Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind your favorite song lyric, or why certain melodies make your skin tingle? I'm Cole Kushner, and these are the kinds of questions I try to answer on DICEKT, a podcast that dives deep into one album per season, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. I've dissected full albums by Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Tyler the Creator, Beyonce, Kanye, and more. Our latest season just launched all about MF June's Mad Villainy.
Listen to DICEK wherever you get your podcasts, because great art deserves more than a swipe. I'm Sean Fennese, and this is the Big Picture 8 Conversation Show about the best movies of the year so far. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Arcosha Stevenson, the director of the first Omen, and unexpectedly impressive Legacy Prequel to the 1974 classic The Omen. Arcosha, one to watch, friend of Andy Greenwald, that's how you know, good cosign there, visually gifted, thematically conscious filmmaker, really like talking with her, really surprised in the press-iron movie, we'll talk about it a little bit in this one of the best movies of the year so far.
But first, let's talk about movies through the first quarter. Is it premature to be doing the best movies of the year, or do you find some good stuff? No, it's Q1. Q1.
And there were a few things I liked, but if you want to speak holistically, I don't know that it's been the best Q1 of our lifetimes. No, there's one big, full-chested, strident film that is clearly a behemoth that we're going to be talking about for the next year plus. And then there's a bunch of other stuff, there's some big Hollywood Temple stuff, there's okay. And then there were some gems, I found a bunch of gems hidden in the rough.
I found a couple interesting things. Okay. What do you think that's about, is it's just a strike hangover, basically? Yeah.
It seems like real leftover delays plus things that they saw a soft spot, and they're like, well, there's nowhere else to put Argyle. Yeah. Argyle, is that on Apple TV plus now? When's that coming to Apple TV plus?
No, I think that it is like in a week or so, but it's not available yet. I think all in it was that they made the announcement during the New York earthquake. Oh, wow. Literally buried.
Under the roof of the 5.4 magnitude. Do you think this podcast will be buried under the eclipse? Because there's going to be such a massive consumption of eclipse content that people will be deleting this episode of the big picture. I guess it does come out after the eclipse, but we're recording it during a 9 or 12 straight days of eclipse content.
I mean, it has felt like three to four already this weekend. It was a slow news weekend. Yeah. Well, it was like, it was, you know, women's basketball championship and then people being like, where do I buy glasses for the eclipse?
What's more powerful the eclipse or Caitlin Clark? Many people are asking this question. Well, I think the University of South Carolina. Clearly don't say anything about that.
Yeah. Well, and then they won. So good for them. In retrospect, maybe we should have had the podcast where we devolved into insanity.
And the day of the eclipse so that we would have an explanation for it. But now people just saw what it's truly like. Well, it was a little bit like that because going to be honest, it's been a week movie here so far. It has been, it's been, it's been like there have been highlights and we're here to find the good.
Yeah. And to celebrate, you know, what we enjoy, but I don't know. Well, one thing that's been a little bit confusing for me is, and this happens every year, of course, as you get these films, I got these one week engagement runs for award season. And that technically makes them 2023 releases, but then really they get released February and March April to kind of get time to the Academy Awards or whatever award shows happening.
So if we're being honest, there are a bunch of movies that we've covered or I've covered with director interviews that are quite good. I mean, the Promised Land, the Nikolai Arsel film, Perfect Days, The Vinfenders Movie, we did an entire episode of Ellevlai's Bleeding. Good movie. Good movie.
And Immaculate, which I like quite a bit, the Sydney Sweeney and Unsplatational. Great discourse. What explicit with the first moment, it's going to be amazing pairing those two movies together. But you know, those are all good movies.
And those movies would be good in September as much as of February. So I like those movies a lot. I do too. The strategy of doing the one week release to qualify for the Oscars and then hoping that your film gets an international feature, Oscar Boost, and releasing it in February or March is, I don't know if it's paying off totally because only five films get the nomination and then everything else is just sort of frittered away in February and March and April because they don't get extra promo.
Yeah. This was a tricky year because the zone of interest was so dominant for so long and it kind of didn't matter. But getting that nomination can be really impactful for the box office for films. You didn't put the taste of things on this list because you saw it last year and it then did not get the nomination.
But it was another where they were binging on it and it just kind of didn't happen. You know, I also forgot about the Society of the Snow. That's another song, another movie that was pretty good that we both liked and came out in January. So, you know, if you just go off of the stuff that we've covered and we've talked about already in addition to what we'll get into in a second, I think it's been pretty solid.
Sure. It is all of those movies to us are associated with last year because of the Oscars race and, you know, the fatigue of like, let's move on. And that's not fair to the movies probably or to our judgments of Q1. A couple of these movies that we'll talk about, I mean, I made a long list of about 10 that I really liked and you've seen some of these two that I think also kind of sort of feel like 2023 movies.
And so, you know, it's just the invisible delineation of time. Years are meaningless. It's all one agglomeration. So, we set these borders and we try to stick to these borders.
Things get a little bit confusing. I think also is of all the quarters Q1 is always my least favorite quarter. It's the worst quarter. It's just always stinks.
