@avclub-97d6c074b974838257db17a02f8784c4:disqus I'm not saying anything isn't awesome. I love Jurassic Park.

@E.Buzz Miller The plot involved a lot of elisions and extrapolations, and gave too much weight to both Jim Garrison and E. Fletcher Prouty (and Clay Smith), but its illustration of the fallacies in the Warren Commission's version of the assassination was dead-on and stands the test of time (and the movie serves an…

I'm not really "explaining it away." Apologies for not being clear. What I mean is, yes, Goldman did an incredible, masterful job, but he didn't have to make up characters and relationships (and the fearlessly direct and antiseptic quality of the story — no sub-plots; no brooding, edge-of-the-bed conversations about…

@ E.Buzz Miller All of Tarantino explores the soul, starting with Reservoir Dogs (which is as tightly nuanced and controlled a study of the criminal sensibility's distortion of societal reality as Goodfellas or The Public Enemy or Dog Day Afternoon) and running all the way through to the spectacular commentary in Djang…

@avclub-b750f74544cb00c138079607276995e9:disqus Exactly, which is why I didn't even like it the first time around (as I did Titanic).

@KyleRyan:disqus Right. I remember when that idiot in the New York Times (A. O. Scott, I think) gave away that gimmick by referring to the girl "in a red coat" (as if there'd be any way for him to know this without a color insert).

@avclub-8f5d52de325e27c15de41667d4d82f50:disqus Titles aren't copyrighted.

Yeah! Fantastic piece of work. (And amazing multi-format collage effects by Robert Richardson.)

@avclub-667a0b7862bb9382e28a19b634fc7f3c:disqus I'll get into the rest of your stuff later, but you really (unwittingly) hit the nail on the head when you said that my objections to Butch Cassidy indicate that I don't know very much "about screenwriting."

Titanic's an odd duck, isn't it?

Butch Cassidy — more jokey bullshit.

@avclub-667a0b7862bb9382e28a19b634fc7f3c:disqus No, I'm absolutely serious. I don't like the movie at all. I like real fantasy. Or, if it's going to be sardonic, let a visionary like Terry Gilliam do it.

[wrong thread]

@avclub-6e3b2cb658a36cff9d66c3371c46c4a6:disqus I brought up Altman because people who come into the thing from that specific angle — who aren't interested in artistry or talent or competence, but prefer what they see as some kind of arch "commentary" on "the form" of movies — tend to like Altman, who's unthreatening…

@LurkyMcLurkerson:disqus @frug:disqus Viz. The Birds: I admit I'm applying a very high standard — probably the highest you can apply in cinema — simply because we're talking about the man who had just made Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho all in a row. (Kind of like the Beatles following up Rubber…

Hate it. Not funny. Never understood its appeal.

Max, the planet is terribly run.

@tomandlu:disqus No, sunlight destroys vampires. It's an axiom. (Also, vampires want to suck your blood until you're dead and then you rise as a vampire, too; they don't have weird "love affairs" with human women.)

Ridiculous. One of the greatest movies ever. Singlehandedly advanced the art of the procedural thriller; advanced Hollywood's (and the public's) understanding of gender issues and the plight of women; endlessly imitated but never equaled. And a technical tour de force. (And, heartbreakingly tragic and real; drenched…

@avclub-97b2d5e5f92c333976018236d76658d9:disqus Yeah, I love the score. It just bothers me that (as with Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner and a bunch of others) they had to put out one of those awful soundtrack albums with snippets of dialogue from the movie all over it.