sycasey 2.0

Well, this was an amusing episode. The guest brings a movie in that he must have considered a worthy nominee, and yet the entire conversation is about how virtually every subplot of the movie has creepy and noxious sexual politics somewhere in it. So why does the movie work anyway? "It's charming." I mean, doesn't that make the horrible politics of the movie even worse, that they've been given such a nice-looking sheen, the better to worm their way into the audience's subconscious? Isn't this just the movie version of the story where the British guy goes to America and the women fall all over themselves for him because he says terrible pickup lines with a British accent? That's what this movie is: terrible half-baked romantic comedy subplots that seem charming because they have British people in them. I was never a fan of Love Actually, but I always wait to hear the podcast arguments before finally deciding on my vote. Occasionally (as with Top Gun) I am actually swayed by the arguments to vote against my original impression of the movie. This is one time where I come out liking the movie even less. The only question is whether to vote "No" or "Hell No."

I feel pretty strongly that Life of Brian is the better movie, but Holy Grail is certainly more iconic in popular culture. Both are all-time great comedies. This is going to be hard!

This is cruel.

Lady Bird

Perhaps he was under red kryptonite influence.

One of the audience members did mention how Lex was somehow able to sign a lease on an apartment despite being a fugitive, which is a fair point. But I'm also wondering how he's able to go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING in this movie. He's busted out of prison in VERY conspicuous fashion by his VERY conspicuous nephew (all the prisoners and guards on site heard Lenny's name and saw what happened). Lex is already a famous supervillain, owing to his previous tussles with Superman. He also not only has an apartment, he has what appears to be a very ostentatious penthouse apartment in the middle of Manhattan (or whatever they call that part of Metropolis). He's not even attempting to hide himself. When Superman destroyed all the nukes, did he also cause every law-enforcement agency in America to close up shop?

I thought so too when I first saw the movie (way back in its original theatrical release), but after this re-watch I thought it was very possible that this person was talking about someone they THOUGHT was Paul Allen, but might not have been. Remember, no one seems to get anyone's name right.

And to be clear, I'm not referring to either book as "difficult" to suggest that they are bad. I mean it more in the sense of "hard to adapt."

Soft no for me as well. It's well-made, but something about it makes it fall just a little short of greatness. It's hard to explain, but the movie feels a little too . . . detached? Cerebral? It's a movie I'd hang on a wall and admire from afar, but not the kind that pulls me in and spits me out at the end, if that makes sense. I also don't care for the end-of-podcast comparison to Fight Club, a perhaps equally problematic film adaptation of a difficult book, but one that is made with a lot more verve and passion. That said, it is a very iconic performance by Bale and carries a lot of interesting themes so I can see an argument for voting yes on American Psycho. It just doesn't quite make the cut for me.

Good God no.

I also think we need a second poll about pasta salad. I vote with Amy: pasta salad is gross.

On The Graduate: I'm thinking that this movie is now UNDERrated, just because of how many people are now falling over themselves to proclaim it "overrated." Then again, I also think that "overrated" is virtually useless as a term in artistic criticism and try to avoid using it as much as possible, so I might not be the best judge here. In any event, The Graduate is clearly more canonical than Carnal Knowledge, whatever your personal feelings may be about the former. It's a cultural touchstone in almost too many ways to count, and the later film is not. I open with those thoughts because while listening to this podcast episode, I thought Molly's arguments for Carnal Knowledge were hurt by her drawing so many comparisons to The Graduate, when IMO this movie doesn't actually survive the comparison well. I was struck by how many of Molly's complaints about The Graduate can absolutely be applied to Carnal Knowledge: a cold directorial style, a "sensitive" male protagonist who is actually kind of a dick, general contempt for humanity, etc. All of that is in both movies. For me the difference is that The Graduate has more levels to it; you're not nearly as certain of the movie's satirical point until the very end. Until then you could very easily see Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin as the "conquering hero" coming to rescue his beloved. The "60s downer" ending brings the true emptiness into focus, but along the way you have more comedy, more jaunty pop tunes to provide breaks in the coldness. The movie takes you for a ride. Carnal Knowledge largely makes its intentions clear from the very beginning. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the movie is bad. I think it's very well-made and well-performed. It does have a kind of purity of mood and purpose that carries throughout the running time. But in judging its Canon worthiness, I was left feeling that Carnal Knowledge comes up a bit short of greatness because of how one-note it is, and it also doesn't seem to have had the larger cultural impact we've seen from other Nichols films. Glad I saw the movie, but it's a no.

