Substitute “newspapers” for “show business” and you’ve basically got the life of a print journalist. You’ll notice I didn’t have you substitute anything for “clean up after the elephants.”

But that’s not the only connection between newspaper work and show biz. Reporters and editors have been characters in movies for as long as there have been movies, and for a good reason: because most screenwriters are disgruntled former reporters. Still, the fact that we’re in a profession that could actually be the subject of an entire feature film (like detectives! and spies! and Batman!) may, on some days, be the only thing keeping us here. (Not me. Other people.)

Personally, I can’t overstate how happy I was to find my favorite old newspaper movie, Richard Brooks’ Deadline USA (1952), pop up on cable recently. This is the film where the editor is played by Humphrey Bogart — Humphrey Bogart! — in a natty fedora, bow tie and overcoat. He stands up to mobsters, decries the rise of tabloid journalism and is forced to watch as his paper is shut down due to shrinking revenues. So it’s at least one-third realistic.

The flip side of the Bogart coin when it comes to cinematic editors is of course Cary Grant in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940) — for Grant’s Walter Burns, journalistic ethics aren’t important so much as getting the story, selling papers, engaging in rapid-fire, whip-smart repartee with Rosalind Russell as reporter Hildy Johnson and being, well, Cary Grant. It’s worth noting that “Friday” was an update of that other newspaper classic The Front Page, a play that was made into several films featuring a male Hildy Johnson, none of whom could rock a pencil skirt and high heels like Russell. (Well, except maybe for Jack Lemmon.)

Even Jimmy Stewart (arguably the third member of the classic leading-man triumvirate with Bogart and Grant) donned the reporter’s cap in Henry Hathaway’s Call Northside 777 (1948). Unfortunately it’s a little too sincere for its own good — it’s hard not to prefer Stewart’s slightly less straight-and-narrow reporter (for “Spy magazine,” yet) in George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story (1940), which introduced the journalistic truism that socialites love reporters. It’s true, they do.

Sometime between the black-and-white era and modern day, though, newspaper journalists in the movies lost some of their leading-man sheen — the exception of course being Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in Alan J. Pakula’s All The President’s Men (1974). This was mainly because they were playing real-life journalistic heroes Woodward and Bernstein, and they were Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

Not that newsmen weren’t still cool — was there ever a reporter who wouldn’t want to be Chevy Chase’s Irwin M. Fletcher from Michael Ritchie’s Fletch (1985)? He gets to hang out at the beach, pretend to be other people, like Ted Nugent and John Cocktosten, order a steak sandwich (and a steak sandwich) and put it on the Underhills’ bill, and, most importantly, doesn’t take notes.

Most people who actually work in newspapers point to Ron Howard’s The Paper (1994) as the best modern newspaper flick, and it’s hard to argue — I’m pretty sure the Randy Quaid character has been about two desks away from me for the last 20 years. But two of my favorite portrayals of newspaper reporters are slightly less grounded in reality, and yet somehow make complete sense.

The first is the team of Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo (talk about classic triumvirates) in Jim Henson’s The Great Muppet Caper (1981) — Kermit and Fozzie play twin brothers who happen to be “crack investigative reporters for The Daily Chronicle” and Gonzo is their intrepid photographer, who takes a picture of a chicken instead of a jewel heist in progress. That sound you just heard is thousands of journalists nodding their heads in recognition.

But my new favorite movie newspaper man (boy?) has got to be Tintin from Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011). Have you seen it? He travels the world, never seems to have a deadline or an editor or even see the inside of a newsroom, and doesn’t hesitate to, in a pinch, shoot at people.

Sure beats cleaning up after the elephants.

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But imagining I’m warm and that my lawn doesn’t resemble the surface of the moon only goes so far. I find it’s also helpful to tune into some movies that put me in a more summery mood and remind me that in just a few short months I’ll be back at the beach, where I will be chewed to death by a giant shark.

But even if Jaws (1975) has many of the elements that epitomize the summer movie, including sand, surf, skinny-dipping and Robert Shaw being bitten in half, it’s missing one important component of all great summer flicks: Bobcat Goldthwait in a Godzilla costume. Also Annette Funicello, but mostly that first thing.

That’s why the better movie — “better” in the sense of it being much, much worse — is One Crazy Summer (1986), which is director Savage Steve Holland’s less well-known companion to 1985’s  Better Off Dead. It may not have the same off-kilter genius of Dead, but it does have the same star in John Cusack, and also the aforementioned Goldthwait scene, which may be his crowning achievement (apologies to Police Academy 2-4).

Another way to beat the winter blues is to watch summer movies that take place during high school, which remind you that even though you may be freezing now … at least you’re no longer in high school.

Two of the best are George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973) and Richard Linkater’s Dazed and Confused. (1993), which both follow summer-night adventures of teenagers, in 1962 and 1976, respectively. Graffiti is the more classic of the two, a shambling masterpiece that shows that there was a time when Lucas seemed to have some idea of what real people actually speak like. Dazed has its merits as a summer movie, though, including an early appearance by Matthew McConaughey, a summery actor if there ever was one, and lots of 1970s tube socks.

Of course, summer movies don’t have to be goofy — sometimes they just need to be sweaty. I suppose Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) would fall into that category, although I’ve never actually watched that one, mainly because I have an aversion to seeing William Hurt (1) in a pencil-thin mustache and (2) perspiring.

I have seen Jim McBride’s The Big Easy, though — that’s the 1987 New Orleans-set crime flick featuring sweaty Dennis Quaid, sweaty Ellen Barkin, sweaty John Goodman and even sweaty Ned Beatty. It also happens to one of the sexiest, funniest police thrillers of the 1980s, thanks to Quaid and Barkin’s easy chemistry; with all due respect to the almost equally snappy relationship between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon.

My favorite choice for a summer thriller, though, has got to be Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). Like us during one of this winter’s blizzards, Jimmy Stewart is stuck at home, except he’s there because his leg is broken. Sure, he’s itchy and sweaty, and spying on his neighbors eventually prompts Raymond Burr to break into his apartment and try to throw him out the window. But on the plus side, he gets regular visits from Grace Kelly. It’s a decent trade-off.

