Let the Right One In
This was good! I liked this. The American version will be terrible. It is set in Littleton, right? UGH. So dumb.

Some 30 Rock Episodes
I didn't watch this when it first came on, so the first season was very eye-opening! Specifically because of characters and competent plotting! They kinda jumped from "Simpsons Season 2 or 3" to "Simpsons Season 11" in the course of literally two seasons. Also: Josh! There was funny stuff to be done with this character, why did you stop?

Bottle Rocket
Holds up. So good.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Better than the first one, def (though I watched the first one on basic cable, so commercials might've ruined the meticulous plotting). The "Sneaking into Buckingham Palace" scene was successfully intentionally amusing!

Some Monty Python episodes
These are just, like, comfort food, now, which is actually kinda weird and missing the point, when you think about it.

Spies Like Us
Comedies used to be paced so differently! But Landis is basically one of the finest American directors alive and his ten-year "Animal House" to "Coming to America" stretch is unfuckwithable (though yeah that era's Lampoon boomer asshole attitude and '60s worship/contempt can be incredibly off-putting and unpleasant and it's all very Reagany). Chevy Chase's jerk routine has aged much better than Ackroyd's nerd, though Ackroyd is inarguably a finer comedian, in terms of craft.

Batman Returns
The best Batman movie and probably my favorite superhero movie. The climax is actually genuinely beautiful, with the snow and the sad penguin army — maybe Elfman's best work, too?

The first episode of The League of Gentlemen
Didn't really "get" it.

Swing Vote
Oh, man, was this fucking movie confused. Costner was good. Actually, everyone was good! But in service of what, exactly?

Enchanted
Delightful! Seriously!

The Brothers Solomon
Had moments.

Party Down
This show is pretty good! Sad that Jane Lynch left for the other show that I'll never, ever watch.

Noises Off!
It is pretty hacky to say "a laugh out loud comedy" but this movie makes me laugh out loud. (RIP Superman! You are really good in this! Such a great cast! Bogdanovich does screwball better than anyone else because he understands screwball!)

Saboteur
Dorothy Parker co-wrote it. Pretty good vintage Hitchcock, occasionally great, but yeah if it had actually starred Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck like he wanted it would be one of his best films period. (Love picaresque madcap Hitch so much.)

Eight minutes of one CSI: Miami Episode
Yeah that joke isn't funny anymore.

Two Charles in Charge episodes, for some reason?
Huh.

Kipper
This is children's cartoon about a dog and his friends. My little brother used to watch it. It's very slow and quiet and gentle and I like that in a kid's cartoon (Spielberg — who introduced children to irony with Tiny Toons and Animaniacs — has a LOT to answer for.)

The Muppets Take Manhattan
Delightful! Also AWESOME period footage of New York all over the place. Liza! Elliott Gould! Joan Rivers is awesome in this as well.

Across the Universe
Ugh! Love you Julie Taymor but UGH!

Man on Wire
Yeah basically everyone was right about this movie, wow.

Persepolis
So good!

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
I wish it was easier to fast-forward on the Instant Watch. Because I couldn't get through this, because of Bono.

The Good German
I <3 "commercial" Soderbergh and despise "artsy" Soderbergh but yeah this turned out to be a really interesting experiment that is perfectly cast. As an ethical whatever it doesn't register, like at all, but as basically an extended homage to my favorite film ever ("Third Man," obv) it is def watchable. Oh, Beau Bridges is really good in this!

The Spanish Prisoner
Yeah, Mamet. It's Mamet.

Analyze This
Ok, the Landis bit might've tipped you off to the fact that I find "commercial comedies" to be an art form just like the French people all thought those dumb b-movies were actually a genre. And Harold Ramis: this man, he is amazing. Like, very few people do it better! Hollywood has basically stopped making these movies now, though, so he had to pretend to be Apatow to get his last movie done.

The Producers (the musical)
Why did I watch this? Ok, I will say this: the material is so strong that the initial office scene (YOU'RE GOING TO JUMP ON ME!) is still the funniest fucking thing in the world even when it's Broderick and Lane doing the film equivalent of a "lip dub."

