There comes a point that you have to stop letting Spielberg off the hook with the "last 10 minutes are a dream" excuse and accept that he's just a big softy (cf AI)

I haven't seen AI, but I thought at the time it was all a dream. And I don't see any reason it's not. It's not a justification -- it's an honest interpretation.

Except whenever someone mentions his name, my mind now defaults to the leg-in-woodchipper image with the resulting wiggins.

Some actors just get permanently marked by certain roles.

Michael Madsen's the same way. In Free Willy, I spent the whole movie waiting for his utterly harmless dad character to freak out, cut somebody's ear off, and pour gasoline all over them.

Also, The Final Countdown in which a modern US Navy aircraft carrier gets sent to Hawaii on Dec 6, 1941. But I didn't see that one.

Love. That. Movie.

Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Charles Durning, time-travel, moral dilemmas...what's not to like?

I have to admit one of my favorite time-travel movies is Timecop. The MMBS for "how it works" is annoying and hand-wavy, but I dug the realization in the last fifteen minutes that the entire movie is the second time through the time loop! There's, conceivably, an original timeline we never see where Ron Silver doesn't come back and kill Jean-Claude Van Damme's wife. I thought that was kinda cool.

Back to the Future 2 is great. Couldn't happen, according to its own internal logic, but lots of fun.

12 Monkeys, naturally. Just brilliant.

And, *cough* Millennium with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd. Odd little movie, but fun.

Fair enough. and it might be, it's just I tend to be suspicious, where there's no evidence to suggest it, of the argument that the coda to films is a death dream of some sort.

I'm not so certain it's Michael Madsen's roles that have marked him, so much as his life off-camera.

In Free Willy, I spent the whole movie waiting for his utterly harmless dad character to freak out, cut somebody's ear off, and pour gasoline all over them.

HA!

I can buy the dream-ending interpretation of MR, but it doesn't make the movie any better for me. It just makes the last 40 minutes of the film an even bigger waste of my time than I originally thought.

Also, The Final Countdown in which a modern US Navy aircraft carrier gets sent to Hawaii on Dec 6, 1941.

Oh, and I just remembered.... Not just any aircraft carrier, but the Nimitz, which is used for somewehat comic effect because in 1941, Chester Nimitz was still alive, and Charles Durning's character sort of scoffs at the idea of a carrier named after Nimitz.

Back to the Future 2 is great. Couldn't happen, according to its own internal logic, but lots of fun.

And don't forget about the miscounted Deloreans....

And don't forget about the miscounted Deloreans....

Is Aimee around? Just saying that usually gives her a headache...

And that was more of an issue in III anyway.

?In Free Willy, I spent the whole movie waiting for his utterly harmless dad character to freak out, cut somebody's ear off, and pour gasoline all over them.

This definitely would have made for a better movie.

where there's no evidence to suggest it

Well, that's where we differ. I thought there was evidence. I'm keeping that in the past tense -- I certainly don't remember enough about the movie to go through it.

I think the coda is crap moviemaking. I just don't think it's optimistic crap moviemaking.

Millennium was a bad movie based on a short story I really liked. Sadly, Varley worked on the movie and loved it, so I don't even have that recourse.