Join CineFix's Clint Gage, IGN's Alex Stedman and Michael "Cal" Calabro, as CineFix unveils their biggest list ever! What movies are on the list? Where do they rank? We don't know! Join us Mondays as we find out!
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's first foray into global destruction cinema brought us some truly Brilliant Moments and Clint, Cal, and Alex dig into the practical and miniature effects that allow the movie to hold up all these years later, where it ranks among Will Smith movies, whether or not it's peak Jeff Goldblum, Things You Didn't Know about the film's casting and behind the scenes and, finally, Cal reveals his utter disdain for one of the characters, before we found out how high this epic disaster masterpiece ranks in the CineFix Top 100.
For episode 2, Clint, Cal, and Alex muddle through their feelings about Michel Gondry's all-timer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Written by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo at the front of a cast of soon-to-be heavy hitters, the film takes a low tech sci-fi approach to romance and the fallout of a relationship.
Sunset Boulevard is a classic genre-blending, film noir, dark comedy that skewered the state of the film industry in 1950. Maybe the most incredible thing about it is that it's as relevant right now as it was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. But where, oh where, does it end up on our algorithmically confusing Top 100 list? Clint, Cal, and Alex are about to find out!
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a movie that never gets older. The live-action/animated hybrid was a trailblazing piece of film when it dropped in 1988. The Robert Zemeckis follow up to Back to the Future took an IP-wrangling miracle to get made in the first place, and a whole other miracle on top of that which the filmmakers and animators were able to pull it off so seamlessly. So this week, Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss "bumping the lamp", how sometimes the only way to do a thing is the hard way and, on top of finding out where the film ranks on the Top 100, ask the important question: On a scale of John Cleese to Tim Curry, how scary is Sting?
In 2002, City of God came charging out of a Brazillian favela to take over seemingly every critic's top ten list. The decades-spanning crime drama from Fernando Meirelles and co-director Kátia Lund is a fast-paced epic fueled by violence. It's a great film led by an unlikely cast of non-actors recruited from the actual favela and Clint, Cal, and Alex dig into the most stressful movie list, the strange Academy Awards directorial oversight, and Cal's favorite kind of movie (Scorsese clones) on their way to discovering where the film ranks on the CineFix Top 100.
In 2019, Bong Joon-ho dropped an amazing piece of darkly comedic satire on us with Parasite. The film is a twisted, funny thriller that's impossible to limit to one genre, theme, or trope. There is A LOT going on in this film, and as a result, it not only became the first non-English language film to win best picture, but earned a spot on the CineFix Top 100! Clint, Cal, and Alex break down the healthy recent vein of eat-the-rich movies, how the film was edited on Final Cut Pro 7, and why one of the greatest twists of all time is actually in the middle of the movie.
In 1993, the late, great Harold Ramis teamed with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, to do the same thing over and over and over again. In the 30 years since, Groundhog Day has become a genre unto itself. Blending elements of time travel, magical realism, spirituality, and good old fashioned romantic comedy, it doesn't feel right to call it a cult classic—but that's not far off from describing the legacy of the film. Clint, Cal, and Alex, dive into the expert craftsmanship of repetitive comedy, just how many days Phil repeated, and just how long you can watch a human being be despicable before a comeuppance occurs.
There are few who do sequels like James Cameron. In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgment Day blew the socks off everybody on its way to becoming—what we here at CineFix are happy to proclaim—the most perfect action movie of all time. Groundbreaking visual effects mixed with ingenious in-camera tricks and one of the greatest cinema face turns from Arnold Schwarzenegger, T2 is one helluva film. Clint, Cal, and Alex try to discover just where it ranks on the CineFix Top 100, discussing Robert Patrick in his underwear, a Best Editing Oscar snub, and how papier-mâché can look like meat particles on camera.
The late '60s marked the beginning of a new era in Hollywood, and Midnight Cowboy was right in the middle of it. The 1969 film from John Schesinger follows a swaggering small town Texas stud trying to make it as a hustler in Manhattan, and the unlikely relationship he discovers with a con-man. Jon Voigt and Dustin Hoffman turn in amazing performances, but the most incredible thing about the film is how perfectly and inextricably it fits into its place and time. With Alex a bit under the weather, Clint and Cal break down the Oscar nominated editing, relentless gum-chewing, and the concept of the horny grandma that's peppered throughout this Best Picture winner.
