A Miracle on 42nd Street (1947)*

A little girl meets Santa Claus and everyone assumes he isn't really Santa Claus until a lot of people write a bunch of letters or something. Maybe they put Santa in jail? I think he rides a sleigh-float in a parade, and I'm like 90% sure the movie is in black-and-white.

Santa in his civvies.

* This movie is called Miracle on 34th Street. I was on the right island, at least.

License to Kill (1989)

This was, believe it or not, the first James Bond movie I ever saw. I think Benicio Del Toro might be in it, and I swear someone is killed by a supermarket-style sliding door. Or was it a revolving door? Either way: ridicularious.

So I guess Bond has a pretty big dick, huh? Either that or
it's so small that even this gun is overcompensation.
Find out in... 007: The Motion of the Ocean!

Halloween III (1982)

A kid is happily playing with toys in one of those rooms with the one-way mirror (or are those called two-way mirrors?), wearing some kind of plush or fabric pumpkin-head mask that covers his entire head. Then a mad scientist pushes a button—no, he makes something come up on the television in the room with the kid (maybe by pushing a button, sure)—and a light on the mask blinks, the kid frantically clutches his head and pitches over, and the mask constricts and collapses to smaller than kid-head size, at which point cockroaches or beetles come pouring out of it. (Right: holy shit!) The evil scientists intend to broadcast that signal to televisions everywhere, having already distributed these masks all over the place; we see other happy children wearing these masks in television rooms around the country, ready to have their heads devoured by bugs or turned into bugs or whatever it is that happens. The end.

Television is bad for kids.

[I think my memory of this movie may actually be quite clear and accurate; the real problem is that I saw only a few minutes of it. This was on TV, in the days before you could push a button (or at least check the Internet) to find out what show you were watching, so it was years and years and years before I knew what disturbing weirdness it had been that had scarred me in a small way at that late-'80s Halloween-night slumber party. And no wonder I couldn't figure out what movie it had been: who makes a third movie in a series that has nothing at all to do with the first two?! It would be like if Iron Man 3 came out and instead of Iron Man it was about a group of mischievous street urchins who rob a candy store.]

License to Drive (1988)

Corey Haim borrows someone's car? And then he picks up some hot girl, but she gets drunk, or maybe she does drugs or has some kind of drug interaction, and she passes out? Maybe he puts her in the trunk? And then has a series of misadventures? I watched this on VHS when I was a kid and home sick* to the point of delirium, so I'm not sure I remembered it ten minutes after it was over. I think half of what I'm "remembering" now actually comes from Adventures in Babysitting, and the other half from "Parents Just Don't Understand" by DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. (But maybe this movie is basically Adventures in Babysitting meets "Parents Just Don't Understand"...?)

"I want the veal scalopini! I want a good fetuccini alfredo!"

* ≠ homesick

Scream 3 (2000)

There's some suggestion in this one that shit may have just gone supernatural, the same way we jump from Jason's disgruntled mother to an undead Jason himself in the Friday the 13th movies: I remember Sidney (wait...that's her name, isn't it?) in like a fake haunted house where suddenly it appears that maybe the actual ghost of her mom is coming for her, under a sheet? But then it turns out no: no ghost. I think Sidney shoots somebody in the head on a stage at the end, but that might be in Scream 2.*

Pretty sure this is from the opening scene of Scream 2, but it
came up when I searched for Scream 3 images, so fuck off.

* BLOG-INAPPROPRIATE NOTE: I just recently rented Scream 4, and [SPOILER ALERT] isn't the whole movie basically just a not very good set-up for the actually relatively worthwhile final 20 minutes? What a character or two refer to as the "alternate ending" is way more interesting than everything leading up to it. I might be wrong about all this: I was half-asleep when I watched it (and also high on uranium).

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)

Steve Martin and John Candy get stuck going cross-country together (presumably via plane, train, and automobile). At one point they share a bed in a hotel and John Candy says he has his hands between two pillows and Steve Martin says, "THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS!" (Or, wait, probably it's Steve Martin who has his hands in John Candy's ass, right?) Also they stand holding suitcases, hitchhiking. I think both of the things I remember about this movie were in the trailer.

