On Movies & Movie Collecting: ‘Catch Me if You Can’ Turns 20 this Year (and Other ‘Tempus Fugit’ Musings)

Hello, there, Dear Reader. It is late morning in Lithia, Florida, on Monday, June 13, 2022. It is a hot, humid, and cloudy early summer day in the Tampa Bay area. Today’s forecast is typical for our wet season; the current temperature is 84°F (29°C) under mostly sunny skies. With humidity at 84% and the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 4 MPH (6 KM/H), the heat index is 92°F (33°C). Today’s forecast calls for a mix of sun and light rain in the afternoon. The high will be 92°F (33°C). Tonight, skies will be partly cloudy, and the low will be 75°F (24°C).

Last night I watched Steven Spielberg’s comedy-drama Catch Me if You Can, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank W. Abagnale, Jr. and Tom Hanks as FBI agent Carl Hanratty in a delightful “inspired by a true story” chase movie in which Hanratty pursues the teenaged check forger and con man Abagnale across the U.S. and Europe in the Jet Age 1960s. Before Hanratty finally apprehends Abagnale, the clever and charming grifter manages to impersonate a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a Louisiana assistant state prosecutor – all before his 20^th birthday.

I’m a Spielberg fan, and even though Catch Me if You Can is not a movie that I revisit as much as, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is one of the lighter, more comedic, and fun-to-watch offerings, especially in years when “America’s filmmaker” releases a more serious, darker movie. (In 2002, for instance, that darker film was Minority Report.)

Of course, since 2022 happens to mark the 50^th anniversary of many momentous events in my life, including my life-changing stroke, my close encounter of the worst kind with a Doberman pinscher, first bouts of young love, my first kiss, my first experiences as a student in a U.S. public school, and our move to our penultimate house in Miami, my mind sometimes wandered while I watched Catch Me if You Can.

At one point or another during the 141-minute movie – which, coincidentally, was released on Christmas Day 2002 – I thought, Holy shit! This movie is going to be 20 fucking years old in six months!

As you know, I have a movie collection that includes titles from as long ago as 1938 (The Adventures of Robin Hood, which was released when my father was 17 years old and newly returned to Colombia after living in Paris for almost a decade and my mom was still nine years old and living in Bogota) and as recent as 2021 (West Side Story and Zack Snyder’s Justice League). That means that many of the movies that I have on DVD – the oldest format that I still have – and Blu-ray (2K HD and 4K UHD) were released in years that end with the number “two” and are therefore “anniversary-worthy” in 2022.

According to My Collection page in my Blu-ray.com page, the oldest film that qualifies for the nth Anniversary category based on the year 2022 is Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, which was made in 1942 and released (for Academy Awards consideration) on November 26, 1942. That means it’s going to be 80 around Thanksgiving 2022!

As far as 10^th-anniversary-worthy titles, if we exclude TV seasons that I have in my DVD & Blu-ray collection, I don’t have too many films that were released in 2012. Per my Blu-ray.com database, I only have:

• The Dark Knight
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• Zero Dark Thirty

From the 20^th Anniversary category:

• Unfaithful
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
• The Sum of All Fears
• Catch Me if You Can

From the “30 Years On” category:

• Bram Stoker’s Dracula
• Patriot Games
• Far and Away
• My Cousin Vinny
• Unforgiven

In the “Wow, 40 Years Have Passed!” category, we have:

• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
• The Thing
• Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
• Creepshow

Poor 1972 got the shaft, at least as far as my collection of movies related to that year goes:

• The Cowboys
• The Godfather

The 60-year mark was sadly underrepresented since I don’t have many 1960s films in my video library:

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Longest Day

I don’t have any 1952 films on Blu-ray, so we can forget about 70^th Anniversary stuff and move on to the 80^th Anniversary, which is represented by 1942’s Casablanca.

Time, Dear Reader, indeed flies!