Windswept Movie Taglines Through the Years Quiz

Answer: Back together for the first time, again!

This funny film depicts the fictional reunion of some 1960's folk musicians, as they prepare a show to honor a former colleague who has recently passed away. It stars many of the actors who typically work with Guest on these ventures: Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, and Jane Lynch. Guest himself even makes an appearance. The interactions among the characters are just as important as the music they make in this satirical look at folk singers past their prime.

I think a better tagline than the actual one could have been, "Playing to honor the music that ALMOST made them famous". The real tagline also expresses the setting for this movie, that people who haven't seen each other in years and who didn't always part on the best of terms, are together again, as if for the first time.

Answer: What has Opie gotten us into this time?

The movie tells a tale of brothers who are firefighters (Kurt Russell and William Baldwin) trying to protect their city from the work of a dastardly arsonist (Scott Glenn) under the leadership of fire commissioner (Robert DeNiro). It is full of excitement and fire.

The three real taglines are good depictions of the tale: Fire is extremely unpredictable and dangerous, and each of the taglines expresses ways that fire can spring up unexpectedly and change everything, often with danger and death. The tagline I made up references director Ron Howard's early gig as a child actor on "The Andy Griffith Show", and has nothing to do with fire.

Answer: Atlanta burns, the South falls, and hearts ignite!

I honestly like the tagline I made up better than the insipid drivel that MGM used. Though it is true that it was a magnificent picture, a great romance and an exciting love story (which the real taglines state), it was also the story of a particular moment in history that shaped the United States. Clark Gable, Vivien Liegh, Leslie Howard, Olivia DeHavilland and a huge and impressive cast lovingly brought Margaret Mitchell's epic story to the screen.

It took almost four full hours (with a short intermission) to tell the story of the Civil War against the backdrop of Georgia and a civilization that was "Gone with the Wind". Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara is a formidable woman, who may lack scruples, but is able to adapt to the changes in the South and does everything in her power to save her family's land. Perhaps they'll come up with better taglines for the re-releases of this movie as it hits new milestones in the future.

Answer: The Last Airbender (2010)

This tagline is from "The Last Airbender", a convoluted tale involving Avatars trying to save the last Earth Kingdom by thwarting the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water Tribes. The four nations in the movie are the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom and the Air Nomads. If one nation eliminates the others, they won't have a shared destiny. If they can find a peaceful way to coexist, the shared destiny will be achieved. That's a pretty lofty tagline for a pedestrian and confusing movie! With a running time of 103 minutes, it seems a lot longer. Starring Dev Patel, Noah Ringer and Jackson Rathbone, this movie is hard to follow, and even harder to care about.

The other three choices listed are also Shyamalan films. "Signs" stars Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, and is suspenseful tale of mysterious crop circles that could be signs of something.

"Lady in the Water" is another muddled mess starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Paul Giamatti. It involves a writer, played by Shyamalan himself, a swimming pool, and a lady in the water, played by Howard. The twist is easy to guess and this isn't one of the director's best efforts.

My favorite film of Shyamalan's, by far, is "The Sixth Sense". Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment are wonderful in this tale of a boy who can see dead people and the psychologist who tries to help him cope.

Answer: The Fog

"The Fog" stars Jamie Lee Curtis. She made it when she was a scream queen before hitting the mainstream movies for which she is better known today. It is a typical lower-budget horror film, about a town celebrating its 100-year anniversary. Little do the townspeople know that their founding fathers murdered a man trying to establish a leper colony, and now the spirits of the lepers are coming back out of the fog to reclaim their town.

The tagline evokes the fear of the citizens who are trying to figure out what it is that is threatening their existence in that blasted fog!

Answer: Fear changes everything.

The tagline the movie producers used goes with the plot, but it really doesn't say much. "Fear changes everything" is true of almost any horror film. In this case, the fact that the smell of fear is perceived by the monsters ties it in to the plot. Marcia Gay Harden stars in this little-known horror picture.

It is based on a story by Stephen King, and the creatures in the mist have been unleashed by a military project gone wrong. Needless to say, both King and Harden have better movies in their repertoires.

Answer: Inherit the Wind (1960)

None of the movies with "monkey" in the title are the correct answer here. "Inherit the Wind" focuses on the Scopes Monkey Trial, which is the trial referenced in the tagline. A teacher who dares to share the theory of evolution with his students is vilified and jailed.

This is a real life case from 1925. The courtroom scenes are masterful, and the film is very well written. It basically shows that the right to free speech and free thinking is worth defending, no matter what the risks might be.

Answer: Riptide (1934)

The only movie from the right timeframe to be a pre-code film is "Riptide". The tagline does movie goers a service because it signals that this is a tale of a woman giving up everything, even her own identity, for love, and it isn't an action movie. Norma Shearer does a great job emoting in this one, after an absence of some years from the screen.

In it, she plays a woman whose husband doesn't appreciate her. Despite her efforts to make her marriage work, she ends up failing due to a web of deceipt and lies.

The "Riptide" reference is to the way that the ocean currents can seem to be flowing one way, but are treacherous and can pull you under and drag you away in a second, much like gossip and lies.

Answer: justice

This film tells the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. He had a promising career as a boxer, but misfortune struck when he was arrested for three killings. Carter was convicted, but always protested his innocence, and many celebrities believed in him and wanted him to have a retrial. I won't spoil the ending, but Denzel Washington's performance is wonderful.

The tagline correctly states that his legal battles for justice in his case last much longer than his career in the boxing ring, and may have consequences that are much more important in the long run.

Answer: The Perfect Storm (2000)

The other three films do not star Clooney and company. This movie, a box office hit, shows the fury of the ocean and the dangers involved in trying to make a living fishing. The tagline captures the terror of the movie's climax perfectly, when the men on a fishing boat decide to go out and then keep fishing because they all need the money, even in the face of a terrible storm.

The movie is based on a true story, and it is well worth a look.