Latest / Critically Acclaimed Network / Critically Acclaimed #356 | Send Help, Melania, Iron Lung, The Strangers - Chapter 3, Whistle, The Wrecking Crew, Relationship Goals, Solo Mio, Pillion, Shelter
Transcript
- 0:11[SPEAKER_05]: Greetings friends welcome back to critically acclaims the film review podcast where we review movies But not not before our signature sound effect Explodey the explosion.
- 0:25[SPEAKER_05]: It's floaty.
- 0:26[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah everyone likes floaty.
- 0:29[SPEAKER_05]: We have floaty t-shirts.
- 0:30[SPEAKER_05]: My name is Whitney Sibold.
- 0:31[SPEAKER_05]: I'm a film critic.
- 0:33[SPEAKER_05]: I contribute to slash film with me as always as my Centelating and staggeringly intelligence and better prepared co-host
- 0:40[SPEAKER_05]: Well, you might have to introduce yourself for the record.
- 0:43[SPEAKER_05]: He's more handsome.
- 0:44[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Pish.
- 0:45[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
- 0:46[SPEAKER_01]: I have that.
- 0:47[SPEAKER_01]: I have that for a fact.
- 0:49[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, you with all of your sexy admirers.
- 0:53[SPEAKER_01]: My name is William Bibiani.
- 0:54[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a film critic.
- 0:55[SPEAKER_01]: I write for the rap and I have seen more movies than Whitney, but we've been forced to because of the idea of things not to this weekly for a little bit.
- 1:08[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they pile up.
- 1:10[SPEAKER_05]: I was doing very well there for a second, but I tend to when I invited on to other outlets, like a radio station, we both go on a case here at W here in Los Angeles, and I'm well prepared for those.
- 1:22[SPEAKER_05]: Well, and then the last couple of weeks, I've just been busy, various things have happened, and I wasn't able to catch up.
- 1:28[SPEAKER_05]: Quite as staggeringly quickly.
- 1:30[SPEAKER_01]: We both have day jobs in the industry writing, but our day jobs are different.
- 1:35[SPEAKER_01]: My primary day job is writing reviews.
- 1:40[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
- 1:41[SPEAKER_01]: And your primary day job is more writing like historical pieces and you do sometimes get to write reviews.
- 1:47[SPEAKER_01]: But that means those that I have to prioritize new releases and you don't always have the option to probably only prioritize new releases.
- 1:56[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I could.
- 1:57[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's, but when you do have the reviews and when you do like go on the radio whatever, you can prioritize that, make the part of your time, you tend to absolutely overwhelm me with how much stuff you watch.
- 2:09[SPEAKER_01]: So it does bounce back and forth.
- 2:12[SPEAKER_01]: So if you've ever noticed that there's sometimes a big discrepancy, that's why.
- 2:15[SPEAKER_05]: No, no, uh, we're trying we're not going to move a lot of time to this and we're not Sadly, we're not going to move these together all the time not as much as I wish I wish we could Yeah, I miss it and when we do we do sit next to each other.
- 2:29[SPEAKER_01]: We're so yeah, be worried if we didn't But this time on critically acclaimed we're we're playing some catch-up We are reviewing Sam Ramees survival horror comedy thing send help
- 2:42[SPEAKER_01]: uh... we're reviewing and someone had to do it
- 2:47[SPEAKER_01]: the documentary Melania, and I use documentary and air quotes.
- 2:51[SPEAKER_01]: We're reviewing the new, is it an action comedy that's a wrecking crew?
- 2:54[SPEAKER_01]: Is that what then?
- 2:54[SPEAKER_01]: It's a buddy cop action movie.
- 2:57[SPEAKER_01]: We're reviewing the new Valentine's Day rom-com relationship goals.
- 3:02[SPEAKER_01]: The new, the actually released and incredibly lucrative YouTube horror movie, Iron Long, the conclusion of the reboot trilogy of the strangers, the strangers chapter three,
- 3:17[SPEAKER_01]: The Supernatural Curse Final Destination Knock-off Whistle The Jason Statham Action Movie Shelter And I don't go into more details because Jason Statham Action Movie Does do a lot of the heavy lifting The queer BDSM Romance Pillian And the Kevin James Romcom Solomio Okay, Solomio
- 3:44[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, so let me go.
- 3:46[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, that's great song.
- 3:49[SPEAKER_01]: It is a great song.
- 3:50[SPEAKER_01]: It is the you deny it.
- 3:52[SPEAKER_05]: You can't deny it.
- 3:54[SPEAKER_05]: They based the whole movie about it.
- 3:55[SPEAKER_05]: Does he sing that song?
- 3:56[SPEAKER_01]: He does actually sing, but he doesn't sing that song.
- 3:59[SPEAKER_01]: But that song is discussed in the movie.
- 4:02[SPEAKER_01]: So although it's not about it or based on it, it's it's not out of the blue.
- 4:06[SPEAKER_01]: It's like sometimes you'll watch a movie and it's like
- 4:10[SPEAKER_01]: this calling this movie like naming this movie after this song like when they did that jilly rubber is going to be something to talk about which was a good movie actually but kind of forgotten in her filmography but uh that was there was that song something to talk about and uh something that's not good back and it has fuck all to do with the movie which is the popular song yes um so this is
- 4:34[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it told me it was not currently at the top of the the charts, but it's not it's not it's not it's not inappropriate And we will talk about that from later the biggest Financial success in terms of number one of the box office, which is what we like to start with
- 4:51[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, is for a couple of weeks running, uh, the Sam Ramey or comedy things and help.
- 4:58[SPEAKER_01]: And I was out of town when this came out and I was completely unable to go see it since.
- 5:04[SPEAKER_01]: And this infuriates me because Sam Ramey is one of my favorite directors.
- 5:07[SPEAKER_01]: He's been in a slump lately last 15 years or so, I think, but it's not that he's been in a slump.
- 5:12[SPEAKER_05]: It's that he's been busy raising five children and also getting a divorce.
- 5:17[SPEAKER_05]: So I didn't realize.
- 5:19[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he's actually been going through a lot of personal stuff.
- 5:21[SPEAKER_05]: And he's a busy producing.
- 5:23[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the dad to his kids.
- 5:25[SPEAKER_05]: He's directed here and there, but he's only made four movies since 2009, which is a long time.
- 5:31[SPEAKER_05]: He made, um, Australian powerful.
- 5:33[SPEAKER_05]: Drag me to hell was in 2009.
- 5:35[SPEAKER_05]: I love drag me to hell.
- 5:35[SPEAKER_05]: Dregmit Hell's Pretty Good.
- 5:36[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, then he did Oz the Great and Powerful, which was like 2013 Which is um, there's a few interesting ideas in that movie.
- 5:44[SPEAKER_05]: It's not a good movie It's the same story as Army of Darkness when you think about it getting like swept away to another time in place Yeah, and it's kind of a kind of a rassible modern guy in a fantasy scenario.
- 5:54[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, again, I think there's a neat
- 5:56[SPEAKER_01]: concept in there, but it doesn't really work.
- 5:58[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 5:58[SPEAKER_01]: And then he did Dr.
- 5:59[SPEAKER_01]: Strange in the multiverse of madness, which I'm going to say this one too, I think.
- 6:06[SPEAKER_01]: No, it wasn't twenty two.
- 6:07[SPEAKER_01]: It was.
- 6:08[SPEAKER_01]: No.
- 6:09[SPEAKER_01]: That was 23.
- 6:11[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, you're probably right.
- 6:12[SPEAKER_01]: What was 22 and I think about it.
- 6:14[SPEAKER_01]: But regardless, my thing with Dr.
- 6:16[SPEAKER_01]: Strange and the multiverse of madness is that is a fantastic title.
- 6:21[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that title is so evocative.
- 6:24[SPEAKER_01]: That title is like, when you think about like the old Steve Didko, Dr.
- 6:29[SPEAKER_01]: Strange comics and how they were just completely surreal, like acid trip movies.
- 6:34[SPEAKER_01]: And you say to yourself,
- 6:36[SPEAKER_01]: Sam Remi, if you take out Dr.
- 6:38[SPEAKER_01]: Strange, Sam Remi is directing a new movie called The Multiverse of Madness.
- 6:42[SPEAKER_01]: Oh fuck, the possibilities are limitless, and then you watch the movie, it's like, oh, they put a lot of limits on that.
- 6:50[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 6:50[SPEAKER_01]: There's one cool bit in that movie where Dr.
- 6:53[SPEAKER_01]: Strange has a music fight with himself.
- 6:56[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so me that's kind of fucking cool, but it's all the little things.
- 6:59[SPEAKER_01]: That's the that's the fun stuff Little details.
- 7:02[SPEAKER_05]: It's it's really overwritten as those MCU films tended to be Has like some stylistic trade marks that Sam Raimi brought into it, but I feel like even when it was making those spider-man movies They were studio monsters especially one in three.
- 7:16[SPEAKER_05]: I think two had a lot more of his personality in it
- 7:19[SPEAKER_01]: I think what I love about the Spider-Man movies even one in three, which are less popular than the second.
- 7:27[SPEAKER_01]: He was still putting his stamp on it, more and two than the others, but they were still Sam Ramey films, whereas most other filmmakers that they got, like I'm sorry for like Christopher Nolan and Guillermo Del Toro, but like a lot of the other super her movies in its wake were just studio product and they wanted the director to kind of get out of the way, and I would say Black Panther's another exception here, but like a lot of the other ones are basically just
- 7:53[SPEAKER_01]: I think John Favre is a great filmmaker when he wants to be.
- 7:55[SPEAKER_01]: Iron Man doesn't really have an author's stamp.
- 8:00[SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, it's good movie.
- 8:02[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like John Favre is sort of the era parent to film makers like Spielberg or Zemeckas, who are just sort of really good at a certain kind of very slick populist film again.
- 8:14[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of what he was aspiring for and I think he hit it with something like Iron Man I think he's more like as a mechist and but even some mechist is early stuff had like a lot of person Yeah, and I think that road does too don't got me wrong But I feel like a lot of his really mainstream stuff like I look at his jungle book It's okay, but then I look at chef or I look at um
- 8:37[SPEAKER_01]: uh... even zithora zithora has a lot of personalities are really really fun that's that's that's his imagination running wild but uh... uh... we're off to be met and we're finally has a new movie it's been a really long time it's said doctor strange big break and now send help and uh... and uh... and that quicky thing
- 8:54[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the whole thing.
- 8:57[SPEAKER_05]: He did one episode, but he produced it.
- 8:59[SPEAKER_05]: That was 50 states of Friday.
- 9:01[SPEAKER_05]: He also did the Evil Dead TV series.
- 9:03[SPEAKER_05]: He's been keeping busy, but he hasn't done a lot of feature phones.
- 9:05[SPEAKER_05]: He's only back with SunHall.
- 9:06[SPEAKER_01]: He also produced a crawl that's alligator movie, which was great by the way.
- 9:12[SPEAKER_01]: And that feels like a same rainy joint.
- 9:14[SPEAKER_01]: It's got that energy to it.
- 9:15[SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, Sam Reemies back, and this is him doing his stick again.
- 9:20[SPEAKER_05]: Not he's not the sort of wild stylized stick that he's known for from like early evil dead pictures.
- 9:27[SPEAKER_05]: He's not like fling in the camera around and doing the wild zooms But he is sort of throwing in some of his interests.
- 9:34[SPEAKER_05]: There's a hagg monster in sent help in one shot for some reason just one just one
- 9:40[SPEAKER_05]: Like there's like a dream sequence, and there's like a witch monster appears over someone's shoulder and that's it.
- 9:45[SPEAKER_05]: He likes to throw in witch monsters.
- 9:47[SPEAKER_05]: Does that mean he's gonna not hold a drag me to hell?
- 9:50[SPEAKER_05]: I don't think it's the same, like it's not the same evil witch who cursed Alice in Lohman.
- 9:54[SPEAKER_05]: It may be fun but what?
- 9:57[SPEAKER_05]: But Rachel McAdams plays Linda Little, she is a hardworking office wank and she's one of those hardworking office wanks who does all of the work, hands it to really slimy
- 10:16[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, she's been passed over for a promotion and time and time again.
- 10:20[SPEAKER_05]: The boss of the company has recently died and his son is played by Delano Bryan is taking over and he's Yuppie King asshole number one.
- 10:31[SPEAKER_05]: He actually points to a portrait of his of the boss and it's first Campbell isn't that cute.
- 10:36[SPEAKER_05]: That's the first Campbell cameo in this one.
- 10:38[SPEAKER_05]: It's just a portrait on a wall.
- 10:39[SPEAKER_05]: I'll take it.
- 10:42[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, Dylan O'Brien, super dickhead, and says to Linda, hey, I'm not going to give you the promotion.
- 10:47[SPEAKER_05]: I need somebody, I need a guy, I need somebody who plays golf and then he interviews like some hot, tall, like six foot model, looking is a predatory, and she's in sex.
- 10:57[SPEAKER_05]: uh, Linda is past over because she's kind of, even though she's played by Rachel Mike Adams, they try to like, dowdy or up and make her like really mousy and give her like wild hair and ill-fitting glasses and she's eating tuna fish and gets an on her face.
- 11:12[SPEAKER_05]: So she's seen as like, she's past over because she's not attractive enough for a little brand.
- 11:17[SPEAKER_05]: You don't understand.
- 11:19[SPEAKER_05]: She has a ponytail and wears glasses.
- 11:24[SPEAKER_05]: Those are,
- 11:25[SPEAKER_05]: Am I nuts that I think those are attractive features?
- 11:27[SPEAKER_01]: No, I remember when she's all that came out and I was like she was prettier before the makeover My personal opinion.
- 11:33[SPEAKER_01]: I know that subjective Glasses, no, I don't believe the glasses.
- 11:36[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very interested with the glasses.
- 11:37[SPEAKER_01]: I never understood that.
- 11:38[SPEAKER_05]: Anyway, I had a grasp, but yeah But she's so she's heartbroken when she's passed over for a
- 11:47[SPEAKER_05]: promotion.
- 11:48[SPEAKER_05]: Then Obas says, you know, to make it up to you, actually, I do think you're really valuable in the company.
- 11:53[SPEAKER_05]: I need you to do all this work when you go on a business trip to like Southeast Asia.
- 11:57[SPEAKER_05]: So they take a plane to on this business trip.
- 12:00[SPEAKER_05]: We learn through some of these introductory sequences.
- 12:02[SPEAKER_05]: And there's a lot of it.
- 12:03[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of set up as we're getting into the main action that Linda is also a survivor enthusiast.
- 12:09[SPEAKER_05]: She reads the show survivor
- 12:14[SPEAKER_05]: She's just really, really keen on wilderness survival.
- 12:19[SPEAKER_05]: So when the plane on the way to this business trip crash lands on this deserted island, she is
- 12:27[SPEAKER_05]: Well, Seth, she knows exactly what to do.
- 12:30[SPEAKER_01]: She's like lock on lock.
- 12:32[SPEAKER_01]: Anthony Hopkins in the edge.
- 12:33[SPEAKER_05]: She finds Delo Brian is injured.
- 12:35[SPEAKER_05]: She kind of like puts him in a little shelter and her system back to health.
- 12:38[SPEAKER_05]: It's raining a lot because it's tropical environment.
- 12:39[SPEAKER_05]: She catches water.
- 12:40[SPEAKER_05]: She knows how to build a shelter.
- 12:42[SPEAKER_05]: She knows what to look for.
- 12:43[SPEAKER_05]: She knows where to look for fruit.
- 12:45[SPEAKER_05]: She knows how to catch fish.
- 12:47[SPEAKER_05]: She's fine.
- 12:49[SPEAKER_05]: And in fact, it doesn't take, it's only a few days on the after being on the island where
- 12:54[SPEAKER_05]: her skin clears up and her she puts her hair down and it's just like what now she starts to look we're more dazzling yeah meanwhile Dylan O'Brien is resentful that she has all of this agency now and has all of this authority
- 13:07[SPEAKER_05]: And the bulk of the movie is about the shifting power dynamic between them now that she's in charge And he is trying to sort of still assert his control over the situation even though he has no skills Yet he doesn't know how to survive it all.
- 13:20[SPEAKER_05]: There's this early sequence where she he says I don't need you.
- 13:23[SPEAKER_05]: I'm fine.
- 13:23[SPEAKER_05]: He's injuries like bleeding out of his leg So she says fine and leaves him there for like two days And he can't move and he's like dying of thirst and she finally comes back and says okay.
- 13:33[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you need me
- 13:36[SPEAKER_05]: uh... there are some fun samurai bits while they're learning how to survive there there are borders on the island for instance and there's this really revolting sequence where racialic atoms slays a bore with a knife and you know like the boys diving at her she's stabbing and she's getting sprayed with blood and snot is coming down her face uh... there's a bit where she uh... eat something poisonous and barf sent a delinial brine's face over and over again a lot of barf and snot and
- 14:06[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 14:07[SPEAKER_05]: I miss Goop.
- 14:10[SPEAKER_01]: The Goop, not the product.
- 14:12[SPEAKER_05]: Not the going to cultural products.
- 14:14[SPEAKER_05]: I miss Goop in movies.
- 14:15[SPEAKER_05]: Goop in slime.
- 14:17[SPEAKER_05]: Actors being coded by actual viscous fluids.
- 14:21[SPEAKER_05]: the scourge of CGI blood is something we were never lived down no no I mean and there's some CGI in this but you can tell that he's actually spraying down original makeup so it's very game yeah and she because this is Sam rainy film though all everything's really heightened the performances are a little bigger than reality the situation's a little bigger than reality there's uh uh it's not quite realistic you know it's about as realistic as gilligan's island like they're just kind of a
- 14:48[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my girlfriend saw this movie.
- 14:51[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't get the go of it.
- 14:52[SPEAKER_01]: She did and she's also a big survivor fan.
- 14:56[SPEAKER_01]: She was that show and she was very amused that the idea is that some character who watches a lot of survivor has a leg up on someone who doesn't in an actual survival situation but then she was like, but that's not how you make a fire.
- 15:11[SPEAKER_01]: Like someone didn't watch enough survivor.
- 15:13[SPEAKER_01]: No, it didn't get that right, which I know it's funny.
- 15:17[SPEAKER_05]: Again, there's there's not a lot of realism to it.
- 15:20[SPEAKER_05]: There's also broadcast some plot points early on because they're going to be some twists in the plot throughout I would never dream to reveal them, but there is a scene early on where she says see those big rocks in the shape of an X Don't go on the other side of those.
- 15:33[SPEAKER_05]: It's full of like stinging metals and fissiles and you wouldn't like it
- 15:37[SPEAKER_05]: Blockpoint, blockpoint, blockpoint, blockpoint, blockpoint, blockpoint, blockpoint, blockpoint, something on the other side that's going to come into play later in the movie.
- 15:43[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's about the monster.
- 15:45[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, I'm not going to say.
- 15:46[SPEAKER_05]: I don't care.
- 15:47[SPEAKER_05]: But the fact that you didn't say means.
- 15:49[SPEAKER_01]: Smoke monster.
- 15:50[SPEAKER_05]: Could very well be a smoke monster.
- 15:51[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 15:53[SPEAKER_01]: I will say this when I saw the trailer for this.
- 15:55[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, is this just a horror movie version of Swept Away?
- 15:59[SPEAKER_05]: It's more of a much more energetic version of the final act of Triangle of sadness.
- 16:04[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, because that's also about shifting power dynamics.
- 16:08[SPEAKER_05]: There is the...
- 16:09[SPEAKER_05]: I think she was just like a plumber or toilet technician.
- 16:13[SPEAKER_05]: She was just a worker on a ship.
- 16:14[SPEAKER_05]: She was a worker on a yacht with all these rich people.
- 16:16[SPEAKER_05]: And when they crash line in the islands, the rich people don't even know how to find food.
- 16:20[SPEAKER_05]: Like they're fighting over bags of potato chips that are washing a shore.
- 16:24[SPEAKER_05]: Jesus, well, I'm the only one who knows how to start a fire.
- 16:26[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm king now.
- 16:28[SPEAKER_05]: I got to move into the one shelter.
- 16:31[SPEAKER_05]: I get to choose my sex partners.
- 16:33[SPEAKER_05]: Like she has, she finally has all of the power in the situation.
- 16:36[SPEAKER_05]: That's very much what's going on and sent help as well.
- 16:39[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, Rachel McAdams national treasure Canadian national treasure in Rachel McAdams.
- 16:44[SPEAKER_05]: She is so bloody good in everything But in this.
- 16:48[SPEAKER_05]: She's so so good at selling it at playing it the way Sam Raimi wants her to and that she's doing it a little bit larger Then I think she would and because she can be on just understated as well Oh, yeah, so maybe she should have won an Oscar for are you there got it's me Mars she should win an Oscar for this oh like she's great in this and the way she plays off of Dylan O'Brien is great as well
- 17:11[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, I don't know what Sam Raimi was trying to get at because as the film goes on, you realize that she's, like, dealing with brands of shit, you kind of want her to sort of assert dominance over this guy because he was such a jerk back in the office.
- 17:27[SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to have him kind of realize and be humbled at some point.
- 17:30[SPEAKER_05]: Hell, again, it's come up.
- 17:31[SPEAKER_01]: Hell, I didn't.
- 17:32[SPEAKER_01]: Hell, I didn't.
- 17:32[SPEAKER_05]: Hell, I either be humbled or she'll get revenge in some way, but she also becomes a little bit
- 17:39[SPEAKER_01]: So is the argument that power corrupts regardless of other advantages, like money or gender?
- 17:47[SPEAKER_05]: I think Sam Raimi isn't thinking quite that hard.
- 17:49[SPEAKER_05]: He's always been a little bit more of an entertainer.
- 17:51[SPEAKER_05]: There are, he did a couple of films that were a little bit more for lack of better term adult.
- 17:56[SPEAKER_05]: A simple plan.
- 17:58[SPEAKER_05]: A simple plan to give for love at the game, like he was trying to prove that he could make movies for grown-ups.
- 18:03[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 18:03[SPEAKER_05]: And then he made more superhero movies.
- 18:08[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, the only one of those movies that's great is a simple plan.