I plan to have all of these handy during this week’s latest snow-in — I figure if I pull the shades, crank the heat and get cinematically summer-ized, it will help get me through until the real thing comes around. Which I hope is soon: Aruba in my mind is starting to resemble the beach scene at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968).

I just hope I don’t look too pasty in my loincloth.

Related articles

• Farkakte Film Flashback: ‘Are You Ready For The Summer?’ Edition (popdose.com)
• Farkakte Film Flashback: Off-Kilter Christmas Movie Edition (popdose.com)

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I think I may have watched it because as a child, it’s comforting to know that Santa, in addition to bringing you toys every year, is also capable of warding off an alien invasion if necessary. Also, New York’s Channel 9 scheduled it on a Saturday afternoon every December — your choice was either that or reruns of “Hee-Haw” on Channel 11, and Roy Clark certainly never conquered any aliens, with the possible exception of Minnie Pearl. (Incidentally, I’ve embedded the entire Santa Claus Conquers the Martians below via Hulu, in case you ever have a spare 80 minutes and have a choice between watching that and hitting yourself in the forehead with a plank.)

Of course, there are plenty of other holiday-themed movies that don’t seem to quite get the spirit of the season. Some are downright horrifying, like Silent Night, Deadly Night, or anything starring Tim Allen. But others are only just slightly off, like a sugarplum left under your pillow one night too long. (Or wherever the heck those sugarplums were.)

One that comes to mind is Gremlins, the 1984 Joe Dante film about horrible little creatures that terrorize a small town at Christmastime, and breakdance. It’s noteworthy not so much for the scene where a Gremlin explodes in a microwave oven (no matter how many thousands of important microwave experiments it may have inspired among America’s youth) but for Phoebe Cates’ speech about the time her father dressed up as Santa Claus and died a horrible death while coming down their chimney. Sadly, no transcript of the speech was included with the thousands of Gremlins dolls under 5-year-olds’ Christmas trees that year.

Another is John Hughes’ Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), in which cute (by which I mean possibly sociopathic) Macaulay Culkin gets left behind at Christmas by his parents again, this time in New York City. I thought the first “Home Alone” movie was just stupid, but in watching the second one I realized it teaches children a valuable Yuletide lesson: If Joe Pesci ever tries to break into the house, electrocute him.

And I was particularly disturbed by 2004’s The Polar Express. Much has been made of how creepy Robert Zemeckis’ animated characters look, which is exactly the kind of press you want when you spend $166 million making a movie (which, granted, included Tom Hanks’ standard salary, $164 million). Personally, I saw this entire film and don’t remember a single shred of the plot, and yet the Steven Tyler-inspired Aerosmith elf who pops up at the end haunts my dreams, with those pointy ears and gigantic lips — I have visions of him jumping out from behind my Christmas tree and gumming me to death.

The good news is, over the last few years I’ve been able to introduce my kids, now 9 and 11, to a few holiday movies that are outlandish enough to rise above, say, the goop on ABC Family’s “25 Days of Christmas” (in which a grouchy businessperson or Tom Arnold learns the true meaning of the season), but not so bizarre as to keep them up Christmas Eve, not from excitement but from the fear that they will be attacked by Gremlins, or Joe Pesci.

Their hands-down favorite is of course Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story (1983), which does off-kilter Christmas just the right way: with fake swearing, almost shooting your eye out and eating mashed potatoes like a piggy. It shows that it’s possible to make a holiday movie that’s funny, moving and even a little bit subversive without being gross or stupid.

If only the Christmas goose had exploded in the Chinese restaurant microwave, it would have been perfect.

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For the uninformed among you — e.g., those of you without kids between 9 and 14, whoever you are — Fred is the “YouTube sensation” known for his squeaky voice and manic delivery, and the screaming … Good God, the screaming. I could try to explain further, but instead you should probably just watch the clip below. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

OK, now that you’ve seen Fred for yourself, you’re probably having difficulty reading this column because you’ve been distracted by the blood coming out of your eardrums.

What you might not know, though, is that as originally devised by young creator Lucas Cruikshank, Fred was supposed to be 6 years old, which would (sort of) explain why he acts like he just ingested a barrel full of sugar cubes. But in Fred the Movie he’s been aged to 15 without changing his behavior, making it feel like you’re watching a mentally challenged person humiliate himself for two hours. In other words, it’s exactly like every other show on Nickelodeon.

I watched it because I wanted to interpret it for my kids, who are 9 and 11; I ruin a lot of their entertainment for them in this way, because that’s my job. And I’ll admit there were a few funny moments, including some with John Cena, the professional wrestler who plays Fred’s (imaginary?) father and has a habit of picking him up and smashing him against coffee tables, in a supportive kind of way.

But I couldn’t help but wonder: Has there ever been a mainstream children’s movie with so much vomit in it? Somehow I can’t picture Walt Disney looking at the rough cut of Mary Poppins and declaring, “It needs more heaving!” The Parent Trap, maybe.

Now, you might say Fred is just this generation’s Pee Wee Herman, Paul Reubens’ manic man-child of the 1980s. This is an assertion to which there is only one possible logical response: I served with Pee Wee Herman; I knew Pee Wee Herman; and Fred … I know you are but what am I! Heh… That never gets old.

For one thing, Pee Wee was the master of his domain (so to speak): He lived in a cool house all by himself, had awesome contraptions, a great bicycle and seemed like a generally well-respected member of his community, as evidenced by the fact that James Brolin wound up playing him in the movie within the movie. And he had no trouble hitchhiking to the Alamo to find his missing bike, whereas Fred can barely get up the nerve to take a bus across town to visit Judy, the “girlfriend” whom he spends the entire movie stalking — he’s sort of like DeNiro in  Taxi Driver, if DeNiro were a chipmunk.

