one time there were two magician movies

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.

Hmm, the academy stopped liking Kubrick after Barry Lyndon, and FMJ only got one nod, for Screenplay, so I dunno if I would count it as "Oscar bothering." Also, while FMJ is the only one out of the three of those that I've seen (never saw HH) that I actually like, any trend that can swing as wildly from FMJ to GMV has something more going on in it than the usual spikes in the popularity of disaster flicks.

yeah i mean, kinda not very surprising that there would be movies about vietnam being made in the 1980s!

they were probably attempting to bother the oscars I should have said, fuck 'em anyway cos Barry Lyndon is a great movie.

World Trade Center (2006)
United 93 (2006)

there was a Flight 93 in 2006 too!

let's roll (the cameras!)

Went The Day Well (1942)
Saboteur (1942)

oops forgot the question mark

Deep Star Six (1989)
Leviathan (1989)

Oh, man:

Terminal Velocity (1994)
Drop Zone (1994)

Competing skydiving thrillers!

Without Limits (1998)
Prefontaine (1997)

(Both pretty good, actually)

Mission to Mars(2000)
Red Planet (2000)

touching the void was alas a full 3 years after vertical limit xp

In The Last Starfighter (July 84), a humanoid space-fighter pilot teams up with a vaguely reptilian alien; through adversity they become close friends.

In Enemy Mine (Dec. 85), a humanoid space-fighter pilot teams up with a vaguely reptilian alien; through adversity they become close friends.

too much distance and it basically ends up being casablanca --> to have and have not, the latter film clearly riffing on the former, maybe improving massively on it etc

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iSjnlF6CQBc/Tk67Fu8mpAI/AAAAAAAAENo/pVW7VEdIuXA/s1600/liz%2Bman2.jpg xp

BTW To Have and Have Not is a fun movie. Was you ever but by a dead bee? Put your lips together etc.

Two biopics called Harlow in '65

also two biopics about isadora duncan in the space of about a year from ken russell & karel reisz.

In 2003, Ned Kelly, a $30 million budget movie about Kelly's life was released. Directed by Gregor Jordan, and written by John M. McDonagh (brother of Martin McDonagh), it starred Heath Ledger as Kelly, along with Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, and Naomi Watts. Based on Robert Drewe's book Our Sunshine, the film covers the period from Kelly's arrest for horse theft as a teenager to the gang's armour-clad battle at Glenrowan. It attempts to portray the events from the perspectives of both Kelly and of the authorities responsible for his capture and prosecution and throws in a romance between Kelly and an married upper-class Australian woman. It was not a success; one review dismissed it as fiction.

That same year (2003) a low budget satire movie called Ned was released. Written, directed and starring Abe Forsythe, it depicted the Kelly gang wearing fake beards and tin buckets on their heads.

Was there two westerns with all/mainly female protagonists in the mid/late 90s

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Bad Girls? (I don't think the former is actually a 'western' but might fit?)

Sharon stone?

I need to take the time to research this is lazy stuff from me

Your talking about The Quick and The Deadly

Ya!

Really a single female protagonist, that one

Nah that was Bridget Fonda and Jennifer jason leigh

lol that is almost a candidate for this thread but it's more part of a micro-trend