Even the movie premier pot bust, seemingly there just to establish Vincennes' M.O. and shadiness, is called back in a way that the entire film turns on.

It also draws a little bit from The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere (been a while since I read them so I can't point to specific plot elements). Hanson did his homework.

Could not agree more. Go ahead and put Jackie Brown at 3. After that it's a toss-up (but I'd find a spot for Donny Brasco).

I read the Quartet straight through about five years ago. I STILL feel like I need a shower. That's just a lot of depravity to consume.

I read the books after seeing the movie, and they're just different characters. Movie Smith is the consummate mastermind schemer who no longer needs to dispense his own violence. I think that makes him more interesting.

Que??

Would you ask Tom Petty that question?

Wait, Donny Brasco was '97? Then hell yeah, make some space. Sorry, The Game - you're out.

Not to mention that the film LAC draws from several of the Quartet. And obviously Dudley's end is a complete departure from the books.

First time I heard Add It Up in high school I really wondered what was wrong with those guys.

It's a great movie that shows the WOWS story from the bottom up. Tom Everett Scott's Belfort character is only seen once (I think) and may as well be from another planet. Katt nails it that those guys drive Porches but don't have enough restraint to hand onto enough cash to put gas in them.

With WOWS Scorsese makes the fantastic decision of showing all of the proceedings from Belfort's point of view, as if the goings on are all perfectly normal and rational. The drugs and sex in the office (leading to the no fuck rule) were all just boys being boys, to be viewed with amusement.

It's a realization that builds over the course of the film. You don't start out knowing that we likely attacked the bugs' home planet first. It's very much a second-viewing sort of movie.

I had a communications professor in business school who told us anyone who wanted to go into the sales side of any business needed to watch and internalize that scene. It's not always that overt, but the bottom line is the bottom line.

I suspect he was fucking captive bugs, like a space concentration camp commandant. He was CREE-PY.

"One dimensional characters"????!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh come one - Zane is the best part of Titanic by a country mile. What did he ruin?

I never could suspend disbelief long enough to accept Helen Hunt falling for Nicholson. It pretty much blew up the movie.

I was prepared to vent about Grosse Point Blank being 18, but am more riled up about Confidential at 8. It should be #1 hands-down. That movie is a damn masterpiece. Crowe is an absolute force of nature in that film; you can't take your eyes off him. Look at that screen shot up there, or the movie's opening scene…

Pulp Fiction acknowledges people's interests in music and captures period-appropriate snippets (e.g. the weird cartoon Butch is watching when Walken arrives) but doesn't pretend everyone is some sort of pop culture savant, which makes those touches seem much less intrusive. It's stylized, but in service of the…