bleary

Yeah, I get the urge to promote your own film, but maybe spending 15 minutes out of a 90 minute podcast on that rather than the 50ish he spent would have made for a better episode. But I liked the purported topic of the episode quite a bit and am happy to vote yes on it.

It will be interesting to see how this vote turns out. I think there's little doubt that RoboCop is more influential than Starship Troopers, but I think the latter is probably a more interesting film.

My only complaint with this episode was that it wasn't 3 hours long, because there's still so much to talk about with these 3 movies. First off, I do wonder if there's anyone out who would have voted for "2 only" if that had been an option. I know that as a kid, my brother always claimed that Part 2 was his favorite, and I have to think there are some people somewhere who still feel that way. Then onto my thoughts about the movies themselves. I think Amy and Evan did a great job talking about all the ways that Part 1 is perfect, and I'll echo that the most important thing that distinguishes Part 1 from the sequels is that Part 1 is really just about Marty understanding that his parents were his age once. And even though that's a simple enough idea, so much great stuff is mined from that, from him recognizing that his mom was looking to get laid, to the realization that his dad was the kind of kid who climbed a tree with binoculars and looks into girls' windows: the kinds of stories that no parent would want to tell their child, and that no child would really want to know about their parent either. This arc is what makes the movie good, and to be honest, Crispin Glover is what makes this arc work as perfectly as it does. I'll pause here to direct everyone to fellow Earwolf podcast I Was There Too, in which episode #55 had Tom Wilson talk about his role as Biff. Tom Wilson, in that podcast and in other interviews, has also pointed to Crispin Glover's performance as the real reason his own performance worked as well as it did. I think it was Amy in this episode who mentioned the intense reaction you feel when watching Biff be a bully, and it works because Glover was able to so perfectly play the habitually bullied kid. Moreover, he does this in such a way that not only was his reaction to being bullied believably, but you could immediately understand the history between these two: the defeated, beaten-down victim and his daily assailant. In many ways, this is the most important relationship in the film, because this is the only relationship that Marty actually completely changes in 1955, and we see the drastic effect it has on everyone's lives in 1985. Furthermore, the triumphant moment in the film doesn't belong to Marty, it belongs to George. All this is to say that Crispin Glover's work as George is what transforms this movie from something good and inventive to something truly special. And it's easy to laud Glover all the more when he's missing in the sequels, which, in my opinion, don't work in his absence. In Part 2, the strong emotional core of familial generations understanding each other is replaced by, essentially, shenanigans. I don't want to dismiss this too much, because Part 2 might be the coolest of the movies. The idea of going back to the scenes from the previous movie and reviewing them from other vantage points is an objectively cool/fun/meta-in-all-the-good-ways idea. The concept of Doc having a letter delivered to Marty at the precise moment in 1955 when he disappeared is cool. The 2015 presented in Part 2 is cool. Hoverboards are cool, even if they don't work on water. And in hindsight, the accuracy of so many things in the 2015 scenes are cool. (A counterpoint to this though: if we're going to give points to BTTF Part 2 for correctly predicting the future, does that mean Blade Runner should lose points for so poorly predicting the future?) But beyond the coolness, what is there in Part 2? For any sequel, there's a question of how beholden it is to the original, with some sequels only loosely tying to the original, or other sequels continuing one character's arc in a different type of story from the original. I say this because there are many successful ways to make a sequel. (See, for example, Thor 3, which ends up being an incredibly enjoyable movie in the ways that its predecessors are decidedly not.) However, I think a cardinal sin in making a sequel is changing your characters' impulses and motivations in a way that is unrealistic with respect to the amount of time that passed in the fictional universe between films. And in BTTF Part 2, there is zero time passed in the fictional universe between films, and yet Marty now has a completely new motivation that had never been mentioned before but now becomes the impetus of his character moving forward: no one calls him chicken? What? Then when Jennifer becomes a non-character, the only chance of a real emotional conflict is between Marty and his mother in alternate-1985, which has potential but is given too little screen time to really develop. Stripped of any real emotional arcs, Part 2 is little more than an exercise in complex plotting. And credit where credit is due, the plotting in Part 2 in mostly magnificent. (I must say though -- if I were Marty, I don't think I'd have taken Doc's handwaving explanation of why it was okay to leave Jennifer dumped in hellish-1985 as readily as he did in this film.) However, the chicken-shift in Marty's character and the lack of characters arcs in general always left me feeling pretty empty about Part 2. And here's my potentially hot take: purely from a Campbellian storytelling point of view, Part 3 is better than Part 2. It absolutely lacks much of the time travel coolness present in Part 2, but it's clear what the journeys of the characters are, and I believe they're executed fairly well, relative to the chicken-shift in Part 2. (Although it's not as jarring as the chicken-shift, we get a slight character alteration in Part 3, with Doc's out-of-nowhere Jules Verne obsession. This is more believable that Doc could be super into Jules Verne, but it's a little weird that he's so into Jules Verne that he names his children Jules and Verne, yet had never mentioned anything about Jules Verne in either of the previous films?) Marty's motivation is to save Doc from 1985 and bring him back to the future, and his arc is to overcome his stupid, crippling chicken-pride. Doc's motivation is to get Marty back to the future and destroy the time machine forever, and his arc is discovering, with the help of Clara, that despite all his wonder with technological achievements, he's happier in 1885 than he ever could be in the 20th and 21st centuries. And this wasn't really mentioned in the podcast episode, but you really have to give it to Mary Steenburgen for making that aspect of the film work as well as it did. She made it completely believable why she'd be interested in Doc, and why Doc would be so conflicted about the possibility of losing her. I also like the emotional beats in this film between Doc and Marty, like the photo in front of the new clock. So I think there's actually a lot to like about this movie. The problems with Part 3 are, of course, numerous as well, primarily that Marty doesn't really have anything to do between when he arrives back in 1885 and when he invents the bulletproof vest at the end. One could say that he plays Doc's part in Part 1, advising against forming relationships that could alter the future, but without the knowledge or gravitas that Doc had when he was the one advising. And honestly, the biggest issue I have with Part 3 is the ending, where Doc makes a new time machine in order to... pick up his dog? Say goodbye to Marty? Doc had been saying for the last movie and a half that the time machine was too dangerous and must be destroyed, yet he decided to build a new one anyway for pretty thin reasons. I'd have loved all the information that Doc gives Marty at the end to be delivered in another letter from 1885. It would have been better if Doc knew that he could reinvent the time machine in 1885, but chose not to. As it is, it's a bad ending to a pretty mediocre movie. But at least Marty overcame that chicken-pride. So I really think that Part 1 is the only Canon-worthy entry. That said, I'm not angry if one or both of the other two get in, as there are scenes in them that I absolutely adore as well. As long as Part 1 gets in, I won't be upset with however this vote turns out.

