Oscar-bait disability movies; Raymond crashing the sex scene; the car-import business scenes; the card-counting stigma and casino reaction; Tom Cruise's cigarette smoking
The Oscar-bait run of movies like Regarding Henry looks bad in totality. — Sean Fennessey
Raymond crashing the sex scene also goes here: weird, though it somehow works. — Sean Fennessey
The car-import business scenes with Lenny are one and a half too many and five minutes too much, like someone gave Oliver Stone an eight ball to write two Lamborghini-importing scenes. — Bill Simmons
The economics of Charlie's business is flagged and deferred to a later spot. — Bill Simmons
The stigma of card counting starts with this movie, yet they don't seem to win enough for the casino to turn on them; up 80 grand in 1988 is guessed at about 400K now. — Bill Simmons
Crowds in Vegas do not gather behind random winners at a table unless it is someone like Tiger Woods or Charles Barkley. — Bill Simmons
Card counting is not illegal, and being called into the manager's office for that amount seems ridiculous; trouble usually starts in the millions. — Sean Fennessey
There is no law against counting cards unless using a device; casinos push out players who crush them over months, not for one night. — Bill Simmons
Tom Cruise trying to smoke cigarettes ages worst and is suggested to have cost him an Oscar nomination; fans are invited to make a montage of Cruise smoking in movies. — Bill Simmons
Cruise learned to fly a plane, flip pool cues and drive a race car, yet smokes like an idiot, holding the cigarette like a tree stump, usually at a diner. — Bill Simmons
Hoffman smoked through the Bernstein role and could have given him advice; Cruise also learned a back handspring for The Firm. — Bill Simmons
Bad smoking on screen is called a passion; Cruise clearly never had a cigarette, holds it sideways and never smokes it, because his body is a temple. — Bill Simmons
The music and Hans Zimmer score; Charlie's Ferrari; the Rain Man would save me line; asshole Cruise; the Bonnie Hunt cameo; the old Vegas view from Caesars; the traffic, bathtub and smoke-alarm sequences; the autistic-savant premise; Raymond crashing the sex scene; Valeria Golino; The Hangover's parody; the Rain Man Suite; Cruise's 1988; Qantas
The music holds up: a great 80s score, the Iko Iko use, and the two Hans Zimmer pieces.
Asked for Hans rankings, the answer is Zimmer number one, Gruber being pretty problematic. — Chris Ryan
Charlie Babbitt's 1983 Ferrari ("400 I") and the line "when I was a kid, I always thought the Rain Man would save me," framed as foreshadowing. — Bill Simmons
Asshole Cruise ages best: telling Raymond to shut up, and ordering large pepperoni after being told pepperoni is not wanted; this is straight asshole rather than the cocky version in The Color of Money, Top Gun or Days of Thunder. — Chris Ryan
A question is raised whether hotel room service ever let guests freestyle an order like beer for two and the closest thing to tapioca pudding. — Bill Simmons
Freezing on the view from the Caesars suite shows old Vegas: a "holiday in" across the street, none of today's casinos, and the Barbary Coast, thought to be the Cromwell now. — Bill Simmons
The smoke-alarm scene was left out of the rewatchable-scene picks because it is disturbing; the traffic, bathtub and smoke-alarm moments are praised as tension-building sequences. — Bill Simmons
The autistic-savant concept in movies and TV has aged well because it keeps being revisited. — Bill Simmons
Raymond crashing the sex scene is weird but works, a 9.9 degree of difficulty; he just wanted to see what was on TV. — Bill Simmons
Valerie Galena (as transcribed) is great in this; she became the queen of Hot Shots, made a couple of American thrillers, went back to Italy and appeared in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. — Sean Fennessey
The Hangover's parody of Rain Man is an addendum that plays all the same notes. — Bill Simmons
The Rain Man Suite lives on as a Vegas idea; the hosts recall being given a suite during a Summer League trip, with high ceilings and multiple rooms. — Bill Simmons
Cruise's 1988, with Cocktail and Rain Man making him the biggest under-35 star in the world.
Qantas is called the biggest pick: still no crashes, apart from early propeller crashes.
Asked how often he has flown Qantas, the answer is never; only Air New Zealand. — Chris Ryan
Ebert is jokingly called "Raj" because the hosts feel closer to him after doing a Siskel and Ebert podcast; his score is three and a half stars. — Bill Simmons
The quoted review says the film refuses to supply sentimental but unrealistic answers and is not a movie with a miracle cure; he also liked what Cruise did in the film. — Bill Simmons
The first line of a second critic's review, read aloud next, calls the film Dustin Hoffman humping one note on a piano for two hours and 11 minutes. — Chris Ryan
Station scenes are loved: the cops betting and the bet called off over the station wagon, and the rubbers gag. — Bill Simmons
The straitjacket shoulder-dislocation bet is a terrible example for impressionable teens, shows his athleticism and pain tolerance, and is Chekhov's shoulder dislocation because it returns when he is almost drowned.