Little Shop of Horrors
Hah. Yeah. Still pretty damn good, and it's hilarious to me that a couple years later Disney had Ashman and Menken doing Oscar-winning "serious" versions of the stuff they were being all kitschy and gay about in the '80s. One of the songs basically IS "Part of Your World."

High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Watched this in the middle of the night on mute while listening to, I think, Neko Case?

The Iron Giant
Yeah I missed this one back in the day. Brad Bird is obv an animation genius but I think John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton actually make movies that are both funnier and have more "heart" without feeling kinda emotionally manipulative? (Though all filmmaking is emotional manipulation obviously but still.) This is probably just me.

Vantage Point
So I saw a trailer for this and I was like "oh man a dumb thriller starring Dennis Quaid with a super obvious gimmick I am THERE." And then I watched it and basically it hit the buttons! Dennis Quaid was intense!

Eve's Beach Fantasy
You know the "Ironic porn purchase leads to unironic ejaculation" Onion story? Yeah, no, only made it through two minutes of this before getting bored.

March of the Penguins
And then we watched "March of the Penguins" and my girlfriend, who was a little drunk, began weeping, because of dead baby penguins.

Milo and Otis
So I turned this on to stop the weeping.

Arthur
Love it.

Armageddon
Eh. It should be so much better. Bruce Willis as oil-drilling space cowboy, cast of hilarious '90s misfits… Michael Bay is no Roland Emmerich.

The Last Boy Scout
I was sorta hoping I could rewatch this and discover that it was actually a secretly underrated example of another of my favorite genres, the "late-'80s early-'90s big budget action film that is really well constructed actually" (or "Die Hard" films basically) but it kind of meanders. Has some great moments though, and basically I will literally watch Bruce Willis in anything. Tony Scott has made more good films than his deadbeat brother, who has made like three, maybe. Michael Kamen score, too!

The Edge
Classic. Why isn't this basically talked about all the time, as one of the best movies ever? It should be. This is a movie annoying people should quote all the time, like they do with Glengarry.

The Hunt for Red October
You know the Harold Ramis thing, earlier? Well John McTiernan is the Harold Ramis of kickass big-budget action movies. But their era passed, and he lost his mind, sort of. It is a shame.

Pingu
This is great! It is stop-motion penguin antics. It is Scandinavian or something, I think?

Step Brothers
Hah, yeah, this movie is hilarious.

State and Main
Mamet, again! It is Mamet.

Last Action Hero
Yeesh. What happened here? What happened here is that what should've been actually a really inventive and hilarious deconstruction of the genre became a kind of clumsy and only occasionally amusing deconstruction of the genre with an really annoying kid in it. Who decided fucking Schwarzenegger should be playing the Willis role? The "Shane Black Era" was a weird time.

Faerie Tale Theatre: Three Little Pigs
Starring Billy Crystal, Jeff Goldblum, Valerie Perrine, Doris Roberts, Fred Willard and Stephen Furst.

One episode of Ripping Yarns
This is like a "British Public School" joke, so I don't really get it, but it is funny.

Multiplicity
Michael Keaton! The definition of "good in everything." Is he back, yet?

Feed
Hah, this was an AMAZING movie about an Australian internet cop who… travels to America, to take down the operator of a website that features fat women being fed to death. It is, wow. You should watch this, probably, if you HAVE THE STOMACH FOR IT. The villain is like "the poor man's Christian Bale doing an impression of the poor man's Owen Wilson."

Superman II
Pretty great. It was the, uh, the Richard Lester version.

Quarantine
This movie made no damn sense. Maybe the original foreign one was super cool but sometimes when you have these shot-for-shot remakes basically you are like "maybe that just seemed cool because it was foreign."

Daylight
Hah, this one is kind of a gem. Viggo Mortensen! The black guy dies but the DOG survives! They don't make them like this anymore!

The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie
Eh, it's comedy. (And lots of self-congratulation.)