I was a soft no before listening to the episode, but Amy and Kier-La won me over. My initial impression of the film was the anti-women view, but I liked the alternate view presented in the episode. And I learned a lot about how messed up Canada was!

It seems like a lot of people are basing their votes on the relationship between this movie and the genres of monster movies and kaiju movies. I don't understand this reasoning for a number of levels. First, this isn't a versus episode against Godzilla, so why should it matter that you prefer Godzilla or that Godzilla was more influential? Secondly, as pointed out by Amy in the episode, I don't know if this even qualifies as a "monster movie" due to the way the creature is depicted: not as a humanized character, nor as a heartless killing machine, but just as a animal. Of the Bong Joon-Ho films I've seen, I echo a lot of the posts here in saying that Memories of Murder is his masterpiece. But I'm very glad I saw The Host, and I probably wouldn't have if it wasn't for this episode. This is an inventive, unique movie, and I think the bonkers tone works even better here than it does in Snowpiercer. The camerawork is masterful as it always is in his films, and you can count me among those who were not upset with either the CGI or the soundtrack. I honestly didn't even notice the score being out of character, and while I had quibbles with the CGI upon first viewing of the creature, the fact that they show the creature so early works to the film's favor. I pretty much forgot about the CGI problems until that terrible fire effect at the end. I'm a yes, and as of 10:00am EST on Sunday, that makes the vote tied.

