All right. Here we go. Quiet. Hello and welcome to the Big Picture podcast where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday and put them all into some sort of context.
My partner sitting across the microphone from me is telling me to speed it up. His name is Rich Dries and he's my editor and chief on this lovely day and seated across the microphone from me is the mood swinging, film buff online, contributing editor Natasha Boquett. You got that damn right. Welcome back.
Welcome back. We are off to a wild and lucky start. It is cracking. Yes.
I know it's been it's just been a little over a week since the last episode drops, but in that time are you are you going straight into it? Well, we had been away. We had recorded that in advance a little bit and I was off on a film shoot for eight days in the woods, not my project, but it was a lot of fun. You're getting witty.
Sorry guys. It's been a long day. And then I came home and we went to the drive-in. We saw our film this way to the address as part of the Northeast B.A.
horror fest. Congratulations, Rich. I'm being a wonderful director. You made me blush.
You produced though, so you share some of the accolades as well. And I end up in hell for a very good reason as we find out in another movie that was premiering that next called Fallout. Yes. Directed by our friend Desiree Zelinski of Desiree films and Scranton films and fun pants films.
Yes. Oh. All of our friends were all together because we had a lot of overlap and we all snuck in charcuterie. It was a drive-in.
You know, they expected to bring in food. I mean, it's either that or me, French. So we kind of made it a little fancy and we were around again. It was a fun night.
Oh my god. I can't believe that's the slasher movie or him midnight. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
There was a group of ladies next to us in the car or outside their car and a wonderful mama. They just went back to it. And we just lost it back. That last one was like a midnight movie where you're just shouting things at the screen.
It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, that last one hardly. Anyways, it was fun.
It was. It was. We had a good time. I will say because for this festival, it was at a two-screen drive-in.
One screen was the festival and there was a lot of cars. And the other screen was showing Shoker 2, which didn't have a lot of cars, unsurprisingly, because even by Friday night, I think we knew the box office on that film was not going to be what they were hoping for. It's, I think we would turn this an unmitigated disaster. And I don't think the movie was all that good anyways.
I mean, this is not our key review, but I mean, it just kind of happened as well. So I think it's getting over hated. And a lot of people are bitching about the musical side of things. But guess what?
It was announced as a motherfucking musical. So get over it. It was. But then again, we kind of are in that bubble.
And sometimes I wonder how much of the news gets out of that bubble. Because even on the title is called Foli Adu, which is literally a musical term. True. But then again, if you went up to the average person on the street and asked them for the definition of like five musical terms, like Fortissimo, etc.
And whatever, and ask them, and they look at you like, are those Harry Potter spells? Because probably. Yeah, you're right. So, I mean, I mean, it was shown also in the trailers how musical this damping was going to be.
I guess. I mean, maybe if you knew it was going to be a musical, but there's been a lot of marketing recently for a number of different movies that kind of shies away from the idea that it's musical. Wonka did. Wonka and Wicked.
Wicked. Everyone knows this. I'll fuck it. It's one of the longest running musicals ever.
But the advertising kind of doesn't show any of like the big songs until like the most recent trailer that drops. They're using the fine gravity and it almost consistently. And no, that's not true. The first film, the first trailer used popular popular.
Oh, that's right. They don't want to be popular. So yeah, they are. Yeah.
Yeah, it just seems like a DM. I'm still at a loss as to how part one of Wicked is going to be two hours and what 40 minutes long, which is longer than the runtime of the entire musical if you see on stage. Because it's also a book series, a very large book series. So they're probably going to take things not just from the musical, but also from the book series as well in order to give clarification on things that maybe don't maybe don't work as well on screen as they do on stage.
Okay, that's that's a possibility. I hope so. Maybe it would be interesting. It would be interesting if this made like a billion dollars and then they decide, well, how do we turn the second book in Maguire series into a musical now?
Because I'm sure that thought would happen. Probably. Yeah, it is. What was the second book?
Was that Son of a Witch? I think so. Was it the one about the? It's been a long time.
Same here. Like I wasn't like, I did I? Well, I don't know. I read I think like the first two.
I wasn't a big fan of like the Wizard of Oz growing up anyway, but and I wasn't a fan of Wicked. So I read the first two books and then I just kind of bowed out from there and I can't remember what the second one was because that's how little I cared. I, as I mentioned before, my ex wife was a big Wizard of Oz fan. She's read the books.
We saw Wicked right when it was opening on Broadway. So we saw, you know, the original cast, which was amazing. And then as a concession to me, we saw. You saw Joe Gray?
Yeah. Kristen Chenoweth? I don't care about Edina Menzel. Although I will admit that Tony performance is one of the of Defying Gravity is one of the best fucking Tony performances ever.
