Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

Someone keeps calling Bruce Willis and threatening to blow things up if he doesn't do certain things, like solving brain-teasers and walking around in Harlem wearing a sandwich board that says he doesn't like black people (but not in those words). Somewhere along the line—I hope not in Harlem, but probably in Harlem—he's joined by Samuel L. Jackson. Something might happen with a truck. Really the main thing I remember other than the racist sandwich board is how to get exactly four gallons of water when you have only a three-gallon and a five-gallon container.

N.B.: There was never actually a pay phone there in real life.

Three Fugitives (1989)

Nick Nolte, Martin Short, and a little girl are bank robbers. Or probably two bank robbers get stuck with a little girl for some reason? Mainly what I remember is the one-sheet: isn't Nick Nolte holding both Martin Short and the little girl? Something wacky is going on. I'm really searching for any memories at all about the actual content of this film. Maybe it's more violent than you'd expect? One thing about it is that I think for a while in my head Nick Nolte was "the guy from Three Fugitives."

A career-defining role for Nolte.

Congo (1995)

A team of scientists goes to—well, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say the Congo—and might be attacked by hippos but definitely are attacked by gorillas who smash people's heads, possibly trained by ancient Mayans. Oh, and the scientists have their own gorilla. Are they looking for treasure or something? The friendly gorilla probably saves the day by talking to the violent gorillas, and/or gets its own head smashed. In conclusion, it probably wasn't Mayans if this is in the Congo. (But you never know! Sci-fi!)

Wait, what? There are lasers in this movie?

Die Harder (1990)*

Die Hard in an airport. Bad guys hack into an airplane's navigation system to make the pilot think it's farther above the ground than it is, and the plane crashes even though John McCain McClane tries to stop it by waving lights in the air; then he finds a teddy bear or a doll in the wreckage (that scene is rough). Later, someone gets sucked into a jet engine (surely, right?), and someone else gets stabbed in the eye with an icicle.

Oh, and apparently this happens.

* I was sure this movie was called Die Harder, but the IMDb says Die Hard 2 and Wikipedia says, "often subtitled Die Harder"—and includes a picture of a poster in which "DIE HARDER" is pretty clearly a tagline but is much bigger than the title, so...

Movies My Mother Remembers: Song of the South (1946)

Reportedly this is the first movie I saw in the theater (in its 1980 rerelease). Take it away, Mom:

I thought you'd like the cartoon characters zinging around the star's head as he sang, but you were not ready for it. There was one scene where a little boy pushed a little girl in a yellow dress into a big mud puddle, and you loudly and insistently kept asking me "Why did that boy push the girl into the mud??!" We had to leave.

Why? Why?!

TV I Don't Remember: The Wonder Years (1988-1993)

Fred Savage is friends with this Jewish kid, and his older brother, Marty McFly's coonskin-cap-wearing uncle, is maybe a bit of a bully. Fred Savage has a crush on Winnie Cooper, and one time he makes out with Becky Slater* and she gives him a hickey and he says it's a bug bite and Becky Slater's like, "Bug bite?!" I believe the series is set in the 1950s and is narrated by Fred Savage's older self (like in Stand by Me)—but honestly that's about it: I can't imagine how a single episode would have panned out. I do remember that Fred Savage tends to humiliate himself. Essentially I think of this show as a 1950s, kiddy, goyische version of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Curb + Freaks & Geeks ÷ Jewish?† [Cf.]

* Played by the sister of the girl who played Winnie Cooper, TRUE STORY!

† No, if only because Fred Savage is Jewish. Bee-tee-dubs, how cool is it that he now directs shit like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Party Down? Go Fred Savage!

Movies I've Seen Only Parts Of: Titanic (1997)

The boat sinks, the bad guy handcuffs Leo to a pipe, and there's a lot of swimming through hallways (maybe one with a closed gate, in a very tense scene?). I gather there's a class issue, here, with Leo being the wonderful poor kid and Kate Winslet being engaged to a rich monster. I know Leo draws Kate naked on a couch, I know he freezes in the water trying to save her, and I know the old lady drives a submarine down to the sunken ship looking for her jewels. That's all I remember (and I am acutely aware that the movie is like four hours long).

NOTE: Every time I turn on the TV and this movie is on, either the boat's about to sink or Kate Winslet is about to get naked. And for that I am grateful.

Like one of Leo's French girls.