The Island (2005, probably)

(Christian’s Note: I didn’t want to Google this movie because I like not remembering it at all. Seriously, I can’t even be sure this is a real movie. So I drew my own movie poster for it. You’re welcome.)

Written by: Siân 

Last Time I Saw It: 2005? Maybe? Sure. 

Okay, so there’s an island. Yup. And this guy lives on the island. Oh, crap. Who was it? I keep wanting to say Jude Law, but he was probably hanging out on Johnny Depp’s island at the time because, let’s be serious, that sounds like a lot more fun. Um. Hm. It was a male actor. And he was pretty studly, even though that apparently isn’t a word. OH. Ewan McGregor? Ewan, is that you? Well, it is now. 

Right, so let’s get back to the island. Ewan’s character lives there. It’s all super rad and sci-fi like, so let’s give him a sci-fi name. Charles. Okay, so Charles is just chillin’ on this futuristic island. Life is good: he has a job, everything is very white, he wears a sweet jumpsuit, and has all the Tang and Dippin’ Dots he could ever want. He also has a sexy lady friend, played by Scarlett Johansson. I obviously remember her in this movie immediately because boobs. She also has a super sci-fi name: Kim. But, Kim, she isn’t content with living her perfect life in her perfectly fitted jumpsuit. She thinks it’s way too perfect. And, let’s face it: a world full of an unlimited supply of The Ice Cream Of The Future? Yeah, I’d be suspicious too. 

She convinces Charles that he should be just as creeped out about the perfect Island as she is. I mean, isn’t it strange that their friend, Bob, all of the sudden “won” a trip to “another island”? And he’s never coming back? It’s totally weird, especially since he’d never entered any contests in his life. At least, that’s what he was shouting when they dragged him off for his trip. Charles and Kim do some more snooping and uncover some science things. The science things convince them that they should leave the Island, so they leave. It’s probably not as easy as that. The Island security chased them for a bit, I’m sure. Maybe someone even died. And super futuristic guns were fired, I’m sure. And buildings exploded. A lot of buildings, because Michael Bay. But Kim and Charles managed to stay alive and make it to the outside. And, guess what, it’s the real world! Yeah, like the one we’re living in now. Yes, the shitty one.

Kim and Charles realize they stand out in their pristine, matching jumpsuits, so they hit up the nearest JC Penny to get some real-world clothes. While they’re out on the street searching for some Dippin’ Dots, Kim passes a giant perfume ad with her face plastered on it. She’s confused, because she’s pretty certain if she was going to hock any perfume brand it would totally be Burberry and not Calvin Klein. Duh. Kim and Charles venture out to the desert. Oh, and they’re still being chased. And buildings are still exploding. They hide in a diner or abandoned motel or something and guess what: Steve Buscemi is there! That’s nice. He helps them out, but then he dies. Or maybe he explodes. Yeah, that’s more dramatic.

Somehow, during all of this, Kim and Charles figure out that they aren’t real people at all, which is the whole point of the movie. They’re just clones of super rich people living in the real world. And when those super rich people have need of their organs or whatever, they get harvested. The Island is just a holding zone for all of the clones, not the perfect world after all. Kim is slightly comforted because she knew that she would never have signed a deal with Calvin Klein (please), but also sad because she’s a clone of someone who would sign a deal with Calvin Klein. She doesn’t cry, because there is no crying in baseball and also I am pretty sure clones can’t cry anyway.

And then, there is some sort of climax to the movie. Except I don’t know what. I feel like there were more explosions. But I’m sure Kim and Charles live happily ever after and he finally gets some.

That’s probably ‘The Island’.

Probably The Scene, #1

Fight Club (1999, probably)

Jack and Tyler exit the bar and stand outside the doorway. Tyler lights a cigarette.

Jack: Hey thanks for the drink, I should probably get going. I have to call a hotel or something.

Tyler: (Chuckling through a cigarette drag) Just ask, man.

Jack: What?

Tyler: You called me because you needed a place to stay…

Jack: (interrupting Tyler) Oh, no, that’s…

Tyler: …so just ask, man.

Jack: Would that be a problem?

Tyler: Is it a problem for you to ask?

Jack: Can I stay at your place?

Tyler: Sure.

Tyler walks out of the doorway to the middle of the parking lot. Jack hesitantly follows behind, keeping distance.

Jack: Thanks.