So, that's going to flavor my, you know, every aspect of my Q1 experience, including movie watching. Do you feel that way about the first quarter of sporting events? Yes, they don't matter. We'll rank them from one to four.
Well, four, three, two, one, because the only stuff that matters happens in Q4 as we know. I do like a, I do like a Zesty Q3. Sure. That's right.
They're breaking, they're kind of sleepy and they've given up their 14 point lead. You see that? That also corresponds to movie watching. I would rank the movie Qs as four, three, two, one.
They'll often the best movies come in three. Oh. But four is Zesty S for watching a discussion. The tides are shifting though.
Four is becoming a step child. I don't, I think I think. You forget that the force is strong with three. I said that three is Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Is July, when is it? July three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right.
I think three is probably the secret best, especially for you and me. Plus we get to see all of the like very good movies. I guess October is four, right? You know, the best.
Where a lot of the, the best. Right. Whenever the Zen movie comes out, that's the best quarter. Yeah.
So usually that's October. So that would be Q four. Right. So it's between three and four, but it is like in movies, in movie release calendars as of life, right?
It really is just a four, three. And you know, two is frankly overrated, but we are just trying to get our spirits up after one. We'll be previewing two shortly. I mean, I mean like in life, especially if you live in LA and it's just gray all the time.
What quarter of your life do you think you're in? Hmm. I think I'm closing down Q two and Q three is about to start. So like the magic is coming.
Isn't that exciting? Let me tell you something. The magic is not coming. There is no magic in Q three.
No, no. I was in the shower this morning and I looked down and I saw like a mark on my leg and I was like, hmm, is that cancer? What is that? Like, I really, I'm in a new, concerned area with my Q three.
That has nothing to do with Q three. That just has to do with you and what you're reading on the internet. And also like your, your long term hypochondria that is really just finding new expression as we move forward in science. Yeah, it is.
It is. I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to your Q three. So you think 80 is that a cutoff? That's when you're just going to drop dead.
It's spiritually, if not physically, you know, if I make it to 80. Wow. We are fucking through turn 85 yesterday. Yeah.
What a legend. He's just hosting screenings in Atlanta. I think he was invited to that one, but you never know. Wouldn't it be fun if he just, if his megalapalist tour was just showing up to random theaters uninvited everywhere across this great nation?
The film has no distribution. So he might have to be like surprise. Yeah. What do you think of that?
Like the story about him screening the film for lots of luminaries and stuff. Right. I mean, why not? If you could do it.
Also, divisive reaction. Some people were like, this is one of the bravest artistic acts in recent cinema history and other people were like, this movie is incoherent. Right. Like all the people with money were like, no, we won't be giving you money, which again is not surprising because we have read and watched Francis Forkalplist throughout his entire career and the people with the money are never on board.
I think it was cool. If I'm 85 and make a movies, I will just, I won't do it at city walk. Will you be making movies at some point? No, probably not.
Okay. So, you know, I won't. It seems like a lot of work and a lot of interaction with people, you know? Yes.
So that would be sort of the thing. And I am good at telling people this is what I see and what I want. I'm decisive. Yep.
But then the follow through. That's pretty tough, right? Making sure it happens that way and then it doesn't happen that way. And then you're like, no, actually, like I'm at this.
And do you understand the difference? You want to instruct, but not manage. Yeah. Okay.
Sounds like a teacher. That is just that's a job. I do it at home. Okay.
So you're in your entering your third quarter. Yeah. What quarter would you say this podcast is entering? Oh, let's see.
I maybe we had a what kind of breakdown. Would you classify Friday? I don't think it was midlife. No, I thought it was maybe to quote John Mayer a quarter life crisis.
So maybe we're done with maybe we're wrapping up Q one. Yeah. I'll have a big picture. So that means we have this is a 25 year podcast.
What's going to say is that optimistic? Do you think podcast will exist in 10 years? I don't really want to have an AI conversation, but I mean, you know, it's something to consider. I was talking with a friend who is a college professor this weekend and I was like, well, how's it going?
How are the youth? And she was just like, I mean, just like I just reading AI papers, you know, and then she's like, and you know, and then sometimes I could see that it's their grammatical mistakes inserted into the AI papers in order to, you know, let's let us know the moral question. I first second one thing I've noted with some interest. My step mom was a high school teacher and now college teacher and my father-in-law is a college professor.
I come from a big family of teachers and one thing I've learned spending time with my family in the last 20, 25 years is that these kids today, it's so much easier fucking cheat. Like I can't believe how much cheating is going on in high schools and colleges and how easy it is to get away with relative to when we had to really just like pour ourselves into the spark. I actually wrote papers. I've read most of the books.
Yeah. Sometimes I read the beginning. I read all the books in high school. College, a little bit of a coin flip there really depended on what kind of a paper I needed to write.
Yeah, true. And also sometimes I was. I was taking some survey courses and it was really like, I'm just like, I'm just like, I'm going to read the first chapter. I'm going to find the thematic center about 120 pages in.
I'll read the ending and then I'll use my sparks notes to make sure I'm saying. I was going to say, you would use a supplemental material. Of course. Of course.