Totally forgot they're transporting a 12-year-old Swedish vampire.

L.A. Story (1991)

I've seen this movie twice, and the second time I'm pretty sure I liked it. AND YET...all I can remember is (1) people shooting at each other in a traffic jam, (2) Steve Martin talking to a sign that quotes Hamlet, (3) the "half-caf decaf triple-latte" order, however it went, (4) marital discord with the woman from the ABC sitcom Taxi, and (5) Sarah Jessica Parker as Rollergirl.

In the early '90s, only signs spoke this kind of pidgin English.

that Archie TV movie (1990)

Did anybody see this one? It was to the Archie comics as Hook was to Peter Pan. (That was an SAT analogy for you—free of charge!) Archie and company come back to Riverdale for their 10-year high-school reunion (or 15-year, or 20-year, I don't know), and I think Archie may be married, with a kid who put Jell-O in his sheets. Or is it a stepson?—because I assume that Archie winds up with either Betty or Veronica, and I assume this isn't a story about marital infidelity. Or, who knows, maybe it is! I basically remember nothing other than the Jell-O. I think this thing was called To Riverdale and Back Again or something.

Couldn't find a decent movie still,  so this'll have to do. (via)

Lawnmower Man (1992)

I'm thinking a convicted murderer is executed in the electric chair—something like that—and winds up getting his evil soul uploaded into one of those early-'90s sci-fi misconceptions of what the Internet might be like? I think telephones and weird 3D Tron-like visualizations are involved. This is yet another movie based on something Stephen King wrote, and I think I remember that it sort of couldn't decide whether it was a Nightmare on Elm Streetish horror story or a Johnny Mnemonicky thriller. (Yes, Johnny Mnemonic postdates Lawnmower Man; I'm using "Johnny Mnemonicky" as an adjective with its own independent existence, like "Kafkaesque" or "Yahoo Serious."*)

What the Jesus? I think I sort of vaguely remember this. Does
Lawnmower Man† say he is God, or is it like Mola Ram (whom
he kind of looks like!) saying he was going to conquer God?

* E.g., "Shit's about to get Yahoo Serious up in here."
† If I'm not mistaken, "Lawnmower Man"—like "Jaws," "Die Hard," and "Wall Street"—is not in fact the name of the character.

The Cradle Will Rock (1992)*

Rebecca De Mornay is a nanny who it turns out is crazy and tries to kill Macauley Culkin. Or maybe it's just that Macaulay Culkin was in a similar movie around the same time.† I also sometimes get Rebecca De Mornay and Traci Lords confused. (Is this the movie with the literal cliffhanger at the end, or is it the one where an underage girl with a fake ID has unsimulated sex on camera for the masturbatory enjoyment of a country of perverts?)

Still from Black Throat (1985).

* IMPORTANT NOTE: I was thinking of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
† The Good Son (1993).

Se7en (1995)

Kevin Spacey (it turns out) is going around murdering people based on the seven deadly sins, like he makes this fat guy eat himself to death and does a horrible thing to a prostitute that I don't want to talk about. What else does he do? He puts Brad Pitt's wife's head in a box and gives it to him. (Brad Pitt—is that right?) You know when they refer to certain films as "torture porn"? I thought this movie was a kind of pornography, and I didn't like it. SORRY, SEEMINGLY EVERYBODY ELSE.

This is what comes up if you Google Image Search
"se7en" (which is stupid, by the way—the word, not
the result: a 7 does not look like a V, you jerks).

Home Alone (1990)

Macaulay Culkin gets left behind by his parents because they don't care about him, he's afraid of a pigeon man (the pigeon man might actually be from Home Alone 2: Jason Takes Manhattan), Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern try to rob his house, and he stops them with hilarious booby traps,* any one of which might easily have straight-up killed these two people. I guess I remember the entire story line (although, then again, I think all of what I just said might have been in the trailer). Christopher Columbus wrote Gremlins.

Why don't all movies star adorable hilarious children??
(Oh, right—because we're trying to keep the suicide rate down.)

