CineLinkr #218: The Story Behind the Puzzle
Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This post assumes you've already solved the puzzle. It reveals all categories and their connections, and discusses plot details, endings, and spoilers for featured movies/games throughout.
Rear Window gives Jeff binoculars and a telephoto lens, then makes watching the neighbors an increasingly dangerous occupation. A hobby is supposed to get you out of trouble. Hitchcock has other plans for the equipment.
🟢 Easy: Nicole Kidman performances
Movies: Days of Thunder · The Others · Batman Forever · Far and Away
Kidman connects NASCAR to Gotham, with a haunted manor and an Irish immigrant's journey in between. Days of Thunder and Far and Away both pair her with Tom Cruise, but that smaller partnership doesn't explain the whole row.
The Others supplies a particularly good detour. Alejandro Amenábar's English-language horror film won Best Film at Spain's Goya Awards, becoming the first winner without Spanish dialogue. Kidman's presence is the shared credit; the films refuse to share a comfortable genre.
🟡 Medium: Ice hockey drives the story
Movies: Slap Shot · Goon · Miracle · D2: The Mighty Ducks
Miracle follows the US men's hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics, with Kurt Russell playing coach Herb Brooks. D2 sends its team into the Junior Goodwill Games. Both put international competition on the rink, though their approaches are rather different.
Slap Shot and Goon move toward the bruising business of minor-league hockey. The former centers on a struggling team that gains attention through violent play; the latter follows Doug Glatt becoming an enforcer. A sports double bill with a substantial dental contingency.
🔵 Hard: Amateur observers suspect they've spotted a killer
Movies: Rear Window · Body Double · The Woman in the Window · Road Games
These observers see something they can't comfortably dismiss, then struggle to prove what they think it means. The connection is the act of watching and drawing a dangerous conclusion, rather than simply being present when a crime occurs.
Rear Window makes Jeff's view of Thorwald the basis of his suspicions. Body Double gives Jake Scully a telescope and a view of Gloria. In The Woman in the Window, Anna Fox's account meets disbelief from the police.
Road Games takes the pattern out onto Australian highways. Truck driver Patrick Quid repeatedly encounters a man with a green van and begins to suspect a killer. It's the useful fourth because the observer's problem travels with him instead of staying behind a particular window.
🟣 Tricky: One-word titles are astronomy terms
Movies: Moon · Gravity · Meteor · Supernova
The plots invite a science-fiction answer, but the titles do the actual work. Each is one word drawn from astronomy, including gravity as the force rather than an object in the sky.
Meteor wraps its approaching-asteroid crisis in Cold War politics. Supernova here is the 2000 film with James Spader and Angela Bassett. Those details identify the entries; you don't need them to notice the vocabulary.
The little switch is from remembering stories to reading labels. Moon and Gravity make excellent narrative companions, but this answer needs only their names. Save the orbital-survival discussion for after the purple row turns over.
The observer films are a persuasive advertisement for minding your own business, which would unfortunately end all four stories. If the hockey row left you in a sporting mood, today's PixelLinkr has basketball and considerably looser rules about borrowing cars.