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A few others that hold a special place in my heart are as follows. The 2002 literary adaptation White Oleander has one of the longest summaries still for a film that snuck by with a PG-13. It contains "mature thematic elements concerning dysfunctional relationships, drug content, language, sexuality and violence." Jackass was accorded an R for "dangerous, sometimes extremely crude stunts, language and nudity" while in a variation on that, Jackass Number Two was noted as having "extremely crude and dangerous stunts throughout" among other things. Obviously, the MPAA was spinning their wheels and avoided thinking outside the box for something new to say. I would like to end with a little shout-out to The Powerpuff Girls Movie that earned its PG for "non-stop frenetic animated action." My Grade 11/12 AP English teacher would be proud of the use of a solid vocab word in that concise description.

Twenty-five years ago, the summer of 1984 was a turning point in the ratings system as two different films that Steven Spielberg had a hand in - one as director and another as executive producer/presenter provoked a furor over their being too intense and violent to have been awarded only a PG rating. (Remember, this was the same year that Tipper Gore caught wind of what Prince was up to with "Darling Nikki" and, as a result, formed the Parents Music Resource Center, pushing for warning stickers on albums and other media. Concern was in the air.) Between them, the pair featured ripped out hearts, enslaved children, microwaved gremlins and darkly comic holiday anecdotes involving Santa Claus. I'll circle back around to the second film later. The era of the PG-13 rating would soon be upon us, brought about in part by the second adventure (sort of) of a certain fedora-wearing, thrill-seeking professor/archaeologist.

Confession time — I realized about five seconds into my viewing of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom last weekend that I had, in fact, never seen it before. I understand this may be grounds for my immediate dismissal from Box Office Prophets. Perhaps, though, you may wonder how I could possibly have been so confused in my memory that I only imagined I had already watched it.

Allow me to elaborate. The summer it was released was my first summer as a resident in the tiny town of Camp Sherman, OR (population at the time 350) having moved there the previous fall. The nearest town with movie theaters was Bend, which was a 45-minute drive on a good day. For the rest of the decade, most of my movie-going was in the form of videocassette recordings. But even that doesn't scratch the true surface of why I didn't see Temple of Doom. I could have gotten my parents to drive me. Trips to Bend were frequent for us as we ran a small business and needed supplies and items in bulk that necessitated the journey.

Truth be told, I remember getting burned out - at age 8, mind you - on all the hype and talk and ads before it came out and at some point, I basically said, "Not interested." Gremlins and Ghostbusters were also victims of this childish, for lack of a better word, mentality that summer. I certainly could have rented them at any point in the months that followed, but I didn't. The latter two I eventually caught on TV years later but I was certain I had finally gotten around to Temple of Doom in college, that I had watched a video dub of it in a friend's dorm lounge. I was familiar with the plot from so many years of hearing it discussed and dissected. It felt like I had seen it! My initial reaction is that it is the best of the series.

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