Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Season 2 of HBO's succession is back, and the Ringer's Chris Ryan and Jason Concepción are here to give you the latest in-boy family drama. Every Sunday night, they'll be breaking down what we just saw on our new show called Number 1 Boys, a Succession After Show. You can tune in live on the Ringer's Twitter every Sunday night, right after the episode ends.
I'm Sean Fantasy, Editor-in-Chief of The Ringer, and this is the big picture, a conversation show with myself. Amanda Dobbins is on vacation, and so right now we are doing a very special mailbag episode. I won't be quite alone, I'll be joined by Bobby Wagner, my producer, who will be throwing some questions at me. About the year in movies and movies in general, and the history of the Oscars, and all the things that you guys wanted to know about, I want to say, I appreciate the depth and thoughtfulness and also desire to make me make lists that came in these questions.
I'm really flattered by the way that people are engaging with the show, and I'm really enjoying doing it. So this means a lot. Hopefully it will be a fun thing for us to do, especially in Amanda's absence. I'll try to get as many spider-versed takes in as I can while she's gone.
And without further ado, Bobby, you want to jump right into these questions? Sure, let's do it. All right, first question. Brian Wilson asks, now that Midsmar and Once My Time have been released, what is your top five films of the year look like so far?
See, this is what I was talking about. Everybody wants you to make a list. It solidifies your brand when you ask for a mailbag. We're not even in any order, because I don't really know.
And we're not even at sort of a three-quarters turn yet. We haven't even, we're about to cross the two-thirds mark of the year. In not any order, I think you're wise to put Once Upon a Time in Midsmar in the question, Brian, they both would definitely be there. I'm still chewing on both of them.
Those are two movies I've seen twice. I probably will see them both the third time this year. That's how you know when I'm really in love with something, is if I go to see it a third time in theaters. In addition to that, definitely the souvenir, which Amanda and I have talked about on the show in the past, and which is sort of growing in my estimation, I finally got a chance to catch up on Rebecca Mead's profile of Join A Hog in The New Yorker, which ran I think in May before the release of the film.
And just a fascinating portrait of a person who's having a really, really unique career as a filmmaker, and the fact that she is now making a second souvenir, the souvenir part two in this time of overwrought IP, I find it be a hilarious decision. So I'm really looking forward to that. What else besides those three? Those are locks.
I would say there's certainly a case to be made for Toy Story 4, which I greatly enjoyed, and Rob Parvell and I discussed on the show at length. There's certainly a case to be made for Rolling Thunder Review, the Bob Dylan Martin scores easy documentary that I just inhaled. I quite liked American Factory as well, which is a movie that is not quite out yet, but is going to be out very soon on Netflix, which you'll be able to stream if you're a subscriber to that service, which is a documentary that chronicles the life cycle of a shuttered American factory that is reopened by a Chinese corporation and hires American workers. It's probably one of the most sophisticated, provocative looks at life in the American workplace that I've ever seen.
So that's on my list right now. Bobby, what am I forgetting? What are some movies that I've gone completely over the top about on the show? Over the top out on the show.
I mean, we all liked Last Black Men in San Francisco. I don't know if that would really crack your top five, but in terms of like cinematography, that really stuck out to me. Yeah, that was beautiful. I like that.
I like that in the Farewell or kind of operating in the twin. I have a lot of admiration for this movie, A24 brand where I liked them a lot. I certainly understand why they have been two of the rare examples of kind of small scale releases that premiered at festivals that have been able to do a little bit of business. A lot of their brethren and their sisters have not done quite so well in the marketplace.
So I have admiration for those movies. I don't know if I am passionately in love with them in the way that I am with the same Midsomar. The Farewell, I just thought this past weekend didn't get a chance to see it before this, but I'd be very surprised if that wasn't at least nominated for Best Original Script. Yeah, I think there's a strong chance there.
Obviously, a lot of history with a kind of film like that, autobiographical. It's not Lulu Long's first movie, but it's her second movie. It's obviously crossed a lot of boundaries. It's reached a lot of people who would normally get to see a story like that.
So I think that's a reasonable bet. I have a scoring system that I keep because I'm a crazy person. So I've got this big document full of all the films that I've seen this year. Let's see how many I've seen by this moment.
There have been released in this year, 168. So 168 movies, 48 of these movies have gotten three stars out of a four star system. I'm probably being a little too generous with my scoring is what I've learned. So I'm reluctant to put any of the three star movies on this list.
Everything that I've mentioned thus far is either gotten three and a half or four. The only two to get four, of course, are Midsummer and One's Fun in Hollywood. So that's the best I can do with answering that question. That was long winded, huh?
Did you mention her smell? That was your number one movie with that meme? I take it back. That also has three and a half stars.
And yes, that would be on my list too. I mean, that is almost assured to be a top 10 movie for me before the year is out, but we'll see where in the top 10 it lands. Shout out Elizabeth Moss. Shout out Elizabeth Moss.
Certainly. Former guest of the big picture. Okay, question number two comes from Dawson. How did you feel about the movie Wild Rose and do you think the buzz for Jesse Buckley as a potential best actress nominee is real?
I don't think there was buzz. Made up the buzz. Who sprays his live song on the show? You may have also seen her in Chernobyl this season where she played the woman whose husband was badly burned in the Chernobyl disaster.
She's an incredible performer. I think I have seen very few performances in which an actor is as good at acting as they are at singing when their character is a singer. It's a very, it's a fine movie. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense.
It's well made. It's nice. It's kind of uplifting. It's not kind of steal your breath away quality, but it's very good.
And she, of course, is wonderful. I think it's more star making than it is Oscar buzz. That being said, if the best actress raised this year is a little thin and they find a way to burst through and get that little small indie nomination for her. I think that would be fine.
I wouldn't ban on it though if I were you. What's next for her? Where does she go from here? I don't know.
She was looking around in B.I. I don't really know what she's got lined up. She was in a film in 2018 called Beast, which was very well received. She's done a lot of TV work in the UK.
