The performer whose name is transcribed as Season Hubbly was married to Kurt Russell, which is offered as the reason she joined the cast. — Bill Simmons
One voter chooses Jones as the film’s soul whose final scenes turn a cat-and-mouse thriller into a meditation on age and fear. — Bill Hader
Two voters choose Bardem because Chigurh embodies the destructive future, completes his task, survives damage, and became an iconic villain. — Bill Hader
Jones’s one-take dream monologue and career are celebrated even by the Bardem voters. — Bill Hader
Bell’s sudden dream ending moved from baffling on first viewing to the host’s clearest aged-best selection, especially his admission that he will not risk everything against what he cannot understand. — Bill Simmons
The 1980 border story operates as a timeless western about the end of the West and a lawman discovering he cannot protect people. — Chris Ryan
Chigurh’s first murders immediately establish an almost elemental sociopath, and the title perfectly names Bell’s realization.
The harsh Marfa landscape and old roadside businesses feel both specific and outside time; Ellis’s isolated shack embodies where Bell fears he is headed.
Sparse music, sound, patient images, and Tommy Lee Jones arriving after every major event let process and aftermath carry the story. — Bill Simmons
Josh Brolin’s long-delayed emergence as an A-list presence is praised as perfect casting for a capable man rather than visible star acting. — Bill Hader
The coin toss expresses fate without excusing Chigurh, while Bell’s feeling of being overmatched captures a universal fear of the world moving past you.
Deakins’s cinematography, editing, production design, lightning, desert scale, and minimal setups make the film a continuing visual reference for prestige crime work. — Bill Hader
According to Vin Diesel, the role of Hobbs was originally developed for Tommy Lee Jones; on his Facebook page Diesel saw a fan who wanted him and The Rock in a film together, and he and Justin Lin redesigned the role for The Rock.
The mustaches, all real and magnificent: an hour and a half in, one host wonders why nobody wears hats and mustaches now and says producer Craig should have one right now; another cannot grow one, Kurt Russell can grow incredible facial hair, and a Christmas challenge is set to grow a Tombstone mustache or goatee for the fans.
Powers Booth and Val Kilmer actually have a soul patch with a mustache rather than goatees; the challenged host is in, even though a mustache makes him look like a dirtbag cop from 1974, which is when the challenger feels most like his friend, like being friends with Gene Hackman.
The crazy loaded cast, already discussed, and Dana Delaney, whose good career felt like it could have been better; a China Beach fan likens her to Carla Gugino, first said as 'Carlo Gugino' and mocked as a Fellini actor and the Godfather toll-booth gunman, as a why-aren't-you-a-bigger-star actress, asking why Demi Moore was so much bigger.
Delaney had a bigger career than Gugino, whom everyone loves, but should have been an A list star; this was the one time a big movie made her the female lead, Exit to Eden being the joke about where it went wrong, and she remains one host's second-favorite actress in the film.
The 1880s Wild Wild West world-building: liquor, brothels, gambling, hats and mustaches; the Godfather tone Russell talked about shows in Wyatt moving in, taking over the faro game (transcribed 'Pharaoh') at the Oriental and winning the deeds to mines, a man who stands for law and order screwing people out of things because fame left the Earps with nothing to show for it.
The film is called the bridge from John Ford Westerns to Deadwood, one of the first Westerns full of people cursing each other out and then shooting somebody in the head; the blood in the Bill Paxton scene and Sam Elliott being told he will never use his arm again were new and intense for a Western.
The closing credits, four solid minutes of the cast walking in their outfits for no reason like a Vanity Fair photo shoot, are unintentionally funny but cool, compared to a Countdown segment one host once shot with Jalen.
That era of Val Kilmer, all the way through Heat, is savored like old Fab Five tapes from Michigan: it did not totally work out, but if you could bottle this there was something special, and he really should have been a bigger star.
Why the film is special: you can watch the other actors recognize what Kilmer is doing and change their performances to elevate his, making themselves more buttoned-down and austere, solid American oak, while he is free jazz, a coughing, sweating, feverish, green Byron or Shelley figure; the Kansas Earps versus Georgia Doc contrast is credited, with colleague Amanda Dobbins invoked as the poetic Georgian, and tuberculosis explaining the rest.
Kurt Russell's Wyatt is looking for a wife who gets him and stokes his soul, but the real partner is Holliday, from the first 'how the hell are you' line; the friendship is the love story at the center of the movie, an amazing portrayal of it.