Sometimes I were covering film. Sometimes you're reading like Faulkner and you're like, I actually read all of this and I don't know what happened. So I need someone to explain it because that's not something that you can cray on three one night as I often had to do. Yeah.
That was tough starting a lot of books at Sunday at 4pm for a Monday paper. I was like, well, I could have approached this differently. I did all the time. Pull up Jatchy, chat GPT and say, write me a 22 page dissertation on Absalom Absalom.
Someone should actually do that because I think that that probably defies like Jatchy. Oh, you mean you can't get into Faulkner. Yeah. I think that it's not going to turn out passable.
How can something that's not conscious talk about stream of consciousness writing? It doesn't understand what consciousness is. I'm not saying that Friday was our Faulkner. I think it was coherent.
I think it was just wildly off topic. Stream of consciousness somehow implies a loss. It was like a soft pilot for hour three. I know hour three coming.
We do not have a patreon tier, but if we did have a patreon tier is hour three, hour three of the picture hour three of Jmo. I was wondering, are we sure it's not hour four because the big picture sometimes is like three and a half hours of content a week. Oh, that's true. Hour three sounds better than hour three.
Hour three is like an elegant piece. It also, you know, subconsciously it is episode three, if not hour three, you know. So we need people to be able to just tick off at the time hour long. I got hour two.
There was a time when the show was hour long. That's not a good case. Anyhow, let's let's just go back to movies before we run the risk of repeating last Friday's either sins or joys depending on your point of view. Dune Part 2 was the big movie of this year.
Good movie. I'm pro. I revisit the film. It was a Friday afternoon.
Yeah, like what time? It was a 1230 screening. Love a 1230. It was nice.
What was your lunch strategy? What was my lunch strategy? Well, as you've pointed out, I usually have some crackers and I just get on the go. I had a Dasani water in the movie theater.
No candy. No food. Had you eaten anything that day? I think I had an apple and some dry cereal, which actually was both guarded by my toddler who I was taking care of over the weekend.
Okay. So drop it off at school, took a couple of meetings, went to the movie theater. Okay. Except for the nutritional intake.
Yeah, it's fine. I get to 6PM and I have a large, hearty protein filled item. And then I'm going to go. Actually, I did it with you.
You may recall. We had dinner on Friday night. Yeah, but that was a lot of protein in that. It was brisket.
Oh, Friday night. I was thinking about Saturday night. I actually watched you consume two dinners this weekend after night. You make it sound like I give you any food.
Anyhow, Dune Part 2, this is my third time seeing the film with theaters. Here's what really jumped out to me about this. This is my favorite movie of the year so far. Yeah, my tip.
The major achievement. Really a breathless act of filmmaking. I had listened to the episode of the Director's Guild podcast with Stephen masking. have you heard that?
Have you either of you guys heard that? No, I would highly recommend it because, man, Steven Spielberg, in addition to obviously being such an extraordinary filmmaker and such a huge influence on film move, was really into Dune. And not in the way that he was like, I want to talk about how you shot this scene or can you explain to me the mechanics of this. He was into the mythology of the story.
What's his take? Well, he just asked questions. I mean, he wasn't doing his dissertation. He was just saying, like, so explaining when you were thinking about the religiosity of the spice, how did it intersect with Paul's journey?
Like he really was looking at thematics rather than what we expect from him, which is sort of like a mechanical discussion in that setting of the director's field of American podcast. People have also, I highly recommend it. The only move is like, I can't believe this is happening to me. I can't believe this guy's so into this conversation about this movie I made because he's like my hero.
Yeah, closing counters is I think a huge influence on this movie for a variety of reasons. Anyhow, the one tidbit from that pod that I really enjoyed was just him citing that Spielberg asked him a great question. I never heard this ask before and I will steal it, which was when you were making this movie, who was the one person who was kind of lingering around the camera setup, who was asking questions, who seemed most interested in the actual filmmaking, who's going to be a director someday? And he said Zendaya, which is awesome.
And makes a lot of sense actually. If you listen to her interviews, you know, she's pretty cerebral. She's clearly like got a kind of leadership quality. Like people follow her.
She's been doing it for a long time. She's very observant. She's been in all facets of the industry. It's a logical progression in many ways.
And rather than necessarily being just a producer and seizing the means, making the films would be cool. Anyhow, I sat down thinking a lot about the conversation that they were having watching the movie. And so that led to just me thinking about specifically Paul and how the movie is even more so than I realized the first time that I watched it, not just suspicious of Paul, but really anti-Paul. I mean, I couldn't think of a lot of epic films that have such a distrustful complex relationship to its own protagonist.
You might find that in a smaller film or a character study, like a taxi driver, right? That's an example of a movie that is wildly distrustful of the psyche of its main character. You find that in a lot of character pieces in a lot of 70s cinema and a lot of European cinema in a blockbuster. I mean, can you guys think of it?
An example where at the end of the film, you're like, wow, this person is a representation of the loss of control and the way that power corrupts people, the way that a kind of fanaticism drives division, drives violence, the way that societies seek these kinds of leadership figures, and then they start to believe their own hype. You know, and one of the interesting aspects of the traditional film in Spielberg was this idea that Paul is not the chosen one. You know what I mean? He is just the person who's been hoisted or foisted into the role.