The 13th Warrior
Oh man, I watched this because of John McTiernan, and then it turned out that Michael Crichton took over directing and ruined it (uncredited) because presumably McTiernan was trying to make his utter nonsense into something awesome. Here is a really curious Wikipedia sentence: "Ironically this film came out the same year as another film called Beowulf, but this is not the first time this has happened." Oh man, another one: "The original soundtrack was composed by Graeme Revell and featured the Dead Can Dance singer Lisa Gerrard. The score was rejected by Michael Crichton and was replaced by one composed by Crichton's usual collaborator, Jerry Goldsmith." See? What could've been!

Dreamscape: Special Edition
Why is there a Special Edition of this odd little movie? Anyway — Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer. Best bit might actually be that Eddie "Oliver from Green Acres" Albert plays the Reagany president?

Batman & Robin
Lol, irony, etc. etc.

Masters of Horror: Joe Dante: The Screwfly Solution
Joe Dante should have at least part of the career that Sam Raimi is currently enjoying, but they gave him that Looney Tunes movie and he made it something closer to Chuck Jones than Space Jam and they couldn't really market it to anyone, so now he does… this? This little Showtime anthology show is super awesome in theory, cuz shortish films by awesome genre directors is self-evidently awesome, but premium cable budget means "you are expected to take Jason Priestley seriously." Priestley aside, this is good clever fun.

Masters of Horror: John Landis: Deer Woman
Landis works better with the aforementioned "premium cable budget" than Dante and the result is a pretty funny little movie with a surprisingly good performance from Brian fucking Benben.

John Carpenter: Cigarette Burns
This was good! I love John Carpenter! It is basically a lot like "In the Mouth of Madness" which is ALSO really good, though this one is a bit goofier, because, like, ok, it's a movie about THE MOST INTENSE AND IMMORAL MOVIE EVER MADE, a movie that literally makes viewers commit suicide, it is so goddamn disturbing, and I know it's really a metaphor for the power of art and the responsibilities of the artist but they can't get away from the fact that we're going to have to see at least little peeks of this notorious movie, and it will disappoint us. Like, you think, "how is this worse than Bride Wars?"

Fear Dot Com
Why did I watch this? Because it was called "Fear Dot Com."

John Landis: Family
This was good. Though I was thinking — was George Wendt his first choice? Did John Goodman turn him down? Would John Candy have maybe been amazing in this?

A couple Lost episodes
Part of my "attempt to figure out what the fuss was about years after the fact" series. I guess it seemed ok!

Follow that Bird
Did you know that the songs in this movie were composed by Van Dyke Parks?

Joe Dante: Homecoming
The "politics" of this movie are heavy-handed and kind of goofy but it is otherwise a pretty great little zombie movie that is also against the war.

After Hours
SO CLASSIC.

Some random SNL specials
The 1986-1990 era is always underrepresented in these. (And, obviously, the 1980-1986 era is never mentioned, at all, except for a couple Eddie Murphy sketches. Sometimes I wonder if it was as bad as we have been told! Old people: was it?)

Clear and Present Danger
Hah, man, this is actually pretty good, but it is so damn long. The idea of an acting deputy director of the CIA literally having no understanding of what the CIA actually does and has always done is hilarious. Han Solo is all, the CIA I joined would never illegally stage military actions in Latin America and you are like "sir, you must be a TERRIBLE analyst, because you don't even read newspapers apparently."

Godzilla (1996)
Yesss!! LOVED IT. Why did people hate it? Because Godzilla didn't breathe fire and wasn't that tall? Is that seriously why? Because it is great. Fighting adorable baby godzillas in Madison Square Garden! Jean fucking Reno! What is not to like?

Clash of the Titans
The best part of this movie is that adorable robot owl, obviously, though Maggie Smith is pretty kickass.

Waterworld
Hah, this was like the worst thing we thought we'd ever see? It has Dennis Hopper, it has Jet-Ski stunts performed by actual human stunt men, it has hilariously inept attempts at making satirical points about society. It's great. It also never makes any sense. I am morbidly curious about the like ten-hour extended version. Are their hysterical intense Waterworld fans somewhere on this internet that can get it released?

Zero Effect
This is like the most 1998 movie EVER.