* That's what I said! Booby traps!

The Opposite of Sex (1998)

Christina Ricci goes to... Wait. I'm not sure about "goes to." It might actually be the case that the only thing I remember about this movie is "Christina Ricci." I'm confident about that part. Maybe at one point the boom comes into the frame and it's somehow "meta" and intentional?—and/or an embarrassing fuck-up that my friends and I noticed and couldn't believe? [It might be funny if I pretended to think that Christina Ricci gets chained to a radiator in every movie she does, but that's not really what this blog is about. THIS SHIT IS REAL.]

Pretty much the only image that comes up if you Google this movie.
The good news is, this might end up being almost as popular as
Porky's with my accidental-Google-Image-pervert-click demographic.

My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Joe Pesci is a lawyer who represents "two yoots" in a criminal trial (car theft?), and Marisa Tomei is his hot girlfriend or sister or something who staggers around endearingly in high heels and a short dress. Is one of Joe Pesci's clients the Karate Kid? Probably it looks like they don't have a chance and then it turns out Pesci's seemingly ridiculous tactics are actually dark-horse brilliant. We might guess that the prosecutor is an asshole and is duly humiliated. Years later, Marisa Tomei is topless all over the place, and I am not trying to complain about that.

Paint on a mustache and squint your eyes, and might this not
look a little bit like The Paul F. Tompkins Show? FINALLY: A
REFERENCE I CAN BE SURE EVERYONE WILL GET.

TV I Don't Remember: Shirt Tales (1982-1984)

You know how some television shows for kids are pretty much just commercials for toys? (For example, I'm pretty sure the entire He-Man universe was created as a workaround for the fact that Mattel couldn't get the merchandising rights for Conan the Barbarian. That's not a joke I just made up: I'm pretty sure it's actually true!) Well, I Googled Shirt Tales a while back and found out that it started out not even as a line of toys but as a line of greeting cards. With origins like that, how could the show not be good?

I remember that these were a bunch of knee- or waist-high talking animals wearing different-colored T-shirts that would all turn the same color (blue?) when they needed to...um... OK, I have no idea what was different when the T-shirts changed colors. I think it was set up like a superhero thing—or, you know, like the way Voltron would assemble and then kick ass—but I'm not sure anything actually happened when it happened: it really might have been all convention, no content. They had some kind of batmobile they'd drive out of their tree (because they lived in a tree), and they were maybe in a park or a zoo with a groundskeeper who was always trying to catch them and lived in a house with his family. There was a girl panda and a boy monkey (who talked like Humphrey Bogart, whom I first learned about via Shirt Tales). Maybe their batmobile flew? I'm pretty sure my parents hated this show. Hated.

I'm sorry, what's that fucking possum's name?!
Oh...Digger. OK.

Patriot Games (1992)

This might be the point at which Harrison Ford stopped being rakishly delightful and started getting all gruff and unhappy and "Get off my plane" about everything. In this movie he thwarts an IRA bombing and the IRA gets mad—maybe he kills somebody's brother—so they start stalking him at his beach house or something. I think maybe they drive after his wife on the highway in a Libyan terror-van ("Run for it, Marty!") and she gets in a car crash and Harrison Ford gets pissed. Or maybe that's when they go to the beach house? Like, Harrison Ford lures them there? That's all I got. [Oh, and this is kind of a Hunt for Red October sequel.]

"I am never gonna let you go! You hear me? Never!"

[new new slogan]

New slogan: Now Only Once a Week!™

Extract (2009)

Jason Bateman?...gets dumped by someone, or has a bad marriage with someone, and gets involved with...Mila Kunis? (yes, Mila Kunis, because I remember seeing an interview with her where she said she had fake breasts for the movie and everybody treated her differently on set)...and they go to a motel and she steals his wallet and/or car. Something else happens with some lawsuit...riiight, some guy loses a testicle in an accident and is going to sue Jason Bateman; I'm pretty sure that's it. This is a Mike Judge movie and it basically just came out and I'm sorry I don't remember it. I'M SORRY, OK?

In other news, Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis are in every movie. (Yes including Schindler's List.)

