It's 1997. You pop a VHS that contains from-cable-recorded copies of Glimmer Man, Fire Down Below, and On Deadly Ground and watch them in succession until you can't take any more horrendous dialog and fake New York accents...or berets and sleeveless cardigans.

You switch the input back to TV, and after the screen flickers blue for a moment, and then you're 10 minutes into a Columbo TV movie special, so you don't know who did it just like Peter Falk.

Later that night, on the Million Dollar Movie, you resign to insomnia and catch Road Games, a gem from 1981 about a trucker on the barren highways of Australia engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse — with a super young Jamie Lee Curtis playing his a hitchhiker companion. And you watch the whole, damn, thing — with weird late-night commercials.

You fall asleep to Above the Law on the couch as a form of self flagellation whilst you dreaming of a short, trenchcoated detective chewing on a cheap cigar fighting Rasta gangsters and Keenan Ivory Wayans in a Road Warrior knockoff. It was a time of drastic magic. 

There are some actors who were big bright shooting stars, gleaming for a couple years and then gone. Then, there are some actors whose faces we have literally been looking at on screen for our entire lives. Nic Cage is one of those screaming, crying, wacky faces. We take a thorough look at the high notes and some of the lesser known notes of his long, nepotism-launched career.  

At one point, a young Leonardo DiCaprio was in consideration to play Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), the surprisingly excellent adaptation of a horribly difficult book to adapt with the same title by Brett Easton Ellis. The role of Bateman, of course, went to Christian Bale.

Now, as news circulates that we may be getting a new adaptation of the novel about yuppie madness in 1980s New York City with Austin Butler stepping into the role, we take a look at what it might have been like if DiCaprio had been the one running through a hallway covered in blood, naked save for a pair of Nikes, wielding a chainsaw.

Martin Scorsese has directed a lot of hits, and a few downright classics, but there are also a few semi-forgotten gems in his filmography, the best of which is The Color of Money (1986). It was a weird move for the already accomplished director: a movie about pool hustlers starring an aging Paul Newman and a up-and-coming Tom Cruise and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio that's actually a long-delayed sequel to a film Newman starred in back in 1961, The Hustler. 

Newman reprises his role as Fast Eddie Felson at a very different point in his life than when we last saw him squaring off in marathon games of straight pool with Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats. It's a bit of a slow burn with an unconventional protagonist and an ending that leaves you feeling good but a little hollow inside, too. Take a deep dive into this forgotten classic with us! 

There's yet another reinvention of the Man of Steel on the horizon with James Gunn's forthcoming Superman (2025), so we're taking a look back and the film's we've gotten so far, and imagining the ones we haven't. If we had the talent to do it ourselves, or at least the power to order talented people to do our bidding, what would be our perfect Superman movie? Dave, Tom, and Vinnie sound off. 

It's an odd genre of movies — Christmas movies. They are dramas, romances, horror, action, and some of the most saccharine sap you'll ever come across, but they're all Christmas movies. So, what exactly makes a movie a "Christmas movie" and where do we draw the line? And, of course, we run down our all time favorite Christmas movies — and we get into a more niche category: Holiday Movies. 

They're both ridiculous buddy cop team-up movies from the 1980s and 1990s, but of very different star caliber and budget. Tango & Cash (1989) saw Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell join forces as two LAPD super cops who are framed by Jack Palance's crime boss, who has a weird thing for mice and CCTV monitors. Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) sees post-Rocky IV Dolph Lundgren team up with Brandon Lee in one of his first film roles as two...cops who, uh, well, there's a story we're pretty sure. And it follows a lot of same beats thumped by Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash. Prepare to dive into the cinematic complexities of two of the goofiest action (comedies??) to come out of the '80s. 

Ah yes, the family-friendly mildly supernatural vehicle for a young Tom Hanks just breaking his way into feature films from the TV world. We all have such fond memories of Big (1988), but have you ever really thought about the psychological damage inflincted on the characters involved?

And what the hell happened to Josh after the movie was over — a kid who lived as an adult for weeks and had a number of...mature experiences before being shot back into his 10-year-old body? And his poor mom?! And Susan (Elizabeth Perkins)...how does she go on knowing what happened and that she fell in love with a grade-schooler!?! Let's get into it. 

It's difficult to overstate the sheer awesomeness of the original Predator (1987). It's just about the perfect action movie, and it's a blending of sci-fi, action, and horror that is extremely rare in all of movie history, not to mention a lightning-in-a-bottle cast that could only work in the late 1980s. So why has every single sequel (yeah, Dave's looking at you, too, Prey) sucked so bad?! We take a deep dive into Predator, as well as Predator 2, Predators, The Predator, Prey, and we gloss over the two AVP movies, as is deserved. Let's go!

Stay tuned at the end for Tom's artistic reinterpretation of the score from Predator (1987). 

Kevin Bacon was in not one but two white water rafting slash canoeing movies in his career — one when he was still an up and comer and another when he was an established and bankable movie star. One is a neat little '90s thriller with Meryl Streep, the other is a strange coming of age movie with a super young pre-Hobbit, pre-Rudy Sean Astin. Take a trip into this weird little corner of movie trivia with our stunning analysis of White Water Summer (1987) and The River Wild (1994). Plus, you get to brush up on your 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon skills.