It's been manufactured. Manufactured, exactly. Which are all things that as you're watching the movie, of course, you understand and are feeling, but I don't think I quite realize how hard he was banging that drum because the first film is setting us up in a much more classical storytelling mode, where you're just like a hero will rise. As a true heroes journey movie that kind of cuts off in the middle and you're like, I can't wait for him to win.
And then when he wins at the end of two, you're like, wow, holy war. I guess some people will interpret that as really exciting and inspiring, but for the most part, you're like, oh my God, this whole society's gonna be destroyed. I mean, I thought, and you can't really ever trust the quote unquote discourse about any of these things. And to some extent, I think it's good that there was a large conversation of like, wait, why is this movie endorsing or celebrating this character that is clearly at best a fraud and at worst, a leader of generations of genocide, which is all a plane in the text.
And it's good to be having that conversation, but I was always like, I think the movie's very clear about this. So from the very, very beginning, even to the point where his final, like the big reveal, the big, I choose the Empress or the Empress to be over Zendaya. I mean, Van Gasp in the theater, but it was like, that was text, right? Like that was, so I think the movie does like a very remarkable and pretty straightforward job of handling something that I do point out is really counterintuitive because we are used to going to it.
You see a big epic movie and the person who is the star of the movie is the hero and not the hero turning villain. And the hero's journey usually only goes one way and this one goes very differently. If you look back at the news movies, obviously makes sense. I mean, he has a really kind of acid cynical point of view of the world.
And if you revisit Sicario or prisoners, even if there's a hopeful aspect of the story, they're pretty burned out about humanity. Arrival is a rare exception. Even in arrival, there's like kind of like a thrashing inside of the warmth of the mother-daughter story that the expectation around Amy Adams and Jeremy Reynolds characters is sort of the impossibility of happiness is a big theme of his films. And so, and forget about like his Canadian, his early Canadian, his early Canadian, or polytechnique, like those movies are so raw and so upsetting.
So, you know, in retrospect, it's not, to me, it's not that this was the story, because this is a huge part of the story that Frank Herbert is telling. It's not like, oh wow, this is what he chose to do. It's the audacity of being able to get this done, like get it made this way to show us the movie this way and also to do it with Timothy Chalmy, who was like arrived at this chosen one moment of his own. He's such a likable screen presence.
Off, off screen, like away from the movies and interviews, he's just like so winsome hipster kid. Yeah, he's really just not aggressive at all in his public persona. He seems like maybe a little bit of a little catish, but aside from that, it seems like kind of a nice guy and sort of place him in this role too, also feels kind of counterintuitive. Right.
And yet, when you're doing a story that is riffing on the concept of white savior, like he's perfect, he's really well cast. So, you know, the movie is this like big epic, beautiful film, it's really, really well orchestrated. A lot of what the first film, the second film does well, we saw in the first film, but those very specific storytelling choices and then the way that the performance has interacted with them. I was just like, this is actually as good as I thought it was the first time I saw it.
Like it actually holds up to me, which is exciting because sometimes a film that is driven by spectacle doesn't hold up. Right. And this one did. Any other dune part two thoughts?
How are you feeling about Oscar Chances? Like after the first flush of excitement? I think we were pretty much on the money the first time we talked about it. I think it was, I think it will do very well below the line.
Based on what I've heard from everyone who works at the Ringer, who's interacted with either the Wikipedia or the books, Dune Messiah's peculiarity could make it difficult to make it the return of the king of the series. It also sounds, it was announced that he's now making a film about nuclear war next to film. So that means we're probably, it's probably at least five years until we see Dune Messiah. Which, as I understand, as I recall the story, which I read on Wikipedia page once at night, mirrors everyone ages.
And there are consequences of that aging that play into it as well. So that's appropriate. So that's appropriate. No, it's really strange.
I think also the other thing is that, and certainly Villanueva could change this or anything but there was not as much spectacle, at least until the very end. It is kind of like palace intrigue. Interesting, okay. And I mean, I guess there are like- Game of Thronesy?
I guess there are very brutal wars going on throughout that you could show and that seems pretty depressing. But he changed a lot. In Dune part two, and I imagine he would change a lot in Dune Messiah to make the story maybe fit more appropriately thematically with what he's done. I don't know, we'll see.
But it is interesting to think that we'll spend the next year celebrating Dune part two. It'll probably get right up to the finish line, not win best picture, probably not win best director. And then we'll win another five years for another movie. And then if that movie is really weird, it won't do anything.
And then he'll win for something else that isn't a genre. See also Chris Riddle. I wouldn't it be interesting if it was the next movie that he made, the nuclear holocaust film, which we just saw in there holocrossed. Yeah, exactly.
I wonder if maybe the academy will be burnt out on those kinds of stories too. Hard to say. Okay. So you like so far and the non-partude division.
We've already done the, yeah, we covered all those movies. Yeah, you made a good call on the taste of things. That's the one I forgot, came out this year already that was very, very good. But side of the snow taste of things, perfect days, promised land, love lies, bleeding, like we've gone through some good stuff.
