the groundhog day project

In 2000, Fievel Mousekewitz was named an official icon for UNICEF for "promoting worldwide understanding and friendship among children." However much Roger might have dismissed the movie for being too depressing— he wrote, among other complaints, "The movie has such vague ethnic grounds... that only a few children will understand or care that the Mousekewitzes are Jewish. And few of those are likely to be entertained by such a tragic, gloomy story. —the film not only performed well—it was #2 behind Crocodile Dundee its opening weekend and #18 at the box office for all of 1986 (and it didn't come out until November)—but has also endured. A few sequels, a couple video games, a comic book, and some nice retrospective articles years after release. Regarding the latter, for example, Dave Trumbore, who credits An American Tail as the first film he saw in a theater, writes for Collider , 21 November 2016: What I once regarded as a darkly serious and sometimes sil...

The thing about Baby is, she is already is someone who wants to make the world a better place. Maybe despite her parents—it's a little presumptuous to think they aren't all for her plans—she wants to join the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps had only recently begun. The first group of volunteers started training in June 1961. She references monks burning themselves in protest—Thich Quang Duc famously did so June 11 1963. Right before the film starts. And, she "wants to send her leftover pot roast to Southeast Asia" (sort of) and she plans to major in "Economics of Underdeveloped Countries"— (I find it odd that Neil tells her that he is "going to Mississippi with a couple of busboys, freedom ride." With a different tone, it could be a sarcastic response to her Peace Corps plan, like he doesn’t buy that a rich Jewish girl like her would deign to do that. Except, the actor playing Neil doesn’t say it that way. He says it like he means it. His reference ...

I want to say coincidence, but I'm guessing there's something more involved than just chance. But, anyway, weird coincidence that Dirty Dancing came out just a month after Adventures in Babysitting and they both* begin with The Ronettes' "Be My Baby". (* This isn’t true but for whatever reason “Be My Baby” sounded just like “ Then He Kissed Me ” in my head and then even as I realized the mistake I was already writing.) Which at least distracted me momentarily-- trying to see if there was a producer or someone in the music department that worked on both these films --from the voiceover narration that lasts all of three sentences. The worst kind of narration, the useless opener because someone involved, probably the director, couldn't think how to establish place and time succinctly. That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me "Baby" and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatle...

The Presidio begins a little oddly--like the filmmakers didn't know how to do a cold open. Some obligatory San Francisco skyline shots, the Golden Gate Bridge, a military march past a stage (with Sean Connery up there because we need to be reminded he's in this movie like we didn't see the trailer and choose to see this in the theater... Or maybe we didn't watch this one until it was on home video; I can't remember. I know we saw Big Business in the theater and that was this same weekend. Given that we went to the second-run Academy Theater a lot in the late 80s, maybe we saw it there. But, my point is, until it's on cable much later, no one is turning this movie on and not knowing that Connery is in it. So, the film would be better served pulling a cold open with the dark foggy night, the MP coming upon a robbery and getting shot, the car chase, instead of wasting time on) basically a bunch of pointless establishing shots instead of getting to some action...

From the opening slasher moment I mentioned yesterday , Jack's Back cuts to a cheap knockoff of Peter Gabriel's "Red Rain"--and they purportedly wanted "Red Rain" but couldn't get it. And, it's obvious that 1) this movie is taking itself seriously, which will be good later, and 2) this movie is going to feel fairly generic if you've seen enough movies, and will be even more generic if you watch it a few decades later and write about it. And then the movie goes from the knockoff song to jumping to the day of the final copycat murder, which is a waste of a far more interesting plot, but I will get to that below. Roger has a great Line about the plot of this film: All of this sounds contrived. Of course it is contrived. A movie like this is nothing without contrivance, and one of its pleasures is to watch the plot gimmicks as they twist inward upon themselves, revealing one level of surprise after another. Roger may have bought Jack a...

I think I forgot that Dean (Kurt Russell) makes art with chainsaws. That's how we are introduced to his character before he heads off to work on the yacht Immaculata . Later, there's some artistic stuff going on with the miniature gold course, but the artwork there comes from Joanna (Goldie Hawn); he handles the technical aspect and the building. Which his work in Joanna's closet at the start of the film sets up his engineering ability fairly well. His "objects de art" kinda gets lost. Looking back at Overboard with a modern lens, the plot is problematic, but the classist leanings outweigh the sexist leanings to create something more positive than the plot implies. Especially in the hands of director Garry Marshall. Still, even in '87, not everyone cared for the film. Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times , 18 December 1987: Unfortunately, Joanna eventually turns goody-two-shoes herself. All those layers of snobbery peel off to expose a bouncy, bubbly...

An odd note up front: 33 years after I first saw Suspect , and maybe a couple decades since I last saw it, I only just noticed that the murder victim, Elizabeth Rose Quinn, is the woman in the opening scene talking to the Supreme Court Justice who kills himself thereafter. I don't think I ever realized that before--mostly because we barely see her face later but also because the film wants us focused on the guy who kills himself. And my inability to notice--or the film not making a point of drawing my attention to--her face might connect in a way with what I wanted to write about the film today. The film paints an interesting picture of Washington DC. In the early establishing shots of the city, we see traffic, we see homeless, and after we are introduced to Kathleen Riley (Cher) in her car, three young men smash her windshield, yank open her doors, steal her necklace, and make a run for it. The film wants us to see DC as an urban environment with too many people and rampant ...