Well, you care enough to pronounce it correctly, which is more than we can say, but then John Travolta. So, uh, well, because I respect her, I just, yeah, I don't care about Wicked. Okay, that's fine. That's perfectly fine.
It was an amazing show, though. And then, you know, the next tonight, we went off and saw Mark Hamill in a play. I got to meet Luke Skywalker at the stage door. I was a very happy boy speaking of meeting people from Star Wars at a stage door.
I know where you're heading with this. This is how we segue. You're segueing right into the main already? Um, well, we're like eight minutes into this already.
Oh, those kind of makes sense. Oh, wait, we have sat through 30 minutes of an opening before we got to our main. And you're like, Oh, we're eight minutes in time to switch. I'm like, well, okay, before we proceed then to our big review of this week, which is going to be Francis Ford Kobelismekalopolis.
You had to get it away already? No, you can't use that segue again. Jeepers, kids, and cats. Ah, oh, well.
Um, did you have anything else that you wanted to hit upon? No. Okay. Now that was worth it.
This is why it should be a fucking video podcast because guys, you should saw his face. You should have just put his head down on the desk and start hitting it off of there. Like he was president Bartlett from West Wing. Like, oh my God, am I still here?
If I was president Bartlett from West Wing, I'd have much better witty comebacks than the nonsense that falls out of my face. So that is absolutely true because he could destroy all of us, you know, battle with except there's one person he probably couldn't destroy. Maggie Smith, or at least the Dowager County. Yes, that would be that too bad.
We never had a weird time travels crossover with West Wing and Downton Abbey. No, I know. And I know you didn't want to kind of go here, but at least we did get her versus Shirley McLean. And that was a battle.
That was, I enjoyed that. But you know, it was so funny, funny odd because Maggie Smith just passed away recently. And just a few weeks earlier, I'd been watching Murder by Death, which she's in. I'm not doing that.
You can borrow the blue ray off my shelf if you want. I may be borrowing a lot of your shit because you don't have an op on the plaques on the plex yet. I know. I did watch an evil under the sun.
Very good as well. I need to watch Death on the Nile, but I just wanted to see her snipe at Diana Reek. But she's wonderful. She's paired up with David Niven in Murder by Death, where they're playing a version of Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man movies.
Oh, that's why you watched it. Well, hold on. There's, are you familiar at all with Murder by Death? A little.
I have a bunch of different quote unquote detective types. So you have your like, it sounds like an Agatha Christie. Yeah, it's kind of a riff on Agatha Christie, but and you do have an Agatha Christie, like Miss Marvel like character in there as well. It's a lot of fun.
It's just, you know, it's a fun little light comedy. But as I was watching it, I was like, you know, I need to get into like older Maggie Smith movies and by that, I mean, when she was younger, because everybody's so used to Maggie Smith from like either Harry Potter or down Abbey that, you know, people forget like her career goes back and back and back. Oh, yeah. The things that I first saw her in actually were Sister Act and Hook, which are pre Harry Potter, but so, but I started doing some research and I accidentally ran into her when I was watching First Wives Club last year for the first time.
I didn't even know she was in it. I just threw it on. I was like, oh, that's Maggie Smith. And I was also just rummaging around a few things and, you know, oh room with a view, also with Judy Dench.
Never seen this. He was Mussolini and never seen this. Okay, putting that on the list. I've never seen the movie that she won her Academy Award for.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brody. Yeah, another of I actually it skyrocketed to the top of my to watch list over the next like week or two. That being said, last night, I needed horror in my life. And by the way, your horror stores on the plex from your personal library are so horrible.
Z would love them. What do you mean? What titles? Everything is like almost like just it's very, I don't want to say Hong Kong like action movie style, but everything is very kind of niche.
And you don't have anything that with all the respect I've heard of. Well, yeah, there are some oddball choices in their life. Some severance, which is a great British satire about office workers. There's, I'm trying to remember what, you know, it's been a while since I went through the entirety of your horror catalog last night, looked for something.
And the only thing that caught my attention literally was the layer of the white worm, which I didn't want to watch anyway. So that's what I ended up watching. And what did you think of it? I loved it.
Okay. That's not exactly niche though. I wouldn't say I would say next to Tommy. That is Ken Russell's most popular movie.
That being said, the devil kicks, kicks them both in the ass. It's just harder to get your hands on. Yeah, in a form that he would have approved of, because there are like edited down versions of that film. I watched it on a criterion channel when it arrived a few months ago.
