General questions about movies, TV and more

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I'm trying to remember a movie I watched in 1987-88 either on TV or VHS where a lead character danced to a song by himself in a bedroom. He was jamming laying on the bed. I'm thinking a Motown song and a bratpack actor. But not sure because I can't find anywhere on Google or YouTube. Help! Thanks.

Answer: I believe it's from the movie, "St. Elmo's Fire." Andrew McCarthy does a "Risky Business" dance in his room. I haven't seen the full movie for awhile, but I remember seeing the scene in the "Man in Motion" music video.

When I was a small boy (born in 1942) my mother took me to see a black and white WWII movie about a small group of servicemen, and one woman, who were survivors of an airplane crashed at sea. Most of the film was about the survival adventures while floating in a rubber raft in the open sea with a developing romantic interest between the lead hero and the lone woman. At the end, after they are rescued, he discovers she is a nun. I thought the film was called "Seven Who Returned" but can't find anything with that title. Can you tell me the name of the film? Many Thanks, Ken.

Answer: There is a film called "Sea Wife" (1957) which is set during WWII and has 4 survivors on a raft and one of them is secretly a nun. It's not B&W though and they were survivors of a ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese. The main story is told as a flashback because the man who fell in love with the woman is looking for her. There does happen to be a B&W British film about survivors on a raft called "Seven Waves Away" (1957).

Bishop73

Looking for a movie from the 80's - it starred Bette Midler and (I think) Lily Tomlin as two mismatched pairs of twins, and had Steve Winwood's Higher Love in the soundtrack.

Answer: Is it "Big Business"? That film stars both Midler and Tomlin and features "Higher Love."

TedStixon

I once saw a few minutes of this sitcom TV episode. The main characters' neighbor is a man who has two girlfriends - two girlfriends who both know about each other, agree to this relationship, they might have lived with him. I remember a scene where the man was sitting in the hot-tub, with one girlfriend on either side of him. The main character couple might have been visiting and talking with them in the hot-tub. Thank you for any guesses.

I'm trying to find the name of a movie but I only remember this one scene. A guy spins a quarter on a table and it doesn't fall. He covers it with a glass while it's still spinning and then walks away.

It seems some TV shows, especially in later seasons, will include a version of their own show or movie into the show itself. "Seinfeld" had "Jerry." "Stargate SG-1" had "Wormhole X-Treme." "Monk" had an episode where they were going to make a movie about Monk and the show "Crime Lab S.F." (but that's might have been more a parody of "CSI"?) And now "Lucifer" has "Diablo." What are other examples of TV shows doing this? And this is different then the normal show within a show trope, like "Home Improvement" having "Tool Time" or "Full House" having "Wake Up, San Francisco").

Bishop73

Answer: Supernatural famously had at least two instances of this. There's a running plotline through the series where they discover a series of "Supernatural" books based on their antics, which end up being written by God himself. Even more meta, in the episode The French Mistake they end up in an alternate reality on the set of a show called "Supernatural" where everyone starts referring to them by the real actors' names, their angel friend Castiel is now a goofy actor called Misha Collins (the real actor) and their demon foe Ruby is now actress Genevieve Padalecki, married to one of them (as she is in real life).

Jon Sandys

I remember a film I saw many years ago. A reporter (Kathleen Turner, perhaps?) was doing several interviews with an older man, who I think was on Death Row. He was also a magician, and at the end, as he is being executed, he is covered over with a sheet. When they remove the sheet, he has disappeared.

Answer: "Switching Channels" (1988). Although the inmate, who is strapped into the electric chair, escapes when the power goes off.

Bishop73

Looking for a film I saw a few minutes of, probably early 90s. A woman (I think the actress was Michelle Pfeiffer) is in a multi-storey car park and witnesses a man having his throat cut. She escapes in a car with another man, and as they are driving down a road in a long shot, she asks him to pull over, and she rushes out of the car and throws up over a fence. Not much to go on.

Answer: It's most likely, "Into the Night." Jeff Goldblum plays a man who leads a boring life. He heads to the airport, thinking of flying somewhere for an adventure. In the airport parking garage, a screaming Michelle Pfeiffer, jumps into his car begging for help. She and her partner, who was murdered by Israel mobsters, were smuggling gem stones.During the night, it's one adventure after another, as he helps her get out of her predicament. A romantic comedy, directed by John Landis (Trading Places, The Blues Brothers). Lots of cameos by famous actors, singers and movie directors.

Don't remember what year I saw this but, it was a very weird cartoon. One part of the cartoon had a man and woman kissing but each time they kissed, their mouths seem to distort causing their heads to get even closer. Eventually, their kiss got so deep that they both cut half of each other's head off. Another part of the cartoon was a guy singing but, while he was singing, his face kept morphing repeatedly.

Answer: You're probably thinking of How to Kiss by Bill Plympton. I think the part with the man singing is from another Plympton short, Your Face. Both were just added to the Criterion Channel along with a lot of his other films.

That's the one. Thank you so much.

Answer: The first part of your question, two bodies coming together, reminds me of the movie, "The Lawnmower Man." Jeff Fahey and Jenny Wright, enter a virtual reality world. They have computer sex and their bodies morph together. The second part, a man singing and changing does sound familiar, but can't recall it.

It's a bit of a trope in films for an explosive device of some kind to be placed in a microwave, often catching the victim unawares until the final few seconds before the beeper goes and it explodes. Grosse Point Blank and Under Siege come to mind, to name but two. But is there any real reason the countdown should match the explosion? Is there anything specific about the end of a microwave cycle that might cause a detonation in something capable of it, or is it just a Hollywood convention that the hero's skills are such that they manage to set the timer for the perfect length to cause an explosion?

