Two-fer

Years that end in "2" are every now and again the home of some good movies. Ten years ago, New Line Cinema's release of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers reassured Tolkien fans that their beloved trilogy would indeed hit the screen more or less intact. Ralph Bakshi's shenanigans twenty years prior had burned them once. Spider-Man was Sam Raimi's well-done first-take on Peter Parker. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a crowd-pleasing indie hit (On the other hand, there were also the awful Die Another Day and Star Trek: Nemesis, as well as George Lucas's continuing degradation of the good will Star Wars had earned him, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).

But 1992 was a lot more lightweight even if it had some great fun trips to the theater like Aladdin and Wayne's World.

Thirty years ago, though, moviegoers were treated to high-class fare like Diner, Blade Runner, My Favorite Year, The Verdict, The Year of Living Dangerously and Koyaanisqatsi. Or they could take in well-done box-office champs like Tootsie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Rocky III, Poltergeist, An Officer and a Gentleman, 48 Hours, Annie or Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Or movies that were both, like E.T. and Gandhi.

The year 1972 would be a movie banner year if only for the fact that the first Godfather movie came out then, but if you tuck some things like Jeremiah Johnson and Lady Sings the Blues around it, you've got an even better showing. Skip back another 10, and 1962 gave us Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Dr. No, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and The Longest Day.

1952 keeps the ball rolling with High Noon, Monkey Business, Ivanhoe and Singin' in the Rain, among others. And 1942 welcomed Casablanca. Nuff said. In 1932, in addition to movies like the original Scarface and Grand Hotel, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Shirley Temple all started their movie careers. One of the first screen versions of the bandit who robbed from the rich to give to the poor debuted in 1922 with Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood. It cost a million dollars to make -- about $13 million in today's money -- and was the first movie to have a genuine Hollywood premiere.

What seems interesting about this list is that many if not most of these movies were either crtically lauded or at least commended for competence as well as becoming movies that top out at the box office or had staying power. Of course, similar lists could probably be compiled using most years, with some decades excelling and others "meh"-ing. So it's probably just an interesting coincidence, and I'll leave you with the roast beef sandwich scene from Diner. Other than Kevin Bacon's F-bomb a little way in, there is no free-range vocabulary to avoid: