Nolan has cited The Thin Red Line as a huge influence on his own work, particularly in how he edits in memories.  He does the same thing Malick did, where you never get a whole act in a memory, so it's not an isolated thing—we move into and out of the memory before can fully be in the world of the memory.  You can see…

Blame where it's due:  that's exactly how Richard Yates wrote the character in Revolutionary Road.  All the bluntness you see in that movie was present in the novel.

He manages to own in just a few scenes in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead; he has the same kind of force (and the same kind of scene) as Tom Sizemore in Heat, what Michael Mann called "the ability to communicate lethal potential."

8 is R.E.M., "Laughing"

Damn, that's right.  He just commits completely and elevates every line he delivers.  (See also:  Alec Baldwin.  Fucker commits on Capital One commercials, that's how great he is.)

If The Larry Sanders Show influenced This Is the End, that is the absolute best reason to see it.

That you did, good sir.

All this and Sterling Motherfucking Hayden, too.

@skippykawakami:disqus is right about the looseness of the trilogy.  Ellroy has said he's been more influenced by Classical/Romantic music than anything else in structuring his novels (Beethoven's late quartets get a shout-out in this), and he treats these big books like symphonies.  There are characters and incidents…

Dammit.

Oh, @avclub-f8f8c273f326be25421cc62737d24a9e:disqus , your Soderbergh reviews have denied you the opportunity for some classic snark for so long.  I'm unironically glad to see you taking that opportunity now.  (And if everyone on the bus had started singing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," I would have seen this…

I'd prefer "Coop Me Sleigh," an Arctic version of "Pimp My Ride."

I'm wallflower, an occasional (and happy) visitor to the CZ.  I'm a long-term but sporadic commenter, same generation as Craig J. Clark.

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT THIS LAPTOP ISN'T WATERPROOF

I love Titus, and it's still the best thing she's done.  (I propose the term "Taymorama" for an insane, over-the-top multimedia spectacle that still somehow works.)  So many great moments, performances, images, and music (her boy toy Elliot Goldenthal wrote one of his best scores here); the moment I'm remembering now…

I don't think "undercut" is the right word; I think the key to the film is the line

Fun fact:  at the time, Hopkins intended for that to be his last film performance, so he did tributes to all his favorite film actors in that scene.  His little laugh is from John Gielgud, he does some Brando in a line reading (it's when he's caressing his daughter's neck), and I think that's Ralph Richardson in his…

"Does the word bother you, Mr. Lebowski?  Nothing."

Everyone in this thread gets it.  Don John isn't one of Shakespeare's better villains, he's just there to fuck things up because, well, he's eeeeeevil.  So there's just not much the actor needs to do, and Keanu Reeves definitely doesn't do much here.  (Basically he's just there to keep his beard from falling on the…

One thing that always impresses me about Swimming is how intuitive the filming feels, like Demme was constantly there, and deciding on the fly when and where to move, change the lighting, and cut.  And of course that's impossible, it has to be planned out somehow (although it's easier when there's just one thing to…