David Cronenberg has made some incredible movies that are also incredibly gross. This episode of the CineFix Top 100 dives into one of his best, The Fly. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis star in the story of inventor Seth Brundle and his attempt to master teleportation, only to end up becoming a fly for his trouble! Clint and Cal spend another week waiting for Alex to rejoin them, but in the meantime they dig into the amazing work of professional face-melter Chris Walas, just how much Mel Brooks campaigned for the movie, and lament the unfortunate missed opportunity to "collude for Croney" to get more of the Canadian body horror maestro's work on the Top 100.
For anyone that got to see Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity in the theater, it's a breathless, palm-sweating, white-knuckled experience that is hard to describe. Essentially Castaway in space, Sandra Bullock is by herself for most of a tight 90-minute adrenaline rush, just trying to survive. In this episode of CineFix Top 100, Clint, Cal, and Alex celebrate this harrowing film's 10th Anniversary, with its Academy Award winning Visual Effects Supervisor, Tim Webber. Tim walks us through all the little details, and tries to describe how necessity really is the mother of invention when making a movie where only the faces are real. Buckle up.
Carol Reed's The Third Man is a gorgeously photographed bit of post-war film noir that gave us one of the greatest grins in the history of cinema. It also gave us a ton of zither! Clint, Cal, and Alex dive into the classic detective yarn that's not really about a detective at all. They discuss the dutch angles that kept Joseph Cotton on his heels for most of the film, just how bad a guy Orson Welles as Harry Lime really is, and just how bad a guy Orson Welles was on set, as legends have it. It got booted off of AFI's Top 100 movies list, but find out where it ranks on the CineFix Top 100!
The year… vaguely near future. The setting… Old Detroit. The hero… a robotic cop, resurrected by corporate greed, fighting to regain some of his humanity. RoboCop, in a word, is awesome. The Paul Verhoeven masterpiece has everything you'd want from the '80s: goopy squibs, stop-motion animated robots, and a literal shootout in a cocaine factory. Clint, Cal, and Alex dig into the incredible staying power this movie has, thanks to its brilliant satire, why the extreme violence also has good comedic timing, and why the campiness in Verhoeven's career is not a bug—it's a feature.
The Exorcist had audiences' heads spinning in 1973, and hasn't really stopped since. William Friedkin had just won an Oscar for The French Connection, and William Peter Blatty's novel was a best seller, but the filmmakers still had a long way to go to make a classic. Clint, Alex, and Cal are chock full of pea soup and ready to dive into the incredible makeup effects, the behind-the-scenes wizardry of the grip department, and how the director's cut of the film was actually kind of the writer's cut.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is an unimpeachably great movie that gave us the second iconic Harrison Ford role of the era with Indiana Jones. It's hard to imagine a world without our most famous archeologist—or to understate the franchise's influence on the adventure genre—but at the time, there was a weird amount of pressure to succeed. Steven Spielberg was coming off a string of movies that had gone over budget, the most recent of which was an outright flop. Clint, Cal, and Alex dig into the budget-minded approach Spielberg, George Lucas and crew took to the production, the incredible accidents responsible for some of the coolest imagery in the film, and just how many people were violently ill during production. So buckle up, this is almost 2 hours worth of Raiders talk to find out where it ranks on the CineFix Top 100!
Welcome to another NOT Top 100 in between seasons! This week, Clint's not around, so Cal and Alex are digging into one of their favorites that didn't quite make the cut. This week they explore In Bruges, and discuss its status as a Bro-core movie, its choice to focus on the words of its playwright script instead of the visuals of the romantic city it's shot in, and just how many f-words are said in its 107 minute runtime.
In today’s CineFix Not 100, Alex and Calabro are talking about Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino's 1997 follow-up to Pulp Fiction. In the 25+ years since Tarantino adapted the Elmore Leonard novel, Rum Punch, Jackie Brown has managed to age like Pam Grier herself—which is to say, incredibly. Cal and Alex wax on about how this is Quentin's most traditional film (but not in a bad way), how Alex's cool flight attendant grandma introduced her to this film, and how Pam Grier, Robert De Nero, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robert Forrester turned in some truly excellent performances.