If you get Criterion Channel through Filmstruck, it's currently streaming on that as well.

sycasey 2.0's post here was great and gives all the reasons and more that I'm voting no on this one. I want to talk about a couple things that were mentioned briefly on the podcast but haven't been discussed in this thread yet. First, did anyone else have a little shudder when the Weinstein Company logo popped on the screen at the beginning? I mean, it appears Harvey had little to no involvement in this film, but it certainly made me cringe, particularly since this film centers around the idea of women being abused, albeit non-sexually. And speaking of the abuse, I want to talk about a thing I hate in movies that pops up across genres, which is where a film tries to criticize the glorification of some vice by glorifying it itself. Like how in "The Wolf of Wall Street," where the 80s business culture of drugs and misogyny is satirized by... showing how much fun drugs and misogyny are? So in this movie, Mademoiselle's monologue in which it becomes apparent that she's making meta-commentary about the horror genre and fans of the horror genre made my eyes roll. The sadistic villain explaining why gory movies are appealing, in a way that, I believe, is supposed to make the viewer realize that it's pretty fucked up. And yet, 15 minutes earlier we had a shot of metal staples being removed from a woman's skull. And I can't help but say that I agree with Mademoiselle's meta-commentary, that wanting to watch this movie is a little fucked up. Same goes for Mademoiselle's line about why it's "better" to torture young women than anyone else. It feels like simultaneously trying to take a stand against violence towards women, while also showing basically nothing but violence towards women. How are we supposed to feel about Anna at the end of this film? Happy that she lived? Sad that she didn't die sooner? I don't know if I believe the film even cared at that point, because it got to close on exactly what Mademoiselle had wanted: a still frame shot of a broken person. Is that what you wanted to see too?

I laughed when movies like "Diabolique" and directors like Hitchcock and Scorsese were mentioned in this episode, because their work is, you know, good. This is schlock. It's a B-movie that knows it's a B-movie. The plot is a mess, the effects couldn't be cheaper, and the gimmick is a gimmick. I'm glad it's a guilty pleasure for some people (especially for Gilbert Gottfried), but I don't see it displaying any merit entitling it to Canonization, nor do I believe it has had any meaningful effect on cinema or pop culture history. And I bristled at the discussion that Corman made movies more cynically than Castle did, particularly when Castle was described as a huckster earlier in the episode. It seems to me that Corman was more interested in making films, and Castle was more interested in crafting theatrical experiences, but both genuinely enjoyed doing what they did AND they were happy to make money off it when possible. And I'm sure Scorsese, Frances Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, and many others could attest to the impact that Corman had on their careers in particular and on film history in general. Does William Castle deserve a place in the Canon for being the master of gimmickry? I'll vote no.

I'm going to vote soon, but first, I believe that no discussion of the Tingler is complete without mentioning the extent to which Gilbert Gottfried is insanely amused by it. I've heard him talk about it in several episodes of his own podcast (hosted by Earwolf) and at least one episode of someone else's. [media='']https://youtu.be/aHLiZAoOx_g?t=40m7s[/media] (This is supposed to start automatically at 40:07) https://audioboom.co...d-all-that-jazz (Start at 7:40) And also on Harmontown in front of a live audience, with Tingler discussion beginning at 16:00 -- http://podbay.fm/sho...019?autostart=1 I wish anything made me laugh as hard as the Tingler makes Gilbert Gottfried laugh.

Hmm, although I agree that #2 and #4 are definitely intended to be humorous, I'm inclined to believe that #1 and #5 were more intended to come off as "cool." Keanu's wooden dialogue delivery makes "I know Kung Fu" funnier than it is on the page. And Hugo Weaving does give a glorious, scenery-chewing performance, but again, I don't know if I'm sure that's what the Wachowskis intended. I think the main things that in retrospect seem goofy to me are the things that seemed super deep at the time, like Morpheus's "Do you think that's air you're breathing now?", the Oracle's "What's really going to bake your noodle later on is: would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?", and of course the monologue by Spoon Boy. Those sorts of freshman-level philosophy major things worked for me as a teenager but definitely seem silly to me now. Not to criticize, because certainly just because something is much sillier than was intended doesn't automatically make it bad (which I'm sure will come up in next week's discussion of The Tingler).

