Total Movie Recall

This week on Total Movie Recall, things get Freudian as they did for every little boy who stared confusedly at Jessica Rabbit and wondered what was happening to them. Handsome, chiseled leading man Bob Hoskins soldiers on in spite of the bleeding ulcer all that booze gave him, and Christopher Lloyd goes to eleven with his unhinged, terrifying performance. Did hentai exist before this movie? Because it sure as ...

This week on Total Movie Recall, we take a hard pivot from all the toxic masculinity of weeks past and Steve shows his gentle, romantic side. Somehow, Ryan makes this about his sad sack heartache but in the end, everybody calms down and moves on with a nice mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

The Princess Bride (1987)

d. Rob Reiner

w. William Goldman

Starring:
Cary Elwes
Mandy Patinkin
Robin Wright
Chris...

This week on Total Movie Recall, Ryan stares out the window of his furniture-less modernist home at the endless, uncaring ocean while Steve sleeps on the floor with his hand gripped around his pistol. The pseudo-philosophy of this movie seems deeper than it is because it’s endlessly reflected in all the glass buildings of Michael Mann’s uber-masculine vision. Sure, it may be pretentious, but that’s the point, ...

This week on Total Movie Recall, two white guys talk about hip hop culture in a totally convincing way when they put on their mustard-colored overalls to go to the House Party. Steve, a sentient walking issue of Pitchfork, schools Ryan on the infinite subgenres of hip hop while Ryan, to no one’s surprise, gets a little weepy at touching father-son relationships.

House Party (1990)

d. Reginald Hudlin

Starrin...

This week on Total Movie Recall, the pressures of competing at a professional level with all the concussions, cocaine, infidelities, and painkillers almost make Steve request to be traded during the free agency period after he and Ryan bicker about Oliver Stone’s divisive 1999 film, Any Given Sunday. Does Steve’s complete lack of interest in professional sports bring this episode to a screeching halt? Yes. Can...

This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve and Ryan discover that there’s actually an antidote to getting punched really, really hard. The cultural divide proves too much for Ryan in this wild, fantastic, hallucinatory Kung Fu epic of many names. The story is incomprehensible, the fights are nonsensical, but Steve still finds it defensible, while Ryan finds the editing reprehensible. There’s no reason for this rhy...

This week on Total Movie Recall, it’s Steve’s turn to not get it when Ryan forces him to snooze this way through the 1997 hambone, The Devil’s Advocate. This movie has it all -- a grand guignol of sex, violence, operatic depictions of Hell and Satan, Keanu swinging and missing, Pacino putting his blood pressure medication to the test -- and yet, somehow, it’s still boring! Please don’t waste Steve’s time with ...

This week on Total Movie Recall, Ryan gets his hipster comedy credentials revoked after Steve makes him pay $3.99 to watch the 1994 not-so-classic comedy, Cabin Boy. Ryan simply cannot understand the cache this movie has in the “alt-comedy” world, or as he likes to call it, the “non-comedy” world (now that’s funny!). Steve would explain it, but you just, like, don’t get it man.

Cabin Boy (1994)

d. Adam Resni...

This week on the Total Movie Recall Holiday Special, Steve and Ryan visit the mopey, gothy early 90s when Generation X looked to the high school Gloom King Tim Burton to express their so dark vision of Christmas. Stop motion animation is such a labor intensive craft that creates beautiful visions that aren’t all that interesting, which is going to enrage a bunch of high school Wiccans that love this movie. It ...

This week on Total Movie Recall, things get grim and a little too close to 2020 reality for comfort. Definitely don’t watch this movie if you’re fresh out of rehab, which Ryan can tell you all about. The future is bleak, but if it’s also as ruggedly handsome as Clive Owen is and has the greatest single-take of all time, it might not be so bad. This is also one of the greatest movies of all time, just to be cle...

This week on Total Movie Recall, our bodies go through some changes that we don’t know how to deal with as we take in a John Landis double feature with Thriller & An American Werewolf in London. We really just need somebody to talk to about it. What’s that, Dad? You’re busy? Okay, I’ll just go on the internet and learn some deeply ingrained, problematic attitudes about Michael Jackson, Nazi monsters and Van Mo...

This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve holds Ryan’s hair back while he cries and dry heaves and rocks back and forth like his cat just died, because there has never been a movie more perfectly designed to make him cry like The Sixth Sense. Misunderstood children? Check. Put-upon mothers just trying their best? Check. An exasperated but committed psychologist just trying to figure out how to reach this kid? Dou...

This week on Total Movie Recall, we acknowledge that The Wizard of Oz is, yes, a classic. However, it’s missing a certain je ne sais quoi, and we try to put our fingers on exactly what it needed. We conclude that classic, whimsical children’s film needed more childhood lobotomy, forced imprisonment, Queens pulling their own heads off, and Veruca Salt. Or Fairuza Balk? Potato potato.

Return to Oz (1985)

d. Wa...