We have now arrived at my first year in high school. There were a ton of movies that I really liked this year and it represents a pretty major shift in both my life and my appreciation of movies. The summer leading up to my first day of high school I had started to really pay a lot more attention to movie news.

I became much more interested in how movies were made and who was making my favorite ones. There was no internet at the time and I mostly had to rely on Entertainment Weekly and watching more E! Entertainment Television than would be otherwise recommended. I had been watching Siskel and Ebert religiously for a long time at that point and so I began asking for and receiving Roger Ebert’s yearly movie review guide for Christmas. I read his reviews voraciously and started to learn a bit more of the connective tissue of filmmakers, actors, and movies. I was still fairly young in my understanding in all of this but this is where it really began in earnest.

As has been the case for awhile now, there are a lot more movies this year that I love than just the top five and while some of you might still be going cross-eyed at my choices for favorites, I offer no apologies. Just the same as ever year so far and every year after. And so it goes.

Runners up in roughly release order: The Hunt for Red October, Blind Fury, Opportunity Knocks, Ernest Goes to Jail, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, Back to the Future Part III, Gremlins 2 the New Batch, Robocop 2, Die Hard 2, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Ghost, Arachnophobia, Young Guns II, Flatliners, Exorcist III, My Blue Heaven, Pump Up the Volume, Darkman, Men at Work, Goodfellas, I Come in Peace, Miller’s Crossing, Quigly Down Under, Jacob’s Ladder, Home Alone, Predator 2, Misery, Edward Scissorhands, Hamlet, and Kindergarten Cop.  

If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 1990 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 36-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!

1.Total Recall-Paul Verhoeven

The second of Paul Verhoeven’s stone cold bangers, Total Recall is a massive Arnold Schwarzenneger starring sci-fi movie about a man who goes to a memory company for a ‘vacation’ and finds himself embroiled in an intergalactic conspiracy involving oxygen rights on Mars and the resistance movement led by mutants to take back control of Mars for the people…or is that just the secret agent trip that he ordered going haywire in his head?

Schwarzenegger plays Douglas Quaid, a construction worker everyman who finds himself at his construction job dreaming of something more. He talks to his co-workers about this and they encourage him to keep his mind on his work and his life and out of the clouds. His wife, Lori (Sharon Stone), counsels the same but it continues to nag at him. He keeps seeing commercials for Rekall, a company that offers memory implants that feel as real as actual memories and he wants to try it out since an actual trip to Mars is out of the question. Again, his co-worker Tony (Robert Costanzo) tells him not to as there was a guy who tried it and got himself lobotomized.  

Quaid does it anyway and chooses the Secret Agent Ego Trip to mars called ‘Blue Sky on Mars’  in which Quaid chooses to be a hero of the resistance in the fight against the corporation and designs his perfect femme fatale in the process. As soon as he gets in the chair and they start the process it goes horribly wrong as, apparently, Quaid has actually already been to Mars and has had his memories replaced. They knock him out, refund his money, and dump in on the street, erasing any evidence that he went to Rekall.

Quaid is then attacked by his co-workers and his wife for going to Rekall and after getting a package sent to him by his ‘real self,’ whose name is Hauser, he follows the instructions to ‘get his ass to Mars.’

Based on ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K Dick, Total Recall takes the basic premise of that short story, a guy who unlocks hidden memories by accident when he goes to a virtual vacation company, and expands on it into all of the revolution on Mars material. This is one of the few Dick stories I have read and while I like it a lot, I can’t help but prefer the movie for its expanded depth and themes. It also has insane, over the top action and Schwarzenegger one liners that make it one of the best action packages of the decade.

In the short story, it is explicitly clear that the main character really was a secret agent, but the movie bakes the uncertainty into every moment and you can really kind of read it either way. The one piece of evidence that it is real is when Dr Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith) comes to Quaid to try to talk him out of his delusion and Quaid sees that he is sweating. The counterpoint to that is that everything that Edgemar tells him will happen if Quaid kills him actually happens when Quaid kills him. The movie even fades to white as predicted which would signal that Quaid was lobotomized. Verhoeven is not prescriptive about this and says you can read it either way and I think that is one of the things that makes this movie so good.

There are so many rad characters and sequences in this movie. Ronny Cox turning in another fantastic villain performance as Cohaagen. Michael Ironside is fucking badass as Richter and gives his own spin to what is essentially the same sort of character that Kurtwood Smith gave us in Robocop. Rachel Ticotin’s Melina gives us a strong and kickass female lead who is a counterpoint to Sharon Stone’s Lori in just about every way. Marshall Bell gives an iconic performance in a duel role as George and Kuato. “Kuato is a mutant, so don’t be upset when you see him” right before a malformed fetus mutant comes out of his stomach to tell Quaid to start the reactor is fucked up in the most perfect way. I have a t-shirt that is one of my favorite puns ever which is an avocado with Kuato in coming out of the pit telling Quaid to start the reactor. It is Avokuato. AVOKUATO, guys. Iconic.