Revisiting the 1993 Best Supporting Actor field (Tommy Lee Jones, DiCaprio, Ralph Fiennes, Malkovich, Pete Postlewaite), it is amazing Kilmer was not nominated, though the category was stacked; Malkovich is good in In the Line of Fire but not as memorable, and with the wished-for five-year Oscar delay Kilmer gets nominated.
The film was a modest hit that took on a new life: one host is not sure he saw it in theaters despite seeing everything then, another definitely did over Christmas break when movies were the only thing to do, and another watched it maybe 25 times in a friend's basement because it was always on TV.
The tuberculosis vaccine has aged best, in the sense that the film shows how much having tuberculosis sucked: Doc turns green, coughs blood, is insulted as a 'lunger' by everyone, and keeps smoking and drinking whiskey around the clock until the doctor orders no more whiskey, cigarettes, sex or gambling.
Joanna Pacula, whose name nobody can pronounce, is the last pick: she was around for a while as a why-not-bigger actress and then just never made it, her credits being Marked for Death (transcribed 'Mark for Death') with Steven Seagal, Tombstone and My Giant; while her credits are looked up, Kilmer's 'I have not even begun to defile myself' is performed, his accent likened to Yosemite Sam reading Oscar Wilde, ridiculous but perfect.
Asked again later, Billy Bob Thornton is one host's answer; another sticks with the mustaches.
The segment is announced as 'New category. The Joe Pantoliano Award' and named for Joe Pantoliano, which is why it is recorded under the existing Joey Pants that-guy family.
The award is for a then-that-guy who became a that guy or never did: Joe Pantoliano was Guido the Killer Pimp and the guy from the Cruisers movie for five years, then Running Scared, The Matrix and The Sopranos made him Joey Pants; the two nominees are Scott Glenn and Harris Ulan (as transcribed).
Harris Ulan (as transcribed) is a flat-out that guy: a hundred movies, almost always evil, usually the lieutenant or someone in the DA's or mayor's office, an amazing theater actor; the two performances burned in are the judge in Ghostbusters 2 and Mel Burstead (as transcribed) in Scarface, a role he has essentially played for 35 years, including a version of it here.
Scott Glenn's recognition of Hoyt as a strong safety from North Hollywood High is recited, and his one-shot character in the Apocalypse Now director's cut, painted and surrounded by Montagnard Indians at Brando's compound, is imagined coming back to the States to become an L.A. drug dealer who scouts high school defensive backs.
Why does Roger wear a black tank top tucked into jeans with a green bathrobe, drinking scotch at 10 in the morning, with a photographic memory for a player from 10 or 15 years earlier, before YouTube mixtapes, like the invention of Pro Football Focus; weird little flourishes like this elevate the movie.
Roger is understood as an ex-cop turned dealer, and there is a brand of cop really into local athletics who goes to high school games for no reason and asks about the quarterback, a provincial type who probably has a Letterman jacket from 1957.
The script had been banging around since the mid-90s and is based on the Rampart scandal, drawing on the Raphael Perez (as transcribed) case of cops stealing and selling drugs, with Alonzo modeled on Perez down to the beard and look.
Wesley Morris's 'there can only be one' market-correction game: Tommy Lee Jones market-corrected Scott Glenn; Glenn was the rival who sleeps with Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy, a weird film that has not aged well, while Jones was in The Executioner's Song with Rosanna Arquette, and they ran parallel through the 80s until The Fugitive and Under Siege made Jones a top-tier star and left Glenn to play Roger.
Glenn belongs to the early-80s generation of The Right Stuff, Silverado and Terms of Endearment whose careers were derailed by the mid-to-late-80s action boom; he took second-in-command roles in The Hunt for Red October, Silence of the Lambs as Jack Crawford, The Player, Backdraft and Absolute Power, grouped with Kline, Costner and Dennis Quaid.
Personal Best, Robert Towns's (as transcribed) directorial debut, is a weird film that has aged badly and incredibly well at once, with Glenn's character crazy and the two-athletes-falling-for-one-another premise interesting; it will never be on the show.
One voice thinks it has to go to Scott Glenn; another argues for Harris Ulan (as transcribed) because Glenn was already Scott Glenn, Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff, a known quantity 20 years earlier; Roger is called his best part, three great scenes, though the other would take Personal Best and The Right Stuff over it, and no single pick is settled.
Roger's football recall is riffed on: the game against Crenshaw, picking off two passes, going nickel in the third quarter, the safety blitz, all offered with scotch and a bathrobe.
Earlier, during the heat check, a nomination for Harris Ewan (as transcribed) was held for this new category.
