This weekend, I saw my best friend from grade school again. I miss her a lot. Her daughter has just gotten to the age we were when we spent the most time together—she’s twelve. It’s a fun age. I’ve been thinking about what we used to do and watch and listen to at that age, and that meant it felt like time to finally get around to Charlie Sheen. Junie and I used to have the Great Charlie Versus Emilio Debate that captivated so many women our age when we were young. She was always an Emilio fan, and I always preferred Charlie.

I have known that my premise going in was that, if Charlie had died years ago, possibly in the late ’90s, we’d remember him as a fine, talented, versatile actor. It’s too easy to remember Foodfight and winning and the slow descent into the depths of his illness—Sheen denies being bipolar, but apparently he’s a Scientologist, so is that a surprise? However, if his last film had been, say, Being John Malkovich, we’d have Platoon and Major League and Eight Men Out. I’ll even defend his work in Young Guns and Hot Shots!

I won’t defend his personal life; it’s a mess. He’s a Truther and an anti-vaxxer, the latter a stance that I find literally unforgivable—as did his now ex-wife Denise Richards, apparently, as she cites it as one of the causes of the breakup of their marriage. (She vaccinated the kids anyway.) It is perhaps ironic that he was not yet an addict when he played the drug addict character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; he achieved the look by staying up for two days. But it’s quite clear that he’s had addiction problems about since Junie and I were debating about him in seventh grade; whether that’s connected with his abusive behaviour toward the women in his life, I cannot say.

So yeah, Charlie Sheen is a mess. At least part of why I wanted to write about him for this column is, yes, nostalgia. It’s true. On the other hand, I also do legitimately believe he has been a good actor. I haven’t seen anything new of his in years; I think, yes, Being John Malkovich is the last one. But let’s talk for a minute about some of his older work, some of the movies of his that I own and watch.

Yes, Young Guns is pure nostalgia for me, with a little bit also of “my, that cast is pretty.” And the amusement that it is, in the movie, Charlie who is the voice of reason against Emilio’s Billy the Kid. I won’t deny that. However, Major League, minus some uncomfortable sexual politics, is a fine movie. I don’t like baseball, and I have tried to watch it every summer for years. Sometimes, I’ll watch it just because. In that and in Hot Shots!, Sheen showed a comedic timing that many people making money at comedy today could stand to emulate. And he’s funny in different ways in the movies, too. I would even say that Hot Shots! achieves the challenging Good Parody genre. Certainly Sheen’s Topper Harley doesn’t know he’s funny!

Eight Men Out is a serious baseball movie, an examination of the infamous Black Sox scandal. Sheen played Oscar “Happy” Felsch, one of the players who threw the series. The movie has an ensemble cast, and Sheen isn’t its strongest element—but the movie has such an impressive cast that it would take serious doing to be its strongest element. How do you steal a movie from David Strathairn? Still, Sheen gives a solid performance here. As he did in Platoon, a movie I’ll admit I do not own and do not wish to own. And Sheen’s weaknesses would be more on display there than in Eight Men Out, where he can rely on John Cusack and Christopher Lloyd and so forth to cover for him.

And, okay, I have a crazy weakness for the 1993 The Three Musketeers, the movie I saw on my first date. That’s okay. I’m allowed my nostalgia. It wasn’t enough to get me to watch Two and a Half Men.