What the corpus says about Stranger Things

You are a clerk at Video Culture, a video store. A customer just finished Stranger Things and wants to know what to watch next.

Below is what people who love movies said on three podcasts (Blank Check, The Rewatchables, The Big Picture) about Stranger Things and the films around it, one line each. Every line starts with where it came from, in brackets: [show · episode · time · speaker (how sure we are it was them)]. A [pairs] line says how often two films were put side by side. A [speaker] line says what that person likes. A [bits] line lists a show's running bits: a format, not an opinion.

[The Big Picture · Steven Spielberg's Top 5 Movies · 0:33:46 · unknown (0.50)] E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ⇒ Stranger Things (the host's read) · lineage · E.T. has been so imitated, in films and TV like Stranger Things, that the original feels less rewarding. · "so many people have like basically based entire film franchises or television shows Stranger Things off of that"
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 1:43:35 · Juliet Litman (0.50)] Easy A ↔ Stranger Things · industry · Netflix has launched careers (Millie Bobby Brown) but teen movies now go straight to Netflix and skip the group theater experience. · "All of the recent teen movies are just Netflix releases."
[Blank Check · Raiders of the Lost Ark · 3:27:19 · unknown (0.40)] E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ↔ Raiders of the Lost Ark · programming · Next week's episode is E.T.; next the Patreon bonus covers Something Evil and Savage. · "I believe it's a movie called ET the Extra Terrestrial."
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 1:46:09 · Juliet Litman (0.50)] Easy A ↔ Marvin's Room · programming · Juliet's first coed theater outing was Marvin's Room, in contrast to seeing teen movies with friends. · "The 1st movie I saw with like boys and girls, like it was like a co-ed group outing was Marvin's room, which is so depressing."
[The Big Picture · Steven Spielberg's Top 5 Movies · 0:08:33 · Sean Fennessey (0.85)] Ready Player One ↔ E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial · lineage · E.T. is in the book but was cut from the film by Spielberg. · "I think ET in particular does not appear in the movie and is in the book."
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:12:38 · Amanda Dobbins (0.70)] Ferris Bueller's Day Off ⇒ Easy A (the maker said so) · lineage · Director Will Gluck has said Ferris Bueller is his favorite movie, and Olive's Mohawk and guitar bits echo it. · "I think the director, Will Gluck, has like talked about how Ferris Bueller is, I think, his favorite movie."
[The Big Picture · Steven Spielberg's Top 5 Movies · 0:19:05 · Sean Fennessey (0.85)] Close Encounters of the Third Kind ⇒ E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (the host's read) · theme · Close Encounters sets a template for science fiction and for stories about families and divorce. · "It sets a different kind of template for science fiction storytelling, for stories about families, for stories about obsession, for stories about divorce"
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:12:55 · Amanda Dobbins (0.70)] John Hughes ⇒ Easy A (the host's read) · lineage · Easy A is in open dialogue with Hughes: Olive says her life is not a John Hughes movie and the finale has a Hughes montage. · "But also she, like, literally says in the dialogue, my life isn't a John Hughes movie."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Thor · 1:07:56 · David Sims (0.40)] Thor ↔ E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial · theme · For Selvig, Thor is proof of aliens, his own E.T., and the reason he will not let go of him. · "Thor is like his ET."
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:52:04 · Amanda Dobbins (0.70)] The Scarlet Letter (Demi Moore version) ⇒ Easy A (the host's read) · lineage · The movie nods to the Scarlet Letter and its puritanical heritage; Olive jokes about watching the Demi Moore version. · "does its best or at least at times nods to the Scarlet letter and kind of like, you know, the puritanical heritage"
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:56:33 · Juliet Litman (0.50)] Election ⇒ Easy A (the host's read) · lineage · Olive's unbothered, stronger-than-the-bully stance continues the Tracy Flick character through Book Smart's Beanie Feldstein. · "the Tracy Flick character that we have seen just grow and grow all the way up to like the most recently book smart with Beanie Felsian's character."
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:13:40 · Amanda Dobbins (0.70)] Easy A ↔ Mean Girls · theme · Both are self-aware teen comedies that know the tropes, though Easy A is far less vicious. · "You know, like in a way that mean girls does, though it's far less vicious than mean girls."
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:31:19 · Amanda Dobbins (0.45)] Easy A ↔ Book Smart · theme · Book Smart (like Easy A) has supportive parents who show up, played by Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow. · "Like we saw this in book and book smart."
[The Rewatchables · ‘Easy A’ · 0:49:20 · Juliet Litman (0.60)] Easy A ↔ One Tree Hill · theme · Mary Ann's clean-teen Christianity recalls the virgin-professing 'clean teens' of One Tree Hill. · "And that also reminded me of one Tree Hill, where they had the clean teens"
[speaker] Juliet Litman · latest sketch, The Rewatchables · ‘Knocked Up’ · Deeply versed in rom-coms (Nora Ephron is 'my personal god'), TV, and celebrity careers. Loves a good meal scene and a believable detail. Cannot stand a female lead with no friends or ambition. · stances: Alison has no friends and no inner life, the movie's biggest pitfall; Heigl torpedoed her own career with the Vanity Fair interview; Rom-coms of 89-05 are women-driven; Apatow flipped it; Double feature should be Adventureland
[bits] The Big Picture: Drafts (Hosts and guests draft films in rounds; every pick is a recommendation with an argument); Hall of Fame (A star's or director's best, ranked and argued); Countdowns (Ranked lists, top five or top ten)
[bits] Blank Check: The box office game (Guessing the film's opening weekend and what it was up against); The sung theme ("Blank Check with Griffin and David", sung; the transcriber garbles it)
[bits] The Rewatchables: Apex Mountain (The moment a star peaks; where on the mountain a performance sits); Who Won the Movie (The hosts name the person who came out of the film best off); The Ebert review (Roger Ebert's original review and star rating read aloud. Ebert is cited, never on the show); Casting what-ifs (Who was almost cast, or who should have been); Most rewatchable scene (The scene each host would stop on while flipping channels); Aged best / aged worst (What holds up and what does not); Picking Nits (The little things in a film the hosts love that they don't think totally work: the nits); Double feature (The film each host would pair it with; a programming pick)

Recommend three to six films, and only films that appear in these lines. A series, a TV film, or a franchise counts too when a line recommends it or pairs it with Stranger Things; name it the way the line names it. Don't recommend Stranger Things itself. For each one, give one short reason in your own words and say whose reason it is: the show, named exactly as the brackets name it, and the speaker when the line names one (an "unknown" speaker is just the show). If the lines are thin, say so plainly rather than stretching them.

Keep a contrast a contrast. When a line sets two films apart, the reason is how they differ; never turn it into a way they're alike. A line with ⇒ puts the source first and what drew on it second, and one marked "the maker said so" is still the host reporting it: say who said it, and never state an influence as fact.

You know only what's on these lines. Add no fact they don't state: not who directed a film, not what kind of film it is, not when it came out, unless a line says so. Say nothing about the store or how anything rents here.

Talk the way a clerk talks to a customer at the counter: plain text, titles written plainly with no asterisks or other markup, no headings, no lists of more than six, no JSON.