SNL episodes from seasons 2 and 4
You forget what an awesome stable of female talent they had back then because, you know, the asshole dudes got all the attention and credit. There was one sketch that was just a joke-free musical number by Jane Curtin and Lorraine Newman and Gida Radner and Lily Tomlin (who was not the host! she just showed up!) and it was awesome. This one where Ed Koch does the monologue, too! So '70s.

That Mitchell and Webb Look
It is a shame that we only get like one sketch comedy show, here in America. This is a pretty good show with some really funny sketches but they repeat a lot of characters that maybe you have to be English to find amusing.

Ladies and gentlemen: Alex Pareene!

Alex: Natasha!

Natasha: Can we talk about the motherf'ing Bad Lieutenant??

Alex: Yes. Yes we can.

Natasha: Pareene, tell me why this is a great movie.

Alex: Well. I think, first of all, that it is indeed about a Bad Lieutenant. I think that while Abel Ferrara's original movie was about a bad person who happens to be a Lieutenant, Nic Cage, in this film, was just not ever very good at being a Lieutenant. And I admired that, making a police procedural where none of the policing is ever very competent.

Natasha: Have you ever been to New Orleans where this movie was filmed?

Alex: Yes! Pre-Katrina. I was not "of age," and also it was a school trip, but one night I got ridiculously high behind our hotel and totally freaked out for about 4 hours, so I could relate to this film.

Natasha: I was there post-Katrina. And it was like… hmmm… what's a kind way to put this? Coastal Indonesia circa July, 2005?

Alex: Yes. I think Herzog's camera was basically like "fuck you, America, look at this shit."

Natasha: So one of the things I appreciated was finding a context of New-Lawlessness. Cause, I mean, really, could he have done it New York the way Ferrera did? I mean, you're from Brooklyn, you tell me?

Alex: Well there have been a lot of shootings recently in my neighborhood, recently—one of the most recent was apparently because of a 40-cent wing special at the Atlantic Center mall! But there is not really any sense of lawlessness at all, like things basically seem to be In Control, and the violence and death is nicely pushed to the periphery in Bloomberg's New York.

Natasha: You guys are so lucky to have such a great Mayor-King.

Alex: I know, I am thankful every morning. What did you think of Val Kilmer?

Natasha: ENJOYABLE! Also I think it was a smart choice to use Kilmer and Cage and make 'em both look sweaty and bloated. They both looked used and cadaverous.

Alex: Ha it was a smart "choice" to make Val Kilmer look bloated indeed.

Natasha: What did you think of him??

Alex: What I loved was, you know how in The Departed how Marky Mark just sorta disappears 2/3rds of the way through, and you don't even really notice because so much other shit is going on and Rolling Stones songs are playing and dangerous father figures are corrupting our heroes and then at the end, BAM, there he is, Marky Mark suddenly ends the movie, and you are like, SHIT. In this movie Val Kilmer disappears and— [SPOILERS DELETED].

Natasha: Which left you unsatisfied or DELIGHTED?

Alex: I was definitely delighted. Because if our hero was going to face a reckoning I would rather have it be at the hands of reptiles or sea creatures instead of, like, a GOOD lieutenant.

Natasha: Can we talk about the THRILLING use of creatures this movie?

Alex: Yes!

Natasha: Like, perhaps some of the most gasping-for-air moments involved slow lingering shots of animals!

Alex: I mean, the reptiles seemed generally to be laughing at the humans. An alligator caused the car wreck, the snake was totally digging the flooded jail cell…

Natasha: They seemed to heighten the drama of every scene in a way that I'm really not used to in movies. I think that's what was so gripping: this otherworldly emotion would come on screen from just watching a waddling lizard wander through the scene. Like, people in audience clapped for them! WE WERE MOVED!

Alex: Yes! Totally. I think we are supposed to be relating to the iguanas. They are sort of witnessing this bizarre comedy of human ineptitude along with us in the audience. And they seem to find it just as funny.

Natasha: Oh my god, those wise, bluesy, Iguanas. The Beta Fish that just stupidly floats in its cup, per Herzog, gets that we are all going through some comedic toil, even if we don't?

Alex: Nic holds the little cup up so we see his face distorted through the little fish's water bowl.The film is totally from the POV of little creatures.

Natasha: Let's talk about the best creature: Nic.

