Selfish and snarky, Murray’s Phil Connors is a Pittsburgh weatherman who plans to be in Punxsutawney, Pa., for just one day: Feb. 2, Groundhog Day. Except that the day repeats itself, with infinitely minute variations, until Phil gets it right. Punxatawney becomes Phil’s Purgatory, or maybe Limbo, a place with this weather report: “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you the rest of your life.” The script for this 1992 film, by Danny Rubin and director Harold Ramis, superbly balances comedy and philosophy. (Is God a Groundhog? Discuss.) But it’s Murray who sells, and inhabits, this rumination on life as an endless repetition of small inanities and indignities. Since Caddyshack and Ghostbusters, Murray has refined his amiable doofus into the minimalist modern man—his posture a question mark, his face a concrete poem of anticipated disappointment. Murray—Man should have won an Oscar for Lost in Translation, and certainly for this film, where he can rise to romance and sink to despair—and be wonderfully funny—all in the same day.
All-TIME 100 Movies
TIME's Richard Corliss updates our All-TIME 100 list of the greatest films made since 1923 — the beginning of TIME — with 20 new entries
Bill Murray, Groundhog Day
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Behind the List
A - C
- Aguirre: The Wrath of God
- The Apu Trilogy
- The Awful Truth
- Baby Face
- Bande à part
- Barry Lyndon
- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Blade Runner
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Brazil
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Camille
- Casablanca
- Charade
- Children of Paradise
- Chinatown
- Chungking Express
- Citizen Kane
- City Lights
- City of God
- Closely Watched Trains
- The Crime of Monsieur Lange
- The Crowd
D - F
G - J
K - M
N - P
Q - S
T - Z
Great Performances
Guilty Pleasures
- Gone With the Wind, 1939, Victor Fleming, U.S.
- Tenth Avenue Angel, 1949, Roy Rowland, U.S.
- Sailor Beware, 1951, Hal Walker, U.S.
- Diabolique (Les Diaboliques), 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot, France
- School Girl, 1971, David Reberg, U.S
- There’s Something About Mary,1998, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, U.S.
- Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Otto Preminger, U.S.
- Gun Crazy, 1949, Joseph H. Lewis, U.S.
- The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957, Jack Arnold, U.S.
- Joe Versus the Volcano, 1990, John Patrick Shanley, U.S.
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