Tyler: I need you to do me a favour, though.

Jack: Of course, yeah.

Close-up, Tyler speaks slowly and confidently.

Tyler: I’d like it if you said “ice ice, baby” as loud as you could.

Brick (1997, probably)

Written By: Christian

Last time I saw it: When I slept on the floor and painted things.

Author’s Note: This is a special post commemorating a staff birthday here at PTP and co. As friends and roommates, Siân and I have watched somewhere between two to seventeen movies together over the years, and I believe Brick to be the first of the lot. If it wasn’t the first, it was certainly the first featuring Joseph Gordon Levitt in a noir role. So there’s that. Anyway, Happy Birthday!

Excitement right off the bat, as it’s the start of a new high school semester and Joseph Gordon Levitt is young and in love with a blonde girl (who isn’t, amirite?). I want to believe Joseph’s name is Brick in this, but I doubt that’s true as the only movie character I know named Brick loves lamps and hosts pants parties. For the sake of the readability of this review, though, his name is definitely Brick. (Omelettes, eggs. You know the deal.)

Brick and blonde girl are madly in high-school splove. Splove is new term I just coined that is a love substitute; all the taste, none of the calories. But as is the need for noir movies, something goes terribly, terribly wrong: Blondie gets murdered. Stone cold dead. A horrific tragedy that rocks the high-school world, and hits Brick the hardest. He becomes a wall of emotion, only held together by the mortar of friends around him.

He begins to realize something is amiss regarding the circumstances of Blondie’s demise and sets out to get to the bottom of it. Blondie was into some shady shit and had connections to some of the most criminally adept high-schoolers ever organized. It must have been one of them that took her out! Brick enlists the help of the comedic relief character, his genius best friend, to decode some clues that Brick found on the sidewalk, probably.

It turns out that there is a drug ring operating throughout the school and that it is governed by some sort of tweeny-bopper Godfather type, who takes notes in English Lit. by day and oversees heroin deals with the Triads by night. Sure, his Mom wonders why there’s suddenly a hot tub full of crisp hundreds in the basement, but he did just get a B in Math and every boy needs a hobby.

I’m quite certain the clues Brick followed were cryptic and important, but their details escape me on a level that I simply can’t convey. If I were to try, I would equate it to talking with a very attractive foreign woman whose English isn’t perfect but still decent enough for you to pick out words and you just have to sit there and nod, muttering ‘Mhmm, mhmm, yeah. I know some of those syllables.’

Eventually, I believe Brick meets the girl who has been leaving him all the clues to follow. She is creepy in an emotionally disturbed kind of way, but she also tells Brick that she loves him and that Blondie was never good for him anyway. He should have taken this, and the fact that she knew enough about the situation to leave clues, as a sign that she was evil and probably in on the whole thing. But, you know, she wanted to bang him so that won out. I think we all know how romantic ‘my girlfriend has just been murdered as part of a brutal drug ring operation’ sex can be.

As should have been predicted, the genius comedic relief best friend character who hasn’t been sleeping with creepy women, properly used all of his lonely spare time to solve the puzzle and find out what happened to Blondie. Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t the bad tween godfather guy or the creepy clue girl or any of the obvious suspects; it was the bodyguard of the godfather that we were introduced to almost at the beginning of the movie. I know, right! Crazy. He killed Blondie because she was pregnant with his baby or something and he didn’t want it getting out. So despite all good intentions of making a high-school movie that didn’t hark back to any of the old degrassi cliches, it ended up there anyway, albeit with a lot more death and heavy criminal activity.

Brick becomes disillusioned as a result of all these hijinks and slowly fades into depression, spending much of his time wandering around going to Orange Juliuses and shopping at Old Navy amongst other people who hate themselves.

All in all, he became just another Brick in the mall.

That’s probably Brick.

‘Probably the Plot’: Trailer Edition #1!

The Hobbit (2013, probably)

The ‘Phantom Menace’ of the Lord of the Rings series, this movie looks like it will probably start at the end of the movie and then flashback to the beginning of the movie so that there will be a movie with a beginning and an ending in between the real beginning and end of the movie. Peter Jackson loves his endings, so you had to have figured there was going to be at least two or three of them.

