but Dustin Hoffman as Rain Man was so goddamn good!
And its hardly a soft pedal of his mental illness—there are scenes where Cruise experiences exactly what happens when Hoffman gets disturbed and Cruise gets more than he can handle. I mean its not a searing disturbing portrait but it doesn't entirely sugarcoat…

Its an ink blot test of a movie. People literally see what they want to see when they look at it. They wanna see "obey and keep in line or you'll die of Aids" they can see that. They wanna see a strongly acted portrait of a man who did his best to handle whatever craziness the world would throw at him regardless of…

"Think I'll Go Home Now"
This is a movie that literally stops what it was doing and decides to just have its main character become a long distance runner—and somehow inspires a cult of like minded individuals in the process—and then just as soon stops and turns to them and says he's gonna go home now.
I Love It. Even…

Furry Vengeance begs to differ sir. (I guess that's not fair by the time he did that his peak had long past and he was clutching at whatever he could but still)

Capote yes. Good Night and Good Luck not so much. (not that I didn't like it but I feel like had it won we would've never heard the end of republicans complaining about it)

no I more or less agree with you—when I saw it, it was during its first theatrical release that May—so no one on earth was touting it as a front runner or an Oscar contender…and I mean NOBODY! it was no one's idea of a prestige film so when I saw it I didn't have that knock against it and it was entertaining-ish. I…

I did always love the way he would enthusiastically praise the thing he loved in a movie that he essentially hated or dismissed. If something spoke to him…he damn sure was gonna spread the word on how great that one thing was—even if they were Rosario Dawson's bosoms!

I think the draw was that it was seemingly an important film that was supposed to depict the way we live in society today—-which of course is total bullshit—even if we do go through our lives separated from one another—we don't just randomly "Crash" into other people and are amazed at how different they are from our…

YES I said during the end credits me and my sister turned to each other and mocked that damn bag speech and proceeded to mock that whole thing the whole way home. We couldn't believe it was the big winner that year!

THAT's a very astute observation Warren—really dead-on and also explains I think in a major way why the academy fell head over heels for it that year.
I remember people comparing it to "The Apartment" for much the same reasoning….and they even kept comparing Spacey to Jack Lemmon.

I vividly remember making fun of American Beauty while the end credits were rolling with my sister whom I saw it with. Its not that I thought it was a bad movie—but that monologue about the beauty of that plastic bag dancing in the wind loaned itself so wonderfully to being mocked and we both (as it turned out) had…

at least your shallow racist dad got what the movie was trying to say (in as much as the movie was trying to say anything) my own racist dad literally said to me that he didn't get it, and he didn't think the movie was about anything much at all. (I think his exact words were I didn't get the point it was trying to…

I dunno—at least Chicago was entertaining on its own merits. It might not have been great or something I'd wanna see again but at least it was an entertaining two hours that went by relatively fast and painlessly. (relatively)

Most of these ideas are cute but are realistically ehhh in terms of being a big audience draw for the network. (although a reboot of Little House On The Prairie would no doubt pull in a significant audience number for its premiere alone just cause of nostalgia mixed with curiosity in what the heck a reboot of that…

I can't for one second believe that any of the changes NBC wanted for the show including adding a younger/hipper character to join Sam on his wacky adventures thru time would've actually helped the ratings out at all in what would have been its SIXTH season. At that point in time the show was essentially pulling in…

I would love to see not just another year or two of ED—but just another sweet but funny quirky small town drama with a sympathetic but nice lead courting the whole town once again. I don't know what's happened to the networks but this was the kind of show they used to do really really well, but it seems like the…

ummm I wanna agree with you because I did enjoy watching it for the majority of its run—and I liked the idea of season three's heroes vs. villains in theory, but a lot of what actually ended up happening during that season wasn't just repetitive (when it wasn't being repulsive—Mohinder becoming a mutant fly like…

even if NBC vetoed the idea of having a new cast every season—the show runners could've still at least brought in more people so they wouldn't have necessarily had to had Claire in trouble every week and have Sylar killing people every single week and etc, etc, etc.

Committed is a very good example of a sitcom that did all right during its 13 ep run that I was genuinely surprised that nbc did not bring it back the following fall. It was far from a huge hit but it generally built on Scrubs' lead-in audience (or at the least held on to it) so I was surprised that it was thrown away…

awww mbs liked Vegas—even if I said on one of the reviews of the show when it was covered here that it was essentially the tv equivalent of a car engine revving up and idly sitting in park in its driveway. I still enjoyed it for the most part. (I hearted the endless grimacing and growling of Quaid and…