What else? What have we not talked about? So I guess the big one is the Alice Rorwalker film. Do you want to do it in Italian for me?
Ali J Rorwalkers, La Cimera. La Cimera. Yeah, okay. Wow, you did the full name as well.
I had this, I was corrected on this. When I was a telleride when I saw this film. Oh, okay. Which I was released finally last weekend.
You saw the telleride, it was like popping around festivals and stars my boy, Joshua Connor, along with just an incredible cast of Italian actors and non-actors also as the case maybe. This has been called basically like Emo and the Ana Jones. The Tomb Raider story. Yeah, like sort of, but it's not exactly, like when you say Tomb Raider, you know, Joshua Connor is not like busting through doors.
There aren't like rolling balls, but like he's not hanging off a train. He's basically just holding a twig and like looking sad for the better part of two and a half of the hours while he tries to like find a trust and remains and also his lost love. I was very, very turned by it. It is like a mood piece for sure.
It is. But Roacher has a great way of creating, like her ensembles are very funny. And the energy, one of the best, my favorite parts of this movie is when Joshua Connor is just sitting at a table surrounded by like 18 Italian women, including Isabella Rosalini, and then a bunch of her daughters and some other people. And they're all just yelling at each other.
And he's just like eating pasta. It's very funny. So it is funny as well as wishful and beautiful to look at I thought I mean, it's just, you know, filmed in Italy on a bunch of different film sacks. And Joshua Connor can wear a suit.
He literally wears one suit. He wears one suit, but he wears a white linen suit. Yeah. He does not speak very much in this film.
It's an interesting, almost like a silent movie performance. And he's a guy who I think has served some time in prison and is clearly a bit of a bandit. The character. The character, not Joshua Connor.
He seems like a lovely man. Have you been following the challenges press door? Not closely. It's really, so they're going everywhere.
They are in every single like international city, wearing clothes and taking pictures in front of the local monuments. And these two nice guys who are just like, what am I doing here? Really? I thought they would have both been a little more stylish.
No, they're very stylish and they're all attractive and they're charming and they're great in the movie. But that's that's thematically consistent with the movie. Yeah, totally. But it is just really like it is just like Zandaya movie star and then to kind of like, why guys are like, hey, how are you doing?
So Joshua Connor, I believe this is the first time I ever saw him when I saw him on his side. I didn't watch the crown. Oh, no, I think I saw him in the Terrence Davies movie. But what what what what he prints Charles, young Prince Charles?
He's incredible. So he's Prince Charles in season three and season four, which is both to generous casting with Prince Charles. That's what everyone said. You have more to think for Prince Charles.
You think maybe he's more handsome than Joshua? No, I think I think the show is very, very pro Charles or very empathetic with Charles because no one loved him, especially his parents. We'll come back to that. And so and so that the generous casting extends to season five and six, which is Dominic West, which is like really a generous that no and just Dominic West.
Yeah. He doesn't look like Charles. It's like we said, it's a very generous. No, no fake ears.
No, but it doesn't mean that. No, but he has he has like me strong Italian or excuse me, strong Irish ears. Yeah. So he sees in three and four, which is like season three is just like my mom hates me and I don't have a purpose.
And he has like a single best episode of the entire series and also like some standoffs with the little bit coolment. And then season four, he does he gets all the Diana stuff and Camilla. So it's a it's like a juicy role. Yeah.
OK, I mean, he's terrific. Like he's really he's really wonderful. And this movie and his role in Challenger is what we'll talk about in a couple of weeks is like the exact opposite of the lachimara part got a ton of range major, major charisma. It's fun to follow him in Lachimara, which is it is like a kind of shambolic, bucolic, beautifully shot Italian journey that's very much in in conversation with the wonders and happiness, lisaro, her two previous movies and La Pupilay, the Oscar short.
Right. Speaking of groups of young women in like decaying buildings, just shattering. If you happen to watch that during the Oscars, you'll really like you're very good movie. It's in movie theaters right now.
Let me tell you about the first song a little bit. OK. Mine's some high low here. The Tina Brown mix.
See, I would say that the first woman is a little bit of a high, high. Oh, OK. Despite its genre trappings, it's genre genre. That's a project.
It is my thank you. Thank you for seeing me. In this case, I think. My project is preserving the Tina Brown mix.
So it's OK for it to be high because low can be high. We have our passions. But Tina taught us. Well, yes.
And frankly, we were raised in a prepoptimus era where we actually truly were able to come by our low culture, honestly, and valorize it and appreciate it without it being part of some sort of philosophical mode. I'm just like, poor movies are beautiful. And in this case, it is actually. You and everyone on Letterbox, but that's cool.
I'm excited. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. That's beautiful.
That's beautiful. The first woman, it's so funny that this movie has come out of the same. It's came out two except for Immaculate. The Sydney Sweeney None movie.
This is also a none movie. It is a prequel to the Omen. It's a story about a woman, an American woman who comes to an Italian convent, her sort of mentors played by Bill Nye brings her to Italy to spend time proximate to the Vatican, effectively. It's clear very early on in this film that something is not right.
