There are a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL Draft this week. My name is Danny Kelly, and I host the Ringer NFL Draft Show with Danny Heifetz, Ben Zolak, and Craig Orbeck. We cover trades, free agency, and the draft, obviously. We'll tell you about everything, including which quarterbacks are good, which quarterbacks are not as good, and which quarterbacks are just for cousins.
Search the Ringer NFL Draft Show on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture A Conversation Show about spies, lies, and unsanitized.
Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolai Arcel, the star and writer-director behind Promised Land. An absolutely rip-roaring historical epic that I highly recommend. I hope you'll stick around for my conversation with them. Second time for Mads Mikkelsen on the podcast, you may recall he came on for another round a few years back.
This time it was in person. Amanda, wow, the energy. I know. The power of Mads.
Bob, you were sitting right next to me when we talked to Mads. Describe it for me. How was it? Cool, calm, collected.
One of the cooler people. Just wanted to share his thoughts about a lot of different things that weren't even in the movie, which was great. If you want to hear Mads being cool, stick around until after we're done. That being said, I'm back from a week-long sojourn to the East Coast.
Meeting and greeting the people. How was it? We were touring for the Rewatchables, and men were coming up to me. He was crying and saying, I've seen Argyle.
Have you seen Argyle? And the truth is, I hadn't. In fact, we were in Philly. This is a true story.
Sierra and I are getting out of the car to the venue. This was an incredible moment. And there was a guy in a pickup truck behind us who stopped his pickup truck so that we could exit our car and walk towards the venue. And as he saw us walking, he clocked Chris, and he started screaming, yo!
And he was pointing at his radio because he was listening to, I don't know if it was Rewatchables or the Watcher's Big Picture, but Chris's voice was coming out of the car. It's very funny. So then he called Chris over to get a selfie. But this man wasn't going to the event?
He wasn't going to the event. He was just driving around the neighborhood of Philadelphia. And then he saw Chris walk over to take a selfie. And then he saw me.
He was like, oh, my God. And then so he called me over. And as I'm walking over, another car came up behind him. And this car was not really excited about the prospect of waiting for us to take a selfie while this guy hung out the side of his car.
So the guy was like, oh, shit. So he drag raced off the side of the road quickly, almost killed Chris in the process, so that he could park his car so then we could take a selfie together. So we took this selfie. Lovely guy.
Just a working man in the city of Philadelphia. And after we were done with that photo, we were sort of walking towards the entrance to the venue. And two men were walking past this. And one guy says, yo, fantasy, I just saw Argyle.
And this is on like Thursday night. So that was the true opening night. Yeah. So he was like, and he literally said, can't wait for the pod.
Yeah, I'll bet. So the pod is here. This is what we've built. This is what it's all been for the whole career is for people to approach you in the streets of good, hard, blue-collar cities.
Did Bob like pay these people to approach you? They're like, we're going to have five plants right outside the venue. So as soon as you guys show up, they're going to make you feel good before you go on stage. It was very strange.
Nevertheless, what did I miss? Did I miss anything while we were out visiting people? I mean, Bobby, did he miss anything? Marty met the Pope.
So I mean, that's in the future, but they're, you know, we're in a phase now of them teasing and promoting the promotions that will be aired during the Super Bowl. I fully support Francesca leveraging my Marty's young daughter. I think there's no chance. Absolutely.
And it's like a great buddy comedy, what they have going together. Chris Nolan, he declared that IB is dead. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He did say that. IB is over. Sure. I mean, yeah.
I think I saw one. Did Denis Villeneuve say Christopher Nolan is our greatest filmmaker? Did that happen? Yeah.
Well, they did an event together. Okay. Which, all credit to Bobby, Bobby tried to get me a ticket to. And unfortunately, I didn't have childhood lined up.
So I'm going to go. No, no, no. Denis Villeneuve said Chris Nolan was like the greatest filmmaker or something. And then Chris Nolan was like, Dune 2 is his Empire Strikes Back.
Yes. So they're both thriving. Can you believe the kind of podcast I'm going to do about Dune Part 2? We are so fucking set.
Well, yeah. Guys, you're dudes. That's another thing that I did this weekend is that I did a photo shoot with my son who spotted a bus bench with a Dune 2 ad and was like drawn to it. And he had to stop and he had to crawl on it.
He had to stroke Austin Butler's face. And he really did. I didn't coach him. He gravitated towards an Austin Butler and not the Timothy Shalian.
Yeah. You know, so. Big fade, Routh of vibes. Yeah.
So he's in. We're all in on Dune 2. Have you seen the popcorn buckets that they're selling? I mean, they did like an SNL sketch about it already.
I missed that. Did I have an IO at a beer? Yeah. Okay.
Well, it doesn't seem like I missed much. No. Monkey Man trailer? Well, yeah.
I was in the city of Los Angeles when that dropped and I am fired up. In fact, I was with Van last week and Van was like, you and I are going opening night. I was like, I'll be seeing it. But yeah, I'm fired up about Monkey Man.
Monkey Man, just a wonderful thing. You know, like I do want to talk a little bit about what happened with action movies as we talk about Argyle and it is kind of related to what happened with Monkey Man, a movie that was made for Netflix and then Jordan Peele, I suppose, convinced Universal to buy the film back from Netflix so that it could get released in theaters because it's a movie that in theory makes you feel something and you want to see you in a big crowd. So why don't we use that as a pivot to Argyle? A film that was actually made for a streaming service but released by Universal, much like Monkey Man will be.
Argyle. Did you like Argyle? I thought Dua Lipa was wonderful and was the best part. And I almost texted you both.
I told you so about Dua Lipa, but I had like two hours and 14 minutes left because she did it for approximately three minutes at the very beginning and then things go rapidly downhill. Yeah. This is from The Twisted Mind of Matthew Vaughn, the filmmaker behind Kick-Ass and X-Men First Class and most recently the Kingsman trilogy. And this movie is quite poor.
This is not a good movie. It's really bad. And it's kind of astounding. And it's not fun bad because I was sitting next to you and I saw the Argyle trailer for the first time and I was like, what?