Oh, right...CGI smoke? That was dumb.

Carrie (1976)

Carrie has her period in the shower, she has an abusive religious lunatic for a mom ("They're all gonna laugh at you!"—right?), she has pig blood dumped on her at the prom, she telekinetically kills everyone, including her mom, with flying knives, and then she grabs some girl's ankle from her grave. But that last part's a dream. OR IS IT?

[NOTES: (1) It may be that I've actually successfully summarized the entire plot of the movie: this is another one that I can't see as being much longer than 20 minutes long. (2) When I saw the Sex and the City 2 teaser poster, I honestly thought that it was for a Carrie sequel, but of course it wasn't. OR WAS IT?]

But, you know, in the end it's a pretty happy story.

A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Some kind of skeleton (or rag doll) finds out that Santa Claus was kidnapped by a creepy pin cushion (or rag doll). I remember this movie being about as dark, subversive, and interesting as the doodles of a 12-year-old girl who recently learned that it's cool to wear black.

Oh, and it's a musical! Remember, kids: it can't be schmaltz
or sentimentality if there's graveyard imagery in it.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Keanu Reeves has a microchip in his head that bad guys want, one of the bad guys has some kind of laser whip, and Henry Rollins helps Keanu out and then drives a tank or something. When The Matrix trailers started running, I was like, "What is this, Johnny Mnemonic Too?"

This movie is about the Internet. Hahahaha, Nineties.

Transformers (2007)

For some reason Bumblebee is not a Volkswagen beetle.* Shia LaBeouf buys Bullshit-Bumblebee, Megan Fox leans over the hood of a car in short shorts, and then Transformers start fighting. They fight on a highway, they fight in a city, they fight in a way that is impossible to tell which one is which—just a bunch of indistinguishable metal-colored CGI. John Turturro's a crazy general, Optimus Prime has a sword, and soldiers comport themselves with grace and nobility (because Michael Bay masturbates to Army recruiting commercials). This movie is one of the most disappointing-ever products of man.

I remember this part pretty well.

* This is very difficult for me to move beyond. It would be like making an X-Men movie in which Wolverine has baseball bats coming out of his hands [see also].

Children of the Corn (1984)

Some kids in a farming town kill all their parents and then stand around like creepy American Gothic Babies. I think this happens under the opening credits. Then probably some attractive teenagers get lost there and the children of the corn kill most of them but one or two escape; this I'm more guessing than remembering. (I think Stephen King wrote this; of course, he wrote most movies, including Stand By Me, The Running Man, The Shawshank Redemption—this is all true!—and Madea's Family Reunion.)

Looks like a nice boy.

The Anniversary Party (2001)

Some guy looks like Peter Sellers, and I'm pretty sure that's the only part of the movie I liked. Jennifer Jason Leigh is pregnant...no, she tells Alan Cummings that she had an abortion without his knowing, and they yell at each other outside in the dark—Hollywood Hills? John C. Reilly tries to drown himself in the pool, maybe, and some actress I like swims naked (but I can't remember which). I know I felt like this was a movie by and for actors, and I wasn't too into it.

[Another thing I'm not too into: this post. I wrote it, like, a million years ago and keep postponing it in favor of newer ones I write. Time to just get it out of the way: fuck off, Anniversary Party post!]

It's probably a function of the title, but it was very difficult to
find photographic evidence of the existence of this film online.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

I remember thinking that this movie was like a weird sandwich with unbefuckinglievably amazing war scenes as the bread and a lot of boring stuff (in the sandwich metaphor, maybe dry slices of turkey?) in the middle. And then they wrapped the whole thing in treacle.

Of course they're looking for this lost soldier, and Tom Hanks is the officer in charge. In the storming-the-beaches scene, somebody gets his leg blown off and then walks around carrying it for a second. In the other big battle scene, there's an amazingly long sequence in which a Nazi is trying to stab a Jew (and maybe actually ends up succeeding?). And Tom Hanks shoots a little gun at a tank and the tank actually blows up for some reason not actually having to do with the gun.

Oh, and the insufferable "frame story" involves a girl with big breasts being respectful in a graveyard.