My teenage self loved this movie so much that I would have really taken any excuse to vote yes, and Cameron's read on it is more than enough. As Amy says, it's a totally goofy film, but I still find it so enjoyable, and it was an absolute industry game-changer. This movie was also 100% responsible for the 3 months of my life that I was super into both late-90s techno and Rage Against The Machine (the techno interest died quickly, the Rage stayed at least to the end of the Bush administration). I really don't want to underplay how utterly obsessed I was with this movie as a teenager. Looking back, I can't believe the sequel(s) only came out 4 years later, because it felt like a decade in hyper-anxious teenage years. I dove deep into this the way some people dove into Lost, trying to piece together every possible allusion or piece of symbolism (though admittedly I completely missed the great queer-centric read that Cameron gives). I fondly recall the juvenile sense of glee I got from reading up on the historical and Biblical figure of King Nebuchadnezzar and trying to place what it could mean that Morpheus's ship was named after him. So yeah, much of my love for this movie is strongly tied to who I was at that particular time (in the same way that people who were teenagers in the mid-80s have trouble seeing that Ghostbusters is not actually a good movie). I try to look at it now with a more discerning eye, and I would still want to put it in my top 10 best action movies ever, but again, I can't claim to rid myself of all biases. But I think the cultural impact of this movie is undeniable, so I certainly won't lose any sleep over voting yes on this one.

Part of why I'm hoping this gets in is to hear Amy react to the fact that Ice Cube has more films in the Canon than Tom Cruise. I've never seen House Party, so I have no idea if they did the idea of a slice of life, hangout comedy better than Friday. But I liked Friday for being that, and sort of taking the air out of that deadly serious view of South Central LA that's depicted in Boyz N The Hood (and Menace II Society, and South Central, and Poetic Justice, etc.) As mentioned above, criticizing comedy is hard. I personally laughed more at this than I did at Real Life, but it's not like you're wrong if you experienced the opposite. I don't know how useful it is to break down comedic elements, but I mostly loved the small sight gags that were mentioned in the episode, like Craig's girlfriend jealously calling him while lying next to another guy. Also, Amy and Ben talked about "Bye Felicia" as sort of a throwaway line, but I have to say that Cube's delivery of the line was absolutely perfect and had me cracking up. I get the complaints about the tone problems, particularly about how any ostensible arc Craig has is about learning to not use a gun and learning how to dump his girlfriend. (Even the last fight could be seen as funny if the film weren't taking it seriously; Craig finds that hitting an unarmed guy with a two by four is much manlier than using a gun.) I actually wouldn't even throw the drive-by into that tone-deaf category though, because the film mostly plays it for laughs, and you get the sense that maybe that actually is part of the lives of these characters. It's far from a perfect movie, but I think it's good, and it has certainly had a lasting impact on some aspects of film/society. I'm a soft yes on this one.

This is also currently streaming on MaxGo, if you have Cinemax.

I voted yes for Fatal Attraction too.