And then I saw it three to four more times and I thought maybe it could be a bit, you know, maybe there would be something like fun in its absurdity and it could be in on the joke and we could all have a nice time. And I had a terrible time. I didn't have a very good time and I did have the movie spoiled for me before I saw it. And I'm trying to figure out if that's spoiling, which occurred because there was a Deadline.com tweet from 2021 that in the tweet literally revealed the plot.
And this was just served to me in my For You on Twitter where somebody was like, retweeted and was like, lol, this is the whole movie's twist. If you haven't heard the twist, I'm not going to spoil it yet, but we will spoil it later in this conversation. If you haven't seen the movie, and I suspect you haven't because this movie did not be very well in the box office, I think it actually would be fun to just listen to us talk about it because some of the twists and turns are inane, idiotic, ridiculous, silly, but it's kind of funny. Yeah.
And sort of hard to totally follow in their specifics to the point that trying to recreate them would also be funny. I mean, this is, this is where I swear to you, I saw the Friday that it opened. I had to see it by myself, which is just sad, but it's here we are. I did.
I saw it by myself. Did you see it by yourself? Yeah, I did. Wow, we are so big.
2.45 PM on a Monday. Yeah, I was there. I was awake. I wasn't looking at my phone.
I wasn't distracted by other people chattering. And like, they would explain parts of the plot in the movie, and I forgot it in real time. I was sitting there watching, and it just fell out of my brain because it was so both convoluted and stupid that I just couldn't hold on to it. So how much of this movie do I actually remember?
It would be interesting. I had some mishaps with my travel over the weekend, and there was a chance that I was not going to be able to see the film before we had to record a show. We're already recording late as it is. And if I hadn't, you very valiantly offered to do a reverse Amanda to explain the entire plot of the film to me.
Which I think would have gone quite well. Well, it would have been amusing because there are some twists and turns that are borderline in coherent in this movie. And there are also some set pieces that I would not believe if you had tried to explain this to me because they just defy our expectations of what is good moviemaking. I think it's an unusual situation where, you know, I generally like Matthew Vaughn movies.
They're getting worse, and I want to talk to you about that. But I wouldn't say he's an enemy of mine. I love Sam Rockwell. I think he's wonderful.
I know Beef with Bryce Dallas Howard, who's the star of the movie. You got some beef? I have beef. I tend to not like movies where they're centered around her.
So that's like a recurring thing that I noticed during this movie. Okay, well, we can explore that bit. And I think in this particular case, it might be what they're trying to do with the character rather than her, which was very grating to me. So I don't really blame her, but this was the Jurassic movies.
Not really for me. Interesting. What about Lady in the Water? Do you like that film?
And Night Shyamalan? No. Did I see that one? It's his fairy tale.
Yeah, no, I didn't see that. Absolutely not. This also has a hallowed cast of supporting actors. Brian Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, Henry Cavill, the aforementioned Dua Lipa, Ariana DuBose, your favorite actress, John Cena, Sam Jackson.
So this is a heavy hitter's list. And I will also say, to your point about seeing the trailer, I think if we had just written out the sort of like first act of the movie in a synopsis style and just showed it to you on a piece of paper, you'd have been like, hmm, this is kind of an Amanda movie. Yes. It's like a spy movie about a writer.
Yes. That's great, right? And a little zany. Yeah.
And making fun of itself, which when done right, I do actually like a lot, though it can go wrong. I have a whole theory about why this movie went wrong that I will present in this discussion. This is the fourth installment of a tie-in series. Okay, no, no.
So do you know this? Let me just explain. Excuse me, please. So this is insane.
And this, I became aware of this on two fronts. One, because I was at the bookstore and saw like, you can buy a hardcover copy of Argyle the book. Okay. You know me, I like to buy novels and I like to know what's going on with the book to movie pipeline.
So I was kind of curious about that. And I was separately aware that there was also like a pretty widespread internet conspiracy theory that Taylor Swift was somehow either the big reveal of the movie and or the secret author of this book. Okay. Which she is not.
She is in no way affiliated, but if you've seen the movie or even the marketing, you can understand that the Bryce Dallas Howard character is, whose name is Ellie Conway, which is the author of Argyle the book that is available in stores. From the dressing and the just approachable millennial girl persona to most specifically the cat in the backpack, which is something that Taylor Swift does in this Americana documentary. She has the same type of cat in the cat. Do you remember it's in that little backpack with the astronaut?
I expunge all memories. Sure. Anyway, it's a notable visual reference for people who are hanging on to that sort of thing. So people were like, oh, so Taylor Swift must have ghostwritten this spy novel that then got made into this movie and she's going to be in the movie.
We haven't gotten to the spoiler sections yet, but that doesn't happen just so everyone knows Taylor Swift has nothing to do with this. They were just borrowing on it. This is not running into the tortured poet's department. No.
And, you know, having seen the movie, I think it's like, I have not been a fan of like all of Taylor Swift's recent work, but like, it's rude to think that she would be associated with something like this. So what happened is, in reality, is that this book was like commissioned for the movie and it's a tie-in and Matthew Vaughn wanted to buy, wanted to option a different novel by the novelist Terry Hayes. Okay. That couldn't happen.
So he's like, why don't you write a different spy novel? And then I will turn it into a movie, but with this meta element. Okay. So in the movie, we're seeing like book four, right?
All of the events are from book four of the Argyle series, but in real life, these novelists Terry Hayes and Tammy Cohen wrote book one under a pen name that was published like three weeks ago to go along with the movie. I mean, it's the most fascinating. The key thing that you need to take from all that is that Matthew Vaughn asked for all this. Right.
Like this, like they conceptualized and was involved in it. Like, here's what we'll do is we'll make like a tie-in spy novel and then do this meta thing where it's someone writing the book in real time. And, you know, like that was all created. Right.
