Ghost

Ok, call me a cynic, but the inefficiency of this movie made me crazy. It's like two and a half hours long and it could easily be cut down to, oh, 45 minutes if people weren't so fucking stupid. Once Swayze figures out that he can move physical objects (which he should have done right after his first train ride! hello?!?), there's really no need for all these ridiculous plot machinations. He could easily handle things on his own. But hey, it's a good thing he doesn't, because honestly, Whoopi Goldberg is hands-down the best thing about the movie. She is fantastic.

Also, it ought to be said, the sex scene is hot. The giant clay phallus is hilariously ridiculous, and yes one can't help but notice that the clay magically disappears from their glistening slender bodies, but goddamn. They just don't make sex scenes that are so beautifully intimate like that anymore. There's a fascinating kind of individuality to it, it's sort of hard to explain.

And then there's the oh-so-kinky Moore/Goldberg/Swayze scene. Hats off to a movie that manages to combine necrophilia with interracial lesbian love. How taboo! Too bad they weren't braver about it.

The special effects on the other hand, oh man. Maybe they were mind-blowing at the time, but now they're delightfully kitschy. As is the whole movie, really. It's definitely aged, not least because you can't really watch both Swayze and Moore in a movie without thinking of them as Swayze and Moore and making Nobody puts GI Jane the Striptease Wonder in a corner! I kind of wanted John McClane to burst in, guns blazing, with Ashton hot on his heels yelling PUNK'D! And the hair, good lord, it's wonderful. This incidentally, serves only to reinforce a point a friend of mine the other day, that much of what we think of as 80s fashion is really from the early 90s. But as stated above, the movie has so many extended scenes that serve no ostensible purpose. I couldn't help but wonder if the whole scene in the crowded elevator when Swayze and Tony Goldwyn pretend to have highly contagious diseases just to freak people out wasn't an unconscious reference to cultural anxieties about the spread of AIDS.

All in all, a perfect late-night tv movie.