Last night, Turner Classic Movies ran Robocop proving that it's a classic movie. Move over Citizen Kane.

In the year 2006, I ran my first post on Robocop, lamenting that the movie was then 17 years old. That was 15 years ago. I have to say that Robocop is aging better than I am. All of its themes about the runaway corruption of Capitalism, a government failing to protect its citizens, and the militarization of the police force are all still relevant today. Maybe more so.

And, of course, we still drink Coke.

Dead or alive, you're drinking a Coke!

Sooner or later, someone in Hollywood will remake this movie (again) with a female lead. And there will be a public outcry, because some things — like misogyny — are simply timeless.

P.S. Turner Classic Movies followed Robocop with an airing of Robocop 2, which is not as timeless. (I distinctly remember being very disappointed when I saw it on first release in the theater.) The first movie is a satire of modern society; the second, a parody of the first. You can tell it's an inferior model as soon as you see that the soda company product placement has been changed from Coca-Cola... to Pepsi. Ick.

P.P.S. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be fun to see all the Coca-Cola product placement screenshots I've taken in one place? Yes. Yes, it would be fun. So I made this page. Fun! (I even uploaded shots from both Clueless and Murder by Death I took only last week.)

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Thanks to the Olympics, I barely saw any new movies in February.

18. (555.) The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)
This was just a little caper-slash-romance featuring Joan Crawford, William Powell, and Robert Montgomery.

19. (556.) Runaway Train (1985)
Ugh. I hate it when my action movies try to teach me a lesson about Life. That star Jon Voight landed an Academy Award nomination for this film underscores why I don't care for Oscar.

20. (557.) Lady for a Day (1933)
This was Frank Capra all the way, and I only watched it to torture myself. The movie is about a mendicant woman who puts on a big show to get her daughter married to nobility. Of course, the final curtain falls before the woman has to return to life on the street. Don't dwell on reality, right, Capra?

21. (558.) RoboCop (2014)
You know you've failed when a movie with a plastic model antagonist is more insightful than your film. Like so many modern movies, this film wants to be "realistic" in its treatment of a cyborg police officer. "Realism" all too often is a code word for having no sense of humor. This film's only saving grace is the over-the-top performance by Samuel L. Jackson.

22. (559.) The Gambler (1980)
I suspect that no one ever told Kenny Rogers "no." They should have.

23. (560.) The Paper Chase (1973)
As a child, I remember HBO really promoting the hell out of this movie. It's really not that good. Not quite a coming-of-age story, its year-in-the-life format does little to show us anything deeper about the human condition other than "don't be a robot" and "stop and smell the roses sometime." Emerson it's not.

24. (561.) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
I know now why I avoided this movie so long. I probably should have avoided it longer. I really hate watching movies about bad people doing bad things. I want to see the bad people punished.

25. (562.) The Sunshine Boys (1975)
Man, Walter Matthau was terrific. I understand why I didn't like him as a kid: you need some life experience to see his characters underneath all of their artificial crust.

Eight movies is the lowest in any month since I started tracking in 2012. The second lowest was 10 in August 2012. You remember what happened that month? The Olympics. If there were three more days in February, I might have gotten to 10 this Olympiad, too.

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I get the impression from the commercials that they just remade Robocop so that they could paint him black. At least the remake is rated PG-13. That's good for children everywhere.

True story: I remember that despite my appeals, my parents would not let me go see the R-rated Robocop in theaters when it came out in 1987. I was only 11 at the time, and my parents thought it was too violent for me. (To be fair, it is a terribly violent movie for a mainstream action film.)

Because I couldn't see the movie in theaters, I bought the black and white Marvel comic book adaptation. Assuming it was exactly the same story, I tried to avoid ridicule by bluffing my friends about having seen it. Given that some of my friends had less discriminating parents, my lie was soon discovered, and I was rightfully ridiculed.

Kids today don't know how easy they've got it.

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In the movie Robocop, when post-resurrection Alex Murphy is having a flashback to his previous life in the now-abandoned house, his son is sitting in front of the tv (watching the show T.J. Lazer - thank you, Shatner!) with a bunch of comic books in front of him. Those are Marvel ROM, Spaceknight comic books. Clearly the design for ROM, a toy turned into a comic, was one of many that influenced the Robocop costume. But I think it's odd that a movie that takes place in the future would depict a boy reading comic books that were canceled before the movie was ever released.

It's perhaps a little more odd that the director of Robocop, Paul Verhoeven (also director of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Hollow Man) believed that Robocop was the story of Jesus Christ in the future. Like Jesus, Murphy rose from the dead and saved his people - police, not Christians - from persecution. It should be pointed out that Verhoeven was the director, NOT the writer of Robocop, who got the idea from Blade Runner. I think the fact that Robocop was driven largely by vengeance sort of puts the whole thing outside the realm of comparison. If Paul wanted to make a point, I think he should have made a film where Jesus crawls out of his cave and goes all biblical on the Romans' ass.

As I read back on what I just wrote, I realize that I'm talking about a movie that was released in 1987. That was 19 years ago. It's those sorts of realizations that start to make you feel old. My parents wouldn't let me see Robocop because it was rated R. Yet I was allowed to see Good Morning, Vietnam, even though it was rated R. It's those sorts of realizations that start to make you understand why you're fucked up.

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