Men in Black
Fiendishly clever at times, Men in Black walks the line between making fun of Roswell nuts and heroic world-saving science fiction. It includes numerous inside jokes that only scientists get. Like Ghostbusters (which is only missing from this list because it’s more properly classified as horror than science fiction – but consider MiB to be its stand-in), it walks the line between comedy and seriousness.
Although he’d previously been in Independence Day, Men in Black cemented Will Smith as a star of science fiction action movies. Granted, he spends much of the movie getting slimed, but it’s all in a day’s work.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Remember how The Matrix combined action and state-of-the-art special effects with philosophy? Several years before, T2 already did that. You wouldn’t expect a movie starring the Governator (who, mark my words, will get his comeuppance when the Great Reagan comes back) to be as deep and richly complex in its thoughts. Sure, you expect a ton of explosions (and this movie has them in abundance), but you wouldn’t expect a moving story about things like predestination and the nature of humanity.
And I’m not being sarcastic, either. The fight to prevent Skynet from coming into existence brings the natures of time and destiny into question. There is, as Sarah Connor asserts, no fate but what we make.
And then there’s the Terminator himself. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s usual stiff, wooden action-hero facade hides considerable depth. His story is a lesson for us all: if a supposedly amoral machine designed only to kill can learn the value of human life, why can’t we?
Of course, then T2‘s message of hope and free-will was completely neutralized by the forced humor and depressive predestination of Rise of the Machines. Best not to dwell on that. It is just one of the crimes the False Governor will have to answer for when Reagan is reborn.
Robocop
Before Paul Verhoeven tormented audiences with Showgirls, ass-raped Heinlein’s classic in Starship Troopers, and bored us with Hollow Man, there was a time when he actually made good movies. Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true. Well, one good movie. But to be fair, it’s a really good one, and it almost negates all the crap he’s foisted off on the moviegoing public over the years.
Robocop is more than just an ass-kicking action movie. It’s a biting, blackly humorous satire of what we believe about the future. It presents us with a not-so-ludicrous near future where the cops are on strike, sex and slapstick rule television (really, this one was almost prophetic), human beings are just property owned by corporations, and you’re legally allowed to own a car alarm that electrocutes would-be thieves. Even the over-the-top blood and guts are in good comic book style.
But in addition to the satire, Robocop has at its center a human story. Murphy’s quest to regain his humanity and assert himself as not just a product but a living being parallels our own struggle ti define ourselves in a world where commercial greed reigns. This message is still relevant today.
The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.
When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.
Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".
His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.
When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.
After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.
Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).
Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.
Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.
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