... FOR "ACTORS WHO SHOULD PLAY OTHER ACTORS' FAMILY MEMBERS"

New year, new feature here at Finding The Wrong Words...

Have you ever looked at a particular actor and thought, "Why, he/she is the spitting image of this other actor/actress I love so much! This can't be a coincidence. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were separated at birth!" And the idea fascinates you so much that you're compelled to check the IMDb, only to find that the two actors are not, in fact, related in any way?

How can this be? More importantly, why hasn't anyone had the bright idea to cast these folks as family members in a movie before? This is especially distressing once you realize that Hollywood has a long and tortured history of casting people who obviously have no business being siblings. Kurt Russell and William Baldwin in Backdraft, for example (wouldn't it have been simpler to hire, I don't know, Alec Baldwin as Billy's older brother?). Or Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves, cast as (half) brothers in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (yeah, right). The eclectic ensemble of 2003's Cheaper By The Dozen are clearly the product of an extramarital affair or two, with blonde, brunette and redheaded children all running around under the same roof. And can anyone point out the family resemblance between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in Twins? (Okay, so that last one's a joke).

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY #5"

In which we take a look at a series of odd movie coincidences - scenes, jokes, dialogue, even specific camera shots shared between two seemingly unrelated films. Anyone who's sat through a particular scene in a movie and thought, "Gee, haven't I seen someone do this somewhere before?" will know exactly what I'm talking about.

A Historical Drama and a Sci-Fi Action parable which end with strikingly similar closeups of the same actor's face. Two Horror film sequences seemingly inspired by Fred Astaire. And a gag about urination, used first in a spoof on 70s cop shows and then again during a Comedy about baseball. You look at these films and you have to wonder: Are these screenwriters purposely cribbing from each other, hoping no one will notice? Or are they paying deliberate homage to previous films, hoping overly attentive audiences will? Or is it, in fact, pure coincidence, plain and simple, since there is technically nothing new under the sun?

... FOR "SUMMER OF THE UNOFFICIAL REMAKE, 2013"

If our current summer movie season had a theme - I know, I know, it's only been a couple of months, yet already one has started to shake itself out - it might be The Summer Of The Unofficial Remake, Whether Its Makers Care To Admit To It Or Not. Of the season's biggest studio releases, at least a dozen of them - Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast And Furious 6, Man Of Steel, Monsters University, World War Z, White House Down, Despicable Me 2, The Lone Ranger, R.I.P.D., RED 2 and The Wolverine - seem cobbled together from the spare parts of previous films. Most, obviously, just happen to be sequels and/or prequels to popular franchises (or, in Star Trek's case, a sequel to the reboot prequel). But that's no excuse for the amount of literal scene-stealing going on now at your local multiplex.

The saying goes, of course, that there's nothing new under the sun. And this is true, to a point (as David Bordwell astutely says here, even box office behemoths like The Godfather, Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark took previously-established Hollywood genres and made them bigger and better). I've even written about films that take entire plots from other films and try to pass them off as their own - a dispiriting trend in Hollywood, and one that seems to be growing more common by the minute.

... FOR "MARKETING PLOYS AND THE ART OF THE MONEY SHOT"

I happened to catch Independence Day on AMC last week (well, most of it anyway), and was shocked to re-discover how simplistic the movie plays, and how that simple-mindedness works largely in its favor. It's deliberately designed as a callback to those big-budget, star-studded disaster flicks of the 70's, only this time with aliens, and like Earthquake or The Towering Inferno, it appeals to our most basic desire to watch stuff blow up. Each individual character motivation can be summed up in six words or less (Wants His Ex-Wife Back, Wants To Be An Astronaut, Wants To Be A Better President), the special effects (mostly model work, minimal CGI) are impressive in an old-fashioned Irwin Allen sort of way, and its big emotional crescendos ("Today we celebrate... our Independence Day!") are painted in the biggest, broadest strokes. Lump them all together, and it's no wonder audiences went absolutely ape for it.

... FOR "CG ATROCITIES (AND THOSE WHO COMMIT THEM)"

Confession: I don't care much for CGI. At least not in the way most filmmakers tend to use it these days, which is too much and too often. Like any cinema tool – music, art direction, cinematography, editing, costume design, even A-list actors – special effects should always be used as a means to support a story, not as the focus of it. And it's a shame how so many people have apparently lost sight of that.

Granted, it's a tricky mix to get just right. While some directors seem to get it (Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, even pre-Avatar James Cameron spring to mind), others have simply lost the ability to rely on anything else (cough-George Lucas-cough). We've come a long way since the days of Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, when CGI still had the power to shock and surprise us - to make the fantastical seem fathomable. Now that anything and everything can be accomplished via CGI, from exploding planets to spaceships to kitchen utensils to tabletops, my question is: Should it?

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 3 - 'THE MATRIX' EDITION)"

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."

When The Matrix opened in March of 1999, it hit like a breath of pure oxygen – and a slap in the face to every pretender-to-the-throne action/sci-fi extravaganza since George Lucas' original Star Wars. (More than that, it made those movies look positively old-fashioned by comparison – The Phantom Menace included, which still had a good month and a half to go before its official release date.) Andy and Larry Wachowski's genre-busting fusion of all things cyberpunk, Hong Kong action cinema, and Japanese anime didn't just stand the special effects industry on its head; it turned into a full-fledged pop culture phenomenon. "Bullet time" became a cliché. Wire work and extensive kung fu choreography became the norm for almost every action sequence that followed. It gave Keanu Reeves – he of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Paula Abdul's "Rush Rush" music video, and Speed – his most iconic role since, well, Bill & Ted. It even spawned its own religion, of sorts.