one time there were two magician movies

I remember one called The Car, I think that was similar.

scratch that, it was '77

Well, as my memory is so bad it could be what I was thinking of, though having looked it up on wikipedia I don't think it was that as I'm pretty sure I'd remember the detail of it being some sort of demonic car that couldn't enter consecrated ground.

Goodfellas and My Blue Heaven both from 1990 and both based on the life of Henry Hill

according to wiki While Goodfellas was based upon the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, the screenplay for My Blue Heaven was written by Pileggi's wife, Nora Ephron, and much of the research for both works was done in the same sessions with Hill.

Ephron also wrote the script for Cookie which was another mobster comedy from 1989 idk if that was another mini-trend

late 90s mini disaster movie trend is pretty much there, with roland emmerich as the critical irwin allen figure without whom there's no trend at all: independence day, day after tomorrow, i guess godzilla, and then the late hangover of 2012. rewatched twister a few years ago and man that hasn't dated well at all - effects lookin' real shabby but also almost all the dialogue is bill paxton repeating himself: "we've got to go! (pause) we've got to go now!" etc. also a truly thankless role for jami gertz as the citified new fiancee who somehow doesn't know anything about or understand bill paxton's driving life passion of chasing tornadoes with his folksy ragtag bunch including philip seymour hoffman and an extremely doomed quirky den-mother character. basically paxton seems like an asshole. screenplay was by crichton which makes me wonder if jurassic park might be understood as something like a disaster movie.

elaction (1999) was a fillum about a female secondary character that has a scene where she swings on a swing set to represent the tension between lost youth /coming of age dynamics and i swear there was another contemporary joint that utilized the same device so they're the same movie but i can't remember what the other one was just now, but i randomly watched them in succession so it counts

The Ice Storm?

Ha I have this whole thing in my head about twister and jurassic park that I'm not good at expressing but the tornado is the T. rex

Mostly sonically cause the cry of the tyrannosaur in Jurassic park has this metal-on-metal squeal that you hear a lot in twister

i mean it's definitely as much a post-JP greenlight as congo.

mix of "audiences go for this kind of thrill ride" and "we have the technology now!" thinking.

(Twister is a bad film obv, yeah)

Twister is no good, but it was less painful than its contemporary Independence Day.

Which reminds me, '96 also saw two "John Travolta is magic" movies.

Kind of love independence day

How bad was Summer '96 for movies? I actually remember enjoying The Rock.

man, a phenomenon / michael double feature might be the least appealing billing of any of the pairs mentioned on this thread so far. tbh i've never seen either one but i remember both just radiating "touching" in a really depressing way.

independence day is super problematic but super watchable. certainly way more memorable scenes, characters, visuals, jokes than any of the other 90s disaster films.

I remember lots of people pointing out at the time that Mars Attacks! and Independence Day have very similar plots/concepts

Even back when I was the audience for most of the big releases (I was 17-turning-18 in '96), I still knew well enough to avoid that Travolta twofer.

Nathan Rabin is braver than I.

Dissuading details from Wikipedia: Contrary to popular depictions of angels, Michael is portrayed as a boozing, smoking slob – yet capable of imparting unexpected wisdom.[1]

Xxxp Jokes is the main one imo, it's the only one where emmerich's strict adherence to "in every ____ ever" formula lands, because the actors sell the types

Also remember outside of the states the July 4th stuff plays as comedy, 100%

it plays as comedy to me too! i mean i am definitely not putting it forth as a movie that'll really stir your heart and make you proud to be an american or whatever. but man is it fun watching will smith and company flying jet fighters at UFOs, or bill pullman in the creepy area 51 basement with the slimy tentacle alien and brent spiner.

michael rogin's BFI book on the film is a good read too btw.

Would read

Also remember outside of the states the July 4th stuff plays as comedy, 100%

This reminds me of something I've been thinking about for a while. All the foreign films that make it to the US and get reviewed by the mainstream press seem to be of the "good for you" variety - earnest dramas about prejudice and sorrow, heartfelt tales of the human condition, blah blah blah. But I'm convinced other countries produce just as many dumbshit popcorn movies as America, proportionally - I just never hear about them. So in other countries' big dumb action movies, is there the same amount of hyperbolic nationalism and flag-waving? Is there a French equivalent to Michael Bay? And without totally hijacking this thread, what are the stupidest, most crowd-pleasingly boneheaded foreign movies folks can think of that I might want/need to see?

Feel like American chauvinism expressed via Hollywood is a fairly distinct phenomenon with few analogues? But as regards dumbshit patriotic films we could be here all day

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysbbPStfWw

There was also a Sylvester Stallone disaster movie in 1996 or 1997 where people got caught in a car tunnel, I remember seeing that one at the cinema.

Daylight!

That came just after cliffhanger - in both he plays a character haunted by flashbacks of a disaster he failed to prevent

Oh yeah, Daylight, that was from 1996 too.

It seems weird that several neo-disaster movies came out in 1996 already: Daylight, Tornado!, Independence Day, Twister... Considering the production time for your regular feature, it seems like there should be some ur-example that inspired this fad? Maybe it was indeed Jurassic Park? Or Speed? Or maybe they were all already anticipating Titanic, which must've been in the works for quite some time?

xp and that disaster was called "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!"

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT

xpost
Was the success of Titanic always a foregone conclusion, though? I mean, the odds were in its favour--Cameron had been having a monster 90s (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think The Abyss was his only major film that underperformed according to expectations), but it was still a wildly expensive production featuring two non-superstar leads. Hard to imagine now, of course, but I think there was always the potential for it to flop.

Everyone thought it would flop iirc.

Including me (and my parents), when we saw it during its like first or second week. Like people in the theatre (a suburban multiplex, not at all some hipster enclave) were laughing at the dialogue, Billy Zane's acting, etc.

Dark city, matrix, existenz, gattica

Yeah famously it had been building up a follywood rep before its release xxp

there were 2 near-simultaneous Hitchcock biopics a couple of years ago

seem to recall 2 Truman Capote biopics a couple of years before that?

Yep

Despicable me and megamind

megamind wasn't about truman capote

black hawk down / behind enemy lines (both 2001)

Braveheart (1995)
Rob Roy (1995)

dont tell me there's some comic book guy called the Magician

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_large/0/3125/1197318-fb19.jpg

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/e/e5/Zatara_001.jpg

The Double (2013, adapted from Dostoevsky's The Double)
Enemy (2013, adapted from Saramago's The Double)

Both deal with doppelgängers and identity.

Nice! That's a perennial of course. Does anyone remember double take, the film about Hitchcock, Borges and doubles? Written by Tom McCarthy!

The Football Factory (2004)
Green Street (2005)

Followed by hundreds of terrible football hooligan films available at tesco

you can find some of those films if you scroll right to the very very bottom of netflix's british films list

i have never watched one but it strikes me as the sort of thing one might do in pursuit of the fake real

Platoon (1986)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
Hamburger Hill (1987)

There are shitloads more from the 80's Nam boom, but these were the Oscar bothering type ones that ran concurrently.