Something is not right at this convent. Something's not right at the Italian convent that the American woman showed up at? Lo and behold, a plot to birth the Antichrist starts to emerge. I'll say that the first hour of this movie, I wish the movie wasn't called the first Omen.
I wish it was just called like a none story. I wish it was just called something different. And then because then you wouldn't know that she's going to give birth to Damien Owen, who is a person who I don't. I'm not aware of, aside from you telling me.
There are four, this is technically the sixth Omen film. There were four films and then a remake in 06. The first one in three, I think, are interesting. I wouldn't say this is my favorite horror franchise.
I don't really hold it in the same esteem as Halloween. I don't even really hold it in the same same as Friday the 13. I think it is. It's got a great story and a great idea, which is that this couple, a diplomat and his wife living in Washington, DC, I think are struggling to have a child and they adopt a child and the child that they adopt turns out to be the Antichrist, Damien.
Just a series of tough breaks for them. It's brutal and many brutal things happen in that first film. This movie is all about the plot to birth the Antichrist and why. And the story is so similar to Immaculate.
It's bizarre. And you can tell that neither of these productions knew that this was happening. I really like talking to Arcausa, the director of this movie and the co-writer is that she's like a David Lynch, David Cronenberg person. Even though she's working in the legacy horror mode where you see the post-stream, you're like, oh, God, another Omen movie.
This is not that at all. There's a shot in this movie that is among the most bracing images I've ever seen in the studio horror movie. This movie is released by Disney. There is something that, and she said in our conversation that she sold the movie to the studio on this image.
And while it was happening, I was like, I literally can't believe she got away with this. I can't believe this movie is an NC 17. So once she's got a real knack for shocking visuals, too, I think one of the reasons why the movie has maybe disappointed a few people is because it's not John Scarsity. It's much more ethereal and upsetting in an ambulance.
Until it's really physically gnarly. It's really funny. Because you told me it's about job birth, right? I mean, it's very much about the act of carrying and birthing a child.
And the movie was made for a reason. The reason she wanted to make the movie is because that idea in our world right now under fires is really threatened. And I think she was trying to find a way to express that. I don't think it doesn't hit you over the head with it.
It doesn't like this is just like when Roe v. Wade was overturned. It's not that at all. But it is about controllable woman's body.
That's really ultimately what it comes down to. And it's the same as true of immaculate. It's fascinating that they've come out together. Do you want to segue to girl state?
That's a good idea. Or I guess you could segue to have sex also. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, women's bodies. And I can scroll over them as a thing of this episode. It's a good call. I would recommend the first woman for people who genuinely like a certain kind of body who are especially like Coronenberg and possession and movies like that.
Girls state? I haven't seen this in a few months. It's thought it's Sundance. This is the follow up to Boy State, which is Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss's documentary about the youth government program to find young leaders in America, which has authored many a president, secretary of state.
The first film showed, I think, really, some of the origins of toxic masculinity, the male character, and what's wrong with it. It's very memorable. What's right about it? Maybe in some ways, too?
Maybe some vulnerabilities that are helpful, but mostly bad things. So this is the other side of that coin. Yeah. So I did not see it until this weekend because it's available on Apple TV Plus, which I'm one of three subscribers to.
But the reactions were somewhat muted after Boy State. Mine was somewhat muted. Yeah. And so I knew that going in.
And so I guess I wasn't expecting the definitive take on Girl Boston. And I thought it was interesting. I wanted to talk about it afterwards. So it was filmed in 2022 in Missouri, which is significant for two reasons.
One, because it was filmed after the leaked Roe v. Wade opinion that ultimately led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. So Roe v.
Wade is very much on the minds of everyone in Missouri, which is not the most liberal of states, shall we put it that way? And the overturning of Roe v. Wade would have serious material consequences for people in Missouri. Because it was filmed in 2022 in Missouri, the program for the first time was being held on the same campus at the same time as Missouri Boy State.
So and at first I was pissed off about that. I was like, oh, why can't you let them have Girl State without Boy State? And I would like my own time. But to me, honestly, the most interesting part of it was that no matter their goals, political beliefs, backgrounds, whatever was going on with the young women at Girl State, they were like, the way that we're being treated as opposed to the way that the boys are being treated is bullshit.
And I also thought that the filmmaking even captured that. The dances and the songs that they lead, the girls in, and the amount of time you have to put your card in on once you get back inside and all of these. And I was just so viscerally angry, because I have experienced that. So I thought that was actually really interesting.
And then that is actually the thing that animates most of the young women, even one of the characters who is maybe not unsympathetic, but she doesn't win. And then she does amazing journalism. That young woman is a fascinating. Is she so wonderful?
Just like in the first film they found a couple of kids. I thought her story was really, really complicated and nuanced and didn't force you to say she's a villain. She's a hero. That is the one thing.
So I was a little mixed on the second one, because I felt like it was a little iterative. And it was only just kind of betraying the difference in characteristics, obviously, between the boys and the girls. But in the same way, the same film, where they cast two or three kids in the first film. They're so good at fighting characters.
And they found two or three kids in this movie. Especially that girl who I can't recall what she's actually from. And she starts out in the film. And she's other off from the story, of course.
