Leaderboard

I agree with the general consensus here: it's a good movie, competently made and well-acted (Teri Garr really is terrific), but I'm not seeing where it's good enough or important enough to remain on the Top 100. Some Like It Hot is absolutely the better cross-dressing rom-com and it's already on the list. Dustin Hoffman is already represented. I don't think Sydney Pollack is an important enough director to require inclusion, but if he were I'd rather have They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I'm with @Cameron H. in thinking that the ending is a problem. It doesn't really tie up the storyline very well, and to me more importantly it feels like a cop-out. Whether or not the Jessica Lange character is romantically interested in our leading man or they are just friends, I think it happens way too fast that she forgives him for his lying. It feels to me like the filmmakers think that because the movie must be classified as a "Comedy," they have to manufacture a happy ending. How about grappling with the larger implications of your premise first? This is also where the movie really feels like a "feminist" film entirely coming from the perspective of straight men. The "resolution" is just about how one straight dude learned to be a bit less selfish, even after putting a whole lot of people's careers at risk with a self-interested stunt. I would cut it some slack for this, but as was mentioned, 9 to 5 was already out and clearly has a more female-centered slant to it. I don't even think that's necessarily a better movie (the direction is pretty weak IMO), but as a historical artifact it's more interesting. Anyway, that all sounds like I'm really negative on the movie, but I'm not. It was an enjoyable watch, just not Top 100 material.

Unless someone already owns this, I can probably host this on Friday since it's free to stream through my library.

511 minutes too short

Since time travel is fake though you can make up the rules as you see them or break them as you see them, which is what they were doing by calling BTF untrue, but then following the rules of it when they went back in time (not running into past selves, making huge changes), so it was weird that after all that Steve goes fuck it and just rearranges 70 years of history. I have seen some theories that it's not Peggy he's married to but that he managed to bring back Black Widow from the time stream and that's who he was with, also leading to why Banner couldn't bring her back to the present because she had already been brought back to the past. I am now a bit more interested in the Black Widow movie, which I believe is supposed to be out as the last MCU movie for 2020 or the first for 2021, while The Eternals is starting filming in three months so that should be coming out next year, while Black Panther 2 is looking to come out 2021 along with Doctor Strange 2 being another likely film for that year, Guardians 3 in 2022 at the earliest, then Shang Chi has no timeline yet as they are still finding a cast and crew for it. Seeing as though that's only half of the movies that could be in this Phase given the recent release record of Marvel, I expect there to be a Captain Marvel 2, and possibly a Captain America/Winter Soldier film, along with the recent properties Disney got, which does include Fantastic Four. With Tony grabbing the stones, if I recall, he uses both hands to grab Thano's gauntlet and it's his right hand that ends up with the stones. After the years of seeing the various ways Tony has created suits that form around his body, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a pickpocket mode built into one for this such occasion, akin to Spider-Man's suit that has 1,000 different modes that he can use at any moment. I was irked by Nebula killing her past self because that just creates the offshoot reality that the Ancient One was warning against, and even having past Gamora running around in the present is more of those same issues. I have heard rumors that Marvel might be setting up The Maestro as a big bad, given that there is smart Hulk now, which could be interesting given that they really haven't given Hulk a standalone film since Phase 1. I also wondered about all of the people who came back, like how do you go about normal life after being gone for five years and you know why you were gone? They apparently haven't aged so Hawkeye is now five years older than when they last saw him, and then you have the people who come back but find out that their loved ones either died over the course of the five year gap, or via survivor's guilt killed themselves. As far as the rat goes, that I liked because of the randomness of the universe, it would most likely be an animal or something falling on the machine to reactivate it. My one big question was regarding when the people came back, what is there reaction to seeing how everyone that lived just said screw it and apparently didn't pick up a single piece of trash in the ensuing five years.

One thing I've been thinking about lately and really noticing is the sort of cinematic language that these films use. It's why I defended Chinatown in the face of a general indifference: I think it really has its own language in how it tells its story. Paul kept saying Tootsie was more than just Bosom Buddies, and that's sort of true in some regard: but also not so much. Take all the actions of the story: now he has to take care of a baby, oh now he is in some vaguely homophobic misunderstanding because a man is in love with him (his love interest's dad no less!), etc. These plot points are not any different than what you'd see on Bosom Buddies. So even if they're making a valid statement, or being funny!, it's just not done in a quality way with any sort of originality or creativity. Oh and how about the numerous music montages? Great films don't get to use that shortcut so many times in one movie. By my count, there were five. That's ridiculous. All the decisions they made to tell this story are not at all elevated from any old '80s drag comedy, even if maybe the acting is better. There's just not enough here for me to think it should be a classic to any level, and I'm totally baffled that it is. I have it last on my list of the 47 movies we've seen. I may enjoy it a little more than some of the others down near the bottom, but that's not all we're looking at here. I can sort of accept the pioneering nature of it, but even there, I'm not sure it's enough. One thing I think would improve this is though Hoffman's character dresses as a woman, he never truly identifies as one, so the perspective offered seems very narrow to me. I think what Bill Murray said about Hoffman and Pollack was illuminating: they had no idea what they were making. They should have let Bill direct it and turn it into what he was seeing could be.

It’s a shame because I actually think I have a really interesting question that uniquely relates to Tony Hale (how does he get into the funny zone). Shame there was no shoutout for the lunch podcast on pro version.

Haven't posted in a few weeks. So I'll post my thoughts on all the episodes (including pro version) since my last appearance here. funny

Please note: I will be voting for this as all top 10 episodes of 2019.

some real wiseguys

This could have gone wrong in so many ways but Marvel nailed it on nearly everything, it was fan service in the BEST way imaginable. The way that they created applause/cheer break scenes that gave the audience enough time to savor before quieting to get back to the movie is something I've never seen done so much or so well in a film, especially with the worthy Cap scene and the army reveal. I loved the return characters from so many films and the fact that 99% of them weren't just quick appearances but actually added something to the story. My only issues with the film were I found Nerd Hulk oddly disconcerting to look at, it was like they did too well with how he looked. The other was the ending for Captain America, as I just read an article that broke down all of the issues with it in concern to how the overall movie played out because it Back to the Futures almost every huge event in MCU history https://www.thewrap.com/avengers-endgame-that-last-captain-america-scene-makes-no-sense-peggy/. But even with that it still didn't stop me from giving this a five star rating on Letterboxd, this movie was just that good.

Paul talked about how this was a perfect "bridge movie" for the Academy Awards, smack in the middle of The Music Man and the subversive Bonnie and Clyde. First of all, it wasn't The Music Man, it was Dr. Doolittle (the Music Man was 5 years earlier). But Paul and Amy gave major short shrift to how epic that year's Oscars race was. You guys HAVE to read what must be one of the best books written about Hollywood: "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood" by Mark Harris. (for what it's worth, Quentin Tarantino calls it "one of the best books I've read in my life", as quoted on Amazon) When I read it I didn't know which film had won for Best Picture, and it was riveting to see how the race played out, and what those five films said about Hollywood and America at the time. Looking back, 1967 was the pivotal moment when Hollywood started to shed the old-fashioned Biblical epics and movie musicals and moving toward socially relevant, auteurist fare. So in 1967 you had two revolutionary films, still considered classics, that captured the Vietnam-era American malaise: Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate two films starring Sidney Poitier that tackled contemporary issues of race and prejudice, albeit in different ways: In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and a film that "old Hollywood" shoved down that Academy's throat, just because they wasted so much money on it and wanted to at least reap some critical self-acclaim even if no one paid to see it in theaters: Dr. Doolittle From what I remember of the book - in addition to incredible stories about Stanley Kramer, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, etc. - was that it was wide open season for Best Picture in 1967. It could have gone to any of those films (except for Dr. Doolittle). It turned out to be a perfect triangulation between the ballsy, forward-looking The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde and - not the musical, but the more audience-friendly depiction of idyllic race relations, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? And so In the Heat of the Night won. I don't know which AFI list this is, or how it differs from the list Unspooled is using...but here you've got 3 of the Oscar nominated movies from '67 on the Top 100 list and In the Heat of the Night, the Best Picture winner, ISN'T INCLUDED. https://www.afi.com/100years/movies.aspx I don't know if Guess Who's Coming? is on Paul and Amy's list. I'm assuming The Graduate is. But with 3 or 4 Oscar-nominated films, 1967 might be the winningest year for movies on the list, at least tied with 1939.

My Mom grew up in Sparta, Illinois, where this film was made (to substitute for Sparta, Mississippi). It was an hour south of St. Louis, but still on the north side of the Mason-Dixon line. When this movie came on TV in the late 60's/early 70's, we were living in St. Paul. Mom would have us watch the movie and show us the racist things that we didn't see growing up in Minnesota. Some were blatant and some were more subtle. You brushed on one of the more subtle items at the end of the movie, where Rod Steiger carries Sidney Poiter's suitcase to the train. This was a big deal to my Mom. At that time in the South, she told us, it would have been VERY unusual for a white man to carry a black man's bag. There are little things like this in the movie that we don't really get the impact of now that audiences in the late 60's would have picked up on. Good podcast - keep them coming.