Jon Sandys

Answer: To start, exploding microwaves in film are like gas tanks exploding when shot, what the movies show is nothing like real life. Most explosive simply do not explode in microwaves, even after 15 minutes. Flash powder (flashbang grenades) can go off in a microwave after about 5 minutes, but just from being heated up, nothing to do with the final seconds of the countdown. Although they certainly wouldn't explode an entire store or cause more damage then the flashbang would do normally. Explosives like C4, hand grenades, or modern TNT and dynamite-type explosives will not go off like seen in the films, at least not with low powered home microwaves.

Bishop73

It seems that since 2010-ish, more and more actresses have released music albums, and more female singers have acted in TV shows and movies. Especially those in their teenage years and twenties. Are there any suggestions as to why this is? Or has it always been somewhat common practice?

Answer: Actors going into music and vice versa has been around longer than TV shows and movies. With the need to cash in on trends quickly, it might be more common than before, but it's happened.

Captain Defenestrator

In particular, children in the "preteen" and young teenage years often want the range of products offered by the celebrities they like.

I saw this movie trailer in the late 1990s or early 2000s. A man has become, or can choose to be, invisible. At one point in the trailer, he asks a woman if she has ever made love to an invisible man before. I am certain that she had long brown or black hair.

Answer: There's another film, The Man Who Wasn't There, (1983), Steve Guttenberg (Police Academy) plays a man who becomes the target of American and enemy agents after stumbling upon an invisibility serum. After using it to escape, he hides out at a girlfriend's apartment. I don't remember the exact dialogue, but they do have a love scene. It's funny seeing her going through sex motions with no-one there.

Answer: I believe you are referring to Hollow Man, with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Shue.

Phaneron

Thank you.

Answer: This could also be the 1992 film, "Memoirs Of An Invisible Man," starring Chevy Chase and Darryl Hannah.

raywest

Thank you.

There was a horror movie in either the 80's or 90's. The only scene I can remember is a guy is having a turkey dinner with his family when the turkey grows a human head and talks to the man and taunts him. The man gets angry and stabs the head, scaring his wife and kids.

Answer: This scene is from the 1989 film The Horror Show starring Lance Henriksen.

BaconIsMyBFF

That's it.

Anyone recognize this horror movie/TV show from 1990 or earlier? A surly preteen is walking down a street, when he's accosted by a strange man who says the boy is upset because it's his birthday and his parents forgot. The boy runs off, but obviously the comment hit home. He walks into an abandoned building to find a party with cake and presents all set up for him. He keeps calling for his family to come out, but instead, strange toy robots come clanking out of the darkness. When the boy opens the cake box, there's a severed human head inside which smiles and says 'hi', causing the boy to scream and run off. I was babysitting when I watched this and it was upsetting my charge so I turned it off, and I never got to see the ending, and it always bothered me.

Brian Katcher

Answer: The movie is called Spookies.

Thank you.

Brian Katcher

There was a movie that had both Angie Harmon and Charlie Sheen. In the movie, Angie is friends with a woman who writes an advice column but, the friend doesn't really offer any useful advice. Charlie Sheen plays a guy, who after coming across the letters, decides to write some real advice using the woman's name and the advice he gives actually helps people.

Answer: "Good Advice" (2001). Angie plays the newspaper editor that hired Charlie's girlfriend, who writes an advice column. When his girlfriend leaves him for another man, he takes over without the editor knowing (since he needed a job). It's only when the girlfriend returns and wants her job back does it turn out she isn't as good as Charlie.

Bishop73

Answer: The film is "Good Advice" from 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Advice.

Jon Sandys

Is there a TV series lately which has a similar poster as that for See featuring Jason Momoa? I remember seeing a similar one.

ihabh

I'm trying to remember a movie: a boy is with an adult (a wizard?) as they are on a quest somewhere looking for something. The whole time, the boy is trying to get the wizard or warrior is go back to his village to help them win a war that's going on. When he tells the wizard (or warrior) about going back and helping the village, the man always says, "Oh, don't worry, they're fine." Then the scene cuts to the kid's village being attacked by some vicious army. This happens several times in the movie. Any clue?

CCARNI

I'm trying to remember what movie it's from when the bad guy (I think) says "you find something that's important to them, and...you squeeze." Drawing a blank. Anyone know?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: "Mission Impossible." Kitteridge says it to his colleague, Barnes (when the Feds turn up at the place where Max and her team were, and find them gone) when describing how he's going to get Ethan to come out of hiding.

Heather Benton

That's it! Fantastic, thank you. :-)

Jon Sandys

Which film is it where a girl watches her boyfriend's flat from a disused warehouse and breaks in when he's not there?

Answer: This might be the 1997 movie, "Addicted to Love," starring Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick.

raywest

Looking for a horror movie where a woman believes that she is mentally ill and ends up staying in a nunnery. Although it turns out she is having visions and gets help from a priest who at the end goes off to deal with the Amityville case. Was told about it by a friend so I don't have any more details. Can anyone help me out? Many thanks.

sleeptight

Answer: Except for the Amityville part, there are two movies with a Nun having visions. The First Power (1990) about a detective, Lou Diamond Phillips, hunting a resurrected killer and Fallen (1998) about a detective, Denzel Washington, being hunted by an evil spirit that can jump from body to body.

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