Thursday Movie Picks - Video/Arcade/Board Game Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You can participate, too! All you have to do is pick three movies that fit the week's themes and say a little something about them!

Is it really Thursday again, you guys?

Sorry, it's now been six days since seeing La La Land, and I'm still not over it. I don't know what time it is or what day it is anymore.

Which makes it even harder for this week's Thursday Movie Picks, because we are picking game movies. Whether this means movies based on a pre-existing game, or movies centered around a game, it is unclear, so I will cover as many bases as I can this week! Ready? Let's go!

Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985) One of the most delicious comic ensembles of all time gets to take on the iconic board game characters in a cleverly twisted murder mystery. Which is complicated by the fact that the film was released with the gimmick of having three different endings.... just like the game, right? No, not really. So, of course it was a flop in theaters that got resurrected on home video, mostly because of that downright brilliant cast. It's nearly impossible to pick an MVP between Lesley Ann Warren's vampy Miss Scarlett, Eileen Brennan's kooky Mrs. Peacock, and Madeline Kahn's deadpan Mrs. White (just to name the women), but I have to go with Tim Curry's all-out performance as an invented character, the butler Wadsworth, which finds a perfect balance between madcap physical comedy and dry British wit.

Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995) This one centers around an invented board game that has some serious juju issues. You see, once you start playing, you MUST finish, and the silly things that would normally move you back a square or lose a turn or whatever become all too real. When young Alan Parrish finds the game buried near a construction site and begins to play with his friend Sarah, after a turn or two, the mysterious crystal ball in the center of the board reads: "In the jungle you must wait, until the dice read five or eight," and thus gets sucked into the board game. Sarah, understandably, freaks out, and the game gets buried for twenty-five years... until young siblings Judy and Peter play the game and release Alan from his jungle prison. Which is a good thing, because they're going to need his know-how to survive as the game starts taking over their idyllic New Hampshire town. This is a fun family adventure from a time when such films were taken seriously as entertainment for the WHOLE family - it doesn't try to be hip or cool or snarky, just to provide everyone with a good thrill ride. Which it succeeds at wonderfully. The visual effects have held up pretty well, too.

Silent Hill (Christophe Gans, 2006) And lastly, one based on a video game. Rose is worried about her young daughter, Sharon, who has problems with sleepwalking. She decides to take her to the town of Silent Hill, WV, which Sharon keeps repeating the name of over and over. But upon reaching the town, they get into a car accident and Sharon disappears. Rose has to find her, and in so doing, unlock the mystery of what the town of Silent Hill is and why Sharon feels such a connection to it. Let me make one thing clear: This is NOT a good movie. Not by a longshot. Approximately nothing in it makes any sense, it's insanely overblown, and none of the performing styles ever really meld. BUT, it does boast an absolutely tremendous performance from the terminally underappreciated Radha Mitchell, as well as some of the most sublime surreal imagery I've ever seen in a mainstream movie. Plus, a deliciously campy scene-stealing turn from Alice Krige as the leader of the town cult. Silent Hill may be a failure, but it is at the very least an incredibly interesting one - one that I'm quite fascinated by. Just.... enter at your own risk.