And it’s not like I necessarily have an objection to movies about idiots — in fact, some of my favorite movies are about complete morons. What’s not to love about Steve Martin’s Navin Johnson in The Jerk, even if it’s not exactly appropriate for kids, given that his dog is named after excrement? Or Inspector Clouseau, who managed to solve every major jewel heist in France while falling down stairs? Now, that’s comedy, especially if you happen to be 12 years old in 1980.

The way I see it, Pee Wee at least had some panache, in that he didn’t vomit on anyone, much less the girl he was in love with, and his movie didn’t end with him making a YouTube video where everybody vomits, thus somehow making him the most popular kid in school and the apple of the formerly vomit-covered girl’s eye. Yet this (spoiler alert!) is how Fred the Movie ended, leading me to wonder: I made it all the way to the end?

But after suffering through it, I figured I needed to at least turn it into a teachable moment for my kids, so as to completely erase any fond feelings they still might have harbored about the evening. So I put on Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and guess what? My son said he found it “even funnier than Fred.”

I know he was probably just trying to humor me, but after two hours of bodily excretion jokes, I say I deserve his pity.

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“Inappropriate” is one of those catch-all words we parents use when we mean, “This is something I’d rather put off discussing as long as possible.” But in the case of Piranha 3D — which, judging from the trailer, consists primarily of people in tiny bathing suits being eaten in extreme close-up by prehistoric fish — the word seems entirely, well, appropriate. It looks like a movie that is completely inappropriate for viewing by almost everybody.

So why is my gut reaction to run down to my local IMAX and plunk down 15 bucks? After all, I consider myself a student of the cinema. I’ve paid to watch foreign films — with subtitles, not the dubbed kind where someone steps on Tokyo. Once I even went to a library to watch De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, a movie in which not a single person was skeletonized in 3-D.

Maybe I should blame the cheesy horror films of my childhood — for instance, I remember spending one particular Saturday afternoon glued to Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), a movie in which William Shatner and nobody else you’ve ever heard of are eaten by tarantulas. The movie did not have a happy ending for anybody except Shatner, who released Star Trek: The Motion Picture two years later and immediately removed this from his resume.

It was terrible, and yet I still remember it 30 years later as if I had seen it yesterday, whereas plenty of other “better” movies I saw back then have completely deserted my memory. You know, movies like The Black Stallion (1979), which got four stars from Roger Ebert and I think may have featured a horse, and possibly Mickey Rooney. I guarantee that if either of those characters had been eaten by a spider or a prehistoric piranha, I would recall that movie much better today.

The way I see it, as long as they’re not too exploitative (apologies to Roger Corman), creature features provide some much-needed mindless scares, and at least have the courage of their convictions. For instance, Entertainment Weekly reports that the makers of Piranha 3D used a tanker truck to fill an Arizona lake with at least (at least!) 7,000 gallons of fake blood, which we can only presume is still being cleaned off the fake turtles and pelicans.

Granted, I’ll admit that when I do happen to watch one of these movies now, I can’t help but see them through the eyes of a jaded adult. You’re supposed to revel in the untimely demises of the principal characters at the hands (teeth, claws, appendages) of whatever creature the filmmakers have dreamed up, but that’s harder once you’ve left your callow youth — these days I can’t help but think of the poor state trooper who has to knock on some lady’s door and tell her that her husband was eaten by a fish.

But even if they’re better for the young, 9 is probably a little too young for many of these flicks. I can only imagine if I took my son to Piranha 3D he’d wind up like the kids of a friend of mine — she gave in and let them watch Jaws recently, and now not only won’t they go in the ocean, they won’t sleep in their own beds, out of fear of land sharks. Also, bringing a 9-year-old to Piranha 3D would probably trigger a DSS investigation, and rightly so.

But I’m willing to compromise. Maybe we can settle on something with a little less carnage, like Gremlins (the little pointy-eared creatures movie) or Tremors (the giant worm movie). Or even Kingdom of the Spiders — believe it or not, they have it on Netflix.

I wonder if Shatner knows about that?

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Of course, in real life we have no shortage of fools. (I’m not mentioning any names. Sarah Palin.) But what about in the cinema? In honor of April Fool’s Day, here’s a random sampling of film fools who may have spread their film foolery over the years.

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989). I’d already pretty much written off Mel Gibson after the whole anti-Semitic rant episode, but I really got upset when he mouthed off to that reporter in Chicago. Maligning an entire religion is bad enough, but don’t mess with journalists, Mel. You might make one of us mad, and then we’ll talk about you behind your back.

But while I’m loath to recommend any of Mr. Gibson’s work these days, no discussion of cinematic fools would be complete without Joe Pesci’s Leo Getz. Pesci had been little-seen since his intense role in Raging Bull (1980), and was still a year shy of his Oscar-winning turn in Goodfellas when he stole this movie right out from under Gibson and Danny Glover. Just think, if it weren’t for Pesci, we still might not know what they do to you in the drive-through.

Personally, I found the first Lethal Weapon to be an exercise in stupidity, from Gibson’s faux-craziness to his over-the-top hand-to-hand combat with Gary Busey (Gary Busey!) at the end. The sequel, directed like the first by Richard Donner, is cleverer in general, with better action and more suspense – but its best attribute is Pesci fast-talking his way toward comic genius; you can feel Gibson and Glover elevating their performances just to keep up. And if you don’t think it’s a legendary effort, just think about how many critics referred to Sean William Scott’s part in Cop Out as “the Joe Pesci role.”

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Peter Lorre is a classic cinematic fool, with his weasely looks, his halting laugh and vaguely indeterminate foreign accent belying the gears that always seem to be turning behind his eyes – he’s a fool with a plan, even if it never quite works out. (You’ll recall that things go particularly badly for the little guy in Casablanca, and not much better in The Maltese Falcon.)

In Frank Capra’s brilliantly funny Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant, Lorre turns his sweaty loser persona up to 11 as Dr. Einstein, reluctant aide and plastic surgeon to the homicidal Jonathan Brewster (Raymond Massey). Grant was of course a legendary leading man (An Affair to Remember) and one of cinema’s first great action and suspense heroes (Gunga Din, North by Northwest). But his skills as a comedian were his most lasting legacy, and he was rarely more manically hilarious than in this farce, adapted from Joseph Kesselring’s stage play.

