HoldenMartinson

Though it's the weakest of the trilogy, the first Toy Story has to be in the discussion. So, that's my pick. If I had to pick another film to go against it, I'd pick Up or The Incredibles, which are the two that I think aged the best.

No question, I'm voting Bloodsport. Why make a list that has to have the same movies as every other list? I would happily put Bloodsport over Citizen Kane, which will lose no steam if it were to be denied entry into the canon.

Is David Bowie wearing a codpiece, or is he just letting his package roam freely? Discuss.

Citizen Kane is supposedly Trump's favorite film. When I first heard this, I thought Trump was just pandering. Revisiting Kane, I feel like Trump is leaving crumbs that aids my theory that Trump's candidacy is a long con/practical joke.

I'd like to refute the argument that you had to be there when this came out to appreciate the film. I saw the film over a decade after it was released, largely ignorant of just how much of a phenomenon this was. This has always been a movie to me. I like that there are no jump scares. I like the slow deterioration of everyone. I've always loved the ending. As a film experience, I think it holds up. I think I've seen it mostly on laptops, and it still frightens me. In fact, most people my age who have seen The Blair Witch Project, who never got to see it in the theaters, still really enjoy it. Point being, no one can definitively say that the film only works in the moment it was released when people are discovering it today and being affected by it.

I was a relatively solid yes going in, but hearing how the film was actually directed turned me into a hard no-doubt-this-is-canon. I've always liked The Blair Witch Project, and liked it on subsequent viewings. It's effective and creepy--the latter of which I appreciate more and more. This is a terrific horror film. I think it gets a lot right. I think the ending is one of the best endings of any film ever, in terms of setups and payoffs. In terms of the ending, I wish that had gotten more discussion, because Mike does hear Josh. That's who knocks Heather over, isn't it? Maybe I'll have to pull a Devin and re-listen, only to be totally unsatisfied by the second go-through. Anyway, great film. Maybe not a huge favorite, but an astonishing achievement nonetheless.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my absolute favorites. 100%, I'd love an episode on this one.

Never been a John Hughes fan. Maybe when I was younger, I liked Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but now I can barely stomach any of his teen films. I like Planes, Trains and Automobiles well enough, but I can't imagine that being canon-worthy. Devin famously declared Ferris Bueller to be evil--and one can even find an old C.H.U.D. thread with Devin demolishing the morality of the film--and I'd loooooove to hear that episode. Otherwise, I'd much rather get a de Sica or Sturges episode long before another John Hughes film.

You know what though? The show wasn't doing much of anything interesting until after the movie anyway. There are a couple of good episodes beforehand, but it definitely needed time to mature.

I recently revisited all of South Park, which was so ahead of its time on a million things, and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut is maybe the pinnacle of what Stone and Parker could do with that world. It's a terrific film, regardless of the show it's based on, and would be a better contender for a big screen adaptation of a television show than, say, Mission: Impossible.

This is interesting, but potentially out, since this was a big point for Cannibal Holocaust. That said, there can be multiple films responsible for a thing. Anyway, I'm very excited for this episode. I think The Blair Witch Project might be one of the only horror films that gets better with multiple viewings, at least for me. That, and the level of indie filmmaking ingenuity on display is undeniable. This is a terrific film, and I'm really interested in what these three have to say about it.

I re-watched this film, despite having seen it dozens of times as a kid. And wowee zowee, what a great film. As a matter of fact, this is the film Rob Reiner considers his best work. As someone who was a twelve year-old boy when they first saw this, and who is revisiting the film ten years later, it feels as real as a film can get. Reiner and the cast capture boyhood friendship so authentically. Most of their dialogue is so right, just focusing on inane banter and hangout conversations. The part where Chris is saying he wishes he was Gordie's dad feels right. I remember being twelve year-old and saying big, ill-fitting things that seemed profound at the time, but were just grasps at being a deep, adult person, much like when Teddy talks about how much he likes smoking after dinner. Also, independent of Devin's reading of the film, this time around, I 100% got the same homoerotic vibe between Chris and Gordie. They do love each other very deeply. They don't just get along, but they allow themselves to be vulnerable with one another. When Chris fires off the gun and Gordie is upset, Chris doesn't just blow Gordie off. He stops him, grips him, and earnestly tells him that he didn't know the gun was loaded. Minutes later, after they run into Ace and Eyeball, they do that thing where they kick each other's butts, and they don't think anything about it. They have an intimacy with each other that the film is CLEARLY addressing. And you know what? I was sold by that ending. There's a romantic tension that the film plays so subtly that it's easy to miss, but Gordie and Chris love each other, 100%, on a level that they maybe couldn't articulate or express directly, but it's there. Also, if I remember correctly, the end of "The Body" has Gordie confessing that his work isn't all that well-received, but his books keep getting made into super successful moments, which I love. Anyway, yes. 100% yes. This is a small, near-perfect film. It may even be the best Stephen King adaptation. I wish I had more to say about how well-paced it is, and how much I love the dynamics between all of the characters here. The only thing I'd say is that Amy seemed to have problems with the tone. For one, I like the shot of the dozens of holes. It's a great visual joke, and it lends to the next moment where Vern sticks his head up to hear his brother and his friend, and he looks like a gopher. It's a comedic moment that fits the character. The flow of the film flows with the characters, and it's always logical and real. Also, having recently been a teenager, I don't find Teddy to be a bully. He's an annoying jerk, for sure, but I don't think he's being malicious. He's just fucking around. When Vern explodes at Teddy, Teddy not only doesn't retaliate, that outburst comes as an extension of the conflict of events within the film. Plus, these kids all pick on each other a little bit. Vern gets it the worst, but you know what? This whole movie happens because they go along with Vern's plan. They're not running trucks off the road in a game of chicken. With that in mind, could we PLEASE work on getting female coming-of-age films in the canon? If Stand by Me illustrates the unique experience of being a twelve year-old boy among other twelve year-old boys, clearly there have to be other films that capture that for women and girlhood that aren't anime--because we're never getting an Only Yesterday episode, despite my constant badgering.