So the expectation there is obviously that, I guess, born to noble dwellers would stumble upon an exciting new release from a big publisher in the spy realm. They'd get curious about Ellie Conway as a figure, the pen name that those two authors operated under, and that they would then read this book and then get excited about hearing more about the wide world of Ellie Conway. And then they would watch a movie that skips the next two books in the series to portray sort of in a quasi meta way, the events of the fourth and fifth book. That's a lot to keep in your mind for a silly spy thriller.
It's very confusing. I did a lot of reading. I think that I think I got it right. Like the true authors, their names are only revealed like two days ago.
Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know if it's like breaking, but there has been like a lot of mystery. They obviously didn't deny the Taylor Swift thing for a few weeks because they were getting like a lot of pre-orders, you know, an interest in that sense. At some point, the theory also mutated so that it wasn't Taylor Swift who was doing it, but it was J.K.
Rowling. Oh, God. I'm like, the internet has been going absolutely insane. Oh, a guy goes on one trip, you know?
This is what happens when he goes away. I'm just like on message boards. It's really funny. Yeah, so there's a book out there that I haven't read.
I won't be reading either. It's apparently... Especially having seen this. That's the other thing.
The movie's coming out two weeks later, it came out at stake. So what was the idea here? I mean, there's a whole buildup towards the potential future of this series, which like pretty clearly will not be happening. Let's talk about the plot of the film because it does center around and opens with this elaborate imagining of this spy named Argyle and the various figures in his life and the agency that he's operating against and his partners in spy and espionage.
Yeah, it's like the climax of a Bond movie, but very visibly a parody of it and everything is intentionally CGI. It almost has that Barbie, we're not in the real world, we're in a fake world thing. And it's Henry Cavill who has either not been cast as Bond or played his fair share Bond wannabes doing Bond. Dua Lipa is the Bond woman.
She's great. And then there's a terrible CGI motorcycle chase. John Cena shows up as his buddy or his teammate. And then there's some Devil Crossing that I didn't totally understand because they're looking at their phones and it's like Dua Lipa's calling her boss, but also it's Henry Cavill's boss and there's been like some sort of, you know, betrayal.
And then Dua Lipa does, or like has her like diamond cyanide capsule, right? And then there's a shootout. You're going into the text here. This is really, it's like the first time I read Tom Wolfe, you know, where I'm like, what really is important to the tale and what is a magic?
This is the only like borderline palatable part of the movie. So you might get all the details of the first four minutes and then we'll fly through it. I have to ground this scene because there is a big reveal. There is a big reveal.
Okay, there are several reveals, but one's like really important to me. So I just need to set the scene. So like Dua Lipa's gone, that's hit number one for a minute. Then there's like a lot of shootout and people show up and at some point Arianna DuBose like pops up in a Jeep.
And if you're like me, you're like, oh, Arianna DuBose is in this movie. I'm a Academy Award winner. Who's been in literally every movie released in the book. Yes, shout out to her work in Wish.
Yeah, and Sesame Street. We watched that episode again yesterday. Great stuff. So she shows up for two seconds and then she dies.
And then, listen, it's the first four minutes of the movie. You knew what was happening when you were watching it. You were like, this is an imagine world. You weren't thinking this is a story.
Yeah, you're right. And then I don't totally remember what happens. She's like, it's unresolved and you cut to the reading that Ella Conway, a.k.a. Rysel Howard, is giving.
And so, and that's how they set up this like movie within a movie. Metafiction. Yeah, very quickly, she's kind of concluding this book and she's trying to get to the end of it and she's trying to write this kind of final chapter of the book. And she gets a call from her mom and her mom has just read the book overnight.
She's read this ending and her mom's like, this ending isn't right. It doesn't work. I'm going to come see you. Right.
I'm going to help you. We're going to workshop this together. No, you're going to come see me. Well, no, she says, I'm going to come see you.
And then she and then Ellie says, actually, I'm going to get on a train and I'm going to come see my mom. I'm going to surprise her. parents house okay right so she gets on the train you skipped how ellie i mean you just skipped her entire characterization which is like the airbnb glass cabin like in the middle of colorado and she's drinking like little pint glasses of ipa because she's colorado you know she's not like some real like relatable like when i when it's all over we wrap this shit up on the big picture it was like the spawn of like cottagecore tiktok pandemic trends i was like this is just it's really just very upset did she live on a lake though i think she lived on she did live on a lake yeah it was sick that house it was really nice like she those books are selling also where she's giving the reading is like you know it's supposed to be like the trading post store in like the one place in colorado you know but then it's like the world's largest barnes and noble on the inside and everybody has like a letter thrown that they're sitting in and it's like what are we doing here and it's also extremely well attended a lot of people who work on this movie don't live in the real world i want to say matthew on again who i like as a director is married to claudia shiffer so yeah this is a person with an elevated imagination of the comic experience uh on the way to see her parents she gets on the train on the train she encounters um a man in a beard and a long haircut and that man is sam rockwell and he says he's a spy right and then the movie sort of it becomes clear what this movie is which is that which was already clear because that's in the trailer good point um which is the trailer that everyone has seen like 800 times that and arthur the king yes arthur the king i know is not on our upcoming lineup lineup is that something you want to change i'm taking a couple weeks off from the show you're gonna be hosting the show i'm dead serious in late march if you want an arthur the king episode you can book any guest you want if you want to be a dog to join you if you book arthur bob do you think arthur the dog would come on the show at a cliffhanger we don't know if he's alive according to the trailer yeah sure what if he just dies in the movie ends that would be a tough b for arthur is arthur the dog yeah well no arthur the king is the name of the song but i think arthur is the dog okay it's not referring to i know he's the king oh boy can you tell we haven't potted in two weeks there's a lot of silliness going on right now um we're talking about argyle i know well it's weird because like the plot and mechanics of argyle don't matter but they're also the only thing that you can talk about because this movie has no meaning there's no theme in the film argyle like there's no deeper context it's just a spy romp a kind of action comedy and it slowly becomes clear that this world that she has created is somehow intertwined with the real world and that the espionage that sam rockwell's character is responsible to is related to the writing that she's been doing there are some people in this group this organization called the division that want to get the information that she has because whatever she writes according to sam rockwell's character comes true that like almost she has this kind of predictive quality to her