André the Giant (2018)

★★★
My first exposure to André the Giant came while viewing the V.H.S. tape for WrestleMania III. The story before his match with Hulk Hogan was that André aligned himself with the heel manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and challenged Hogan for the World Wrestling Federation title. André was serious about his challenge, and he proved it by ripping the shirt from a distraught Hogan, who couldn't believe what he was witnessing. One of his closest friends turned against him. The setup was professional wrestling storytelling at its finest, with the payoff signifying a monumental shift in the wrestling landscape. The old ways of territorial wrestling were already losing ground to the W.W.F.'s national expansion, and this match was hyped as a passing of the torch from one generation to the next. As an 11-year-old, I watched this giant of a man envelope the muscular Hogan in a bear hug. The crowd was going nuts. Many years later, W.W.E. (name changed in 2002) advertised 2022's WrestleMania as featuring the biggest match of all time, between Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns. It wasn't even close. That André/Hogan match was one to remember.

Go (1999)

★★★
Go represents the first movie for which I wrote a full-length review. I saw it in early 1999 at a special screening on my college campus. The crowd was a rambunctious lot, with everyone clearly having a great time. Upon the movie's theatrical release a few weeks later, a pair of reviews appeared in the campus newspaper. They were terrible, and not just because they were negative. They were poorly constructed. In fact, they didn't even describe the movie, but were instead tirades against the Hollywood trend of copying the structure of hit movies and reconstructing them into a new package. Pulp Fiction is the obvious inspiration for Go, so the point is not invalid. There were other examples from the time. The Aaron Eckhart vehicle Thursday was one, as was 2 Days in the Valley. When I read those Go reviews, I thought to myself that I could do better. It wasn't that the writers disliked it. They didn't get into why Go was bad in and of itself, inspiration notwithstanding.

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

★★★
The writers of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead didn't like the name change (original title: The Real World), but that name change was the best thing that could have happened. The movie was already going to receive a few curious looks due to Christina Applegate's involvement, thanks to her role on Fox's Married…With Children, but its longevity was not going to rest on her role alone. The movie did okay business, but the title made it one to remember. It was marketable. It was that movie starring Christina Applegate, who had the opportunity to play a character unlike her signature role of Kelly Bundy. Kelly was an airheaded and promiscuous blonde. Applegate's new character, Sue Ellen Crandell, was a typical 17-year-old who had to mature fast to take care of her family. Applegate's chance to shine combined with the movie's title cemented its longevity. H.B.O.'s involvement helped too, since the cable company produced it and gave it a second life on television after a warm but not outstanding theatrical run.

Firestarter (2022)

½ star
Firestarter is slow burn torture. The actors display no conviction. They recite their lines woodenly and walk around as if wading through quicksand while wearing concrete boots. The victims of psychic attacks react like pod people. The tepid direction looks to have been inspired by Albert Pyun. The villains appear bored. The climactic firefight has all the excitement of a fireplace screensaver. I expected more from Blumhouse Productions, which has established a good reputation for decent horror movies. Taking the 1984 Stephen King adaptation and passing it through the Blumhouse sausage factory should have yielded better results, but instead we get a movie that fails not spectacularly but in whimpering fashion.

Bad Teacher (2011)

★
Navy ships have a form of self-defense called chaff. Upon sighting incoming missiles, the ship will fire chaff into the air and lure the missile into targeting it. Chaff can also be used to confuse enemy radar. Bad Teacher, a morally inept movie, launches chaff in the form of adult humor to distract from the fact that its main character is getting away with murder. Cameron Diaz's Elizabeth Halsey is a useless and self-absorbed teacher who isn't interested in providing her students with a quality education but would rather show them movies so that she can sleep off her hangover at her desk. Chaff is effective. This movie has some funny scenes that deflected my attempts to pierce through its defenses and see its shortcomings. Eventually the chaff supply runs out, leaving the movie's flaws exposed. Moving in for the kill, I was astonished by the story's disregard for Elizabeth's actions, making her out to be heroic and giving her a happy ending when she should have an ominous one.