Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema

by Lindy West

Of course it must be acknowledged that The Fugitive is a movie all about men, where women don’t do very much except die or sometimes hold a clipboard.

Richard escapes outside into the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is the one where they dye the Chicago River green, and this is unrelated to the movie but it seems like they shouldn’t do that.

Then he says one of those zingers that were cool as hell in the ’90s: “You missed your stop.”

Hugh Grant plays the role of “horny prime minister,” which raises the question: What percentage of Americans believe that Hugh Grant literally is the prime minister and/or boy king of the UK? I’ll bet you the number is not zero, and that is why we should all probably eat poison.

To be perfectly honest, Liam Neeson is really acting the hell out of this movie.

The truth is that you simply can’t make it into adulthood unscathed.

They say it’s excruciatingly difficult to become an animagus and takes years and years of study (except that even flushable wipe Peter Pettigrew figured it out in, like, one year as a teenager, but okay1), yet McGonagall uses it literally exclusively to blow kids’ minds on the first day of Transfiguration class.

You know, it’s like actually insane to make Harry sleep in the cupboard under the stairs when you have an entire extra bedroom. And don’t you need the storage? I would NEVER give up my linen closet no matter how much I hated my shitty nephew! Take the master, Grayson! I expected better logic out of Aunt Petunia, being the only non-fat in the family.

Now it’s Harry’s birthday, and for the first time in his life, he gets a letter in the mail. Mesmerized, this dumbass brings the letter into the dining room like he’s never met his own family before.

Wizards are constantly roasting “Muggle technology,” meanwhile their best method of long-distance communication is sticking your face in a fire and hoping your friend happens to be in the kitchen at the time.

Harry buys a magic wand from John Hurt, considered by many to be the greatest actor of his generation, who really takes his twelve seconds of screen time talking nonsense to a child TO THE LIMIT.

BTW, Hermione should 100 percent be the protagonist of this whole shit

the Sorting Hat. So it’s a sentient hat, and they stick the kids’ heads up its asshole so it can tell them whether they’re brave, smart, evil, or other (the four genders).

I hate how they sometimes crimp sections of Hermione’s hair like that’s part of her natural hair texture like we’ve never seen hair before.

“Good luck today, Potter. Then again, now that you’ve proven yourself against a troll, a little Quidditch match should be no problem, even if it is against Slytherin.” Dude, you’re an ADULT. GO TO THERAPY.

Yeah, there are technically Black characters in Harry Potter, but tell me one thing about Dean Thomas.

It goes without saying that Harry and Ron would have been instantaneously deceased without Hermione, but as usual, Harry’s the fucking hero.

It would be a real letdown if the last thing you did in your life was suck Nicolas Cage’s tongue. And I say that respectfully, as a fan.

There is no other movie where they do less to explain the science.

Face/Off

“YOU ARE NOW A CITIZEN OF EREHWON PRISON, YOU BELONG TO NOWHERE.” Erehwon is nowhere backward, so kindly reanimate my corpse from where it lies in front of the Mirror of Erised and kill me again.

this universe has that Lady and the Tramp disease where all the boy babies look like the dad and all the girl babies look like the mom. “Genetics.”

Controversial yet objectively factual opinion: Anthony Edwards is hotter than Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

Who are the enemies in this movie? They never say!

Top Gun

HOW IS ICEMAN THE VILLAIN OF THIS MOVIE???????

Go to therapy! You can be in a men’s group with Snape!

Maverick

Leonardo makes one attempt to get on the board with her, but falls off, so he decides to just die instead.

putting on a dead man’s pants constitutes a binding legal agreement to assume all his debts and obligations.

(As was scribed in the ancient texts: every movie from the ’90s must include equal parts lawyer jokes, hatred for psychiatrists, and your divorced parents getting back together.)

Oh, ugh, and then Tim Allen does his horrible caveman catchphrase thing in the form of a “ho ho ho,” which sucked my soul out of my mouth like a haunted cat.

The Santa Clause, apparently some sort of perverse yuletide virus, has entered its Jiminy Glick phase.

Toxic friends will say, “Call a newspaper maybe,” but it’s Scorpio season, okay? Cut unsupportive snakes from your life, honey!

I feel like in the ’90s people were always answering the phone while they were having sex. I remember watching movies as a kid and thinking, like, three out of four adults were probably secretly having sex when you talked to them on the phone!

The 2003 vibe—culturally, socially, politically, spiritually—was very “energy drink commercial directed by Mark McGrath, and not Mark McGrath in his prime, either.”

The movies were just kind of figuring out how to use computers in 2003, and nobody was just kind of figuring out how to use computers harder than Michael Bay.

Dr. Grant (Sam Neill, incidentally an Instagram MUST-FOLLOW) is digging (OF COURSE) at a fossilized velociraptor skeleton, which is just sort of half-buried in one to two inches of soft sand, like the cap to your sunscreen, or Joey in the opening credits of Friends.

Dr. Grant touches Laura Dern on the buns to establish that their relationship is caliente yet tender.

Then there’s a scene of Newman eating breakfast. Later in the movie, breakfast eats Newman.

Unfortunately, due to the indefatigable vileness of men throughout history, sexual exploitation and abuse of power have pervaded all of our art and media, and everything is tainted and fucked!

Natalie Portman’s character claims to be a human being but is actually a genie that exists entirely within the mind of Zach Braff’s dreaming penis.

Ugh, you live in an old boat in the bottom of a quarry in Newark? How pedestrian. MY junkyard guru lives in an old tampon box in the bottom of a witch’s well in San Antonio.

Man, remember when FLAMES on METAL were really cool? No offense because this is actually a compliment, but the opening credits of Terminator 2 look like the opening credits of Guy’s Grocery Games. A metal skull emerges from the flames. Oh no! It’s the mayor of Flavortown!

Having to think about time travel should be the punishment we give to criminals instead of prison.

Man, can you imagine if you sacrificed your life and legacy to save humanity, and then just twenty-five years later, they elected motherfucking Donald Trump to be the president?

They don’t actually give a shit about what you think—YOU’RE A TWENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD UNEMPLOYED POET—they’re just being nice. They have mortgages.

Man, there’s nothing America loves more than a really pretty woman who kind of tries.

If these weren’t attractive white people, they’d definitely have to explain how a couple of jerks who hate jobs got a free house at the end.

Twilight took me out of my body in a way that did not give me pleasure but did give me fascination, and when it was over, I couldn’t believe it, but I felt compelled to watch the next one just to continue the satisfying, itchy glitch of it all.

You might want to lie down for this, in a grave, and never get up again: the Cullens can only play baseball when there’s a thunderstorm going on because they hit the ball so loud. I can’t.

It was around the Speed era, I think, when people used to constantly make fun of Keanu Reeves for being a “bad actor.” Are you kidding me with that? I love Keanu Reeves! I love him. He is a really good actor, you fucks. Did you ever think that maybe you’re a bad actor??

Jeff Daniels is one of those guys that seems fat, but then he’s not.