It then seems that Gandalf puts together some kind of Norwegian hair-fetish orgy in the shire and everyone has a good old fashioned pre-bang sing along. Next December, in a classic nod to the original films, Bilbo and Gandalf set about on an endless, featureless walk through the mountainous region of New Zealand. They sometimes use horses, you know, to go faster. Who would want that, though? Speed kills, guys.

Then another talking hairless cat shows up blabbing on about some ring based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. 

That’ll probably be ‘The Hobbit’. 

The Man With One Red Shoe (1986, probably)

Written by: Christian

Last Time I Saw It: When I lived in my parent’s basement.

BOOM! Something explodes and suddenly, there’s cocaine everywhere. I remember this part because at the time, it was hilarious to me that a group of mexican workers near the cocaine blast started shouting ‘Cocoa-ine! Cocoa-ine!’ and the studio thought it necessary to add the subtitle ‘Cocaine! Cocaine!’. It also occurred within the first 5 minutes of the movie when my attention hadn’t been compromised yet, so I extra remember it. Anyway, a lot of powdered sugar goes everywhere and some guy with a moustache doesn’t like this because he’s a secret agent or something. This guy, Agent Tom Selleck (not really, but roll with it), is part of a group of sort-of secret agents in a sort-of gang war with other sort-of secret agents. It’s sort-of important. 

Cut to the airport, where we’re introduced to a young Tom Hanks. Not the AIDS or the BIG kind of young Tom Hanks; a healthy, kind of nerdy but that’s okay because he has a super masculine best friend, Tom Hanks. This Tom Hanks doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to be pinned as the guy who caused the cocaine explosion we saw earlier. “But he’s innocent! How can this possibly be a good thing?”, I hear you saying. I know, man. It’s fucked. But just wait, okay. He has sex later so it’s all cool.

As Tom descends the escalator, two henchmen from the rival secret agent gang that was really responsible for the cocaine catastrophe randomly choose him as their frame victim, due to his distinguishing singular red shoe. Unlucky. It could have been the cool nun with the shades on, but that red shoe was just too compelling. (The nun thing is real. Seriously. It was a choice between gangster nun, asian tourist #3 or a black guy in a Hawaiian shirt.)

Young Tom Hanks has a lot of stuff going on: He’s boinking his best-friend’s wife even though he’s supposed to be extremely sexually repressed, he’s a violin teacher, he’s got a tooth ache, he’s awesome at riding bikes and now he’s got this hot blonde secret agent babe who’s playing for the good guys following him around trying to figure out why he did the cocaine thing.

Frankly, the whole situation is as confusing as I’m making it out to be and I’m not even including a quarter of the details that are in the movie. Here’s the skinny: Hot blonde babe (HBB) and Secret Agent Tom Selleck (SATS) are in cahoots and they don’t like that the mexicans got their hands on cocaine. On the other side there’s two idiots and fat guy in a white suit who actually did the cocaine explosion thing who have pinned the crime on Tom Hanks; they want him dead, because then they can get away with whatever they did. Tom Hanks is caught in the middle of all this, resulting in hilarious hijinks of a dangerous variety.

On top of all that, there’s a romance. Tom Hanks has fallen madly in sex with Hot Blonde Babe and Secret Agent Tom Selleck doesn’t like this because he spent all that time growing that moustache and no one is going to ride it. Then there’s another layer; Best Friend of Tom Hanks starts to discover the dead bodies that are beginning to pile up around Tom Hanks despite being a total buffoon. (The bodies aren’t literally piled up like in ‘300’, but there is a significant death toll that Tom Hanks unknowingly leaves in his wake. Okay, maybe one or two bodies fall on top of one another. Tom never notices this.)

Fuck, this movie has more layers than Inception. But the only time someone says ‘We have to go deeper.’ is when Tom and Hot Blonde Babe bang.

I may as well just get to that, because the main point of this movie is to watch a ridiculously good looking woman get dragged around by her hair after getting it entangled in Tom Hanks’ fly. Like, his crotch fly. His pecker protector, his dingus dock, his groin guard, his shaft sheath… his fly. Secret Agent Tom Selleck has to watch this horrific act of hilarity from behind a two-way mirror, because the whole situation that led up to the zipper zoinks was a ruse that he set up.

I think in the end the good dudes beat the bad dudes. It’s a game changer for modern films. They figure out that Tom Hanks isn’t an international criminal mastermind, he’s just a quirky fool who couldn’t find matching shoes, because it’s not like the sell those in pairs or anything.

That’s probably The Man With One Red Shoe.