fiction writing now there's of course a reason for that and the reason i guess we should just spoil it here right yeah so if you don't want to know anything else about argyle which i get it you know you couldn't get a sitter over the weekend or i don't know you had to catch up on true detective or you were out supporting the if you want i wouldn't recommend it because i'm gonna say some dumb shit about this movie that's kind of entertaining but um it turns out that the long suggested question of who is agent argyle is actually who ella conway aka the writer of the series aka bryce ellis howard and she is an amnesiac brainwashed cia agent yes who has been brainwashed by an illicit group that is trying to get her to reveal all of the secrets about her spy organization right and in doing so she only knows how to process those secrets by writing them out and writing them through isn't that basically the movie i mean yes yes yes but it's like the big reveal an hour and 20 minutes and it's like actually argyle is r kyle right aka rachel kyle right which is ellie conway's real name yeah but she's being it's a normal one here on a tuesday someone in the theater when that reveal happened literally said oh brother fell out okay but so also by the way the way that that is revealed is in the quote-unquote french countryside which where where do we think that was actually filmed i mean but like yeah it could have been london i think this could have been shot in london yeah so some yeah and that's so that's where sam jackson spent his one day yes and clearly never left that location right we get a lot of those lately i don't know if you saw the film the marvels where he just sat on a spaceship for two hours but this is really one day so he's there to give like one speech um and then he goes back to his lair where he watches the lakers for quite literally the rest of it i did too i thought it was really funny entering spread wine um but that leaves what we call her ella conway rachel kyle or kyle that was our kyle like out in the like fake vineyard with sam rockwell and he's like no this is really who you are i'm just like i don't believe you no i'm not like and she's like yes you want to go back and forth and then finally he just like attacks her and her like you know her physical instincts catches in kick in and now she can like you know do whatever like impressive martial arts she knows how to do i was like meeting you up on the hillary clinton barbie yeah exactly and then she's revealing she's like wait how do i know how to do that and she knew how to do that so that's that's how she finds that out but so then a lot of weird things yeah i want to go back to you so she is she's like part of psyop pro she's the target of psyop program and it's brian cranson and katherine o'hara who have been brainwashing her but they like why why are they brainwashing her is i think so that she doesn't realize that she's revealing these critical secrets that she needs to think that she is someone else and that they've created this entirely new backstory for her after she's been retained after she's had this amnesiac experience right and so because she has all this information inside of her she's like a human hard drive of critical data for the division's exploits right this is the best way to get out of her and in fact when you go back to the movie you think about katherine o'hara saying like i'm gonna come to the lake house and talk to you we're gonna workshop you because your book can't end on a cliffhanger that's what she says because she needs to know what happens right right right so i mean i but so i guess that's clever no because i want to jump ahead okay because are they not in the division i believe that they are right so why do they need her to reveal the division's secrets if they are do you know what i mean i think it's more like the the organization that um that she's in that are kyle and aiden the same rockwell character in she's revealing those secrets oh i see like the argyle character that she has created is in their organization got it whereas dua lipa is in the division got it okay make sense sort of i think that's right okay tell you what not really sure okay the movie is a little bit incoherent so can we then fast forward to so she there's an up in which is like the master key the master key and so she has to go to what is sofia tell his characters i don't know what her character's name is i mean she's in arabia and she has access to them the keeper of secrets yeah classic stuff is that like an official title you think it's like she has a special license plate it's like being a diplomat it says that in work day actually they all are part of the same system wait who's her manager is it bill no she reports to julia she's on the production oh got it okay she's keeping all those secrets you know that's a blue collar job okay so she she has the memory box as she looks at the memory box uh-huh or whatever it's all yeah but then like she's inside it's like you know she's it's me you know so it's like is she she was part of the division she didn't understand the extent to which she was i think this is unclear to me this is unclear to me obviously the mind of rachel kyle has been refracted in a million it's a diamond inside of a diamond and because of this i mean it's authentically confusing because it's unclear if she at this stage of the movie let me just talk about what directly precedes the event she and aiden go to arabia to retrieve the master key um and so that they can avoid the division getting their hands on the location of solomon which is samuel jackson's character and whilst there it becomes clear to ellie conway aka r kyle that she and aiden were a thing they were a couple they weren't just partners in this espionage organization but they were in love and we learn this when sam rockello's character hears they both hear their song quote-unquote their song yeah um which is a song called now and then yeah which was uh written by the beatles which was released roughly four months ago right by ai so so dog what i don't i don't know does this film either take place in 2039 or have they had access to the ai beetle song because they're members of this espionage group or is this an opportunistic apple moment where they're like we got a new fucking beetle song we're getting the shit because it's not like they say the beetles that's true at any point they're not just like they aren't like remember yeah what do you think of the other candidates for that song you know like definitely a youtube song absolutely yeah one yeah definitely one um i've got you babe sunny and share oh yeah silver springs nothing but a g thing by dr trey uh what else what else could possibly i can keep going like this i i just i laughed out loud i was like this is this is an insane choice to make us i had already forgotten that that new beetle song sure of course we all did it was nice to remind you i guess did you like that song yeah i'm right it's weird did you go like grammy i think so okay i didn't watch that i did i know yeah i listened to your podcast about it okay great um was it good uh no i was a weird vibe in the room okay i was i was proud of billy joel yeah in his efforts william joel one of the greats long island the only thing i was missing actually what it was just uh um she's always a woman that was the song oh that's really good that would improve this movie by at least 10 percent yeah well we're starting at negative 50 000 so um yeah and then basically what happens is like a series of double crosses where the ellie character thinks she's a part of the division but also we can't tell if she's actually doing a double double cross so she can trick the division and she's gonna get the master key and she's gonna give up the location of solomon but then actually wait a minute just to the last minute she's not gonna do it then there's a big chase sequence where she's gonna have to get out of this place where they are and then get on a ship and go somewhere else right and the