Cinematrix Clarifications & Corrections Vol. 3: Trick or Treat

We like to think we’re the latter, but these rules do get tricky.

A new Cinematrix drops every morning. You can play past Cinematrixes here.

With an autumnal chill in the air, we’re rounding into October at the Cinematrix. We’ve experienced a lot since we last presented our Clarifications and Corrections: We Mandela Effected actors into movies, debated the validity of archival footage, and been menaced by the sinister article “The.” 

All the while, we are striving to come up with clear and consistent rules for what is often subjective criteria. We wrestle with category definitions, genre distinctions, and what constitutes an acting performance. (For a rundown of all our current category definitions, check out our new glossary.) As always, we’ll continue providing a window into the decision-making process and how it affects the game. Since we’re in America, we’ll start with football. 

🏈  

Are You Ready for Some Football (Movies)?

If you think it’s easy to determine what does and doesn’t count as a “football movie,” well … how did you reach that conclusion? Sure, many are no-brainers (your Varsity Blues-es, your Any Given Sundays), but things get tricky when it comes to movies with some football elements that don’t represent the bulk of the plot (is Ace Ventura: Pet Detective a football movie?) or movies where a character is a football player, even if the movie isn’t about football.

That was the case with the 1979 film Breaking Away, which we counted as a “football movie” for Dennis Quaid because Quaid’s character was pretty much defined by being a football player. But since the rest of the movie was very much about teenage cyclists, it seemed to many of you a deeply silly decision to label the film a “football movie.” Honestly? The naysayers aren’t wrong, either.

We’re never going to have airtight definitions for a number of categories that come down to subjective assessments — which is why we encourage you to always click the category definitions, where we share as much of our thought process as possible. That will hopefully be a clear indicator of how inclusive we’re being. 

(And for the record: We would count the first Ace Ventura. As beloved Cinematrix product lead Alison Morgenstern thoughtfully put it: That’s not a sports movie, but it is a football movie. Laces out!)

➼ Correction: Bryce Dallas Howard is in Parenthood

We mistakenly didn’t include the 1989 movie directed by her father, Ron Howard, when we had Bryce on the grid. While she doesn’t show up in the end-credit scroll in the film itself, she’s credited as “Strawberry-Blonde Girl in Audience” on Wikipedia, as “Redheaded Audience Girl” on IMDb, and she talked about filming the uncredited cameo while on The Drew Barrymore Show this year.

➼ Clarification: The Virgin Suicides is a movie from the year 2000, not 1999

We’ve talked about this quirk before, but to reiterate: while some sites catalog movies by the year in which they first debuted (say, at a film festival), our rule is that we date movies by when they opened theatrically in the United States. That’s the year those movies earned money and the year they were eligible for awards. This issue arose again just this week with the Amanda Seyfried movie Chloe, which played festivals in 2009 but opened in 2010.

There Will Be Emails  

Let’s Talk About ‘The,’ Baby

There have been a surprising number of requests for clarification on the subject of the word “the,” stemming from our “Title Begins with ‘The’” Category. A bunch of people emailed to say they tried There Will Be Blood, even though the category definition explicitly states that we’re looking for titles with the word “The” at the beginning. We even use There Will Be Blood as an example of a title that wouldn’t count! To reiterate: The category definitions are there to help! Especially if you’re being cute with your guess!

We also heard about a few other movies that are often misremembered as having “The” in their titles, but don’t — because as a sleazy little tech bro once taught us, it’s cleaner that way. These titles include, but aren’t limited to: 

➼ Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (which was indeed based on a book called The 25th Hour, written by Game of Thrones’ David Benioff)

➼ The 2008 Angelina Jolie movie Changeling (which is distinct from the 1980 George C. Scott movie The Changeling)

➼ The 2023 movie Haunted Mansion with LaKeith Stanfield and Owen Wilson, which is a remake of (or at least a second attempt at) the 2003 Eddie Murphy, which is called The Haunted Mansion, both of which are based on the Disneyland attraction.