Burlesque (2008, probably)

Written by: Christian

Last time I saw it: After Osama Bin Laden died. (Not immediately.)

Christina Aguilera’s boobs appear on screen, closely followed by Christina Aguilera herself. She’s a small town girl who’s transplanted herself to Los Angeles in the hopes of making it big which means she’s a waitress or something. Luckily, her name is Lexi or Lacey or Luscious or some equally stripper-esque mistake so at least she has that going for her.

After another long day of waiting tables and telling people about the student short film she’s starring in, Lexi exits her restaurant and looks across the street for the first time since arriving in Los Angeles to notice a shady, neon-lit misogyny palace.

Drawn by the need for a reason to make the movie, Lexi walks into this burlesque club and is met by a scantily clad redhead with boobs gyrating on a stage, belting some of the loudest singing heard since the first few rounds of any American Idol auditions. This whole burlesque thing is an exciting new concept to her sheltered midwestern mind and she is sold immediately.

“This is perfect!”, thinks Lexi. “Not only do I have a pair of boobs but I also sing above the volume tolerance of any rational human being. This is a money making opportunity for the ages.”

She then waltzes unimpeded to the back room (because who needs security when you work half-naked at night in an east-L.A. club?) to inquire about a possible work placement; She does have two great resumes prepared and they’re on display nearly all the time. This is where we’re joined by the owner of the club, the Crypt Keeper. We’ll call her ‘Cher’ for short, as in “Cher is no way that is her original skin.”

Cher is feeling quite generous that day, so she takes it easy on the kid. Instead of dragging Lexi to a back office and draining her blood to feast on the essence of youth, Cher puts her to work as an Executive Funtime Food Service Liaison (waitress) and also kindly sets her up with a cool new place to live: the club bartender’s apartment (Chad, probably). This is a good situation for the bartender Chad, because not only is he a typical hunk who will be living with a girl who is blonde and %70 boob, he also has a fiancee who lives elsewhere and awful self-restraint. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s likely that at this point, I went to go refill a soda or unfill my bladder or a combination of the two without asking other viewers to pause the movie until my return because the next thing I remember, Lexi was singing. Why I walked back into the room when I could hear what was happening, I couldn’t begin to rationalize. Yes, Lexi had become a part of Burlesque’s nightly parade of showgirls singing sexy sexualized sex songs and she was already making a name for herself as one of the loudest dancers around. This pleased Cher to no end, as her club was failing due to a dire need for a crisis in the plot and Lexi had started to drum up business.

In the meantime, Lexi and Chad had absolutely started bangin’. Off-screen, on-screen, sometimes they would do away with the screen and just use a bed; whatever the case, uglies were being bumped. Chad was dumped by his fiancee, probably because she found out that he agreed to let a now semi-famous nude dancer chick live with him in a one-bedroom apartment. Ugh, bitches be cray.

Anyway, Chad did what any normal guy would do: take off all his clothes and stand in a doorway until the woman he wanted couldn’t contain her wonton ways any longer. Essentially, he pulled a naked-man scheme. It works every 2 out of 3 times.

Lexi’s newfound fame had brought joy and profitability to Cher’s club in it’s bleakest of times and everything was good again. There was probably a problem involving money and the mob at some point, but it was okay in the end because the girls held a bake sale or something. Due to the appealing nature of cupcakes and tits, it was one of the most successful bake sales of all time and everyone had a good laugh when someone said ‘This had better be icing sugar!’.

Cher was now younger than ever thanks to the life-forces of the sudden influx of young girls chasing Lexi’s path to fame, the bartender Chad was happy because boobs and Lexi was happy because she had finally found a venue large enough to contain her massively overbearing vocals.

That’s probably Burlesque.

There Will Be Blood (2005, probably)

Written by: Siân

Last time I saw it: I’ve only seen this movie once, when it was in theatres. So whatever year that was. 

Okay, so this movie stars Daniel Day Lewis and he’s an oil tycoon. Or, at least, he really, really wants to be. When the movie starts, he’s just a dude with an oil pump. Thinger. Rig? Well, whatever it is, it isn’t going well, because there isn’t any oil. 

I should also say that this movie takes place in Olden Times, or as the fancy-pants film critics like to say: a period piece. This was the period of time when people rode horses and wore hats and there was no Internet. So, anytime before the seventies, really. But it was probably more like the late eighteen hundreds.