She is Irish. One of the interesting things about her role in Wild Roses is that she's playing a Scottish person. That's some rare accent work that you don't always see. It looks like she's going to significantly be a part of Fargo season four next year, which is kind of interesting.
She's also going to be in Judy, which is the forthcoming Judy Garland biopic starring Renee Zellweger. She's got a little movie on her called The Voyage of Doctor Do Little. Do you know anything about The Voyage of Doctor Do Little? Bobbie?
Do not. That's quite a title. This film is directed and written by Stephen Gagan, who you may recall from Siriana. You would not think that the guy who wrote in the Siriana would be making a Doctor Do Little movie.
It's the first movie starring Robert Downey Jr. since Endgame. It's ostensibly a remake slash reimagining of The Doctor Do Little Fable, which was a musical in the 60s starring Rex Harrison, that is about a Doctor who talks to animals. Behind the scenes, this is thought to be one of the most complicated productions in Hollywood history.
This movie started filming a long time ago. It's been under various stages of reshoots and reimagining over that time. I don't know a whole heck of a lot about it. It was first announced in March of 2017.
So we're now almost two and a half years into the Voyage of Doctor Do Little process. This is some cast here. Yeah, should we read it off? Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., Rami Malek, Michael Sheen, Jesse Buckley, Emma Thompson, Ray Fiennes, Antonio Banderas, and then wait, look, Mary on Cotillard and Selena Gomez?
John Cena? So one thing you got to keep in mind here is that more than half of these people are just doing the voices of animals. John Cena, for example, will be appearing as Yoshi, who is a polar bear. Octavia Spencer, Academy Award winner, will be portraying Dab Dab.
Who is he doing? This is how Hollywood goes forward. This is how theatrical releasing and Hollywood happens. We have to make the Voyage of Doctor Do Little a $200 million adaptation of a movie from the 60s that no one likes anymore, starring the biggest movie star on the planet as he is deceased as Iron Man and featuring the voices of John Cena, Rami Malek, and Kumel Nanjani.
Heck of a time. So for Jesse Buckley, I don't know. I mean, she's the only character on this list that does not have a character name, which means maybe her role won't be significantly big. I like her a lot as an actress, though.
Grant Andrews asks, are there any upcoming films that no one really knows about, like Just Mercy from Dustin Daniel Creighton, that might have a chance at best picture? Well, that's so hard to say. There are a lot of movies that are in development or being shot or in post production that could come, not nothing in development, but things that are being worked on at the moment that could come along. There's this movie called Wendy.
Are you familiar with Wendy? Bobby? No. So Ben Zaitlin is the writer and director of a movie called Wendy, which I believe went into development maybe four or five years ago.
This is the guy who made a piece of the Southern Wild in 2012. And this movie, which is being produced by Fox Searchlight, is nowhere to be found. I just don't know what's going on with Wendy. It is one of the longest in development movies of all time.
Now if Wendy just shows up and tell you ride, which I don't think it's going to, but if something like that were to happen, immediately the guy who made me so the Southern Wild has a new film and maybe it finds its way into the Oscar race. I don't really know anything about this movie, but that is the kind of game that you have to play when you're doing this. Likewise, a movie I'm very interested in is called Waves, which is a musical, which I believe starts Lucas Hedges in K-Stirling Brown, a C-C-Brown, and comes to us from Trevor Schultz, who famously made Kree-Shah and a horror film two years ago for A24, and is a very creative, thoughtful guy who operates almost entirely out of Florida. I don't really know what's going on with this movie except to say that I'm interested in it.
If it comes along and it has a La La Land-like energy, maybe it's meaningful. Another movie coming from Fox Searchlight is No Mad Land. This is Chloe Zhao, who you may recall from The Rider, and who is directing the forthcoming Marvel film The Eternals. She's got this movie, which will star Frances McDormand, that is based on a nonfiction book that was released earlier this decade.
By all accounts, it sounds interesting. It sounds like it could be meaningful. I don't really know anybody who knows when it's coming out or at what stage of development it's in. Presumably Chloe Zhao has moved on to Eternals, or is it about to?
So those are three kind of random ones. There are some others that we just don't know a ton about, but we know are coming. The laundromat directed by Stephen Soderberg is a movie that I don't think many people have seen that is about the Panama Papers. And that's kind of got the profile of a movie that could be a big Oscar film, it's Star of the World Street, but it's going straight to a streaming service.
It seems like Soderberg is in a very experimental phase of his career, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. That's my best three or four examples of things that we don't see coming. Now maybe some of those movies don't come out until 2023. That's also in play.
Yeah. You mentioned Lucas Hedges. Let's say you about Honey Boy briefly. Haven't seen it yet.
Okay. Can't wait in. This of course is the autobiographical story of Shilobuff's life in which Shilobuff plays his own father. And it's about a young actor going through the stages of development and having some success and having some troubles and some trials.
Those who have seen it have told me that it is a very powerful and intense film. I think you've seen it. Yeah, it's extremely intense. And it's also like a dual timeline film.
So Lucas Hedges is playing, I guess, like 20-something Shilobuff. And then there's a child actor whose name I can't recall off the top of my head, but he's playing younger child star Shilobuff. And Shilobuff's performance, I think a lot of the questions have been, is Shilobuff going to be nominated? Well, frankly, it's hard to say because on the one hand, I think there's been a long-term understanding all the way going back to his days as the star of even Stevens and Holmes and all this kid stuff, iconic stuff for my generation.
Iconics, by the way. He is like a sincerely passionately talented performer. Viewers of Project Greenlight may recall his role as the star of the film that they made in the first season of Project Greenlight. And he has a magnetism.
The actor that you're talking about, by the way, that plays a young Otis is named Noah Joop, which people may recognize from a quiet place. Oh, yeah. Noah Joop, a very good actor. As far as Shilobuff, you know, Shiluff is the sole writer of this film.
And I think people will be impressed by his braveness in putting the story on screen. He is a problematic dude, though. He's done a lot of things in the past, whether they be comments that he's made or things he's been accused of or legal fracas' or accidents or the way that he's operated inside of big studio projects that have put a little bit of controversy around him. I'm sharing this in kind of a value in a neutral way that may become trying for him as he goes into an Oscar campaign.
