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For me, I think I’m on the same page with Amy in the sense that I think the jokes landed better for me in A Night At The Opera than they they did in Duck Soup. Still, I think, of the two, Duck Soup has more cultural relevance so I’d pick that one to stay. On a personal note, one of my favorite bits in the movie was this one between Groucho and Chico: -Groucho: Here are the contracts. You just put his name at the top and you sign at the bottom. There's no need of you reading that because these are duplicates. - Chico: Yes, duplicates. Duplicates, eh? - Groucho: I say, they're duplicates. - Chico: Oh, sure, it's a duplicate. Certainly. - Groucho: Don't you know what duplicates are? - Chico: Sure. Those five kids up in Canada I loved this joke because it reminds me of my father - who just passed away in December. While we were arranging his funeral, people would share personal stories about my father, many of which I had never heard. One of which had to do with the Dionne quintuplets. Born near Callander, Canada in 1934, the Dionne children were the first known quintuplets to all survive infancy. It was a huge deal at the time. So much so that it managed to get a reference in A Night At The Opera. (Chico is mistaking “duplicate” with “quintuplet.”) How this relates to my father is my that father was born in the town of North Bay, Ontario which is just south of Callander. When he was a kid, apparently the idea of quintuplets was still a major oddity and their existence attracted a bunch of tourists who would drive up there hoping to catch a glimpse of where they lived. Evidently, these tourists would often stop my father and his pals and ask them for directions to the quintuplets. As polite as can be, my father would give them careful and detailed directions - in the completely opposite direction! When I heard this story, I asked if it was to protect the quintuplets from gawkers, and I was told, “No, your father and his friends just liked messing with them.” Lol I really love this story about my father as a kid, and I like the idea that my father shared a bit of the same anarchic spirit of the Marx Brothers. It was nice to be reminded of that story as I was watching the film. I also want to say he eventually met Groucho, but I might be misremembering. He worked in advertising for most of his life and I know he had contact with Jerry Lewis (annoying), William “Bill” Shatner (class act), and Gilbert Godfried (...). However, I have a distinct memory of him telling me about Groucho and saying that he liked him.

Holy crap!

Apologies for being out of touch. I have had some health issues that don't need details. You just need to know I had a cardiac catheterization last week and had a stent put in my heart. I am still planning to host a showing of Shallow Grave this evening at 9 p.m. I can also do one tomorrow night if people want.

Sorry I missed this week you guys! I was really looking forward to it! My cat Albus had to have two emergency (minor) surgeries . One on Thursday and one again Monday when I noticed he was bleeding. I just got him home and he seems to be MUCH better. The vet staff pretty much wanted to keep him forever lol. He was eating everything in sight though they said.

I definitely did not get this joke. So, I appreciate this explanation. If we limit ourselves to one Marx Brothers movie, I'd push for Duck Soup no question. I think it's a more pure look at what they did best that no one else can quite do. No one else does that insanity. A Night At The Opera is maybe more influential but I think at the expense of feeling a bit more watered down for lack of a better phrase. This is still good but more "conventional" to me.

It's not a clear, direct reference, but this Simpsons scene seemed kind of inspired by the State Room scene in A Night at the Opera

Congratulations to sean and grace on the birth of a king

The Truman Show probably was a legit contender, given that it got three other nominations. Rushmore was too small a release at the time and Big Lebowski was considered a flop.

I have a vague sense here that A Night at the Opera works better on first viewing, but Duck Soup works better after multiple viewings. The lack of story in the latter doesn't matter so much when you're not expecting it anymore, while the "dead spots" in the former become more magnified when you're waiting for the next comedy bit.

Oh for sure. There's no chance they'd actually have been nominated, but certainly all 3 are high enough quality, and have made big impacts on culture.

Rushmore, The Big Lebowski, The Truman Show were all 1998

Haha yea. I think I made clear why I think it's badly manipulative, so I was half-joking. Maybe the phrase needs more elaborating though, for sure, but 'cheese' also encompasses the problem with it. I like narrowing down definitions though, because as mentioned by you guys earlier, most films are in some ways. So where is the difference? What's the line? I think the key is in the 'manipulative' part. 'Emotional' is fine. But 'emotionally manipulative'? I think that's valid criticism. Badly manipulative stories add emotion unnaturally -- either ringing untrue like grudlian's example, or just totally unnecessarily (like every other example in the movie). The fact is, this isn't a Hallmark TV movie about the people falling in love at Christmas time. It should not need to do this to be effective. It does not need to manufacture all these little moments for us in this way. It's condescending!

OK, replace any mention I made of 'manipulative' with 'pointlessly cheesy'

Agreed on all counts. I was pretty hard on Platoon, but I think Platoon mostly holds together better than this. (Although I might change my mind again when I rewatch Platoon and hear Charlie Sheen's stupid voiceover work again.) There's a couple things in the screenplay that I think are really bad. First, I think it's such a weird move that one theme of the movie is the characters talking about how stupid the plot of the movie is. You've convinced me, characters of the film: the idea that General George Marshall would alter his war strategy to appease a mother in Iowa IS a pretty dumb premise. Secondly, relatedly, after they go through the dog tags, and they're talking about how hard it might be to find Ryan, Miller is basically like, "Maybe if I just call his name, we'll find him, wouldn't that be stupid? LOL." And then Miller calls his name and immediately gets the information needed to find him. And it is stupid. Also, you get the sense that the writer learned the phrase FUBAR while writing this and was just fucking tickled by it. Then the Spielberg schmaltz doesn't help either. John Williams' score comes off as more manipulative than moving, and Old Man Ryan's breakdown has echoes of the worst scene in Schindler's List, when Schindler inexplicably breaks down about not having saved more people. The comic relief bits didn't really work for me on this rewatch either. For example, though the Nathan Fillion fake-Ryan scene is funny, it's 100% meaningless to the film and is only in there so that the film could be 10 minutes longer and a small amount funnier. At any rate, I agree with what seems to be the prevailing opinion so far, that this film shouldn't be on the list. Is there anyone out there who wants to argue that this is one of their top 5 favorite Spielberg films? I'm pretty sure it's not even in my top 10. No disrespect to Spielberg, who I believe has made more masterpieces than anyone on the list other maybe Kubrick, and has a deeper bench of near-masterpiece films than anyone on the list other than maybe Wilder and Hitchcock. But this film is not one of them.

I was worried the Saving Private Ryan ep would be overly focused on minutiae of filmmaking (sound design, etc.) but am very happy with the direction the discussion did go. I pretty much agree with Paul & Amy here, but go a little further - I question this story and basically don't like it much at all. When thinking about it, I keep coming back to Vin Diesel's death scene. Instead of just being dramatically shot, Spielberg and the writer have to wrap it all in this scene with the little girl and how she reminds him of her niece and then he gets shot. To me it's like, you spend all this time on accuracy but then it's telling these emotionally manipulative scenes, which to me is the opposite of accurate. They don't fit together. Even the whole story of saving Ryan, as Paul said, it's about pleasing the mother which is a strikingly cheesy way to frame the whole thing. I'm no big fan of war movies, and the others we've seen on this list weren't my favorites either, but I'll say I vastly preferred Platoon and Apocalypse Now to this one. In fact, it's making me look at those two a little more favorably than I previously had.