Nominees are young Eddie Murphy, James Remar as Gans, and James Horner's soundtrack crossed with San Francisco; the score is one of the all-timers, and some of it was reused in Commando three years later to one host's annoyance; Horner likes his steel drums and scored much of one host's movie childhood, including, as recalled, Alien, Aliens and Terminator.
The three-minute cue before the subway stakeout, when they wait outside the parking garage in the morning, with the clarinet, is wanted as the theme for the BS podcast, with an appeal to James Horner's estate to hand it over. — Bill Simmons
The Torchy's scene has aged phenomenally; the Police's Roxanne is a time capsule that would have been a baffling intro if the song had fallen out of popularity, but it turned out to be one of the most iconic songs of the era; a Walkman-with-microphone memory and the thought that Dexys Midnight Runners there could have gone very wrong.
The Busboys have aged really well, leaving the question of why they never made it; the final scene, when Reggie finally gets laid and comes out to find Jack waiting with the car, the exchange about the money ending with Reggie wanting only enough for a new car, and Reggie stealing Jack's lighter and getting caught, is incredibly well written; the pick is Reggie, the Eddie Murphy performance, and the other agrees on young Eddie.
A bar-band tangent: every city had its own Huey Lewis ripoff, like the Young Rumblers in Philly, and the Busboys songs all seem to be about going downtown for new shoes or being back in town, written to land a Friday residency at a place like Torchy's or Roman's rather than to write the White Album; both songs could have been Blues Brothers numbers; the country band at Torchy's was pretty good too, and young Eddie is reaffirmed.
Without stepping on the Gans section to come, James Remar is one of the great psycho-on-the-loose characters, maybe number one among realistic ones, a man a prostitute character says prefers shooting cops to sex and who has been in jail three years; competition is thin, perhaps Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege ten years later, since eighties villains were slick businessmen like Alan Rickman in Die Hard.
TLJ wins; the category is barely needed, and he is called the star of the movie.
He had been a respected character actor who played villains, was 47 at the time, and was on minds from JFK. — Chris Ryan
His career is traced from Coal Miner's Daughter and The Executioner's Song through JFK and Under Siege to The Client, Natural Born Killers, Cobb, Batman Forever and Men in Black; The Fugitive unleashed him.
Clips played include 'I don't care', the leg irons with no legs, 'I don't bargain', and 'Our fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble.' — Bill Simmons
The 'I don't bargain' scene is clarified: the line is not 'I don't miss', and it is whispered to a man whose hearing was damaged.
The ponytailed marshal is the one who gets killed in U.S. Marshals.
The best quote is 'I don't care'; he actually did it (transcribed 'he had lived it', apparently the ad-lib), and Tommy Lee Jones is jokingly credited as screenwriter. — Andy Greenwald
The scene of Kimble vigorously dyeing his hair and the face on the product box stays with one participant. — Andy Greenwald
The pre-CGI one-armed man is kind of funny: the arm is visibly pinned in, and he always wears an overcoat.
Katsulas's first interrogation by Tommy Lee Jones plays like a 1970s movie, compared to a '70s eating guy' sketch. — Andy Greenwald
Possibly a nitpick: despite constant media coverage, no cop recognizes Kimble or considers he shaved his beard; a cop asks the disguised fugitive if he has seen the man and gets the reply 'I see him every day in the mirror', earning 'dumbest cop ever.'
This is not Joe Pantoliano's apex; candidates raised include The Sopranos, Guido the Killer Pimp, The Matrix, Bad Boys, Eddie and the Cruisers, Running Scared and Risky Business.
A case is made that The Fugitive was the apex of Pantoliano being likable and welcome, when people recognized him and were excited he was there. — Andy Greenwald
Nominees include the one-armed man (Katsulas) and the bald Black convict on the train, who is said to deserve his own sequel or the U.S. Marshals fugitive role; Joey Pants and Dr. Charles Nichols make four candidates. — Bill Simmons
A write-in candidate is all the reporters at the Tommy Lee Jones press conference, including an actor from Veep and two apparent real Chicago columnists. — Chris Ryan
Side note: Andreas Katsulas was on Babylon 5 and has died; its creator said he loved smoking with a passion that cannot be described. — Andy Greenwald
One participant names the bald Black convict the winner: in three scenes he goes 'seven for eight with ten rebounds.' — Andy Greenwald
Another makes a small argument for Krabbé (transcribed 'Jerome Krabb'), who must have laughed at the script and is dining out on those scenes. — Andy Greenwald
The Nichols character is obviously the villain as soon as he reappears; he is not plausible as Kimble's friend, and the Charlie and Chuck names do not fit a Dutchman. — Andy Greenwald