As Mortimer Brewster, intended target of crazy brother Jonathan’s animus, Grant imbues the proceedings with an infectious comic exasperation, but I have a soft spot for his scenes with Lorre – they somehow take the typically hyper tone of screwball comedy to an even higher plateau of ridiculousness. And I mean that in a good way.

The Godfather, Part II (1974). Fools in the movies aren’t always the squirrelly, semi-pathetic sources of comic relief; sometimes they’re the squirrelly, fully pathetic objects of pity that Al Pacino kisses on the lips before (spoiler alert!) having a henchman kill them in a rowboat. Alas, poor Fredo … We knew ye a little too well.

Fredo was goofy enough in the first Godfather, fumbling his gun as he’s trying to protect Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone from the men who’ve come to kill him in the fruit market. (Although seriously, if you knew someone was out to kill you, would you go out on the town with Fredo?) But John Cazale’s damaged, deluded (“I’m smaht!”) younger brother to Pacino’s increasingly sociopathic Michael Corleone becomes in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic sequel one of the true great pathetic fools of the cinema.

From his transparent attempts to pass himself off as a player in Vegas to his sad breakdown in the wake of the failed hit against his brother, Cazale never fails to break our hearts (in a different way than he broke Michael’s) no matter how many times we watch. Cazale died of bone cancer after making only five films, but what films they were – all were nominated for Best Picture. Just try that, Rob Schneider!

Young Frankenstein (1974). While some audiences were enjoying (?) Fredo’s troubles in The Godfather, Part II, those seeking lighter fare may have been taking in what is still Mel Brooks’ most consistently side-splitting spoof, featuring one of film’s greatest fools, period: Marty Feldman’s Igor (that’s I-gor to you).

I’d put this one in my top five comedies – Brooks never again managed the deft touch he showed in this film, which works equally as satire, parody, farce and slapstick. Plus it’s just freakin’ hilarious. It seems almost unfair to single any one actor out, but Feldman always rises to the top for me – comic sidekick or not, he’s still the smartest character in the movie; he only gets the wrong brain (“Abby-something”) because that’s what henchmen are supposed to do.

I’ll also admit to being unable to disassociate this movie from a dream a co-worker on my college newspaper had during one of our all-night layout sessions; she woke up after a nap on one of our decrepit couches and announced she’d just had a dream in which she’d had relations with Marty Feldman in the typesetting room. Funny how that seems just as disturbing today as it did in 1988.

Caddyshack (1980). Was there any reason to expect Caddyshack to be as good as it was? And it really was good – how Harold Ramis managed to wring so many laughs, and even some heart, out of the old snobs vs. slobs premise is evidence of his skills as a comic director. If you don’t think that’s hard to pull off, just see Caddyshack 2. (Or better yet, don’t – I saw it so you don’t have to.)

The stellar cast didn’t hurt – I’m talking about Ted Knight, Rodney Dangerfield and Chevy Chase (before he became, you know, Chevy Chase). But Bill Murray’s demented groundskeeper Carl Spackler is a fool for the ages; more than a sketch character, he’s a comic invention that raises stupidity to the level of brilliance. He’s a joy to watch.

His efforts to corral and then kill the fake little Kenny Loggins-loving gopher are of course the cornerstone of his character’s raison d’etre, but the scene that goes down in history is the 78 seconds where Murray acts out his character’s Cinderella story on some unlucky flowers. (“It’s in the hole!”) You’d have to be a fool not to laugh.

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Still, winter can be an evocative time, especially in cinema. In movies like Fargo, A Simple Plan and The Shining, the season is almost like another character in the film: a big, cold, snowy character. And even when it’s subtler, like in some of the flicks below, that cold winter wind almost always packs some dramatic bite. Especially if they’ve got the AC cranked in the theater.

So enjoy the snowbound random rewind below, share your wintery cinematic suggestions in the comments, and pass me my hot water bottle. If you don’t ask me where I’m going to put it, I won’t tell.

Groundhog Day (1993). I thoroughly enjoyed Groundhog Day when it came out in 1993, but frankly I can say the same thing about Hot Shots, Part Deux. Unlike that Charlie Sheen classic, though, Groundog Day has evolved over the years into what I’d argue is one of the most enduring and frankly philosophical of all screen comedies. It also makes me wonder where the heck Chris Elliot has been – Cabin Boy 2, anyone?

And for our purposes, it’s one of the great winter movies, in that Phil’s odyssey (I recall reading one estimate that his Groundhog Day must have lasted at least five years) wouldn’t have been nearly as wrenching (and hilarious) had it taken place on the Fourth of July. Being trapped in an endless summer doesn’t have nearly the comedic possibilities of an everlasting February; when Phil says, “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you the rest of your life,” you get what he’s talking about.

In fact, besides entering the lexicon, the concept of Groundhog Day – with its underpinnings of religion, philosophy and psychology – has led more than a few of us to question our own perpetual loops. (Check out a clearly tickled director Harold Ramis discussing those concepts here.) In fact, watching it again makes me want to resolve that personally, this will be the year I finally kidnap the groundhog and drive off a cliff into a quarry. Er, metaphorically, I mean.

Cliffhanger (1993). Ah, the snow-capped mountains, the blustery vistas, Sylvester Stallone’s meaty arm emerging from a snow drift to drive a pick into a bad guy’s leg. Such are the sights of Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger, the best mountain-climbing terrorist Treasury thieves movie of 1993.

The film of course starts with one of the most suspenseful sequences ever put on film, in which Stallone attempts to rescue his partner’s girlfriend (Michele Joyner) and winds up, whoops, dropping her thousands of feet to her death. (“Why did I put that Vaseline on underneath my gloves? Why?” OK, I just made that line up.) The rest of the movie fails to live up to the promise of its opening scenes, except of course for the part where Stallone, after having his head kicked … wait, let me check my notes … one meeeeellion times, impales his attacker on a stalactite. Wait, or was it a stalagmite? I never get that right.

