Whereas the original Karate Kid soundtrack was the BEST… AROUND! [pumps fist]

Of course, if you wrote a story about a "wicked step mother" you'd be writing a tired cliche, which is partly what Sturges is praised for avoiding.

I can't say it's better than Double Indemnity. But it's not worse. Also written, though not directed, by Sturges.

"I need him like the axe needs the turkey."

If you haven't already, check out Baby Face. She sleeps her way to the top in record time.

Interestingly, all three of those movies you mention came out the same year—1941. And Remember the Night, my other favorite, was just the year before. Stanwyck was crushing it!

Aren't we missing some nuances here that are the whole point? Stanwyck at this point of the movie is pretending to be a different character from the card sharp Fonda met on the boat. Everything about this character is made up, in order to get revenge on Fonda—she leads him to believe she's virtuous, then makes up all…

"most of the jokes are silly, verging on simplistic, the characters lack internal consistency and the plot is pretty much non-sensical."

Yeah, and she was playing romantic leads/femme fatales for something like 25 years, which is just about unheard of. And never a bad performance, even in the occasional bad movie. To me, she might be the greatest American film star ever—actor or actress.

Hackman's nasty confrontation with Glover in Tenenbaums would seem to contradict this view.

Very well said. I also love the ending, with Angelica Huston telling her sons to get over themselves, and then disappearing the next morning once again; and the incredible, impressionistic train-car sequence with appearances by all the minor characters plus the tiger. It's really a great movie, although I understand…

If Murray didn't like working with Wes Anderson anymore, you wouldn't need to rely on vague Internet rumors to know about it. He simply wouldn't take his calls anymore, wouldn't do his movies anymore, wouldn't even utter his name publicly (see Ramis, H. for the last 20 years of his life). He certainly wouldn't be…

Apparently Angela Lansbury wasn't so desperate for this prestige role: http://www.avclub.com/artic…

Where did you read that? Every recent comment I've seen from Murray says he loves Wes's movies, thinks they've gotten better over time, not worse, and loves being in them.

Maybe he just got back from the Berlin Film Festival.

I don't know if I'd say Rushmore is my "Rushmore," but I would say that it goes on my "Mt. Rushmore" of Wes Anderson films. Along with Tenenbaums, Moonrise, and… well, the other one's a tie between Bottle Rocket, Mr. Fox and Darjeeling.

Really? I thought the storytelling in Moonrise was great. I could see the "visuals over story" critique applied to Life Aquatic, which was a bit muddled storywise, or to Darjeeling, which was a bit of a shaggy-dog narrative, but not to his other films at all.

No, it's Rushmore. No, wait, it's actually Moonrise Kingdom. He can only have one masterpiece, dammit.

Ten-year olds? Yeah, that would be pretty skeevy. That's not Moonrise Kingdom you're describing, however. Just what kind of films have you been watching?

Henry Sherman was one of the best characters in Tenenbaums.