Latest / Critically Acclaimed Network / Critically Acclaimed #341 | The Toxic Avenger, Caught Stealing, The Roses, The Thursday Murder Club

Transcript

Critically Acclaimed #341 | The Toxic Avenger, Caught Stealing, The Roses, The Thursday Murder Club · Critically Acclaimed Network

0:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Hello everybody and all you ships at sea welcome back to critically acclaimed the movie review podcast or we review movies for all the ships at sea
0:34
[SPEAKER_03]: My name is William Dubiani.
0:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I am a film critic.
0:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I write for the rap, and everybody calls me boobs at sea.
0:42
[SPEAKER_04]: My oceans are now battlefields.
0:45
[SPEAKER_04]: My name is Whitney Syvolt, I am a film critic.
0:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I contribute to slash film, and we're going to review only a few movies.
0:52
[SPEAKER_03]: At sea.
0:53
[SPEAKER_04]: At sea.
0:54
[SPEAKER_03]: We are viewing or on dry land.
0:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Wherever you happen today.
0:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Dry land is real.
0:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I have seen it.
1:00
[SPEAKER_03]: We will be reviewing on this week's episode.
1:03
[SPEAKER_03]: The new remake slash reboot of the toxic Avenger.
1:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The new Dereneranowski joint.
1:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Contesteling.
1:13
[SPEAKER_03]: The new comedy, the roses.
1:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Thursday murder club.
1:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Sounds like intriguing when you put it like that.
1:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's unfair.
1:31
[SPEAKER_04]: We murder on Thursdays with Thursday murder people.
1:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like Tuesdays with morey.
1:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We've murders with Tuesdays.
1:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:38
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll be murdered morey.
1:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's Murray the victim and the Tuesdays with Murray, but on Thursday we kill him.
1:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and good news.
1:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't rapport.
1:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my god.
1:52
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going way deep on like, we're Tuesdays with Murray references.
1:55
[SPEAKER_04]: We just lost everybody by the way.
1:57
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just tuned out.
1:58
[SPEAKER_03]: To be fair, this episode didn't go live on a Tuesday.
2:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Fair.
2:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's fair game.
2:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we're reviewing those movies and let's just get right into it.
2:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the biggest release of the weekend was like weapons again or something.
2:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to talk about the movie that we're most excited about.
2:17
[SPEAKER_03]: A little movie quite a little movie called the Toxic Avenger.
2:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Now what was your first exposure to the Toxic Avenger?
2:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I actually didn't watch the toxic Avenger until recently, recently.
2:34
[SPEAKER_04]: We talked.
2:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, within the last year and a half or so.
2:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I, I, I, I, I love skies.
2:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I love skies.
2:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've seen a lot of trauma movies, but like, yeah, the, like, they're, they're, they're crown jewel.
2:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
2:49
[SPEAKER_04]: The toxic Avenger is just skipped me by.
2:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's say I love superhero movies, but I've never heard of this Batman guy.
2:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's just never come up.
2:57
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I've seen the Orabad Granny's Killer Condom, which they just distributed.
3:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Troll me on Juliet, that is a favorite.
3:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I've seen Sergeant Kabuki Man and YPD, like I've seen these movies, but yeah, I just never actually saw it.
3:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've seen the class of Nukem High two and three, but never won.
3:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Ah, the good one.
3:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm very sometimes that trauma is being left in the dust.
3:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like there was a period of about twenty, twenty-five years where trauma was kind of the Renegade movie studio.
3:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you just knew trauma.
3:38
[SPEAKER_04]: people knew you were cool because you'd seen some trauma like if you'd seen sergeant kabuki man everyone's just sort of like tight yeah yeah yeah trauma sadly rose and fell with the popularity of video stores that that was sort of their stock and trade for many decades they could turn out these things on the cheap if they were even the ones producing them mostly they would just wait for completed films and distribute them for other people yeah lots of people people who would like just make some
4:08
[SPEAKER_03]: horror movie in their backyard.
4:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't tell them musical as a trauma was distributed by trauma.
4:12
[SPEAKER_03]: The horror of the humongous Hungan is a funny title.
4:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I whip out a lot, but that's a real movie.
4:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Trauma put it out, but yeah, basically people would make these low budget, mostly crappy horror movies.
4:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Occasionally good one came out.
4:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And then trauma would be the one studio that was like we'll distribute that yeah, and then they would slap it on a box and then not only would they ship it off to video stories and in the early days of video stories especially in the nineteen eighties they were just desperate for anything to put on the shelves because the studios were only kind of trickling it out so people would go to the video store they'd rent out all the big titles but they still want to watch something on their cool new VHS so
4:50
[SPEAKER_03]: or VCR again.
4:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wanted to rent something at the store.
4:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
4:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So we'll take what we can get and Troma build that niche.
4:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And as a result, a lot of their movies got seen by a way bigger audience.
5:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And they normally ever would have.
5:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And Lloyd Kaufman, Lloyd Kaufman and Michael hers were the two sort of founders of Troma.
5:08
[SPEAKER_04]: They're based in New Jersey.
5:11
[SPEAKER_04]: They came up with this very hurtful Gordon Lewis-ish ethos to their distribution where they knew they could get renters if they put a really like eye-grabbing title on their video box.
5:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And also monsters, guns, and boobs, like any combination of those things you had ahead.
5:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, one of their biggest early hits was called stuck on you as a sensitivity and I haven't seen the movie, but I remember the poster just to to lovers chewing chewing gum and their nude and their bodies are stuck together in a way.
5:43
[SPEAKER_04]: They're you can't see the the naughty bits, but that'll they'll get
5:47
[SPEAKER_03]: catch somebody's eye and I got nothing else to do on a Friday.
5:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you were in one of a neighborhood that didn't have porn or porn shops were kind of verboten, there were a lot of videos stores that were like in like kind of Christian neighborhoods like they didn't even want to have an adult section, but you're right.
6:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're going to have to make this kind of smuddy sex comedy isn't that that was you.
6:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I could stand in for pornography and that was actually a good business for a long time.
6:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes they would just get interesting titles and distribute them teenage cat girls and heat.
6:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That's gonna catch you all right.
6:19
[SPEAKER_03]: They were the first American distributor of my neighbor Toto Ro.
6:22
[SPEAKER_03]: No one else was interested.
6:23
[SPEAKER_04]: That's true.
6:24
[SPEAKER_04]: That's true.
6:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a real thing.
6:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Troma did it, but yeah, they were this shawkey scuzzi studio that did all these wonderfully low budget movies and they sold themselves on that.
6:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they
6:35
[SPEAKER_04]: They knew they had trash and they loved that they had trash.
6:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And they made movies that were often really cheap looking.
6:44
[SPEAKER_04]: They knew they were cheap looking and they kind of rolled with it.
6:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And they just tried to put in a lot of gore and boobs.
6:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was in this very unapologetic way.
6:55
[SPEAKER_04]: If you look at the beam movies of like Roger Corman, he was trying to make things that looks like real movies.
7:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he was making him on the cheap.
7:04
[SPEAKER_04]: He knew that they needed violence and sex and exploitation elements.
7:09
[SPEAKER_04]: but he also was trying to tell real stories and actually make real movies.
7:14
[SPEAKER_03]: He didn't want to be defeated, he didn't want to be unrespectable.
7:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
7:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Lloyd Kaufman didn't give a shit.
7:19
[SPEAKER_04]: No, he was very happy to be known as the trash guy.
7:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
7:24
[SPEAKER_04]: He knew he was making trash in movies.
7:25
[SPEAKER_04]: He knew people were watching these things because they were trash and it was just having a great time.
7:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think it's worth noting if you're not familiar with trauma that you might be hearing all this and think, oh, these are sleasemongers.
7:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, they monged to some sleas, but
7:38
[SPEAKER_03]: They actually had a pretty good heart about it.
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there was all in the name of good fun.
7:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
7:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of their movies, even their ultra violent movies, a lot of boobs and a lot of just cheap, taudry, infantile humor.
7:52
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a sense of naive a pay that they presented them with.
7:55
[SPEAKER_03]: These were not cynical features.
7:57
[SPEAKER_03]: They were critical features and they often took place in sort of a nineteen, eighties.
8:03
[SPEAKER_03]: landscape that was like perverted by toxic waste dumping yeah and everything was kind of awful and gross but there were there was always innocence within those worlds and that violence and that sexuality and that really a very dark humor that they often had was usually presented with a oh you guys yeah it's cute and they would and they would have like
8:26
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, shows and videos and do live appearances that were basically just inviting everyone into the trauma family, Lloyd Kaufman wrote two books, how to make, what was it?
8:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything you need to think about filmmaking, learn from the toxic Avengers, and make your own damn movie.
8:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I think James Gunner worked on one of those.
8:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And James Gunner got a start at trauma writing, trauma on Juliet.
8:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And he, and it's been down a hill ever since James Gunner.
8:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's fair to say.
8:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But but I've been like this movies as much since.
8:58
[SPEAKER_03]: No, you're very very smart.
9:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Look, my point is that I am our top.
9:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I know.
9:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for saying.
9:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, you're better than all of us.
9:07
[SPEAKER_03]: You absolutely God of a man.
9:09
[SPEAKER_03]: No, but
9:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Lloyd Hoffman had a very anti-establishment kind of vibe.
