But he never spent more than half the running time of the movie talking about one movie, with spoilers, while Siskel tried to participate without having seen the movie.

/just sayin'

Then that would be "On Snows, Whites, and Huntsmen". THIS ISN"T ROCKET SURGERY TEAGUE

Yes and no. TPM IS the best of the prequels EXCEPT that Jar Jar makes it almost unbearable. And yes ROTS is bad because of Anakin. But, like I said, get rid of Jar Jar and make Anakin cooler and less whiny in AOTC and ROTS and fans would be happy with all three films. They would still have problems, but the fans would mutter about them instead of ranting about George Lucas raping their childhoods.

Sith gets the least complaints from fans. There's effectively no Jar Jar, less awkward romance, and more of a darker tone. If the other films had matched it, I think people would be fairly happy overall.

Jar Jar alone derails Phantom Menace. I honestly think that without him the film would play fine. There would still be things to complain about, but without that one thing to totally hate, the rest would feel like nitpicking.

Clones suffers terribly from Anakin's whining and the awkwardness of the romance. It's much worse than Phantom Menace because of that, and there's no easy fix for it, altho recasting Anakin would have helped.

My god. Two years later, and I still haven't seen any more of these.... And I've had Deliverance and Cuckoo's Nest on my DVR for at least that long.

I tried watching Speed Racer with my 9-y-o nephew. We found it confusing and gave up about 30 minutes in when the sponsor guy is putting pressure on Speed.

If you're not a legionnaire, I wouldn't worry about it.

/now always worried that making the obvious joke will result in alarms and Stephen Fry deducting 10 points from my score....

And oh please let it be some sort of undead western. Zombies are overcooked at this point, but something else would be awesome.

I watched The Borrowers with my 9-y-o niece and nephew this weekend. Good fun but nothing special; it's full of British actors who appeared in Harry Potter later. We recognized Slughorn and Arthur Weasley of course (as well as Peter from Jumanji, House from House and Sully from Monsters, Inc.), but it wasn't until the credits rolled that we realized that the littlest borrower was Draco Malfoy!

Right, I was surprised to hear bloody in Harry Potter 1 (to a teacher, no less), but didn't it used to be considered quite vulgar? In My Fair Lady, the line is "Come on Dover! Move your bloomin' arse!" as if bloody is worse than arse.

It occurs to me that Litomnivore is a ladyperson, and we've been recommending WW2 and martial arts and heist films, so we need to girl up the phrasebook list...

• Roman Holiday — template for a lot of romantic adventures

• The Lady Eve — it's a heist movie where the object is Henry Fonda's heart

• All About Eve — I rooted for Eve; your mileage may vary

• Breakfast at Tiffany's

• My Fair Lady

• Romeo & Juliet (1968)—treat yourself to the original

• Sophie's Choice

• Grease — the quintessential modern musical

• Fame

• Beaches — ten hanky epic

• Carrie — girl power

• The Craft — girl power

• Steel Magnolias — woman power

• Heathers

• When Harry Met Sally — because what woman doesn't fantasize about Billy Crystal?

• 16 Candles

• The Breakfast Club

• Ghost

• Romancing the Stone

• Freaky Friday — either the original with Jodie Foster or the remake with Lindsey Lohan

• Pretty Woman — My Fair Lady for the '90s

• Thelma and Louise — introduced the world to a certain Mr. Brad Pitt

• Clueless

• Legally Blonde

• Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion

• Four Weddings and a Funeral

• Love Actually

• Bridget Jones's Diary

• The Princess Diaries

• Sleepless in Seattle

• You've Got Mail — update of Jimmy Stewart forgotten classic The Shop Around the Corner

• A League of Their Own

• Overboard

• Terms of Endearment

• Bring It On

• The Bridges of Madison County

• My Best Friend's Wedding

• Chicago

• The Notebook — top tearjerker

That's a hell of a list. I love that Operation Condor is on there along with some Kurosawa. But there's some other Asian cinema that is highly suspect—18 "essential" Asian titles in the last 10 years vs maybe 3 from the rest of the non-English-speaking world...?

More linguistics course material...

• Metropolis — the original sci-fi dystopia emulated by Chaplin to Ridley Scott to James Cameron

• Snow White — the original Disney fairy tale that gave us multi-plane animation in feature length

• The Killing — early Kubrick that virtually defined the precision heist film

• The Manchurian Candidate — clumsy cold war paranoia that nevertheless became a touch point

• The Lost Weekend — the film that gave us many comedy references about booze benders

• Double Indemnity — one of the greatest fully-formed films noir

• The Italian Job (1969) — an absolute classic heist comedy and a film so British it hurts

• The Cercle Rouge — stylish French crime pulp that became a reference point for the genre

• The Getaway — rough Steve McQueen crime pulp and another reference point for the genre

• Soylent Green — the sci fi film that helped define dystopia paranoia

• Bonnie and Clyde — New Hollywood crime and punishment tale that made careers