It's really hard to say because where once those things would be deemed an opportunity to overcome struggle, now they may lead to someone like him being quote unquote canceled. So I don't know. Yeah, I guess. I mean, only a couple years ago, Gary Oldman won for Pertrian Gwenston Churchill, two problematic dudes.
I guess I think the thing that may be more of a hang of Oscar-wise is that the Oscars don't always want this much honesty in their films. And this film is very honest. And he's portraying his father who was emotionally and physically abusive to him when he was a child. So I don't know if that might fly.
It's definitely not a feel good Oscar movie. No, though, it is the kind of supporting performance that is usually recognized. You know, if Lucas Hedges is not recognized, it's possible that Chai himself will be because they'll want to reward that kind of that raw portrayal that he's going for. But you know, as I said, I have not seen the movie, so it's a little hard for me to say.
Yeah, your name. What's next? A lot of people ask this question. So this is from Andrew Ly and many, many others, but they want to know they're interested in hearing what you've learned, if anything, from your project of watching every Academy Award, Best Picture, Nominee in History, which you've mentioned a few times on this podcast, as well as a few times on the rewatchable.
So what did you learn? I've learned two things, Bobby. One, there are a lot of fucking movies that have been nominated for Oscars. So I was a serious endeavor for you.
I don't know how you did it. I'm not done. I'm not going to claim to be done. Hundreds of films have been nominated for Best Picture.
It hasn't helped that they've increased the number of films that are nominated for Best Picture now. I, the other thing I've learned is that mostly movies are bad. And the what we perceive to be a great film has changed a lot over time. But the thing that is unmistakable is that the Oscars have always been political.
And I don't mean that in the sort of Republican and Democrat sense of the word. I mean that in terms of what gets spot lit at award shows and why and the fact that there has been machinery behind films forever. They're at the studios and the people who work on the margins of the industry that work hard to push for awards, it's evident when you look back at some of the nominees. Now, we've spent a lot of time on this show and on the rewatchables kind of griping about illegitimate wins or things that we would do over again or what have you.
What we don't account for is the kind of the small stuff in the middle. You know, like if you let's choose a random year and analyze the best films from that year. So in 1981, here are the films that were nominated for Best Picture. Chariots of Fire, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Reds.
Now I didn't have to rewatch any of these movies or I didn't have to watch any of these movies for the first time when I was embarking upon this. I'd already seen them. What's happening inside that Fivesome is an interesting microcosm of Hollywood at the time. You've got a very sort of serious British historical drama, which won Best Picture.
You've got a French O'Tours, kind of seedy, steamy romance crime film. You've got On Golden Pond, which is this tree of teas on aging. You've got Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is like a whizbang entertainment, very classical throwback. You've got Reds, which is a deep historical American epic.
And you know, 1981 is a very interesting year in movies. Are those the five best? I don't know. I mean, this is the senior year that strikes was released.
You know, this is the same year that Time Bandits was released. This is the same year that Cannonball Run was released, Arthur, Superman II. You know, it's a very complex collection of movies. And what you realize is what I've realized really is that going back and trying to watch all these movies is not necessarily good use of my time because it's not necessarily telling me about what Hollywood was at that time.
What it's telling me is what the Oscars was. And that then requires a second level of investigation. So I think I'm just learning that all things are political. That's my big takeaway.
That's fair. The era of Twitter. So BMac wants to know, BMac, fantasy, can we have a brief Midsomar spoiler discussion? As listeners of this podcast will recall, we had a spoiler-free-ish episode featuring Chris Ryan and the director Ari Aster.
He wants to know your thoughts on the ending because they didn't get it in the spoiler-free episode. So it's been like a month, right? We can spoil Midsomar. I guess if you don't want to hear my thoughts on the ending of this movie, just bang that 30-second button, I guess and go forward, jump ahead.
I don't want to be labor too much. You know, obviously I thought it was brilliant if it's on my, you know, top five of the year so far list. I think that Ari Aster has a very distinct sense of the comically absurd. And I found particularly the last 30 minutes of the movie to be very funny and very twisted in a knowing way.
And whereas I thought the final couple of minutes of hereditary were pretty funny. I thought the whole denouement of Midsomar to be pretty much a comedy. Now I grow Tess and elaborate and certainly ridiculous comedy, but you know, if people are asking about, if B-Mac is asking specifically about that final moment where Florence Pugh looks and gazes into the camera and her stone-faced look, you know, turns into a bit of a Mona Lisa smile and then we get this feeling of exultation from her, I think that that was appropriate about for a movie about a toxic relationship. Did you have any reflections on it, Bobby?
Well, I mean, you pitched it to me a few different times as a relationship test and I actually ended up seeing it with my significant other who said afterwards, if that's a relationship test for you, you might not be in the best relationship. Well, that's why. That's why I said that because I do think that there will be people who will walk out of that movie who are on like their 11th date and they may disagree about how they feel about that movie. I can't imagine being on a date with someone I don't know that well with that movie.
I think what you said is right about the movie about the last 20ish minutes being like actually rather comically absurd. That's a really nice way of phrasing it. I don't know if there's probably a lot of crossover between listeners of this podcast and the A24 podcast, but are yes there's conversation about making that film with Robert Eggers who made the lighthouse and I don't think that's out yet, but I'm seeing it today. Wow.
Wow. Big day. Big day. So why is this follow up to hereditary, the blending of genre, how he keeps getting asked about genre.
Fans of that movie should go into that episode of that podcast. Yeah, I agree. I also really love the one film I've seen from Robert Eggers even too which those two spend a lot of time on that podcast talking about Ingmar Bergman which I find funny because I don't sense a ton of Bergman in the tonality of their movies. I sense it in the sort of like austere quality of some of the way that they film movies, but and there's a kind of hysterical nature to some Bergman movies but it's different and after the person that he has cited, not just on this movie, but on the last movie too, as it being a significant influence that is really resonant for me as Albert Brooks, and Albert Brooks operating, especially early Alberbrook's modern romance in real life, those films, and the heavy dose of satire that he's putting on those films, feels of a piece with where he's going.