9:13
[SPEAKER_03]: He just thought that the big studios were strangling out all of the originality, all of the independence, they were making it harder for anyone to get work, put out something interesting, and he didn't like the homogeneity of what the big studios were putting out.
9:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And he saw trauma as sort of intentionally putting a stiff middle finger in the face of all of that.
9:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And so to like trauma movies, and yeah, it's a little bit of a cult, they're cult movies.
9:38
[SPEAKER_03]: was to basically be part of a counterculture movement.
9:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So to be a trauma fan at its best, it was a sense that you belonged to a group of people who like scuzzy, weird shit when most of the people around you didn't.
9:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It was actual counterculture.
9:55
[SPEAKER_03]: But the thing about trauma is that even though it was counterculture, they still had a mascot.
10:00
[SPEAKER_03]: They had an actual franchise, bonafide franchise, they had a couple, but the big one was the toxic adventure.
10:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And they made four of them.
10:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, they did.
10:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was originally going to be three, but the second one ended up being so long, they just split it into two movies.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: but the toxic avenger came out in the early nineteen eighties and it was a monster superhero movie was really ahead of the game in that regard people really weren't making superhero movies like that at the time and uh... it was about a adobe nerd who like the protagonist or the the monster and
10:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Many in nineteen eighties movie was initially the victim of a horrible prank, and he ended up not only humiliated in front of everybody wearing a two-two.
10:43
[SPEAKER_03]: He was also splattered with toxic waste, like that one guy in Robocop.
10:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But the toxic waste, much like many Marvel heroes ended up giving him superpowers.
10:54
[SPEAKER_03]: His superpowers were, he was incredibly strong, he was incredibly invulnerable.
10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And whenever he was in the presence of evil, he flew into a homicidal rage.
11:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are evil people around.
11:06
[SPEAKER_03]: He had a uncontrollable compulsion to kill them.
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: But there are always cartoonish evil.
11:11
[SPEAKER_03]: There was never any question.
11:13
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no.
11:13
[SPEAKER_03]: There are always monstrous human beings.
11:15
[SPEAKER_04]: These are, in case it doesn't.
11:18
[SPEAKER_04]: This need saying these were very broad pictures.
11:21
[SPEAKER_04]: They had like almost a police academy vibe.
11:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they were slapstick comedy because as much as they were monster movie.
11:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's hard to take them seriously, although I think the Batastic Avenger himself was very sympathetic.
11:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Toxic was a hit.
11:37
[SPEAKER_03]: People like Toxic made appearances at all of their live shows.
11:41
[SPEAKER_03]: He ended up being a legend starring for a movie.
11:44
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of like hurricanes and that kind of stuff.
11:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't, I don't, he probably still goes.
11:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I used to be a comic-on every single year if I had to have a couple of DVDs signed by him.
11:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I ran into him on Halloween, and the West Hollywood parade.
12:01
[SPEAKER_04]: He was down there filming people, and that's just... I saw him.
12:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I saw him.
12:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I saw him.
12:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I saw him.
12:06
[SPEAKER_04]: He's filming what he's doing here in California.
12:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought he lived in New Jersey.
12:08
[SPEAKER_04]: He's filming some friends.
12:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I just walked past.
12:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I just shot it.
12:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, Lloyd, I love your movies, and without even looking up from his camera, you just shot it.
12:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And they love you, baby.
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: That's very loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy-loy
12:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Unlike, and not like an adult one like Duckman, no, no, no, no, no.
12:39
[SPEAKER_03]: A kid's cartoon series called Toxic Crusaders.
12:43
[SPEAKER_03]: There were action figures.
12:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I owned one.
12:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Gotta talk to Commander.
12:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I did, yeah.
12:49
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
12:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't remember.
12:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, now you got me questioning it.
12:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew there were toys, but yeah, yeah, that's cool.
12:55
[SPEAKER_03]: No, that's very, very cool.
12:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he was like this weird crossover hit.
13:00
[SPEAKER_03]: There was that weird time in the nineties where like our rated movies could have like Saturday morning cartoon shows like Robocop, Rambo.
13:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
13:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell some of the script.
13:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Odd.
13:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Odd that we did that, but by God.
13:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, just though like that, those films were having penetration to the kid audience.
13:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I was just reading somewhere about apparently
13:22
[SPEAKER_03]: In like, nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one, uh, Julie Roberts went a kid's choice award for pretty woman.
13:28
[SPEAKER_03]: We were just allowed to see anything.
13:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Normally, that would not be considered a kid's movie now, but at the time.
13:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Toxic Avenger is very popular.
13:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Toxic Avenger is a little bit character.
13:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember the first time I ran into the Toxic Avenger, it was one of the greatest shows ever to air on television USA up all night.
13:50
[SPEAKER_03]: USA up all night was on the USA network.
13:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It would air like after midnight Gilbert Godfreed or someone similar would be like
13:57
[SPEAKER_03]: out on the town at various bars they were open super late and he just be hosting your stations and occasionally they cut back to the toxic Avenger or that one weird sex comedy where a kid finds a leprechaun and a beer bottle and it gives him sexy wishes
14:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I cannot remember for the I you're making stuff.
14:14
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a real movie.
14:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I cannot remember the title of that movie if for the life of me I've been I think I looked it up once and I was like Oh, that's what it was called and then I completely forgot it sexy leprechaun is not sexy leprechaun is not sexy leprechaun grants sexy wishes Just so we're clear he's at the bottom of a beer bottle this would have been a sex comedy of the nineteen seventies at the earliest but probably nineteen eighties maybe nineteen ninety
14:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Nineteen eighty nine mm-hmm the title is fittingly enough getting lucky that sounds right nerdy students life changes after encountering misdivis leprechaun it's it's a trauma film yep that's a hundred percent correct but you say up all night big even though it was basic cable because it was on super duper late they just left shit in and the first time I saw the toxic Avengers some guys were like I think they were like holding up
15:02
[SPEAKER_03]: like a restaurant or something and the classic Avenger burst in and everyone's like hey it's a toxic Avenger and then the toxic Avenger punched through a guy's stomach ripped out his small intestine and jumped rope with it
15:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that sounds about it.
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a tough idea.
15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: They've been talking about doing a remake of the Toxic Avenger for a while, like in, like, I sort of a bigger budget Hollywood mold.
15:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Schwarzenegger was attached for a while.
15:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if he's going to be Toxic or the villain or what, but that would have an interesting version.
15:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Instead, we waited a very long time, and we got a remake slash reboot from Make and Blair.
15:41
[SPEAKER_03]: He's probably best known as an actor.
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You might remember him.
15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: You might remember him from blue ruin.
15:47
[SPEAKER_04]: He did.
15:48
[SPEAKER_04]: He was in blue.
15:49
[SPEAKER_04]: He directed green room.
15:52
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no, no.
15:53
[SPEAKER_03]: He's in green room.
15:54
[SPEAKER_03]: He's in green room.
15:55
[SPEAKER_03]: He directed, um...
15:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, God, what was it?
16:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Something... I'm getting tired of the end of the world or something like that?
16:05
[SPEAKER_03]: What the hell was that called?
16:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, um... We are the people who live in the castle.
16:11
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no.
16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That's... That's really Jackson.
16:13
[SPEAKER_04]: One of those... It was a long title.
16:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it was.
16:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's it, actually.
16:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
16:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
16:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
16:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the one.
16:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, good for him.
16:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yep, I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
16:31
[SPEAKER_03]: He directed it, Peter Dinklage stars in it.
16:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And he is the toxic avenger.
16:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Great get.
16:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin Bagan plays the villain.
16:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Great get.
16:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Casting Peter Dinklage, as the toxic avenger, is a stroke of genius.
16:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Because Peter Dinklage is too good and actor to let this slide as something one hundred percent cheeky.
16:56
[SPEAKER_04]: He knows it's cheeky.
16:57
[SPEAKER_04]: He knows how to play the part funny.
17:00
[SPEAKER_04]: But he also knows that the character is really pathetic.
17:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And he spends the first half of the movie
17:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Just sort of wallowing in his own self-pity.
17:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the idea is that he is just as put upon nice guy who doesn't deserve how much shit the world has heaped on him.
17:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So when it becomes a time to go vendor and gets to like rip a guy's jaw out and you're like, good for you.
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it doesn't fit because if he was like just a normal guy and suddenly started murdering people you'd be like
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Nah, you might be a dick.
17:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, no, Peter Denglish does it by the time he does it, it's like, fair game.
17:34
[SPEAKER_03]: One hundred percent.
17:34
[SPEAKER_04]: No, we're, we're remaking a trauma film.
17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is going to be a delicate balance because trauma, a lot of trauma strength came from the fact that it was super cheap.
17:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And through that cheapness, you could sense a great, we were just talking about it, this great earnestness from the filmmakers.
17:50
[SPEAKER_04]: They had a need to entertain.
17:53
[SPEAKER_04]: They knew it was cheap, they knew it was low, but we're all here for the same reason.
17:58
[SPEAKER_03]: No, and they put a lot of effort into its cheapness.
18:00
[SPEAKER_03]: like these weren't like little things we shot in our backyard they would go out on the streets in New York one time they jumped a car off of something but you know it was so fucking dangerous they never did it again and then they reused that car shot and everything they ever did afterwards because we're never doing that again and that was good production value
18:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you're going to do that with a bigger budget, what are you left with?
18:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing really.
18:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You're trying to emulate cheap earnestness when you need studio oversight.
18:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And that doesn't happen.
18:30
[SPEAKER_04]: It has to be done on the cheap.
18:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And I see this happen time and time again, even with low budget movies, where they try to recapture that earnest sense of humor to entertain
18:46
[SPEAKER_04]: and end up pushing it into this self-aware ironic realm that robs it if it's pop.
18:52
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no.
18:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very, very tricky too.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Because here's the new toxic Avenger.
18:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's clearly more expensive than the original toxic Avenger movies.
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It's still pretty damn cheap.
19:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like, but they just, they threw, they threw their money in at a few visual effects and the makeup and they tried to make sure, you know, it looked respectable and they could sell it on a theater.
19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It ended up playing at a festival and then went unreleased for two years because people, I guess people didn't think anyone would buy it.
19:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a delight, but make them where gets it, and this is something I was really struck by in his toxic Avenger because he understands that trauma isn't just the character of Toxie, it isn't just violence, it isn't even just naive of a take, it isn't aesthetic.
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the two things that I noticed that he made sure to put throughout the movie that I think other maybe lesser filmmakers or filmmakers who weren't on the right wavelength at least would have missed were things that you'd see in every trauma movie.
19:46
[SPEAKER_03]: One everything is unnecessarily gross.
19:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if you can't afford orange juice into a glass without spilling it anywhere and then nobody picks it up.
19:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything in this universe is unnecessarily untidy.
19:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That creates a vibe.
20:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's untidy, it's messy, it's
20:03
[SPEAKER_04]: cool.
20:05
[SPEAKER_04]: A big part of the appeal of the original talks because
20:09
[SPEAKER_04]: if you look back to sort of the mid-nineteen eighties there's like uh... there's like the bow-palled as aster and there's a lot of uh... you know the Chernobyl disaster all these horrible environmental disasters were coming out uh... with uh... toxic waste and radiation pesticides all of this was coming out at the same time and filmmakers decided to kind of make light of that and they were doing it for decades like we talked about the oblongs
20:38
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... an animated series for like the early two thousands on uh... uh... our kids will soon podcast uh... that was about a rich neighborhood that was pouring toxic waste into a lower neighborhood and there's about the people live that in the lower neighborhood and the health problems they were doing well uh... all of that was sort of grist for the middle in nineteen eighty four when the original toxic manager came out
21:03
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't fix it.
21:04
[SPEAKER_04]: We have the same problem.
21:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So making the toxic Avenger in twenty twenty five is still weirdly appropriate.
21:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And however now we have to sort of just expand that into the whole universe.
21:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything is run by
21:19
[SPEAKER_04]: and evil greedy pharmaceutical corporation, that is the one doing all of the polluting everybody's corrupt, everybody's being bribed and they have secret labs and in a weird way, it's believable within this structure of this universe.
21:36
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing that make him Blair does that I thought was like,
21:40
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so hard to understand how trauma does this because it looks like a cinematic band-aid and indeed it is, but they elevated it to an art form.
21:50
[SPEAKER_03]: The superfluous ADR.
21:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, just like the jokes thrown in on the side.
21:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I would joke half the time.
21:57
[SPEAKER_03]: ADR, automatic dialogue replacement is where after the movie is completed, you have people record dialogue in a booth somewhere.
22:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes this is because the sound was unusable and you needed to re-record a line.
22:12
[SPEAKER_03]: But often, it's there to just sort of
22:15
[SPEAKER_03]: growing a little bit of exposition.
22:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
22:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like you cut out a seam that clarified the people are going somewhere and now in the exterior of a car driving up is like, oh, I'm so glad we decided to go to this chemical plan to look for clues.
22:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Like just boom, voiceover, you're good.
22:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Harris, they were so concerned that people wouldn't be following along with their narrative, that people would often just yell things.
22:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And they thought that they could get away with it if they just sort of yelled out, plot some time.
22:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So like there's, or just excuses, there's a scene of the movie terror firmer where a guy was electrocuted to death.
22:56
[SPEAKER_03]: and then after he's electrocuted at his hair goes all spiky like a like a cartoon yeah problem was before that the actor was bald after he was bald and all of a sudden for the electrocution effect they put away gone and then they kind of forgot that that wouldn't make sense so they added an ADR if someone yelling he's got an afro now like that's it and hilarious here at the beginning of this movie Peter Zinclage like
23:24
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... seas like a mob goon trying to like talk his neighbor into selling her land and he's got like her cat with him is like oh it's okay i'll take very good carry cat and then he drops the cat in the street in traffic and peter dinkled runs into traffic and saves the cat and then someone yells off screen he saved the cat
23:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Just in case that was too subtle.
23:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I assumed that was a reference to the book save.
23:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a reference to save the cat, but just in case he didn't get that or yelled it.
23:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It's full of unnecessary tradition like that and it's genuinely funny.
23:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You clearly totally get it.
24:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The plot of the movie is he's in trouble.
24:02
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a single father, Jacob Tremblay plays his son.
24:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Single stepfather, apologies.
24:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's barely making it work and then he finds out that because of the chemical plant he works at, he has brain cancer and he only has a year to live.
24:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course his health insurance is impenetrable so he goes to his boss play by Kevin Bacon to beg him to help him with his health insurance.
24:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Kevin Bacon, who plays a lot of heavies like this?
24:26
[SPEAKER_04]: He does this a lot lately.
24:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I think every since super, it's been kind of his, his stick.
24:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
24:31
[SPEAKER_03]: He's good at it.
24:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, he does in hell, Peter Dinkler decides to break into the chemical plant right when another woman is trying to break into like steel corporate secrets to expose them.
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's when evil Elijah would six his monster core rock band assassins on them and it all goes wrong.
24:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're called like like the hot nuts of something like that.
24:53
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a scene where Elijah would just speaks into like the Serianist phone.
24:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Seri released the nuts.
25:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Bless him.
25:01
[SPEAKER_03]: He knows what movie he's in.
25:02
[SPEAKER_03]: He's having a great time.
25:04
[SPEAKER_03]: He can produce this.
25:05
[SPEAKER_03]: He isn't into this.
25:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he did produce this.
25:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
25:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to give credit where credit is doing.
25:10
[SPEAKER_03]: We talked about Peter dangled.
25:11
[SPEAKER_03]: He was extremely funny in this.
25:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Especially after the toxic Avenger is dialogue performances, really just kind of like mildly embarrassed by the horror he had brought.
25:21
[SPEAKER_03]: But he is not the only person giving this performance like Darth Vader before him in the costume, it's not him.
25:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if it was an availability thing, or what, maybe they could only afford Peter Dinkler for so long.
25:34
[SPEAKER_03]: But the toxic Avenger apparently studied Peter Dinkler's movements, like he recorded all the movements.
25:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they studied it, and then they copied them in the suit.
25:44
[SPEAKER_03]: They're played by Louise Guerrero, who has a very long career.
25:49
[SPEAKER_03]: She was on teletubbies, she's a character in the new Baldur's Gate.
25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: You recognize her from things, even if you don't recognize her.
25:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's really funny.
26:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone's really giving their all to this thing.
26:03
[SPEAKER_03]: It's super violent.
26:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very pointed in that very direct, unflinching trauma way.
26:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you know big corporations are bad?
26:12
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not wrong.
26:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It's worth repeating.
26:15
[SPEAKER_03]: It's important to keep that in the public eye.
26:18
[SPEAKER_03]: We lose sight of it sometimes.
26:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the movie, really.
26:22
[SPEAKER_03]: At one point, he finds out his urine is corrosive and uses it to melt through chains.
26:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Bless him.
26:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It's exactly what you're supposed to do when you're a toxic Avenger.
26:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's not shy about the gore.
26:35
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a scene where somebody gets their intestines pulled out of their own butt or shoved back in their butt.
26:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're pulled out of their own butt.
26:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
26:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no way.
26:44
[SPEAKER_04]: There were pull out of his gut and then shoved up his butt.
26:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you do.
26:50
[SPEAKER_04]: creative you know they're trying to do something there's I've never done that never seen that in a movie before yeah
26:58
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a kind of wild joy to this talk to Commander that is lacking from a lot of these Neogrand house movies.
27:08
[SPEAKER_04]: This could have been awful.
27:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've seen a lot of films try to do something like this and fail.
27:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's because, and I've said this before, I think when filmmakers understand that something is outrageous, they kind of push it and then they kind of immediately swivel their head around to the audience and, you know,
27:28
[SPEAKER_04]: with their elbows saying, hey, isn't that outrageous?
27:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And I can say, yes, it is, what do you think of that?
27:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And the filmmakers clearly have no viewpoint.
27:38
[SPEAKER_04]: They're clearly just trying to push some kind of envelope in their own hands.
27:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is not an extension of their own sense of taste.
27:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an extension of what they think the audience would get into.
27:49
[SPEAKER_04]: When I see something really wild and gross and gory, I don't want to be ribbons to have the filmmakers say, isn't that outrageous?
27:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I want them to say, that's fun.
27:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
27:57
[SPEAKER_04]: This is, we're having fun.
27:58
[SPEAKER_04]: We like this.
27:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Isn't this cool?
28:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't believe we're getting away with this.
28:02
[SPEAKER_04]: We get to do this for a living.
28:03
[SPEAKER_04]: This is awesome.
28:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like that's what the makers of this new toxic adventure have.