The psychiatrist popping up is like Jimmy Cricket; if Riggs endures that pain for a bet, imagine what he will endure for something righteous. — Van Lathan
The chili scene is not the most rewatchable but is really important for the Riggs character and why the movie is special. — Bill Simmons
Pesci arrives, followed by an evil 80s room-service guy with a mullet who is obviously a South African villain. — Bill Simmons
The pool drop is a great 80s stunt that ups the ante on the first movie's pool shootout. — Bill Simmons
The house-bust car chase and surfboard are among about four scenes with a beginning, middle, end and money shot. — Bill Simmons
The original trailer was just the toilet scene, and it worked. — Bill Simmons
The toilet bomb is one of the great action premises; he sat 12 to 18 hours, the smell is never addressed, and he noticed the bomb when reaching for toilet paper. — Bill Simmons
A complaint follows that this was going to be the speaker's most rewatchable scene and the romance is being taken out of it.
'Guys like you don't die on toilets' is called one of the better lines, and Riggs refuses to leave. — Chris Ryan
The unspoken 'I love you' between the partners, said with the eyes, reminds a host of his dad; Shane Black 'just got it' and the leads play like a symphony. — Van Lathan
The escape is ludicrous but set up so it seems possible; in reality they would have concussions and hearing issues, which was flagged as a nitpick. — Bill Simmons
Gibson breaking into the office ('it's the master race'), shooting the fish tank and 'pick them up with your hands' are loved. — Bill Simmons
Gibson's trailer getting shot up is a great action scene, and during the escape he asks what she is doing Saturday. — Bill Simmons
The underwater image of the dead girlfriend sticks in the brain like the head in Jaws. — Bill Simmons
Riggs yanks the stilt house down, a great pickup-truck ad; per a Premiere November 1989 breakdown it cost $500,000 and used a replica house. — Bill Simmons
The Gibson versus 'Adolf' fight and Glover's diplomatic immunity revocation close it out; one host has about 12 scenes. — Bill Simmons
It is unclear whether Doug was cut as superfluous. — Bill Simmons
The cop is the recast: it is clearly a Paul Rudd part; Jason Sudeikis and Bill Hader are other options, and this participant would personally go with Paul Rudd, never having felt O'Dowd was the good guy. — Bill Simmons
Fox wanted Warren Beatty for Gecko, who wasn't interested; Stone wanted Richard Gear, who passed during a stretch of bad movies. — Brian Koppelman
Gear would have been good and looked great, as in Internal Affairs, but he does slow burn rather than the verbal pyrotechnics Douglas studies. — Brian Koppelman
Beatty holds months of conversations and then says no, as he did to Goldman on Misery. — Brian Koppelman
Gere's "I got nowhere else to go!" is praised, from a movie producer Craig has definitely never seen. — Brian Koppelman
An internet claim that Pacino turned down Gecko in a 1992 Barbara Walters interview is called bullshit; the guess is that his agent passed on a script Pacino never really wanted. — Brian Koppelman
Tom Cruise wanted Bud Fox and lobbied Stone, who was committed to Charlie; they later made Born on the Fourth of July. — Brian Koppelman
Stone gets chippy on the commentary about Bright Lights, Big City shooting at the same time; Michael J. Fox was a miscast there and Downey Jr. would have been a home run. — Brian Koppelman
Per Stone, Hannah was not happy in the role and he should have let her go; Sean Young almost got fired and a Bud affair storyline was cut. — Brian Koppelman
The first 17 minutes, introducing the characters through the roundup, lineup, interrogation and holding pen, are called an absolute masterclass. — Chris Ryan
On the lineup day the cast reportedly kept laughing because Benicio del Toro was farting, and Stephen Baldwin turns to the camera with his profane line about the keys, signalling that all bets are off. — Chris Ryan
Each actor seems to be in a different register: del Toro doing a voice, Pollak doing one-liners, Gabriel Byrne in a Eugene O'Neill play and Baldwin in a spaghetti western; Baldwin is joked to be chasing a future overacting award. — Chris Ryan
The interrogation-room scene is included, with Pollak's jail-shower line and the Queens exchange; Pollak is joked to be done setting picks for Tom Cruise. — Bill Simmons
The police heist is praised along with a proposed rule: more than one ambush makes a good movie, more than two heists a great movie, and more than three an immortal one. — Bill Simmons
Pouring accelerant on the car is the Reservoir Dogs moment, and the New York's Finest taxi service picking up the jeweler at LaGuardia makes the world feel real. — Chris Ryan
Redfoot's first scene is praised, with the hosts noting the actor arrived fresh off his Pulp Fiction role and joking about the conspicuous seaside meeting spot. — Bill Simmons
Kobayashi's first scene laying out Soze's demands is praised as an expository-character trope; his accent is hard to place, and although Verbal made up the name, the character exists because he picks Verbal up at the end. — Chris Ryan
The three-minute Keyser Soze origin story, in which he shoots his own family and lets one man go to tell the story, is one host's second-favorite scene. — Bill Simmons
In retrospect Soze's self-image resembles Glenn Danzig, a metalhead. — Chris Ryan
The boat shootout, with the no-coke line, and the man in the cell insisting Soze is there are called incredible. — Bill Simmons
One host picks the last Palminteri-Spacey scene leading into the ending, from the detective's condescension to the limp slowly disappearing; once the boat scene is on cable, he is in until the end. — Bill Simmons
The other host agrees it has to be the reveal, adding only the aborted Kobayashi hit at the office building as a runner-up. — Chris Ryan