And back then, you could either be an oil tycoon or own a cattle ranch. Daniel Day Lewis didn’t really like cattle ever since a childhood incident involving a bull and a wig that he doesn’t like to talk about, thank you very much. So, that meant he had to get into the oil tycoon business. But Daniel Day Lewis didn’t love oil either, because, well it was oil. What he really loved were frozen novelty treats. He dreamed of one day owning a shop that exclusively sold frozen novelty treats. He used to tell him mom about his dream, but she just laughed at him. “Why would anyone want to have frozen juice on a stick? And what is a shaken milk?” 

“Milkshake! It’s a milkshake, mom!” he would shout at her, before dissolving into tears. People in Olden Times didn’t quite get the concept of frozen novelty treats. Probably because freezers hadn’t been invented yet. 

So, he built the rig thing. Except he didn’t follow the instructions when he built it and everyone knows you always, ALWAYS, have to follow the instructions, especially for oil rig thingers. So, it eventually broke. And one of the giant doo-hickies (it’s a professional oil rig term; check the instructions if you don’t believe me) fell onto someone and they got squished. This was very bad for morale, as nobody likes to get squished, so all of his workers were really bummed out; they threatened to leave, which was understandable. Because what’s the point of hanging out in the middle of nowhere if doo-hickies are falling left and right and there’s no oil? Daniel Day Lewis promised them that they would strike oil soon. He could feel it. Or something. 

At this point, we realize that Daniel Day Lewis is a dad, so we’ll call him Daniel Dad Lewis. And he has a son named Paul Dano. But we’ll call him Son Dano. Now, Son Dano isn’t very smart. I think he is dyslexic, but dyslexia (like boom boxes and parachute pants) hadn’t been invented yet, so everyone just thought he was stupid. Daniel Dad Lewis was super mortified that he had a stupid son. He hired a babysitter and tried to stay as far away from Son Dano as he could. You can’t really fault him, though; he had an Oil Tycoon appearance to keep up. And everyone was still really bummed out about the doo-hickie.

All of the sudden, oil! Yah! It starts raining men. I mean oil. The rig finally worked and there is oil shooting into the sky and everyone is running around and happy. But then it’s on fire. This is bad news bears, because oil is more valuable when it is not on fire. Oil Tycoon Lesson Number One: on-fire oil is bad for business. Oil Tycoon Lesson Number Two: if your oil is on fire, you a fucked. 

So Daniel Dad Lewis’ oil is on fire and he’s really pissed off. The workers are all, “fuck this bullshit”, and they leave. Son Dano is confused. (Typical.) Daniel Dad Lewis packs up camp and they move to a new place where no one has ever heard of them before. They can finally start fresh. Son Dano might actually be able to make friends. Nah, just kidding. He can’t, because he’s stupid. 

Daniel Dad Lewis has a problem, though: he’s broke. You know, because all of his oil was on fire. So he cons the locals in the town to help him build an oil rig thinger. (Don’t worry, this time, he reads the instructions. Wouldn’t want another doo-hickie falling down, am I right Daniel Dad Lewis? Boy, would that would be egg on your face!) 

Daniel Dad Lewis might have convinced the simple town folk that building an oil rig was a great idea, but the sheriff was suspicious. He didn’t trust Daniel Dad Lewis. He told Daniel Dad Lewis that he had to pay the townspeople back, or else. And Daniel Dad Lewis was all, “Don’t worry, I will.” Except he was totally lying. 

Son Dano is growing up at this point, but he’s still stupid (nope, dyslexia still hasn’t been invented). One day, while he’s still trying to figure out how to read, he meets a pretty girl. She has blonde hair. Because it’s Olden Times, and everything happens faster in Olden Times, they immediately fall in love and decide to start a life together. They didn’t want to run an oil rig or a cattle ranch, so they did the next possible thing: started a religious following. Son Dano convinces everyone that he’s not stupid, it’s just that God has a special plan for him. Sure he does. 

Daniel Dad Lewis is super rich now, so I guess he found oil. He cheated all the townspeople out of their money, though. (He’s still trying to get enough capital to start up his frozen novelty treats shop, so lay off him, alright?) The sheriff is really angry and they fight and there’s a lot of violence and shooting. There was blood. And stuff. People die. It’s pretty gruesome. Daniel Dad Lewis goes and hides in the giant-ass house that he built and doesn’t want anyone to visit him.

