Man I got so focused on all of these other features that I forgot how long it has been since I’ve done a proper Are You Afraid of the Dark or Goosebumps review. I need to get back on track with that right away so here we go with the next one on the list – The Tale of the Captured Souls.

I don’t need to say anything here, it’s fuckin’ Ghostbusters.

Rocky is the ultimate everything. It’s the ultimate Stallone performance (with First Blood being a close second), the ultimate underdog story, the ultimate boxing movie, hell even the ultimate sports movie. It’s so god damn good! I do have respect for each of the sequels in their own unique way (seriously math has shown that the fourth movie is almost 50% montage) but the first is where it’s truly at. I don’t even know what else to say other than watch this shit immediately.

I think everybody has a movie they always go to when they need a quick pick-me-up and this is absolutely that movie for me. No matter what kind of shit life is hurling at me, this movie always makes me walk away with a smile. Sure the story of an eccentric, reclusive madman who casually terrorizes and perhaps even murders a group of children in order to find someone to run his factory populated by tiny orange slaves doesn’t sound overly cheerful, but it puts me in a great mood man. I love everything about it. The characters, the writing, the songs (oh man the songs), the sets, everything. Plus that tunnel scene may be the most random and terrifying scene ever committed to film, so you get whimsy and sheer terror. It’s the complete package!

Oh and once again, stay the fuck away from the remake.

I watched the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies for the first time back to back and even then I found myself gravitating much more towards Indiana Jones. I just like those movies better, I’m sorry people. You know what, no I’m not sorry because Indiana Jones is great and yes the second and fourth movies certainly aren’t terrific but the third is great and the first is a god damn masterpiece.

I don’t throw the phrase “non-stop fucking thrill ride” around too often, but I need to violently hurl that phrase at this movie because it’s the one film that easily deserves that title. Raiders of the Lost Ark is wall to wall excitement and is essentially one constant memorable moment. For my money, this is also Harrison Ford’s best role. I know most people are all about Firewall but I’m going to take a stand and say this one is his best. And that theme song? Ooooo that theme song! Like…aaaaaaa it’s so good! It’s all so good!

I remember in fourth grade all of my classmates were raving about Terminator 2 (which had recently come out to rent on VHS I believe) but my parents refused to let me watch it. Finally one day my parents left for the day and my brother turned to me and asked “Ok fine did you want to watch Terminator 2?” It blew my young mind and it continues to blow my old mind (everything about that sentence sounds filthy) to this very day.

What’s not to love about Terminator 2? Great story, great characters, great action, great (not to mention ground-breaking) special effects – it has the whole package. It’s one of the best sci-fi/action movies ever made and may in fact be my all-time favourite sequel. Hang on, let me look at the rest of my list to be sure. Yep, it would appear this must indeed be my all-time favourite sequel.

We’re into the big shit now!

As much as A Good Day to Die Hard seemingly tried to sully the good name of the franchise, nothing could ever taint the original Die Hard. It was so influential that it birthed the whole concept of the “Die Hard on a ____" sub-genre of action movies. You have a fantastic central performance by Bruce Willis (back when he gave a shit) portraying one of the greatest protagonists in cinema history. He squares off against Alan Rickman, who in turn is portraying one of the greatest villains in cinema history. You put those characters in the middle of a fantastic script and you get….well you get Die Hard. Fuck analogies, don’t need ‘em. Die Hard is amazing.

To have seen Office Space is to love Office Space. The true test of a comedy is whether or not it continues to make you laugh on subsequent viewings and after seeing Office Space a frighteningly large amount of times, it gets me every single time. In fact, I can appreciate it even more now since I’ve been out in the working world and when I first saw it I had yet to really work (remember those days? Sigh). It captures work life damn near perfectly and hardly even has to exaggerate the situations since office life is already so god damn ridiculous. So if you haven’t seen this, if you could go and watch it right now that would be great, okay?

A while back I reviewed the complete series on DVD of Chris Bores’ Haunted Investigators, a series he does that is in the vein of Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted and probably a whole slew of others that I can’t think of at the moment. My main thought was that it was more boring than actively bad, consisting of nothing more than a group of people wandering around various locations at night and asking if any ghosts wanted to talk with them. A new episode hasn’t been released for years so I was pretty surprised to hear about Pursuit of the Paranormal earlier this year.

Pursuit of the Paranormal is Bores’ return to the world of haunted investigations, only this time it was being presented as a feature length movie. The tagline touted it as being a “90-minute conversation with the dead” and it promised to reveal the secrets of the afterlife or show us shit that had never been seen before or any other number of hyperbole. Bores’ himself was really out there trying to generate hype, attempting to get the thing into festivals, going on TV to promote it, and even securing a theatrical showing. It almost started to sound like this was going to be something on a much grander scale than the show.

It’s not. It’s really not.

This to me is the ultimate gangster movie, even more so than The Godfather. Maybe it’s because I saw this one way sooner, but no other mob movie tops it for me. The cast is fantastic with a perfectly unhinged Joe Pesci, a scarily introverted Robert DeNiro, and somewhere in the middle is Ray Liotta in his best performance, before his face started to look like a baseball glove. The story, the dialogue, the characters, you can pick dozens and dozens of reasons as to why this movie is great. There’s a reason so many scenes and moments have stuck around in pop culture – because Goodfellas is an absolute classic. Now go get your fuckin’ shine box!