So yeah, I love him in some art. I thought it was an extraordinary act of creativity. I think he is a bit of a ghoul in a good way, Ari. I think he knows that he's kind of trying to haunt people a little bit.
And I think he relishes that. Even though if you've heard him on the show, he's just like a very kind guy and a fun guy to talk to about movies. He's got his eyes on some, I think some big things. I'm very excited to see what he does next.
Yeah, visually that movie is unbelievable. It's not the best thing. I've seen on any screen ever. Totally.
Evan Cunningham, what is your level of excitement for Adam Driver's two new movies coming this year? The Report and Marriage Story. And where is he and the ranks of best actors working today? I know you're a big Adam Driver fan.
I'm on the record about this. This is the best movie star that we have right now. That's my take. Now, I don't think that we define it in the same way that we would say Brad Pitt.
There's all this Brad Pitt conversation going on right now around one time in Hollywood. How even this character who is theoretically a very bad person is so magnetic that we're judging the film based on his aura. And I don't think that Adam Driver has the same kind of practical beauty and charisma that somebody like Brad Pitt does. He's a little bit more of a Humphrey Bogart, which is to say that he is, while not traditionally handsome, whenever he's doing things on screen, you just can't take your eyes off him.
And if he's being a son of a bitch, you're interested. And if he's being sweet, you're interested. And if he is tearing the room apart as he did in girls, many times you're interested. And if he is a dark Sith Lord, you're interested.
And he's very, very funny in another movie that's kind of this year called The Dead Don't Die, which was Jim Darmis's zombie comedy. And you mentioned he has a more than, he's got a few movies coming out this year. I mean, if we look back on what he's done, so he obviously was Oscar nominated for Black Clansman. That was 2018.
2019, the men who killed Don Quixote. A movie that kind of came and went, even though it has all this mythology around it, that's Terry Gilliam's long, long, long, gestating story about a filmmaker who is making a movie about Don Quixote and his experience with that mythology. Interesting movie, not one of my favorites. And then he's got the report, which, did you see that at Sundance?
Yeah, it did, it's Sundance. So that's a forthcoming Amazon drama about the CIA. We will get into that when the movie comes around. It's a little like a spotlight in terms of setting.
Like you feel like you're in an office and it's like very confined and just like the hard work that went into that happening within the CIA and how much like pushback there was, correcting the record for Zero Dark Thirty. Yes. It does seem to be in conversation with that movie. That's from Scott Z-Bearns, who is a long-time Steven Soderbergh, collaborator and screenwriter, making, I believe his directorial debut, I could be wrong about that.
And so I'm looking forward to that. I like a good docu-drama. I like a good claustrophobic confined spaces, retelling of history. I'm not immune to that.
Marriage Story is one I'm most interested in. Amanda and I mentioned it on the show a couple of times. I'm obviously incredibly enthusiastic about No Bound Back's work. I am also notably a child of divorce.
And I do love when a child of divorce makes a child of divorce film. The comparison that's been made to me by some folks who have been around the film is that it is his Kramer versus Kramer. No Bound Back of course went through a very, sort of about a public divorce that he was married to, Jennifer Dasonley, who's a public person. And I think the film is in some ways, you know, at least iterating on the experience of going through something like that.
And it doesn't just start as Driver and it starts Carly Johansson and it starts Laura Dern as a lawyer. And people really want this movie to be a thing. So we'll see if it's gonna be a thing. I'll watch Driver and anything.
You know, let's not lose sight of the fact that he's also gonna be appearing in the rise of Skywalker, which comes down in December. Ever heard of it. So, you know, I mean, who's better than this guy? He works with Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmish, slightly No Bound Back and he's in a Star Wars movie.
What more can you ask for from a modern star? Yeah, he's picking up and putting them down. If you want to divide the Ringer podcast office, as podcast producers, like the most of it's something that's ever happened is Adam Driver Hot, that question being posted to the room. So we'll think on that for a little bit.
The good news is I don't have to weigh in on that question. You're not obligated to, by no means. All right, Jordan Eckard asks, for your top turn your brain off comfort flicks. So movies you don't have to think about, but give you all the feels.
I like the way that this question is phrased. It's different from the next question, which I'll get into a little bit. Turn your brain off comfort flicks. Here are the three movies I wrote down.
I wrote down, Anchorman gets shorty and days and confused. Now, I think that shorty is getting a little lost to time, though it's a wonderful movie. It's an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel. And it is different than I think most other Elmore Leonard adaptations.
We think Elmore Leonard and we think, Jackie Brown or out of sight, there's something kind of cool and stylish and subtle and kind of steamy about it. Get shorty is more of a satire, it's more of a satire of Hollywood. It's very pop, it's very zippy. It's got tremendous John Travolta Renee Russo, Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito performances.
It's got a great early James Gandolfini performance in it. That's a movie that for whatever reason, I owned it on VHS in like 1995, right in the throes of the John Travolta revival. This is the first film I believe he made right after Pulp Fiction happened. He plays Chili Palmer, who is a kind of a fixer for the mob.
He's kind of muscle for the mob, but he also collects money and he's got a history and a lot of different kinds of jobs and he comes out to Hollywood after living in Miami. And there's just a rhythm to that movie that calms me. Anchorman, I don't really need to explain Anchorman. Anchorman is well understood as a masterpiece that also doesn't require much brain work.
Isn't Will Ferrell still doing TV hits as Anchorman? I think people are aware of why that's successful in 20 minutes. Do you know that there's a Ron Burgundy podcast? I didn't know that actually.
Have you been a listener? I have not. I have an interview with some of the interview people as Ron Burgundy. I presumably, maybe I should check it out.
I'm not into like fantasy pods. It's not really a fantasy pod because interviewing real people as themselves. However, are you explaining a character? I've got some bad news for you.
This is a fantasy version of myself. And for those of you who know me in the real world, you know that perhaps my podcast persona is slightly different. No, it's like this all the time. No, it's not true.
