TOTAL RECALL (Paul Verhoeven, 1990): Welcome to week two of our Paul Verhoeven retrospective. I don't have the same powerful affection for Total Recall as I do for Robocop or for next week's Verhoeven Guy Movie, but it's still a smart, well-made, very entertaining piece of work.

For some reason, though, the first time I saw it, my reaction was kind of . . . blah. On subsequent viewings, I've come to appreciate the sense of humor, and the complex, multilayered plotting. But that's typical of Verhoeven. His films are so rich in detail, you can watch one for the fifth time and still catch something you never noticed before.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Quaid, an ordinary working man of the year 2084 who is obsessed with taking a trip to Mars, which is now a dingy mining colony. His beautiful blonde wife, played by the beautiful blonde Sharon Stone, is deeply opposed to visiting that God-forsaken planet, so finally Quaid signs up with Rekall, a company that, for a fee, will implant memories of a wonderful vacation into your brain.

Quaid, for whatever reason, opts for a sort of spy-thriller vacation, and sure enough, he is soon convinced that he is a secret operative whose memory has been blanked. He finds a some stuff left by his former self which helps him infiltrate Mars, hook up with the old girlfriend of whom he has no memory, and try to rescue the planet's mutant population from Cohaagen, an evil industry baron played by RoboCop's Ronny Cox.

So is Quaid Quaid or someone else? Is this whole adventure happening, or is it simply a horrible malfunction of Rekall's memory implant? The film never lets you know for sure, and it's plenty easy to argue either way. But what the hell--Quaid's adventure is our adventure, and it's a fun ride, with three breasted mutants, sassy robotic cab drivers, bloody shootouts galore, and not one, but two sexy females who kick serious ass. This is the movie that gave Sharon Stone her first really juicy role before she flashed her snatch in Verhoeven's Basic Instinct.

The special effects of the movie were cutting edge at the time, but because they just predated the age of digital, they already look pretty dated today. Still, the movie's got a wacky sense of humor, Arnold gets to shoot lots of baddies, and . . . did I mention the chick with the three breasts?

A sci-fi treat.