I haven’t seen “all those movies,” but on the blockbuster list, A Quiet Place and Ready Player One most definitely are NOT better than Infinity War. I mean, one’s tastes, and all that, but they just aren’t.

Stick with it - I gave up fast food many many years ago, after being a regular consumer. It was difficult at first, but not only did I start to feel better relatively soon, it was the first step towards really getting a handle on good nutrition in my life.

Kind of like your buddies Oscar v Kermit? (or Grover?).

I think there’s probably some truth to that - particularly the “personal is political” element you describe. Again, though, even that, I think is a lot different from the characterisation above about “not caring.”

Huh, it’s an interesting take, I guess. I remember “slackers,” etc., for sure, but for me (also in my 20s at the time), I also remember quite a bit of activism and activity - a lot of what passes for “woke” these days has its roots in the ‘90s - from discussions of sexual consent, to third-wave feminism, to bringing…

Is that how you read the ‘90s?

To be fair (and I’m a big S3 fan), a lot of the on-island stuff is pretty rough, too. By that point, the whole, Jack-Juliet-Ben situation was getting unfathomable, and the weird enforcer woman who showed up to “punish” Juliet and then never showed up again, was pretty lame. The Kate-Sawyer-Karl stuff is nice, though,…

I feel like Damn the Torpedoes, Southern Accents, Full Moon Fever, and Wild Flowers are all pretty close to perfect albums - and there are a few others that have nary a dud. Not at all sure why Petty was the example for that comment.

I’d say that AlwaysBeenTim is mostly right. I’m another white guy from whitesville who lived through the era (graduated college in ‘93), and while I do remember anti-rap conversations going on, I remember finding it laughable. On a camping trip to a remote part of my state with a bunch of other 20-somethings that…

Whatever the specifics of what the festival was or what “tier” they were compared to the male artist(s) in question, Haim definitely bring it live. Saw them very recently on their current tour and they ripped the roof off the joint. Well worth checking out.

Is the “racoon” thing a stab at a sly joke, or is there some Ambien at play here, too?

yes

they had that one good song

That can depend a lot on the director’s current reputation, the relationship between the director and production company(-ies), and the production company’s arithmetic re: a director suing v a potentially bigger box office.

Exactly. It’s probably a bit pretentious of me, but whenever anybody praises a movie to me by first quoting its RT score, I find it hard to take them seriously as being knowledgable about film.

Kael was the opposite of pretentious - she was an equal-opportunity movie lover who was happy watching blockbusters or art house as long as she thought the movie was good, who would rip anything she thought was bad or lazy, and who was never ashamed of her love of Hollywood.

All of us?

POST-CREDIT SUPER MILD SPOILER-ISH

Exactly, also, when the term was coined in the early-mid ‘70s it was commenting on a Hollywood history that was almost entirely dominated (or at least Mulvey would have argued) by the male gaze - which wasn’t only about women in films being presented as “sexy” or “objects of desire,” but also objects to suffer, lose,…

Ant-Man is tons of fun, definitely in the upper tier.