- 18:12[SPEAKER_01]: Simple plan is great and I think I think it's good.
- 18:14[SPEAKER_01]: And I get this good and a lot of the game is fine.
- 18:17[SPEAKER_01]: I have seen for love of the game.
- 18:18[SPEAKER_01]: It's a sign.
- 18:19[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good premise.
- 18:20[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a great, it's not, but it of all the Kevin Costner baseball movies.
- 18:25[SPEAKER_01]: It's the worst, but that still is a lot of room for it to be quite good.
- 18:28[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, yeah.
- 18:31[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, yeah, I don't know.
- 18:34[SPEAKER_01]: What does Sam Ramey have?
- 18:35[SPEAKER_01]: I always thought that Sam Ramey's
- 18:39[SPEAKER_01]: when you think of him in terms of like as the author of these movies and he always puts a stamp on it like it's always the same rainy film but like what is the same rainy film like when we think about like what is a scorsese film all he's in love with sent him a history and he's got a very catholic perspective on that he's interested in the corruption of humanity.
- 18:58[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Spielberg is interested in putting a children in peril.
- 19:03[SPEAKER_01]: But in children in peril, but also the American soul and the conflicts and resolutions between parents and children.
- 19:11[SPEAKER_01]: And then Sam Ramey, it feels like there's a certain, almost existential horror to most of his movies, even the ones that aren't necessarily horror movies, where
- 19:23[SPEAKER_01]: life is going to tear you down and life takes the form not so much of like Gene Hackman or Venom, but Sam Remy himself.
- 19:34[SPEAKER_01]: The director is here to punish his all the characters.
- 19:38[SPEAKER_05]: Sam Remy is the villain in all of his pieces, but he's a he's like a villain the same way bugs bunny is a villain in duck-a-muck Yeah, that that's in that he's pulling everyone's strings.
- 19:50[SPEAKER_05]: He's a controlling everyone's fate But he's doing so like well, he's kind of giggling a little bit.
- 19:55[SPEAKER_05]: There's not a lot of
- 19:57[SPEAKER_05]: I wouldn't, I would hesitate to call him cruel.
- 20:00[SPEAKER_05]: He's not a mean filmmaker, even though he kind of puts Bruce Campbell through the ringer.
- 20:03[SPEAKER_05]: Bruce Campbell would disagree with that.
- 20:05[SPEAKER_05]: I think he's, uh, but he's he's a mean older brother.
- 20:07[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, love him, but he will like why you keep hitting yourself, why you keep hitting yourself.
- 20:11[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of what he does to all of his characters.
- 20:13[SPEAKER_05]: And that's sort of the impulse.
- 20:15[SPEAKER_05]: It's like he has more ver for the structure of filmmaking that he does for, like larger ideas.
- 20:21[SPEAKER_05]: He just likes to prod people and he thinks the violence is funny.
- 20:25[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know about that.
- 20:25[SPEAKER_01]: I genuinely feel as though he's trying to say something about whether he means to or not about how it feels to never make it.
- 20:36[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, sometimes his characters do at the end, but even like Spider-Man, like at the end of Spider-Man, too He defeats the bad guy.
- 20:43[SPEAKER_01]: He saves New York City.
- 20:44[SPEAKER_01]: He gets the girl, but what's the last shot?
- 20:46[SPEAKER_01]: It's not him swinging away going woohoo.
- 20:48[SPEAKER_01]: It's his girlfriend going I'm gonna have to worry about him forever I and it's like, oh, he can't win And I think that's I think that's something I've always glanced on to a Sam Ramie the idea is that no matter what you do No matter how good you are and try and counts But you can't win
- 21:05[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, life will always win in life is a bully and it's really hard not to sympathize with that sometimes And I think that pity a lot of his characters and I want them to succeed in spite of Sam Ramey Yeah
- 21:20[SPEAKER_01]: How does this fit into his overall and just in terms of overall quality?
- 21:23[SPEAKER_01]: Is this one of his better films?
- 21:24[SPEAKER_05]: It's, I would compare it to Drag Me to Hell.
- 21:28[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's, that's high praise.
- 21:30[SPEAKER_01]: I love Drag Me to Hell.
- 21:31[SPEAKER_05]: I like Drag Me to Hell.
- 21:33[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't fall in love with it.
- 21:34[SPEAKER_05]: It's hard as some, as much as some people did.
- 21:36[SPEAKER_05]: And he doesn't make films about women a lot.
- 21:42[SPEAKER_05]: His, for tagging us tend to be men.
- 21:43[SPEAKER_05]: He tends to surround himself with men.
- 21:47[SPEAKER_01]: Quick as a dead.
- 21:49[SPEAKER_01]: the gift, the same help, obviously.
- 21:53[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 21:54[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like I'm going to be anyone.
- 21:57[SPEAKER_05]: If you look at it, if you look at his movies though,
- 22:01[SPEAKER_05]: women tend to be either concerned wives, or literal monsters, or they're like loving girlfriends who turn into monsters.
- 22:13[SPEAKER_05]: You look at a simple plan, or a British font is essentially lady Macbeth in that movie.
- 22:18[SPEAKER_01]: I would say that Mary Jane and Aunt May and the Spider-Man movies have our interesting complicated characters.
- 22:25[SPEAKER_05]: I suppose so that they're they're about Spider-Man.
- 22:28[SPEAKER_01]: They're about Spider-Man.
- 22:29[SPEAKER_01]: I'm granting you.
- 22:29[SPEAKER_01]: I just feel like you're treated in the M&A fights with.
- 22:31[SPEAKER_01]: I just feel as though they're treated with dignity.
- 22:34[SPEAKER_05]: That's fair.
- 22:35[SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, Protagon I need to tell you.
- 22:37[SPEAKER_01]: But then you got like Brigitte Fonda in a simple plan.
- 22:40[SPEAKER_01]: Who is there to suffer basically?
- 22:42[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I get it.
- 22:44[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it's cut and drive.
- 22:45[SPEAKER_05]: I see your point and and his women I guess to be fair suffered the same way as men do like looking at men who's always struggling to moment when it appears like I can't even pray without the green goblin like crashing into the room.
- 22:57[SPEAKER_00]: Finish your prayers.
- 22:59[SPEAKER_00]: What is the scene?
- 23:00[SPEAKER_00]: The scene is so weird.
- 23:03[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you want me to finish the prayer?
- 23:05[SPEAKER_00]: What do I am distracted now?
- 23:08[SPEAKER_01]: It's a weird scene and it will be full of very weird scenes if you
- 23:12[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, but it's just nice to see Sam Revy back because he still has a lot of energy.
- 23:18[SPEAKER_05]: I think he's, it feels like a sigh of relief for him to finally be back after this huge long head as because, uh, since since, uh, since drag me to hell, his two main theatrical feature films were gigantic studio projects with hundreds of million dollar budgets, which he was able to handle a Spider-Man, not with Spider-Man 3.
- 23:38[SPEAKER_05]: Because that one lot of studio.
- 23:40[SPEAKER_03]: Not a studio.
- 23:41[SPEAKER_03]: That one wasn't a lot to do.
- 23:42[SPEAKER_03]: Way out of control.
- 23:45[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, I heard a story recently about when he was making his film, Crime Wave, which was the filming mid after the evil day.
- 23:52[SPEAKER_05]: Way back in the 86 or something.
- 23:53[SPEAKER_01]: Big broad, weird, colon brothers, ask, almost was written by the colon brothers.
- 23:58[SPEAKER_01]: It was written by the colon brothers.
- 23:59[SPEAKER_01]: It's got that quirkiness, but it's almost like, what if the colon brothers did like a naked gun style movie with like a hitch cocky and plot?
- 24:06[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds great, and there's some amazing filmmaking in it, but like, there's some great set pieces.
- 24:10[SPEAKER_05]: It's just not fun to walk.
- 24:11[SPEAKER_05]: The chase through the room full of doors.
- 24:13[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 24:14[SPEAKER_05]: That's so brilliant, but yeah, it's terrible, but from what I heard is that when he was making crime wave, he was trying to shoot at the way a shot evil dad, which is to say, I'm gonna get my 12 best friends, I'm gonna force them to work 14 hours a day, and we'll be done in two weeks, and the studio said,
- 24:32[SPEAKER_05]: We have unions to do that and you shouldn't have done that in the first place if you're being we're being honest about it.
- 24:39[SPEAKER_05]: We're starting to take it away from him and there was a big mess with crime way.
- 24:43[SPEAKER_05]: And I feel like by the time he got to Spider-Man, it's like he knows he can't do that anymore.
- 24:49[SPEAKER_05]: But I feel like that's what he's always wanted.
- 24:51[SPEAKER_05]: He's wanted small casts, intimate settings, and of course he wants to crack the whip on everybody.
- 24:56[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 24:57[SPEAKER_05]: And if Rachel McAdams is going to be his new Bruce Campbell, I'm okay with that.
- 25:01[SPEAKER_05]: Can you see any, I know they already remade evil dead, but I'd love to see a Rachel McAdams in the ash roll of evil dead.
- 25:07[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're making another evil dead movie now, so just keep adding.
- 25:12[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite, like, there's a couple of stories on the Spider-Man movies where, um,
- 25:17[SPEAKER_01]: There's one scene I think it's in Spider-Man 2 where Peter Parker like drops his books and a bunch of people walk past him and like brush past him and then one person like really waxing with their book bag, that was Sam Rami.
- 25:28[SPEAKER_01]: Of course it was, but if you watch the special features in Spider-Man 2 there's like a bit where they're like in a big green screen room and Kirsten Dunst is being carried by one of Dr. Octopus's tentacles and you've been like up there all day and she's really unhappy and they keep filming stuff and then finally Sam Rami walks
- 25:47[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want this to be a good movie or a bad movie?
- 25:51[SPEAKER_01]: I can't even look very concerned.
- 25:52[SPEAKER_01]: Cook movie?
- 25:54[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, because you know, it's just like, oh, this is gonna, this is gonna get a rough afternoon and I'm gonna be swinging around on this tag.
- 26:03[UNKNOWN]: Go.
- 26:03[SPEAKER_05]: I have a feeling we're about to see sort of a new era with Sam Ramie because because he was he was away raising his kids and now he's a divorce man and he's gonna get back into it.
- 26:14[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, getting back into the game a little bit so I hope so.
- 26:18[SPEAKER_05]: I like to see him bring a little bit of his comic energy but I also want to see him do whatever he wants.
- 26:24[SPEAKER_05]: I want to see him grow as a filmmaker because I know he's capable of a lot.
- 26:27[SPEAKER_01]: He's he's really really talented.
- 26:29[SPEAKER_01]: He's a very quirky gentleman and people really
- 26:33[SPEAKER_01]: terrible to Bruce Campbell and they keep working together so they're clearly going but like yeah it's just.
- 26:40[SPEAKER_05]: One more thing and this is something I actually got to interview Sam Raimi for this and I brought this up with him.
- 26:45[SPEAKER_05]: Um, it's the whole, you know, but the whole Sam Ray me West Craven thing, right?
- 26:51[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, yeah, in the West, um, West Craven did a movie called The Hell's Have Eyes back in the late 70s.
- 26:58[SPEAKER_05]: And in, and that that's like mutants attacking people in a trailer up in the desert.
- 27:02[SPEAKER_05]: Very scary, I believe.
- 27:03[SPEAKER_05]: And, um, yeah, really really good.
- 27:05[SPEAKER_05]: And evidently there's a jaws poster inside the trailer and it's like ripped and hanging sideways Which was a metaphor for this movie's that much scarier than jaws.
- 27:13[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like jaws is like fake horror This is the real thing and then what's Henry me that evil dead He put the trailer put the poster for Hills of eyes and there any rip that of him.
- 27:20[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, so it's like What's crazy to notice that?
- 27:24[SPEAKER_05]: So there's a reason why somebody falls asleep watching the evil dead and nightmare in Elm Street
- 27:29[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's really, I wish the evil dead.
- 27:30[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there's the same word where Heather Lange and Campus watching the evil dead and it makes her fall asleep.
- 27:35[SPEAKER_05]: So that's kind of like, I think West Craving has ribbing Sam rainy back a little bit.
- 27:39[SPEAKER_01]: Got about that one, that's funny.
- 27:41[SPEAKER_05]: And then wouldn't you know, it's Sam Rainey put a a pretty glove, like it's in a background scene and evil dead too.
- 27:46[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 27:46[SPEAKER_05]: So they keep were kind of like tossing the ball back and forth a little bit.
- 27:49[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 27:50[SPEAKER_05]: In this movie, Rachel McAdams gets into a fight at one point, and she suffers a little bit of eye trauma, and for a little while she has a red eye.
- 28:02[SPEAKER_05]: Rachel McAdams, because he was on an airplane.
- 28:05[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:05[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:06[SPEAKER_05]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:07[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:08[SPEAKER_05]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:10[SPEAKER_05]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:10[SPEAKER_05]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:11[SPEAKER_05]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:12[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:13[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:13[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:14[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:16[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:16[SPEAKER_01]: She was on an airplane.
- 28:18[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get this out of the way.
- 28:20[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about tell me about the triumph of the will yeah I wanted to call a garbage fire of the will and then my editors were like people aren't going to get that reference And I'm like I think they will but whatever You should triumph of the swill would have oh So that's even better Just try it a little better.
- 28:45[SPEAKER_01]: That's so good.
- 28:46[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 28:46[SPEAKER_01]: Well anyway, there's a new documentary
- 28:49[SPEAKER_01]: There's a new movie that was made like documentary.
- 28:52[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a called Melania, and it is about Melania Trump, the first lady of the United States for two non-consecutive occasions.
- 29:03[SPEAKER_01]: And it was commissioned or purchased by Amazon for like $35,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
- 29:19[SPEAKER_01]: no one spends that much money on a documentary.
- 29:21[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 29:21[SPEAKER_01]: And at that, that's absolutely money changing hands.
- 29:25[SPEAKER_01]: It's just unfuck and believable.
- 29:27[SPEAKER_05]: It's, well, and it's very transparently a political favor.
- 29:31[SPEAKER_05]: By the way, this is a really, specifically Jeff Bezos, but like all of the big wigs behind Amazon, trying to curry favor with a corrupt president who likes getting favors.
- 29:42[SPEAKER_01]: Because let me tell you something, when you watch,
- 29:45[SPEAKER_01]: Let me rephrase.
- 29:46[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you something, you will hopefully never watch Melania, and I don't mean that in terms of I'm telling you what you should or shouldn't watch, it's not my job.
- 29:54[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying, I hope for your sake.
- 29:56[SPEAKER_05]: You don't go through this because this is one of the worst, nobody pays money to see this.
- 30:01[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I will say this.
- 30:05[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't pay money to see this okay.
- 30:08[SPEAKER_01]: I did not.
- 30:09[SPEAKER_01]: I won't tell you how I saw it.
- 30:11[SPEAKER_01]: If you theater hopped, say so.
- 30:13[SPEAKER_01]: I was excited.
- 30:15[SPEAKER_01]: I let me with this way.
- 30:16[SPEAKER_01]: Normally I opposed theater hopping.
- 30:19[SPEAKER_01]: Normally.
- 30:20[SPEAKER_05]: But anyway, I haven't seen this, Mary.
- 30:24[SPEAKER_05]: You should not be giving money to this corrupt.
- 30:27[SPEAKER_01]: And I absolutely did not.
- 30:29[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, okay.
- 30:32[SPEAKER_01]: So,
- 30:35[SPEAKER_01]: This feature film, I feel like that's an accurate description, was directed by Brett Ratner.
- 30:47[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, the sex past.
- 30:48[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, who was completely canceled and with good cause because of a lot of allegations for sexual harassment and worse.
- 30:57[SPEAKER_01]: I would argue that his greatest claim to cinematic fame is great contribution to cinema was not getting in Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker's way.
- 31:10[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he directed a buddy cop movie called Rush Hour.
- 31:13[SPEAKER_05]: So, perfectly entertaining Hollywood.
- 31:16[SPEAKER_01]: It's a generic buddy cop movie.
- 31:18[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's, it's, it's, it's adequate.
- 31:20[SPEAKER_05]: It's about the charisma of the stars and they have charisma.
- 31:22[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
- 31:22[SPEAKER_01]: And they do.
- 31:23[SPEAKER_01]: No one's pretending otherwise.
- 31:25[SPEAKER_01]: But if you look at the rest of his film career,
- 31:29[SPEAKER_01]: aggressive mediocrity like you can tell like sometimes that he's trying and still the best he can do is mediocrity.
- 31:37[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at like I would say he's like red dragon like red dragon you're dealing with one of the most influential detective novels of all time.
- 31:45[SPEAKER_01]: You're dealing with one of the best thriller novels of all time and we were that has already been made into a
- 31:56[SPEAKER_01]: You got Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ray Fines, Emily Watson, Philipsymore Hoffman, Harvey Kytel, I mean, holy fuck.
- 32:08[SPEAKER_01]: And it's okay, a little.
- 32:13[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you even got the original screenwriter for Silence of the Lamps, like you got that guy to come back.
- 32:18[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
- 32:19[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, a little and I know some people are kind of that movie because ultimately he doesn't get in the story's way He just doesn't tell it and that's the thing with Brad and I really I watch his movies.
- 32:31[SPEAKER_01]: I think most of his movies and He knows how to get like, okay, we're gonna get a wide shot and we're gonna get a couple of close-ups and An comedian and that then will be able to edit them together and I feel like that's where he's
- 32:48[SPEAKER_01]: his visual genius taps out like I remember even like the one time I remember I'm actually trying to do something kind of clever was there's a shot and actually in the last stand and Kelsey Grammar is playing the beast and he's covered in blue fur and he's reading we cut to him in a room and he's reading a book and then the camera
- 33:07[SPEAKER_01]: Revolves and he realized he's hanging upside down as he's reading the book.
- 33:11[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's kind of clever And then he realized like his hair was an actually falling down like gravity was affecting it, so he couldn't even do that right I have hidden suspend the actor.
- 33:22[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would say his best movie is Hercules with Dwayne Johnson Which is which is watchable enough.
- 33:32[SPEAKER_01]: Okay Like it's it's it's it's not an unwatchable film.
- 33:35[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of amusing
- 33:37[SPEAKER_01]: but he's not actually filmmaker, he has nothing to say.
- 33:41[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would argue that someone who has this little, this limited capacity to observe human condition, this little interest in history and drama and context and themes is not someone who should probably be making any documentary.
- 34:07[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, that's not necessarily, I don't think that's the best cocktail for someone who's going to make a really interesting documentary and what he has in Melania, leaving aside the fact that it's a puff piece of Melania Trump obviously has total control over how she's presented and there's no there's no actual like inside or damning questions, but like he has unprecedented access.
- 34:33[SPEAKER_01]: to a significant moment in history.
- 34:36[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a good moment?
- 34:37[SPEAKER_01]: No, is it significant?
- 34:39[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, cameras should be there.
- 34:44[SPEAKER_01]: He really wants you to know about her hats.
- 34:47[SPEAKER_01]: He really wants you to see her shoes.
- 34:49[SPEAKER_05]: If Melania has complete control over this and Brett Ratner has no interest in doing anything other than puffing up Melania Trump.
- 34:58[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 34:59[SPEAKER_05]: How are they making her look?
- 35:01[SPEAKER_05]: heroic.
- 35:02[SPEAKER_05]: What are they trying to say?
- 35:03[SPEAKER_05]: Because I remember that Reagan film and they really yeah they they turned him into this like mythic figure.
- 35:08[SPEAKER_05]: They said like the Soviet Union would not have fallen were an offer this one rugged individual kind of stuff.
- 35:14[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a bad movie but it has a perspective at least like it's like we genuinely think he's great.
- 35:18[SPEAKER_05]: It's incorrect but they they're trying to turn him into like this god.
- 35:22[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah and they have and they have a mechanism by which to do that.
- 35:25[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's successful but it's using all the tools.
- 35:29[SPEAKER_01]: He is presenting Melania Trump as someone who is in absolute control over her image.
- 35:37[SPEAKER_01]: She has a history as a model and one of the first big things we see in the movie, extended sequence, is her with a fashion designer figuring out what she's going to wear on an inauguration day.
- 35:51[SPEAKER_01]: And she's just like, okay, well, I know I need this tucked in here, and I want this wider at the shoulder, or this isn't falling off of my neck, right?
- 35:58[SPEAKER_01]: And then we got a short interview with the costume designer, the fashion designer, and he's just like, I love working with Melania Trump.
- 36:05[SPEAKER_01]: She knows what she wants from fashion.
- 36:06[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, this is how we're beginning fashion.
- 36:10[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but you know what?
- 36:11[SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
- 36:12[SPEAKER_01]: Style is a factor.
- 36:14[SPEAKER_05]: Hmm, look at Kennedy.
- 36:16[SPEAKER_01]: Look at Kennedy, the Kennedy's had style, you know?
- 36:18[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's people, Obama's, the Obama's had style.
- 36:21[SPEAKER_01]: Like, at least people have an idea that we need to be presentable.
- 36:25[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we need to be presented in a certain way.
- 36:27[SPEAKER_01]: To explore that is not disinteresting, it's not uninteresting, sorry.
- 36:32[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but it's an interesting place to start.
- 36:35[SPEAKER_01]: And then throughout the movie, we see just perfectly just focusing on like how
- 36:45[SPEAKER_01]: She has her, quote, be best campaign, which is supposed to be about like encouraging excellence in children in a very vague way.
- 36:53[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 36:53[SPEAKER_01]: We see her meet, I think, like the queen or the first lady of Jordan.
- 36:59[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 37:00[SPEAKER_01]: And then she has a phone call with the first lady, or a Zoom call with the first lady of France.
- 37:06[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 37:06[SPEAKER_01]: And in those brief conversations,
- 37:11[SPEAKER_01]: They're just like, oh yes, we're happy to be working with you on your Be Best Campaign.
- 37:14[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Alania Trump is like, yes.
- 37:17[SPEAKER_01]: And at one point, she asks the first lady of France, how are you doing it?
- 37:28[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 37:28[SPEAKER_01]: That's about it, really.