And I broke down these things confused. I don't need to explain these things too much, right? These are wonderful movies. There's this whole history of other kinds of movies that I've had probably that relationship to over the years, Aliens and Terminator 2, the things that teenage boys watch when they grow up in the 80s and the 90s, I don't really turn to those things that much.
And honestly, I don't do this that much. I feel like there's so much new work to see. And I love seeing new things and understanding new things. And we have never had an opportunity to see as many things as we do now for if you just pull the total sum that you would pay for the most significant streaming services.
Let's say it's $300 a year. So for $300 a year, you can have a criterion collection and probably soon to be Disney Plus and Netflix. If you just take those three things, you could never watch 1,000th of all the offerings of those spaces. So I don't have a lot of time to kind of rewatch and remain unless we're doing a rewatchables.
Yeah, I don't do this shut your brain off comfort flick by myself. I don't want to bet just throw on role models or throw on super bad or super bad. Like a night, it's like a lot of those like dumb high school boy movies that you love that that's when I need to like maybe turn my brain off a little bit. Yeah, and you know, I'll send a shout out to my wife who has something called kitchen movies, which is that whenever she is preparing dinner or working on a new recipe project or baking something, she just puts on the TV in the kitchen and only goes on when she needs to watch a kitchen movie.
And like her kitchen movies are so different from the movies that I would watch. Just yesterday, she watched an education. She watches routinely the David Lee movie, breathing counter. She watches the before sunset sunrise trilogy all the time.
That's a different tonality than the kind of movie I want on in the background when I'm trying to do something else. So for everybody, it's different. What's next? So similar, what are some of your guilty pleasure movies?
So it's like a little bit of a different flavor of the same question. Guilty pleasure don't exist, Bobby. That's not a thing that we subscribe to. If you like something you like it and you need to stand forward and say, I am guilt free in liking this thing.
So let's take in general, I reject the premise. That said, also this person is named Trey Turner Nader, which as mess fans, we don't recognize that. That's why I didn't read it. That's not, this is, come on in.
I will say that there is certainly a kind of movie that I like that I don't feel guilty about, but I think what Trey is trying to get at, which is the face off, broken arrow, con air, dumb action movie. It's the kind of movie that I'm not routinely invited onto for the rewatchables because no one wants to hear me pontificate about the cinematography choices of those movies. But I do have an admiration for them and I do like them and I have a lot of fun and I love particularly Shaserano's ability to make us excited about those kinds of movies. And I think one thing that has happened too is let me pause a theory to you know, in the 2000s in music writing, which is something I spend most of my time doing it back then.
Popdomism came to the fore. The idea that popular music is not inherently bad and has a value and it has a critical value and we can understand the world a little bit better if we look at the totality of music through a similar lens and we don't just dismiss things out of hand because they are inherently commercial. I think that movies quietly are having its pop to miss moment. And I think the ability to say, you know what's really valuable is John Wick.
You know what's really valuable is some of the storytelling choices in end game. And the way that we are valorizing popular movie culture in a significant way. And I think that some of the things that we do here are contributing to that. I think the rewatchables is absolutely contributing to that.
The sort of high level engagement sincerity and a little bit of intellectualism sprinkled on stuff like Conair. So I don't think they're guilty pleasures anymore. I think that that's a whole category that is kind of bunk. You wouldn't call Katie Perry a guilty pleasure anymore.
You just say she's a person I like or not like if you are living in 2019. But the fact that that is going on right now is interesting. I mean, now there is still a kind of movie that is not necessarily reputable to say you like. And I think it's probably mostly problematic-ish movies.
But like I saw Breyburn this year. Did you see that Bobby? No, I didn't know. Breyburn is a Sony superhero movie.
It's sort of like, what if Superman but he's evil? And Superman is a kid and we see the origin of a super powered young boy who breaks bad. It's a well-made movie. It's a nasty bit of business.
It's just a really tough, violent and gory movie. And it's the kind of movie that when I was 16, I really loved. And I still have a little bit of admiration for it. I think it's hard to step forward on social media and say the movie I fucking loved is Breyburn because it indicates a little something a little crack about you.
And it's different than something like Midsomar which is deeply artistic. Breyburn is more exploitative in a specific way with the movies. So I guess that that is the closest that we can come to this kind of like modern guilty pleasure. But as I said, I don't really think that that's a real thing.
Yeah, your optimism point as well taken. The fact that I've read like 10 articles on my life at Gunfu which is like what they call the fighting style of John Wick. Absolutely. Just goes to show I think that there's much more widely accepted critical thought about these types of things.
No doubt. I think the concept of guilty pleasure movie kind of shifts on the group of people who are around you. Like I felt like Top Gun was a guilty pleasure for me at NYU which was ridiculous because that's not a guilty pleasure at all. It's a perfect movie.
But I think it depends on who you're talking to. Yeah, I think the way that we deem something useful and valuable has changed a lot too. For a time, I think a lot of people, especially when they're growing up and don't necessarily know how this industry works as much, think that the Oscars is the barometer against which you measure quality. And we know that's not true now.
But I think as you get older and you see more kinds of films, you see more foreign films, you see more documentaries, you see more things that are not necessarily fully commercialized, you have a different understanding of what's good and not good. And you can realize that the concept of unintentional comedy as it applies to Top Gun makes it better. And it's okay to be excited about something being kind of bad because it makes it even better. I'm gonna give it so hard for that in 2020.
Speaking of that, yeah. Don't let the villa asks, what has most anticipated 2020 movie for you? Remember otherwise? I wrote this down quickly.
Here's my list. Last night in Soho, that's Edgar Wright's new movie. A lot of admiration for what Edgar Wright does. I think Edgar Wright is trying to do the same thing that Tarantino is doing.
He's trying to create an event at the movie theater. And that was what Baby Driver was. And I think even if he had some problems with Baby Driver, he was trying to create a theatrical experience that is full of energy. So I'm very curious to see what he does there.
I wrote down Newark. You feel like with Newark? No, I'm familiar with Newark, the place, and unfortunately the international airport, but not the film. So I've never been to Newark, so I'm not gonna weigh in on it.