Cliffhanger has much to offer, though, including John Lithgow chewing more scenery than ever before or since, which is saying something, and a fine performance from Michael Rooker as the only character ever to spend an entire movie with an automatic weapon pressed against his jowls. And those wintery scenes are beautiful to behold, even if it looks way too cold for Stallone to be running around in a wife-beater T-shirt.

Incidentally, producer Neil H. Moritz is supposedly remaking (rebooting?) this movie, with filming set to start this year. If it doesn’t have at least one stalactite, I’m not going.

Better Off Dead (1985). As a high school junior I went to see this movie with three friends, and we laughed without pause for 97 minutes. I’m not talking about chuckles or backhanded, that’s-clever snorts, but full-out teary-eyed guffaws. Oddly enough, not a single other person in the theater seemed to find it the least bit funny, and one girl we knew even questioned us on the way out on how we could possibly enjoy a movie that was so clearly retarded. (This was not an offensive term at the time.)

If anything, though, my fondness for the film has only grown over the years. John Cusack has been brilliant in more than a few “good” movies – Say Anything, of course, and another favorite of my high school years, The Sure Thing, come to mind – but I’d put his performance as the not-quite-suicidal Lane Meyer up against the best of them. It’s an ingenious walk of the tightrope between satire and engaging believability, and if you don’t think that’s tough to do, go watch a Corey Feldman movie.

As for its winter pedigree, the film of course ends with a spectacular ski race to win the heart of Monique (Diane Franklin), the exchange student with a heart of gold. And God’s honest truth, I think when the obsessed paperboy appears on the slopes, skis mounted to the tires of his ever-present mountain bike, demanding his $2, I laugh even harder now than I did when I was 17. Not sure what that says about me.

Incidentally, Savage Steve Holland’s next collaboration with Cusack, One Crazy Summer (1987), wasn’t quite as successful – this brand of humor works better in cooler climes, I think. Summer did have the inspired image of Bobcat Goldthwait in a Godzilla costume stomping on a scale model of a city block, though, so all is forgiven.

Spellbound (1945). As evidenced by the famously pedantic ending to Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock clearly had a weird fixation with psychiatrists (along with icy blonds, policemen and Cary Grant, but don’t get me started). And never was that fascination on display more than in Spellbound, which today requires a tremendous act of will to appreciate in the context of the time rather than as, well, one of the stupidest thrillers ever.

Still, even though I wouldn’t put it in the Hitchcock top 10, it does have much to acquit it. There’s the famous Salvador Dali dream sequence (revolutionary for its time – no, really), and of course Ingrid Bergman, who’s as luminous as ever, even as she’s spouting psychobabble or looking furtively over her shoulder while skiing to make sure Gregory Peck, as the amnesiac and possible killer she’s trying to cure, isn’t going to murder her with his pole. (Not being Freudian there, I swear.) It also had an awesome poster.

The ski sequence, as in Better Off Dead, is what qualifies Spellbound as a winter movie, and seen apart from the rest of the film I’ll admit that it’s patently hilarious. Peck, like Stallone, is spectacularly underdressed, and the rear projection has the quality of a mid-’80s Saturday Night Live sketch. But if you can tell me another movie whose denouement features a better revelation of a long-suppressed childhood memory on a ski slope, I’m all ears. And no, Hot Dog … The Movie doesn’t count.

Pale Rider (1985). Pale Rider is another movie that wouldn’t fare nearly as well if the characters were warmer. Unlike Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns where Clint Eastwood first made his mark – in which you could practically hear Eli Wallach’s skin cracking in the desert heat – Rider’s downtrodden miners in darkened hovels are much more convincingly in need of redemption surrounded by snow, cold and distant mountains that look almost like icebergs. And Eastwood’s angel-of-death preacher feels like he was born breathing out cold air.

Pale Rider came across as a fine western when I first saw it (in the same year as Better Off Dead – 1985 and 1993 were apparently pretty good years for winter movies), but it’s grown on me even more since. Eastwood wasn’t yet the accomplished director he is today, but the economy of his shots shows a master in development, and I love the way he keeps his preacher a mysterious figure, letting us decide for ourselves whether he’s a man with a troubled past, a ghost emerged from the snow to wreak revenge, or something in between.

Also, he shoots a lot of guys. If you’re a cut-to-the-chase kind of person, you can watch that in the clip below. Hopefully that will keep you warm until spring. As for me, I’ve got my water bottle.

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And the cinema is no different. So, in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought I’d revisit some films where the dinner table is practically its own separate character, because somehow these movies wouldn’t be the same if the characters went bowling or water skiing instead of sitting down to break bread (although in a few cases those are options I would like to have seen).

Notorious (1946): There are so many little rules you should follow if you want to throw a truly special dinner party. For instance, you may want to consider cloth napkins folded like a swan. Also, if your wife is a spy, make sure the man she really loves doesn’t come to rescue her from certain poisoning when you’re having all your high-ranking Nazi friends over. That’s a big no-no.

That scenario plays out in one of several extremely suspenseful dinner-party scenes and gatherings in Notorious, each of them featuring a stunning Ingrid Bergman at her most painfully pathetic. As party girl (and daughter of a convicted Nazi sympathizer) Alicia Huberman, she essentially prostitutes herself in the name of democracy — but also in the name of true-love G-man T.R. Devlin, played by Cary Grant. Devlin is pained by her willingness to sleep with the enemy, but not so pained as to keep him from engaging in a kissing scene that’s so long I think it may still be going on in some time zones.

Notorious is one of Hitchcock’s greatest, both technically (his one-take tracking shot from the top of a staircase to a key Bergman’s grasping in her hand is still breathtaking) and emotionally. The master shifts your allegiances, well, masterfully, from Bergman to Grant and even to Sebastian, Claude Rains’s duped Nazi. (Not to his mother, though — she’s just evil.)

P.S.: Not to be confused with Notorious (2009), the biopic about Notorious B.I.G. Boy, did I find that out the hard way.