What kind of inhuman monster would want to punch this man?

My Blue Valentine (1990)*

Steve Martin is a Mob informant in the Witness Protection Program. He has black hair instead of white—I think this is just his character, not part of his disguise—and he pushes a shopping cart in a supermarket (possibly also on the movie poster). Maybe he meets Rick Moranis? I don't remember anything else about this goddamned movie.

Whatever happened to Rick Moranis, anyway?

* Important note: This movie is called My Blue Heaven. Blue Valentine is a very different movie.

Movies I've Seen Only Parts Of: Fantastic Voyage (1966)

A politician gets shot in the head through the rear windshield of a town car—and I watched this as a pretty little kid* and for years afterwards was always just ever so slightly worried about getting shot in the head through the rear windshields of cars. (Great, now I'm scared of it again.) Anyway, these doctors need to get shrunk down and drive a submarine through this guy's veins, where they're nearly crushed by the heart—I may be remembering Innerspace here—and up to the brain, at which point it turns out that someone on the sub is a saboteur, and then my parents were like, "OK, time to go," and they turned off the TV, and I never found out what happened. I assume the submarine got big again and the politician's head blew up.

I think this is the brain...but where are the file cabinets?

* By which I mean that I was pretty little, not that I was pretty and little—although I was pretty gorgeous.

Flatliners (1990)

Kiefer Sutherland (I think...pretty safe guess, anyway) is part of an all-nighter-pulling team of scientists who discover that they can maybe bring people back from the dead, and a few of them—maybe all?—try it, after which I think they start having terrifying visions, like they brought something back. Then it turns out they just have to go around apologizing to people they wronged as kids. Oh, maybe one of them can't do that because the person he wronged committed suicide? Not sure what happens then. Nothing too cheerful, I'm thinking.

Also starring—Oliver Platt, as "Igor."

Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)

Julia Roberts is on the run from an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband who wants to kill her: not sure whether it's because she knows about some crime he committed or just because he's a violent, jealous maniac—I think the latter. In the end there's a suspenseful scene at an amusement park and presumably the guy dies, probably by falling off a ferris wheel or something. I remember this movie being about as cheerful and fun as you'd expect a movie about a woman-beating stalker/murderer to be.

This screenshot might be from a different movie—not totally sure.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Hugh Grant and others (maybe Helena Bonham Carter?) are friends and have various romantic entanglements. To be fair, that's less remembering than it is guessing. I sort of want to say that the wedding-funeral math doesn't add up the way you'd expect it to, and I think one of the main characters may be gay (which at the time of the film's release was relatively unusual?). I am really straining to remember anything else about this movie. I know I saw it in the theater, and I believe I felt that it had an impact in the United States that was disproportionate to its quality. Either that or I thought it was funny—but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to go back and check.

Reminds me of that movie Homer went to see
when they pulled the crayon out of his brain
and he got too smart to like bad movies.

Baby (1938)*

Not to be confused with Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (I actually did confuse the two when I was a kid and was painfully disappointed: no dinosaurs at all?!), this movie does still involve a wild animal, albeit not extinct. Cary Grant and, I don't know, probably Katherine Hepburn have a tiger they have to drive around for some reason, and they wind up in a jail cell at one point with a bunch of other people—and possibly also the tiger. I feel like I have this movie filed, for some reason, in the same folder of my brain that has Mighty Joe Young (1949) in it. In other news, my brain is organized into file folders, and this is entirely neurologically sound [see Muppet Babies: "Scooter's Uncommon Cold"].

Adorable photograph (taken moments before Hepburn's tragic death).

* Important note: this movie is actually called Bringing Up Baby, and the tiger is a leopard.

Swordfish (2001)

Wolverine is a hacker and John Travolta is a master criminal who tests his hacking skills by seeing whether he can crack some kind of code while getting a blowjob with a gun to his head. Maybe Wolvie's an undercover cop? I think Travolta's getaway plan for some kind of big bank robbery involves a school bus being picked up by a helicopter with a huge magnet, and somehow that's supposed to be a brilliant, unstoppable maneuver. Halle Berry might be in this.*

Also part of the process if you apply for a job at Google.