I can't believe the forum opinion on this one, which seems to think (a.) Minority Report is good, and (b.) Top Gun is bad. I'll get back to this though. First, one of these movies is iconic, and one of them is forgettable. I watched both movies for the first time in about five years before listening to this episode. I had forgotten essentially everything about Minority Report, except for two or three scenes. If I watch it again in five years, I'm confident I'll have forgotten most of it again. Meanwhile, nearly every scene in Top Gun is memorable, with some among the most recognizable in film history. Love them or hate them, the beach volleyball scene, the cobalt-blue lit sex scene, and the Righteous Brothers bar scene are iconic scenes in a way that nothing in Minority Report can compare. I mean, the beach volleyball scene invented a new high-five that we all aspire to master! Next, the soundtrack for Top Gun is one of the most incredible ever assembled. Even if the 80s-ness of it is not to your taste, you can't deny that "Danger Zone," written for the film, is as indelibly linked to the imagery in it as "Don't You (Forget About Me)" is linked to The Breakfast Club. Similarly, whenever I hear "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" or "Take My Breath Away" I can see Goose and Maverick singing at the bar or that profoundly awkward sex scene (which again, as unsexy as the sex looks, the silhouettes in front of the blue light still makes for a great shot). Hell, I still primarily think of Goose on the piano every time I hear "Great Balls of Fire" and there was literally a whole different movie with that title that was about the guy who wrote the song. And then don't get me started on the Top Gun anthem, which is the most 80s thing possible and still never fails to pump me up. Finally, Top Gun has an armory full of memorable lines, including "need for speed," which made the AFI Top 100 Movie Quotes of All Time. Through and through, Top Gun is in the pantheon of recognizable movies and has so saturated pop culture that if you haven't seen this movie, you are missing a crucial reference point for America in the 1980s. Next, Minority Report is a fine movie. Its strengths come from how good Philip K. Dick's short story is, how cool (at the time) the effects were, and how good at acting nearly everyone in the cast is. I mean, you put Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow, and even slightly sub-peak Tom Cruise together, and you're going to get something decent. But I really think just about everything else in this movie goes wrong. I strongly dislike the desaturated colors. I don't like most of what was added to Dick's story, such as the dead child plot. I HATE the soundtrack, which is completely incongruous with the futuristic imagery of the film. (Don't get me wrong, John Williams is a master, but this is a big swing and a miss. Perhaps the problem was Spielberg asking him to do two straight futuristic soundtracks with this coming right after A.I., which, for all its problems, had a way more appropriate score than Minority Report.) And perhaps most of all, the pacing of this movie is terrible. Much of that is probably due to the changes from Dick's story. The enactment of Anderton committing the "murder" should be the denouement. Instead, after the movie crescendos to that point reasonably effectively, we still have almost an hour left. In Dick's story, Anderton goes through with the murder willingly, and then explains why. Here, although it is the resolution of the inciting incident for the whole story, it's used simply to open up a new mystery, and then the movie limps to the finish line. Oh, and as far as the plot holes: It's one thing to handwave away Star Trek's use of warp speed as being an unimportant detail. Star Trek is not a story about how the warp drive works. However, Minority Report is a story about how every murder has been seen and predicted, so to have Lara pull a gun on the jailer while the Precogs are up and running, and for the jailer not to realize that he's not actually about to be murdered, that's a far more egregious error. If your sci-fi movie is about the invention of a particular piece of technology, make sure that you follow your own made-up rules. Now, I'm probably not going to be able to convince anyone that Top Gun is a brilliant piece of cinema on par with Citizen Kane and The Godfather. It's not. However, I think a lot of people on this forum are completely missing what the film is really saying about machismo and masculinity. You get it in the first scene when Cougar has his breakdown, betraying the macho image that all the other pilots try to portray. What I find really interesting is that no one criticizes Cougar for this after the fact, even behind his back. It would be easy to show other pilots mocking him for "wimping out," but no one does because all of them are aware of how thin the macho facade they put on really is, and how easily it could break. And then it's interesting that the only person who looks down on Maverick for "wimping out" is Charlie, one of the only female characters in the film. All these supposedly macho dudes see what happened to Maverick and view it with empathy rather than derision. And as mentioned in the episode, Cruise does a great job in his performance, showing the difference in his personality when he's putting on a facade for the other guys versus when he's alone, or just with Goose, or just with Charlie. At any rate, I could talk about the things in this movie that don't work, including the romance and much of the daddy backstory. And I'll avoid getting into whether or not the film is too jingoistic, which I don't really think it is, but I can see the arguments of those who do. But this is a good movie. I feel like people think it's cheesy because of how of the time it was, and maybe it is, but I don't understand how that lessens its quality. I could talk so much more about why Top Gun is good; I haven't even gotten to Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer doing vastly underrated work. But again, I don't think I'll be able to convince people if they weren't convinced by the podcast. Finally, a lot of people are throwing out other movies with Tom Cruise that they would have preferred to see. I think that the point of this episode was to pick two "Tom Cruise movies", which is to say that he is the dominating force behind them. Rain Man is not a "Tom Cruise movie." It's a Dustin Hoffman movie that Tom Cruise is quite good in. Similarly, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, and A Few Good Men don't ring to me as "Tom Cruise movies," because the ensemble/director/writer are the stars of those movies, respectfully. Even Collateral just doesn't seem to fit to me, perhaps because it's a true two-hander with Foxx doing great work, and perhaps because Cruise is the bad guy, which seems so different than the rest of his films. Which leaves things like Risky Business and Born on the 4th of July. And those could have just as easily have been picked, but Tom and Abe didn't pick them, so that's that. Top Gun vs. Born of the 4th of July would have been an interesting episode as well, and maybe the latter will get revisited someday along the road. But come on guys, this is a no-brainer. Top Gun is so already in the canon that it seems silly to have to vote on it for the Canon.

