The CineFix Top 100

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.