They had the good version. Yeah, no, no, that's, I will admit, I've seen bits and pieces of said film before on porn sites, but that's weird. But it's the same version. It's, you know, I've always been told, oh, this has been edited down.
This has been edited down. And this is the good version. Apparently, criterion has the good version. It doesn't.
It has the edited version because apparently there are certain things that have been 100% cut out. Interesting. And kind of that version is good. I'm bringing up the my flexer for now looking at the horror category.
All the boys love Mandy Lane is really good. Abby is basically a black version of The Exorcist so much so it was a black exploitation film so much so that Warner Brothers sued them into not having the film out there for a long time, which might be what I've heard of this movie. I don't know. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in here that's kind of like maybe a little off the beaten path, but there's maybe because I put it in here.
That's why I'm recognizing it as a Chinese ghost story. Nope. I would dare say your Hong Kong knowledge is a little- It's lacking. I wouldn't say lacking.
I was gonna say skimpy. Wow. Now you want skimpy. I'll give you skimpy, but that's not skimpy.
Okay. I'm gonna keep going. But yeah, still stuff like Devil's Advocate. I've seen that's that's there is I didn't say that all of your stuff was niche.
I said about 85% of it was. Oh, I would recommend the final girls too, which is a fun movie about the daughter of an actress who used to be in horror movies. And that's all I'm gonna say about that. I'm not sure why Plex is like lumping one camera movie in under horror when I know I have a giant monster movie from Japan.
Okay. But I have like five or six camera movies on. I do? Yeah.
Then why the hell is that in horror? I don't know. I don't know. That's what I'm saying.
I have like five or six other camera movies on here. And I have no idea why it's that. I mean, it has. Why is it lumping Godzilla minus one in there?
Well, that's not a horror movie. I'm sorry. The opening. Okay, the opening I have to give credit to.
It does remind me of the original Jurassic Park and it scared the shit out of me when I saw that opening in the cinema. However, the majority of that film is not a horror film. I'd actually considered a war movie. That's that is definitely a way to look at that.
Um, that I actually hadn't thought of before, you know, I mean, it's a post-war movie and definitely, you know, because it's all about PTSD and everything. Exactly. And that's why I would I would consider it that just because it has a monster doesn't make it, you know, part of this category. Yeah, but you know, there's other things that I would recommend like high tension, which is a French extreme horror film.
And I know you're looking at me like, you have an extreme horror film. Yeah, I have a couple house, which is this really weird. I've heard of house houses and houses bonkers. I was shocked you didn't have Anibaba in there.
I'm not familiar with that. Don't look at me like that. Miss we're not on the video podcast. Tell me tell me why it should be.
Anibaba fucked up Japanese horror film. Okay. Wait a minute, is Goku on here? There was something in the Jays that was Goku body snatcher, which is one of the films that Tarantino ripped off a look for for Jays really.
There was something in there that caught my eye. Juan, that's really the only one. Yeah. Juan is the original Japanese version of the grudge.
Yeah, I've heard that terrifying. I noticed also you had the 2002 Japanese version of the eye. I hate to say it. The only version of the eye I've seen is the Jessica Alba version.
Don't hate me. That's okay. I mean, some of those movies are part of that J horror way from the early aughts that that that stuff was good. You know, sparked a remake wave and you know, the later aughts into the early teens.
Some of that stuff I saw at like the Philadelphia Film Festival in their Danger After Dark series. Well, there was, I miss the guy who Travis, I can't remember his last name. I don't only feel bad, who was the programmer for that, you know, passed away a few years ago. But he got some great stuff for that year after year after year and some of it is represented in what I have on my place.
There was an obvious consensus. Again, people don't come for me. I don't want to get canceled here. In the 90s and especially in the early 2000s that foreign films didn't make money in the American box office.
So if we wanted to see a film like that make waves, then we had to Americanize it. We had to put it in English and we had to completely reshoot it. Which is why not just with J horror, but pretty much a lot of foreign films. Like you have to have something specific about your film that couldn't be copied in order for it to actually, you know, like no one will touch Amalayno and we'll touch Pan's Labyrinth with a 10 foot pole because, you know, Guillermo del Toro and Amalayo just becomes so iconic that it can't be copied.
But one of my favorite, even today, this is still a case. Parasite may have won best picture, but there was a film during the pandemic, a foreign film called Another Round with Mads Nicholson. I know that was a favorite of yours. Oh, it still is and it is considered in Danish cinema to be very iconic.
I still see clips of it pass through my my Facebook every now and then or on my Instagram and I constantly freaking share it. But guess what? The rights are out there and they have been scooped up for an American version whether or not they make it remains to be seen. I gotta hope they don't.
