| Movie 1 | Movie 2 | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Cache | History of Violence | Cache is History inside out: what does the man think, when his past rises up to haunt him? |
| Napoleon Dynamite | Fast Times at Ridgemount High | Misfits in High School |
| Lord of the Rings | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | Python skewers the pompous, wildly over-the-top CGI of "Lord of the Rings". |
| Passion of the Christ | Life of Bryan | "Passion" really is quite as ridiculous as Bryan. |
| Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Brodie debunks what Dead Poet's adores: a charismatic, "inspiring" teacher. | |
| *King of Kings | Superstar proved that the story of Christ shouldn't bore anyone. | |
| Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Both films about teachers who finally realize what fools they have been-- with different results. Evil twin: Freedom Writers. | |
| Fail Safe | Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1961) |
Both films are about imminent nuclear holocaust. Strangelove shows that the only way to grapple with the subject is farce, because the very concept of Nuclear War is inherently absurd. |
| Crucible | The Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy era in U.S. politics. | |
| Crucible | Salem Witch Trials and Satanic Cults, the modern day incarnation. | |
| Cabaret | Realistic Cabaret debunks sentimental Sound of Music. | |
| Brady Bunch Movie | Opposites: the television image and the real thing. | |
| *Green Berets | John Wayne used Green Berets to correct the popular "misconception" that invading and destroying a country half-way around the world because an election didn't turn out the way we liked it was a mistake. | |
| Rashomon (Akira Kurasawa, Japan, 1950) | Who is telling the truth? Why do people lie? How do perceptions shift because of personal inadequacies? How far will people go to alter memory and perception in order to rationalize human will? | |
| Heavenly Creatures | The powerful, violent effects of two synchronized personalities. | |
| A Night to Remember | A Night to Remember is meticulously, scrupulously accurate. Titanic is pompous but has great special effects. If only they could be combined! | |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey | An optimistic view of the future versus Terry Gilliam's more down to earth version. | |
| Star Wars | The characters in Star Wars were stolen from Kurasawa's superior classic. | |
| *Umberto D | Two foreign films, Italian and Japanese, both tragic stories about old men whom society has cast aside. | |
| Being There | TV and Reality. Chauncy Gardiner lives in TV; Truman lives on TV. Neither are in touch with reality, but Hollywood thinks they are both probably really very smart. | |
| Truman Show | Both are about malevolent manipulators, but Network at least has the honesty--before it descends into self-parody-- to acknowledge the audiences' role in creating this monster. | |
| Absence of Malice | Are reporters heroes or heels? | |
| Apartment | All men are heels. Two points of view, 35 years apart. | |
| Lord Love A Duck | Vacuous blondes rule the world! | |
| *Back to the Future | If we're going to do predictable B movies about how the 60's enlightened us about sex and rock'n'roll, at least be fun about it. | |
| North Country | Norma Rae | Both start out fine and go off the rails. Union Blues. |
| Apartment | Carnal Knowledge |
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