But I do believe that is the current title. And maybe they've changed the title at this point of the Sopranos prequel. Oh, okay, yeah, something like that. So this is the James Guineauffini's character, Tony Sopranos father, I think is the significant figure in the story.
This has been long just dating. I think David Chase's last movie, Not Fade Away, is one of the already kind of lost classics of this decade. I wrote about it for Grantland back in the day. And I really admire what he was going for.
And this is gonna sound like a strange comparison, but I think it has a little bit in common with Euphoria, especially the ending of Euphoria's first season and the ending of this movie, Not Fade Away. So I'm used this as a shout out to Not Fade Away and to my interest in David Chase. A couple of other movies, here's a dumb movie that I'm looking forward to, and it's called The Gentleman. This is Guy Ritchie's new movie.
At CinemaCon, I saw a preview of this film. And even though it's not coming out, I think until January 2020, and I'm just on all the way in. And it's Colin Farrell, it's Hugh Grant, it's Charlie Hunnam, just being dashing, tweet-bearing drug dealer monster guys. Great.
And it looks in the vein of the sort of snatch and lock-stock Guy Ritchie, which he has not been doing enough lately as we know from our Latin podcast. Other relevant figures in this movie include Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, who you may remember from Crazy Rich Asians, Michelle Dockery with Who I Am in Love from Down to Abbey, and Jeremy Strong, our number one boy. Just a lot of handsome dudes. It's gonna be wearing a tweet.
A lot of handsome guys in tweet. So that's late January 2020. I wrote down Nightmare Alley. There was some news about Nightmare Alley, which is, Guillermo Datoro's next film, his first film after the Shape of Water.
This movie is going to star Bradley Cooper. It's based on a novel from the 1940s. There has been already an adaptation of this movie from the 1940s starring Tyrone Power. This is a very twisted film about what happens inside of Carnivals, and who tries to penetrate the world of con men and jacaynery.
And it's a Guillermo-py repeat set in the 40s. And I'm very, very excited about it, even though I think Guillermo Datoro has lost my trust a bit in the last couple of years. I've also written down Lee Wannell's The Invisible Man. I think Lee Wannell is one of the more underrated, genre stylist, the idea of him doing a classical horror movie is interesting to me.
I mentioned Chloe Shao's Eternals. As far as the Marvel movies that are coming in the near future, that is by far the one that has piqued my interest the most. There is now a bang up cast in Eternals, full of very, very famous people, including Angelina Jolie and Richard Madden, and Camille Nanjiani and a whole bunch of other people. I mentioned Waves as well.
I don't know when Waves is going to come out. It might be this year, it might be next year, the trailer of Jolt's film. I also wrote down Tiger Tail, which is Alan Yang's Netflix movie, which I don't know a whole heck of a lot about. But I did really admire Forever, the series that he made for Amazon, starring Meyer Rudolph and Fred Armisen.
And of course Alan has, you know, appeared many times on The Dave Chang Show, and he was a writer on Parks and Rec, and he was a co-EP and writer, director on Master of None, is he's on Sorry series, he's just a great writer. So I'm very interested to see what he does when he's got everything at his fingertips. Yeah, I'm quite a fan of the wholesomeness of his storytelling in many different occasions. It's a sincere fellow you can tell.
Yeah. Okay, Nick Adams asks, and many other people ask this, what is your rewatchables passion project that no one will agree to do? So a little bit of inner working here, that you're trying to lie before. I honestly don't know.
I mean, I really want to do there will be blood for obvious reasons. I think that there will be blood as the masterpiece of the 21st century. I don't think that Bill was opposed to it. I think that Bill's trying to cycle through every last damn Michael Mann movie before we get a chance to do that, which is fine.
I don't want to fire all the bullets out of the chamber. The thing is, is if Bill does Black Hat before I get a chance to do there will be blood, I'm going to be very concerned about my future. That's just one of those things. Michael Mann is a brilliant director, and I admire a great many of his films.
I understand the desire to do The Last of the Mohicans, and there's a handful of others that he hasn't done yet. The final thing has been rewatchables. There will be blood needs to happen. And I'm waiting on that.
I've already created so many podcasts and content options here and at Grantland and effort to talk about there will be blood. I wrote about the 10th anniversary of the film. We did a 2007 Top Five podcast here. I just really love digging my teeth into that movie.
So that's my hope. I don't think no one's agreeing to it per se, but that's where I want to go. A 2007 Top Five podcast for you to talk about there will be blood is just like Chef's Kiss, you know? It's my lifestyle.
It's my lifestyle. Okay, here a few different people ask about this, Nate Schwartz being one of them. Suggestions from the Criterion channel. You've talked about it a few times, a lot of people who listen to this podcast probably have it myself included.
And it can be kind of a wall of old movies that you don't know that well. So are there a few that stick out for you? It's so hard to do this because it's so hard to know what people aren't not familiar with. I'm always surprised by some people have an extraordinary depth of knowledge about the work of a cure a cura-courer-sawa, but they don't know anything about Nicholas Roke, right?
So how do you decide what to say? You know, you really should watch this because there are certain canonical films that I think people are familiar with, but maybe they're not. The first handful that I wrote down were the Red Shoes, the Powell and Pressburger film and Bicycle Thieves, which are two significantly different non-Hollywood productions that are striking in sort of their beauty and their intimacy and their importance to the future of filmmaking. And their films are from the 40s and the 50s.
And I would just plainly recommend those to any living person. I would just say, I dare you to watch the Red Shoes and not be moved. Then there's some other things that are passions of mind that other people may be interested in or not. I wrote down Volver, which is a Pedro Enmodovar film.
I'm kind of preparing for painting glory, his new movie, Coming Up. I think there are six or seven Enmodar films on the Criterion Channel right now. I don't think you'd really do poorly to watch any of them. I wrote down the Manchurian Candidate, which is actually a Criterion collection Blu-Ray that I spent hard earned money on because I love that movie so much.