* Ohhhh, right. Topless, reading a book.

Mermaids (1990)

Cher is a single mother, possibly a widow, whose daughters are Winona Horowitz and Christina Ricci (in her first role!). Sometimes they have fun, like when they cook together and sing songs from the early '60s or when Cher dates Bob Hoskins, but other times things are rough, like when Winona loses her virginity and her sister nearly drowns because sex is immoral. In the end everything turns out OK, though, and they cook and sing together during the credits. [NOTE: Is there something sort of messed up, somehow, about a bunch of pretty women singing that "Never make a pretty woman your wife" song, or am I imagining that?]

Why does this look more depressing than fun? Looks like
an oasis of laughter in a desert of despair.

Point Break (1991)

Val Kilmer robs a bank in a Reagan mask, and Keanu Reeves is maybe a cop trying to catch him? And they become buddies? Or maybe they're already buddies and Keanu wants out? But they definitely surf, I know that!—and, in the end, Val Kilmer rides his surfboard off into a huge wave that I guess they for some reason know is a certain-death situation,* and Kilmer says, all meaningfully, "Vaya con Dios"—and that's the end of the movie, and my friend and I (this was in high school) looked at each other and were both like, "What the fuck?" We didn't speak Spanish.

Jesus. I feel like this movie is for guys with sunglasses I wouldn't like.

* Funnily enough, "And, in the end, Val Kilmer rides his surfboard off into a huge wave that I guess they for some reason know is a certain-death situation" are actually the original lyrics to the Beatles' "The End." (They changed it to that "love you take, love you make" business because this version didn't scan quite right and because they were like, "Paul, who's 'Val Kilmer'?" and he made this very hammy Paul face and was like, "Beats me!")

Species (1995)

My memory of this movie has been corrupted by my memory of Mimic (which I think has to do with giant subway cockroaches that turn into Mira Sorvino?). In Species a beautiful blonde woman is actually an alien—or bioengineered, or a bioengineered alien—and she keeps having sex with men and then killing them in unusual ways. I think she's being tracked by Anthony Hopkins or something, and she may be trying to reproduce. Does something come out of her mouth like in Alien? Is there any nudity?* These are important questions.

Not Anthony Hopkins.

* Google says—and I am paraphrasing, here—"Oh, yes."

Freejack (1992)

Somebody—I want to say possibly Sylvester Stallone?*—gets blasted into the future, where he's pursued by Mick Jagger (that part I'm pretty sure of) because everybody has to be registered somehow and this guy isn't because he's from the past. Either that or they're actually used to time-travelers in the future, and they want to detain our hero, but he gets away? Yeah, you know what: I think they bring him from the past so they can use his organs or something. Maybe not. At any rate, I'm pretty sure Mick Jagger ends up coming around and helping the guy out. I remember zero scenes from this movie, except Mick Jagger in his batmobile talking on speakerphone and wearing maybe a helmet like the Kodan wear in The Last Starfighter. I watched this movie in a hotel.

OK, not so much with the Kodan thing.

* Stallone, Estevez—same difference.

Phenomenon (1996)

John Travolta sees a flash of light in the sky and then starts being able to move shit with his mind. At first everybody thinks he was visited by aliens that gave him superpowers, but then it turns out he just has an enormous brain tumor, and he dies (seriously).* [NOTE: I remember that a good friend insisted, years ago, that this movie is really, really good; on what authority can I possibly say he's wrong?]

In which a man suddenly gains the power to open books.

* SPOILER ALERT: This is also how Green Lantern (2011) ends.

The 400 Blows (1959)

A kid steals a typewriter and walks around Paris in black and white. I think he lives in a small apartment with his mom and her boyfriend (or some kind of "nontraditional" family arrangement that isn't entirely comfortable for him) and he plays hooky and gets in trouble in school. Or maybe he gets in trouble for the typewriter thing? Anyway, they send him to, like, a juvenile-delinquent camp, and he gets interviewed. This movie is about alienation and/or the filmmaker's childhood—and probably Algeria, too, somehow (knowing France).

