Having a boat looks appealing in the movie despite upkeep and immediate depreciation objections.
The self-harm reaction image and a Bridge Nine Records flag are cited as lasting cultural and local details. — Chris Ryan
Gretchen is praised as a strong character actress after one participant admits earlier doubt. — Bill Simmons
The accent scores are Affleck ten, Gretchen nine, Williams nine, Hedges seven, Chandler three, Donovan roughly two to four, an unnamed local nineteen, and Wilson at least eight after being mistaken for a local.
Damon and poker are initially no; the first film observed as firstborn is proposed for Damon, and Norton’s Fight Club is preferred over this film despite an initial challenge. — Bill Simmons
Malkovich candidates are Dangerous Liaisons and Being John Malkovich. Janssen’s Gene Gray and X 2 period and the observed Titoro and Lobowski/Do the Right Thing are proposed; no full ordinal ranking is imposed. — Bill Simmons
Oreos from the audience and Binghamton receive support. Chan’s consecutive championships versus this cameo is debated, Atlantic City evokes 90 s fights and a bachelor party, Russians remain unresolved, and Gretchen Mall gets no. — Bill Simmons
Matt Damon is a no because the movie was not a hit; his real apex is probably the first movie of his franchise that made a shitload of money (the transcript has 'that first born movie'), unless it was covered in the Good Will Hunting episode; Ed Norton is a no, with Fight Club his apex given his body of work, though he was on his way up; Gretchen Maul (as transcribed) is definitely a no, with The Notorious Betty Page (as transcribed) her comeback.
Johnny Chan is put forward as a 100 percent yes; the other reacts 'No way!' and the proposer repeats 100 percent yes, since Chan won two World Series of Poker in a row, this was effectively his third title, and he is immortalized pulling the greatest poker move, waiting out his man; the hosts wonder whether it is the same wheel hand Mike uses to beat Teddy KGB.
John Turturro is a no: this and Jesus in The Big Lebowski the same year are a great one-two, but Barton Fink is probably his apex, even though one host is not a Coen Brothers guy.
For Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons is argued as his apex, coming off Killing Fields, with an underrated over-the-top performance opposite Glenn Close; then the other realizes it must be Being John Malkovich, since they named a movie after him, which is conceded as the cherry on the sundae.
For Koppelman and Levine, Billions is their apex mountain right now; their dream is Kevin Durant telling them at a party that he loves their show.
Gretchen Maul's (as transcribed) wet-blanket girlfriend Joe and her performance; the judges' instant hand-reading scene; Mike McD not hooking up with Famke Janssen's character
Gretchen Mala (as transcribed) plays the stereotypical wet-blanket girlfriend, a staple of 80s and 90s sports movies for undermining the hero: a girlfriend or wife who does not believe in what he is doing.
A Mount Rushmore of wet-blanket girlfriends: Adrian Balboa in Rocky IV, who quits on Rocky and shows up belatedly in Russia, leaving one host still in go-fuck-yourself-Adrian mode; Myra Fleener in Hoosiers, the number one, subject of an old ESPN magazine column, with no idea why Gene Hackman liked her.
A theory: many men do not know how to write female characters, so they pour their own relationship anxieties into a figure who is holding the hero back, which is why so many movies have a woman you cannot place; the last Rushmore member is Ned Braden's wife in Slapshot (as transcribed), a tough hang who even throws it at Paul Newman.
The defense from Koppelman and Levine, given in a back-and-forth with one host: Damon's girlfriend was originally in only three scenes, and a law-school best friend named Atkinson, a counterpoint to Worm, was in the script until the studio made them merge Joe and Atkinson and boost Joe, leaving her inessential and simply in Worm's way.
Not a great performance either, though she rallied in the 2000s; she is flat-out bad and unlikable here, around the time of the Vanity Fair cover anointing her the next ingenue when she had made little more than Donnie Brasco, and hers is the only stretch where the movie loses its rhythm.
The judges' card scene, which both like, has aged worst: Mike McD standing for eight to fourteen seconds and reading everyone's hand is not believable, even if Koppelman and Levine claim to have seen it happen; the clip is played; such reads take hours of study.