Yeah, you're probably right there. They shouldn't remake that. You've seen it. It's good.
Yeah, I enjoyed it very much. It's it's it's very of its country in a way that I don't know. It could be quite adapted into an American thing. One of the things that I hate was the girl the dragon tattoo.
They did all three of the books in Sweden, what knew me, repays, and it was amazing. David Fincher takes it over. Does it here in America? And I am one of the minority in this.
I actually kind of like the Fincher version, but you have to go in and not compare the two. If you look at it as its own thing and you don't compare it to the book, you don't compare it to the original films, it's actually a good film on its own. Yeah, but when you compare, it still lacks. It lacks and then there are certain sexual sections that look more like porn and less like the actual event.
It lacks the grittiness and the the violence. It kind of comes across a little more sexualized than it should be. And I think that may just be a case of how we don't know how to shoot brutality. I don't think we know how to really deal or shoot sexual violence.
No, because we're scared of it. We're scared of it. We're scared of it. We seem to be kind of sliding more into a puritanical thing.
If on social media, it seems like every four or five months, we have the whole do we need sex scenes and movies conversation, which is stupid. And I'm hoping that because it's body horror and there is some nudity in it. I'm hoping maybe the substance will get people thinking about how nudity can be used in a movie that absolutely has character and story import in a way that they might not think of when they think, oh, I saw some bear boobies in the remake of Dawn of the Dead. And was that really necessary?
Was it necessary for the tit shot in any 80s movie? Probably not. But unless you consider a good reason, getting horny teenagers in with horny teenage boys to spend their money on tickets. Yeah, and I'll admit, as much as I love airplane.
That's it, those make sense. Everybody's doing crazy things because they suddenly know that there's no pilot for the plane. And just, you know, boom, pair of boobs popping a bounce into frame, basically. And even on the director's commentary, though, Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg, they talk about, yeah, maybe we wouldn't do that now.
So you should see the area your ways and it was a fat and a phase. But I will say that I think is where Fincher's version suffers is when you look at the foreign version, they know how to shoot brutality and they make it brutal. You feel it. I will say one of the hardest scenes that I've ever had to sit through was almost like a 10-minute rape scene from a reversible with Monica Bellucci.
The movie is great, but that scene is rough. And you are forced to sit through it. It is a one-shot. There is no cuts.
There is no hiding from it. And I just don't think that our culture understands another person's culture well enough to remake these movies because you're missing. I think that vital, that vital key that makes those movies work. Yeah, I mean, I've not seen the Bellucci movie.
I'm familiar with it, though. And given our past conversations about sexual violence, when we were talking about the first couple of seasons of Outlander, I made some- That's kind of ties compared to that. Oh, geez. Okay.
We are not making an argument for me to go watch this movie. Because as I said then, I find that difficult to watch simply because of people in my life who have been assaulted like that. I will admit, I have been. But it was so, so, so long ago that it doesn't feel like it happened to me.
It felt like it happened to someone else entirely. And I have played that character, me too. Yes. One of the things that I had to deal with was creating that scene on stage.
And I sat through that scene several times because there is a grittiness to it. There is a realness to it. And as an actor and as a performer, you owe it to the people watching who have had to go through something similar to put yourself in their position to do it right. And if you're going to cover it with cuts, and if you're going to sanitize it with trigger warnings at the beginning, then you are going to drive away people who, yeah, they may be triggered by it, but they also may be healed by it, particularly if a story leads itself to a conclusion that makes you feel cathartic.
If you put a trigger on warning on something and people know what they're going in for, then they won't go. And art can be healing. I mean, you also run the risk of just alienating them because they were like, oh, I wasn't expecting this. And that becomes then a commerce question.
And I think we want to keep it more on the art side, though. From an art standpoint, I would agree with you. Let's keep it on that. And that's why I don't believe in putting those on things.
Because at the end of the day, art is supposed to be talked about. Art can lift us up to something ephemeral. It can make us enjoy our deepest, darkest desires. Hello, saw films.
But there is nothing that you can show in a film that shouldn't be there. That's true. That's true. Then allow me to take that thought about art saying something and wanting something.
There is an argument to be made about megalopolis about what to cut. And yes, I was going to kind of just worm my way around into our discussion on megalopolis, because this is a movie couple has been wanting to make since like 1977. And I dare say his struggles to make this movie could be paralleled to the story he tells in Apocalypse. Now, he was constantly swimming up that river to try to find his Colonel Kurtz in the making of this movie.
And it's interesting that you made that comparison because I made the comparison over to Man Who Killed On Kehote. Oh, interesting. And Terry Gilliam's decades-long struggle to make his film that came close very close a couple of times. They actually shot a day or two before Floodwaters wiped out their set.