Annie Hall (1977): Of all the funny-squirmy scenes in Meet the Parents (2000), the funny-squirmiest may be the one where Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker first sits down to eat with his fiance’s family and somehow winds up telling them of a youth spent milking cats. It’s a scene that probably couldn’t exist without Alvy Singer’s Easter visit to the Hall family’s house in Annie Hall.

The scene is actually tamer than you might remember — watching it again, its beauty is actually in the subtlety of Allen’s portrayal of Annie’s WASP family, eventually contrasted in split-screen with a much louder gathering of Alvy’s Jewish family back in N.Y. (“We don’t understand it either,” his father admits when Annie’s mother gets puzzled over the concept of fasting on Yom Kippur.)

The scene’s big laugh, of course, comes when Annie’s “Gram” (“a classic Jew-hater”) looks begrudgingly at Alvy and sees a full-fledged Hasidic rabbi. Watch the whole clip, too, for a young Christopher Walken’s scene-stealing turn as Annie’s deranged brother, who sets up one of the greatest Allen reaction shots ever.

Unfortunately, Annie Hall hasn’t aged particularly well. I think by influencing almost every romantic comedy that came after it, it now seems less groundbreaking than it should. Taken in context, though, it’s brilliant — Allen’s first real work of mature genius. It’s his Blood on the Tracks (but, you know, funny).

The Empire Strikes Back (1980): What sci-fi epic? Sure, a lot of people point to this sequel as the best episode in George Lucas’s famous space opera of diminishing returns, but if you think about it, The Empire Strikes Back as directed by Irvin Kershner is really a comedy of manners — table manners, to be specific.

I’m referring primarily to that droll scene in which Lando Calrissian escorts Han, Leia, and Chewie into what must be the Cloud City executive dining room, where they find Darth Vader waiting for them at the head of the table. Han, no slave to social etiquette, shoots at the enemy with his laser blaster, but Vader absorbs the blasts into his glove, raising the question “Why don’t they make the stormtroopers’ uniforms out of whatever that glove is made of?”

Anyway, in the closest thing to a clever remark uttered by Vader in all six Star Wars movies, he declares, “We would be honored if you would join us.” Then Boba Fett does what he always does — namely, walk out from behind a wall and stand around holding his gun like he’s about to breast-feed it. (For this the guy’s got one of the top five action figures?)

The other lousy dinner guest in Empire is Luke Skywalker, who disses Yoda’s food and apartment and comes within inches of throttling the poor puppet before realizing that, oops, he’s a Jedi master! It’s practically right out of a Dorothy Parker one-act.

My Favorite Year (1982): Over the years Lainie Kazan has morphed into something of a parody of the ethnic mother — she’s big! she’s loud! she says things no actual human mother would say in front of other people! etc. — but that’s only because there was a time when nobody did it better. Case in point: My Favorite Year.

When Mark Linn-Baker’s nebbishy TV comedy writer Benjy Stone brings his show’s famous guest, Alan Swann (Peter O’Toole), to his mother’s Brooklyn home for dinner, he’s convinced things won’t go well. (Coworker: “What are you ashamed of?” Benjy: “Everything!”) But mom and uncouth Uncle Marty manage to charm the movie star in their own way, even as Kazan’s Belle calls him “Swanny.” (“Ma, he’s an actor, not a river.”)

Kazan, at 39 only 14 years old than Linn-Baker, steals the scene out from under O’Toole, and turns in one of a bevy of brilliantly funny performances in My Favorite Year. The film was actor Richard Benjamin’s directorial debut, and it bode well for his future projects. Then My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988) came out, and that was that. Still, he’ll always have a special place in my heart for trying to use a Star of David on Dracula (George Hamilton) in Love at First Bite.

P.S.: The dinner scene isn’t on YouTube, so you’re going to have to buy the movie.

For Your Consideration (2006): This is probably the least gut-busting of the Christopher Guest ensemble comedies, possibly because he jettisoned the faux-documentary interview segments, or maybe because the film was just too “inside baseball.” (I have a feeling it must be a favorite for anyone who’s ever held any kind of job in Hollywood, from Tom Cruise on down to parking attendants.)

But this story of a group of second-rate actors (fronted by the brilliant Catherine O’Hara as the sublimely named Marilyn Hack) getting unexpected Oscar buzz for their southern Jewish melodrama “Home for Purim” has plenty to recommend it, and not just Fred Willard and Jane Lynch’s giddy evisceration of Entertainment Tonight, although it’s worth seeing just for that.

No, my favorite part actually has to be the dinner scene at the heart of the movie-within-the-movie, in what would easily be the funniest Purim gathering ever recorded on film even if it wasn’t the only one. (If there’s another one I’m not aware of, zay moykhl, as my Bubbe used to say.) For Your Consideration may not be the best Guest, but watching this same group of actors sit around improvising about the weather would still be better than 90 percent of Hollywood’s current releases.

Or 90 percent of Thanksgiving dinner conversations. Here’s hoping you’re in the other 10.

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Still, I have a soft spot for these films. When an actor truly embodies the familiar figure who’s being, er, biopicked, there’s no doubt it can be riveting; I could watch Meryl Streep make boeuf bourguignon all day long. And biopics can even be fascinating when things go wrong, in a Bobby-Darin-must-be-rolling-over-in-his-grave kind of way.

I thought I’d revisit a few of both kinds in order to mentally prepare myself for the moment when Hilary Swank goes down over the Pacific. By the way, if I’m already dead when they begin looking for someone to play me in the story of my life, please tell them: definitely Zac Efron.

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942): I went through a period in my youth when I was a little obsessed with old James Cagney movies. (Name me one other actor as handy with a tough one-liner as he was with a gun or a grapefruit.) It wasn’t until later that I came across his one Oscar-winning performance, in Michael Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy — wasn’t he going to shoot anybody?

I have no idea if this movie is at all close to what George M. Cohan’s life was actually like, but when you’ve got Cagney hoofing it up, who cares? His oddly compelling singing-speaking (which apparently mirrored Cohan’s own style) and his light-footed dancing — which still looks like a special effect — make you forget all those times he mowed down people with tommy guns, though I admit it might have been something special if he’d blown up at the end.

