5 Best 'TNT Movies'

"The Judge" opens this Friday. I have heard mixed reactions. Some have been filled with vitriol, some have been mixed, some have been blah, a couple have been positive. Unfortunately it will take me at least a couple years to weigh in with a reaction of my own, specifically because "The Judge" appears to be the epitome of a TNT Movie.

I'm not talking about original movies made by TNT. No, I'm talking about theatrical films that have left the theater, been released on DVD, had their bow on HBO or Starz or whatever, and now found their Sun City-ish retirement home on cable TV.

A TNT Movie is not only shown on Turner Network Television. A TNT movie can, in actuality, be seen on TBS, USA, BRAVO, SPIKE, so on, so forth. You may have seen a particular TNT Movie, you may have not, but crucially you never watch a TNT Movie from start to finish. You jump in, you jump out, you flip over during commericals of the Olympics (well, I do). You watch ten minutes one Saturday afternoon, you watch twelve minutes one Wednesday night, a little here, a little there. A TNT Movie is not meant to be experienced, it is meant to be a casually amusing distraction from something else. The TNT Movie, as the digital age advances with sheer abandon, will one day, rather soon, be extinct, and so we must pay it homage.

5 Best 'TNT Movies'  

5. Ocean's Eleven

This is, frankly, almost too high in, shall we say, quality to make the list. Yet, it is a TNT Movie because you can so swiftly and pleasingly fall into its classically transitory elements.

 4. National Treasure

As a whole, I didn't much care for "National Treasure" turning history into a game of cloak and dagger. Yet, I confess, there is something semi-magical about Nicolas Cage's wide-eyed innocence and total belief in cockamamie cartography that comes through so much better in three to four minutes at a time.

3. Cocktail

Coughlin's Law: Anything Is Better Than "Cocktail" On TNT Except For Everything On An Absurdly Lazy Saturday Afternoon.

2. Runaway Jury

As a Movie, it is ephemeral. As a TNT Movie, it is quintessential. It is stacked to the rafters with quality actors, all of whom may not be, shall we say, Day-Lewis-ing but who are nonetheless phoning it in with professional pizazz. It is, to paraphrase Gene Hackman's character himself, the (almost) ultimate movie to sit in your Barcalounger and let wash over you for two minutes between the sixth and seventh innings.

1. A Few Good Men

You know that archaic saying "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere"? We here at Cinema Romantico prefer "'A Few Good Men' Is On TV Somewhere." This is the Washington and Lincoln of TNT Movies. To prove it, I will simply advise that I have never, in fact, seen "A Few Good Men" from beginning to end but that I have seen all of "A Few Good Men." And I have seen it all because I have, over the years, bit by bit, watched the entire film in increments on TNT.