“Always Remember Us This Way” is treated as Gaga’s last great musical moment before the pop-star turn.
The Grammys sequence becomes darkly comic on repeat viewing even though its humiliation remains difficult to watch. — Bill Simmons
The final Cooper and Elliott scene became a durable meme and emotional payoff. — Bill Simmons
The cop-bar conversation is praised as an unusually specific and believable flirting scene. — Sean Fennessey
The supermarket sequence sustains the early romance through mundane details and the leads’ chemistry. — Sean Fennessey
Dice and the drivers watching the viral video provide a charming family-comedy interlude. — Amanda Dobbins
The parking-lot scene is the preferred runner-up because Bradley Cooper recognizes Gaga writing a song in real time.
The opening concert introduces Jackson’s addiction, charisma, and physical mess without dialogue. — Sean Fennessey
Ally’s bathroom introduction establishes a separate crisis and character with equal economy. — Amanda Dobbins
The “Shallow” scene is praised for every checkpoint Lady Gaga crosses before stepping onto the stage. — Bill Simmons
Bradley Cooper’s supportive reactions communicate love, belief, and encouragement, making that support a major part of his performance. — Amanda Dobbins
The Saul Rubinick award (as transcribed) is given to Dana Wheeler Nicholson as well; one host refuses to accept that in a movie with Powers Booth, countering with Booth, and the pick is repeated as Dana Wheeler Nicholson; Booth is defended as good, if more Booth than needed, and Thomas Hayden Church (transcribed 'Daniel Church') is said to be closer to the award than he is.
The case against her: in bed after Wyatt gets back from the picnic, asked how she is feeling, she is so high she is laughing at her own misery, and that is not good acting.
The defender insists the other two are both wrong: calling her overacting in a film where Powers Booth wears a sash and sashays around town on opium shooting people in the chest, and in which Michael Biehn appears, makes no sense. — Chris Ryan
Further candidates: Billy Zane, who overacts in every movie and is not good, though in fairness that is literally the point of his character, an actor, and he played that same melodramatic man in his next nine movies, including as a serial killer on a boat; Sam Elliott overdoing the Western thing, rejected; and Robert Mitchum's completely unnecessary narrator, parked as a nitpick.
The dispute resumes during nitpicks: the hosts attacking her are told she is alive and reachable through her agent or Twitter, and that it is weird to be most bothered by a woman in three scenes while the men ham it up like boar's head; the defense is that the part is poorly written with no payoff since the narrator simply tells us she died; the attackers say the award is not a demerit and her laudanum-soaked scenes are just bad, with no emotional journey.
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.