- 37:29[SPEAKER_01]: That's about as far as we get in there.
- 37:30[SPEAKER_01]: She has one conversation with someone who's husband
- 37:36[SPEAKER_01]: is a hostage.
- 37:38[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, in Gaza.
- 37:40[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 37:40[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, that's a lot.
- 37:42[SPEAKER_01]: That person's going through a lot.
- 37:43[SPEAKER_01]: Say which well about the politics or whatever, that one individual person, that's got to be harrowing.
- 37:49[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like trying to say like, yeah, I'm going to see what I can do.
- 37:57[SPEAKER_01]: But she's not very consoling.
- 38:01[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't seem to have much of an emotional connection to it, and it's a very brief talk.
- 38:05[SPEAKER_01]: That's supposed to be clearly very humanizing.
- 38:08[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm glad she took the meeting, but it doesn't really show her as being a brilliant diplomat or a very kind-hearted individual other than
- 38:18[SPEAKER_01]: I agree people shouldn't be hostages.
- 38:21[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 38:22[SPEAKER_01]: The rest of the movie is mostly fashion and then the actual inauguration.
- 38:28[SPEAKER_01]: There's the biggest thing in it.
- 38:30[SPEAKER_05]: So she wants to be seen as a fashion icon.
- 38:33[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, she does.
- 38:34[SPEAKER_01]: And she also wants to be another thing they do to try to humanize her.
- 38:37[SPEAKER_01]: And this is nothing to do with work.
- 38:39[SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually it does, but
- 38:42[SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly before the inauguration, and it's her mother died a year ago.
- 38:47[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's sad.
- 38:47[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's always sad, right?
- 38:50[SPEAKER_01]: So she's still dealing with that.
- 38:52[SPEAKER_01]: And then right before the inauguration, Jimmy Carter died.
- 38:55[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 38:55[SPEAKER_01]: President Jimmy Carter, and she and Donald Trump go to the funeral.
- 39:01[SPEAKER_01]: And we hear in the voiceover about how going to Jimmy Carter's funeral reminded me of my mother's funeral, and she's talking about her mom
- 39:12[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing Jimmy Carter's funeral.
- 39:13[SPEAKER_01]: Not talking about Jimmy Carter at all.
- 39:16[SPEAKER_01]: Jimmy Carter is a prop to get us to talk about her mom.
- 39:19[SPEAKER_01]: And then she, after Jimmy Carter's funeral, goes to a church by herself to let a candle for her mom.
- 39:23[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, humanizing.
- 39:25[SPEAKER_01]: They're radically humanizing, right?
- 39:27[SPEAKER_01]: And then Brett Ratner in his finite wisdom.
- 39:31[SPEAKER_01]: He puts,
- 39:33[SPEAKER_01]: I believe it's a on the soundtrack he puts I believe it's amazing grace, but a very jazzy version of amazing grace, okay, and it's also a live recording of amazing grace, and we see the room no one's performing this is clearly a soundtrack choice yeah, um, and
- 40:02[SPEAKER_01]: There's a plaza in the song, okay.
- 40:04[SPEAKER_01]: So we're applauding her for presenting any sort of humanity.
- 40:08[SPEAKER_01]: This is supposed to be special.
- 40:11[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so heartlessly manipulative.
- 40:16[SPEAKER_01]: And even if that's genuine, even if she really does feel really sad about her mom and who could blame her, that she is okay with it being presented as heroic that she has a feeling and deserves applause for it is really gross.
- 40:34[SPEAKER_05]: To comment on this whole sort of entire administration and the Trump's in particular,
- 40:43[SPEAKER_05]: Donald Trump constantly complains he complains about him with that and he especially almost every time we see him in this movie he's complaining when somebody asks that he do something the same way every one else does it he gets myth that he's not getting especially treatment that he doesn't get to do it a different way this goes for
- 41:06[SPEAKER_05]: just following basic laws.
- 41:08[SPEAKER_05]: Let's go from medical evaluations.
- 41:11[SPEAKER_05]: He wants sharing your tax records.
- 41:12[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he wants to be rewarded for doing the bare minimum.
- 41:18[SPEAKER_05]: He wants to be vented for just being who he is because who is he?
- 41:23[SPEAKER_05]: He's a guy who sells his name.
- 41:24[SPEAKER_05]: He thinks he has value.
- 41:26[SPEAKER_05]: He thinks he's smart, he thinks he's brilliant.
- 41:29[SPEAKER_05]: Or at least he's interested in self.
- 41:30[SPEAKER_05]: And I feel like this entire administration, both Trump administrations, have been full of people who are looking out into the world, seeing the types of people who are celebrated civil rights activists, people who actually like bothered to fight for good in the world.
- 41:47[SPEAKER_05]: People who stand by their ethics, people who stand by their ethics, people who have a lot of talent, people who have really pushing arts forward in an important way.
- 41:55[SPEAKER_05]: People who have studied things and experts and fields, and they're getting prizes and documentaries around them, because they actually are changing the world in a positive way.
- 42:06[SPEAKER_05]: they look at those kinds of people who are being celebrated and think to themselves, why aren't I being celebrated in that way?
- 42:14[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 42:14[SPEAKER_05]: They don't want to necessarily have done the hard work.
- 42:16[SPEAKER_05]: They just want the celebration.
- 42:18[SPEAKER_05]: And that's all the Melania film feels like to me.
- 42:22[SPEAKER_05]: Somebody who wants to be celebrated, even though they have achieved nothing.
- 42:26[SPEAKER_01]: There's very, that's very apt, actually.
- 42:29[SPEAKER_01]: And I, there's so much in this movie, this is not a lot in this movie, actually.
- 42:33[SPEAKER_01]: And, but there's so much in this movie that just really reeks of that.
- 42:36[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a bit at the end of the movie.
- 42:39[SPEAKER_01]: And the last chunk of the movie is inauguration day.
- 42:42[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a lot going on that day.
- 42:44[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of process, there's a lot of pageantry, there's a lot of speeches and special events, and it's a whole to do, and I'm not saying that's not of interest.
- 42:59[SPEAKER_01]: Towards the end of that, Donald Trump is giving a speech.
- 43:03[SPEAKER_01]: At that point, we cut, and we could have cut to this earlier, but we cut to earlier like that day or the day before, and he's practicing the speech, and Melania Trump walks into the room as he's practicing the speech.
- 43:15[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I'm trying to remember exactly the word, but he's he's giving like a speech and she suggests changing a word to like unifier.
- 43:24[SPEAKER_01]: I want to be a unifier change one word and Donald Trump's like, that's a good idea.
- 43:29[SPEAKER_01]: And then we cut to back to him giving the speech and he says that word, and he looks back to her in points.
- 43:37[SPEAKER_01]: And it's and she like, not and like that's the movie.
- 43:39[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, see, she's she's important and it's like,
- 43:45[SPEAKER_01]: That's the best you've got, huh?
- 43:47[SPEAKER_01]: That's not good.
- 43:48[SPEAKER_01]: There's weird moments in this movie that I saw this movie in a pretty crowded theater, actually.
- 43:57[SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of jokes that people weren't buying tickets.
- 43:59[SPEAKER_01]: I think they just weren't buying advanced tickets, because my theater was pretty crowded.
- 44:02[SPEAKER_01]: I was the second youngest person and thereby about 20 years.
- 44:06[SPEAKER_01]: But there was a demographic.
- 44:07[SPEAKER_01]: There were people who really into it.
- 44:08[SPEAKER_01]: Like when the Biden's got on their helicopter at the end of inauguration day to leave the White House, move on with their lives.
- 44:16[SPEAKER_01]: Someone yelled in the audience and take Hunter's cocaine with you.
- 44:20[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone laughed.
- 44:21[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a big, bread rat and her managed to catch one shot.
- 44:26[SPEAKER_01]: of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like waiting in the wings have their names called to like walk on the stage.
- 44:32[SPEAKER_01]: And it looked like they were didn't realize they were being filmed when they just saw them go, huh?
- 44:36[SPEAKER_01]: And he put that shot in there at such a moment that it made them look as foolish as humanly possible and it was a big laugh moment for everyone of the air.
- 44:47[SPEAKER_01]: Ha ha ha.
- 44:49[SPEAKER_01]: There's a very like, I mean, this is clearly maybe a bit of a partisan move.
- 44:57[SPEAKER_01]: But there's one other thing I want to talk about with it, the fact that it's very partisan, aside from the fact that it's greatly dull, a lot of it, and even though it's ostensibly selling us the greatness of Melania Trump, it does a pretty poor job of it.
- 45:14[SPEAKER_01]: Brett Rattner himself is not in the movie on screen, but he's behind the camera a lot and sometimes he talks.
- 45:22[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 45:22[SPEAKER_01]: And again, he has unprecedented access.
- 45:26[SPEAKER_01]: He has the opportunity to ask him a lot of your Trump any question, and there's a lot of interesting questions you could ask him a lot of your Trump.
- 45:34[SPEAKER_01]: And when he finally, I have a few in mind, yeah.
- 45:36[SPEAKER_01]: When he finally gets like a 40 minutes into the movie, give or take, they're in a card a gather, and he finally has a moment, I want to ask you a question, and he says, who's your favorite recording artist?
- 45:49[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 45:50[SPEAKER_01]: That's the big question.
- 45:52[SPEAKER_05]: And she said, try to get something human out of her.
- 45:54[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it's human.
- 45:55[SPEAKER_01]: I would have rather had something relevant, but whatever, something human.
- 45:58[SPEAKER_01]: And she says, Michael Jackson.
- 46:00[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have an extended sequence of her and Brett Ratner, singing a very bad duet of Billy Jean in the back of a limousine and Brett Ratner yells out, are we doing carpool karaoke with Melania Trump?
- 46:15[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, this is why we're here.
- 46:18[SPEAKER_01]: We're here so a very particular fan base can like kind of geek out in really, really weird ways.
- 46:26[SPEAKER_01]: And what's really bizarre though is that over the course of the film, we don't see here with Donald Trump a lot, but when we do,
- 46:34[SPEAKER_01]: there's nothing.
- 46:36[SPEAKER_01]: There's no connection.
- 46:37[SPEAKER_01]: The small talk is forced.
- 46:39[SPEAKER_01]: There's a scene earlier on when Donald Trump calls her to say we want the election and it's like what we want the electoral college by a lot and he's very excited and she's and he's calls her and says, hey, were you watching?
- 46:50[SPEAKER_01]: And she says, no.
- 46:52[SPEAKER_01]: And then he tells her how excited she is, and she's just staring into the middle distance, trying to kind of tuning it all out, and then she just hangs, and then they just hang up, and she feels nothing.
- 47:02[SPEAKER_01]: And this is supposed to make them look good.
- 47:05[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the movie, at the end of inauguration day, they've been through a lot, like it's a long day by any
- 47:18[SPEAKER_01]: Brett Ratner is in the White House, with Donald and Melania Trump after inauguration day.
- 47:23[SPEAKER_01]: So embarrassed for this world.
- 47:24[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 47:25[SPEAKER_01]: And he and Melania are having a great time.
- 47:28[SPEAKER_01]: Donald Trump comes in, awkwardly says something about what a big day it was.
- 47:33[SPEAKER_01]: And then just leaves these two people here who have, I'm not saying it's a good thing, who have weird chemistry together.
- 47:42[SPEAKER_01]: And he just leaves to go to go to bed.
- 47:46[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, well,
- 47:48[SPEAKER_01]: enjoy Brett Ratner and leaves and I'm like is he trying to steal Melani a Trump is that like the sub-tats here because any other this is a fictional movie and that happened you would assume
- 48:03[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, that's probably that's there's some infidelity brew in there.
- 48:07[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's how it feels yeah Like there's this weird power dynamic the Brett Rattar managed to find his way in here that makes him Look more virulent Donald Trump and it's like this is fucking weird This is a weird Difficult to watch Boring
- 48:30[SPEAKER_01]: offensively propagandistic, which I think is a word, movie, it's it's really gross and it's offensive to the senses and I think when history looks back on it, not only will it not look back favorably, I think it will be symbolic of how fucking disgusting this era is.
- 48:54[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I have seen trying for the well.
- 48:58[SPEAKER_05]: This was one that they used to put on like school sillinesses, this idea of the power propaganda.
- 49:04[SPEAKER_05]: The power propaganda, how, you know, we would look back at World War II, how is it that people went to follow how they'll Hitler at all?
- 49:12[SPEAKER_05]: yeah and you show them a film like triumph of the will it's like oh well this is the story they were telling themselves yeah and there's nothing in triumph of the will about the organiser organizing that big rally yeah it's not about sort of the the logistics that went into it it's interesting other by magic because the greatness of the thing yeah it's just like we just get to see the rally itself
- 49:38[SPEAKER_05]: It's monstrous because we know what the Nazi stand for and it's difficult to watch and I don't recommend you see it.
- 49:45[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 49:46[SPEAKER_05]: It's only it's only uses as a and historical object and you kind of know what's in it already.
- 49:52[SPEAKER_05]: You don't necessarily need to watch it to understand what's going on in the film.
- 49:57[SPEAKER_05]: It's so pathetic that the new Reich that we're living through now in the United States.
- 50:05[SPEAKER_05]: They got Brett Ratner.
- 50:07[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 50:08[SPEAKER_05]: This is the best thing.
- 50:09[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 50:09[SPEAKER_05]: To sing Billy Jean in the back of a limo with the first lady who by your description doesn't even have any personality.
- 50:16[SPEAKER_01]: Very, very, very little personality.
- 50:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 50:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 50:21[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 50:21[SPEAKER_05]: It's just really odd when you think about this movie because this movie could run out of that line from Edward.
- 50:25[SPEAKER_01]: These are our lives.
- 50:26[SPEAKER_01]: It's so embarrassing.
- 50:28[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 50:29[SPEAKER_01]: This is a movie.
- 50:30[SPEAKER_01]: Thinking about it as a piece of propaganda.
- 50:33[SPEAKER_01]: Who is the propaganda for?
- 50:35[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the people who are in the grave, but seriously though, let's think that a step beyond, because obviously it's for the pre-existing fan base.
- 50:43[SPEAKER_01]: But who is it trying to inspire or impress, or inspire them to do something?
- 50:51[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like what is it for?
- 50:53[SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't speak to,
- 50:56[SPEAKER_01]: for or about the American people, including the Trump voters, it has zero interest in them at all.
- 51:05[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of solidifies some of the things they have been told about the Trump administration, like Biden is a little bad who isn't with it and Donald Trump makes them look embarrassed or whatever like that.
- 51:19[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of in there, but that's not really about the American people, it's not about America, right?
- 51:26[SPEAKER_01]: What this is is about how great Malania Trump is and to an extent Donald Trump.
- 51:37[SPEAKER_01]: It's not about you.
- 51:40[SPEAKER_01]: Now, your enjoyment of it, your appreciation of it.
- 51:43[SPEAKER_01]: How inspired you feel by it, is secondary at best to
- 51:50[SPEAKER_01]: This is a movie that Melania Trump and Donald Trump can watch to feel good about themselves.
- 51:57[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like it has been made specifically for an audience of one maybe two people.
- 52:04[SPEAKER_01]: I think everyone else is irrelevant.
- 52:05[SPEAKER_05]: They can watch it in the White House movie.
- 52:09[SPEAKER_01]: It has been interesting watching Melania Trump like when she's been doing like press for this movie Hmm talking about how like you know I do I do a lot and like I you know completely renovated the east wing and it's like Oh, did nobody tell her I've been renovated Oh, Jesus you didn't it's probably something really should have mentioned that Oh
- 52:31[SPEAKER_01]: It ends with a bunch of chirones about all the things she did as first lady and like some of them are pretty good But like assuming you take him in face value, but like assuming take me as some of these things seem good But it's like they say like she is completely redefined the role of the first lady She's done things that no one else has ever done and like one of the chirones is like she visited the victims of the California fires and I'm like I'm pretty sure meeting the American people after bad stuff happens has been done before
- 52:59[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you had to put that in there, it means that you were stretching it.
- 53:02[SPEAKER_05]: You want to be celebrated for doing regular stuff, like the band.
- 53:07[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not even well, just doing it.
- 53:09[SPEAKER_01]: But I really wanted to make this clear because this is a movie that's easy to reject without seeing it.
- 53:15[SPEAKER_01]: And I strongly encourage you to do so, but that's what I'm doing right now.
- 53:19[SPEAKER_01]: I firmly believe, I firmly believe and I've said this before.
- 53:21[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost a catchphrase that film criticism is a full contact sport by which I mean,
- 53:27[SPEAKER_01]: we are like defensive linebackers preventing you from getting a concussion sometimes.
- 53:33[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 53:33[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of those instances.
- 53:36[SPEAKER_01]: Let a critic do this.
- 53:38[SPEAKER_01]: No one else should, no one else should have to be subjected to this.
- 53:42[SPEAKER_01]: If you do see it, you're gonna see an amazingly terrible documentary on a wide variety of levels.
- 53:49[SPEAKER_01]: And I want you to know what's in it so that you can be prepared for it and have some sense of what you're getting into because it's so easy to just regard it as a matter of course, because obviously it's gonna be like this.
- 54:00[SPEAKER_01]: But you know what, for a second before the movie began, I'll be like, what if this is a fascinating historical document?
- 54:06[SPEAKER_01]: What if even if it's part of it?
- 54:07[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's good or bad, at least capture is interesting information or moments in history and it doesn't do that.
- 54:14[SPEAKER_01]: It's just on its face, even as propaganda it's bad.
- 54:21[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing.
- 54:22[SPEAKER_01]: It's like we wouldn't be talking about the triumph of the will in history classes if it was bad propaganda and didn't inspire the German people to believe these terrible things.
- 54:38[SPEAKER_01]: Like it was effective in its presentation.
- 54:41[SPEAKER_01]: This is crap in its presentation.
- 54:44[SPEAKER_01]: It's not even good bad propaganda, or like good evil propaganda.
- 54:51[SPEAKER_01]: not competent as a documentary in any way.
- 54:58[SPEAKER_01]: And I would really like to move on and not talk about it again until the end of the year when I am 100% confident that it's going to be a contender for the worse in the year.
- 55:08[SPEAKER_01]: It might need a special spot like a dishonorable mention because there's some movies that are bad because they're badly made and there's some movies that are bad because they espoused a terrible idea Well, you get because like you're looking at a movie like I don't know like I'm like gone with the wind which is like incredibly well crafted In service of kind of evil.
- 55:27[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it doesn't matter how good it is to some degree because if it's good it's conveying evil ideology
- 55:37[SPEAKER_01]: And when you take away any sense of craft from that, how could it not be one of the worst movies?
- 55:44[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's bad and it's bad about it.
- 55:49[SPEAKER_01]: It's just stunningly terrible.
- 55:51[SPEAKER_01]: And can you please take me out of this?
- 55:54[SPEAKER_01]: Can you like, when do you want to talk about Iron Long?
- 55:57[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, a movie that is making more money than Melania.
- 56:00[SPEAKER_05]: And was made for much less money than Melania.
- 56:02[SPEAKER_05]: Iron Long, we're moving to Iron Long.
- 56:05[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'm really really wanted to see by the way.
- 56:08[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I was fascinated because I feel like Iron Long is yet another example of two where cinema might be going.
- 56:16[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like the model that we've been following for the last 15, maybe even 20 years, the the super blockbuster that you have.
- 56:23[SPEAKER_05]: half billion dollar movie that makes a billion dollars in a weekend.
- 56:26[SPEAKER_05]: That model is kind of over.
- 56:28[SPEAKER_05]: We have a couple of those every year, but we used to have dozens of everyone.
- 56:31[SPEAKER_05]: Well, yeah, they used to be really common every MCU film would make a billion dollars.
- 56:36[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and we have a couple of billion dollar movies last year, America.
- 56:39[SPEAKER_01]: It was very, what was it like four or five?
- 56:42[SPEAKER_05]: four or five and they're not coming from the same places or as not as the as big a cultural presence of superman to break a billion dollars to never broken a billion dollars no superman uh i think on the world wide grosses still like nine or ten highest grosses but it's not bad but it's not but it's not but it's behind things like nasiatoo and demon swear that's the blockbuster now and i feel like and i'm a minecraft movie i think was the highest grossing domestic film
- 57:09[SPEAKER_01]: audiences are coming from the end was an avatar made like over a billion dollars like a thing avatar technically I'll look it up I know avatar because I know it made less than the other avatars and it seems to be a lot but it made a staggering amount of money by any other
- 57:27[SPEAKER_01]: That's the major.
- 57:27[SPEAKER_01]: I'll look up the highest in the most of the years, sir.
- 57:29[SPEAKER_05]: But I feel like the future model is to find where the audience actually is and to cater to their interests.
- 57:37[SPEAKER_05]: And right now, a lot of younger viewers are coming from online entertainment.
- 57:41[SPEAKER_05]: They're coming from YouTube.
- 57:44[SPEAKER_05]: Iron Long is a film that was written and directed and stars Mark Fishbock better known online as the YouTuber Mark Applier.
- 57:53[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
- 57:54[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I don't watch Markiplier, but I know he's too rificly popular.
- 57:58[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
- 57:59[SPEAKER_05]: It's a celebrity in the YouTube world.
- 58:02[SPEAKER_05]: And he is decided to make a film from Markiplier Studios.
- 58:06[SPEAKER_05]: So he's also the executive producer on this.
- 58:09[SPEAKER_05]: And he's adapting a video game that I'm not familiar with either.
- 58:13[SPEAKER_05]: That's also called Iron Long.
- 58:15[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know this was based on a video game.
- 58:17[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 58:17[UNKNOWN]: Oh.
- 58:18[SPEAKER_01]: it's yeah so and he's it takes place in one setting and he's the only actor we see on camera except for like a few brief flashbacks okay i i stand corrected the number one highest grossing movie of twenty twenty five domestically is lmake oh i'm so sorry now it's uh the highest grossing just i'll make this quick just for the sake of being accurate the highest grossing movie domestically oh my god
- 58:45[SPEAKER_01]: A Minecraft movie, $423 million in 2025, followed very closely, like less than a million dollars by Lee Loanstitch.