chase sequence is when they're ice skating on crude oil yes okay i truly what is that what is that sequence i don't know was brysales howard i'm scared here let's google that because they make a big thing brysales howard ice skating this is riveting podcasting um no i don't think so while they're being pursued by these the division spies she turns to aiden at a certain point and says do i skate well her backstory the fictional like hypnosis thing that created for her was that she had a skating accident and then when she you know recovered from that accident she rode the right so but my question there is can you be brainwashed into being a world-class skater on no he answers yeah that they kept it as close how did the division even know that i mean i think if you're a spy you know everything was she like christy yamaguchi what are we talking about here she's she's skating like crazy on that crude oil just covering the floor of this like where even are they at that point they're not on the ship yet they're like in in this in like a department yeah division lair i don't know this movie is incoherent right i think they were on the ship i think that all that whole like middle it's all in the last hour and a half oh you know what i think you're right because there's like no maybe i'm confusing it because there's like this big reveal of like oh you're on like a ship but that might be a shot again all we're doing here is suggesting improvements uh okay yeah so and then and there's been this whole thing with a dance move called the whirly bird that they do with guns and like pink and blue smoke at the end of the skating sequence which is just just you know uh confusing and upsetting and then throughout throughout just like it looks just absolutely terrible and then they have the file or something and the satellites are down but there's a different satellite above deck that they can use you know just like you're telling me there's another satellite above that it's all gonna be fine they just like you know need it to upload to 100 so people physically like try to keep stopping it from uploading and there's more fighting on top of the deck and then at some point catherine o'hare gets out the skating music box that plays the beatle song and as all we learn is like the the cue for bryce dallas howard to become a killer but i believe they actually say the phrase they mk altered you like do bryce dallas howard's character they use the phrase mk ultra which at that point in the movie i was like maybe this movie's cool maybe this movie's good but then it lost me again yeah and so it's everything is about to go wrong i don't like someone's about to die and the music box is spinning and at the very last moment the music box is shattered and maybe catherine o'hare is taken out too i don't know someone saves the day and allows for the things and that person is ariana devose and i started cheering alone in my theater i was just like i can't believe that this this oscar winner who was in the movie previously for 15 seconds max shows up again to save the day and then explain some email that we didn't even get into because it was like far too complicated um ariana devose saves the day and ariana is the most hilarious thing that's happened to me in 2024 uh it's funny because you were you were texting me while this was happening you were wondering if this had happened yet and i thought you were more excited about the absurdity of everything that happens after this which is that after that moment right and and rachel and aiden are reunited and they're no longer brainwashed and rachel is a successful author and they're back at the barnes noble she's doing a reading and then two things happen there's two kind of like guess what you're gonna get 13 more years of argyle the first one is um in a slightly different hairstyle henry cavill stands up at the reading and identifies himself i guess as the real argyle well does he identify himself he doesn't say like hello i'm the real argyle he just like looks like jim from statements like he's henry cavill sure but he looks like the person that ellie has imagined in her head i guess one thing i don't think we said just that during some of the action early action sequences when when sam rockwell is like as the real person you know doing the fight because the movie then like cuts to henry cavill in the same fight sequence and it goes back and forth to communicate the confusion in her mind there's my problem yeah real life versus what she imagined go ahead but aiden is not henry cavill aiden is john cena and our kyle like the argyle is her so why would she be seeing that's not even because she hasn't the girl bossed up yet you know she doesn't she's not that part of the journey where she understands that she is the real argyle you know that's part of her journey okay it's all about self-actualization and this is this has to get there you know by the end by the end she is lifting sam rockwell in the whirlybird in the pink and blue smoke with his gun she's just so powerful that's why hillary here on the show which is uh uh the girl boss scale you may have heard the midnight year on midnight boys but uh where's this film rank from one to ten one to ten bosses one being the least bossy okay and ten being the girly bossiest okay well hmm well i'm just trying to wrap my head around the parameters of that scale so i guess this is a film written directed and produced by i mean it's like a one but also a ten you know because what is girlboss like really like this is this is the definition of a girlboss it's just absolute uh nonsense uh what do you think of the little teaser at the end i didn't know it was there and i laughed okay this is a girlboss movie so we know they're gonna be you know credit sequences okay so uh immediately after the the short bit of credits we go to a post-credit scene where a young argyle so this is i guess technically a young henry cavill even though it's a skinnier guy but i got the same haircut he didn't have looking 20 years ago that's well that's a good point um and he's not tired as a bachelor for argyle book you're doing his thing that's true and he's like We're going to get the Schwarzenegger here in my dissertation on this film. Can't wait.
So, Young Argyle is in a pub, which I think says Kingsman Tavern at the top. I don't know how familiar you are with Kingsman films. I've seen one. Okay, there have been three of them.
It's kind of an ornate mythology. I didn't know that there were pubs like this. Yeah, clearly. The villain, literally, of the third Kingsman movie is Rasputin.
So, they're pretty complicated. But so, this Young Argyle, it turns out, is a Kingsman agent. And he's giving a code to the bartender, who I guess is also one of the keepers of Kingsman secrets. Maybe a master secret.
The keepers are like the Knights Templar. In a manner of speaking. Mixed with the CIA. Mixed with...
I don't know why I wasn't into those. You weren't more into those. The Knights Templar? No, no, no.
The Knightsman movies. Because it's like... Knightsman, yes. That might be part of the issue.
You're just looking up the wrong movie. Why can't I find Knightsman on Netflix tonight? What service has Knightsman? Like, it's a combo of Da Vinci Code.
It's my movies. It is. It's like, sure, that should be right in my alley. But then it's not, right?
You're teeing me up marvelously. Thank you. Sometimes I know how to do my job. Well, the movie ends and it says, Argyle colon book one dash the movie will be coming soon.
Which, let me tell you, listener, it will not. That movie will not be coming out. Because this movie got a C-plus in the score, which is basically like getting a 38 on a math test. And it made $16 million, despite costing reportedly $200 million.
Who knows? You know, the action is not great. And it's disappointing because Matthew Blunt has done some great action in the past. The first Kingsman movie in particular is very celebrated for this bizarre sequence set to Leonard Skinner's song that takes place in a church.