The judges' game is not Texas Hold'em, perhaps a seven-card stud variant with many cards showing, which makes the reads more plausible, and the judges' cards are never shown, so he might have missed some; it sets him up as a savant, a reach one host is fine with.
Martin Lando's (as transcribed) character is described as a cross between a law professor, Confucius, the fairy godmother and Red Arbeck (as transcribed); not a great character but essential, and the bar scene where he pours gin and tells the yeshiva story is loved; movies like this need an old guy, as Charlie Pierce was for Grantland.
Mike McD not hooking up with Famke Jansen (as transcribed) is called the biggest flaw of the movie and maybe of a host's life, raised with Koppelman and Levine multiple times: his girlfriend has moved out, he is home alone watching an old World Series of Poker, she comes over about Worm's tab and makes a hard pass, and he says now is not the time, which is called inexplicable and indefensible.
Her character is the manic poker dream girl, after the manic pixie dream girl of Penny Lane and the Zooey Deschanel movies: beautiful, a Bond girl three years earlier, works at the Chesterfield and recounts World Series hands; the case against is that he loves Joe, is trying to go straight, and Petra represents the old version of him.
On rewatch the hosts think the two should simply have gotten together; Koppelman and Levine admit it is their biggest mistake, prompting a joke about adding a scene for the 25th anniversary; for one host it is the what's aged the worst, and the explanation offered does not convince him.
The opening scene, Mike McD losing his 30 grand to Teddy KGB; Mike McD and Worm arriving at the emptied apartment and leaving to 'play some fucking cards'
Five nominees are read: the opening scene where Mike McD loses his shirt ('I don't think you have the spades'), and Mike McD's poker comeback, whose clip is played; 'let's play some fucking cards' plus the guitar riff gets a host fired up to gamble, like the Vegas moment in Swingers.
An aside: the comeback is a bit of a cheat, because the two hosts played cards on the same night earlier this summer and real poker is slow and awful, everyone is Joey Knish and no one is Mike McD, whereas the movie makes it feel like a jet engine down the tarmac; one host's favorite thing in life is driving to Vegas and sitting silently at a poker table for eight hours.
The remaining nominees: the Johnny Chan scene, Chan being one of the movie's big winners, with the Russian lady's intimate familiarity with World Series of Poker hands and the Chan versus Seidel 'look at the patience' hand; Mike and Worm trying to win everything back ('I've gone on runs like this before'); and the final Mike McD versus Teddy KGB showdown.
Runner-up nomination: the judges' game, Mike McD putting every judge in the room on a hand so that Judge Marinacci offers a clerkship on the strength of one read; every movie like this needs a moment showing how smart the lead is. — Sean Fennessey
The other runner-up is the trip to Binghamton and the card game with the police officers, corrected to municipal workers: the scariest scene but one of the best made, the shot of Mike and Worm getting beaten after Norton's mechanic work is caught, real tension in a movie where the stakes are otherwise hard to gauge.
The opening scene is picked as the most rewatchable: a testament to how the film draws you in, the soundtrack, Mike McD rolling in with 30 grand, taking three stacks of high society and explaining the game's nuances; voiceover is a no-no that the host hates, but here it works for the first ten minutes.
A quibble about the opening hand: Mike McD holds ace-nine, KGB holds aces, the board runs ace nine eight, then another nine gives both a full house, and a rag comes on the river; KGB is so sure he has won that he shows his aces, drops them and walks away, yet Mike could have held pocket nines for four of a kind, something the host has never heard anyone discuss.
The quibble is told to save it for picking nits; the counter is that KGB read Mike's devastated face and needed to see nothing else, which the questioner half accepts while still wanting to see the cards.
The other favorite is when Gretchen Mull (as transcribed) moves out: not the moving but Mike McD and Worm arriving at the emptied apartment, Ed Norton's 'women are the rake' speech, Mike's wheels turning to 'fuck it, let's go, let's play some fucking cards', and the music, almost a sports-movie scene.
