# Last movie you watched - that you didn't know you've watched? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 1, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123 "2014-04-01T22:39:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/1 "2014-04-01T22:39:50Z")
It was the funniest thing. I was watching _G.I. Joe: Retaliation_, wondering how I hadn’t gotten around to watching it since I found the first entertaining in a goofy way. Then that _deja vu_ feeling starts as I watching and I realize I _had_ seen it - and yet it made so little impression I didn’t remember seeing it. In fact, I was having trouble remembering details even as it played along in front of me. I’ve had this happen with books - remember 50 pages in that I’d read it before - but never with a movie. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/2 "2014-04-01T23:02:26Z")
I’m sure I’ve had this experience now that my brain is aging and taking my memory with it. Of course, I can’t remember when, or which movies. It’s a Catch-22 question. Hmm, have I seen Catch-22? ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/3 "2014-04-01T23:04:00Z")
**Tank Girl**. The first time I watched it I drank an entire bottle of vodka during the show. I have since watched it sober, and much as I love Lori Petty, I think I had the right idea the first time. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/4 "2014-04-01T23:42:47Z")
My wife put on _Fright Night_ (the '85 original) while I started making dinner a few days ago. Little did I know that was the title of the hilariously campy vampire-next-door spoof that I had inexplicably seen only the second half of three times as a teenager. Roddy McDowell wasn’t even done with his TV show intro scene over the opening credits before I was laughing my ass off at the coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/5 "2014-04-02T01:44:27Z")
I rented a movie called _The Lookout_ starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I sat down with my wife and started watching it. About 10 minutes into it we both realized we had already seen it. It’s actually a pretty good movie, but for some reason I had completely forgot that we had watched it before. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/6 "2014-04-02T17:22:57Z")
That Jack Reacher movie - you know, the one with diminutive Tom Cruise as towering Jack Reacher? Yeah, that one. Watched it twice - rented it once and totally forgot about it, then watched it again on HBO or whatever. It was a surreal experience; I totally didn’t remember the first viewing, but had this weird feeling of foreknowledge of all the plot points. “And now he’s going to do that and he knows this because of that thing there…” Really, really strange. I think I twigged on that we’d watched it before about 30 minutes in. Seemed El SpouseO knew all the time, which made me all, “why didn’t you say something?!” ---
**Author:** ![Marks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce73a5/32.png) [@Marks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marks)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/7 "2014-04-02T17:54:41Z")
“Thor: The Dark World” ---
**Author:** ![Randolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Randolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randolph)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/8 "2014-04-02T17:56:43Z")
I had a similar experience with the second Narnia movie, Prince Caspian - I forgot I was watching a movie _while I was watching the movie_. I sat there staring in the direction of the screen, eyes defocused, thinking, “I’m bored. I should throw on a movie. Oh, wait! I’m already watching a movie!” I’d like to think that says more about the quality of the Narnia films than about my attentions to detail. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/9 "2014-04-02T17:58:55Z")
The Conformist. It’s happened to me with that movie _twice_. I never remember that I’ve seen it before until the scene where the women dance together. Oddly, two of the times I watched it were with my parents. They didn’t remember that they’d seen it, either, and now when I describe it to them they draw a blank. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/10 "2014-04-02T18:34:51Z")
The Philip Seymor Hoffman movie **Doubt**. I have no idea when I saw it first but I know I had seen it before when I watched it again. And now really I can hardly remember the plot! (I am awful about remembering movie plots) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/11 "2014-04-02T19:01:27Z")
_ **This Island Earth** _. I caught it just as it was starting on cable one Saturday afternoon a couple of years ago, and within ten minutes I was saying “I think I’ve seen this somewhere before…” Then one of the actors delivered a line I remembered and I was sure of it. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/12 "2014-04-02T20:27:17Z")
A friend and I picked out a movie called [Hit and Run](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2097307/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_19) on Netflix that looked good. At the beginning is a bedroom scene with the main character and his girlfriend playfully fighting. I said to my friend, “This reminds me of a scene in another movie where the guy had this cool black car…in fact I think it was the same guy.” Turns out it was the same movie. Nice little caper road trip movie IMO. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/13 "2014-04-02T21:48:25Z")
My mother hated going to the movies alone, so she usually dragged me along with her, even when I was very, very young. For years, I remembered seeing a movie with her when I was five or six, and the only thing that stuck in my mind was that it had a hot, busty blonde running around in her bra and slip in a hotel room (I was a very, uhm, precocious child). I wondered and wondered what film that was, and thought I’d never find out, until one day 20-odd years later when I accidentally caught it on TV. Imagine my shock when I learned it was… _ **Psycho** _! :eek: My mother was a big Hitchcock fan…! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/14 "2014-04-02T21:58:19Z")
This happened to me with _Citizen Kane_, of all things. It’s not that I didn’t remember it, but that I caught it after it had started and had no idea what the title was. I finally decided to see what the fuss was about and realized I’d seen it. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/15 "2014-04-02T22:40:00Z")
Not quite the same, but it wasn’t until over halfway through watching Gone, Baby Gone with Casey Affleck in the theater that I realized I had read the book! No wonder everything was so familiar (“there’s going to be a scene in a quarry coming up, wtf? I haven’t seen this before, it’s opening weekend!”). ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/16 "2014-04-03T00:16:48Z")
Not a movie per se, but after I got into Douglas Adams I tracked down the HHGTTG mini series, and gradually realized I must have seen it on PBS many years before I was aware of the whole HHGTTG phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/17 "2014-04-03T00:27:10Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > Not quite the same, but it wasn’t until over halfway through watching Gone, Baby Gone with Casey Affleck in the theater that I realized I had read the book! No wonder everything was so familiar (“there’s going to be a scene in a quarry coming up, wtf? I haven’t seen this before, it’s opening weekend!”). I had the same thing, but in reverse, with Carl Hiassen’s _ **Striptease** _. I was about fifty pages into the book when I realized I had seen the movie with Demi Moore. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Reeses\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reeses_monkey/32/2885_2.png) [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/18 "2014-04-03T00:46:13Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > _ **This Island Earth** _. I caught it just as it was starting on cable one Saturday afternoon a couple of years ago, and within ten minutes I was saying “I think I’ve seen this somewhere before…” Then one of the actors delivered a line I remembered and I was sure of it. Had you seen the original or the Mystery Science Theater version? ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-movie-you-watched-that-you-didnt-know-youve-watched/685123/19 "2014-04-03T00:51:02Z")
> [@Reeses\_Monkey](#): > > Had you seen the original or the Mystery Science Theater version? I believe it was the original, both times.