I don't know if you remember this. Oh, you remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really fun and creative.
I'm still laughing at the 38 on a math test. You like that? Yeah, it's really bad. It's not good.
You basically don't understand math. This is a movie that no one got or spent a nice time watching, which is not where you want to be. This movie is what I call Wink Action. Wink Action is a subgenre of action filmmaking that has gotten very, very, very popular in the last roughly 15 years.
And I think it's on its way out. And so I wanted to talk to you about this today, both of you. Because I want to know if I'm overthinking this, but I don't think I am. I think it speaks a little bit to what our friend Chris Nolan was talking about with the IP era, too.
Because this stuff is all kind of interwoven. He's nominated in adapted screenplay. Yes. Okay, I see what you're saying.
You're saying that he should only create stories from whole cloth if he doesn't want to be accused of participating in the IP gold rush. It's funny that he used the phrase intellectual property, which means a very specific thing, particularly for screenwriters. And he knows that. That's true.
He just didn't want to say comic book because he saw what happened to Marty. Right. He also made three. Nevertheless, okay, so we're growing up.
They're good. They're good. Sort of. We're growing up, and there's action comedy, right?
You've heard that phrase before. You know that phrase. So that's an action movie, a pure action movie that has good jokes or a comic tone. So it's like, it's 48 hours.
It's pretty good. It's bad boys. Probably like the signature action comedy of your youth. Anything written by Shane Black.
Lethal Weapon, Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero. You know, I just watched The Nice Guys on the plane on the way back because there's no Wi-Fi on my plane. You were down bad. Well, no, but I just watched Child's Play, which was wonderful.
And I hadn't re-watched The Nice Guys in years. I just met like your travel situation. It was on the lesson. And I've entered an atmospheric river here in Los Angeles.
Not an ideal set of days. Nevertheless, these movies that I'm talking about, you'll find a lot of them on the re-watchables. They're marketed first and foremost as like a thrill ride, as an exciting movie with high stakes. There's murders.
There's these evil villains that are really dangerous and scary. There's funny stuff in them, but they're really intense movies. They're adult films. So all the mid-period Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, like from Kindergarten Cop all the way through like True Lies, those are basically all action comedies because someone smartly realized that Arnold is funny so that he can do laugh lines, but it's still like he's got a gun in his hand.
Right. This kind of ends, I think, with Guy Ritchie. I think Guy Ritchie is kind of a turning point here. And that's relevant because Matthew Vaughn was Guy Ritchie's producer on the first two movies that he made on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and on Snatch.
So then there's comedy action. This is totally different, but very related. So this is like Rush Hour, Hot Fuzz. A lot of the Edgar Wright movies fit this bill.
The Other Guys, the Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg movie, Men in Black, of course, 21 Jump Street. So these are movies that are like, these are comics. Midnight Run. Midnight Run, totally.
A comedy action movie. It's funny first. And there is serious stakes, but what you are there to do is laugh. These are more often summer movies.
They're not fall movies or winter movies. They're kind of, these are both of these movies are kind of date movies, but you're more likely to bring your date to a comedy action movie than to an action comedy. Would you agree with that? Yeah.
Like Game Night is in this category, right? Very much. Game Night is a perfect. I'm a little stuck on, never mind.
We can do some ethics on other times. Meaning which word should come first. Yes. And I understand that you're doing comedy action first because it's a comedy first, but I'm doing modifiers in my head.
And that's the face that I was making as you were talking. But I'm with you. Your point is valid when I thought about this. It's fine, but we're on the same page.
We've addressed it. And yes, I like going to these movies on dates or by myself at 3 p.m. on Friday because no one will go to the movies with me. I'll always go to a comedy action or an action comedy movie.
Not once have you been willing to go to the movies with me, but I text you being like, hey, do you want to go see this? I've got a lot going on. Pineapple Express, interesting example of comedy action because it's a movie that is paying homage to action comedy, but it can't help but be comedy action because it's Seth Rogen. It's James Franco.
It's Danny McBride. It almost can't do what it wants to do because of who it's cast. If it had been Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, it would have been an action comedy. Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves, IP.
But this is a movie that is actually comedy action. That's really ultimately what it's trying to accomplish. It's in a very similar vein. It's medieval, but it otherwise in its tone and its execution has great action sequences, but it's funny first.
So something happened. And I guess it is in the aftermath of Guy Ritchie and in the rise of this kind of IP where we've got this mutant baby. We've got this movie that is neither face nor foul. That's wink action.
It is like ostensibly really thrilling and funny at the same time, but more often than not, it's really glib. It's full of CGI. It's heavily influenced by online humor. It almost feels like a YouTube, Reddit, you know, Vine, a Meldum, a lot of like meme jokes you find in there.
And so like the pre-branded IPR almost forced these two things together. And there's a lot of movies where if you don't have the talent of the people behind 21 Jump Street, but you're trying to make a coherent idea out of a movie that otherwise just has like IP attached to it or like a big hey concept attached to it, you end up getting one of these movies. So I'm just going to say before I give you the key examples of wink action, these movies are not wink action. John Wick, not wink action.
Any movie starring Gerard Butler, Liam Neeson, or Jason Statham, those are action movies. Mission Impossible. As funny as it is and as self-knowing as it is, not wink action. Also not wink action.
Nolan or Zack Snyder movies. Very serious, earnest films. Now, Bond is complex because Daniel Craig Bond is not funny with a few rare exceptions in sequences. But the previous Bond films that were a little bit more self-knowing in their cheekbones.
And in each era, they all become that. Yes. So would you, how would you define that? Well, I mean, Pierce Brosnan era, maybe a little bit of wink action.
And I think, I mean, Timothy Dalton, I don't really, and Roger Moore, I guess. I guess so. Early Roger Moore, no, later Roger Moore, yes. Yeah, but I mean, you could say that, like, early Sean Connery, no, later Sean Connery.
Like, even a little bit. And some of that is just because, like, Bond himself is, like, literally, you know, a winking character and the knowledge of those tropes are baked into the movies themselves. Yeah, they can't help but knowledge in them as you go through. Right.