I remember only a few specifics about Suspect even though I have seen it many times. One of the things I remember is who actually committed the crime, and who plays him, so I am going in with SPOILERS (which I will not share here, now). This was the first time I knew who Liam Neeson was, even though I had seen him previously in Krull and Excalibur , of course (and that's directed by Peter Yates, who also directed Suspect . Also of note, Cher would star in Moonstruck just two months later, but I will be skipping that film in this movie life list because I have already written about it. Still, it's interesting that aside from some passing knowledge of Sonny & Cher, there was a one-two punch here of Cher as defense attorney and then romantic lead [Which given the co-star I forgot--mentioned below--I guess she kinda is here, as well].           By the way, I forgot Dennis Quaid was even in this film. And, since I ended up having very little to ...

It feels like, however much I had things to say regarding the last film on the list ( Stand By Me 1381 1382 1383 1383 1385 1386 ), with each further movie on my "movie life" list, it is much more about commenting from the present than remembering from the past, because for some of them--like today's Crocodile Dundee , for example--they were so briefly what I've been calling fixtures, that their influence is negligible beside something bigger and more attractive to my imagination like Dune or Masters of the Universe or Willow ... Actually, Willow might be on the list. But, I'm not sure, say, Batman is, even though I saw that movie 6 times on the big screen, bought the VHS on the day it came out, listened to both soundtracks constantly, and went retro watching reruns of every episode of the 60s tv show and the '66 film, and when I started reading comics regularly a few years later, the Batman comics were on my pull list for more than a decade. But,...

SpaceCamp is not streaming anywhere, and that is just my first complaint. This movie has been (mostly) forgotten, and yet it was #6 its opening weekend, and was only—and I mean only --beat by Top Gun , Raw Deal , Cobra , Poltergeist II , and Short Circuit . Action movies, horror and sci fi, and this nice wholesome* film holds it own. (* to be fair, Short Circuit is pretty wholesome as well, but not nearly as wholesome as Short Circuit 2 .) The release of the film was delayed, of course, by the Challenger explosion in January, so that didn’t help. Andie suggests—sarcastically—that Kevin is “clean cut, well motivated, all American”, but he seems to be very much that. That Tate Donovan plays the “bad boy” of the film is really weird. He does steal someone else’s team tag soon after his arrival, so I guess he’s absolute evil. The various characters are interesting—ambitious Kathryn, hyperintelligent Tish, troublemaker Kevin, the too young Max, and entrepreneur Rudy. Plus t...

I don't think I even like(d) today's movie, and I am only watching it because it's free on Netflix. I barely remember the beats of the story, but I feel like we must have watched it a lot because one scene in particular I know I saw a lot when I was young. And, I don't mean like certain "adult" scenes might've gotten extra watches from me when no one else was home. I mean, we just must have watched The Money Pit many times. Even though we had a much better Tom Hanks movie-- Splash at hand. So, the movie starts and already I'm like what am I watching. Some old guy marrying the princess from Gymkata and I guess he's Hanks' father or something. Confirmed on the cut to new scene. Hanks and Long voiceover as we focus on mail. This movie is weird. I know they're going to... Buy? Inherit? A house that turns out to be crap. And, I think Shelley Long is going to have an affair with the blonde dancer-looking dude from Die Hard , and I t...

Recent high school graduate who, sure, has flown a fighter jet at least once--we see it in flashback--plans a rescue effort in unnamed Northern African nation along with a few friends and a retired pilot in three days (and that includes executing the mission itself). The plot alone is silly. But, worse--and I almost wish I had time to catalog all of this--it uses the same footage over and over again. Obvious case in point: every single time Doug fires a weapon, there's the same shot of thumb pressing button. And, when it's the machine gun, always the same closeup of it firing: And, then there's everything in act one between Doug's father's capture sequence and Doug and Chappy teaming up. Doug drives like an asshole. Then he fights with Knotcher for also driving like an asshole. And, then they can't fight because--and this is an almost clever infodump scene--Doug can't get in trouble for fighting again. Then, brother shows up with Doug's ...

May 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom comes to theaters with Mola Rom (Amrish Puri) pulling a guy's beating heart out of his chest. Also some guy's getting eaten by alligators, a guy getting crushed by a big stone wheel, the stewed monkey brains, but it's not like we see anyone's face melting. June 1984, Gremlins arrives in theaters with at least one Gremlin getting killed in a blender, one exploding in a microwave overnight, one getting shot at close range in the head, at least one melting/boiling into nothing. These two films are generally credited with the birth of the PG-13 rating. Director Stephen Spielberg helped birth the new rating--he told Vanity Fair in 2008, I had come under criticism, personal criticism, for both Temple of Doom [which he directed] and, you know, Gremlins [which he executive produced], in the same year. I remember calling Jack Valenti [then the president of the Motion Picture Association] and suggesting to him that we need a ra...