If you would quit playing with yourself long enough to pay attention to the important things in life, you would certainly notice that there are lots of stupid movies with punchy two-word titles: Get Carter, Deadly Friend, Extreme Prejudice, Red Heat, Blood Feast, Hard Target...

I knew you would bring up Gosford Park and Schindler's List. Look, I'm not saying that all movies with two-word titles are bad. I'm just pointing out that a suspiciously large proportion of bad action-adventure and cheesy horror movies end up with easily digestible two-word titles. Convincing evidence can be found in the form of Jean-Claude Van Damme's filmography; this legendary bad actor has appeared in 31 movies, of which 14 -- almost half! -- have titles with more than one but less than three words.

If you want to have some fun with this concept, you can play an exciting, action-packed game I invented. Here are the rules: Make a list of ten imaginary two-word movie titles that seem like actual movie titles, but that you don't know to be movie titles. Make a list of twelve, if you like. Heck, make a list of fifteen or twenty. It's not like you were going to spend the time working on a cure for cancer or anything.

When you're done with your list, go to the Internet Movie Database and type your imaginary titles into the search window. If one of your titles turns out to be an actual movie, you score a point. Or maybe two points. Whatever.

Here's the list I made. The hyperlinks are titles that turned out to be real.

Power Play
Blood Zone
Black Rain
Stopped Clock
Hard Enough
Power Trip
Shattered Dreams
Zero Tolerance
Broken Promises
Bad Attitude
Hot Date
Easy Money
Death Wish
Ipso Facto
Pandora's Box
Fibonacci Sequence
Empty Cradle
Deep Trouble
Razor's Edge
I, Kilgore
Deadly Stranger

Of the 21 completely made-up two-word movie titles I wrote down, 13 turned out to be real actual movies. Do you realize what this says about the fragile condition of the art of filmmaking today? I don't either. All I know is that I apparently have another amazing talent that will never, ever help me to get laid.

+posted by Lawrence @ 9/09/2003 11:47:00 PM