Long before I even saw it, "The Exorcist" terrified me. I recall seeing a clip of it on the news one night when I was ten or so and the mere sight of Linda Blair's possessed face scared the shit out of me. I subsequently found myself fascinated and intimidated by the movie in equal measure. I knew of no other film where the mere sight of its monster makeup gave me nightmares. That face haunted me in the middle…
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Pee-wee's Big Adventure 1985
"Pee Wee's Big Adventure" was the world's introduction to the crazy comedic stylings of Paul Reubens and to the visual splendor of Tim Burton, and it remains one of the greatest things that either of them has ever done.
"Pee Wee's Big Adventure" is a glorious testament to silliness. It is pure and innocent but with a twinge of something darker creeping in around the edges. But even that darkness is somehow wholesome, which is what you get when you…
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The Hand 1981
Michael Caine plays a comic strip artist.
Sidebar: are comic strips still a thing? I haven't bought an actual newspaper in a million years, but I remember the joy of opening that full-color comic strip supplement in the Sunday paper and savoring every panel of them. Though I was never as keen on the serious, serialized stories in the paper (such as "Prince Valiant" or "Mary Worth") as I was "Garfield" and "Peanuts" and, the GOAT, "Calvin and Hobbes". The…
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The Mangler 1995
The alternate title for this film should be: "OSHA Violations: The Movie".
I love Stephen King, so you think I would have seen this movie by this point in my life but it's based on one of King's weaker short stories (from what I remember) with one of his iffier premises: there's an evil machine at an industrial laundry that has a diabolical thirst for blood. King's vast literary output means that he's written books about damned near everything, but…
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My Cousin Vinny 1992
Marisa Tomei winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was long considered one of the biggest screw-ups in Oscar history. She was considered undeserving, her performance too light and insubstantial for an award.
If you hold this opinion, I respect your viewpoint. But you can also go fuck yourself.
If you can watch the scene at the end where Marisa explains positraction on the witness stand without smiling, and without marveling at how fully and beautifully Marisa Tomei hijacks the…
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Ever After 1998
There's a line in this movie that breaks me. Every single time. It's when Drew Barrymore, as Danielle, the alleged real-life inspiration for Cinderella, asks her wicked stepmother, played by a rarely-better Anjelica Huston, if there was...well...
"Was there ever a moment, even in its smallest measurement, that you loved me at all?"
"How can one love a pebble in their shoe?" replies the stepmother.
This line, delivered so coldly, without a hint of empathy or remorse, guts me. I…