Fighting off gremlins like Corey Feldman.

Quadrophenia (1979)

A guy who in my head is a cross between Bud Cort in Harold and Maude and what's-his-name in A Clockwork Orange (Malcolm Gladwell?—no) sings maybe "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks in a bathtub while some other guy in another, adjacent bathtub(?) sings Elvis or something, and they get mad at each other. And this defines a divide between the rockers, who wear leather jackets and ride motorcycles, and the Mods, who look more like modern-day post-punk types and ride...I want to say razor scooters, but that's clearly wrong. Vespas? Anyway, the Mods sing, "We are the Mods, we are the Mods, we are the we are the we are the Mods," and there's a big riot or brawl between the Mods and the rockers, and I feel like our anti-hero maybe has sex with some cute girl in an alley. Whatever. As far as I can recall, the Who don't enter into it.

Yes, alley sex! Once again, what I feared was incriminating
invention is nothing but innocent, blameless memory.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Russell Crowe is a total genius whose mathematical insights border on the superhuman! He sees patterns other people can't! He—

Hold on, scratch that. He's bonkers.

Don't be crazy, Russell Crowe! Those symbols don't mean anything!

Dick Tracy (1990)

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) has to take down a foam-rubber-faced Big Boy (Al Pacino) with the help of spunky ragamuffin Gavroche (Charlie Korsmo). Big Boy slams a piano lid down on somebody's fingers, a mysterious blank-faced person turns out to be sexy singer Breathless Mahoney or Mulroney (Madonna), and Dick Tracy asks whether the enemy of his enemy is his friend but ultimately comes down on the side of the enemy of his enemy's being his enemy. I think Breathless dies in a very Éponine kind of way—a little fall of rain can hardly hurt that creepy blank face now.*

[NOTES: I remember that Al Pacino's character is "Big Boy" because I remember Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman) saying, "Bbddt, bibididit, Big Boy did it" (when Dick Tracy slows down the tape); I remember that Madonna's character is "Breathless" because of the album I'm Breathless;† and I don't know whether the thing that Big Boy slams down is actually called "a piano lid."]

This picture actually sort of makes me feel sick.

* And everyone who said I couldn't make two not-really-justifiable Les Miz references in one Dick Tracy post can EAT IT.
† Sample lyric: "I'm going bananas, and I feel like my poor little mind is being devoured by piranhas."

Movies I've Seen Only Parts Of: The Last Action Hero (1993)

In this Purple Rose of Cairo remake Charlie Kaufmanesque masterwork,* Arnold Schwarzenegger plays an Arnold Schwarzeneggy action hero, and some fucking kid goes into a wardrobe or something and finds himself in Arnold's fictional action-movie universe—after which I think he and Arnold and the main bad guy jump back to the real universe, where Arnold sees a cardboard life-size stand-up of himself in a video store and has feelings about it.

I remember watching much of this movie on TV, late one night in high school, alone—and keeping on watching it, waiting for it to turn a corner and get better—then ultimately giving up and feeling, painfully and acutely, that I had wasted part of my life. I'm not joking about this even a little: I went to bed feeling bad. What we have here is a memory of existential despair.

One-word review, then: "Nausea."

"If I were you, I'd run the rest of Gremlins 2 right now!"

* No.

The Exorcist (1973)

I know a little girl gets possessed, and of course I know she (1) spins her head around and (2) throws up. She also pees in front of a piano and—I'm afraid to say this in case it's wrong and reveals something about my psychology, but—doesn't she use a crucifix as a dildo?* The exorcist says, "The power of Christ compels you!" but I only know that because people reference it. I'm not sure how they get a whole movie out of this.

She sleeps above her covers. Four feet above her covers.
[q.v. April Fool's Day post]

* In sort of a violation of my usual Movies I Don't Remember code of ethics, I actually checked this before posting—and for that I apologize to all of you.

Platoon (1986)

I think I remember Charlie Sheen in the mud. (Is that the image on the one-sheet, even? Am I just remembering the goddamned poster?!) Pretty sure somebody betrays somebody else. Oh, and of course it's Vietnam. Or Korea. I'm going to go with Vietnam.