Agreed 100% with this. The point of the movie is that the Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell characters both love the fast-paced, hard-nosed life they have as newspaper reporters and that's why she decides to stay. I suspect that if the movie were made today, Hildy would wind up with neither of the male leads, but the social mores and/or production code of the time forced this ending on us.

It's a close call, but I'm going with His Girl Friday. It's mostly because of the stylistic flair Hawks brings to the material: the overlapping dialogue, the fast cutting, the way the whole thing moves at breakneck speed. By comparison, Cukor's approach feels bland, especially by modern standards. I'd also argue that the Hawks movie is worth canonizing because of how its title has become a cinematic/storytelling trope in and of itself. I can't think of anything similar from The Philadelphia Story that has entered the cultural lexicon.

Ed Wood was definitely my thought when Paul was talking about what else qualifies as this kind of "Best Worst Movie," i.e. one that is made with complete sincerity and artistic ambition but is still completely terrible. But I suppose you could argue that while Wood did have the right combination of sincerity/incompetence as a filmmaker, he didn't fancy himself an actor like Tommy Wiseau does. That does add another dimension to The Room.

I had to vote no on this movie, because it's . . . well . . . bad. I do find the story behind The Room and Wiseau himself fascinating, and it is fun to discuss it and pick apart the many ways it fails to be coherent. It's also clearly become something of a cultural phenomenon, so in that sense I understand the impulse to make it Canon. But that said, it's . . . bad. In no way could you define it as one of the "great films to live on forever." As a cultural curio, yes. But not one of the great films.

Hah, seriously. Morgen spent a lot of time talking about his own movies on this one. I get that it can be relevant if you're discussing techniques of documentary filmmaking, but it might have been good to steer the discussion back towards Fast Cheap. Anyway, I also enjoyed this movie, and contrary to Morgen's impressions I didn't find it a difficult watch at all. All of the subjects are interesting, and there's something about the visuals and editing in this movie, they feel like rhythms and movements in a piece of music, driving towards an emotional catharsis. A pretty rare thing when it works as well as this one does. Given that this was also the first use of the Interrotron in a documentary, I feel comfortable giving the film a yes vote.

Yeah, the way I think about this is that being the BEST of a particular category (best by X filmmaker or actor, best of a genre, best of a year, etc.) is a point in a film's favor, but not being at the top of that category doesn't disqualify a film either. There are a lot of different ways a film could be Canon worthy.

Even Fight Club has a narrative in which Tyler Durden is ultimately defeated. There's nothing like that in Starship Troopers.

I won't be surprised if this gets voted in, but I vote no. I definitely understand what Verhoeven is doing in this movie, taking Nazi iconography and exaggerating it to such a degree. It certainly plays better now than it did when I saw it as a teenager in 1997 and thought it was just a dumb, mildly diverting sci-fi action movie (agreed with Jordan that the ad campaign featuring the Blur song probably didn't help this movie's reception). That said, I also don't think it's fair to blame critics at the time (or even now) for missing the point. It depends on your focus while watching it. Verhoeven's exaggerated presentation is clearly satirical, but the underlying narrative is not. There's no turn in the story, no obvious instance where the Nazism of the universe is criticized or mocked other than in visual cues. In essence, the film's approach towards satirizing Nazis is to crank them up to 11. Personally, I find this approach slightly inadequate. I don't doubt the filmmakers' sincerity, but I think doing it this way has left them open to a whole lot of misinterpretation (as the straight-ahead sequels would seem to indicate). I'm not a big fan of tying this to RoboCop at the last second, but if that is the choice then I prefer RoboCop. That film has some of the usual Verhoeven excesses, but also a narrative that is built around criticizing the police state in which it takes place. Maybe it's not as interesting to talk about after the fact, but it's more functional and better realized on the whole.

Was anybody else bothered by just how much the opening theme music sounded almost exactly like Danny Elfman's original Spider-Man theme? I mean, Jesus.

I would argue that the movie is actually arguing that Lorraine is happier in the "new" future with more confident George because their relationship is better -- as in, rather than starting because she felt "sorry" for him, it started based on mutual respect and admiration. Sure, there is a lot of "yadda yadda" for what happened in the intervening time (just like everything else in the movie), but I don't think the movie argues that it's solely based on George's virility.

The original LOTR is probably the greater trilogy. But of course they also couldn't leave well enough alone with that one and later made it into a six-movie series.