sycasey 2.0

The thing is that they are really only watching the BEST movies from the old days (or at least those widely considered the best). There was plenty of forgettable crap in the 50s, 60s, 70s too, it's just that . . . it's been forgotten.

Yes, Christine Lakin! And yes, she is better-looking than Paris Hilton. I actually thought her performance in this movie was very good, much better than anyone else's. Like, June's turn to start liking Nate at the end was barely motivated by the writing (if at all), but damned if she didn't try her best to sell it in that final scene. No way her efforts could have saved this movie, but I appreciate the effort.

Yeah, it fell down a few pegs for me after this recent rewatch. I still think it's worthy of staying on the AFI 100 (seems pretty essential to see at least once), but some of the didactic writing hurts, and I don't find the Holden-Dunaway romantic subplot at all convincing. But the acting and Lumet's direction are pretty great, and of course the themes of the movie are evergreen.

Honestly, I think that is more Paddy Chayefsky's fault than the actors. Sometimes he can't resist making the subtext text.

Right, and Jimmy Stewart is great as always. But he's also on the list many times, generally for performances I find better than this one. Not sure I need this movie on the list, enjoyable as it is.

The trouble I have with this movie is that I feel like all of its merits are exactly what you would get out of it as a play, the dialogue and the plot and the acting. I'm not sure I see where it's doing anything special as a piece of cinema. I had similar issues with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , but even there I think Mike Nichols does more with the camera than George Cukor does here. For a list of "greatest movies," what exactly are we honoring with this one? I don't think it's bad or anything, but is it really one of the foremost examples of what The Movies can do? On Amy's old podcast The Canon, they did a versus episode between The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday. His Girl Friday won. I think that was the right choice; that movie takes similar themes and puts them into (IMO) a more cinematic package that doesn't just look like a filmed play. I think it works better as a treatment of those themes too, not pulling its punches as much with a cynical take on romance in 1930s/40s America.

I'm gonna say it's almost certainly American Samoa, given that The Rock's grandfather was from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Maivia

I'm not quite over-the-moon about The Maltese Falcon like some people are. I enjoy it all for the most part, but there are some segments where it seems to go for a lot of exposition and "tell, don't show" storytelling. It helps that the telling is done by Sydney Greenstreet, but still, it's a bit heavy on speeches that describe prior events. You can chalk some of that up to the time it was made, but . . . Citizen Kane came out the same year. That said, it's full of iconic lines and characters and is clearly a major influence, so I still vote for it to stay. And that final exchange is dynamite, really ties the room together.

Oddly, the vote on the Facebook forum went the other way and kicked Nashville off the list (by a close vote, like 48-52%).

For a more granular aggregator of critical opinion, you'd probably prefer Metacritic.

RT Audience Score is garbage anyway. People can literally submit votes before the movie has even been released. I say pay it no mind. At least with the critic score you have a reasonable expectation that they have all seen the movie.

Two big candidates: Constantine: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/constantine Wet Hot American Summer: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wet_hot_american_summer (it's actually stunning to me that this only got 36%)

I was born in 1980 and I've never liked The Goonies. It's a bad movie. Anyway, Space Jam is probably also bad, but I'm not sure if it fits this podcast's mission statement? Popular cartoon characters + popular NBA stars? I can absolutely see how that got made.

Yes, I think that one is more like the Simpsons episode. But I suppose you could say Short Cuts was also primed by Nashville.

I think if you're going to introduce Venom as a Spider-Man villain, you need to tease it out over time. It's a lot to explain: an alien costume, bonded to Spider-Man, rejected by Spider-Man, finds this other guy who also hates Spider-Man, bonds with him instead. If you've also got a bunch of other characters to introduce and give full arcs to, that's gonna be tough to do in one movie.

By far the biggest problem is that Venom clearly doesn't belong in the movie, and by now everyone knows the studio forced Raimi to write him in. It really shows. They have to devote so much time to explaining the character's origin that all the other storylines get short shrift. Sandman + Green Goblin 2 were enough on their own.

I wasn't super enamored of this movie the first time I watched it, but it has gotten better every time I've returned. Now I think it's a near-masterpiece. I'll say this: I think the film announces its intentions fairly clearly at the start, with the way the cast is introduced. It's a big cacophony with overlapping words and music, while the names are read off alphabetically, no emphasis on narrative importance or size of role. I think that should prime you for the idea that this won't be a film with a focus on plot or narrative. Then the opening is just tracking the politician's van driving through the town and delivering slogans, indicating that this is going to be a "wandering" kind of experience. What helps me stay interested is that within the scenes Altman's camera does a lot to help focus your attention. Look at where he zooms in, when he decides to glide from one face to another, how people are placed within the frame to guide your eye to one face in particular (the silent Lily Tomlin during "I'm Easy" is probably the best example). Controlled chaos. I'm not sure any other filmmaker does it like this. I can see an argument for another Altman movie, but I'm not sure any other is quite so emblematic of his particular style as this one?

I guess the closest thing to Nashville that The Simpsons ever did was the Lurleen Lumpkin episode. (It's not a direct parody and the casting of Beverly D'Angelo suggests Coal Miner's Daughter.) Her songs are a lot more obviously about one person than Keith Carradine's too.

Though again, the evidence seems mixed here. The filmmakers' words suggest Team Fred (he's just a projection of Lizzie's mind). The deleted scenes suggest Team Sanity (Fred is a separate and unique entity).

Yeah, I kind of agree. It doesn't totally work, but it wasn't as bad as people make it out to be now. (And jazz-dancing Peter Parker is hilarious and I wouldn't want to lose it.)

Oh, and Rock Star! That movie is fine. It's not great, not terrible, just fine. My picks are fairly boring since they each have Rotten Tomatoes scores above 50.