Clint, Cal, and Alex continue their neverending journey to watch 100 of the greatest movies of all time! No, they still don't know where they rank on the list! Meanwhile, the near-sentient Top 100 algorithm continues to throw curve balls. This time there is a theme: community! And yes, the clips, quotes and music in the trailer are populated by movies from each of the combined lists, and most will be featured this season.
The Sundance Film Festival is celebrating 40 years of bringing independent film to a broader audience. As a fixture on the festival circuit, if you ever get a chance to be in Park City for two snow filled weekends of pure cinema, do yourself a favor and do not pass it up. But just because you haven't been doesn’t mean you've never seen a Sundance film. Here are our picks for the 10 best of all time.
(Note: Since this episode was recorded on location, it is audio-only.) We're hanging out in the snow at Park City, for the 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival this week, and got a chance to see 2014 festival alum The Babadook on the big screen—and wouldn't you know it, it happens to be on the CineFix Top 100! A terrifying entry into the psychological horror genre, writer director Jennifer Kent gives us the story of a woman and her son, struggling to keep their sanity in the midst of grief, trauma and a haunted pop up book! Clint, Cal, and Alex dig into the brilliantly efficient opening 2 minutes, a borrowed sound effect from World of Warcraft, and how The Babadook is a deserving spiritual successor to Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick and The Shining.
Season 2's "community" theme kicks off with the patriarch of modern action cinema, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. An epic story of samurai helping a small village community defend itself against raiders, Seven Samurai puts its characters front and center, and is a masterclass on how to earn a three hour runtime. Clint, Cal, and Alex break down its place in film history as a foundational text on action cinema, the nuts-and-bolts brilliance of staging and shooting the moving and panning shots that keep everything in focus, and the physical and mental toll the film took on those both in front of, and behind, the camera.
(Note: Since this episode was recorded on location, it is audio-only.) The CineFix Top 100 has spent the last week in Park City, Utah, watching all the best independent cinema The Sundance Film Festival has to offer. Clint, Alex, and Calabro talk about some of their favorite narrative features like Hit Man, Sasquatch Sunset, and Love Lies Bleeding, as well as, documentaries like, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Ibelin, and Realm of Satan.
Our community season continues with the movie that added "infamous" and "plethora" to our vocabulary, the Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short classic: Three Amigos. Directed by John Landis, whose filmography up to this point is littered with hits, Amigos succeeds by continually making its leads the butt of the joke. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss the difficulty of analyzing comedies, whether or not Three Amigos qualifies as a spoof or an homage, how the film's comedy is completely character based and how hard it is to be grounded after being so absurd. For the first time, in this community season, we also discuss whether or not Three Amigos belongs on the list and if it should be struck.
We head to a galaxy far, far away, to discuss a little space opera that changed the way we make movies, talk about movies, and build franchises out of those movies. George Lucas' Star Wars stormed onto the scene in 1977, and was relentlessly retconned as they moved to franchise the biggest original IP of all time. Star Wars is inescapable now, but Clint, Cal, and Alex try to dissect the movie it was, while also keeping in mind all the tinkering, changes, sequels, and spinoffs that have followed. How do you talk about a movie that has been discussed, analyzed, and iterated on for nearly fifty years? As a film that has bled into every part of our subconscious, right down to the sound design, is it possible that this doesn’t crack the top 10?
Season 2 continues with a bit of a milestone Disney film, as both the first movie to be developed after Walt's death, and the first to be released on VHS: Disney's Robin Hood. How much has nostalgia played into its placement on the list? Clint, Cal, and Alex are here to break it all down, digging into the incredible pedigree behind the film, including Don Bluth, who went on to create such classics as An American Tale and The Land Before Time, and one of Disney's "Nine Old Men", Director Wolfgang Reitherman, whose previous credits include such heavy hitters as The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, Sleeping Beauty, and more. Does this film stack up to all those other classics? Did it start the furry movement? More importantly—does it belong on the list?
Our community season continues with one of the funniest movies of all time, and our first newly minted Top 100: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A gleeful skewering of the filmmaking process by first time filmmakers, The Holy Grail crams in a musical number, an animated god, and a record scratch of an ending that breaks the fourth wall in the same way Blazing Saddles did. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss the movie being impossible to turn off, its place as a foundational post-modernist comedy, and how budget constraints changed the ending and invented the term "cop-out". Who made the mistake of not including this brilliant comedy on their list?