- 58:52[SPEAKER_01]: OK. Then Superman, then Jurassic World War II.
- 58:55[SPEAKER_01]: What was Superman high?
- 58:56[SPEAKER_01]: Domestically, yeah.
- 58:57[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 58:58[SPEAKER_01]: Dressible rebirths, Utopia II, then wicked for good, then sinners, then fantastic for first steps, then how to train your dragon, then avatar, fire, and dash.
- 59:10[SPEAKER_05]: How about how the might he have fallen?
- 59:12[SPEAKER_01]: May 250 million dollars domestically to date.
- 59:17[SPEAKER_01]: But Minecraft is still number one.
- 59:19[SPEAKER_01]: Oh wait no no hold on hold on hang on hang on hang on hang on.
- 59:22[SPEAKER_01]: Now that they fucked me because this is the first office mojo and they were only looking at opening with December.
- 59:28[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, okay.
- 59:29[SPEAKER_01]: So they want to include a total domestic for Avatar Fire and Ash is $391 million, which is still the third highest-grossing movie of the year domestically.
- 59:39[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
- 59:39[SPEAKER_01]: If you include the January grosses as well, it can say it was technically 2021-25 release.
- 59:44[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of fun, but what are you going to do?
- 59:46[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's still made less money domestically than we loan station in Minecraft movies.
- 59:50[SPEAKER_05]: And I've noticed that there aren't, there's not a lot of
- 59:56[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't see it.
- 59:58[SPEAKER_05]: This is where we're headed though, when you just start thinking about where people want to see their entertainer.
- 1:00:02[SPEAKER_05]: I agree.
- 1:00:03[SPEAKER_05]: All of the old IP that they've been trying to melt, they're making another masters of the universe film for fucks sake.
- 1:00:08[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and it doesn't look bad like as the same time.
- 1:00:11[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sure it's, and it's a brand parent's cartoon at this point.
- 1:00:14[SPEAKER_05]: It might even be fine.
- 1:00:15[SPEAKER_05]: That stuff that came out when I was a little kid.
- 1:00:16[SPEAKER_05]: Who are they trying to, do they really want these things to last in part two to these studios seem to want that?
- 1:00:22[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like making a team in movie now is like when we were kids and they made a movie about the Phantom.
- 1:00:28[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which doesn't mean it's a bad movie, but it just means kids don't know that shit anymore.
- 1:00:34[SPEAKER_01]: I know you had a couple of cartoons.
- 1:00:35[SPEAKER_01]: Shiro was very good in the 20 times, but it's not their stuff.
- 1:00:42[SPEAKER_05]: But what is their stuff is Markiplier.
- 1:00:44[SPEAKER_01]: Agreed.
- 1:00:45[SPEAKER_01]: And back to us.
- 1:00:46[SPEAKER_05]: Back to Iron Long.
- 1:00:47[SPEAKER_05]: Markiplier has made a movie.
- 1:00:49[SPEAKER_05]: He made it for a very modest $3 million.
- 1:00:51[SPEAKER_05]: It's made about 34 million to date.
- 1:00:54[SPEAKER_05]: Um, which is very important.
- 1:00:56[SPEAKER_05]: Which is very impressive.
- 1:00:57[SPEAKER_05]: It's like a 10 times multiplier.
- 1:00:58[SPEAKER_05]: That's a lot by any means.
- 1:00:59[SPEAKER_05]: 10 times mark a player.
- 1:01:01[SPEAKER_05]: Um, thank you.
- 1:01:03[SPEAKER_05]: See, I'm not the only one who does it.
- 1:01:05[SPEAKER_05]: And here's the thing.
- 1:01:06[SPEAKER_05]: It's, this movie is freaky.
- 1:01:10[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, and I'm not familiar with the game.
- 1:01:11[SPEAKER_05]: So I don't know how much is like borrowed from the game itself.
- 1:01:14[SPEAKER_05]: But, uh, it's so high concept.
- 1:01:17[SPEAKER_05]: So, um,
- 1:01:19[SPEAKER_05]: The iron lung of the title is this height.
- 1:01:22[SPEAKER_05]: It's not even high-tech.
- 1:01:23[SPEAKER_05]: It's like this steel tube submarine that the Markiplier character, his name is Simon, but he's only ever referred to as convict by other characters over a loudspeaker.
- 1:01:36[SPEAKER_05]: It takes place in the distant future when something called the quiet rapture has occurred and planets and stars are just going out across the galaxy.
- 1:01:50[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:01:50[SPEAKER_05]: Only the humans in space have survived and there's so few of them left.
- 1:01:55[SPEAKER_05]: That means the value of life has gone up.
- 1:02:01[SPEAKER_05]: And the Markiplier character was convicted of some sort of a vague crime that had to do with the destruction of a space station.
- 1:02:09[SPEAKER_05]: And he sees going into this little tiny submarine as like as punishment.
- 1:02:15[SPEAKER_05]: They think he starts to suspect that this is his execution.
- 1:02:18[SPEAKER_05]: But he's talking to some of his handlers over a speaker inside the submarine.
- 1:02:25[SPEAKER_05]: They keep on saying, why would we kill you?
- 1:02:28[SPEAKER_05]: We need as many people as we can.
- 1:02:30[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 1:02:31[SPEAKER_05]: So there's this weird freaky tone hanging over it.
- 1:02:35[SPEAKER_05]: And he's been sent on a mission to go to some sort of distant moon that just happens to have an ocean of blood on it.
- 1:02:47[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
- 1:02:47[SPEAKER_05]: Like a human blood dripping red human blood.
- 1:02:50[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:02:51[SPEAKER_05]: And he goes down and down and down, and it's like reminiscent of Mad God with all of the weird rusty metal and the sort of dissent in this weird, freaky world.
- 1:03:01[SPEAKER_05]: And he lands on the bottom of the ocean, but things are sort of shifting around him because the ocean floor is essentially clotting as he's going.
- 1:03:09[SPEAKER_05]: It's like the ocean floor is like one gigantic moving scab.
- 1:03:14[SPEAKER_05]: I've never seen that in a movie before.
- 1:03:17[SPEAKER_01]: And a really fucked up guy mad in the film.
- 1:03:20[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of that vibe to it.
- 1:03:22[SPEAKER_05]: And there's a portal that he can look out of, but the ocean is blood, you can't see through it.
- 1:03:27[SPEAKER_05]: It's like thick and viscous in opaque.
- 1:03:29[SPEAKER_05]: The only way he can do it, he can see anything is through this x-ray camera, like a medical x-ray camera on the top, then he hits a button on the wall, and it takes a still x-ray photo, and it lights up on this big view screen in front of him for a few seconds, just the still image
- 1:03:47[SPEAKER_05]: And that's the only way he can see around him.
- 1:03:50[SPEAKER_05]: He can, like, reposition the camera.
- 1:03:52[SPEAKER_05]: He has some maps, but they're not really reliable.
- 1:03:56[SPEAKER_05]: And the pressure is getting to him.
- 1:03:59[SPEAKER_05]: And there's like, as the film goes on more and more blood begins dripping into this submarine.
- 1:04:05[SPEAKER_05]: And wouldn't you know it when he takes a picture, there's love crafty and horrors down there.
- 1:04:10[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, there's love crafty and horrors.
- 1:04:12[SPEAKER_05]: Gigantic.
- 1:04:13[SPEAKER_05]: thought reading worm monsters that look like those deep-sea viper fish that are of dubious motivation trying to manipulate him perhaps or maybe he's or maybe he's hallucinating Markiplier giving a pretty good Kiana Reeves level of performance
- 1:04:35[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, there's a qualifier there, but that's pretty good.
- 1:04:37[SPEAKER_05]: Like he's, you can could tell that he doesn't have a lot of range, but he's acting well, and he's carrying this whole movie, he's directing it.
- 1:04:46[SPEAKER_05]: He's finding interesting ways of exploring this little tiny space and filming it in such ways, so there's like a little bit of visual variety.
- 1:04:54[SPEAKER_05]: That takes a lot of kind of directorial assurance, and that's surprising for a YouTuber who's really making a lot of the sort of really confined space.
- 1:05:04[SPEAKER_05]: And it is just madness, this guy, and at one point the power goes out in the submarine and he has no light and he can only light his way by taking these x-ray photos.
- 1:05:15[SPEAKER_05]: There is a scene where he goes up to the surface to sort of confer with people, but he's been welded inside.
- 1:05:20[SPEAKER_05]: he's not allowed to leave the submarine and they can only look through the portal and they're constantly wiping blood off of his drips down again and again and he tries to get their attention by firing his camera and they're like, no shit, those are X-rays, you just gave us tumors.
- 1:05:37[SPEAKER_05]: So there's like this, nothing but doom and death and blood and cancer is just sort of rotting through this whole thing.
- 1:05:45[SPEAKER_05]: Meanwhile, you're floating at top a giant scab while lovecraft is trying to turn your brain inside out.
- 1:05:52[SPEAKER_05]: This is some pretty wild shit.
- 1:05:55[SPEAKER_05]: How long is this move?
- 1:05:57[SPEAKER_05]: That's the thing.
- 1:05:58[SPEAKER_05]: This is the bit, I'm wondering how long you can sustain that.
- 1:06:01[SPEAKER_05]: If this was like an 88 minute film, that would be cool, but this is like a two hour and seven minute
- 1:06:06[SPEAKER_05]: there's a lot of fat on this there's a way to the the editing is very very loose there's a way to tighten this thing up and make it a little bit more energetic the energy does add in flow as you go but the sense of dread is so palpable that even as you can see it's like I'm going to recognize her
- 1:06:25[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to like explore these like spaces and then the action starts to ramp up again there comes a point to the movie where he realizes that he actually has like a quest and I don't want to say what happens because there's actually some like twists and surprise there's like a mission at some point there's a mission and and like at that point you think the action is going to ramp up and it starts to for a little bit
- 1:06:44[SPEAKER_05]: But then it like stops to take a breath again.
- 1:06:47[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, okay, we need to tighten up a little bit of this.
- 1:06:50[SPEAKER_05]: You can see this is like an editing exercise in a film school.
- 1:06:53[SPEAKER_05]: It's like you can see where things need to be sharpened up a little bit.
- 1:06:57[SPEAKER_05]: But good golly, I was terrified throughout this entire thing.
- 1:07:01[SPEAKER_05]: I don't, I've never seen anything quite that's nightmarish.
- 1:07:04[SPEAKER_05]: I was reminded a lot of films like, like, skin and meringue that are just doing a lot.
- 1:07:11[SPEAKER_05]: They're doing a lot with very little.
- 1:07:12[SPEAKER_05]: I love you super movie.
- 1:07:13[SPEAKER_05]: A YouTuber movie.
- 1:07:15[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:07:15[SPEAKER_05]: The filmmaker all the time.
- 1:07:16[SPEAKER_05]: I love them too.
- 1:07:18[SPEAKER_05]: And I feel like the intimacy of horror filmmaking is being explored on YouTube and through, as it always has been through little tiny independent productions, with filmmakers who are trying new stuff, horror is where it's going to happen.
- 1:07:38[SPEAKER_05]: Well, the horror is almost always where it is.
- 1:07:39[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:07:40[SPEAKER_05]: Everything starts with horror throughout film history.
- 1:07:42[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 1:07:43[SPEAKER_05]: And now we have a YouTuber doing the same.
- 1:07:46[SPEAKER_05]: YouTubers, same as it's going to make doing the same thing, bringing a lot of weird creative new ideas in the horror.
- 1:07:54[SPEAKER_05]: The idea of a well-did-shut submarine lost in a sea of blood is, and they never really explain why there's a sea of blood.
- 1:08:04[SPEAKER_05]: It's almost like, it's relevant.
- 1:08:06[SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's like the universe is the universe itself as bleed.
- 1:08:10[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is something I've been saying for a while about video game adaptations.
- 1:08:14[SPEAKER_01]: And I haven't played this video game.
- 1:08:16[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of video game adaptations, the ones that Hollywood gets really excited about, are the ones that already resemble movies.
- 1:08:23[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're really excited about uncharted.
- 1:08:25[SPEAKER_01]: Of course you are.
- 1:08:26[SPEAKER_01]: It's another Indiana Jones.
- 1:08:27[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:08:28[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're really excited about Hitman.
- 1:08:30[SPEAKER_01]: Of course you are.
- 1:08:30[SPEAKER_01]: You've been making Hitman movies for decades.
- 1:08:35[SPEAKER_01]: you know, marquee value.
- 1:08:38[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many more interesting video games out there that are doing things that are more abstract, more sensual, more emotional, and much more experimental, because the thing that video games do differently than movies, sometimes better, but certainly differently.
- 1:08:57[SPEAKER_01]: Is video games are about the experience of something?
- 1:09:02[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have to be
- 1:09:05[SPEAKER_01]: a conventional narrative, because the point isn't necessarily always to get through the plot, sometimes it is, but even in games that are about the plot, the point is also thinking you feel what it's like to be in those moments, like a world like a World War II game.
- 1:09:21[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's movies in something as we were talking about war, but the point is is that it's supposed to be like instead of just an action sequence in a movie, you're supposed to feel the intensity of what it is like to be there.
- 1:09:32[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of a horror movie where you see other people being scared, you are the one being forced to walk slowly down the foggy alleyway where there might be a monster.
- 1:09:42[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you feel a threat.
- 1:09:45[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
- 1:09:46[SPEAKER_01]: So it's about...
- 1:09:47[SPEAKER_01]: feeling something in the moment and sustaining that immersion.
- 1:09:54[SPEAKER_01]: And a concept as abstract and bizarre as Iron Long is the kind of thing that makes a lot of sense as a video game.
- 1:10:01[SPEAKER_01]: And as a movie, you enter into sort of surreal what the fuck is this kind of zone.
- 1:10:06[SPEAKER_01]: And that can be great.
- 1:10:07[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that we're starting to adapt.
- 1:10:10[SPEAKER_01]: Those games more something really different.
- 1:10:13[SPEAKER_05]: Well, you were you mentioned on chart.
- 1:10:15[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't see the movie But I'm familiar enough with the video games to know they're an Indiana Jones knock-off They get it the fun the fun games and I feel like
- 1:10:25[SPEAKER_05]: The issue is that a lot of those video games of going back to the start You know, we're taking a lot of their cues from B movies fight films come from movies Side you know low budget science fiction movies.
- 1:10:37[SPEAKER_01]: Well, to be fair in the start video games are very abstract like pong and back Man like once they started getting more cinematic yet
- 1:10:43[SPEAKER_05]: But I'm thinking of something like a Nintendo game Metroid.
- 1:10:47[SPEAKER_05]: Somebody has space suit has like a cannon on her arm and she's stalking through like these abstract alien.
- 1:10:53[SPEAKER_01]: Very inspired by alien.
- 1:10:54[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's clearly there's a lot of alien to it.
- 1:10:56[SPEAKER_05]: If you were to make Metroid into a feature film, it's a copy of a copy.
- 1:11:01[SPEAKER_05]: yeah it would it would have to just be like alien and we already have alien yeah uh uncharted you can make an uncharted movie but it's just gonna be like Indiana Jones because you're making a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy
- 1:11:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's it.
- 1:11:20[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like we, but we don't have to do that.
- 1:11:22[SPEAKER_01]: You had that's way.
- 1:11:23[SPEAKER_01]: So putting it back into a movie isn't special.
- 1:11:25[SPEAKER_05]: You've had it really into those.
- 1:11:26[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm really skeptical about a feature film that they're making about the Legend of Zelda because it's just inspired by Dungeon of Dragons and like a whole spade of fantasy literature that we've already seen adaptations for.
- 1:11:37[SPEAKER_01]: But I will say this.
- 1:11:38[SPEAKER_01]: And I was thinking about this when we were talking about this in terms of the Super Mario World movie, the animated one that came out a couple years ago and there's a new one coming out of guest later this year.
- 1:11:47[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a plot-wise as terrible, character-wise as me, but what it does is it captures the field of playing the game, the colors, the sound, the immersion, and a very friendly fantasy environment.
- 1:12:02[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there is something to be said for that on a purely experiential level.
- 1:12:11[SPEAKER_01]: Not plot, not theme, it has none of those.
- 1:12:14[SPEAKER_01]: But it has the experience of being in that colorful environment.
- 1:12:18[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that if they took Legend of Zelda, which is very evocative of all the other fantasy that inspired it, but Zelda has a vibe.
- 1:12:27[SPEAKER_01]: Zelda has its own narrative, tonal, emotional quality to it.
- 1:12:34[SPEAKER_01]: And if you were able to capture that,
- 1:12:37[SPEAKER_01]: the way that like studio jibbly captures a feeling.
- 1:12:39[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying it's a feel like studio jibbly, but they capture the capture of feeling that it's an immersive sense of being in this fantasy environment.
- 1:12:45[SPEAKER_01]: If they can do that in terms of what Zelda evokes, that could be worth it on its own.
- 1:12:51[SPEAKER_05]: I suppose so they radically that would be enough to please fans of the games because it's a poking a similar feeling.
- 1:12:59[SPEAKER_05]: I've said that a lot of these adaptations are a lot like.
- 1:13:05[SPEAKER_05]: like if you're if you're a junkie and you can't find a vein.
- 1:13:10[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:13:10[SPEAKER_05]: And it's like cutting the drug you're addicted to with something even stronger.
- 1:13:14[SPEAKER_05]: It's like the same high, but they're trying to just juice it up a little bit.
- 1:13:17[SPEAKER_05]: They're not trying to give you something new.
- 1:13:19[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:13:22[SPEAKER_05]: Something like iron lung.
- 1:13:24[SPEAKER_05]: I'm really glad that they're I don't know how accurate it is, but if they're going to be doing it just straight from the game that is just already kind of weird.
- 1:13:32[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:13:32[SPEAKER_05]: Guess what, you just made a really weird freaky movie.
- 1:13:35[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, my love weird, freaky movie.
- 1:13:36[SPEAKER_01]: A dab of weird games.
- 1:13:37[SPEAKER_01]: They're gonna get them with only more interesting and to get something that cinema hasn't seen before.
- 1:13:41[SPEAKER_05]: So don't adapt the heads.
- 1:13:42[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
- 1:13:42[SPEAKER_01]: Or if you do adapt the heads, adapt the weird heads because sometimes the weird ones do hit.
- 1:13:47[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:13:47[SPEAKER_01]: But I'd love to see an adaptation of zombies, eight my neighbors.
- 1:13:52[SPEAKER_01]: kind of.
- 1:13:52[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, even that whimsical horror comedy.
- 1:13:54[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've had whimsical horror comedies.
- 1:13:56[SPEAKER_01]: That would be a fun one.
- 1:13:58[SPEAKER_01]: That would be a fun one.
- 1:13:59[SPEAKER_01]: I argued many a time that's psychonauts is a story that we haven't quite seen in movie form.
- 1:14:05[SPEAKER_01]: It's really his tone.
- 1:14:06[SPEAKER_01]: That's very unusual and odd.
- 1:14:07[SPEAKER_01]: That would be a good adaptation.
- 1:14:09[SPEAKER_01]: But, um,
- 1:14:11[SPEAKER_01]: or like eternal darkness had a particularly interesting vibe that would be cold and tendo kind of forgot and that existed.
- 1:14:18[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
- 1:14:18[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I digress, uh, I really need to see this fucking movie.
- 1:14:21[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I encourage people to see iron long.
- 1:14:23[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:14:24[SPEAKER_05]: This one really got under my skin.
- 1:14:25[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 1:14:25[SPEAKER_01]: I saw a couple of horror movies, so let me run through those since it's thematically appropriate.
- 1:14:29[SPEAKER_01]: I'll try to say too long.
- 1:14:30[SPEAKER_01]: Um, the strangers.
- 1:14:33[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter three.
- 1:14:34[SPEAKER_01]: It's back fifth movie the fifth movie but the third in this people it was treated like a prequel But it turns out it's more of a reboot
- 1:14:43[SPEAKER_01]: Real quick, just to remind everybody, I think was 2008-ish, there was a really, really well-done, scary home invasion movie called The Strangers starring, I think, with Scott Speedman and Live Tyler as there were a couple and he just asked her to marry him and she said no.
- 1:15:04[SPEAKER_01]: and they go back to their house and the house had been like, we've done it with rose petals because he assumed she'd say yes, and they're just fucking miserable.
- 1:15:10[SPEAKER_01]: And while they're fucking miserable, a trio of masked murderers has targeted them for death.
- 1:15:17[SPEAKER_01]: And they're just...
- 1:15:17[SPEAKER_05]: They've invaded their home, kind of lurking around to the background.
- 1:15:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a lot of the scary scenes in the movie are just going about their business being, you know, totally distracted by their own problems, not realizing that there's someone in like a scarecrow mask in the room behind them, just looking at them a little bit, and they're waiting, and they're biting their time.
- 1:15:32[SPEAKER_01]: Really creepy.
- 1:15:33[SPEAKER_01]: The whole point of the movie is that they were picked randomly on one of the last signs and the movie is why are you doing this and the strangers say because you were home.
- 1:15:45[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're strangers.
- 1:15:46[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as you know, they don't know them.
- 1:15:47[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's there's no motivation here.
- 1:15:50[SPEAKER_01]: It's not because you did something wrong, it could just be that random.
- 1:15:54[SPEAKER_01]: There was a really good sequel called The Strangers Pray at night.
- 1:15:56[SPEAKER_01]: I like The Strangers Pray at night, which brings it outside of the house.
- 1:15:59[SPEAKER_01]: And it's got a lot more, a lot more of a propulsive quality, too.
- 1:16:04[SPEAKER_01]: But it's really, really good.
- 1:16:06[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, that didn't really set the set them on fire, so they decided to kind of start over.
- 1:16:12[SPEAKER_01]: And they gave, in a very Lord of the Rings fashion, we're going to shoot all three at the same time,
- 1:16:21[SPEAKER_01]: Who's hit hit miss really hit miss like Riny Harlan he had hits like cliffhanger and diehard to and He even started in horror doing films like prison, which is a very strange and awesome horror movie and Nightmare 4 and Nightmare 4 which is not a great story, but got really cool dream shit in it Yeah, it's really cool looking movie so theoretically.