Total Recall is a big movie with a lot of big ideas but it is wrapped in the sort of fun and bombast that only Paul Verhooven could deliver at the time. The social commentary feels very contemporary nowadays with big corporations squeezing people for as much money as they can while holding life saving resources hostage. That this oppression and subjugation is perpetrated against marginalized members of society who are different to ‘normal’ people further drives its current relevance home. And still, we’ve apparently learned nothing.

I saw Total Recall with my parents at the drive in, which I will say again is not the ideal way to see anything but I miss them for some reason. My parents told me we were going to the store, which at the time meant we were going to Smith’s. Smith’s had arcade games, most notably one of my favorite arcade games, Strider. I hurried to gather up all the quarters I could and left the house with them with a pocket bulging and jangling like I was the Sheriff of Nottingham collecting taxes in the Disney Robin Hood (1973).

We got in the car and drove straight past Smith’s. I was apoplectic. My parents said we were going to a different store. I made the argument that other stores didn’t have Strider and they argued that they didn’t care. I was very put out to say the least and loudly complained about it until I noticed that we were in some kind of a line to turn left at 22^nd and Alvernon and I traced that line to the entrance of DeAnza Drive in. I swallowed back my Strider-less disappointment and asked if we were going to a movie and if so which one. My parents played coy as long as they could and revealed that they wanted to surprise me with Total Recall. I was very excited but it was an excitement tempered by having shown my ass for like 20 minutes over not getting to play a video game. I will say it again, I must have been exhausting.

Due to the overwhelming interest in Total Recall combined with people’s inability to show up early to make sure you can see movies on time, we got parked and settled in to watch the film right as Frank  and fellow co-workers were trying to kill Quaid for going to Rekall. My parents and I had no fucking idea what was going on for the rest of the movie.

It is really a testament to how rad the movie is that even without even a cursory understanding of the plot, it is still fucking awesome. We stayed through the second movie, which was Rutger Hauer starring blind swordsman picture Blind Fury, and Total Recall started again to show the first half-hour or so of the movie and we retroactively understood it all. It remains wild to me that Drive-ins expected people to show up late to such a degree that they replayed the beginning of the movie after the end of the second feature. I suppose that now they show a half an hour of trailers before a movie so I don’t really know which is worse.

Total Recall has remained a major touchpoint movie throughout my life, and it is one I quote a lot, reference in my movies, and think about more than I mention to anyone. I am not sure why ‘Cohagaan, give the people air!’ is one of my favorite Arnold line readings ever but it honestly rivals ‘get to the choppa!’ for me.

Thinking about Total Recall now really punctuates how heavy of a hitter Verhoeven was and how awesome of a run he had. I can’t defend Showgirls or Hollow Man but Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers are pretty epic for one guy to be responsible. He always had something to say and he said it in a very quirky and extreme way that drove the point home all the more. It is hard to pick a favorite really, I suppose Robocop would take the honor but it really depends on my mood at the time. Regardless of which is my favorite, Total Recall has definitely stayed with me much longer than TWO WEEEEEKS!

2.Tremors-Ron Underwood

Tremors is a throwback style creature feature that follows two handymen Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) as they attempt to leave the small town of Perfection only to find out that their exit has been cut off by a series of deaths and disasters only to find out that they are being attacked by underground worms that are attracted by sound. They have to team up with a graduate student studying seismology, Rhonda (Finn Carter), to gather the remaining residents of the town and escape without being eaten by the tentacled worms the local store owner dubs ‘Graboids.’

Tremors is an amazing piece of horror/comedy that fires on all cylinders with great creature effects and a delightful cast of characters which includes Michael Gross and Reba McEntire as a couple of gun-toting survivalists, Victor Wong as the aforementioned store owner, Bobby Jacoby as dipshit teen Melvin, and Tony Genero’s Miguel. If the characters sucked, this would not work at all but they are all very fun to be with and it is a bummer when not all of them make it out alive.

This movie is also insanely quotable and is full of memorable lines that you don’t expect to hear in any movie. “Be advised, there are still two more mother humpers” and “You didn’t get penetration with the elephant gun” are two of my favorites that you just don’t really expect to hear. These are not lines I quote because when the fuck would I say either of those things but they are funny nevertheless.