And yeah, that whole story is told in- Both were considered Kurtz, I believe. Yes. The Terry Gilliam story is kind of told in a documentary that when I saw it left me just about in tears because I'm a big Terry Gilliam fan of his work, not necessarily of him as a person at times. But seeing that was just like watching his dreams kind of crumble away from him almost literally as they're watching these floodwaters race through where the set was and everything.
And it was heartbreaking. And so maybe that's why I was at least excited that Coppola was able to get this dream project made, even though I think it's a colossal, crazy wackadoo mess of a film. Kind of admire it. No, I admire anyone who after so long decides no one else is going to take a chance on this.
I'm going to put my own money where my mouth is, and I'm just going to do it. And I think also another connection that I made between those two films was the fact that Adam Driver was the lead in both. And he is the one that kind of helped both of these movies to be finished and out in the world. I didn't make that association.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, that's funny. But let's start.
I was in the middle of making a very low budget horror movie thriller movie out in the woods. We had a day off. I went into town to to watch Megalopolis and to kind of go from that low budget, we have a crew of like seven people and a cast of six atmosphere to seeing something so ginormous that cost so much money. It was kind of like almost mentally jarring for me in a little, in a little way, but really because there were certain sections where I was going where the money go.
Okay. Okay. Why? There were some scenes that just felt it felt like it was shot like a very low budget indie film.
And I mean the micro budget under 250,000 SAG line. Wow. I said certain scenes. The first half of this movie, for me also acting wise, doesn't feel like anyone's really trying.
Okay. There it just felt like, okay, we're here. We're collecting the page and that might just be a part of pacing. The edit itself may have actually been detrimental to the performances.
I'm going to say this right now. And I think I've said this a thousand times. I fucking hate Aubrey Plaza. I know that's why we've never reviewed my old ass on the show, which is actually quite good.
I didn't see it. I know you won't see it because I love Patti LaPone as any fucking witch. And I won't watch Agatha all along because I fucking hate Aubrey Plaza that much. Wow.
So you somehow mistakenly saw Aubrey Plaza movie. I saw Megalopolis here. I saw Megalopolis because it's Megalopolis. Okay.
Just like I went and saw Operation Fortune just because I love Guy Ritchie that much, even when his movies are shit, at least they're entertaining. And she was not. Okay. She was kind of outside of her normal screen persona here.
No, she wasn't. No, she wasn't. You can't look at that. You know, what she does in Megalopolis and then look at her and like, I don't know, um, you know, the office or Parks and Rec.
Excuse me. And you know, oh, yeah, those two characters are similar. Oh, they're completely similar. I don't think so.
One is quirky. One is a femme fatale, both are dead-eyed. Wow. Okay, you, you are very worked up about this.
I don't like her. I don't like her as an actress. I think she's very one-dimensional. I think she plays a type.
She plays the witch, bitch. Okay. Yeah, witch or bitch. That's pretty much it, usually.
Okay. That's fine. Then. And there were scenes where I particularly with a show above where I was going.
I'm actually watching this. Oh my god, I'm watching this. Oh my god, I'm different. Let's see this.
I'm never going to see this. It was, it was one of the most cringy things that I have watched in a very, very fucking long time. And this is why this needs to be a video podcast. Because she is growing up into a ball right now on China.
Exactly what I did in the cinema. Yeah. Ironically though, we're talking about a sex scene again on this podcast. Yeah, but that sex scene is meant to be cringy.
That's a point. But I don't handle cringe very well to begin with, so that's the reason why I never finished Napoleon Dynamite is that I just can't handle cringe. Okay, that's fair. But that's a personal thing.
I mean, we all have certain things in certain movies that we just can't deal with. Brandon went with me to see this and I was watching that. He's just saying they're like chuckling by his hand like, I can't believe I'm watching this. You see this?
I'm like, I'm trying not to. Okay, but overall for me where I think this movie kind of fails, I mean, I'm fascinated by so much of the composition and the look of this movie. We do, you know, we have like circles going in from like old, old, old silent films. You know, we have that influence.
There's the metropolis. Yeah, there's a metropolis vibe to it. It felt very to me, Malay, when the hand comes in and moves the moon out. I was like, Oh, I think that's that interesting like that.
And all the way up through like 9-11 imagery for some reason. And I know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. And I was just like, wow, you know, copeless throwing everything in here.
But the recipe to this stew is kind of wonky. There's if you try to follow it, I mean, yes, it comes right out front and says it's a fable. And I don't have a problem with that. There are times when the movie kind of jumps forward, you know, a couple of weeks, couple of days or what.