- 1:16:42[SPEAKER_05]: He could be Some screaming that Georgian there.
- 1:16:45[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah a scream and Georgian the cockroach events.
- 1:16:48[SPEAKER_01]: Ah That's fucking cool
- 1:16:48[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but in the years since he's been I've seen a couple of good movies.
- 1:16:52[SPEAKER_01]: He's made a single bad movies.
- 1:16:53[SPEAKER_01]: He's made.
- 1:16:54[SPEAKER_01]: He's not consistent.
- 1:16:55[SPEAKER_01]: But you know what?
- 1:16:56[SPEAKER_01]: Low budget, slasher home invasion thing, you know, get a filmmaker who's, you know, hasn't had a chance to really cut loose in a while.
- 1:17:04[SPEAKER_01]: It could have been really, really great.
- 1:17:06[SPEAKER_01]: The first chapter, the strangers chapter one in this reboot series.
- 1:17:10[SPEAKER_01]: was abysmal.
- 1:17:12[SPEAKER_05]: And I did see that one.
- 1:17:14[SPEAKER_05]: It's so terrible.
- 1:17:16[SPEAKER_05]: Really bad.
- 1:17:16[SPEAKER_05]: It's about a young couple with no personality.
- 1:17:18[SPEAKER_05]: You go to a B&B there.
- 1:17:19[SPEAKER_05]: It's not even their home.
- 1:17:21[SPEAKER_05]: It's not even like a home invasion.
- 1:17:22[SPEAKER_01]: No, they're on the screen.
- 1:17:23[SPEAKER_01]: They're on the screen.
- 1:17:23[SPEAKER_01]: They're on the screen.
- 1:17:25[SPEAKER_01]: They're on the screen.
- 1:17:26[SPEAKER_01]: They go up to like the wilds of Oregon.
- 1:17:27[SPEAKER_05]: They have no conflicts.
- 1:17:29[SPEAKER_01]: But no.
- 1:17:29[SPEAKER_05]: Richard Break is there.
- 1:17:31[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
- 1:17:31[SPEAKER_05]: and he doesn't show up in the rest of the movie, so of course he's the killer on the Summon.
- 1:17:36[SPEAKER_01]: Or at least involved in some way, like you don't get into the chapters like, and not do something with Richard Break.
- 1:17:42[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird.
- 1:17:43[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's a kind of a remake of the original and except the protagonists have no personality and weirdly enough no survival instinct.
- 1:17:54[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're not doing even remote, like they're like, oh no, the strangers are in the house.
- 1:17:59[SPEAKER_01]: Let's run upstairs, hide in the corner of the bedroom.
- 1:18:02[SPEAKER_01]: Should we close and barricade the door?
- 1:18:04[SPEAKER_01]: No, but we will look at the door.
- 1:18:07[SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing?
- 1:18:08[SPEAKER_01]: I understand making bad decisions in a life where that situation because you're not ready for it, adrenaline's pumping, making no decisions.
- 1:18:17[SPEAKER_01]: is not human, I don't, it doesn't really register.
- 1:18:22[SPEAKER_01]: Where is your survival instinct?
- 1:18:24[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just awful.
- 1:18:25[SPEAKER_01]: And then unlike in the original movie, one of them survives, the woman to think of things to play by Madeleine Pesh, I think is, okay, I'm gonna try and promise that I'm wrong.
- 1:18:36[SPEAKER_01]: She survives at the beginning of the next movie, she's in a hospital later that night,
- 1:18:41[SPEAKER_01]: Or I think it's like one day later.
- 1:18:43[SPEAKER_01]: She's gonna be okay.
- 1:18:44[SPEAKER_01]: She's gonna live But in the middle of the night the stranger shop to finish the job
- 1:18:49[SPEAKER_01]: So she runs from the hospital, and they're chasing her through the woods, and at some point we cut to a flashback of two of the strangers as children.
- 1:19:01[SPEAKER_01]: So we get to see how they became killers in the first place and why they do what they do, which kind of defeats the title and purpose.
- 1:19:08[SPEAKER_05]: They're there because you're home.
- 1:19:11[SPEAKER_01]: That's random.
- 1:19:12[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and why do they do what they do because their serial killer is basically is the vibe we get it And illuminates nothing and it ruins the mistake But at one point, they're just like cut to them like as kids and one of them like one of the kids says when I grow up I'm gonna have a wild boar and then like we cut immediately back to all of a sudden It's like the guy unleashes a wild boar
- 1:19:36[SPEAKER_01]: Just because I what I assume was a note like why does he have a well-born?
- 1:19:40[SPEAKER_01]: This is probably still chapter two chapter two and so that there's a sequence in the middle of there We're battling Pesh.
- 1:19:45[SPEAKER_01]: It's just suddenly attacked by a wild boar.
- 1:19:47[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the bare attack and the Revenant and for a moment It's like well, I wasn't expecting this
- 1:19:54[SPEAKER_01]: Kudos for this, I guess.
- 1:19:56[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't seen that one before, and then she escapes, and then she runs in the more people, and where he will get killed.
- 1:20:03[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of that movie, and this is a spoiler beat, but if the third movie assumes you know it, because it picks up a second later.
- 1:20:11[SPEAKER_01]: There are three strangers.
- 1:20:13[SPEAKER_01]: There's one of Skirro mask, one of like a pin-up girl mask, and I forget what the other one is called, but it's another lady in a mask.
- 1:20:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:20:19[SPEAKER_05]: It's like a QP doll.
- 1:20:22[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:20:22[SPEAKER_05]: It's like a more like, there's a Betty Boop, and there's one with a big eyes.
- 1:20:25[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:20:26[SPEAKER_05]: And then it's the guy with a bag on his head.
- 1:20:27[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:20:28[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the pin-up girl killer is killed at the end of the second movie.
- 1:20:32[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Madeline Pech, finally gets a win, right?
- 1:20:35[SPEAKER_05]: So these prequel movies kill off a character that survives until later.
- 1:20:39[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I think the idea that they were prequels was overstated and these are just a reboot.
- 1:20:45[SPEAKER_01]: So she's killed them and now there's two strangers left and all of a sudden the movie starts getting a little more interesting.
- 1:20:55[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 1:20:56[SPEAKER_01]: I will say this.
- 1:20:56[SPEAKER_01]: I think each of the strangers movies is better than the one that preceded it, which leaves a lot of room for them to be bad.
- 1:21:03[SPEAKER_01]: But it is better.
- 1:21:05[SPEAKER_01]: But this one actually has an idea.
- 1:21:07[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea, because the first one was just boring.
- 1:21:09[SPEAKER_01]: The second one at least was a chase movie, so there was some drive.
- 1:21:15[SPEAKER_01]: And then the third one, there's an idea.
- 1:21:17[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea is this, this woman who was being targeted by the strangers kills one of them.
- 1:21:22[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the strangers, the dude, the guy in the Scarecrow mask, is it Richard Brake?
- 1:21:30[SPEAKER_01]: I will say Richard Brake is not a good guy in this movie, but I won't tell you exactly.
- 1:21:36[SPEAKER_01]: The guy in the scarecrow mask had a thing going with pin-up girl, they were in love, and it was creepy serial killer way, but they were in love.
- 1:21:42[SPEAKER_05]: I assume there was like a family dynamic between them.
- 1:21:45[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, we also find out the origin of the other one, and it's completely arbitrary in random.
- 1:21:49[SPEAKER_01]: But those two had a thing going.
- 1:21:52[SPEAKER_01]: And now the woman they were trying to kill has killed pin-up girl.
- 1:21:56[SPEAKER_01]: And the scarecrow guy is like, well, now I need a new pin-up girl.
- 1:22:00[SPEAKER_01]: So we're gonna try to turn her into a serial killer.
- 1:22:03[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and I'm like, okay, you know what, that's something that's entirely new, but like, that's not the undideth.
- 1:22:10[SPEAKER_01]: Can we do that in one movie instead of three?
- 1:22:12[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Ryan, we feel like we probably could have cranked this.
- 1:22:15[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that would have been a more interesting take.
- 1:22:18[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's,
- 1:22:20[SPEAKER_01]: more interesting, at least conceptually, there's a couple of scenes that aren't in the other strangers movies, as opposed to the others.
- 1:22:27[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing a concept brewing here.
- 1:22:30[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is you're dealing with the idea of someone who was trying to destroy someone else's sanity, shattering their sense of reality.
- 1:22:39[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't developed a sense of reality, you can't shatter it.
- 1:22:43[SPEAKER_01]: And the movies are too fake for that.
- 1:22:50[SPEAKER_01]: The writing is really, really bad.
- 1:22:52[SPEAKER_01]: So what we need to know about these people to understand what would destroy them, we don't know enough of.
- 1:22:58[SPEAKER_01]: And when things happen that would destroy her, like, oh, no, this person I loved has been murdered in front of me, it's not like she shuts down like her brain.
- 1:23:07[SPEAKER_01]: It's just for weirdly, she seems unresponsive.
- 1:23:11[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:23:11[SPEAKER_01]: And not in a way that's like, oh, God, oh, he broke her.
- 1:23:14[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, like this is gonna get bad.
- 1:23:15[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, just unresponsive.
- 1:23:17[SPEAKER_01]: I think about like,
- 1:23:20[SPEAKER_01]: at the end of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
- 1:23:22[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
- 1:23:23[SPEAKER_01]: Where the DJ has been through so much that she's just... She's gone mad.
- 1:23:27[SPEAKER_01]: She's driven mad and she's like covered in blood and she's screaming and dancing with a chainsaw.
- 1:23:31[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I buy it.
- 1:23:32[SPEAKER_01]: You've been through a lot today.
- 1:23:35[SPEAKER_01]: Here, that level of human emotion.
- 1:23:38[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I forget her name, but the actress in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, she's selling it a lot.
- 1:23:43[SPEAKER_01]: It's like...
- 1:23:45[SPEAKER_01]: It's very melodramatic, but it's earned.
- 1:23:48[SPEAKER_01]: I would, I would also probably act that way that day.
- 1:23:53[SPEAKER_01]: This is so weirdly muted in its characterization and its passion and its emotion, that even when they try to do something interesting, it falls really flat.
- 1:24:03[SPEAKER_01]: And on top of it all, it's not very scary.
- 1:24:07[SPEAKER_01]: The acting is still bad.
- 1:24:09[SPEAKER_01]: The writing is still bad.
- 1:24:13[SPEAKER_01]: boring.
- 1:24:15[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little more interesting than last one, but it's still boring.
- 1:24:17[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's just this whole thing.
- 1:24:19[SPEAKER_01]: I kept thinking about like, when they shot the first three Lord of the Rings movies all at once, right?
- 1:24:26[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a risk.
- 1:24:28[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to look back at it now.
- 1:24:29[SPEAKER_01]: It seemed like it was a good idea.
- 1:24:30[SPEAKER_01]: That was a huge risk to do three giant epic fantasy movies from a filmmaker who has never done that kind of thing before.
- 1:24:39[SPEAKER_01]: with the cast of mostly people who can't sell a movie.
- 1:24:43[SPEAKER_01]: Like there wasn't like a Tom Cruise in there.
- 1:24:44[SPEAKER_01]: There was like, you know, Vigo Morton said.
- 1:24:47[SPEAKER_05]: What does it have been keen though?
- 1:24:48[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
- 1:24:49[SPEAKER_01]: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Vigo Mortonson, and Ian McKellen, and Ian McKellen's your big get.
- 1:24:59[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a huge cast for the year 2001, you know?
- 1:25:03[SPEAKER_01]: So,
- 1:25:05[SPEAKER_01]: That was a gamble.
- 1:25:06[SPEAKER_01]: What if they released the first Lord of the Rings movie and it sucked, I know you're not as big a fan, but like, but what if it was bad?
- 1:25:16[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it sucked, I'm just not a fan of it.
- 1:25:17[SPEAKER_01]: But like two, what if it sucked?
- 1:25:19[SPEAKER_01]: The grand end you have a lot less financial commitment because it's a slasher movie, but I feel bad.
- 1:25:24[SPEAKER_01]: Like you put out the first movie, it's like, oh, nobody likes, I thought like the horror fans would like it.
- 1:25:29[SPEAKER_01]: Like nobody likes it and we still have to finish it.
- 1:25:34[SPEAKER_01]: We still to put the other two out.
- 1:25:35[SPEAKER_01]: I'd probably do the reshoots.
- 1:25:38[SPEAKER_01]: If this is the better version, my god.
- 1:25:40[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's sad, how not good these movies are.
- 1:25:46[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a real bummer.
- 1:25:47[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like there's this tendency for almost every horror movie to get reclaimed later, like five, 10 years later, people like, oh, that movie wasn't so bad.
- 1:25:57[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I actually kinda like Halloween six or whatever.
- 1:26:00[SPEAKER_01]: So there's gonna be a defender.
- 1:26:03[SPEAKER_01]: I don't see anyone passionately defending these movies.
- 1:26:05[SPEAKER_05]: Well, because they're already vanishing through the cracks.
- 1:26:07[SPEAKER_05]: Nobody knows these things are coming out.
- 1:26:10[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think they're going to be like, I don't think they're going to pop up on a streaming service randomly.
- 1:26:14[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're going to give them a chance and everyone's talking about, you know, we should have seen these in theaters.
- 1:26:18[SPEAKER_01]: These were good.
- 1:26:19[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think anyone's going to do that.
- 1:26:20[SPEAKER_01]: No.
- 1:26:21[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have an opportunity for that.
- 1:26:22[SPEAKER_05]: Well, there's what I can tell from these, because I've seen the Stranger's chapter one, and I'm about how I'm done.
- 1:26:28[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
- 1:26:29[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I only got marginally better from there.
- 1:26:32[SPEAKER_05]: In a more just world these would be straight to video sequels.
- 1:26:36[SPEAKER_05]: We'd have like eight of these strangers movies We'd like wrong turn.
- 1:26:39[SPEAKER_05]: It was like seven.
- 1:26:40[SPEAKER_01]: They're eight of the wrong turn and most of the wrong turn sequels are better movies than this and that's not saying a lot Like two and four are kind of pretty good, but like the rest of them are really bad.
- 1:26:51[SPEAKER_05]: They've all mashed together in my mind And fortunately I couldn't tell you the difference but I have seen them all, but they're all the same movie now.
- 1:26:58[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah
- 1:26:59[SPEAKER_05]: These are straight to video movies that somehow escaped into theaters.
- 1:27:02[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I'd like the theatrical experience And you know what we have a right to see shitty movies and we do We great of every movie got a shot at a theater.
- 1:27:11[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, but Interesting, yeah But I will segue here to talk about a movie that is pretty good.
- 1:27:21[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
- 1:27:21[SPEAKER_01]: It's called whistle
- 1:27:23[SPEAKER_01]: it is the latest one from director core and hearty uh... he may recall is he directed the none uh... first one which was ridiculous but had
- 1:27:32[SPEAKER_01]: some theatricality to it, visually as opposed to that fun.
- 1:27:36[SPEAKER_01]: It had a roller coaster quality, you know?
- 1:27:38[SPEAKER_05]: Was it the none of the none to that had the cool magazine sequence, were all the magazine pages flipped in a wind storm and formed the none out of all the different pictures?
- 1:27:47[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I think that was the none to it.
- 1:27:49[SPEAKER_01]: The none one was the one where they go to like this, like, they've been for a bit in castle and
- 1:27:54[SPEAKER_05]: And Vera for Omega's sister is there and she looks so much like Vera for Omega's distracted.
- 1:27:59[SPEAKER_01]: But you think she's playing a young Vera for Omega, but she's not.
- 1:28:02[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's really fucking weird.
- 1:28:03[SPEAKER_01]: But like that first movie has a certain...
- 1:28:07[SPEAKER_01]: early Roger Corman Poe movie kind of like over the top theatricality to it that I like it's not a good movie per se but it's got someone was invested in it like someone who wanted to make a scary movie made it and I think it's at least a fun watch even it was not particularly good.
- 1:28:25[SPEAKER_01]: Um, Gornhardy is bringing that to a pretty formulaic idea.
- 1:28:32[SPEAKER_01]: There is the subgenre of the death curse.
- 1:28:36[SPEAKER_01]: Most famously the final destination movies are just death is after death something a supernatural Personification of death or possibly a ghost or a demon is just looking for you, and it's gonna kill you And you can't do anything about it because it's supernatural and possibly death itself The final destination movies are almost all great and even the one bad one is still pretty fun It's a formula that can really really work provided you have fun with it
- 1:29:04[SPEAKER_01]: It follows is also in the same vein.
- 1:29:06[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit more thematically focused, but it's still about the supernatural thing is coming for you.
- 1:29:14[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
- 1:29:15[SPEAKER_01]: Whistle stars Daphne Keane from Logan, that one Wolverine, as a teenager who moves into a new town, and she discovers in her locker, and her locker belongs to a guy who died under mysterious circumstances six months ago.
- 1:29:30[SPEAKER_01]: Haunted locker.
- 1:29:31[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, locker itself down so much, but inside the locker, there is, like, a centuries-old evil whistle.
- 1:29:42[SPEAKER_01]: Succarino of time a little bit yeah, um, and it's got like a scary face on it and the whole thing says Whatever you do, don't put your lips on me So naturally people are gonna put their lips on it.
- 1:29:54[SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of thing where it's like
- 1:29:57[SPEAKER_01]: Even the movie knows that we can't justify doing this more than twice.
- 1:30:01[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like no one's going to want to do it.
- 1:30:03[SPEAKER_01]: So like early on, they're all, the main characters, the main kids are all in detention together and she brings this thing and she just found it in her locker and their teachers like a history teacher played by Nick Frost.
- 1:30:16[SPEAKER_01]: He's there.
- 1:30:17[SPEAKER_01]: He's their brief celebrity get.
- 1:30:18[SPEAKER_01]: He's not in it very long.
- 1:30:19[SPEAKER_01]: He's the one who recognized like, oh wait, this is actually really old.
- 1:30:23[SPEAKER_01]: uh... and it's got like you know uh... it's some part of some kind of death rich wall from central america from hundreds of years ago so there's a little undercurrent of racism but like that trope is still hanging on it's even a drag me to hell you know what's like oh no don't let the don't let the romani person curse you like it's not say romani they don't know they use the racist term like yes it's so frustrating it's like there's gotta be a better way but um...
- 1:30:50[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, he's like, oh, but this is very expensive.
- 1:30:52[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to have to confiscate this.
- 1:30:53[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, kids.
- 1:30:55[SPEAKER_01]: But he blows on it to see if it still works.
- 1:30:57[SPEAKER_01]: So he can sell it like thousands of dollars.
- 1:31:00[SPEAKER_01]: But when you blow this whistle, you summon, you turn into a whistle.
- 1:31:05[SPEAKER_01]: No, that would be us.
- 1:31:07[SPEAKER_01]: No, you summon a ghost.
- 1:31:08[SPEAKER_01]: And the premise is this.
- 1:31:09[SPEAKER_01]: This is explained better later.
- 1:31:11[SPEAKER_01]: The idea is when you're born, like a ghost or a demon or a spirit, is birthed with you.
- 1:31:19[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it is hunting you down and however you're destined to die, that's when that thing finds you.
- 1:31:26[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so it's important at the same time, but it's in a different part of the planet.
- 1:31:29[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's like, it's in a different spiritual planet.
- 1:31:31[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like looking at it.
- 1:31:32[SPEAKER_05]: That's the look you up online and find out where you're.
- 1:31:34[SPEAKER_01]: If you're destined to die when you're 30, it takes 30 years to find you.
- 1:31:37[SPEAKER_01]: God.
- 1:31:38[SPEAKER_01]: But really, that's actually in reverse.
- 1:31:40[SPEAKER_01]: It takes 30 years to find you, and that's why you died at 30.
- 1:31:44[SPEAKER_01]: But it killed the demon, the spirit, whatever, takes the form of, however, you were gonna look when you died normally.
- 1:31:52[SPEAKER_01]: So Nick Frost, who was a heavy smoker, was going to die of lung cancer.
- 1:31:57[SPEAKER_01]: So the demon comes to him and the form of an extremely emaciated guy, and then it shoves its ghost fists into his chest and infects his lungs.
- 1:32:06[SPEAKER_01]: All right, and it's like, okay, that's kind of creepy.
- 1:32:09[SPEAKER_05]: It's kind of creepy, and then it turns out you're just into die in them.
- 1:32:13[SPEAKER_05]: Every person that you're still having now is going to live it on the planet.
- 1:32:16[SPEAKER_01]: You summoned your death now even if you were going to live to be 90.
- 1:32:21[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
- 1:32:21[SPEAKER_01]: But you will die however it is when you're 90.
- 1:32:23[SPEAKER_01]: So if there's one character who's just into die when they were 90 is this of old age And so like this.
- 1:32:28[SPEAKER_05]: So they will jump real fast.
- 1:32:29[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this old, old version of her is like chasing her.
- 1:32:32[SPEAKER_01]: And when it grabs her, she starts aging really, really fast, but then she pulls away.
- 1:32:37[SPEAKER_01]: So only like half of her is aged.
- 1:32:39[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, you know what?
- 1:32:41[SPEAKER_01]: That's not novel.
- 1:32:42[SPEAKER_01]: Some cleverness there.
- 1:32:43[SPEAKER_01]: That's got a cool.
- 1:32:44[SPEAKER_01]: There's like one person who was destined to die in a car accident, but here's the thing.
- 1:32:51[SPEAKER_01]: The demon won't get the car.
- 1:32:54[SPEAKER_01]: You won't be in a car accident, but everything that would have happened to your body in that car accident, it's just gonna happen.
- 1:33:00[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you see that, oh, and it's like,
- 1:33:03[SPEAKER_01]: that's fucking gnarly man and you really see it too like it's really visceral like that shit's cool like oh is there like somebody was murdered and like the murderers teleported there and doesn't know what they're doing there because they have no motivation to kill you yet well i think that's the sort of kind of ruin the life of the murderers well here's what i'll say about whistle and again it's an extremely contrived premise but once you get past the premise the actual idea is kind of neat and i think that if this was successful enough to warrant a sequel
- 1:33:32[SPEAKER_01]: weekend I'll come up with cool things we could do here.
