Before watching the movie:
I’m sure I’ve seen Eddie Murphy in an action movie, but I can’t remember one. Unless Harlem Nights counts as action, and I wouldn’t. So as far as I can recall, this is the first time I’ll really see Eddie Murphy doing “action hero”. It doesn’t seem like a good fit, but I know there were at least two sequels. I could see him doing a straight-up parody, but that’s not what comes to mind here.
Before watching the movie:
What interested me in this movie was James Coburn. I think it was automatically recommended to me when I selected Bank Shot. I’m curious as to how a movie about building a pickpocketing ring can build tension, aside from the inner tension when the group doesn’t want to work together anymore.
From this poster, it looks more exploitative than I expected. But then, it was the early 70s, and I mainly know James Coburn from Our Man Flint and its sequel, a pair of somewhat exploitative James Bond spoofs.
Before watching the movie:
I’m fairly sure this is the movie I recall coming out at a time when I was too young to be interested in it, but I thought that it was a few years earlier, like 1997 or 98. Still, I definitely remember the title, nothing with that title came out in the 90s, and the summary is about what I remember.
I was surprised by the star-studded cast. Most of them are people I wouldn’t have heard of in 2001, but I know now are big names. I’m not sure if I knew any of them other than Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding Jr. at the time. I guess I knew of John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson, but I didn’t know they were in this movie.
I also just found out this is vaguely based on It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, which make sense, because it reminds me of “The Amazing Race” and that movie. Hopefully, it will have better pacing than “Mad World”, which dragged a bit at times from having to support so many characters and generally being long enough to be the only nonmusical film I know of with an intermission.
Before watching the movie:
The easy things to pick up about this movie are that it stars the Beatles, it’s their first film, and they sing some songs in it, probably including “A Hard Day’s Night”. What I have a somewhat harder time figuring out is what sort of plot is involved. I would have thought that, almost forty years later, people would have more to say about what the movie is about than “it’s the Beatles’ first feature film!” I have the vague impression that this is just about what their lives are like, perhaps in early mockumentary style.
The last time I watched a Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine, I was rather disappointed. I expected it to be light on plot and heavy on songs, but I didn’t expect the latter to the degree it was. It sounds terrible to say, but I hope that since this movie isn’t animated, they spend less time being imaginative and more time telling a story.
Before watching the movie:
I first heard of this movie when I saw pieces of it on TV. Not enough to get more idea of what it was than a trailer could have told me, but Kelsey Grammer caught my attention. It’s been years, so I’ve forgotten much more than “Kelsey Grammer, submarine, ragtag misfits, wargame”, but this finally rose to the top of my list.
On the other hand, that limits what I can say about my expectations. It’s clearly an underdog submarine comedy, and I’m not sure what else I can expect. What little I’ve heard about it otherwise suggests it’s not very good, but I’d hardly call it infamous.
Before watching the movie:
The main thing I can think of to describe my impression of this movie is… normal. Adam Sandler in the 90s playing a hockey player turned golfer sounds pretty normal next to Adam Sandler as a failure of a demon or Adam Sandler as a rich manchild going through elementary school, or even, to go later, Adam Sandler as an Israeli superspy turned fabulous hairdresser. I think he might actually be a fairly normal human being in this movie. I know he’s more serious now, but he did complete oddball roles back when he was “you know, that weirdo from SNL”.
I seem to recall the reason he gets into golf is the idea of hockey players having good golf drives, which reminds me of Jamaican sprinters being good bobsledders. I wonder if there are many other movies built on sports having overlapping skillsets. When I was young, I got his powerful drive confused with the kid with the superhumanly tensioned arm from Rookie of the Year.
Before watching the movie:
I’ve gotten the idea that this movie is kind of horror-drama about a stalker. Glenn Close’s character is obsessed with Michael Douglas and ruining his life in the name of “love”. The greatest insight I’ve seen into it is an episode of Family Matters where a character sees that Steve Urkel’s girlfriend’s bedroom is wallpapered with pictures of Steve and comments “You should rent Fatal Attraction. It’s about you.”
My description makes it sound more like Misery, but that’s all about a fan keeping an author captive, while I don’t think there’s captivity here, except maybe using the man’s family as hostages or something. This might have an element of action, which Misery wouldn’t.
Before watching the movie:
So this is about a modern aircraft carrier dropped in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor. It appeals to me because I’m interested to see how modern military mixes with time travel, how they handle the realization, and how they get home. I don’t think I’ve seen accidental time travel done with large groups that didn’t use space-warping transportation daily and have practical “should you find yourself in the wrong time” procedures.
Before watching the movie:
If AFI hasn’t done a countdown of iconic movie images yet, it’s probably on their to-do list. The one thing anybody remembers about this movie is probably in the top five, if not the number one.
What’s this film actually about, if not Marylin Monroe’s antigravity dress? I recall vaguely from a few synopses something about a man who’s bored with his marriage and strongly tempted by Monroe’s character. At least this poster has him standing nearby with his attention diverted by her, even if he’s not the focus.
I’m still trying to figure out how to describe Billy Wilder. So far all I’ve come up with is “gets it right.”
Before watching the movie:
I’m trying not to think of this movie as The Barefoot Executive meets Short Circuit with a bit of War Games. Although a military experiment is trying to escape from the military, not every story about chimps with uncanny abilities and a young friend is going to be the farce “Executive” was. This is listed as a drama. So I think I know much more about this movie than I really do.
I wish I’d found this one before the more recent Project X of no relation came out. I similarly know everything and nothing about that one too, but I’m pretty sure they intended it that way.
Yesterday's Movies 