I can only imagine what audiences at the time thought of Cagney’s change of pace. I mean, what would it be like in this day and age if Mickey Rourke suddenly turned up in a sequel to Hairspray? On second thought, I’d really love to see that.

Incidentally, Yankee Doodle Dandy goes down in history as the last musical biopic in which the biographee doesn’t engage in a downward spiral of drugs and women and wind up dead in a bathtub. (See: The Doors, below.)

Gandhi (1982): I’ve always been a big Gandhi guy. The nonviolence, the passive resistance, the homemade dhoti — I can get behind all of that. His “salt march” in 1930 sounded exhausting, but an Indian’s gotta do what an Indian’s gotta do.

Gandhi, the 1982 Oscar winner for Best Picture, strikes me as the biopic all others should be measured against: it’s a complex, gripping, somehow amazingly complete tale about one of the truly great men of the past century. Richard Attenborough’s epic hits all the right notes, and Best Actor winner Ben Kingsley, in his first big-screen role, is truly stunning in his portrayal of Gandhi over 55 years of the pacifist’s life — determined, quietly heroic, seemingly possessed of an inner radiance. (Yes, even more so than in Species.)

If they don’t screen this film every year in high school social studies classes they certainly should, especially if they’re still making time for those movies about how LSD makes you see giant caterpillars. But, you ask, should Gandhi really have beaten out E.T. for Best Picture? No, because that had Drew Barrymore.

La Bamba (1987): This is going to make me sound like a horrible person, but I wasn’t crazy about the ending of La Bamba when it came out in the summer of ’87. As I recall, my girlfriend at the time cried her eyes out, but I found it a little heavy-handed (unlike the more subdued The Buddy Holly Story), what with the melodramatic coin toss to get poor, ill-fated Ritchie Valens on the plane, and the montage of friends and family reacting to the news of his death. Look, we get it, alright? It was sad.

It wasn’t until I saw the movie again recently that those scenes really moved me, probably because I’m old now and it doesn’t take much to get me going; these days I get choked up at dog food commercials. (If you really want to be reduced to a blubbering idiot, watch the Behind the Music episode about “The Day the Music Died.” Oy.)

But no matter what you think of the ending of writer-director Luis Valdez’s labor of love, La Bamba offers the performance of a lifetime from Lou Diamond Phillips, who went on to star in a bunch of movies featuring killer werewolves, and a compelling back story centering on Ritchie and his tough-guy brother, played by Esai Morales. Not to mention there’s some fantastic music from Los Lobos, Marshall Crenshaw, and Brian Setzer, who all appear on-camera in various roles. Makes me wish that girlfriend hadn’t wound up with our joint copy of the soundtrack.

The Doors (1991): Ah, The Doors. How could it have been any worse, really? By the fourth or fifth time a suicidal Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) was shown hanging out of a window or off a fire escape, I felt like yelling, “Just let go already!”

Still, even though Oliver Stone’s walk down memory lane is bloated, loud, confusing, and affected as all get-out (he should’ve stuck with Vietnam), it does offer some fantastic concert scenes that’ll probably work well on your high-def TV if you find yourself possessed to buy the Blu-ray. Also, the cast is first-rate, notably a pre-Entourage Kevin Dillon in ’60s curls and Crispin Glover’s he-was-weird-but-I’m-still-weirder take on Andy Warhol.

Was Stone trying to satirize or fetishize the Doors era? The fact that we’re still not sure indicates he probably should’ve taken a different approach. And the less we say about Meg Ryan’s against-type performance the better, although she does have one good line about ol’ Jim’s lack of discrimination regarding where he puts his naughty bits. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that 18 years after The Doors “Weird Al” Yankovic has managed to say all that needs to be said about the band in four minutes and 50 seconds.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007): I realize I’m cheating here since Dewey Cox isn’t a real person, no matter how desperately we might wish the contrary. But Jake Kasdan’s brilliant parody, cowritten with Judd Apatow, should be required viewing for anybody who’s even thinking of making a biopic, so that we can forever avoid spoof-able tropes like characters who awkwardly insert their age into every other sentence so the audience knows how much time has passed between scenes.

In an era where cinematic parody seems to consist of characters who sort of look like characters from other movies, except they’re farting, Walk Hard is a welcome return to Naked Gun-level lunacy, concocted by people with brains. It’s a spot-on spoof of rock-star biopics and a deft skewering of basically every musical icon since Roy Orbison. John C. Reilly is uniformly hilarious as Dewey, whether he’s singing a dirty duet with “backup singer” Darlene Madison (Jenna Fischer) or meeting the (riotously self-referential) Beatles.

In fact I kind of wish Kasdan and Apatow were the team behind Amelia. Then at least we could count on one good “going down” pun.

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Moore’s latest is of course aimed at the business titans of Wall Street who let us have it twice, first by ruining our economy, then by wheeling and dealing the government into ponying up billions in public money so they could get started on ruining it again. I’m sure Capitalism is well executed but no doubt depressing, at least for those of us not on the receiving end of the aforementioned billions. I prefer my cinematic big business to be the fictional kind, where greed may be good but Michael Douglas still goes to white-collar jail at the end, or is at least sexually harassed by Demi Moore. Mrowr!

With that in mind, patch in to my conference call as I review my 300-slide PowerPoint presentation on five random business flicks that deserve the key to the executive washroom.

The Apartment (1960): If you don’t know much about Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, the Best Picture of 1960, you might assume it to be one of those quaint classic movies where everybody talks fast and everything is happy and clever. After all, it’s old, it’s in black and white, and it stars Jack Lemmon (in proto-Tom Hanks mode) and Fred MacMurray, the swell dad from TV’s My Three Sons.

Well, it is clever, but it also happens to be the funniest movie ever made about corporate arrogance, adultery, and suicide (not necessarily in that order). If the NYC insurance company that employs Lemmon’s hapless C.C. Baxter doesn’t make you want to work from home — the desks stretch out across the cavernous office like ancient monoliths, and executives think nothing of bullying an underling into offering up his apartment for their extramarital trysts — nothing will.