And I feel like I'm not told that and I had to kind of fight to figure out exactly what the timeframe, how the story was unfolding and everything. Like there were scenes that were missing. No, think of it this way. And this is something I'm, you know, you and I have both, I think kind of run into a times when we do so many rewrites of a script that we kind of start losing it.
We lose the we lose some of the plot a little bit. Yes, because we're kind of focusing on new things at the to the detriment of preserving what else had previously worked. But also, we forget that we know things about how this story should be playing out that we don't actually put down on paper. Yeah, we all the time.
Yeah, we know that, oh, this character is doing this because of this, but we don't ever actually explain it. And we don't see it. Yeah. And we don't see it.
So we're left to wonder, you know, or the reader of our scripts, let's want to go. How did this happen? And I see a lot of that in Megalopolis. Agreed.
I think a hundred percent agreed on that he forgets that we haven't. He's created an entire Lord of the Rings world building around this, but he hasn't told us any of it. Also, one of my big issues with this script was the philosophies. Okay.
There are so many fucking quotes in this thing. There are quotes from Epictetus and Seneca. Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare. You name it, there's probably a quote in here from it.
And most of them are not being told to you, but it's how they're being used. I believe that I just watched one of the best to be or not to be speeches delivered by Adam Driver. He only goes about half of it and then switches into something else entirely at the end. And I went, that's not that slowly.
Yeah. And it's kind of weird that he does go into that soliloquy. And it's, I'm like, wait, it doesn't make sense to be there. Is his character saying that or is his character quoting Shakespeare here at this point at this gathering?
Everyone's always quoting something that it doesn't make it feel like it is, is it supposed to be them trying to get across their ideas? The only ones that made sense were when, um, Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia starts quoting three quotes from Marcus Aurelius. Those quotes made sense. Yeah.
Those are the ones you needed in this movie. Everything else, any other quote in this film could have been cut because by the end of this movie, I was fucking furious because I felt like I had just been like in Goodwill hunting, tried to have been picked up by a philosophy major who only read the spark notes and then tried to come and just sprout how good they are when in truth they were just being a pretentious asshole. Hello, Frazier. Essentially, that's why I felt like I felt like Frazier.
But do we have an answer to my question? When he quotes to be or not to be? Was it that him talking or was that him going, I'm going to quote William Shakespeare because I feel this thing has something to say here? I think both.
I think it's both. Uh, he's showing up and he has something to say, but he doesn't know how to. That's the only thing that actually sort of made a little sense to me is the answer to your question. His first major speech is someone else's words in his mouth because he doesn't know how to formulate his own words.
Bookend to the end of the movie, him standing before everyone authentically as himself, speaking his own words. But it's still sounded like a pretentious asshole with a bar who's a 101 philosophy major. Yeah, that's fair. Um, I had a big issue with Giancarlo Esposito, Francis.
His character's name is Francis, who is trying to fix his relationship with his daughter. They don't see eye to eye on everything. I had a I've all that's a one issue I've always had with copeless movies is how he's portrayed women. Dracula gets a pass because he didn't write it.
He's just adapting it. Yeah. But in truth, his women have always felt like they are mothers, wives and daughters, or lovers, or whores, the Madonna versus the whore factor. It is, there is no fine line walked between the two.
And the idea of partnership shown in this movie is a woman who is ambitious and powerful is our oddly plaza femme fatale is going to kill or betray or do anything she has to do in order to get where she wants to be, where Julia can be like Mary Magdalene repentant sinner. As long as she is willing to give her energy and drive to the husband and man who deserves it because he has a vision. Fuck you, Francis for Coca-Cola. But she gave up going to the club again, repentant sinner.
Now at the end of this movie, she tries to get him to see the air of his ways and try to move with the times to understand the future that there is change except the change or otherwise you will be left behind. It's a great story. And you can almost compare how Francis does his films to how Sophia does her films. Okay.
And how one is starting to try to see the other one's point of view. I see that that's what he's trying to say with Giancarlo and Julia. But the problem is is what did he do? Francis wrote his women in the fucking tropes.
Julia is still the woman who sacrifices all of her dreams. If she even had any to begin with, by giving all of her energy to her husband's pleasure, to her husband's ideas, to saying, I don't have an idea. I'm just going to piggyback off of yours and somehow I'm going to give you the peace and confidence you need in order to become the man you need to be. It doesn't fucking make any sense.
I understand your point of view. And how can you say I accept change when you write your women in your trope? True. And I think it becomes more problematic.
And honestly, I don't know what his relationship with her was or what their working relationship was. But he winds up dedicating this movie to his wife and who had passed away recently. So I just on that level, I understand she was always there for me. But did she give up some of her own dreams to support his idea of partnership?