Bring your hot takes somewhere else, Rear Window is S-Tier Hitchcock. Made and released between other Grace Kelly classics Dial M for Murder, and To Catch a Thief, Rear Window's strength lies in Hitchcock's ability to make us willing accomplices in Jimmy Stewart's spying on his neighbors, by leaning so hard on his POV and ratcheting up the tension of being stuck in one place. Clint, Cal, and Alex dive into how such a simple set up becomes so complicated to shoot, the technical precision it takes to shoot everything from one vantage point on a giant set, and why Jeff absolutely sucks without ruining the movie. Will it end up being the highest Hitchcock film on the list?
Joe Dante's first collaboration with Tom Hanks started as a send-up of Rear Window, before it morphed into a genre-bending, dark comedy in The 'Burbs. Coming after Joe Dante's Academy Award winning Innerspace, and Tom Hank's first Best Actor nomination for Big, The 'Burbs is something of an '80s curio. Clint, Cal, and Alex dive into the universality of neighborhood paranoia and how it manifests in a dream sequence, textbook blocking for exposition scenes, and visual jokes that work on multiple levels. Who among us hasn't looked at our neighbors and assumed the worst?
From director Hal Ashby, Being There is a wildly intelligent movie about an incredibly unintelligent man. Peter Sellers stars with Shirley MacLaine in a story about a simple-minded gardener, and the power brokers who seem to think he's a genius. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about the power of projecting only what we want to see, how films can become eternally relevant, and who has the bigger fan base: the Chicago Bears or the film While You Were Sleeping.
Hayao Miyazaki dropped one of his several masterpieces in 1997 with Princess Mononoke. Depicting the battle between Iron Town and ancient Gods of the forest, the film is a gorgeously animated adventure that paints its themes vividly, front and center. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about where it fits in Miyazaki's body of work, how James Cameron being a fan makes them feel about the movie, samurai swords in the mail, and whether or not Prince Ashitaka has enough rizz to carry the movie.
Hot Fuzz, the second chapter in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s ‘Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy’, takes the piss out of buddy cop movies in the most loving way possible. The story of a cop who's too good for his own good, transferring to a small town in the country and uncovering a gruesomely violent plot, lampoons its action influences while being a pristine example of the genre in its own right. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about editing paperwork like a fight scene, the comedy chops of Olivia Colman, and audio commentary tracks with film references too numerous to keep up with.
On one hand, La Haine is a grab-bag of every filmmaking trick that was cool in the ’90s. On the other hand, it's a scathing look at systemic violence that's as relevant as ever even 30 years later. The story of three guys outside of Paris grappling with the aftermath of a riot in which police officers put one of their friends in a coma, La Haine is a tough but essential watch. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss how great the black and white looks, the early days of drone photography, and how the film never lets you forget that these guys are just kids trying to get through their day.
The Warriors dropped in 1979, during an age of New York City that was about to change. Walter Hill's film about a gang being hunted across the city as they try to make it home is a portrait of the politics of gang society. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about '70s fight scene choreography, expert camera blocking, and just how many guys it takes to be wearing vests with no shirt, before you start to look cool.
Jaws was legitimate phenomenon in the ’70s, launching both the career of Steven Spielberg and the concept of the summer blockbuster to the forefront of the Hollywood system. For this story about an island being terrorized by a rogue Great White, Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw as maybe the best ever top 3 in a cast, how to dress like a proper island Mayor, and why Bruce the shark not working correctly might just be the most fortuitous mistake in cinema history.
Boogie Nights was only Paul Thomas Anderson's second film, but the story of an up-and-coming star in the waning days of the porn industry on film is exceedingly confident, especially for a director in his 20s. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about the stacked cast that might be the best ensemble ever assembled, the origin of the most hilarious sub-genre (the "horny boy movie"), and why this movie about sex is not about sex at all.
