The Texas State University Fighting Armadillos just won another championship. Unfortunately, they were also caught cheating on a grand scale. Boosters were giving money to players, the players were using steroids, and just about every violation that could be a violation was found on campus. So the football program has been dismantled. They aren’t allowed any scholarships. The games are blacked out. Boosters aren’t allowed. Players must come from the student body and grades must be maintained. It will be a tough year.

About the only thing they can do is get the best person to run the program, and that’s just what they do. They hire Ed ‘Straight Arrow’ Gennero (Hector Elizondo) as the coach, because he’s widely regarded as not taking anything from anyone.

In fact, he was fired from his last job by the boosters because he wouldn’t allow players to take gifts, so it looks like he’s the perfect man for the job. He brings on his long-time assistant Wally Rig (the great Robert Loggia) to run the defense and they are off and running. At least, if they can put a team together, they are.

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Tom McHugh (Ethan Hawke) has always played second fiddle to his older brother, Craig (Brian McNamara). But recently he’s even had to take a back seat to Napoleon, the family’s prize-winning dog.

At least he’ll catch a break because his mom and dad are taking the dog to a contest out of town, meaning that he’ll be on his own for the weekend, and he can watch the house sitter next door (Teri Polo) in peace. Just after his parents leave the driveway, however, his brother Craig pulls in.

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The story begins in a classy residential building in New York, where Chris Thorne (Chevy Chase) is trying to meet a girl (Demi Moore). As men have a habit of doing, he quickly volunteers to help out – in this case, by driving her the next day on a trip to Atlantic City.

They take a detour on this trip by looking at a mapping device that looks like a GPS of some sort (unlikely what we see today, being that the movie is from 1991) and end up in the remote mining town of Valkenvania, run by the Reev (Dan Aykroyd).

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Before Denzel Washington became a household name he starred in this film about an up-and-coming LA district attorney who is being haunted by a criminal who he put away a number of years before (and who, coincidentally, started his rise up the political ladder).

The criminal, Earl Talbott Blake (John Lithgow), recently escaped from prison, and in a brilliant move, shot one of his escape buddies and burned the body to pass him off as himself, so that he could operate under-the radar. What better than to have people think you are dead?

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Bruce Willis stars in this thriller about a down-on-his-luck private eye who gets a plum assignment guarding an exotic dancer (a young Halle Berry).

Unfortunately, he gets the job from his best friend, which ordinarily wouldn’t be so bad, but he gets the job because his friend is finds out that it’s dangerous, and since he is sleeping with his wife, he wants him out of the picture. Too bad for him he’s too late and gets blown up early on.

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This film is made to bring together a handful of fresh young faces (well, they were fresh at the time), but the story isn’t bad. Though I’m not up on my mob history, the fact that “Lucky” Luciano (Christian Slater) and Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey) reshaped the mafia as it was into the mafia that it became is a pretty interesting one to see.

What’s too bad is that it looks too much like a teeny-bopper movie than a serious flick, so instead of being a competitor to Goodfellas, it’s seen more as a joke. That’s a shame.

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Harrison Ford stars in this movie as title character Henry, a high-powered lawyer, slowed unwittingly during a holdup when he goes in to get some cigarettes. Guess that will teach him not to smoke. In a bit of trivia, anyone know who plays the shooter? In one of the shorter roles in recent memory, it was the always entertaining John Leguizamo. But I digress.

After the shooting, Henry loses his memory, and finds that he is unable to speak, walk, or even recognize his wife or daughter. Only a high-spirited physical therapist (and an unknown love for Ritz crackers) helps Henry back to a semblance of a real life), but he finds quickly that he’s no longer suited for the fast-paced corporate lifestyle.

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This, ahem, classic, stars Christina Applegate as Sue Ellen Crandell, the eldest of the five children Crandell siblings, left at home with a kindly, elderly, babysitter while their mother travels to Australia for an extended trip. Needless to say, they aren’t happy about having someone keep an eye on them.

Luckily (for them), their keeper doesn’t last long, expiring peacefully in a lounge chair one evening. Being the considerate kids that they are, they pack her in the trunk and drop her off at a funeral home – unknowingly including the money that their mom left the sitter to care for them for two months. This means someone (Sue Ellen draws the short straw) needs to get a job to buy the essentials.

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