I loved the episode, I'm glad I watched the film, and I'm a huge fan of Matt Zoller Seitz, which makes me a little sad that I'm a soft no on this one. I think it's technically very impressive, but not enough for me to put it in on those merits alone. And although some seem to be lauding the inventiveness of the plot, to me it just felt like a full length Twilight Zone episode with some pacing problems. The whole sequence from when Arthur gets to the Company to when he actually gets valmorphanized is much longer than I felt it needed to be, and the early scenes of Tony assimilating to his new life dragged as well, in my opinion. Certainly, there were bright parts. As mentioned in the episode, the camerawork in that opening scene is really fantastic. I also greatly enjoyed both scenes with his wife, both Arthur's scene with her at the beginning and later when Tony goes to visit her. I really liked Murray Hamilton's bit part as Charlie. And I thought the score was excellent and gave the film the perfect tone. For all these reasons, I'm glad that this episode introduced me to this film. But the rest didn't really do much for me, and as I said above, I found the plot a bit predictable and a bit slow at times. Very, very soft no for me.

I'm sad I was on vacation and missed this episode/vote, as I would have voted yes. I hadn't heard of this before it got nominated for the Canon, and I'm glad I watched it. I was laughing my ass off through most of it. It did start to drag around the 50-60 minute mark, but I definitely didn't see it as a tough hang. And I thought the message was pretty clear: Putney realizes that he's starting to fall into the hypocrisies of the management, and most of all, he sees that his once radical team has become the same as the boardroom of brainless yes-men at the start of the movie (save a couple exceptions), so he decides to blow it all up. It's not super deep, but I found it to be a riot, on the level with some of the Mel Brooks parodies of that decade.

Top Gun is also on Hulu right now.

This is going to end up being a much closer vote than I expected. I also watched Marie Antoinette just for this Canon episode, and I was surprised at how great it is. It's the technically superior of the two films. I loved how the soundtrack choices were used to reflect Marie's feelings at any given moment, with the orchestral swells in the bits where she's around other royals and participating in the pomp and circumstance, and the modern music in the bits where she's just behaving as a normal (albeit spoiled) teenager. The direction in those pomp and circumstance scenes is so great, as Coppola films them like parodies of Barry Lyndon or Tom Jones. Simply put, Marie Antoinette deserves to be in the Canon as an example of how score, photography, and costuming can tell a story even better than acting or dialogue at times. The problem is that although I appreciated those technical aspects, I really didn't connect to the story (perhaps because I've never been a teenage girl?). Meanwhile, Lost in Translation is also technically stellar, but made the story seem much more human and relatable, despite the fact that I've never been in any of those characters' situations either. It's a movie that stayed with me much longer than something like Marie Antoinette could. So in the end, this is a tough call. If either of these movies were in a solo episode, I'd vote for either. But in this versus, I have to go with Lost in Translation.

This will get in easily, and maybe it should, but I really agreed strongly with Ira's points on it. Perhaps it's because I saw their later films first, but for whatever reason, Raising Arizona never resonated with me. I'm voting no, but I realize that it won't matter.

Great episode. This is a tough call, but I'm going with Black Orpheus. I remember when I first saw City of God, I had very high expectations from its place in rankings (it's still the 2nd highest rated non-English language film on IMDb), and although I generally enjoyed it, it did not live up to those lofty expectations, and I think Justin and Amy's criticisms hit the nail on the head as to why. None of the characters really feel as fleshed out as they could be, the gangster rise & fall story is sort of old hat and predictable, and the treatment of/lack of female characters is a real bummer. So maybe it's partly backlash to how overrated I think City of God is that I'm not voting for it. Black Orpheus is a movie I'd never seen before this week, and I think it's a better film.