It's a John Frankenheimer sort of espionage paranoia thriller from the early 60s. That is one of the most sophisticated, complicated evocations of political insanity that you can ever see. And it certainly feels relevant to this exact moment. I wrote down a Gear of the Wrath of God, which is one of the masterpieces made by a former big picture guest in front of Herzog.
If you want to see Klaus Kinsky going for it, check out a Gear of the Wrath of God. And then one of the great things that the service does is they organize certain collections by director. I'm obviously obsessed with directors. That's why I'm talking to so many of them on this show.
I just wrote down a handful that would be good. I mentioned Herzog. I mentioned Nicholas Rogue, who passed away earlier this year and who Adam Neiman is written about for the site, directed movies like Walkabout and Don't Look Now and Performance, The Man Who Felt to Earth. I don't think you can go wrong with any of those movies.
Those are all on the service. I wrote down Carol Reed. He finally has Carol Reed, Bobby, I'm not. So Carol Reed is the director of The Third Man, which is my favorite movie of all time.
And he has a very underrated career. The Third Man, which I believe is celebrating its 70th anniversary in about a month, is widely understood as one of the best movies ever made. But he's got a few more that are a little bit undersea, including Odd Man Out and The Fallen Idol are the two that I would really, really underline. And I would also point out Armand and Havana, which is a great Alikiness movie that also appears on the Criterion Channel.
So that's just a handful of recommendations. And then the aforementioned Joanna Hogg, her three movies before the souvenir are there, unrelated archipelago and exhibition. I would say brace yourself for a kind of stillness. These are not the most active films that you can watch, but they're really, really precise evocations of people who have a wellspring of feeling inside of them, but don't know how to let it get out.
There is a high level of English repression happening in these films. So if you're interested in that, check out Joanna Hogg's movies. That's just a smattering of stuff that I quickly looked at and enjoyed. Are there directors that you have a hard time watching multiple of their films in a row?
Like I watched their old people a couple of weekends ago and I was like, I should really just go back and watch a bunch of PTA movies. And then I went to go watch them and I was like, I feel like I need to marinate on them. They will be blood for a little longer. Well, before I jump right back into Phantom Thread.
Because you find it's better to unpack them? Yeah, because I find I don't want to be necessarily making all the connections between there will be blood and boogie nights. Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, I don't do director of marathons. Yeah, so, and I don't even really know why that is.
I think the only time I'll do it is if I'm preparing to write something or to do an episode of the show, which you do often. So yeah, I don't do it in a way where I sit down and I say, what I'm going to do right now is watch 30 in Marburgman films in a row. I, it really depends on the filmmaker. It would be tough to sit down and do a giant of hog marathon for me because those films are so quiet.
And I like all other people and easily distractable. Despite my desire to watch foreign films all day and to watch slow cinema, I still, I can get really bored. I know, you know, and I think if you watch any of the movies that I recommend it and you're like, I'm really bored right now, that's okay, it's okay to feel that way. But as far as somebody who would be tricky to watch a lot of their films in a row, well, it's probably for the opposite reason.
You know, if you look at same like Nichols, every Michael's movie has a world of pain and anxiety operating just under the surface. And you have to let it sit for a little while before you go to the next one. And so that's probably a filmmaker I really like who I need to chew on a little bit after seeing other movies. Today's episode of the big picture is brought to you by Masterclass.
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All right, let's jump ahead to, we had a whole category of Tarantino questions that people responded with because one time in Hollywood has been on the mind. Yeah, got some feedback from our most recent podcast. Yeah. Some people said, great job by you.
I love you. Some other people said fuck off and die. So, you know, you're doing it right. All right, Doritos asks, love Doritos.
Is this at Doritos? No, it's not. There's a Z at the end. Oh, no.
Has there always been this type of discourse with every new Tarantino movie or is this a new invention of this decade? This is normal. It's amplified because we have social media now, and we didn't have to do that. So we're going to do that.
We're going to do that. This is normal. It's amplified because we have social media now and we did not when Pulp Fiction came out, but this is normal. I mean, he's a provocateur and he's literally attempting to get a reaction out of you.
That is a part of his strategy. He actually talked about that a bit on Quentin Tarantino's feature presentation that showed that Amy Nicholson did with him that you did as well. And I don't, you know, I think that's great. Martin's Rorsese is also a provocateur.
A cure course. I was also a provocateur. The best filmmakers are trying to get you to feel and to respond. So I think that is he problematic aspect of this is also not new.
People have been adjudicating whether his movies are too violent ever since Michael Madsen cut that year off in Reservoir Dogs. So part of the reason I think I was a little bit exasperated by some of the commentary around the last movie is because I just feel like we've done this before and I feel like there are a few filmmakers and get me as excited about the work that they're doing as he can. And so I think that while the criticism is not illegitimate, I just was a little bit bored by it. Let's jump head to Jay Merritt asks, he says, he's 10 to 10 agree that Leo's performance in one time Hollywood is one of his best.
You mentioned that one on our review of the movie. Where do you think Pitts ranks among the roles that he's played? Well, this is challenging. I think Pitts performance is a little more of a cipher for how you feel about the rest of the movie in this, right?
Like Leo's performance is objectively just unbelievable, but I think Pitt is kind of at more of the same speed as the film. I think that's fair. I think Pitt is not given, he's not plumbing the depths in the same way that Leo is. Leo has to act extravagantly.
He has to cry. He has to wail. He has to scream. He has to doubt himself.
He has to be furious and delighted and scared. Pitt is as cool as Lake Placid. You know, he is all on the surface, calm, confident, maybe a little evil. And so while it's a strong evocation of Brad Pitt's stardom, I don't know if it's necessarily in his greatest performances.
I think it's one of his greatest star terms. And there's a big difference there. So how does it relate to something like Moneyball? You know, Moneyball, he was nominated for an Oscar.
I think he was very similar in Moneyball. I think he was very calm, very even keeled, not going out of his way to do things. It's a little different from something like the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, where he's applying an accent. He's lost a great deal of weight.
He is melancholy and mysterious and angry. And he's flexing a lot more muscles. I also think he's very, very fun in something like Fight Club, which may feel one-sided, but by the time you get to be into the film, you realize he's doing a lot of different things. So I don't know where this fits in like his long-term filmography.