- 1:33:35[SPEAKER_01]: And they didn't do that one, but there's definitely shit they could have done.
- 1:33:40[SPEAKER_01]: Gornhardy films the fuck out of this thing, it's really atmospheric, the kills are really mostly really fucking cool.
- 1:33:46[SPEAKER_01]: And that's really only you need, because unfortunately again the premise is contrived in kind of racist, and also once they started establishing the rules it's like, oh so it's final destination rules.
- 1:33:59[SPEAKER_01]: you stole all the final destination rules.
- 1:34:01[SPEAKER_05]: There's like a bit where a guy is like, final destination was a big hit.
- 1:34:06[SPEAKER_05]: It kind of rattled the zeitgeist a little bit, people know about it.
- 1:34:10[SPEAKER_05]: I think it's a touch touch stone.
- 1:34:11[SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually not even mad at it, because you're right.
- 1:34:14[SPEAKER_01]: There is a thing that happens in horror movies where a movie kind of defines a genre of sub-genre and then you just can't get past it.
- 1:34:20[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah.
- 1:34:22[SPEAKER_01]: theoretically you don't have to shoot a zombie in the head to kill it, but we've all seen the Georgia Ramera movies and we all just sort of accept that one.
- 1:34:31[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the rules that we take for granted about where wolves like silver.
- 1:34:35[SPEAKER_01]: That all comes from the wolf man.
- 1:34:37[SPEAKER_01]: That's not actual mythology.
- 1:34:40[SPEAKER_01]: That's all just a movie did that.
- 1:34:43[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm dying of mine that we're stealing it, but just there is no terribly original.
- 1:34:48[SPEAKER_01]: There are certain things that happen in a genre where the genre goes on long enough, and then someone comes up with some kind of novel, new twist on it, and it expands into an alternate sub-genre.
- 1:35:00[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, I'm trying to think of a good example here.
- 1:35:06[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, for example, like found footage movies, right?
- 1:35:09[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we found the footage of how these people died under mysterious circumstances.
- 1:35:13[SPEAKER_01]: And then someone said, okay, but what if we did that entirely on a computer screen?
- 1:35:17[SPEAKER_01]: right and like where people watching videos on a computer screen and then boom now we have the second screen sub-genre.
- 1:35:23[SPEAKER_01]: It mutated like a virus and now there's a totally different strain right.
- 1:35:27[SPEAKER_01]: This is not the mutated strain.
- 1:35:29[SPEAKER_01]: This is just someone else got the flu.
- 1:35:33[SPEAKER_01]: This is just that thing again and it kind of works.
- 1:35:38[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't do anything terribly different but it's a pretty good example of the genre and this is the kind of thing where
- 1:35:45[SPEAKER_01]: It's not gonna blow your mind.
- 1:35:46[SPEAKER_01]: It's not gonna be your favorite horror movie, but if you put this on at a slumber party, everyone would have a good time.
- 1:35:52[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:35:52[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not amazing, but it's solid.
- 1:35:56[SPEAKER_01]: It is a four star three star movie.
- 1:35:59[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
- 1:35:59[SPEAKER_01]: It could never be more than three.
- 1:36:00[SPEAKER_01]: But it's about as good as that three could get except for the racism you didn't have to do that.
- 1:36:06[SPEAKER_01]: That was a choice.
- 1:36:07[SPEAKER_05]: Um, it's one of those tropes that feels more like a trope than a racist thing, even though like we've been using it so long that we've forgotten that it's racist.
- 1:36:15[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, why don't we take a, take a hard pivot out of the horror genre?
- 1:36:19[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you tell me about the wrecking crew?
- 1:36:21[SPEAKER_05]: Raking crew, it's not about the studio musicians.
- 1:36:24[SPEAKER_05]: Bummer.
- 1:36:25[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, there is a film called the wrecking crew documentary film about the studio musicians.
- 1:36:28[SPEAKER_05]: The wrecking crew who played on like all of the records of the 60s.
- 1:36:32[SPEAKER_05]: And that's fascinating and encourage you to find that one.
- 1:36:34[SPEAKER_01]: Is it about the Marvel supervillains who all have enchanted Construction equipment?
- 1:36:40[SPEAKER_05]: Is that a thing?
- 1:36:41[SPEAKER_05]: That's an actual thing.
- 1:36:42[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they shut up and she hulk.
- 1:36:44[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know.
- 1:36:45[SPEAKER_01]: They stole like the Norse gods construction equipment So they have like a magic crowbar I am a magic hammer.
- 1:36:52[SPEAKER_01]: Why not a magic crowbar, you know magic whatever like It's not very good.
- 1:36:58[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're not great girls
- 1:36:59[SPEAKER_05]: Um, the wrecking crew is a body cop movie.
- 1:37:03[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
- 1:37:03[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, it's being put out by prime video.
- 1:37:04[SPEAKER_05]: You can watch it today if you have a prime subscription.
- 1:37:07[SPEAKER_05]: If you were so inclined, uh, and it's, uh, the two buddies are half brothers played by Dave Batista and Jason Mamoa.
- 1:37:15[SPEAKER_05]: So big action stars.
- 1:37:16[SPEAKER_05]: Those are both likeable stars.
- 1:37:18[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:37:19[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, it takes, they are half brothers and the movie opens with their father.
- 1:37:25[SPEAKER_05]: uh... getting killed in uh... mystery circumstances run down in a van he's uh... clearly up to something she and these two uh... jesus mo mo is sort of like the more the more arat uh... rassible less controlled one uh... he'll is a fun guy he's the fun guy is a cop on a reservation at local home on the opening scene we seem like pulling up on his motorcycle as his girlfriend is played by marina back around his leaving him it's like you're you're an asshole
- 1:37:52[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, oh, why are you speaking Spanish at me?
- 1:37:55[SPEAKER_05]: I'm, it's Portuguese, you asshole.
- 1:37:57[SPEAKER_05]: Like that kind of stuff.
- 1:37:58[SPEAKER_05]: And Dave Petista is the family man.
- 1:38:00[SPEAKER_05]: He's a little bit more straight-laced.
- 1:38:03[SPEAKER_05]: Leave the weapon again.
- 1:38:04[SPEAKER_05]: One family guy, one out of control guy, and they get together, they're just brothers.
- 1:38:08[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if you tell me there's like a buddy action where we were Jason Moa and Dave Petista, I'm instantly like, well, that could be good.
- 1:38:14[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:38:16[SPEAKER_05]: And they have to start investigating their father's death.
- 1:38:20[SPEAKER_05]: And they come into and the plot is completely predictable.
- 1:38:25[SPEAKER_05]: They go and find that there's some kind of land snatching going on and how their father was involved with this.
- 1:38:31[SPEAKER_05]: Rich wealthy guys and Hawaii they go to Hawaii, which is most of the action takes place and in fact there's a lot of cultural detail about Polynesian culture and they get a lot of like details right about sort of local lingo and what they call things and how local politics really work in Hawaii.
- 1:38:47[SPEAKER_05]: That's cool.
- 1:38:48[SPEAKER_05]: That's really admirable.
- 1:38:49[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's the same.
- 1:38:50[SPEAKER_05]: And there's a lot of like little tiny supporting players um, who is what's his name?
- 1:39:07[SPEAKER_05]: Cameron Mitchell, Grumpy, police chief character that you've ever seen is like a lot.
- 1:39:12[SPEAKER_05]: Why do you guys look like you eat steroid pancakes for breakfast, doing on my island?
- 1:39:16[SPEAKER_05]: Like as the most boring dialogue, if I'd most of the dialogue is really, really boring.
- 1:39:22[SPEAKER_05]: And I mentioned this when I reviewed the rip, because this is clearly made for streaming.
- 1:39:28[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was never any intention of putting this near.
- 1:39:30[SPEAKER_05]: No, so which means the filmmakers know that audiences are second screening.
- 1:39:36[SPEAKER_05]: They're looking at their phones.
- 1:39:37[SPEAKER_05]: They're looking at a laptop.
- 1:39:38[SPEAKER_05]: They're walking around and doing their laundry, yeah.
- 1:39:41[SPEAKER_05]: Which means you can look up at the screen at any given moment and get all the information you need out of that same.
- 1:39:46[SPEAKER_05]: There's a scene early in the film where the Dave Petista character is going to talk to this Steven Hood character at the Honolulu police station.
- 1:39:53[SPEAKER_05]: And they're repeating plot points that had been repeated in like two scenes earlier, and you look up, and Dave Batista, he plays a Navy seal, and he's at his naval uniform, he's got a name tag, Stephen Rude is carrying a file, and he's got like, I think he might even be wearing a badge around his neck, so you can look up and get all the information you need, where exactly you are in this script, and get all the facts you need to keep on following this film, yeah.
- 1:40:22[SPEAKER_05]: There's this weird, dry clarity to these kinds of movies that are clearly made for like a second screen audience that I kind of admire, I always want more clarity in my movies.
- 1:40:35[SPEAKER_05]: I don't necessarily need plot points to repeated so brazenly, but I like where I know where I am.
- 1:40:42[SPEAKER_05]: And that can also be said for the action sequences.
- 1:40:45[SPEAKER_05]: The action in this film is actually really slick.
- 1:40:48[SPEAKER_05]: There's some, you know, action and chase sequences.
- 1:40:51[SPEAKER_05]: There's a helicopter chase here at the end of the movie Cars do cartwheels and the camera stays back Doesn't do a lot of editing.
- 1:40:57[SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't have that Michael Bay sense of chaos about it There's actually a good sense of visual openness that I appreciate about those action sequences Yeah, the problem is the script is so boring and the characters are so boring.
- 1:41:11[SPEAKER_05]: These are like really stock characters
- 1:41:14[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like watching one of these movies and I made this observation on the social medias.
- 1:41:21[SPEAKER_05]: Watching a movie like this is sort of like the equivalent of reading ad copy.
- 1:41:27[SPEAKER_05]: In that ad copy needs to be clear, it needs to be concise, it needs to evoke a strong feeling, but it's only function is to communicate a very basic feeling and then get out.
- 1:41:37[SPEAKER_05]: It's not really
- 1:41:43[SPEAKER_05]: It was directed by On Hell, Manuel Soto.
- 1:41:46[SPEAKER_05]: He's a Puerto Rican filmmaker who did Blue Beetle, which is a fun movie.
- 1:41:50[SPEAKER_05]: And I have the same issues with Blue Beetle and that's the script I think was over stuff because they tried to do the whole Superm Hero myth thing.
- 1:41:57[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:41:57[SPEAKER_05]: They tried to make it this intergenerational thing and they're introducing all of these facts that are supposed to plan to a larger universe.
- 1:42:02[SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, I know that word.
- 1:42:03[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't end up too much.
- 1:42:04[SPEAKER_01]: It's like going to have all of these villains.
- 1:42:05[SPEAKER_01]: What's their deal?
- 1:42:06[SPEAKER_01]: Well Susan Sarandon is evil and racist.
- 1:42:08[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's another guy who's like Blue Beetle but red.
- 1:42:11[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:42:12[SPEAKER_01]: And he's a bad guy.
- 1:42:13[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like we don't need more than that.
- 1:42:15[SPEAKER_01]: You that's as little as you get beef it down.
- 1:42:18[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:42:19[SPEAKER_05]: Don't be fit up beef it down simplify simplify and but that film also had like charming leads and great great great supporting actors.
- 1:42:29[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:42:29[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:42:29[SPEAKER_05]: Like the lead of Bluebeard all of us.
- 1:42:33[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:42:37[SPEAKER_01]: I forgot
- 1:42:40[SPEAKER_01]: I hope I'm pronouncing that even remotely right, but he really good actor.
- 1:42:43[SPEAKER_01]: I want to see more of that guy
- 1:42:44[SPEAKER_01]: like he's a good he has good like leading man energy and he's very handsome he just he just captivates the screen he's great it was great find blue beetle wasn't a big hit we're not going to see him again i hope he gets more work but um well i heard i heard james gun said that like if the blue beetle shows up in their new universe will keep the same guy okay because he's good so like i hope i hope that turns out well for him we'll see if that universe goes anywhere they're getting the right uh one or two others but we'll see if there's no one here maybe Netflix buys it and then makes it all go straight to streaming and then james gun quits
- 1:43:12[SPEAKER_05]: We're done.
- 1:43:13[SPEAKER_05]: All right.
- 1:43:13[SPEAKER_05]: The superhero things over us.
- 1:43:14[SPEAKER_01]: They're launching them always make them but they'll make them the same way we make Western Which is sometimes and they're not always a big deal.
- 1:43:21[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no one's gonna care so much Yeah, we'll get a couple of boxes here and then we're done
- 1:43:26[SPEAKER_05]: But the wrecking crew is like, it's watchable, it's efficient, the leads are indeed charming.
- 1:43:32[SPEAKER_05]: It fills the space incredibly well, but it never does anything more than that.
- 1:43:38[SPEAKER_05]: It takes up space on your screen.
- 1:43:40[SPEAKER_05]: It's not, I can guarantee you, I'm going to be going through the list of films I've watched in 2026 at the end of the year, and I'm gonna have to look up what this one is.
- 1:43:48[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know that feeling and I enjoyed it.
- 1:43:50[SPEAKER_05]: That's the thing.
- 1:43:51[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, actually really enjoy Jason Momoa does his usual charming He's a very charming actor.
- 1:43:56[SPEAKER_05]: I admire that Dave Batista has said in interviews that He doesn't want to be an action star.
- 1:44:01[SPEAKER_05]: He wants to be an actor.
- 1:44:03[SPEAKER_05]: He's actually trying to find roles that challenge his craft a little bit.
- 1:44:07[SPEAKER_01]: It was in the last show girl.
- 1:44:08[SPEAKER_05]: He was fantastic He wants to refine his performances and I feel like he's playing a pretty good soulful character But this one's like more of a paycheck movie for him.
- 1:44:16[SPEAKER_05]: He gets to do the action star thing again
- 1:44:19[SPEAKER_05]: So these are like interesting actors, giving pretty good performance, efficient performances.
- 1:44:25[SPEAKER_05]: And now, yet another lethal weapon knock off, 40 years after the fact.
- 1:44:32[SPEAKER_05]: And it's hit and all the right beats.
- 1:44:35[SPEAKER_05]: If you had somebody like Shane Black writing it, bring it a little bit.
- 1:44:38[SPEAKER_01]: We already, we already did that with Clay Dirty last year and it didn't make any impression either.
- 1:44:42[SPEAKER_01]: So even Shane Black can't do this.
- 1:44:43[SPEAKER_05]: Well, again, don't get Shane Black.
- 1:44:45[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah.
- 1:44:46[SPEAKER_05]: I was just complaining.
- 1:44:47[SPEAKER_05]: We're recycling too lately.
- 1:44:48[SPEAKER_01]: I just, ironically, we already did that with that guy.
- 1:44:50[SPEAKER_01]: I just thought that was a funny, bring it around.
- 1:44:52[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you bring something really interesting here because you were talking about this with the rip and I think even Matthew and Ben Affleck were talking about this in interviews about the rip which is Netflix had a way they wanted them to make that movie with all of that clarity and also normally when you make a movie you want to like save the biggest action sequence for the end big climax but Netflix is so afraid of people switching to something else because it's so easy to do that the Netflix is like put the first big
- 1:45:20[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so they're shifting the way narrative structure was traditionally being handled, which I think I'm fine with this evolution because if we just stick with the same formula's they're going to stop working after a while that's the thing it's like I think a lot of little bristle at that and a part of me it's like
- 1:45:38[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't necessarily have to not work that way.
- 1:45:41[SPEAKER_01]: Like it could work that way.
- 1:45:42[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you look at like mission-opossible rogue nation, that movie's actually structured really interestingly, and that the biggest stunt in the movie is the first scene.
- 1:45:49[SPEAKER_01]: And then the final sequence in the movie is actually the least death-defying.
- 1:45:55[SPEAKER_01]: It works its way backward.
- 1:45:56[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:45:56[SPEAKER_01]: But emotional stakes are bigger at the end than they were at the beginning.
- 1:45:59[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I love that movie.
- 1:46:00[SPEAKER_05]: Because the climax is people sitting at a table and like it was a bomb.
- 1:46:04[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:46:04[SPEAKER_01]: That's where all the emotional stakes are.
- 1:46:06[SPEAKER_01]: It's just not a big stunt.
- 1:46:07[SPEAKER_01]: And you can do it that way, it can work.
- 1:46:10[SPEAKER_01]: And even the whole, I know people bristled about like, oh, I can't believe you have to restate the plot all the time.
- 1:46:16[SPEAKER_01]: That's been around.
- 1:46:18[SPEAKER_01]: TV's been doing that for forever.
- 1:46:20[SPEAKER_01]: You'll notice like when you watch any kind of like long-running TV show that's serialized, every episode or two, someone says exactly what's going on right now this season with a weirdly direct level of clarity.
- 1:46:32[SPEAKER_01]: And then you notice the next few episodes, that's the line that they use in the previously on segment, just to catch you up fast.
- 1:46:42[SPEAKER_01]: That we're doing that on purpose.
- 1:46:44[SPEAKER_01]: We need to make sure people are following along in case they missed an episode or they came right in the middle.
- 1:46:50[SPEAKER_01]: Movies used to be like this too.
- 1:46:52[SPEAKER_01]: Movies used to run all day.
- 1:46:54[SPEAKER_01]: You would buy a ticket to the theater, not the movie.
- 1:46:57[SPEAKER_01]: And they would have two movies, an A feature, B feature, a news reel, cartoon shorts, documentaries, it was a whole program.
- 1:47:05[SPEAKER_01]: But when you entered the theater, it's not necessarily when the movie began.
- 1:47:10[SPEAKER_01]: You might step in right in the middle and they knew that.
- 1:47:15[SPEAKER_01]: So movies were written in such a way that you could catch up.
- 1:47:20[SPEAKER_01]: People wouldn't talk about the plot throughout the movie.
- 1:47:23[SPEAKER_01]: People would constantly remind everyone what everyone's name is.
- 1:47:27[SPEAKER_01]: That's why people in movies say people's names more often than we do in real life.
- 1:47:31[SPEAKER_01]: Because the audience might not know that dude is Trevor.
- 1:47:34[SPEAKER_01]: So when someone talks about Trevor later you don't know that they're talking about
- 1:47:39[SPEAKER_01]: James Stewart.
- 1:47:40[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 1:47:40[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you don't know.
- 1:47:41[SPEAKER_01]: You have to constantly because the movies weren't treated as precious.
- 1:47:48[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to see the movie in this pure state.
- 1:47:51[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
- 1:47:52[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's something almost gross about that to a lot of film fans that we're not looking at films with the sort of reverence.
- 1:48:02[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also something kind of honest about the idea that when we look at a lot of
- 1:48:10[SPEAKER_01]: we're not trading them with reverence.
- 1:48:12[SPEAKER_01]: These are time-wasters.
- 1:48:14[SPEAKER_01]: These are entertainments, and we're not necessarily taking them seriously, and I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I also think there's almost a weird dignity to it sometime.
- 1:48:24[SPEAKER_05]: There's a certain kind of integrity to acknowledging that the film you're making,
- 1:48:30[SPEAKER_05]: is only meant to be like a blank slate of a slick entertainment.
- 1:48:37[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is, and he's called the Bee Pictures.
- 1:48:39[SPEAKER_05]: We just made the sort of a function.
- 1:48:40[SPEAKER_05]: Be a fun twister, and then we're out.
- 1:48:42[SPEAKER_05]: And here's the thing.
- 1:48:43[SPEAKER_05]: I have talked to numerous people, online and in person, who tend to see the entire medium of film as a...
- 1:48:56[SPEAKER_05]: just entertainment, as something that is meant to be a distraction or an escape.
- 1:49:00[SPEAKER_05]: They don't want a lot of art or complexity in their entertainment.
- 1:49:05[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of people who feel that way.
- 1:49:06[SPEAKER_01]: They just don't, they don't, and love it the way we do.
- 1:49:08[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and filmmakers are catering to those kinds of impulses.
- 1:49:12[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:49:13[SPEAKER_05]: That's not interesting for me as a critic.
- 1:49:15[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 1:49:15[SPEAKER_05]: Because I want the medium to stretch and expand and explore.
- 1:49:19[SPEAKER_05]: We love it, and we wanted to be held to a high standard, yeah.
- 1:49:26[SPEAKER_05]: a four out of ten, and hits it right in the middle, well then that's successful.
- 1:49:32[SPEAKER_01]: Arguably.
- 1:49:33[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it depends on what it's going for.
- 1:49:35[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:49:35[SPEAKER_01]: I made that point earlier.
- 1:49:36[SPEAKER_01]: But like, yeah, if you're aiming low and you hit it,
- 1:49:39[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to deny that you did your job.
- 1:49:42[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't necessarily mean it's we're celebrating, but people can get what they want at it, those are the reason why hallmark movies work.
- 1:49:50[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's only get one that's genuinely good, but it's the rarity, most of them are functional, because people just want something functional out of them.
- 1:49:57[SPEAKER_01]: And again, there's a certain level of integrity to that.
- 1:50:00[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a certain level of disrespect for the medium in that.
- 1:50:03[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not pretending that this is I've completely like shifted my point of view, but I do think that there's something interesting to that that we can talk about and that a movie doesn't have to be bad for doing that.
- 1:50:16[SPEAKER_01]: But it's interesting and it's weird and it is a shift.
- 1:50:19[SPEAKER_01]: And I would like to talk about another Amazon Prime original.
- 1:50:22[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 1:50:24[SPEAKER_01]: This is called Relationship Goals.
- 1:50:27[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 1:50:28[SPEAKER_01]: And it sucks!
- 1:50:30[SPEAKER_01]: okay what's next moving all right now but this that this is actually really what I do want to talk about this is something there's something going on in this movie that i think is relevant but unfortunately it's not the movie part of the movie so relationship goals is a romantic comedy um hold on make sure i get the uh names of the cast right and i'm using one hand to type
- 1:50:50[SPEAKER_01]: uh... okay uh... it stars uh... kelly roll and and the method man who is now being credited as cliff method man smith uh... it they are TV producers all right they're working in a morning show about both pop stars the both pop stars but they're they're playing TV producers in the movie uh... and they're both good the both pretty good actors like method man actually has been doing acting for so long he's a natural
- 1:51:16[SPEAKER_01]: Kelly Rowland, not so much, but she has, you know, rom-com vibe.