One day, Son Dano comes to visit him. They have a meeting in the bowling alley (because the ball pit and go-kart track were getting repaired), but it doesn’t go well. Son Dano tries to convert Daniel Dad Lewis to his new religion, but all Daniel Dad Lewis is interested in is his milkshake.

“Why would I want ‘shaken milk’, Dad, jeez?” Son Dano makes the mistake of asking. This makes Daniel Dad Lewis go absolutely berserk. He starts shouting all sorts of crazy things about super long straws and other such nonsense. It’s obvious that Daniel Dad Lewis has completely lost it at this point, so Son Dano leaves. After that, Daniel Dad Lewis bowls a perfect game in the bowling alley, but nobody is there to see it.

And that’s probably There Will Be Blood.

Gladiator (2003, probably)

Written by: Christian

Last time I saw it: When all I wanted for Christmas was ‘The Sims: Vacation’

Maximus; badass in both name and character, is a roman warlord who is introduced to us in the process of mercilessly slaughtering another culture because they’re on a piece of land that he wants. Everyone loves ol’ Max for this. 

“You’re the best at killing people!”, shout the Roman soldiers. “That is admirable to us because we still believe thunder is a person!”

Max begins to ride triumphantly home from his 9 to 5 in the war in order to brag to his wife about how many other husbands he killed that day and to give his kids trinkets of death. Kids love trinkets; it doesn’t matter to them if you got it from Ms. Tiggy Winkles or ripped it from the corpse of an impaled enemy soldier. They’re mainly in it for the trinket.

Unbeknownst to Max, however, is that by winning the war, he has become too powerful for his own good. The roman emperor’s son, McManus (probably), has become evil due to the need for a major plot point and doesn’t like Max because of reasons that he keeps to himself. This mixture of villainy and unfounded hatred for Max leads to McManus ordering the brutal murder of Max’s wife and child. Somehow, people who have nothing against Max go along with these orders and add insult to injury by taking down his laundry and hanging his dismembered wife from the line instead. 

Rounding the final hill, Max’s house and dirty laundry begins to appear on the horizon. “Who mixed the colours in with the whites?”, he begins to ask. As he gets closer, he sees that his wife was not just being sloppy with the chores, there’s just blood everywhere. All over. Like, from his wife’s body and stuff. Ugh. He resists the urge to ask “How’s it hanging?” and starts to wonder who could do such a thing. Then, he remembers…

…Mendoza. I mean, McManus. McManus always had it out for Max because while he was stuck inside enjoying the riches his father provided and being fed grapes by enslaved maidens, Max was out having all the fun murdering the Persians and getting all the glory.

Max vows to get revenge; he will become an extremely low-class citizen and put himself in massively violent, irresponsible Gladiator-type situations in order to get close enough to McManus for an assassination. Even though newspapers and the internet weren’t invented yet, everyone loves hearing the story of a comeback kid. 

“Have you heard about Maximus the Underdog?”, people will ask.

“No.”, will come the reply. “I don’t watch the 6 o’clock news. I mainly just grow my own food and try not to die from diseases that I could easily catch by walking down the street in this time period.”

So Max registers to get imprisoned down at the local coliseum and starts to work out in order to prepare for all the challenges he’ll face. Cue Rocky music and a montage of gratuitous physical exertion shots and Max is ready to fight anything in his path to McManus. He fights a man in a large metal suit, he fights a tiger that is not at all pleased with it’s surroundings and he fights a group of men who all probably just didn’t want to be there but got peer-pressured into the situation by their drinking buddies.

McManus is displeased by this; why wont Max just give in and die, making his life better than it already is? Money, power and grapes, but one widowed former soldier is barely alive so everything sucks.

It’s at this point that I probably excused myself from the theatre to go do other shit that day, because at the time, Gladiator was the longest movie any sane person had ever paid to go see. I believe it is close to 4 hours, which is too long unless it’s Titanic because at least you get to see some famous boobs.

After doing some chores, cutting the grass, buying some groceries etc, I feel as though I must have returned to the movie theatre because I vaguely remember Gladiator ending by McManus being thrown into the ring to be torn apart by hungry lions. A fitting punishment, to be sure, but what it accomplished I have no idea. Max, happy that his ridiculously lengthy and hazardous plan has worked out, pops on a pair of sunglasses and stretches his arms across two hot Roman broads.