I don't know what their dynamic was, or whether that's something she wanted to do as opposed to she felt she had to. I don't know. And I don't want to kind of get too deep into that thing. But it is worth pointing out, and other people who maybe have more knowledge on that can better address that.
I would welcome reading something about that. I did really, you're going to be shocked by this. I enjoyed Shia LaBeouf. Okay.
He was kind of a wild card, wild card, whack a new character. No, he wasn't. He felt like the he felt like a B plot in a Shakespeare film, or a Shakespeare story. So he's actually a Roman allegory, I guess you could say metaphor, whatever.
So you have this massive family, essentially, like anyone who is anyone is sitting at the big table inside our policy, M.A.K. and Madison Square Garden, which does make sense because when I went to New York a couple weeks ago, I saw there's a thing outside of MSG that says the biggest arena in the world. So it does kind of make sense that that is the Colosseum. Yeah.
I have no problem with the one-on-one of ancient Rome, into New York City. I think it works. It's one of the few things that really does look great. It's a really great idea.
It's an amazing idea. There are many allegories to be made with Shia LaBeouf's character. One is a very modern day political candidate. Yes.
That is all I'm saying on that one. And then I'm going to get to the one that I first noticed. John Voigt's character, old, decrepit, looking for an heir. He's not as crazy, but there are two characters that you could say Shia LaBeouf is.
He's at a Coligula, or he's Nero. I would say there's probably aspects of both of that because I looked at John Voigt and I saw bits of Tiberius. Bits. Yeah, I could see that.
I mean, I'm sure a couple was drawing on a lot of Roman history and sprinkling in there because basically this is kind of about, it's a fable about an empire and decline. And that's something I could see somebody in the 1970s with radical or even just casual leftist politics, the way Colpla has looking at America at that time and then kind of going back to it again and again over the decades between then and now. So building up a story like that, he's obviously going to pull, like I said, from those historical personages. And so I don't have a problem with how all of that is built up.
I think that's actually kind of good. I just don't think ultimately, you know, having a savior character coming in and does he really even save them at the end? I don't know. I honestly, I'm watching this film.
I'm like, this is some amazing and audacious filmmaking. But ultimately, I don't know if the story ends or thematically what's happening here at the time we get to the end. It's bananas. That final shot on New Year's is the thing that gives it away.
It's all about preparing the next generation. Okay, yeah, I can see that. And I'm driver's character has been able to stop time. Yeah, that's another thing again, never explained.
I don't know why. Is that like him just being able to stop for a moment in his thought process? Is that an internal thing for his mental process? Or is that an actual superpower?
I don't know. But the only other person who saw it was Julia. Yeah. And somehow by the end of it, Julia is able to stop time.
But this is the thing I noticed that kind of was very interesting to me. And this is why I say it's not an end, but so much a beginning. It's an end for this generation, beginning for the next that power being passed along to their child. No, okay.
It was when ever someone says stop time, time stops around them, but they can still move. When Julia called it, she froze. Okay. The child is still moving, which means technically the child is the one controlling it.
Here's a question. Will anyone unfreeze until the baby's allowed to speak? And how will the baby learn to speak if everybody's frozen around it? Because babies learn by imitating.
It's a good question. Yeah. I thought that was an intriguing end, but the thematical idea was what that is. But now that I'm thinking about it, though.
The beginning, not the end. It reminds me of the ending too. This is gonna sound weird at first. An ending to a story that they did on the mid 1980s Twilight Zone revival on CBS.
There was a woman who had to- Which won? Oh, you said mid 90s. Mid 80s. Excuse me.
This woman had a stopwatch or a watch that could somehow, she somehow had this ability to stop time. And the thing ends with, and this is kind of playing into, you know, end of the Cold War, so it might have even been a little outdated at the moment. There's a Russian attack, and she literally runs outside and stops time, and she can see like Russian missiles, nuclear missiles hanging over her town. So she knows if she ever starts time again, everybody's dead.
But she'll have to live by herself and then what happens after she dies. You know, does time start up again? Or does time stay frozen for eternity? That actually is a genius dilemma.
Yeah. And it's sort of mirrored in with the baby at the end of Megalopolis. Just not as well done, I don't think. So really.
So there are parts of this. I loved and but the majority of it, I hated God. I love the little irony of John Voigt with his tiny little bow when he was supposed to be Robin Hood at Saturnalia, shooting Shia LaBeouf in the ass. That was hilarious.
I howled. I howled. And I was like, I never knew how much I wanted to see that until I saw I and realized I needed that. It was the same with Aubrey Plaza.