I think people will point to it as one of his great star terms, which is really what his career has been about. There's always been a conversation about how he's a character actor hanging out in a leading man's body. But I would argue that this is more of a leading man performance than anything else. It's way more of a Stephen Queen performance, not a lot of dialogue, looking cool all the time, beating up the hippies, doing things that only a cool guy can do.
So it's in the top 12, but I don't really know what that means. And on Oscar's montage of Brad Pitt's career at some lifetime, it's even a word 30 years from now or whatever, what movie plays first? What is his most iconic performance that you associate with him? This is a very good question.
Well, it comes in two phases. There is the Legends of the Fall, Thelma and Louise interview with the Vampire 7 era, when he is a hot young 90 star. And then there is the guy who recedes a little bit from that start and takes on more challenging work. And I think the sort of most quote unquote respectable thing he's ever done is the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
That's the one where people will say, not a fan of that movie. It's my least favorite venture. But I do think that that's the one where he is going for it the most as an actor. And I think additionally, Inglorious Bastards is probably one of the most well-remembered movies that he's made.
And has the most, I think especially for people like us, as he gets older and we start valorizing him, we're going to point to a movie like that, we're going to point to Oceans 11, you know, we're going to point to probably movies like One Time in Hollywood, The Tree of Life, like a sea being a factor here, certainly moneyballs since he was nominated. I think for some people they'll point to like World War Z or the counselor, but I probably won't. I think I would point to Oceans 11. Just him being cool as shit is just like that's what I think of when I think of Brad Pitt.
Even when I see him on the cover of a magazine or whatever, I'm checking out at Vons. Yeah, I mean, it's always been part and parcel. He's been simultaneously feeding off of it and roaring against that exact thing his entire career, which is what makes him interesting. So kind of in the same vein, True Stories I made up asks, which actor do you think Tarantino gets the most out of?
So we talked about Brad, talked a little bit about Leo's performance, are either of these guys in the running for that? Is it all time? All time, yeah, any of his films? I think his great muse is definitely Samuel Jackson.
I think the actor with whom he gets the most and who is most comfortable doing the Tarantino dialogue thing is Sam Jackson. I wish Sam Jackson was in all of his movies. The jewel, I think we're actually under rating how amazing Jules Winfield is as a character and a performance from Jackson. So that's the person who, you know, Sam Jackson is great in everything.
It's not as if he, you know, really diminishes greatly when he's not in the Tarantino movie, but man, he is just fabulous. Like even the Hayful Eight, which is not really in my upper echelon of Tarantino movies, he is just extraordinarily good in that movie. And he's so mesmerizing, so mesmerizing in Django, also a movie that I don't love, but he is just so compelling to watch. And he has such a almost a predernatural grasp of how to deliver those words that would be my go-to pick.
I think he's, you know, he obviously has a great thing with Uma. Likewise, you look at the performance that she's giving as me a while, and they have something. You know, they just, she gets what he's going for and he's lucky to have her. You know, he's lucky to have somebody who has that kind of grace, who can communicate kind of a sliness and intelligence in that way.
Because that's what he needs. He needs all of his characters to be pretty smart. Yeah. Okay.
Last Tarantino question from Stephen Orkitt. Where does the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood soundtrack rank for you amongst the Tarantino films? I know you're a huge fan of the Once Upon a Time soundtrack. Stephen, thank you for this question.
Thank you for leaning right into my interest. I made a quick list. Here it is. Kill Bill Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Death Proof, Jackie Brown.
Not fond of the Django soundtrack. I don't think that the soundtrack for In Glory's Baster is really applies here, though there are a handful of more Coney moments that I really like. What am I forgetting from this list? I think that's the sum total.
Kill Bill, to me, is the most effective, not because it's the most fun to listen to. It's not the most fun to listen to. I think Pulp and Reservoir Dogs are the two most fun to listen to. Those are also the ones I listen to a lot as a young person.
So they're interwoven into my DNA at this point. But Kill Bill has the most examples of Tarantino taking something that existed in the culture previously and making it his own in a radical way. Now, that includes things like more Coney soundtracks from spaghetti westerns that you haven't thought about, but it also includes Bernard Herman score from the 1950s. It includes the theme song to the Green Hornet, which people think now was recorded for Kill Bill.
It was recorded, in fact, for the show that appears in the movie One Spawn in Hollywood with Bruce Lee. He takes the Pan Flute artist's damn fear and makes that music feel endemic to his own movie. He takes Quincy Jones's iron side score and makes that relevant to his movie. He has taken all of these disparate snatches of movie score history and made them profoundly a part of his own.
And that is a really neat trick. Now, I think it's plausible to be 70 years old and to have a previous relationship with some of that music and the way that I don't and to not be as impressed by that, which I respect. But for me personally, I love what he did with Kill Bill. I'm not dumb enough to think that Pulp Fiction and everything that he did with Dick Dale and Al Green and Dusty Springfield and Chuck Berry and all the artists that he platformed in the way by choosing songs that are just left of center for them and making them a thing was not a radical shift in the way that movie soundtrack's happened.
It obviously was, and I still like it. Just one of those things where sometimes you play out your favorite album and you can't listen to it anymore. And so I'm going Kill Bill and One Spawn in Hollywood is right behind it. That's probably recency bias, but I'm having a lot of fun listening to that soundtrack a lot.
I've been listening to it quite a lot too. You made a lovely playlist of it. Thank you for that. You're welcome.
Shall we do a couple of all time questions? You're on record. And I'm on the record. And one of the best things about seeing movies non-stop is your ideas get to change all the time.
So I want to say that no matter what I say here, and I'm appreciative of the questions, and I'm not asking for less questions like this, but no matter what I say, it is mutable. It has to change. I'll only make you do a couple of them. Okay.
Kyle Dink John asks, which performance in history would warrant Sean Fennesti to whisper? That was the best acting I've ever seen in an actress here. Can we cut in Julia Butter saying that into this? I'll do that.