“Ladies?”, he swoons “You’ll be glad-I-ate-her.”

YEEEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

That’s probably Gladiator.

BIG (1985, probably)

Written by: Siân

Last time I saw it: Can’t even remember.

Okay, so there’s Tom Hanks. Except he isn’t Tom Hanks yet. Damn. I think I just ruined the surprise. Well, not really—the movie is called Big after all, so that implies that there is some bigging to be had. Anyway, before Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks, he is Fred Savage. And the character’s name is, hm, Matt. Why not. 

So, Matt is a kid, but he hates being a kid. Probably because he is so short. He keeps telling his best friend, Kyle, how he wishes he was a grown-up, because grown-ups have it so easy. One day after school (because everything always happens after school), Matt gets in a fight with his mom. He wants to stay out late or do crack cocaine—something “grown-up”; I can’t really remember what—but she is all, “You’re just a kid! You can’t!” 

This makes Matt really mad, so he runs away to Coney Island. First things first: he goes to Nathan’s to get a hotdog, because delicious. Then he is walking down the sidewalk and he sees the creepy mechanical puppet man in the box. Zolton. If you put a dollar into the machine, you can make a wish. So Matt puts in a dollar and is all, “I wish I were big.” The Zolton machine makes some sounds, and the lights in his eyes blink on and off. Then a little piece of paper spits out of the machine and it says, “OK.” 

Except nothing happens. Mark is still not-big. Boo. Wait, I mean Matt. So, yeah, Matt goes home because Coney Island is scary at night and he really wants his mom to cook him some dinner. He goes to sleep, but when he wakes up … OH MY GOD HE TURNED INTO TOM HANKS! Except we’re still calling him Matt. And he’s a grown-up now. I guess he should have been more specific when he said “big” to the magical machine because he sort of skipped all the fun, youthful years of the early twenties and went straight to the early thirties. At least, I think that’s how grown-up he was supposed to be.

Either way, he was no longer a bratty pre-teen, which was something his mother would totally notice and probably not appreciate. So Matt has to sneak out of his house. I think he steals some clothes that fit from his dad’s closet, so as not to be naked. And then he does what every kid who gets magically turned into a grown-up does: he gets a loft in NYC. Maybe he got a really good deal on Craigslist or something, but all of the sudden—bam—-a loft. It’s white. And there’s a basketball hoop. And a hot chick. I guess she came with the place. The hot chick is all, “I want to have sex with you,” but Matt is all, “Crap, I have no idea what sex is. Can we just go to FAO Schwarz and play the piano instead?”

The hot chick doesn’t like this idea, but Matt decides to go by himself. Maybe he brings Kyle. People do think it’s odd that a grown-man is hanging out with a pre-teen boy, so he has to be very careful. The last thing Matt needs is to be accused of being a pedophile, am I right? So Matt goes to the toy store and pushes some kids out of the way so he can play some sweet tunes on the giant piano. I guess he is a giant floor piano aficionado, because he’s very good. People clap and stuff. 

After that, Matt goes back to his white loft. He’s hungry, but he still hasn’t figured out how to cook. This is not acceptable, so he wishes he was Fred Savage again so he can go home and have his mom cook him dinner. He goes to sleep, but wakes up still Tom Hanks. Oh no, Matt, what are you going to do? Matt remembers that he had to pay the puppet thing a dollar for his wish to come true—wishes ain’t free kid, sheesh—so he rushes back to Coney Island to find the Zolton puppet thing. He gets there, but the puppet thing is gone for reasons. Matt runs around for a bit and is sad. Then he gets hungry and is even sadder. This sucks.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Zolton puppet thing! Great job! He runs over and puts a dollar into it and is all, “MAKE ME FRED SAVAGE AGAIN!” And the Zolton machine moves a bit and then his eyes light up. Sounds, too. And then a piece of paper pops out and it says, “NO.” But then another piece of paper pops out and says, “JK, LOL, GO LOOK IN A MIRROR, YOU GOOF NUGGET.” 

Matt goes and looks in a mirror and he turned back into Fred Savage without even realizing it. And somehow his clothes shrunk with him. I guess Zolton was feeling extra generous. Anyway, no-longer-big Matt runs home and is all excited because tonight was meatloaf night and he loves his mom’s meatloaf. 

That’s probably BIG.

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