Wilder was something of a dark genius who could get away with sly, adult satires that eluded many of his contemporaries; his cross-dressing classic Some Like It Hot (1959) remains one of the great pleasures of the cinema, so subversive and funny you almost can’t believe what you’re seeing. And as for the “nice” Mr. MacMurray, watch Wilder’s 1944 murder/adultery noir Double Indemnity to disabuse yourself of that notion.

Incidentally, Wilder’s Sabrina (1954) offers another view of big business, this time through the eyes of Humphrey Bogart’s Linus Larrabee, a tycoon who’s concerned that Audrey Hepburn’s title character may be distracting his playboy brother (William Holden) from the family business because, well, she’s Audrey Hepburn. Still, I prefer Shirley MacLaine — the quirky, pre-”past lives” Shirley, mind you — in The Apartment. Audrey’s so perfect she makes me nervous.

Brazil (1985): OK, I know I’m cheating here since Jonathan Pryce’s aptly named Sam Lowry works for the government, not a corporation, in a dystopian future much more terrifying than the one in Michael Radford’s by-the-numbers take on 1984 from a year earlier. But Brazil, which remains Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, does for bureaucratic office dronery what Chaplin did for factory work in Modern Times, pushing it just far enough past the point of exaggeration to make it recognizable, hilarious, and utterly depressing all at the same time.

Actually, that’s a pretty accurate description of the film as a whole. Pryce is perfect as the nervous low-level worker-turned-unlikely terrorist suspect — I think he held the record for most sweat by a lead actor in a film until Albert Brooks took the title from him two years later in Broadcast News — and Robert De Niro is Jack Walsh by way of Rupert Pupkin, playing a rebel who actually succeeds in bucking the system. I’ve been pushing for a sequel called Harry Tuttle: Air Conditioner Repairman, but Gilliam won’t answer my e-mails.

Incidentally, I once had the displeasure of watching much of the edited-for-TV version, which is an hour shorter, with pretty much every scene that’s the least bit dark or challenging, including the entire ending, taken out. If Universal set out to edit Brazil so as to aim it exclusively and directly at idiots, they couldn’t have done a better job. And if corporate idiocy isn’t the perfect recurring theme of big business, I don’t know what is.

RoboCop (1987): RoboCop is a lot of things: ultraviolent action flick, cynical yet increasingly prescient futuristic satire, the last great Nancy Allen movie. But when you get right down to it, it’s a boardroom drama, featuring a boardroom where there was a very good chance you’d be shot 4,000 times by a killer robot. (Show of hands: How many of you have been in a meeting where you were secretly hoping that robot would turn up and put you out of your misery? Thought so.)

In a movie with no shortage of great villains — Kurtwood Smith’s sadistic Boddicker and Miguel Ferrer’s slimy Morton, of course, among them — Ronny Cox’s Richard “Dick” Jones has got to go down as one of the top corporate baddies of all time. He’s completely ruthless, not above any sort of criminal activity or affiliation, and he has no problem chasing underlings out of the men’s room before they’ve finished peeing. No mercy!

Director Paul Verhoeven never really reached these heights again. Total Recall (1990) may have been vintage Arnold, but Basic Instinct (1992) was, let’s face it, embarrassing (by the 14th sex scene you actually want to scream at Sharon Stone, “Put it back on!”; sadly, it’s a piece of advice she still hasn’t taken). This makes me think Verhoeven should go back to his RoboCop roots and do a straight-out business movie, just one without robots. (OK, maybe one.)

The Secret of My Succe$s (1987): Poor, poor Secret of My Succe$s. For one thing, it has a dollar sign in its name, making it prey to the cinematic truism that all movies in which an S has been replaced by a dollar sign are bound to $uck. (I’m talking to you, How to Beat the High Co$t of Living.)

But it also never lives up to the charm of its star, Michael J. Fox, who does his best to drag it kicking and screaming into the realm of raucous comedy. He’s well cast as the would-be businessman who invents an executive alter ego in order to skip a few rungs on the corporate ladder, indulging in an ill-advised affair with his aunt — the boss’s wife — while he’s at it. Unfortunately, if it weren’t for Fred Gwynne there wouldn’t be another remotely likable character in the whole movie. (Extra demerits for the blatant use of “Oh Yeah” by Yello, a song that will forever belong to Mr. Ferris Bueller, I’m afraid.)

In general The Secret of My Succe$s is a misstep for director Herbert Ross (The Sunshine Boys, The Goodbye Girl), but it’s fondly remembered as a Reagan-era memento, and with Fox having left acting behind for the most part to become a spokesman for Parkinson’s research, I’m willing to overlook the film’s shortcomings to appreciate his performance. Besides, sleeping with your aunt seems pretty tame these days when it comes to Wall Street shenanigans. Now those guys are screwing the entire country.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992): I really can’t understate the extent to which I’d like to be a David Mamet character, spending my days dropping F-bombs, conning clueless marks, and betraying acquaintances (because of course I have no actual friends to betray). And did I mention the F-bombs?

I’ll work on that, but in the meantime I have the troubled, broken men of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross to keep me company. Everyone remembers Alec Baldwin’s sales-meeting rant from James Foley’s brilliant film adaptation, and justifiably so, even if it is harder to take seriously in the Liz Lemon era. But the performances are stellar to a one. Even Al Pacino turns in a nuanced performance here, or as nuanced as a performance can be while still incorporating the F-, S-, B-, P-, and … wait, let me check my notes … ah, yes, C-words (both of them).

It’s worth noting that some of the best performances in Glengarry come from two veterans of this very column, Jack Lemmon and Jonathan Pryce, both of whom play that other type of Mamet male, the emasculated (yet still foul-mouthed) sad sack in search of redemption that never comes. Watching these actors — the whole ensemble, really — sweat desperation is oddly exhilarating simply because they’re so good at what they do. Plus, they teach a valuable business lesson: if Alec Baldwin comes into your office, run! I figure if Michael Moore gets that point across in Capitalism: A Love Story, his work will be done.

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