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Thursday, March 28, 2024
The Observer

New to Your Queue

NewToQueue_WEB
Steph Wulz


Sometimes its just too cold to listen to music, and all you want to do is sit in your bed all day under your blankets, skip all your classes, turn on your television or laptop and let the day slide away under the hypnosis of 10-12 straight hours of movies and TV shows.

But after burning through “Breaking Bad,” “Orange is the New Black” and all the “The Land Before Time” sequels on Netflix (there are five on the site, thirteen films in the series), where, oh, where do you turn next?

Today we’ve revived one of my all-time Scene space fillers, New to Your Queue, in honor of the cold, yes, but also of how I plan to spend my entire Friday.

 

Fargo

There’s nothing colder than murder, am I right guys? Right? Anybody?

That aside, this is possibly the ultimate cold weather movie. Taking place in the upper Midwest, in Minneapolis and, obviously, Fargo, the film follows Jerry Lundegaard, a struggling car salesman, as he tries to organize his wife’s kidnapping in order to swindle her father out of $80,000. The accents and plot twists get weirder and weirder, leading to one of the most infamous death scenes in film history, perhaps the best moment illustrating the Coen brothers’ pitch black humor.

Film: “Fargo” (1996)

Director: Joel Coen

Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi

Best Line: “You betcha!” — Marge Gunderson

 

The Mighty Ducks

A movie that you might find is a lot more sinister than you remember from your childhood (Gordon Bombay is arrested for DUI, Coach Reilly is a force of emotional destruction on a team of eight-year-old kids, Emilio Estevez is a horrible actor, etc.), “Mighty Ducks” can still be appreciated for the cheesy greatness, and might be even better now 20 years later. Banks, the Quack chant, the triple deke, cake eater and all the rest of the classics are just as great now as Charlie Conway was bad in the movie. How does Bombay not have Banks take that shot? Conway was barely a skater. But I guess I’m just no Gordon Bombay.

Film: “The Mighty Ducks” (1992)

Director: Stephen Herek

Starring: Emilio Estevez, Joss Ackland, Joshua Jackson

Best Line: “Yes sir, Mr. Ducksworth. Thank you very much, Mr. Ducksworth. Quack, quack, quack, Mr. Ducksworth! Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!” — Gordon Bombay

 

Cool Runnings

A particularly relevant movie today, what with the real life Jamaican bobsled team qualifying for the actual Winter Olympics, actually, in real life, in a thing that really happened, “Cool Runnings” prophetically follows the comic journey of a based-loosely-on-real-life Jamaican bobsled team on their way to the 1988 Winter Olympics. Led by former champion bobsledder and current bookie John Candy, now exiled from the sport after being caught cheating, a group of four Jamaicans who fail to qualify for the Summer Olympics as sprinters after one of them trips the two others in the trials. Over the course their improbable run to glory, they grow to respect the sport and each other, but not the Swiss, as any great sports movie teaches us.

Film: “Cool Runnings” (1993)

Director: Jon Turteltaub

Starring: Leon, Doug E. Doug, John Candy

Best Line: “I see pride! I see power! I see a bad-ass mother who don’t take no crap off of nobody!” — Yul Brenner

 

Groundhog Day

The best film ever made about an underappreciated holiday, “Groundhog Day” follows Bill Murray’s journey as Phil Collins, a Pittsburgh weatherman forced to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney. Phil is none too pleased about his assignment, even insulting Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog. He wakes up the next morning to discover that he’s in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over again. He tries to commit suicide numerous times and generally acts like a bad dude before realizing the errors of his ways and turning his life around in order to not have to hear “I Got You Babe” by Sonny & Cher every morning for the rest of his life.

Film: “Groundhog Day” (1993)

Director: Harold Ramis

Starring: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell

Best Line: “It’s the same thing your whole life: ‘Clean up your room. Stand up straight. Pick up your feet. Take it like a man. Be nice to your sister. Don’t mix beer and wine, ever.’ Oh yeah: ‘Don’t drive on the railroad track.’”