This is another one I saw in the theater with my parents and fell in love with it immediately. I love that they allow the two main characters to be unapologetically stupid and while some of the comedy comes from it, it isn’t really making fun of them at all. They are just simple guys who aren’t very bright trying to figure shit out.

Tremors is just so much fun and I can watch it over and over. And I often do.

3.Nightbreed-Clive Barker

Adapted from his own short story ‘Cabal,’  Nightbreed is written and directed by Clive Barker and tells the story of Boone (Craig Sheffer), a man tormented by dreams and impotence who is in the process of being framed by his therapist Dr Philip K Decker (David Cronenberg), who himself is a serial killer, who searches out the kingdom of Midian where he is bitten by a monster before being gunned down by police. Boone is reborn as one of the Nightbreed, a race of undead monsters that live beneath a cemetery and ultimately takes revenge on Decker while protecting his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobbi).

Nightbreed is absolutely wild with insanely cool make up effects and creature designs that are somewhat reminiscent of Barker’s Cenobites in Hellraiser (1987). This movie, conceptually, is right up my alley and I loved it when I saw it on VHS. It is true that the theatrical version was butchered due to studio interference and the film has only improved from the extended director’s cut, but I really dug it even in the theatrical version.

I read Cabal after I saw the movie and it is fucked up to a degree that almost led me to spit chewed up omelet across the table on my Grandma on a family vacation but I really dug that too. Nightbreed was very influential on me when I drew and wrote horror adjacent comics in high school and one character in particular was very inspired by Boone, particularly the Craig Sheffer presentation of him.

Seeing David Cronenberg, legendary body horror master director, act is always fun. That his character’s name is an amalgamation of Philip K Dick’s name and Blade Runner protagonist Rick Deckard makes it a bit extra fun while also making this week’s entry pretty Dick heavy. As an aside, Dick Heavy is playing Riot Fest next year.

4.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-Steve Barron

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is as descriptive a name of anything as you could hope for. It tells you most of what you need to know without further explanation. They are mutated turtles who are teenagers and ninjas. What more do you need? Okay, fine.

Based on the 1984 Mirage studio comics from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie follows the Turtles as they battle the Shredder and his Foot Clan of ninjas with the help of humans April O’Neil and Casey Jones. The movie was a surprise to some who came to the turtles through the 1987 cartoon as it was a fairly close adaptation of the original comics. This meant it was a bit darker and more violent and had a different origin than cartoon fans were used to.

I was so hyped about this movie when I was a kid. I was introduced to the turtles through the cartoon but I quickly found and consumed the comics through graphic novels and I connected to those much more. For as absurd of a premise as the turtles has, the comics are a lot darker and more serious with the turtles killing the Shredder in the first issue. I was delighted when the movie turned out to be more comics accurate than cartoon accurate. And I absolutely would not shut up about it either.

I love the turtles so much and it was amazing to get such a faithful adaptation of the characters. Certain aspects of the story were changed from the comics and I was kind of annoyed by the centering of Raphael as I am a tried and true Leonardo fan, but the changes were minor and it was badass to be able to get something like this. The creature effects were done by Jim Henson studios and was the last project he worked on before his death months after the movie’s release. That the animatronic masks could have facial expressions and the suits allowed them to do martial arts was just amazing and the action in the movie remains impressive. I love this movie so much and it remains my favorite Turtles movie. It will probably remain that way now that the proposed Last Ronin movie was cancelled. I loved Mutant Mayhem a lot but this OG movie will probably always be my favorite.

5.Quick Change-Bill Murray

The one and only film directed by Bill Murray, Quick Change is a real hidden gem of a movie about a trio who rob a bank and have difficulty making it to the airport to leave the country while an aging detective near retirement chases them like his legacy depends on it. With strong performances from Murry, Gina Davis, Randy Quaid, and Jason Robards, Quick Change is a comedy of errors and builds laughs on top of the escalating desperation to get away and it works really well. Appearances by Phil Hartman, Kurtwood Smith, and Tony Shalob further bolstered the fun and comedy.  

I saw this with my parents in the theater and it was another in  a long line of Bill Murray comedies we saw together. My parents liked it but not nearly as much as I did and when I got it on VHS, I watched it over and over. Bill Murray is one of my absolute favorite comedy actors and this movie is unsurprisingly right in his wheelhouse given that he also wrote and directed it. This also awakened in me a real anxiety about things going wrong in a plan. That is not a great outcome but it does illustrate how much of an influence this film had on me.

You probably won’t hear much about Quick Change from very many people and that is a shame. It isn’t the funniest movie of the year but it is really fun and I have a ton of affection for it. If you are looking for a fun, underseen movie that you haven’t heard of to check out, you could do a lot worse than Quick Change.