Today’s blogging prompt from Long and Short Reviews is….”Films to Watch on a Bad Day“. I have an album of “movies I’d save in a fire’, and these all live there!

Groundhog Day.  I have watched this movie dozens of times in the last twenty years,  ever since discovering it at Blockbuster and giving it a shot because I like Bill Murray. 

The Sandlot.   The quintessential movie of American boyhood. I’ll never hear “Green Onions” without thinking of that particular scene.

The Philadelphia Story. Kathryn Hepburn,  Jimmy Stewart, and Cary Grant.   Competes with Groundhog Day for being my favorite movie.    The Stewart-Grant scenes are priceless. (“Dog-gone it, either you’re gonna sock me or I’m gonna sock you!”  “….shall we toss a coin?”)

The Three Musketeers, Disney version with Oliver Pratt,  Tim Curry, Charlie Sheen,  and Christopher O’Donnell.  Fanciful, dramatic, and imminently watchable.  Gabrielle Anwar played a perfectly lovely Queen Anne.

Lemony Snicket’s  A Series of Unfortunate Events.   The soothing narration, the story of children imperiled but finding sanctuary again and again,  and of course Uncle Monty. 

Airborne, Absolute ‘90s nostalgia for me. A surfer/rollerblader dude from Cali is stranded in snowy Minnesota, where he falls in love with the wrong girl and finds himself constantly harassed by a high school clique, one that includes Jack Black. Culminates in an epic rollerblading contest down a wickedly dangerous hill.  Also features Seth Green trying to find a cool look to the sounds of Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”, which is hilarious in its own right. 

A Christmas Carol, Patrick Stewart.  I will never tire of stories about redemption, and this one has Patrick Stewart singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Stephen Warbeck did fantastic music for this movie, especially “Fezziwig’s Party” and “Fran’s Theme”. The latter is so utterly, utterly wistful.

D2: The Mighty Ducks. The Quack Attack is back, Jack! Rollerblading hockey-playing kids take on junior hockey teams from across the world. Sidenote: the Ducks recently made an appearance in Anaheim, in Ducks jerseys, to drop a puck to kick off a game.

Bicentennial Man, with Robin Williams,  Sam Neill, Oliver Pratt, and Embeth Davitz.  Robin Williams plays an android who is defective: he has personality and self-awareness.  Like Data, he is on a journey to become more human.  Funny, heartwarming, and features Embeth Davitz in two roles –  a fact important to the plot.  This movie is how I came to start reading Isaac Asimov’s fiction.

And finally….Men in Tights. I watched this entirely too young, but it was my first introduction to Cary Ewles….and Amy Yasbeck.