Willem, no!!!

Amistad (1997)

Slaves are horribly mistreated on a slave ship—I think maybe brought up on deck naked during a thunderstorm and thrown overboard?—and (a) what's being depicted is an atrocity and (b) I'm a dude and not gay, BUT, sorry, it was impossible not to marvel at the penises flopping around. Later, Anthony Hopkins looks at a flower in a glass bowl and then delivers an inspiring speech before an old-timey Supreme Court.

So: what I remember about Amistad—penises, flower, Supreme Court.

Hahahaha, McConaughey!

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Movies I Don't Remember: Now Only Twice a Week!™
[becausehereswhy]

Jack (1996)

Jack is a little boy who isn't so little because he ages too fast: he's only like 10 years old or something and he's already played by Robin Williams. Peter Pan's son who also was Dick Tracy's sidekick might be Jack's friend.* It's sad for everyone because who can understand an old-looking kid? Plus he's probably going to die before too long. Maybe he even dies in the movie (but probably not). Is there a treehouse or something? I would watch this movie again if somebody paid me $50 to do it—cheap!

Maybe $100.

* Charlie Korsmo. Nope.

TV I Don't Remember: The Maxx (1995)

One late night when I was in high school, MTV was showing a marathon of this, and either I missed part of it or the marathon was incomplete, and I was left with narrative blue balls. As far as I could tell—or rather as far as I can remember having been able to tell—there were at least two different realities, or levels of reality, both involving this spandexed alien or something, with like long pointy hands or elbows, who was sometimes a drunk in an alley or dumpster and sometimes was basically a superhero, and he helped some little girl or teenaged girl or some kind of girl, but basically everything was cosmically screwed up and nothing was certain. Essentially it feels like a crazy awesome dream I had and then couldn't get out of my head. This is something I actually think I have to watch and find out whether it's any good.

Illuminates nothing.

Major League (1989)

Charlie Sheen plays baseball and is a bit of a wild man! At one point he shaves some idiotic pattern into his hair—maybe he had that, changed it, and gets it back again later as a way of demonstrating that he's back in the saddle? (I might be remembering Major League 2.) I'm 95% sure that this is a comedy.

Glasses? No memory of this at all. Maybe I only saw Major League 2.
To be honest, I don't really care for sports.

Minority Report (2002)

Creepy bald naked people in amniotic fluid predict the future so Tom Cruise can arrest criminals before they've had the chance to commit a crime, but then the creepy bald naked people say he's going to commit a crime, so he has to jump on vertical elevator-trains and maybe pull out his own molars—although, no, that seems like I'm remembering Twelve Monkeys. Does he maybe do a home eye transplant? I think I saw this movie drunk with a friend of mine in her parents' house in Massachusetts and she got scared.

Oh, Samantha Morton! She was great in Sweet & Lowdown.*

* Woody Allen's last good movie. WHO WANTS TO FIGHT ME?

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The only thing I remember about this movie is somebody getting shot and falling off a roof or out a window. Probably both of those things happen. (I feel guilty because I think this movie's supposed to be really good.)

Wow. Really?

Gosford Park (2001)

Oh my God, they're in some mansion in the English countryside, like with maids and butlers and shit, and I think someone gets murdered, and the hot schoolgirl from Trainspotting might be in it, and people talk confidentially in the kitchen. I think this movie was maybe actually pretty good, although I can't see how.

Oh, that actress. (Not even actually 100% sure this is from Gosford Park.
Found out while Googling it that it's Robert Altman! Would not have said that.)

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Is this the movie in which Bruce Willis drives a car into a swimming pool? Then I think he says something cool and/or funny to a bad guy on a cell phone. Something sarcastic, letting the bad guy know that he (Bruce Willis) isn't dead yet? Or maybe he's just like, "I'm calling from the bottom of a pool?"* I'm spending a lot of time trying to remember this line because I don't remember anything else. What else is there? A football might be involved.

Football! Boo-ya!

* Yes! Sort of! "Hey, Milo. Where ya callin' from, the bottom of the pool?" (IMDb)