- 1:51:20[SPEAKER_01]: She knows like what this movie is asking of her.
- 1:51:23[SPEAKER_01]: She's trying to do it, but yeah, the plot is, they're both TV producers, morning television, you've seen it, silly interviews with celebrities, puff pieces, that kind of thing and get your day started.
- 1:51:35[SPEAKER_01]: Kelly Rowland's been working at this TV station for a long time, her boss is about to retire.
- 1:51:40[SPEAKER_01]: She thinks she's about to get his job.
- 1:51:42[SPEAKER_01]: And then he says,
- 1:51:44[SPEAKER_01]: The higher-ups want to bring in another guy and have you to compete for the job.
- 1:51:48[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a new guy coming in to compete for the job, but it's not just a new guy.
- 1:51:51[SPEAKER_05]: You can try it on sale.
- 1:51:52[SPEAKER_01]: It's her ex-boyfriend.
- 1:51:53[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
- 1:51:54[SPEAKER_01]: And they'd ended badly.
- 1:51:56[SPEAKER_01]: So now, there's a level of rivalry there, but also a lot of anxiety.
- 1:52:02[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the thing, she still hates his guts because he cheated on her.
- 1:52:06[SPEAKER_01]: He has turned his life around, or so he says.
- 1:52:10[SPEAKER_01]: And he's not that guy anymore.
- 1:52:11[SPEAKER_01]: And he feels bad about being that guy.
- 1:52:14[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, interesting.
- 1:52:15[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of with you.
- 1:52:16[SPEAKER_01]: But the reason why he is this guy and this is his big pitch.
- 1:52:19[SPEAKER_01]: This is the story I want to do for our Valentine's Day episode.
- 1:52:23[SPEAKER_01]: Is that he has read a book called Relationship Goals.
- 1:52:29[SPEAKER_01]: That is about what we're talking about.
- 1:52:31[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it is.
- 1:52:33[SPEAKER_05]: All right, so it's based on the book.
- 1:52:35[SPEAKER_05]: It's based on the book and it's a commercial for the book.
- 1:52:37[SPEAKER_01]: It's a commercial for the book.
- 1:52:38[SPEAKER_01]: There is a...
- 1:52:40[SPEAKER_01]: The book is called Holdout.
- 1:52:42[SPEAKER_01]: It's a relationship goals.
- 1:52:44[SPEAKER_01]: How to win at dating, marriage, and sex by pastor Michael Todd who appears in the movie as himself.
- 1:52:52[SPEAKER_01]: So it's an out for this book.
- 1:52:52[SPEAKER_01]: It's an out for this book.
- 1:52:54[SPEAKER_01]: Do they order it on Amazon?
- 1:52:56[SPEAKER_01]: There's a part in the movie where after they do the story on the show, they're reading like, oh, the comment section is really blowing up.
- 1:53:03[SPEAKER_01]: This person said, I was so excited by this.
- 1:53:06[SPEAKER_01]: I bought the book on Amazon.
- 1:53:09[SPEAKER_01]: I am a zon to the book.
- 1:53:11[SPEAKER_01]: Amazon is a verb, okay.
- 1:53:13[SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to verb Amazon.
- 1:53:14[SPEAKER_01]: We have not agreed on this.
- 1:53:17[SPEAKER_01]: Some businesses get to do that.
- 1:53:18[SPEAKER_01]: Some of that, we get to do that.
- 1:53:19[SPEAKER_01]: We, we, we FedEx, we allowed to do that.
- 1:53:21[SPEAKER_01]: Zerox, we decided we allowed to do that.
- 1:53:22[SPEAKER_01]: Even Google, we said you can Google it.
- 1:53:25[SPEAKER_01]: We have never said that about Amazon and we are not going to fucking start now.
- 1:53:29[SPEAKER_01]: You bought it on Amazon.
- 1:53:31[SPEAKER_01]: That's enough.
- 1:53:31[SPEAKER_01]: And even that's too much if you really think about it.
- 1:53:33[SPEAKER_01]: But, um...
- 1:53:36[SPEAKER_01]: It's about this book, it's about selling this book and it's about how this book can do no wrong.
- 1:53:41[SPEAKER_01]: So he has fixed his life because of this book.
- 1:53:45[SPEAKER_01]: She has not fixed her life because she hasn't read this book.
- 1:53:48[SPEAKER_01]: There are two best friend characters who all both have relationship problems that are easily solved by reading this book.
- 1:53:57[SPEAKER_05]: What is the significance of this book?
- 1:53:58[SPEAKER_05]: I've never heard of this book.
- 1:53:59[SPEAKER_01]: The book is, oh, and here's the thing.
- 1:54:00[SPEAKER_01]: To read, to hear the movie tell it, I haven't read it.
- 1:54:04[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, the book is full of relation to advice.
- 1:54:07[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea is it's about dating with intentionality.
- 1:54:10[SPEAKER_01]: You're not just dating to date.
- 1:54:12[SPEAKER_01]: You're dating because you want to find someone to marry.
- 1:54:15[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:54:15[SPEAKER_01]: What's so people look?
- 1:54:16[SPEAKER_01]: Fine.
- 1:54:17[SPEAKER_01]: You're tired of just dating random people.
- 1:54:19[SPEAKER_01]: You want to find a life partner.
- 1:54:20[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:54:21[SPEAKER_01]: there reaches a point where a lot of people want to do that.
- 1:54:23[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 1:54:24[SPEAKER_01]: So how do I get out of the cycle of just dating and start finding someone real?
- 1:54:30[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 1:54:31[SPEAKER_01]: I see your point.
- 1:54:33[SPEAKER_01]: They talk about how if you're dating a bunch of people that are not working for you, date other people are trying to be single for a while.
- 1:54:38[SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
- 1:54:39[SPEAKER_01]: That's not bad advice.
- 1:54:41[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in a long term relationship with someone and you want to get married and they don't,
- 1:54:46[SPEAKER_01]: make sure you're very clear that you want to get married and if they still don't, maybe you should be with someone else.
- 1:54:51[SPEAKER_01]: This is not terrible advice.
- 1:54:53[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of obvious advice, but it's not terrible advice.
- 1:54:56[SPEAKER_01]: But then they throw on this one thing about how, what is it really so bad to date around?
- 1:55:00[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when Pastor Michael Todd, Michael Todd, Michael Todd, uses a metaphor of chicken nuggets.
- 1:55:07[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to play to chicken nuggets.
- 1:55:09[SPEAKER_01]: And you're passing it around the room and everyone's touching them.
- 1:55:12[SPEAKER_01]: Oh dear.
- 1:55:13[SPEAKER_01]: Do you still want to chicken nuggets?
- 1:55:14[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, okay, now that's condescending is shit, dude.
- 1:55:18[SPEAKER_01]: That's condescending and aggressive and and pretty fucked up.
- 1:55:22[SPEAKER_01]: I don't that's that's bad advice, but uh, until then you had me.
- 1:55:25[SPEAKER_01]: Those of these are common sense, not the worst dating advice I've ever heard.
- 1:55:29[SPEAKER_01]: But
- 1:55:30[SPEAKER_01]: It's just about that.
- 1:55:31[SPEAKER_01]: And then the rom-com stuff takes a huge backseat to that.
- 1:55:34[SPEAKER_01]: Geez.
- 1:55:34[SPEAKER_01]: It just forgets to be a rom-com.
- 1:55:36[SPEAKER_01]: There's like a part where they like, the past of Michael Todd, I guess lives in Oklahoma.
- 1:55:40[SPEAKER_01]: So they go to Oklahoma, it's filming interview.
- 1:55:41[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 1:55:42[SPEAKER_01]: And but on the way back, they're flight is canceled because there's like a tornado warning.
- 1:55:46[SPEAKER_01]: So they have to drive to Memphis to get a flight back to New York.
- 1:55:50[SPEAKER_01]: So now it's a road trip with two people who used to date and they hate each other.
- 1:55:53[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, oh, okay.
- 1:55:54[SPEAKER_01]: So this is about minute 30 into the movie.
- 1:55:56[SPEAKER_01]: This is the movie now, right?
- 1:55:58[SPEAKER_05]: They're going to be a road trip with people who don't like each other.
- 1:56:00[SPEAKER_01]: So they're going to.
- 1:56:00[SPEAKER_05]: But they're falling love.
- 1:56:01[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:56:02[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit adventure.
- 1:56:03[SPEAKER_01]: But it works.
- 1:56:04[SPEAKER_01]: It's a framework, right?
- 1:56:05[SPEAKER_01]: We get two scenes of that and then they're back in New York.
- 1:56:09[SPEAKER_01]: Why did we even do that?
- 1:56:12[SPEAKER_01]: You're not doing, we're here to see a rock, I know you, I know it's a commercial, but you're trying to hide it as a rom-com.
- 1:56:18[SPEAKER_01]: You're barely trying to do a rom-com.
- 1:56:21[SPEAKER_01]: The obvious framework for this movie is the film Think Like a Man, okay?
- 1:56:25[SPEAKER_01]: Which is based on a relationship advice book by of all people, comedians, Steve Harvey.
- 1:56:29[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
- 1:56:30[SPEAKER_01]: And it was the best selling book.
- 1:56:32[SPEAKER_01]: And they decided to make a movie out of it.
- 1:56:33[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, it's in advertisement for the book.
- 1:56:36[SPEAKER_01]: But the difference is that they went to the effort of making it a real movie.
- 1:56:42[SPEAKER_01]: It had a good cast of people who had fully fleshed out characters.
- 1:56:46[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had actual problems rooted in their character.
- 1:56:50[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, they were solved by reading the fucking book.
- 1:56:54[SPEAKER_01]: That's tiresome and insulting.
- 1:56:57[SPEAKER_01]: But you know what?
- 1:56:58[SPEAKER_01]: It had character arcs and themes.
- 1:57:01[SPEAKER_01]: And people were funny in it.
- 1:57:06[SPEAKER_01]: A good commercial for the book.
- 1:57:09[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, at the end of this movie.
- 1:57:10[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to read this fucking book You don't want to Amazon it.
- 1:57:14[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to Amazon it.
- 1:57:15[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a bad commercial For a book that they don't even sell well.
- 1:57:21[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to I don't want the book and I don't want the movie and it's a damn shame because I like the actors
- 1:57:28[SPEAKER_01]: They could be in a good rom-com together, even with a similar premise.
- 1:57:31[SPEAKER_01]: Two people fight and over a job.
- 1:57:33[SPEAKER_01]: They have relationship baggage.
- 1:57:34[SPEAKER_01]: They find each other by the end.
- 1:57:36[SPEAKER_01]: That's, you don't need much more for a rom-com.
- 1:57:38[SPEAKER_01]: Just have good characters and dialogue and you find.
- 1:57:41[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:57:43[SPEAKER_01]: They forgot the good characters and dialogue and scenes and all these things.
- 1:57:47[SPEAKER_01]: It's just so insulting.
- 1:57:50[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the worst, you can criticize stuff like the rip and the wrecking crew, which I didn't see, but based on what you were talking about,
- 1:57:57[SPEAKER_01]: They have a different ethos about storytelling but at least they're telling a story.
- 1:58:01[SPEAKER_01]: This they're not bothering.
- 1:58:02[SPEAKER_01]: This is just an ad And it's really fucking offensive So that's that's I hate that there's so many of these things I know because we had mercy as well.
- 1:58:11[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, what was that super hero squirrel film on Disney Plus?
- 1:58:15[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, that was terrible too
- 1:58:18[SPEAKER_01]: Oh god, I, I, I, I, I have thrown that flora and squirrel my blood flora in Ulysses.
- 1:58:23[SPEAKER_01]: Flora Ulysses.
- 1:58:24[SPEAKER_01]: Oh god.
- 1:58:25[SPEAKER_01]: I hate that I have to remember that now.
- 1:58:26[SPEAKER_01]: That's permanently in my brain somewhere.
- 1:58:27[SPEAKER_01]: Even though I couldn't access it right away.
- 1:58:29[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 1:58:29[SPEAKER_01]: But you know what?
- 1:58:30[SPEAKER_01]: I will transition here to an actually good romantic comedy.
- 1:58:35[SPEAKER_01]: Solubio starring Kevin James is a pretty good romantic comedy.
- 1:58:43[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to say like I'm a surprised as you because that's a little, that's a little mean spirited, but when we think of Kevin James, we don't necessarily think of good movies.
- 1:58:52[SPEAKER_05]: No, he's his lead films like Paul Blart, which was widely derived, but here's the thing.
- 1:59:00[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't he do keep him?
- 1:59:01[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the thing with Kevin James, and I've noticed this with Kevin James.
- 1:59:07[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't phone it in.
- 1:59:10[SPEAKER_01]: When it's his movie, he says his important role he might professional, but I mean it though.
- 1:59:15[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't just show up and do his job.
- 1:59:17[SPEAKER_01]: He wants his characters to be imbued with humanity.
- 1:59:21[SPEAKER_01]: If you watch Paul Blart, Malcop, one, not two, two sucks.
- 1:59:27[SPEAKER_01]: Paul weren't Malkop one which a lot of people derided because it's called Paul Blart Malkop Hmm, I believe the tagline was who blarted like it's it's asking for it, right?
- 1:59:38[SPEAKER_01]: But if you actually watch that movie, it's about a guy who is a Malkop and he's a large guy And he's got a hypoclyce semia and he takes his job way too seriously and people make fun of him for it But then one day on the I think it's like a Christmas or black Friday or something like that a bunch of criminals show up after hours and try to rob the place And it's up to him this day of the day, okay
- 1:59:58[SPEAKER_01]: Low concept, but it's that's a movie, but here's the thing.
- 2:00:02[SPEAKER_01]: Kevin James treats Paul Blart like a real person who has hopes and dreams and suffers from indignities and has feelings about stuff.
- 2:00:13[SPEAKER_01]: He's like a good dad, like he's a real person.
- 2:00:17[SPEAKER_01]: So while Paul Park Mallcop is not a particularly good movie, it's actually fine.
- 2:00:23[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Paul Park Mallcop, two is a piece of fucking trash, because it forgets that.
- 2:00:29[SPEAKER_01]: And it treats all the characters in a really mean way.
- 2:00:33[SPEAKER_01]: But if you want something like here comes the boom where Kevin James plays, I believe he's a high school music teacher or English teacher.
- 2:00:39[SPEAKER_01]: He's a teacher in a high school and the high school is not doing well financially and they're going to shut down the music program.
- 2:00:46[SPEAKER_01]: And so in order to raise money for it, he decides to become an MMA fighter.
- 2:00:50[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 2:00:51[SPEAKER_01]: Now again, that's like, oh Kevin James is going to be an MMA fighter.
- 2:00:54[SPEAKER_01]: That's the joke.
- 2:00:55[SPEAKER_01]: But you know what?
- 2:00:55[SPEAKER_01]: He treats it like a real movie.
- 2:00:58[SPEAKER_01]: He treats it like that's an actual storyline that's worth giving a shit about and while it's not a great movie, he makes it better because he tried.
- 2:01:07[SPEAKER_01]: So Solo Mio is a rom-com that Kevin James is taking completely seriously as a rom-com as an actual emotional story worth telling.
- 2:01:15[SPEAKER_01]: He go wrote the screenplay.
- 2:01:17[SPEAKER_01]: The set up is pretty familiar.
- 2:01:19[SPEAKER_01]: He falls in love with the woman.
- 2:01:20[SPEAKER_01]: They're about to get married.
- 2:01:21[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to roam to get married.
- 2:01:22[SPEAKER_01]: Fantasy, Roman wedding, and honeymoon.
- 2:01:25[SPEAKER_01]: But she leaves him at the altar.
- 2:01:28[SPEAKER_01]: That sucks.
- 2:01:29[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a great bid, actually.
- 2:01:30[SPEAKER_01]: When he's at the altar, they're playing the music.
- 2:01:32[SPEAKER_01]: The door's open, and we just stand his face.
- 2:01:37[SPEAKER_01]: for just long enough that we realize she's not coming down the aisle and you just see it gradually dawn on him that this is taking too long and you can just feel it's like that same in the Simpsons you can actually pinpoint the moment when it's heart breaks like it's really sad and no we're on his side right and so he's crushed but his honeymoon package is non-refundable
- 2:01:59[SPEAKER_01]: So he's so like he says I might as well go so he's doing tours of Roman shit and there's a couple of these He guys were like all of like the honeymoon package people are on tandem bikes, but he only he's the only one on his bike That's an obvious joke, but What's actually really sweet about it is the other couples there are two other couples on the trip one couple is weird pairing Kim coats an Allison hand again
- 2:02:26[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's a weird bearing, right?
- 2:02:30[SPEAKER_01]: But in the movie, this is their third marriage to each other.
- 2:02:35[SPEAKER_01]: So they fight a lot and they have a weird relationship.
- 2:02:37[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's another couple where she was his therapist.
- 2:02:42[SPEAKER_01]: Oh gosh.
- 2:02:43[SPEAKER_01]: But and like they knew that that was wrong and so like he like quit being like her patient or whatever, but even that was kind of weird and fucked up and they know it's wrong, but they still love each other.
- 2:02:53[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are other interesting characters.
- 2:02:55[SPEAKER_01]: And when they realize that this other guy on their trip, his wife left him.
- 2:03:01[SPEAKER_01]: they decide to be nice to him and be his friends.
- 2:03:04[SPEAKER_01]: And try to help him through this really hard time and each and each in their own way that actually speaks to their character.
- 2:03:11[SPEAKER_01]: And that's really sweet.
- 2:03:12[SPEAKER_01]: Kim Coates is the most likable I've ever seen him and he's a really fun actor but he usually plays bad guys and creeps.
- 2:03:18[SPEAKER_01]: He plays like heavy is it.
- 2:03:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's adorable in this movie.
- 2:03:22[SPEAKER_01]: And then he meets Kevin James meets this woman who runs a coffee shop next to his hotel.
- 2:03:30[SPEAKER_01]: They hit it off, and she's very, very nice.
- 2:03:32[SPEAKER_01]: And they start spending more time together.
- 2:03:34[SPEAKER_01]: And even though it's kind of fast, he's realizing that his life is an over and that he might be able to love again.
- 2:03:40[SPEAKER_01]: And they're great chemistry together.
- 2:03:43[SPEAKER_01]: And there's some contrivances later involving some cameos or whatever, but it's not too bad, it's actually kind of funny.
- 2:03:52[SPEAKER_01]: And it actually concludes, and I gotta give a credit bank, because I've seen this movie before.
- 2:03:58[SPEAKER_01]: I got you credit.
- 2:03:58[SPEAKER_01]: There's a plot point at the end of this movie.
- 2:04:00[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't see coming.
- 2:04:01[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and it's works.
- 2:04:04[SPEAKER_01]: It's character driven.
- 2:04:05[SPEAKER_01]: It's unexpected.
- 2:04:08[SPEAKER_01]: The people get the right amount of shit for it.
- 2:04:10[SPEAKER_01]: Like they don't just get off the hook.
- 2:04:11[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a really, this is just a really sweet, well made.
- 2:04:16[SPEAKER_01]: I was talking about a four star three star movie.
- 2:04:19[SPEAKER_01]: This is a three and a half star rom.
- 2:04:21[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 2:04:21[SPEAKER_01]: It's not classic, but it just, it really works.
- 2:04:24[SPEAKER_01]: Good for them, man.
- 2:04:29[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 2:04:29[SPEAKER_01]: I got two more movies talked about.
- 2:04:30[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to try to make them quick, but one of them is an amazing movie.
- 2:04:33[SPEAKER_01]: This is quite a long podcast.
- 2:04:34[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this isn't.
- 2:04:35[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
- 2:04:35[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is what happens when we don't do it for a couple of ways.
- 2:04:39[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we always say there's also, oh, we should try to see a few more movies and then boom, 10 movies.
- 2:04:43[SPEAKER_01]: Fuck.
- 2:04:44[SPEAKER_01]: You got to try to do better about that.
- 2:04:45[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know.
- 2:04:46[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's okay.
- 2:04:46[SPEAKER_01]: I do it too.
- 2:04:47[SPEAKER_01]: But you have to see pillion.
- 2:04:51[SPEAKER_01]: I really wanted to see pillion.
- 2:04:53[SPEAKER_01]: You in particular, Whitney, but I think the audience, this movie is fantastic.
- 2:04:58[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a new movie out, it's called Pillian.
- 2:05:00[SPEAKER_01]: It starts Harry Melling, who is still probably best known as the asshole older brother from Harry Potter, Dudley.
- 2:05:10[SPEAKER_01]: But he completely changed his whole persona, and he's doing really well.
- 2:05:14[SPEAKER_05]: He was not Dudley.
- 2:05:15[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Wes.
- 2:05:16[SPEAKER_05]: Harry Melling was, um, uh, Neville.
- 2:05:20[SPEAKER_01]: What was it?
- 2:05:21[SPEAKER_01]: Wasn't he?
- 2:05:22[SPEAKER_01]: No.
- 2:05:22[SPEAKER_01]: Am I mixing them up?
- 2:05:24[SPEAKER_01]: OK, well, now I have to find out.
- 2:05:27[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know your A was Dudley.
- 2:05:28[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was Dudley.
- 2:05:29[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
- 2:05:30[SPEAKER_01]: It's like Dudley was this complete asshole of a character, but it turns out he's really excels at playing very sweet-sensitive people.
- 2:05:38[SPEAKER_01]: He is a queer man living in England with his parents as mother is dying, but it's still part of his life, you know, it's not like she's hospitalized the entire film.
- 2:05:51[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and, uh, he sings in a barber shop quartet with his dad, and for his job, he gives people parking tickets.
- 2:05:59[SPEAKER_01]: He's not cool, but he meets at a bar and incredibly cool biker played by Alexander Skarskard, who basically is just like, maybe in this alleyway on Christmas Eve.
