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:
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:
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.
Before watching the movie:
Well, we’re out of a stealth theme month. First person to send their guess as to what December’s theme was to me via Astral Projection wins a genuine No-Prize.
Here’s another selection from the “how did you miss that one?” files. As I think I’ve discussed previously, I avoided horror movies for years because I didn’t like being scared, and then when I started catching up on them in my 20s, I found myself at best unaffected, and at worst cringing at the cheese. This one seems to be mostly psychological horror, so it should be better than the classic slashers I saw previously.
Thanks to pop cultural osmosis, I know more about the movie than I’d prefer to be going in with, but that’s usually the case when The Simpsons parodies a movie wholesale.
Before watching the movie:
It’s easy to forget that Tom Hanks is in this movie because he’s overshadowed by two big stories: “Disney creates the Touchstone label to distance its core brand from edgier stuff like Splash“, and “Daryl Hannah is gorgeous”.
I think that before The Little Mermaid, it was a common assumption that mermaids were blonde, but I understand that there was a point when this movie owned the image of what a mermaid looked like to the extent that mermaids were blondes because Madison was a blonde, instead of the other way around.
I expect that 28 years later, this movie will look like a soft PG that you might see on Nickelodeon in the afternoon.
Before watching the movie:
On the one hand, Eddie Murphy is a fish out of water in the part of his career before he decided playing multiple roles was a good substitute for being funny. On the other, I’m a little worried that this might not have much more to say than Trading Places did, only more one-sided and with uncomfortable stereotypes about native Africans the whole way through.
Also, the last time I saw Eddie Murphy, he wasn’t being very funny. But that was more of a personal project for him, and he was unfunny in a meaningful way.
Continue reading
Before watching the movie:
I’ve heard mixed reviews about this movie. Everything from “it was awful” to “it’s not so good”. When Leonard Maltin famously reviews a film with “it stunk. I’m Leonard Maltin”, it gives me pause, but I’m hoping some of the other reviews that lean toward “it’s okay if you’re expecting a dumb comedy” are more accurate. Mismanaged expectations are one of the biggest killers of film reputations.
Also, I tend to rate more favorably than many, or at least I think I do. I’ve recently had opportunity to compare how I rate films on a five-point scale to others, and found that on such a scale, the really good movies tend to get fours unless I was especially wowed by them, which is a higher bar for me than for others. Maybe doing this blog for three years has made me harder to please.
More on-topic, I can’t imagine Jeff Goldblum turning in a bad performance. I guess I don’t really know much about Begley other than this seems to be out of the general type I put him in.
Before watching the movie:
This movie came to my attention from a book of Drew Struzan movie poster art (his design was not used). I was interested by the art deco style of Struzan’s poster and headliners Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor, but I was scared off by the way it seemed to be promoted as a serious film about organized crime. I was relieved to read today when I chose it that it is in fact an action comedy. About organized crime.
Before watching the movie:
Often, one never realizes how little one knows about something until one has to describe it. I know this is a riotously funny movie with John Cleese. Possibly his first big thing after Fawlty Towers. I think I’ve heard something about some character’s fish friends. I did not know until I decided to watch it that it was about three crooks trying to find out where the captured fourth stashed the loot.
I almost called Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline up and comers, but while they’re younger and more current than Cleese and Michael Palin, I think they were actually pretty well established by the late 80s.
Yesterday's Movies 