I thought this was a great episode to listen to, and I think both Amy and Michael boiled down the distinction between them rather well: Eraserhead is the formation of Lynch's artistic vision, and Blue Velvet is the formation of Lynch's thematic vision. I'll restate that slightly to say that Eraserhead is the formation of Lynch's artistic vision of his feature length film. Lynch's style had been on display before in his handful of short films that he made before Eraserhead (nearly all of which are on Filmstruck, if you're interested in checking them out.) Lynch's thematic vision is the idea of the seedy underbelly of average America, which is present in Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks (show and film), and even in Mulholland Dr. in the character of Diane, but it is encapsulated best in Blue Velvet. While Eraserhead may have inspired many filmmakers, I still think it's a natural progression from his work on The Alphabet, The Grandmother, and The Amputee. All are incredible avant-garde art films, with the common thread being an other-worldly reality. The terror of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (and of Bob from Twin Peaks or the bum or the grandparents in Mulholland Dr.) is that these characters are living in this world; they teeter on the cusp of reality and surreality. And to me, this is the essence of the body of David Lynch's work. I love Lynch for dancing on that knife's edge. Although I think Mulholland Dr. does it better and is my personal favorite Lynch film, Blue Velvet is where he finds a home in this style. So I voted for Blue Velvet.

At least Devin's occasional man-splaining came with some humor. Boy, Armond was a slog. Kudos to Amy for getting through it, but I hope he's not invited back.

Again, I don't believe that was Aykroyd's original intention. He has said that his original script had a much darker tone, and it featured the team traveling through time, space, and alternate dimensions. His vision was to make a sci-fi movie first that would have moments of comedy, rather than to make a comedy with a sci-fi engine.

I grew up watching this movie, the sequel, and the cartoon. I had the action figures, the firehouse set toy, and drank more Ecto Cooler than water as a 5-year-old. But that doesn't change the fact that the movie wasn't great. I generally agreed with just about every criticism Amy had. Mess of a script, Winston got done dirty, non-peak Bill Murray, where to start? In a way, all those problems are related, because of the writing issues. I'm surprised no one brought up the story of Aykroyd's legendary first-draft, which was 180 pages, deemed unfilmable, and definitively not a comedy. Although it was reworked into something that made some degree of sense, you get the feeling that no one really agreed what the movie should be. Aykroyd wanted it to be a kickass, mythology-building sci-fi movie. Murray wanted it to be a comedy vehicle for him. Ernie Hudson wanted it to be a movie where he appeared in the first act. Only Harold Ramis really gives the sense that he understands what movie he's in, and I do think he's the MVP of Ghostbusters and that it's his greatest acting role/performance. And of course, Bill Murray thought so little of the script that he improvised nearly every one of his lines. This might be one of the top 5 most famous Bill Murray roles, but it's certainly not one of his top 5 best. The best Bill Murray film and Bill Murray performance is Groundhog Day. Just considering comedic lead performances, I'd put his work in Stripes, Scrooged, What About Bob?, and Life Aquatic ahead of his work in Ghostbusters. Not to mention his more dramatic work in things like Lost in Translation, or his supporting work in things like Rushmore, Kingpin, or even Caddyshack (complete mess though that movie is, he cracks me up in it). By the way, I'm with Amy and I actually like Ghostbusters 2 roughly as much as the original. It has the benefit of actually knowing it's a comedy, and because it doesn't have to have an origin story, there's time for a better defined villain (and henchman), and it makes the Venkman/Dana romance way less creepy and actually kind of sweet. And I will laugh my ass off every time I see the scene where Egon and Ray are showing Venkman their discovery of how emotions affect the slime, culminating in the toaster dancing to Jackie Wilson. Not everything works, and it has nothing as iconic as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, but it's really not much, if any, worse than the original. People talk about the two movies as if they're Raiders of the Lost Ark vs Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but in reality, it's nowhere near as stark a contrast as that. So for me, it's a no. People who want to vote it in for cultural impact, I get that, but I disagree. The lasting pop culture impact is really limited to the logo and the theme song, which can be understood just as well without having to watch this movie.