But I stumbled on that one and I ultimately landed on the Daniel Craig movies were not. They were ultimately very greedy, globetrotting action films with heart and backstory and maybe the occasional laugh, like when on the arm shows up. But more played for slapstick, a slapstick kind of humor than what I'm talking about here. So what I'm talking about, and this is the earliest one I could think of that is a true blue, like, definitional version is Shoot'em Up, which is a 2007 movie starring Clyde Bowen that I don't hate.
And I should say I don't hate all wink action movies. Some of them are good. Some of them are great, but they're very hard to pull off. And Shoot'em Up is a movie that feels influenced by video games.
It feels influenced by the sort of, like, over-the-top, exploitative, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Corbett, and Celeste Stallone movies of the previous generation. They're sort of, like, absurd in their construction. This movie is okay. It's, like, definitely not as smart as it thinks it is, but I feel like it kicks off a wave of movies.
It includes the following. Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, which is an adaptation of a Mark Millar comic, which is a very violent movie about little kid superheroes that ultimately I think did more harm than good. I liked it when it came out. I was like, this is a good idea.
It was a clever spin. He's got some real verve as a filmmaker. By now, he already made Layer Cake. He made Stardust.
I started to figure out what kind of a filmmaker he's going to be before he makes X-Men first class, which is not wink action at all. It's also awesome. Very dashing and exciting action movie with superheroes. And then, this is an important one, and I want to speak to you about this, because I feel like the damn really burst here with Fast Five.
Well, I see that, and I think, you know, Fast Five has always sort of been the exception to the rule in that franchise as well as the world at large. So, I think Fast Five is great, even if it has all those hallmarks. It is, you know, the safe, which I always yell about, which is so funny, does have that thing of, like, this is, they're doing that, or doing some version of that, at least. It's like a thrilling stunt that's also like, lol, we couldn't get into the safe, so we just pulled it out, and are now just driving around Fast Fires around Rio.
So, we hear that. The next thing on your list. Well, let me just say one thing. In Fast Five, the issue that I have with it is the reintroduction of the Ludicrous and Tyrese characters into this world doing the thing that I'm talking about, which is, like, ostensibly, they're there for comic relief, but they're not funny.
And whatever jokes they are, and people like them. And, in fact, as the movies go on, they kind of realize that it doesn't even matter if it's that funny, that they're there for, like, their adventures. Right. But that stuff has never worked in those movies to me.
I've never really found it that fun, in addition to Vin Diesel not being able to act in all the other shows. I have both movies. But the next one. Well, when you were describing Wing Action, respectfully, you were describing a Marvel movie.
Yes. The MCU and Deadpool and related Ryan Reynolds properties are the signature of this. And in the same way that many people feel that they replaced already comedies, the MCU, they also kind of replaced all action comedy and comedy action, because they were casting funny people in action movies, and they were getting three or four funny lines. And sometimes the lines were funny, and sometimes they weren't.
And sometimes the films were good, and sometimes they weren't good. But this ate up this whole little stripe of movie making that we don't talk about as much as we talk about rom-coms or we talk about erotic thrillers. There's a series of subgenres that we're always banging on. We don't talk about, like, where's Lethal Weapon.
And those movies ate them. But I think Jurassic World ate them to some extent, too. Which I was wondering, if it had been Chris Pine instead of Chris Pratt, or Chris Hemsworth instead of Chris Pratt in Jurassic World, would those movies have had a different tone? Maybe.
I think you would also need to recast Bryce Dallas Howard, who is very, like, broad in the comedic talents. And, like, not that funny. Now, she is not being given good material, you know? But it's sort of a...
I mean, they're just, like, making Layne Taylor Swift jokes. You know, it's not, like, great comedic writing in R.O. I think Mark Wahlberg has also gotten trapped in this. I think some of it is that, like, he doesn't realize that he's trapped in it because he's just in his, like, Las Vegas compound cranking out Arthur the King for equals.
But there's, like, a whole... I challenge any living human to rattle off the last ten Mark Wahlberg films. I mean, there's only two other humans on this pod, so you guys can try. Right.
Well, Spencer Confidential was before the pandemic. How many Mark Wahlberg movies since Spencer Confidential can you name? There's something that's, like, it's not the parent trap, but it's, like, the something swap or the something... You know what I mean?
Yeah, let's do some math here. So, in 2020, one of the very last episodes we did together in person, you and Chris, was our Mark Wahlberg Hall of Fame, which was Peg Spencer Confidential. That film came out in the first quarter of 2020, right before the pandemic. There have been one, two, three, four, five, six Mark Wahlberg movies.
There's one called The Family Plan? The Family Plan. That was released on Apple TV Plus in December. Have you seen the film?
No, of course not. I haven't seen it. Absolutely not. Is there a different, like, twist, swap-type family comedy movie?
He's been making a lot of, like, family movies, right? Are you thinking of polyamory? Because it's in the news right now. No, no.
Where do you stand on polyamory? It's just, like, a lot of people with time on their hands. That's what that is. That's what that is.
It definitely, that's what all of the, like, articles about it are. Like, every single person in the article, it's just like, well, I do understand, like, that you don't have much else going on. I see. Generally, I agree.
I'm like, who has time for this? It just seems really, really... I feel like a lot of way about just anybody having an affair. I'm like, where do you find the time?
Even if I wanted to cheat, how could I cheat? Right, then the amount of, like, logistics that you have to get right on top... I mean, that's why, like, it always comes out. Because you forgot to pick up a little JoJo at soccer practice.
Because you were fucking some lady in a hotel. Or you coded it on the wrong calendar, you know? Stop being a podcast host and start being a house-called doctor in New York City in the 1990s. That's what I think is, like, maybe if I had a profession that would allow for this kind of behavior.
Yeah. Polyamory, I don't get it. I'm not saying anything here about swaps in the filmography. Do you want to hear the other films you've made?
Yeah, we'll see. Probably can you name a single one of the other five films you've made? I'm already looking at it. I would have only been able to name the one that is, like, the big IP adaptation.