It's also streaming on Netflix, which feels random, but whatever. Anyway, yeah. It's a great film. Definitely check it out, if you haven't.

Chad Allen. Don't know anything about him, for I am merely a humble millennial.

First off, terrific comment. Second, I've often thought about what I'd nominate for the show, and all three of those are films I've seriously considered. Only Yesterday, in particular, might be my number one film to nominate of any film for many of the reasons you've mentioned. It's crazy good on a craft level--as I said on threads on this forum, especially on the topics about Kiki's Delivery Service, I think Takahata is a much better filmmaker than Miyazaki, and all I have to do is point to Only Yesterday--but I find what Takahata has to say about growing out of girlhood to be so fascinating. I love how he captures the strangeness of how growing up is on different levels with such succinct and subtle writing. Also, is there a more profound plotline about menstruation in any other film than there is in this one? Serious question.

I've been holding off on a thread like this for a while, but... I think it could be a lot of fun. Let's say there was a canon of the great podcasts of history. As it stands, I don't think there's a film podcast as listenable or consistent in high quality as The Canon--save for You Must Remember This, which is more about film and Hollywood history, rather than going title by title. So, what episodes do you think are the most emblematic of what this show does? Of course, we can discuss the episodes that represent the show best, or maybe the ones that we think are the strongest at what this show can do. I'm not sure what I'd nominate--mostly because there are so many strong candidates, maybe even including The Candidate. Which episodes would you include, and why?

So the plot thickens to Jareth proportions...

I kinda wish we could have done a versus between this and The Goonies, if we had to do some 80's coming-of-age showdown--though I also love The Never-Ending Story. That said, I have no love, nor any enthusiasm for this film. This is still a hard no. When we get Nicolas Roeg up to bat, I'll be happy to give Bowie another shot. When we do Requiem for a Dream, I'll be glad to get Connelly in the canon. As it stands, I'm not convinced.

This is one of those films that was in heavy rotation growing up. Stephen King writes really good guys hanging out with guys stories, and this is his strongest in that regard. As a coming-of-age story, it's like nothing else. I love this film. I love River Phoenix in it. It mirrors many of my own experiences growing up in a faceless town with guys you couldn't imagine not being with forever. I don't know if this is Rob Reiner's best film--This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally... deserve their day in court--but damn is it a solid contender.

Oh, completely. I think we're pretty in alignment on this.

Agreed on The Fly vs. The Thing. In fact, any hazy versus episode is terrific. This is an odd choice, but my favorite is Decline of Western Civilization vs. Decline Pt. II: The Metal Years. It's argumentative, it's interesting, it's contentious just shy of being mean or personal. Though, the one for American Beauty is also be up there.

You know, we could do 1,000 films, and we'd have less than a tenth of all films. That's 99.9% of an entire medium that doesn't make the cut. We haven't done 100 episodes yet, and if Devin and Amy go through with what they've been teasing, we're going to be taking a film out. We could do this for years and years and years, and never get to all the films that ought to be discussed. Really though, the The Canon, more than anything, is a show about what makes for a lasting piece of cinema. That often means looking at some pretty ambiguous cases. Working Girl may not be a film all of us like, but it's well-liked enough. I like finding the limits with divisive films. Of course we're gonna get to the masters, but those are seldom the most interesting episodes. They're fun, and often important, like when we get episodes for Pather Panchali, or Blow Out, for getting people to see films that aren't the obvious choices for great, epochal works.

Keeping up with these comments this week has been great. It's kind of a shame that Amy isn't reading these, because even if they'd give her too much anxiety, the discussion has been so good.

Good list, but I thought Amy's and Devin's ballots were really interesting, and they both got to do write-ups for films in the top 25, which is super neat. I'd also make one correction and say that There Will Be Blood is the highest ranked that we've considered, and that got in. At any rate, I'd love to do episodes for, frankly, any film in the top fifty or so--Zodiac, In the Mood for Love, and City of God most of all.

I don't know. As someone who lives, and is from Salt Lake, it's kind of neat to see places that I see all of the time. As a film, it's... fine, I guess. I'd be interested in hearing the case for it.