Le Samouraï popped up in the French New Wave and gave us the definitive image of the "cool Hit Man" that endures to this day, and so it only made sense that Clint, Cal, and Alex welcome special guest, and co-writer and director of ‘Hit Man’, Richard Linklater! The Academy Award nominated filmmaker chats about why people think retail hitmen actually exist, how Le Samouraï helped influence that belief, and why the rest of the French New Wave looked up to Jean Pierre Melville and his incredible nom-de-guerre from the French Revolution. It's a super fun, super special in-between season installment of the CineFix Top 100, and we hope you have a good time with it!
Clint, Cal, and Alex are back with a new season of their quest to watch 100 of the greatest movies of all time! This season producer Dan's algorithm hatches a new plan: ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD. This season's theme features films about lone wolves, people facing long odds, and characters with the deck truly stacked against them. How will your intrepid hosts fight back against Dan's Algorithm? How many movies are they going to kick off the list this season? Tune in every Sunday for the rest of the year to find out, right here on CineFix and wherever you get your podcasts.
Blade Runner 2049, the long-in-the-works sequel to Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic, was a critical hit whose box office never quite lived up to its ambitious budget. But, here in the season 3 premiere of the CineFix Top 100, Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about whether the film ever had a chance to make money, the incredible accident that made the original Blade Runner a classic, how hard Harrison Ford is trying in the film, and whether or not Denis Villenueve is actually the Christopher Nolan we deserve.
Uncut Gems is an Adam Sandler dramatic-turn masterpiece of anxiety, from the Safdie Brothers and A24. The film, about a New York diamond merchant and gambling addict, absolutely drips with stress from the cosmos all the way into the protagonist's colon. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about how Kevin Garnett could've been an Oscar contender, the use of the steadicam to create chaos, whether or not this rock is actually magic, and where the film ranks on the all-time F-bomb list.
Ikiru, an Akira Kurosawa "gem" from 1952, follows a dying bureaucrat, searching for something of value in his life before succumbing to cancer. At times both tremendously sad and undeniably life-affirming, Ikiru is critical of the system of meaningless admin work and the people who populate it. Clint, Cal, and Alex sift through mountains of paperwork to discuss subtle camera moves in emotional mega-montages, the intricate and invisible blocking that sets Kurosawa apart, and the best Frank Capra movie that he never made.
In 2004, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay revitalized comedy in the aughts with 90 minutes of pure, goofball nonsense behind the desk of ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’. The whatever-is-funniest-wins approach to the story of San Diego's Channel 4 News Team is absurd in all the right ways. Clint and Alex (Cal is still struggling with his case of Fireman's Elbow) talk about improv in close-ups, the importance of buttons in comedic fight scenes, and how Ron Burgundy gave us memes before memes were a thing.
John Carpenter's They Live from 1988 was a stiff middle finger to Reagan-era consumerism, with the swagger of a professional wrestler. The story of a drifter uncovering a vast alien conspiracy to keep humanity subjugated with hypnotic suggestion and subliminal messages, is a schlocky B-movie veneer on maybe the most prescient political film of the '80s. Clint, Cal, and Alex talk about smartly deployed idiocy, the sneaky difficulty of the film's black and white photography, and the Nostradamus-level prediction Carpenter made 40 years ago that has absolutely come true.
The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad! is on the Mount Rushmore of spoofs. The hard-boiled detective parody follows Lt. Frank Drebin as he unravels a plot to assassinate the Queen of England at Dodger Stadium. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss being floored by the sheer volume of jokes, how the movie ruined anything Leslie Nielsen had done previously, and the tragic death of the spoof as a genre.
Ridley Scott dropped Alien in 1979 and—just 2 years after Star Wars hit the idea that sci-fi wasn't bankable with the Death Star—gave us not only one of the most enduring science fiction classics, but a terrifying haunted house movie to boot. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss "Newcomer of the Year" nominee Sigourney Weaver, how Ripley isn't the main character of the movie (for most of it), and why the single most ambitious shot in the entire film might not be the one you think it is.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is the story of a French spy bumbling his way through an investigation into a Middle East arms deal in 1950s Egypt. Equal parts James Bond and Inspector Clouseau, as much Sean Connery as Peter Sellers, the team that would go on to a big night at the Oscars for The Artist, first cut their teeth on the aesthetics of mid-century espionage flicks. Clint, Cal, and Alex discuss the brilliant use of old school techniques like rear projection and day-for-night, how to stop short of running a bit into the ground, and how this is the most Clint-ass movie of all time.