One last thing on the “The” category: we’re limiting it to the English word “the” and not any other translations of the word. So anything from La Chimera to Les Miserables won’t count. (Is this because we don’t entirely trust that somebody won’t email is trying to claim that La La Land is just The The Land? Not no!)

➼ Clarification: “Based on a Book” doesn’t include plays

Steve Martin’s Roxanne is indeed based on Cyrano de Bergerac, but that is unfortunately not a book but a play. One might say your answer missed the mark… by a nose. (Stay tuned for a “Based on a Play” category.)

➼ Clarification: Emily Watson (Oscar-nominated actress from Punch-Drunk Love and Synecdoche, New York) is not the same actress as Emma Watson (Hermione in the Harry Potter movies; Meg in 2019’s Little Women)

Hence Hilary and Jackie wasn’t accepted when one of you tried it for an Emma Watson with “and” in the title.

➼ Clarification: Harvey Keitel is also in National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Yo Joe!  

G.I. Joe ‘s ‘Character Name in Title’ Dilemma

Here’s one that had the Cinematrix team tangled up for the better part of an afternoon: there are two live-action films based on the G.I. Joe toy line: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) and G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013). Bruce Willis was not in the first film, but in Retaliation, he plays a character named General Joe Colton, who is the namesake founder of the G.I. Joes. He is, in fact, G.I. Joe. Which makes G.I. Joe: Retaliation a movie with a character’s name in the title. HOWEVER, since that character wasn’t in the first film, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, that film would not count towards Character Name in Title.

BUT WAIT, what about Cobra Commander in The Rise of Cobra? That doesn’t count, either, since the title clearly refers to Cobra the terrorist organization rather than the character Cobra Commander — played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is credited as “The Doctor/Rex” and isn’t even referred to as “Cobra Commander” until the second film, when he’s both played by Luke Bracey.

So, to sum up: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra does not have a character name in its title; G.I. Joe: Retaliation does.

➼ Proceed with Caution

Be careful when guessing sequels to films just because you remember an actor was in the original. Sometimes characters die in the first outing! Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn’t make it to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Vito Corleone (as played by Marlon Brando, at least) doesn’t survive The Godfather. There’s also the case of a movie like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, the only film in the series where Harry is never at Hogwarts, and thus cast members like the late Maggie Smith do not appear in that installment.

➼ Correction: Salma Hayek and Zach Galifianakis co-starred with the Muppets

Just today we had a grid that crossed Salma Hayek with “Anyone who played Joker.” We initially didn’t catch that both Hayek and Zach Galifianakis (Joker in The Lego Batman Movie!) have cameos in 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted. The game has since been corrected so if you haven’t played yet today, there’s a tip for you.

➼ Clarification: Your mom’s name isn’t “Mom”!

Familial relations (“Mom,” “Dad,” “Brother,” “Sister,” “Cousin,” et cetera) will not count as Character Name in Title, unless they’re accompanied by the character’s actual name or are credited as such. 

➼ Clarification: We’re not counting clips of old movies in new movies

For example, when WALL-E incorporates a clip of Hello, Dolly!, that doesn’t mean you can play WALL-E as a Barbra Streisand movie. Ditto when Michael Fassbender’s David watches Lawrence of Arabia in Prometheus, that doesn’t make it a Peter O’Toole movie. Every once in a while, IMDB or TMDB will credit performers in “archive” footage as being part of a movie’s cast, but for the purposes of Cinematrix, we will not.

Warning  

Google Sucks Now

If you’re using Google to double-check an answer, you might want to dig a little deeper. A cursory Google search for Revolutionary Road runtime will for some reason populate 2h 5m. On TMDb, Wikipedia, IMDb, and streaming services like Apple TV+, and Pluto, the film runs for 119 minutes, just one-minute short of two hours. Google fail.