There's one big IP adaptation, which is undistorted. Oh, sure, Tom Holland, yeah. He's going to be Romeo. Sure.
On the West End. Yeah, absolutely. Or somewhere. Why not?
I guess. You've got to wipe the filth off the last five years. Joe Bell. Did you see that movie?
True Story Inspiration. Did I actually see that movie? It was Sundance. I did see it in Sundance.
Didn't think it was a very good film. It was directed, however, by Rinaldo Marcus Green. Director of King Richard and the forthcoming Bob Marley Colon One Love, which we'll be covering on the show next week. 2021 Infinite?
Wait, you skipped one. You skipped one. Yeah, you skipped a voice performance. He has a voice performance in Scoob.
Oh, okay. Which was a- Scoob! Exclamation Scooby-Doo. Scoob!
Scoob! Scoob! You guys doing Scooby-Doo at your house yet? No.
Although, Eileen loves Scooby-Doo. I can see that, yeah. That was a big one for her as a preteen. That's cool.
I can see it. And now I'll see my dogs. It's a fucking hair style, so I can see that come. Infinite?
Okay. Early Sun Paramount Plus. Just for fun, let's read the brief synopsis of Infinite. Haunted by memories of places he's never visited, a man joins forces with a group of reborn warriors to stop a madman from destroying the endless cycle of life and reincarnation.
This film also stars 2 Until Edge of 4 and was directed by Antoine Fuqua. Yes, we did watch that. For the pod. Yeah.
Sure. Okay. This was a very, this was a trying time in our history. Just a couple more Mark Wahlberg movies for everybody to hear about Father Stu.
Perhaps you've heard of it. Oh, yeah. I think this is a movie that basically bankrupted the studio because it's important to everybody know about my addiction crisis. That's great for him.
And then Me Time, which in the parlance of the Blank Jack podcast is a movie that does not exist. This is a film starring Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg and Regina Hall. It is directed by John Hamburg, who's the guy who made I Love You, Man. And there is just no way that this is a real movie.
It was released on August 26, 2022. 101 Minutes. Mark plays a character named Huck Dembo. Yeah, sure.
How do you feel about Huck? The name? Yeah. I think it's kind of overexposed right now.
Chappelle has a whole thing about it. If you're named Huckleberry Finn in 2024, what that says about you. I mean, yes. Yeah.
It's not an ideal name. No disrespect to all the Huckleberries. My favorite Huck is a man named Huck Seed, who is a professional poster player. This is why people come to the show.
I'm just as well-shrie of information I'm providing. Me Time, not a fan. And forthcoming, Arthur the King, of course. He's got a very exciting new film called The Union, starring Halle Berry and Mike Coulter, who was in the film Plane.
And then another film called Flight Risk. This film is, of course, directed by Mel Gibson. Mark Wahlberg, Topher Grace, and Michelle Duquery. So that's very exciting stuff.
Your girl. Yeah. Gosh, I might have fallen. You just did a list of films within a list of films.
Like, you're halfway through Wing Action right now. We've achieved new heights. I'm in my bag. Please.
Please. Continuing on. The Hitman's Bodyguard. Very mediocre.
Ryan Reynolds. Sam Jackson movie. Free Guy, of course. Noticing being here.
Ryan Reynolds. Absolutely. Red Notice. I think Free Guy is the closest movie to Arthur.
Argyle, in terms of tone, I think Free Guy was the closest of any movie that I've seen on this list. Those two are totally so similar to me. I hated Free Guy, as everyone who listens to the show knows, but I actually thought it was much funnier than Argyle. Like, I can acknowledge that there are a couple of good jokes in Free Guy, despite it being a very creative act.
Argyle, I didn't laugh once during Argyle. We did the rewatch of that? We did, yeah. And that's, he's trapped in the video game?
Yes. But he's like the guy on the side of the video game? He's an NPC. Right, what does that mean again?
Non-playable character. Okay, but then he becomes playable? Yeah, hell yeah. Polyamory, let's go.
Right, and then at the end, it's like, he's in Marvel and Disney and everything all at once. Yeah, he's got the Hulk hand and the shield. He's got a lightsaber. There is actual recorded evidence of me having watched this entire film.
When our nation is governmentally managed by China in 20 years, they're going to point back to that scene in Free Guy, and they're going to say, this is when it turns. This was the fall of an empire. Was that the plot that we did while Amanda was laying on her side eight months later? I was not on my side.
I had my trusty pregnancy pillow supporting me from both sides. So I was at a comfortable incline, and I was unbelievably pregnant. Bobby, you will never, you can't imagine. You literally will never know.
You're a center of gravity. You know, that was great work by you. Yeah. You did great.
Thanks. I am forever grateful for your service. I forgot about Bullet Train, which I didn't really like very much. Oh, yeah, I didn't like that.
It's definitely Wink Action. Yeah. And The Great Man, too. The Great Man, actually, I think, would have been better served to not try to be cute and funny, if Matt Chris Evans' character had not been written that way, if it wasn't Gosling, if it was somebody else.
I was so disappointed that Gosling was part of that. But that brings me to my next question, which is, is the fall guy going to be Wink Action? I mean, it looks like it. It does, right?
I mean, that's the whole conceit. I'm a little worried. Yeah. I did, too.
I saw the trailer. Yeah. What's going on? So I think that America is onto this.
And I think that they don't want this. This tone is like, hey, I just watched a couple of YouTube videos. Here's some jokes I wrote. I mean, the jokes in Art Isle is like, they're brain dead.
Yeah. And a lot of these movies, the jokes are brain dead. There's a real absence of cleverness. And, you know, if the action isn't great on top of missing that, you've got kind of a disastrous recipe there.
That's true. Do you think that it's the IP thing that no one's talking about and that we've been talking about the last couple of years? Like, what is it that feels like this is... Because when Red Nose came out, people were like, no.
You know, 200 million people watched it because it was on Netflix. But, like, how many of those people finished it? Because it's so clearly, you know, glued together and not really a movie. And just an excuse to sell gin.
Right. That gin is good, though. It is good. It is good.