I think the crucial difference is that despite the overwrought dialogue, CLERKS was a lot closer to the ground. The conversation are ones that we've all had in some form. The situation of working a shitty job and making the best of it by any means necessary is something most people can relate to. And everyone in the…

The point about these movies not having an identity could apply to Hart's entire career. I watched GET HARD on HBO this weekend and was surprised at how well done the first 15 minutes were, and wish it had kept pushing in that direction, rather than devolving into 75 minutes of generic "prison rape and black people…

LOL at the "Dirty Granpda" typo in the first paragraph. Even the ad copy for this movie is saying, "look, this is a January release, every trailer has looked absolutely dire, everyone in this has cashed their checks, so can we just make our $40 million in bored audience dollars and, like so many other crappy January…

Yeah, maybe it's just my own personal feelings coloring my reading of this list and the Pajiba one, but this list feels more like stuff that can be substantiated and proven, rather than "oh, well, he was kind of creepy one time!"

Mary-Kate Olsen and Wakefield did a cover of this song for the NEW YORK MINUTE soundtrack.

It blew my mind that people loved GODZILLA and not PACIFIC RIM. Sure, both had cardboard characters/actors and hackneyed plot elements, but PACIFIC RIM actually, ya know, SHOWED GIANT KAIJUS FIGHTING FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME. GODZILLA kept promising awesome fights and then cutting away to shaky TV broadcasts…

I didn't see THE REVENANT this weekend because it was sold out, as things often are at the AMC by my place, since it has reserved seating/recliners (caught THE BIG SHORT, very much enjoyed it).

The Carrie Brownstein one ("It feels like we lost something elemental, as if an entire color is gone.") was the one that finally broke me. It was reiterated in the comments here that even if you weren't a huge fan, he was just such a PRESENCE in culture that even people who were casual fans at best feel the loss.

In the non-musical realm, Ebert noted that Altman's A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION was very swan song-y, in both the story and the way it was self-reflexive about his own working methods.

We had this exact conversation three months ago.

This scene in particular illustrates what a fantastic hangout movie MMXXL was. I mean, almost nothing happens in the movie, in a plot sense - it's the "wacky road trip" and "one last ride" formulas providing the backbone and little else. That comes with the hangout movie territory. But one of the keys to a good…

I like James Wan as a director and I liked everyone in the first one, so I'm hoping this one is good. And yet the experience of watching the first was probably my most "I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS" movie experience of the '10's so far. I was bored out of my fucking mind.

Good cast, good premise. And it's on TBS, so it'll be cancelled long after anyone remembered it was on. It can't lose!

I recoiled at the smash cut to David Wenham shucking blood off the cat-o'-nine-tails during the whipping scene.

So fucking good, and brutal. Ebert said it was the closest any movie has ever come to Blood Meridian being filmed.

I too enjoy all of those movies. I'd also submit SHE'S THE MAN, with Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum just before he broke out, as a surprisingly decent teen comedy/Shakespeare riff.

"Tom Hooper, your directorial trademark is extreme closeups of anguished faces. Quentin Tarantino, your directorial trademark is extreme closeups of feet."
"….. was there a question there?"
"Nope, just things I thought about. Oh wait. David O. Russell. I HEART HUCKABEES. What the fuck was that shit?"

And the last one I remember seeing twice (THE AVENGERS) was because I was with friends, we were on the way to the multiplex and everyone but me hadn't seen it, so I said "sure, I enjoyed it, why not."

In this vein, I recall stumbling into some AVATAR message board a couple months after the movie came out, and aside from all the cosplay and fanfic and "I WISH I WERE NA'VI" weirdness, there was a thread that was just people posting their ticket stubs, and somehow that turned into a dick measuring contest. One guy…

There's a great spin-off documentary to be made about that jury. Probably an even better one about the Brendan Dassey jury.