And you're getting shot in the heart. I needed that too. Not that she has one. And I'm not saying that Aubrey Plaza by any means is not a good person.
I don't know her. So I can't say anything. I just don't like her acting. That's fine.
That's fine. We all have. I don't want to call it a blind spot, but we all have, you know, certain performers we just don't connect with. She's top of my list.
No, I'm serious. Like unless there is something really incredible. I avoid anything she's in. Well, I have a surprise for you on the phone right now for for an interview is considering you're using that voice.
I say you'd be right. But I think though, this is an audacious movie. I'm glad it exists. It's impressive.
I will admit and it's probably one I will go back to again and again, even though I'm not sure if I like it or I don't like it. I think about maybe it transcends that. I was gonna say I think about 20, 30 years. This movie will probably resonate a lot more than it is doing right now.
And that's the beauty of copolis movies with the exception of maybe the godfather. Most of his movies get shit on. And then people rediscover them later on for the gems that they could be. But we're not at the time.
Like when people look at Dracula at the time, it was favored very well. I hate to say it, but for sure, eight housewives like my mother kind of kept it going. This is how you know her mom doesn't listen to the show. Yes.
Please, that's not the office thing I said about my mother. That's true. That is very true. But when you look at it, the score is fantastic.
The costumes are incredible. Oh, yeah. The modern design, but the jackets somehow look like togas a little bit and stuff like that. The armor looks like muscles, like human muscles.
If you took the skin away, there is so much going into those costumes. That's worth watching alone. Oh, yeah. You have an incredible cast.
Like even the small people you get amazing actors for. There is nothing bad about that movie. I don't understand why people shit on it at the time. It's also a very faithful adaptation of the book, but it didn't transcend well.
But now, 25 almost 30 years later, it is not only a cool classic, it's a classic. I just saw it at a Fathom event last year celebrating its anniversary, which means it stands the test of time. I think Megalopolis is just ahead of its time. It will be interesting to see how this film ages.
This is a film I plan on going back to. It's not really showing anywhere locally after this week. So I don't know. I'm not liking it now, but it's losing all of its screens this coming weekend.
But if you had a chance, or if you do have a chance to see it, I think theatrically see it at least once because it is actually pretty stunning to look at visually. Definitely. And hopefully, we will get a chance to continue to explore and talk about that going into the future. I look forward to the think pieces on five, 10, 15 year anniversary on this.
I'm looking forward to the Oscars this year because I can see costumes, I can see set. But by the way, I didn't mention this, but I need to mention this because it was one of the first things that jumped out to me. Holy fuck, Chloe Feynan. I didn't see that coming.
She was extraordinary in this movie. I was like, wow, she's really good. But to be honest, she kind of reminds me of how Rose Byrne was in Marie Antoinette. Okay.
That's the kind of character I saw her playing. Not much depth, but a lot of fun. That's fair. That's fair.
But I think though, that kind of wraps us up for this week, talking about this movie. If you can find it, make a lot, but it's still like being some theaters as you hear this. Get out, go see it. Love to hear your thoughts.
Yes, definitely. And if you're heading to the theaters, though, and it's not showing, I'm going to recommend the substance if that's still nearby for you. Saturday night, the docu-drama, I guess you could call it, of the 90 minutes leading up to the airing of the first episode of Saturday Night Live. That opens on the 11th.
It's opening this weekend. Today is the 8th. Yes. Which means this weekend.
Yes. The 11th. Yes. I enjoyed it, even though as a Saturday Night Live nerd, and this is where I plug the history articles that we are doing over on film by the month, I think.
I got my eyes stuck. The history on display here is a little wonky, but it's a great movie. I think Jason Reitman has turned in a fantastic film. Also, Dan Aykroyd loved it, and he read the script.
Mm-hmm. I mentioned the Superman documentary, right? Christopher Reeve documentary is getting a wider release this week. That's amazing.
It's very heartfelt if you want a good cry. I would recommend that. Oh, I want to recommend Terrify Your Three, because we had a friend who worked on that. Yes, we actually did.
Our friend, Jared, worked on that show, and I was talking to him about it. He's very proud of all the work that has been created and that movie. He's super excited for people to see it. I've never seen any of the Terrifier movies, but I'm thinking that I may have to grab something that'll call my nerves and sit down and go through all of them to go support.
I told him I'm not sure I was going to go see this or not, because it's certainly not my cup of OT or cup of slash score, but I'm excited. Maybe if I'm at the local multiplex and I know that a screening is ending up ducking to watch the credits to see his name. No, I'll go out and actually watch it. Maybe I will actually go watch it.