ClaraSax

It seems that since this episode is themed in honor of The Blacklist that the connection between the films at the forefront is their strong writing and their announcement of a new voice.

For me it has to be Sign O The Times (I bought a bluray copy from Amazon, there doesn't really seem to be any other legal means of seeing it); though Stop Making Sense is more consistent in what it offers Prince's film is daring and driven with a chapbook-like narrative, balancing its theatricality with cinematic motifs & evocation. Stop Making Sense opens brilliantly and builds beautifully but loses power in its last stretch (all the best songs of the film stacked up in the beginning). There is a neurotic magnetism to Byrne but putting it next to Prince does it few favors-- every moment we're with Prince in Sign O The Times he is catching us up in his wake, bringing us into the gossamer tangle of imagery & melody that seems to (almost physically) ooze from him, as if he is a valve of the primordial and here, yes, he is turning.

I'd throw in Amy Heckerling's I Could Never Be Your Woman in addition to Clueless. Because of some kind of studio politicking it ended up going straight to DVD and pretty much no one saw it but it's an overlooked classic. Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Atonement-era Soairse Ronan all give fantastic fast-and-funny performances. The film itself exhibits a charm and self-awareness that give it tones of a sunnier more oceanic 30 Rock.

There's some physical copies of Sign O' the Times on Amazon, one a $20 bluray that the reviews claim works on most bluray players in the U.S.

Soft no. There's a cultural impact but not ultimately a large enough one to make this film essential viewing. There's great performances here but I really wish they were more balanced, Murray gets so much to do and it ends up hurting the internal structure of the film, if he's our way in as a non-believer then that arc should be better fleshed out and/or he should be more relatable rather than just an eye-rolling joke machine (and I'd say on a joke-by-joke level Egon lands more of his than Murray does). Compare Murray's performance here to the ones he gives in Groundhog Day or Rushmore and his work in Ghostbusters feels almost phoned-in.

I really like Murray and Moranis in the film but then I wouldn't put it in my top 5 Murray or Moranis movies. There's definitely a cultural impact to be explored, for me the big question is, can we point to this as the first big mainstream movie to be both a genre riff and a comedy? And also does it manage to succeed as both a genre riff and a comedy? Or in trying to service both of those DNA strands does it sacrifice one for the other or fumble both of them in the attempt at juggling both? I'm interested to hear what Amy and Paul have to say about it, depending on Amy's argument I could probably go either way.

Agreed, while certainly not a bad film Ghostbusters is a movie that feels overrated every time I watch it.