Stoppard is a script doctor. He does it for money, as do several other established writers. Carrie Fisher is one of the most sought-after script doctors in Hollywood.

That used to be Joss' big gig too.

Script doctoring is how John Sayles has been able to stay independent, so one can't complain that the job exists.

I remember Joss saying, though, that he was usually brought in way too late, to add jokes and transitions to a script with a chasm of absent logic in the middle.

Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

And Goodfellas.

I've only seen a few of the movies on this list.

But Finding Nemo? Excluding the beatiful animation, the movie was awful. Horrible dialogue and acting.

I've tried watching Lawrence of Arabia several times, but it's *so* boring I've never even been able to make it halfway. I've never been able to make it through It's a Wonderful Life, either. And I couldn't stand more than 10 minutes of The Godfather.

And as for The Lord of the Rings, only the first movie was good. The second one sucked, and the third one was mediocre.

However, I do like Blade Runner, E.T., Pulp Fiction, and Star Wars.

But Finding Nemo? Excluding the beatiful animation, the movie was awful. Horrible dialogue and acting.

Wow. Now you have to be dead to me. Shame, really.

Have you tried watching LoA on the big screen? Because that made all the difference for me.

I have the attention span of a tse-tse fly, and so many movies that I have been unable to sit through at home just came to life in a movie theatre. I tried to watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller recently, and it was so dark on my TV I turned it off after 20 minutes.

I need to live somewhere with a great rep cinema.

I love Ellen Degeneres' performance in Nemo.

Betsy, they played one of your favorite movies on cable this morning: Swashbuckler. Robert Shaw! Young James Earl Jones! Young Genvieve Bujold! Going over cliffs in banana carts! All the actors of the 70s who never got a shot at costume dramas.

I thought that the 2nd LOTR movie was the keeper, myself, although I liked all of them.

Also, I've only seen McCabe & Mrs. Miller on DVD, but I'd sure love to see it on the big screen.

I love them for including Double Indemnity, In A Lonely Place and The Lady Eve, but The Awful Truth over It Happened One Night?

I love TAT, think it's utterly brilliant, but IHON was several years earlier, and it's just the damned Shakespeare's Collected Works of romantic comedies: love it or hate it, it was early and enormous and everything in the genre that's been made since has been either standing in, fleeing from, or standing back and observing or deconstructing its shadow. As much as I love It's A Wonderful Life, (and as much as I think it's in many ways Capra's best and richest and darkest), if the listmakers were trying to stick to just one film per director, I'd still have to go with IHON for sheer seminal influential ur-genre-exemplarosity.

I heard something about that list that made it pretty clear they were picking their favorites, not the Best or Most Influential. Which that page doesn't indicate at all.