Similarly, once upon a time, if you searched “The Ice Storm awards,” you would’ve been led to believe it was nominated for seven Oscars. In actuality, it was unfortunately snubbed by the Academy. And, perhaps the most egregious of the bunch: despite the search engine telling you so, Riz Ahmed, Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins are not in Promising Young Woman.

➼ Clarification: Box-office numbers are not adjusted for inflation

We get this question every now and then, so to reiterate: the box-office numbers we use to determine whether a movie did or did not reach $100 million are NOT adjusted for inflation. Whatever money you made in the year you made it is your official box-office total, as reflected on sites like Box Office Mojo and The Numbers.

➼ Correction: This Is Me…Now is four words

We already clarified that hyphenated words count as one word, but in a recent grid our game was not counting This Is Me…Now as a 4+ word title because of that damn ellipsis. Apologies to the heart, soul, and dreams of Jennifer Lopez.

➼ Clarification: All of them Witches

The Nicholas Roeg-directed 1990 adaptation of the Roald Dahl story is called The Witches. The Robert Zemeckis-directed 2020 adaptation of that same story is also called The Witches, and is labeled as such on IMDb and Wikipedia. But in TMDB, which is the database that powers our game, it’s listed as Roald Dahl’s The Witches. That turned it from an Octavia Spencer movie that began with “The” to an Octavia Spencer movie that begins with “Roald,” a category we haven’t been brave enough to try yet. This led to a bevy of frustrated emails, and we don’t blame you on that one. We’ll do our best to try to keep an eye out for potential stumbling blocks like this and avoid them in the future.

➼ Similar Clarification: About that ellipsis…

Usually when movies have identical titles, our database will sort out which version of the titles applies to the square you’re guessing and assign the movie accordingly. But sometimes the titles differentiate themselves in small but frustrating ways. The 1986 film About Last Night stars Demi Moore and Rob Lowe in a movie about a one-night-stand that turns into a relationship. There’s a 2014 remake of the film starring Kevin Hart and Regina Hall with the same title. But if you typed that title into our answer box, you get this:

This is because the 1986 movie stylized its title with an ellipsis (About Last Night…). We don’t include years in our drop-down menu, because it would give away too much info. So in this case you just kind of have to know which About Last Night is which. (I would never condone cheating, but if you already came up with About Last Night on your own, I would not consider it cheating to look up which one of these movies had the ellipsis. Consider that going forward.)

On a related note...  

We Love Hearing From Players

The only A and I involved are in the TMDB.org API. But on the subject of staffing, we’d like to extend a hearty welcome to a new member of the Cinematrix team, producer Britina Cheng. Those of you who are wont to email us with questions — including the sender of the note above — have surely already had the pleasure of receiving a warm, informative response from her. 

➼ Justice for Justice

We included actor Justice Smith as one of the categories on the August 24th grid and were met with a handful of emails that were somewhat rude on the subject of the young actor’s status in Hollywood. An example: 

Here’s the thing: yes, Justice Smith is a young actor who is not yet a household name. But he’s hardly obscure. He’s starred in two BILLION-dollar films (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion), plus two more giant blockbusters (Detective Pikachu and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, plus one of this year’s buzziest indies in I Saw the TV Glow. Young Hollywood is on the rise. (We’ll do our part to cover him more.)

But don’t worry, Justice, they came for Peter O’Toole too: 

Sounds like someone out there hasn’t seen The Lion in Winter. Our August 30th grid featuring classic Hollywood actors Sidney Poitier, Audrey Hepburn, and Peter O’Toole was a chance for TCM enthusiasts and true cinephiles. The response was mixed, but be prepared for more Classic Hollywood grids in the future.

➼ Best Email of the Year (So Far)

Thanks to Julia for sending us this incredible piece of creativity. Julia’s Mom: you are officially Cinematrix royalty.

On the subject: if you decide to dress as a Cinematrix grid for Halloween (I have ideas for how this could be executed), you MUST send us pics.