- 2:06:14[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was like, okay, and then they, they go to the alleyway and then Alexander Skarskard,
- 2:06:21[SPEAKER_01]: Takes off his jacket, Harry Mellon performs oral sex autumn, and then it's basically like nice to see you, and then they leave.
- 2:06:30[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, okay, it's a straight-up hookup, kind of unremarkable.
- 2:06:34[SPEAKER_01]: But a few days later, Skarskard calls him again, and now their next date is a little more domestic, but not an conventional way.
- 2:06:43[SPEAKER_01]: The Go To Skarskard's house, Skarskard takes Harry Mellon to the kitchen, shows him where all the cookware is, and says you're making dinner.
- 2:06:50[SPEAKER_01]: Tells him he's making dinner and he's like okay, and he makes him dinner and then he gives I'll get a scarred scarred his dinner and I was going to scarred each his dinner on the couch Well Harry Melling eats standing behind him and then they go to bed, but they don't have sex And he makes Harry Melling sleep on the floor of the bed It's a subdom relation.
- 2:07:08[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry about to say it.
- 2:07:09[SPEAKER_01]: There's like yeah, this isn't there's like a fetish It reads to that initiated as emotionally cold or maybe even abusive, but
- 2:07:19[SPEAKER_01]: And at first it's like we're not sure that Harry Milling knows about this and that he is a sub, but it turns out he is.
- 2:07:26[SPEAKER_01]: This is actually what he wants.
- 2:07:28[SPEAKER_01]: Alexander Skarskard clocked them like he knew that this guy, he says he has an aptitude for devotion.
- 2:07:36[SPEAKER_01]: So they get into a very intense sub-domar relationship.
- 2:07:40[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 2:07:40[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to scar scar is a biker in a queer biker gang where every biker has a sub and they talk and it's great.
- 2:07:49[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's going to have a cute actually.
- 2:07:51[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually kind of sweet and it's like,
- 2:07:52[SPEAKER_01]: And they go to like on like a camping trip together and everyone was sort of laughing and splashing in the water and then well like all the bikers are having lunch All the subs are like lying naked on a picnic table just waiting to have intercourse like and they're just like
- 2:08:10[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think they're soon, I'm sure.
- 2:08:11[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is something about that.
- 2:08:12[SPEAKER_01]: And, but they're like, one guy's talking, I was in his car, to Harry Mellon, and he's just like, what's it like with him?
- 2:08:18[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, oh, it's great.
- 2:08:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I couldn't do it.
- 2:08:20[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't kiss on the mouth.
- 2:08:21[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I just, and there's something that's really, really, and, but it's really intense.
- 2:08:25[SPEAKER_01]: And it sells that intensity.
- 2:08:28[SPEAKER_01]: And to the extent that you're not sure for a while, even if your comfortable sub-dom relationship, is this a good relationship?
- 2:08:36[SPEAKER_01]: Is everyone getting what they want out of this?
- 2:08:40[SPEAKER_01]: And the way the movie doesn't hold your hand on that.
- 2:08:44[SPEAKER_01]: There's a great scene where it's very difficult to get Alexander Skars' guard to agree to do anything conventional because he's the one in charge.
- 2:08:52[SPEAKER_01]: But he finally says my mom really wants to meet.
- 2:08:55[SPEAKER_01]: OK, so they do have dinner at a normal place.
- 2:08:56[SPEAKER_01]: But he's still ordering Harry Melling around a little bit.
- 2:08:59[SPEAKER_01]: And his mom, the Harry Melling Plum said, I don't like the way you treat my son.
- 2:09:03[SPEAKER_01]: And Alexander Skars' guard looks at her and says,
- 2:09:10[SPEAKER_01]: This is our relationship.
- 2:09:12[SPEAKER_01]: Ha, it's not for you.
- 2:09:14[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the thing.
- 2:09:15[SPEAKER_01]: That's a rude way to put that.
- 2:09:18[SPEAKER_01]: But also true.
- 2:09:21[SPEAKER_01]: If everyone's happy here, there isn't a problem.
- 2:09:25[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 2:09:25[SPEAKER_01]: The question is, is everyone happy here?
- 2:09:27[SPEAKER_01]: And over the course of the movie, we realize that
- 2:09:31[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they're happy, maybe they're in love, but maybe this isn't the right relationship for everybody, but not in a way that questions the subdom relationship as if that's bad.
- 2:09:41[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's just basically, maybe Harry Mellon needs to be better about articulating his boundaries.
- 2:09:47[SPEAKER_05]: It's about exploring boundaries within a new relationship.
- 2:09:50[SPEAKER_01]: It's about exploring boundaries of relationships and it's about a healthy exploration of pretty hardcore king.
- 2:09:58[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this isn't like, oh, let's fool around and I'll get some furry handcuffs and handcuffs you do the bad and I'll, but I'll tickle you with a feather.
- 2:10:05[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's fine, that's whatever you want to do.
- 2:10:08[SPEAKER_01]: This is way more intense than that.
- 2:10:10[SPEAKER_01]: And it's way more common, it's all day.
- 2:10:12[SPEAKER_05]: Subdom has a whole dynamic culture unto itself.
- 2:10:15[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to be communicative, and you have to be, you know, it has to be completely consensual.
- 2:10:21[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of things that movies don't always do a great job of illustrating.
- 2:10:25[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of times these types of relationships and BDSM in general is eroticized, but not necessarily treated with respect and dignity.
- 2:10:34[SPEAKER_01]: 50 shades is a great example They treat the idea that the guy who wants to be the dumb and the relationship is only that way because he had a horrible childhood It's not necessarily the truth, you know There's like there's something broken about people with kings yeah, yeah It's not respectful of kink and there's a lot of people who are into kink
- 2:10:53[SPEAKER_01]: they go into with open eyes, they're being very responsible about it, they have great relationships, they don't always work out because that's life, because it's not the case problem necessarily, it's just, we weren't the perfect fit.
- 2:11:06[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you're waiting to see in this movie, this very sexually explicit movie.
- 2:11:14[SPEAKER_01]: Is this true love or is this like a coming of age learning experience first relationship movie?
- 2:11:20[SPEAKER_01]: And I won't tell you which one it is.
- 2:11:22[SPEAKER_01]: But what I will tell you is that Harry Mellon and Ellison is Scar's Guard are fucking wonderful.
- 2:11:28[SPEAKER_01]: They're giving incredibly complicated interesting performances in a framework that I think a lot of other actors would have found daunting in where they would have struggled to find the reality in it.
- 2:11:40[SPEAKER_01]: Alexander Scar's guard is such a wonderful actor when he's given interesting roles, but he's not given interesting roles, he struggles.
- 2:11:47[SPEAKER_01]: He's so wonderful in this and Harry Melling is just everything he does is great.
- 2:11:53[SPEAKER_01]: It's wonderful, it's romantic in a very atypical way.
- 2:11:56[SPEAKER_01]: It's kinky but respectful about kink but also understanding that just because you respect the law of kink does it mean that a kinky relationship can't be improved.
- 2:12:06[SPEAKER_01]: It's fucking great.
- 2:12:09[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope more people see it.
- 2:12:13[SPEAKER_01]: And then very last, I'm gonna be very short on it.
- 2:12:15[SPEAKER_05]: I'm really sorry, I missed pillion.
- 2:12:17[SPEAKER_01]: I reached out, I tried to get it, and I just did.
- 2:12:19[SPEAKER_01]: Not here.
- 2:12:19[SPEAKER_05]: I could choose between pillion, which might have had a screener coming my way, or iron long.
- 2:12:25[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 2:12:26[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you did iron long.
- 2:12:27[SPEAKER_01]: I did iron long.
- 2:12:28[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's something we really needed to talk about, and I didn't get to get to it.
- 2:12:31[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad you did.
- 2:12:32[SPEAKER_01]: And you will see pillion at some point, I'm sure, because this, remember last year I told you, I promised you I'd see drop before the end of the year.
- 2:12:38[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 2:12:39[SPEAKER_01]: I'm making your promise to see pillion.
- 2:12:40[SPEAKER_05]: I will see you later.
- 2:12:41[SPEAKER_05]: I promise I will see it.
- 2:12:42[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're going to love it.
- 2:12:43[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 2:12:44[SPEAKER_01]: Last thing, I'm going to keep this one short because I described it at the beginning of the episode as a Jason Statetham movie.
- 2:12:50[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no Jason state them.
- 2:12:54[SPEAKER_05]: I saw one of those last year.
- 2:12:55[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think it was called like a working man Yeah, yeah, I didn't see that one.
- 2:12:59[SPEAKER_01]: I reckon guy Jason state them please He plays yeah, he plays a lot of like tough guys who are trying to get out of the game But then some at the beginning of the movie brings him back into the game And now he has to be a badass again kidnap somebody connected to him and someone oh no someone's after this little girl Oh no someone's scared
- 2:13:18[SPEAKER_01]: This old lady out of her money, and now he's got to get revenge for him.
- 2:13:22[SPEAKER_01]: It's a formula.
- 2:13:24[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a good formula?
- 2:13:25[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it works.
- 2:13:28[SPEAKER_01]: Here's someone who sees someone who has been wronged.
- 2:13:32[SPEAKER_01]: This person has the skills and tools with which to write that wrong in a catharticly violent way against people who deserve it and That's the film
- 2:13:43[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
- 2:13:45[SPEAKER_01]: That's all you need.
- 2:13:46[SPEAKER_01]: It's wonderful.
- 2:13:48[SPEAKER_01]: The beekeeper was a blast.
- 2:13:49[SPEAKER_01]: I had a lot of fun with that movie.
- 2:13:50[SPEAKER_01]: Shelter takes itself more seriously, which works to an extent because the acting is actually really good in it.
- 2:13:58[SPEAKER_01]: Jason Statham plays a guy who lives in a lighthouse.
- 2:14:00[SPEAKER_01]: He's completely off the grid.
- 2:14:02[SPEAKER_01]: The lighthouse doesn't even work.
- 2:14:04[SPEAKER_01]: He's just in an island of the coast of like northern Scotland and he just and every like once a week this guy and his daughter Combined a boat with supplies and that's it.
- 2:14:16[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't talk to them nothing one day They deliver the supplies, but there's a storm the boat sinks the dad dies and the girl is injured And he has to take care of her at the lighthouse
- 2:14:27[SPEAKER_01]: He goes to the mainland to pick up like some medical supplies to take care of her, but wouldn't you know, and he's picked up on a security camera.
- 2:14:35[SPEAKER_01]: And because the UK has this like really intense security system, he is immediately flagged, oh no, we have to send all of our military after this guy.
- 2:14:46[SPEAKER_01]: So they send a bunch of military guys to the lighthouse, Jason Satham kills everyone, and then he's on the run with this little girl trying to find a way to keep her safe.
- 2:14:54[SPEAKER_01]: And then also trying to kill all the bad guys who are being run by the X head of MI6, who has a lot of things to like sort of keep secret by Bill May.
- 2:15:06[SPEAKER_01]: Don't mind he is such a paycheck performance.
- 2:15:10[SPEAKER_01]: He has one scene with another person in the room and then the rest of it He's on the phone or on his computer When he finally shot has a scene with Jason Statham at the end.
- 2:15:18[SPEAKER_01]: He's abundantly clear that they were not in the same room.
- 2:15:21[SPEAKER_01]: It's hilarious Good for a naive again that paycheck kind of sad otherwise Excuse me
- 2:15:30[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's very, very basic.
- 2:15:33[SPEAKER_01]: It's very, very simple, the structure works because, you know what, that structure works, man.
- 2:15:39[SPEAKER_01]: It's other than really wrong with it.
- 2:15:41[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason why this will be works as well as it does.
- 2:15:43[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not great.
- 2:15:45[SPEAKER_01]: But the reason why it works as well as it does is because the young girl want to get her name right.
- 2:15:49[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and it's, I'm probably going to knock, because I'm like, Bodhi Ray Brethna, okay, who was the daughter in Hamnet.
- 2:15:58[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and she clearly from Hammett or maybe she brought, I don't know, I assume she filmed Hammett first She clearly took like
- 2:16:09[SPEAKER_01]: the lessons in, I need to keep this emotional intensity super fucking high.
- 2:16:14[SPEAKER_01]: She took that to heart and she brought it into shelter and she really sells the shit out of this.
- 2:16:20[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 2:16:21[SPEAKER_01]: Her fear, her anxiety, her increasing attachment to the danger protector.
- 2:16:26[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, her relationship with Jason Statham feels real.
- 2:16:30[SPEAKER_01]: So even though the rest of the movie is fucking contrived,
- 2:16:39[SPEAKER_01]: So as Jason State the movie's go and then this particular milieu, take a drink.
- 2:16:44[SPEAKER_01]: This is an OK one.
- 2:16:47[SPEAKER_01]: It's nothing but there's no memorable action sequences in a thrall slime, but a history of cinema, this is the OKest.
- 2:16:53[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, kind of, like, it just, it works.
- 2:16:56[SPEAKER_01]: But in an unremarkable way, the only thing remarkable about it is this young girl is a really talented actor, and she makes that relationship work better than you might think.
- 2:17:06[SPEAKER_01]: Everything else about it is functional, and that's all it needs to be, and that's fine.
- 2:17:13[SPEAKER_01]: When we write the biography of Jason Statham and we look over his filmography one day, hopefully a long time from now when he passes away, this will be mentioned.
- 2:17:25[SPEAKER_01]: But not explored in any depth.
- 2:17:27[SPEAKER_01]: I don't unless this girl turns out to be like a huge star later than it might be Whenever early films was this pretty good action.
- 2:17:33[SPEAKER_01]: It would chase and stay them like unless that's the case This is gonna be one of those movies he made that was fine But it is fine.
- 2:17:40[SPEAKER_05]: He's made plenty of fine movies It's made a lot of trash.
- 2:17:43[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but everyone's in a whole make one like it like he was I rewatched home front not that long ago.
- 2:17:47[SPEAKER_01]: It's the one still on rest
- 2:17:48[SPEAKER_01]: the lone rod and it was the one where he was like an undercover cop who like left the business and like moving into a small town but then he pissed off a local meth dealer played by James Franco and James Franco you can't beat him up in a fight but he's just a real piece of shit and it makes his life miserable and he ends up like outing him so like a whole bunch of mobsters come into kill him simple story it's good it's a good movie this one it's okay
- 2:18:16[SPEAKER_01]: So no K-movie, we're gonna be done here.
- 2:18:18[SPEAKER_01]: So, there's a long episode, what are we going to do wrong episode?
- 2:18:21[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna make this real quick.
- 2:18:22[SPEAKER_01]: This is our review roundup, we review movies on a scale of C-minus to C-plus.
- 2:18:26[SPEAKER_01]: A C-minus is below average.
- 2:18:28[SPEAKER_01]: These are movies we don't recommend whether we simply think they're not very good or we think they're terrible.
- 2:18:32[SPEAKER_01]: A C is average, these are mixed bag, or just okay movies.
- 2:18:36[SPEAKER_01]: And then a C-plus is above average.
- 2:18:38[SPEAKER_01]: These are movies we genuinely recommend whether we think they're brilliant or just like them a lot.
- 2:18:43[SPEAKER_01]: On that note, excuse me.
- 2:18:46[SPEAKER_01]: Shelter, high C, okay, it mediocre, but very functional.
- 2:18:51[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
- 2:18:51[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 2:18:53[SPEAKER_01]: Billion C plus, I want to see it.
- 2:18:55[SPEAKER_01]: I want to see it.
- 2:18:56[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm frustrated because technically it had like an awards qualifying run last year, so it doesn't actually, isn't actually a 2026 movie.
- 2:19:03[SPEAKER_01]: It is for us, we're fine.
- 2:19:04[SPEAKER_01]: But if it came out last year and I'd seen it in time for last year, it might have made my best out of less, or at least at
- 2:19:14[SPEAKER_01]: A very likable, not mind-blowing, but a very likable old-fashioned of this came out in the 90s.
- 2:19:22[SPEAKER_01]: It would have been a hit, Ron Com, okay.
- 2:19:24[SPEAKER_01]: It works.
- 2:19:26[SPEAKER_01]: Relationship goals.
- 2:19:28[SPEAKER_01]: Fuckin' see minus.
- 2:19:30[SPEAKER_01]: It's really bad, it's a bad rom-com, and it's a bad commercial.
- 2:19:35[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you just accept that it's a commercial, it's a bad commercial, wrecking crew.
- 2:19:39[SPEAKER_05]: wrecking crew, it's a sea.
- 2:19:42[SPEAKER_05]: It's a five out of five out of ten.
- 2:19:43[SPEAKER_05]: It's like right up the middle, it is efficient, it is clear.
- 2:19:46[SPEAKER_05]: There are enjoyable things about it, but it is very clearly product.
- 2:19:52[SPEAKER_05]: And I can't shake that.
- 2:19:53[SPEAKER_05]: I can't, it's never going to,
- 2:19:56[SPEAKER_05]: However slick it was, however clever it was.
- 2:19:58[SPEAKER_05]: It still has that kind of fakeness to it that I don't like.
- 2:20:01[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 2:20:02[SPEAKER_01]: Oh whistle whistle is like right on the edge of a high sea or a sea plus.
- 2:20:06[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go I'm going to skew down to a high sea.
- 2:20:09[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
- 2:20:09[SPEAKER_01]: It is very much in its formula.
- 2:20:12[SPEAKER_01]: And again, the premise is kind of crap, but the kills are really cool.
- 2:20:16[SPEAKER_01]: So if you'd like that formula, it's worth checking out.
- 2:20:19[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't care for that formula, it's probably not.
- 2:20:22[SPEAKER_01]: But I did have fun.
- 2:20:24[SPEAKER_01]: Stranger's chapter three.
- 2:20:25[SPEAKER_01]: C-minacy minus C-minacy minus C-minacy minus C-minacy minus C-minacy minus C-minacy.
- 2:20:29[SPEAKER_01]: Fucking terrible, and yet somehow the best of the three.
- 2:20:35[SPEAKER_01]: It's so bad.
- 2:20:35[SPEAKER_05]: I don't like C-plus.
- 2:20:38[SPEAKER_05]: Fascinating, strange, really spooky,
- 2:20:41[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, original and striking and Markiplier is now a cinematic force to be reckoned with.
- 2:20:48[SPEAKER_05]: If you were to make another movie, I'd be interested to see what he had to do, could he handle like a more conventional drama?
- 2:20:54[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe not.
- 2:20:55[SPEAKER_05]: I hope he doesn't.
- 2:20:56[SPEAKER_05]: Or begin to use to make weird stuff.
- 2:20:57[SPEAKER_05]: Because I want more weird stuff like this.
- 2:20:59[SPEAKER_05]: All right.
- 2:21:00[SPEAKER_01]: Melania, refresh my memory.
- 2:21:03[SPEAKER_01]: What did we give cats again?
- 2:21:04[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we gave that one a day.
- 2:21:06[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 2:21:07[SPEAKER_01]: We give cats a D because it was like so off the charts mind bogglingly ill conceived that we couldn't help but find it like remarkably like it just didn't.
- 2:21:17[SPEAKER_01]: The rules did not apply.
- 2:21:20[SPEAKER_01]: I'm giving Malania an F. I'm dead fucking serious.
- 2:21:25[SPEAKER_01]: It's that fucking terrible and ill gotten.
- 2:21:29[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't seen it, and this is like historical.
- 2:21:34[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't.
- 2:21:36[SPEAKER_01]: Break that rule willy-nilly.
- 2:21:39[SPEAKER_01]: We have broken that rule twice and cats is fun, bad.
- 2:21:42[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, cats is like you could get together with friends and how people drink some dish.
- 2:21:46[SPEAKER_01]: Like cats at least had skimble shanks.
- 2:21:49[SPEAKER_01]: And even if you hate that movie, skimble shanks fucking rocks.
- 2:21:51[SPEAKER_01]: Real white cat.
- 2:21:52[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that, that, that, that cat can get it.
- 2:21:57[SPEAKER_01]: That was a sexic cat.
- 2:21:59[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's, I'm dead fucking serious.
- 2:22:01[SPEAKER_01]: It's an F. All right.
- 2:22:02[SPEAKER_01]: And then lastly, send help.
- 2:22:03[SPEAKER_05]: uh... sent help is a c plus uh... it's it's just samurai me back in his real house uh... it's not overwhelmingly great but it is enjoyable has some interesting ideas i didn't like the ending so much okay i i said they're like some plot twists that sort of happened in the the last third and some of those i i wasn't satisfied with but uh...
- 2:22:22[SPEAKER_05]: I like Rachel McAdams.
- 2:22:24[SPEAKER_05]: She's great in the lead role.
- 2:22:25[SPEAKER_05]: I like a lot of the power dynamics and there's a lot of energy and humor too I think I really appreciate it's a great to see those all right well that is it for critically claim.
- 2:22:33[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you everybody for listening Thank you for joining us.
- 2:22:34[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being awesome.
- 2:22:37[SPEAKER_01]: We we appreciate you
- 2:22:38[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to help the show, we would appreciate it.
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- 2:22:47[SPEAKER_01]: We're incredibly grateful for their support.
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- 2:22:57[SPEAKER_01]: or you can sign up for some money and even $1 a month you get some exclusive shows that we've released in the past and also all of our new episodes add free and at the higher tiers you get a lot of exclusive podcasts so enjoy thank you for everybody who can support it and if you can't leave us a review wherever you find us that helps too if you want to talk about anything we discussed in this episode our email address is letters at criticallyclamed.net
- 2:23:24[SPEAKER_01]: We might read your email and answer your questions or respond to your criticisms or just talk about whatever you want to talk about on an upcoming episode of We've Got Mail, Whitney, what is our PO box?
- 2:23:32[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, send it to the critically-climbs network, PO box, 641565, Los Angeles, California, nine to below 64.
- 2:23:39[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
- 2:23:40[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, we'll be back soon with more movie reviews because that's what we do, we're critics.
- 2:23:45[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
- 2:23:46[SPEAKER_01]: And never forget, everyone is a critic, including you.
- 2:23:52[SPEAKER_00]: to the Midnight Show.
- 2:23:55[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry I wet.