Instead of 90s movie trivia, a 90s movie

I expected to take both January 13th and January 14th off from watching movies, as we were scheduled to spend the weekend at a friend's beach house. (Again: Southern hemisphere. Summer.)

But then I saw that they had an awesome projector setup, and, well, something had to give.

You'll be glad to know it was not me sneaking in one of my arcane remaining 2023 movies that none of them would want to see. No, it was actually Michael Bay's The Rock.

The choice was arrived upon by my wife's friend. She wanted to get my 13-year-old and her 13-year-old watching something on Sunday night instead of both winding down the evening on their phones. Commendable impulse.

So she found herself consulting a list of Rolling Stone's best action movies of all time, and that's how The Rock was chosen.

At first I didn't expect that I'd be watching it, but then, my wife's friend's husband indicated that he expected to watch some (or all) of it, and hey, with a great projector setup, you don't have to ask me twice.

The main thing that made it better than our own projector setup was that they have a screen that pulls down, whereas we use a white cinder block wall in our garage. The image mostly rests over the grooves of the wall without any real impact on the viewing experience, but of course, an actual screen is much nicer.

Plus, the room where we watched the movie is deeper than our garage, allowing us to get a larger image. 

Plus, I've only seen The Rock once and I regularly call it Michael Bay's best, so it was a good time for a second viewing.

I was expecting The Rock could come up this weekend, but not in the context of actually watching it.

For Christmas I received a 90s trivia card game, I think from my sister-in-law. The husband likes trivia, though he's not nearly the movie aficionado I am. However, it's a period all the adults had lived through so I thought there was a decent chance we'd all be pretty good at it. So I threw it in one of the 17 bags we seemed to bring for just two nights. 

He had a book of 80s trivia, involving all aspects of 1980s life, that made it out on Saturday night, but the 90s movie trivia never did. It might have, except that I cleaned up enough on the parts of the 80s trivia that involved movies that merely the mention of the 90s trivia game prompted a series of agonized pleas not to subject everyone to it. (Hey, at least it's not something I bought myself. I was just trying to use the Christmas present from my sister-in-law.)

In any case, The Rock really holds up.

Not only did I admire a cast with close to 20 actors whose names I knew (or easily remembered when I looked them up), but I was really impressed at the pace Bay is able to keep going. This feels like wall-to-wall action without any of the scenes seeming superfluous. It contrasts significantly with today's action standard bearers, such as the John Wick movies, where every action scene can be described as "another series of assassins tries to kill John Wick." Here, it was all plot-based, and the narrative moves along with a purpose, especially for a film that's more than two hours long.

And when my son is involved, I'm conscious of the pace needing to be fleet. I could see both him and the other 13-year-old longing to return their attentions to their phones, but fortunately, they never gave in to these desires. I took that as a pretty good endorsement of the movie, even if a full-throated endorsement is no longer the style of these kids at this age.

Well I didn't get two nights' break from movies, but I did get the respite I needed on 2023 movies. Now, tomorrow night, the eight-day sprint to finish off the year begins.