But she starts out as one of the few conservative voices that is featured in the film. And you can watch her in real time, evolving how she thinks. But not wanting to give up her strong point of view. The film is very much about young women realizing a certain kind of independence in a structure that is otherwise extremely conservative and old and mannered and needs to be kind of dispensed with in a lot of ways.
But I just never really had seen someone quite like her in a movie. Her name is Emily Wurthmore. I've wiggled her afterwards. She's in college now.
She's studying following her journalism dreams. I really like how they portrayed her. I really like how she comported herself. Like very rare to see something like that.
So she's someone like literally evolved. And she does in the movie. So just to see her. And there are other good characters.
And there are other good characters. Who are the two girls who are very young? I don't like who became a friend. Yeah.
Who both run for Supreme Court. And then they do by the end. They're doing their joint interviews together. And that was very lovely.
I did also think, you know, it's maybe not the most trenchant insight into Roe v. Wade and how teenagers and young women are thinking about Roe v. Wade given the timing and the setting and what is popular. But there was something pretty interesting about, you could almost tell the filmmakers wanted more and certainly wanted more conflict on it.
And it's I mean, maybe they shouldn't have access. But to me, it seemed like all of the young women, even the young women who were like, I am for life, but I'm not going to tell anybody else to do anything. And it was just almost like there was no real conflict there because this group of young women like knew how they felt. And you know, there's like the one or two token conservatives and they get a little bit of air time, but not a lot.
But it did almost, I don't know whether they didn't want to get into that conflict with the kids. I don't know whether it's like a timidness or whether it just wasn't there. It just wasn't there, which is interesting. It's really hard to say.
I think it's probably worth noting that in a lot of elections, like special elections around that part of the country in the ensuing years, a lot of results were not quite what conservatives were expecting. I think in part because of the psychology, the character of what you're describing among younger people around this issue. So in a way, it's kind of representative of the time in a meaningful way. You don't want to overeat a documentary about nine girls.
But I think there's something to that. But I just thought, like because of the exact moment in time that they captured and then, you know, the last card, sorry, spoiler is like five days after a girl's statement's already ended, Roe v. Wade was overturned. And that's it.
It's an interesting snapshot, at least. It's so interesting how I completely inadvertently paired all of these movies, but how to have sex and sperm rolls are both in the same universe of experience. So how to have sex is a film that premiered at Cannes in 2023. It's available on movie now, which is an excellent streaming service, by the way.
I don't know if anybody like a movie. It's Molly Manning Walker's first film. She's a British filmmaker. And this is sort of like an uncharitable way to say is like feel bad spring breakers.
You know, like it's about three young women who are at the end of high school. We're trying to figure out where their lives are going. One's going to college. The other two don't know what they're going to do yet.
They go on a crazy island vacation, basically. Yeah, the alternative of feel bad is like it's not fantastical. It's like, you know, spring breakers has this sort of, I mean, it has the harmony, just weird dancing around a ball of glamour. There is some neon in this movie in the club setting.
Sure, but there is nothing otherworldly about it, if anything, it's like too real. Upsetting at times. Yeah, I think I thought this movie was solid, like an impressive debut, in part because I think Molly Manning Walker's willingness to in almost verite fashion, like focus in so deeply on Mia McKeyn of Bruce's characters, psyche and experience is kind of what's changed in the movie. And also the performance of Mia McKeyn of Bruce, which is incredible and really affecting.
And there is, you know, there's one shot. I mean, it's just like it is the walk of shame put on cinema. Like, and I will always think of it, but what she is able to do emotionally in just what is one still shot of her, like walking down the street is really upsetting and amazing. Yeah, there's a few moments that really, I don't know, it's really hard to be a girl dad and watch it, but be like really hard.
I mean, I thought of you watching Girl State, I was just like, I don't know. I know those girls are inspiring though, you know, like those girls are really smart and aspirational and maybe they're in the wrong place because they're trying to be like presidents and senators, but that movie's about ideas. Had to have sex is like, man, it's hard to watch that. It's totally different from Vail Winston I would have had on five years ago.
I thought I'm very curious to see what she does next, Molly Manning Walker. I think it's worth recommending. I'm also watching Mia McKeyn of Bruce. Yes, I don't know if I've seen her in anything before.
I'm not sure I googled her British shows that I hadn't seen, but she seems like known in that space. Did you get a chance to see sperm world? No, I didn't. Okay, let's talk about this.
We can come back to this for a bigger conversation because the filmmaker of this movie, his name is Lance Oppenheim. He made a documentary in 2021 about, I think the villages in Florida is what it's called, the massive retirement community. It was thought to be very influential on the Donald Trump election in 2020. His documentary was called Sun Kind of Heaven.
He has one now called Sperm World, which is on Hulu, and he has another series on HBO. This is my favorite documentarian who's come along in the last five years. I think he has an exquisite visual style and also the same thing we talked about for all state and ability to cast characters. This movie is a documentary, a kind of episodic character driven documentary about what is described as the Wild West of baby making.