Alex: Ha. About Nic, can I say, that while the things he said and did were not necessarily always the sorts of things I have witnessed people saying and doing while on The Drugs, he did sort of occasionally start walking and talking like Paul Giamatti playing Nixon, and that was awesome.

Natasha: The flat paralyzed cheek thing! Where you talk like your molars are sewn together!

Alex: The bravura shouting and hysterically laughing bits were def what you paid to see, but just the way he stood and constantly gritted his teeth was both hysterical and also: totally true.

Natasha: Like, honestly, how many times have we seen the Junkie. And yet Cage brought the whole crazy toolkit of mania he has. Alex, why should people who are wary about Cage open their hearts to him for this movie?

Alex: I think some reviewer somewhere mentioned this but Nic Cage's character in this movie was Terence McDonagh and Nic Cage's character in the similarly epochal Raising Arizona was H.I. McDonagh And there is no one who is wary of Cage in THAT movie. If there is I don't want to know about it frankly!

Natasha: Like, Cage has some kind of fire he turns on when the set is right and it's like a fucking roman candle. But I'm not sure what it is. A good script? The threat of losing his Bavarian castle?

Alex: Well in a movie like GHOST RIDER, which I Iove but which I understand that others would not love, Cage is still making these Actorly Choices that make him crazy compelling to watch, like he decided that his character would constantly eat jelly beans and listen to the Carpenters, instead of "being an alcoholic" like the script called for. So he doesn't necessarily even need a Script or Director—he can also completely sleepwalk through something like Bangkok Dangerous, which I will NOT rep for, because it is boring, but even that is rare. And this is not a Bavarian Castle movie! National Treasure II is a Bavarian Castle movie. Maybe he just needs to make fewer Bavarian Castle movies and give up on his beloved Bavarian Castle!

Natasha: These are choices we must all grapple with, Alex. WHO ARE WE TO JUDGE CAGE LEST WE GIVE UP OWN BAVO-CASTLE?

Alex: The saddest thing to me is that Nic sold his COMIC COLLECTION. Because that is surely more important to him than a castle. He named his son Kal-el! Someone put him in 2012 2: 2013 so he can buy his back issues of Punisher back!

Natasha: My one gripe with this movie: Eva Mendez in no way has the skin of a woman who has been sodomized and smoking crank all week.

Alex: Haha NO.

Natasha: Loveless anal sex and rock cocaine does not leave one's skin rosy and honey colored. She needed some chest acne or some shit.

Alex: I think she is playing one of those Hollywood "High Class Escorts" whose only sign of the rough life they lead is a painted on black eye in one scene, and that eye is quickly avenged.

Natasha: Naturally!

Alex: And like the one time she is threatened with actually having to go through with what an actual prostitute does for a living it is a TERRIFYING prospect, that someone would do that to lovely Eva Mendes!

Natasha: Alex, why should people go to their local cineplex and patron this film?

Alex: A) It has the single funniest reference to Stroszek that you will see ALL YEAR

B) Nic Cage has no sideburns

C) Nic Cage threatens and insults old ladies.

Natasha: Generally when Cage is given sideburns is when we are forced to conceive of him as some kind of bad ass right?

Alex: Yes, I think sideburned/long haired Nic Cage is usually playing a badass criminal.

Natasha: But none of this is kitsch. Like, gritty is a term that's thrown around, but I feel like we've returned to 1999 levels, a-la-Leaving-Las-Vegas-levels, of realism and despair and comedy?

Alex: It is gritty in the literal sense, in that it feels filthy and abrasive. And it is also hysterical, and not unintentionally so.

Natasha: Why is that?

Alex: Because of the iguanas, again! I think the only logical response to the depths of damaged depravity we are seeing before us is to laugh at the foul state of mankind and its institutions. I mean when your hero appears out of nowhere in a nursing home threatening old ladies while OMINOUSLY SHAVING in a doorway, all because he lost his key witness in a Biloxi casino, I think you are supposed to laugh.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Alex Pareene have a lot of respect for Fitzcarraldo.

First, let's review this week's challenge!

And now, the key!

Answers here!

And here is the answer key!

Previously: Tina And Maureen.