The online forums where sperm donors connect with hopeful parents. There are these men, whether they feel that they are contributing something meaningful to the world, whether they have some sort of kink, whether they are kind of excited about participating in this act, seek out families, make themselves available in these forums. The film shows the kind of typing conversations, but then the film also shows you the interactions, the actual personal interactions between a young woman and a man in his 60s who likes to do this, and they get to know each other. There's a young woman who has cystic fibrosis and who really wants to have a family.
She doesn't have a partner, so she's seeking a donor and she makes this connection with an older man, a divorced man in his 60s who's donated his sperm to many people, many families. They have this kind of not quite romance, but this journey of connection that is a little bit unnerving, a little bit beautiful. It's really strange. I've just never seen anything like these particular characters.
I've never seen them before men who we most spend a lot of our time with, and they're odd guys, and they're not bad guys, but there's something weird going on with their desire to do this. Well, with their desire to donate their sperm or to then be in contact, this is not a rare practice anymore, and the technology has gotten pretty amazing, and they're a profile, but it can also be very separate, and so there are legal questions that I have, and also I don't know if this is representative. I don't think that the men that are featuring this film are attempting to make inroads, and they're not being invasive. We see one man in particular who has donated dozens to dozens of families who is literally actively helping to take care of a couple of kids that he has sired, even though he's not in a relationship with them, and the film is disoriented because they're like, oh, this is his family.
And then he's just like, I think it's a young girl at a beauty pageant, and her mother is there, and he has donated his sperm to this woman, and so he's sort of like taking care of these kids, but then he just gets in his car and drives away and we never see those characters again in the movie, but we follow him and we see him with his family, and his family has ashamed of him, because they're like, why do you have 60 children? This is crazy. I don't want to hear about your hobby of donating your sperm. It's very strange of it as a hobby.
It's bizarre, but nevertheless, it's in the spirit of great arrow-mores movies or Albert Maisel movies or Fred Weizmann movies. These verite portraits, in this case in the Oppenheim case, really stylized verite portraits of weird characters in our world. Right. And it's a weird thing because it's just a movie that's on Hulu.
I think it's effectively on Hulu because it's inspired by a near-times piece that Nelly Boles wrote called the sperm kings have a problem. Great. Okay, there we go. I'm sure this is interesting.
I haven't seen it. I'm like bumping up against what seems like a strange but not representative subset of a culture that doesn't have a lot of normal representation. You know what I mean? You have to watch it to decide.
I don't have a ton of experience in this world. I don't want to represent it. And then you say Nelly Boles and I'm like, oh great. Okay.
It's absolutely rooted in reality. There's no sensationalism whatsoever. I will say at least what I see when you see in the movie feels real. I'm not saying it's not real.
What I mean? It's a goal of a documentary. Is it a fine, interesting character? Yeah, that is true.
But I'm just like, I'm thinking about all of the people who are like, oh, we're going to use a donor. Maybe we're not going to use a donor. And it's like, grandpa's not going to be knocking on your door necessarily. Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know what takeaways to take away. To me, it's less about the experience of what it means to be, what it means in a society to have sperm donor ship and more what it means to be a person who don't need sperm. Right.
Right. That's really what the movie is interested in. Anyway, I've got your interest. I think it's worth checking out for people who are clicking around.
You want to talk about Scoop? Yeah. Or we can talk about the Beast, which I saw at Venice. Yeah.
So like you said, you didn't like it. I did, but it was, I mean, it was just like a lot, you know that was like the third film of the day. And you know me when someone is like doing their best lynch. And sometimes it lands and sometimes I'm like, you're doing your best lynch.
Yeah. And I can, I will remember a lot of these images and also I'm getting a patient. No, it is lynching. There's no doubt about that.
Yeah. This is the new movie from Bertrand Benello, who is a French filmmaker who has been on a bit of a run in the last 10 years. It's some really, really interesting movies, Coma, Nachtra, Rama. There's a really good series of his films, I think on the Criterion Channel right now.
If you haven't heard of his work, I don't think we've ever talked about him on the picture. My girl, L.A.S. Do is in this film, one of my favorite actresses. And she's just amazing in this movie, which has a very unusual structure.
It's effectively a movie that is set in 2024 and a woman is trying to have her essentially like her negative experiences deleted. She's trying to quote purify her DNA by going back in time to previous lives and sort of end those negative experiences. George MacKay of 1917 plays her lover over time in 1910, in 2014, and in 2044. So it's a little sci-fi, it's a little horror, it's a little historical romance.
It is at times very confusing and very strange. I've not seen very many movies like this. I would say I liked it but did not love it. But when it was clicking for me, it was really clicking.
Benel has a really double sense of humor and then it's very, very, very upsetting at the end of the film. The ending is exceptional. And I kind of wish that the movie had the same energy of the last 20 minutes. But for the last 20 minutes, it was worth checking out.
What was your take on it when you saw it? Because it's three separate time periods. It's very segmented, if you will, which is another thing when I'm like, well, it's just not quite an anthology movie, but you're trying an anthology in my eyebrows, raise it back. I thought the modern day or maybe like the 2014, basically like stalker video camp segments was just incredibly upsetting but like effective and held my attention.