28:07
[SPEAKER_04]: This feels like a, it feels like a madball smooth.
28:12
[SPEAKER_04]: If you remember, if you remember the madballs, they were toys from the eighties, like really
28:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Gross toys were I think they're still a thing for a for young, but they were really huge hit in the eighties.
28:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We have the garbage.
28:23
[SPEAKER_03]: They'll kid bog land.
28:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like that's a crusader.
28:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really nice.
28:29
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea is you have gross buggery stuff and you know, it's not in vomit like we're great.
28:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Crawling a bug bugs and snakes and these were just toys for kids.
28:40
[SPEAKER_04]: They it understood that kids like gross stuff and they marketed these mad balls these two grotesque severed heads
28:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, they were bug balls, but they looked like monster heads.
28:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So like this one is like a floating money head, and this one is a cyclops.
28:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's just like a never eyeball.
28:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And this one is like a hand on a like a severed hand carrying an eyeball.
29:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, then they were like beaten up, and they had scars in place, and they broke in teeth.
29:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I had bad balls.
29:06
[SPEAKER_04]: They were great.
29:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I love those bad balls when I was a kid.
29:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I really don't need to last.
29:12
[SPEAKER_04]: No, they're probably, if you have one, they probably broke in down by now.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just ran away.
29:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But
29:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's this sort of sensibility that kids love gross stuff grown-ups love gross stuff too.
29:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I like to watch gross movies and this is a movie made by people who like gross stuff, but in that weird childish of Vomitorium kind of a way.
29:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Well it's an innocent way they're not doing this because they hate people they're doing this because they love people.
29:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and they're using the power of disgust to stick it to the man.
29:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
29:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And that I appreciate.
29:47
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a weird righteousness to this movie, despite how gross it is.
29:53
[SPEAKER_04]: The toxic Avenger Rob's, or I guess, before he mutates when he's still Peter Dinklage is robbing a safe.
30:00
[SPEAKER_04]: at one point, and he soaks his mop and some kind of corrosive chemical, and that becomes his weapon for the rest of the time.
30:04
[SPEAKER_04]: That's his ex-calibur.
30:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is also taken from the original, he has a mop, that's his weapon.
30:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the mop was just a mop originally though.
30:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just a mop originally.
30:14
[SPEAKER_04]: In this one, it's soaked in chemicals in a way that turned it into this eternally smoking torch-like thing that can just swipe through people and take their heads off.
30:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's his meal.
30:23
[SPEAKER_04]: It's his magic weapon, it's cool.
30:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, let's use toxic slime.
30:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Do it.
30:30
[SPEAKER_04]: to stick it to the polluters.
30:33
[SPEAKER_03]: It's Captain Planet would be proud.
30:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
30:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe wouldn't approve of the rating, but otherwise, he's thinking your hearts in the right place.
30:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And their heart is in the wrong place.
30:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It shouldn't be over there.
30:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It should probably be in their chest cavity.
30:47
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's grossness to be moral.
30:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Grossness in the power of morality.
30:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And I like that.
30:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's that's why I think of the madballs because the kids collected those things.
31:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Specifically, so they could piss off adults.
31:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I want the gross toy because it grosses you out, mom and dad.
31:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
31:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's fun and fuck you.
31:11
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but then that was the whole kid's rule.
31:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, your kids rule adults rule.
31:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're parents won't like this.
31:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like your parents have to buy it for you.
31:18
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the way you had that money.
31:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Not in the eighties.
31:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Her kids gonna buy this for their kids.
31:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Our adults gonna buy this for their kids.
31:25
[SPEAKER_04]: You have the kids are gonna bug them about it.
31:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
31:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
31:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
31:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we have a mad boss dad?
31:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I know we have a mad boss dad.
31:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And I know we have a whole movie where I really hope there's some enterprising thirteen year old out there who is begging their parents to go see the toxic Avenger and that the parents are gonna be totally grossed out.
31:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
31:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, completely uncool about it.
31:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
31:46
[SPEAKER_04]: But the kids are gonna grow up cool because they're gonna see this.
31:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's okay for it's an alreadyed film.
31:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really gory.
31:52
[SPEAKER_04]: There's not a lot of sex in the movie.
31:54
[SPEAKER_03]: No, there's almost none to speak of.
31:55
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I'm trying to even think.
31:58
[SPEAKER_04]: The gory is plenty spectacular though.
32:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the gory is gross, but again, it's all in the spirit of good fun.
32:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like, you know, much as like a, eleven, twelve-year-old version of me saw the toxic Avengers two on USA up all night.
32:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Some youngsters are going to be like, I'm going to find this movie on streaming and when their parents aren't watching, they're going to watch and then go, oh, we're going to make a movie.
32:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're going to do it by hand.
32:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And other fuckers, the real way, the trauma way, not the AI way.
32:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to hire Elijah Wood and dress him like riff rap.
32:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And he will do it.
32:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
32:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
32:30
[SPEAKER_03]: He will happily do try keeping him away from the production.
32:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I appreciate that everybody's there for who's the
32:37
[SPEAKER_04]: who's the freedom fighter character?
32:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Taylor Page.
32:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Taylor Page.
32:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
32:45
[SPEAKER_04]: She's playing the part.
32:46
[SPEAKER_04]: You hire Kevin Bacon as a heavy.
32:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I said, he's played a lot of heavy.
32:49
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like this.
32:50
[SPEAKER_04]: But he's never sleepwalking.
32:51
[SPEAKER_04]: He's always selling it.
32:52
[SPEAKER_04]: He's the most out of the bag character like this.
32:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Peter Dinklage is really, really committed.
32:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And what was her name, Louisa Guerrero?
33:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Louisa Guerrero.
33:05
[SPEAKER_04]: doing all the fight scenes and growing and just killing it.
33:09
[SPEAKER_04]: They're making a real movie and just it has a similar guy gets his gut structure of his own.
33:16
[SPEAKER_03]: They made their own damn movie and they learned everything they needed to know from the toxic avenger.
33:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And it has this, it is that same anti corporate eighties punk rock themes to it, but that's not derivative of the original.
33:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just we're still dealing with that bullshit.
33:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's still time-way.
33:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, I really love this.
33:37
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really, really fun movie.
33:39
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so hard to get this tone right in it.
33:41
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's pretty much this movie and to a somewhat more cynical degree psychogor-man.
33:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are the two that I think, over the last like ten years, have done it very, very well.
33:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
33:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it too, and I have high hopes for death stalker.
33:57
[SPEAKER_03]: That's coming out soon.
33:57
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
33:58
[SPEAKER_04]: The makers of PsychoGorman are remaking death stalker, which was a really cheap, sort and sorcery, fantasy epic made for fifty dollars, and what was an eighty-six or something?
34:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
34:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And MST-IIIK finally got around to that one, good episodes, because there was death stalker in death stalker too.
34:16
[SPEAKER_03]: There's four death stalker movies.
34:19
[SPEAKER_03]: There were four death stalkers.
34:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I can see in the sequel.
34:22
[SPEAKER_04]: There's so many dead stalker movies.
34:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think they would have stopped death by that?
34:27
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just stalking death.
34:29
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not going to do anything.
34:30
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just sort of stalking after.
34:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they certainly weren't caught stealing.
34:36
[SPEAKER_03]: death.
34:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god.
34:37
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the clumsiest.
34:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Remember when we just used to yell the words segue.
34:43
[SPEAKER_03]: segue.
34:44
[SPEAKER_03]: God stealing the new Darren Aaronowski joint is another movie that opened this last weekend.
34:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Toxic Avenger was more important.
34:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Literally, I genuinely feel he's talking.
34:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Talks to Gvenger is great.
34:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's not playing in that many theaters, not that many cities.
34:59
[SPEAKER_04]: If it is nearby, really seek this one out.
35:01
[SPEAKER_04]: This is like, get some friends together.
35:03
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be a proper cult experience.
35:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I wait for movies like that.
35:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, Scott's feeling, Darin Ironovski is back or is he?
35:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Because until now, Darin Ironovski has been on a one-man mission to punish his audiences.
35:18
[SPEAKER_04]: He noticed that almost every movie he makes is in some way even if it's good like a chore very difficult and emotionally damaging aggressive oblique he did make the fountain which is actually a very hopeful movie it's also about dad he deals with like big big things about your death and tortures a very religious filmmaker a couple biblical epics or he meant one
35:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you also did mother, which is a channel Old Testament creation story.
35:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I hesitate to call a biblical epic.
35:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It takes place in a house.
35:55
[SPEAKER_04]: I suppose it's not an epic, but it is the Adam and Eve's.
35:57
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a biblical film.
35:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I will give you that, even if it's being a bit coy about it.
36:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But no, it's a religious film, one hundred percent.
36:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what is like a one hundred million dollar epic.
36:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
36:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Mother is Jennifer Lawrence upset about visitors to her house.
36:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Different, different that's that.
36:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but you're tearing your hair out because it's such a stressful.
36:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's very stressful.
36:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I love mother.
36:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I see why you love me.
36:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I I'm actually very fond of Darren Arunowski generally although he just fell flat on his face when he made the whale
36:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I hate that.
36:32
[SPEAKER_04]: The whale is completely misguided.
36:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's supposed to be, it's even in the script.
36:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a film about religious persecution, homophobia, and hell, and depression.
36:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And how those things are just sort of eating away at the main character.
36:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And Darren Aronowski seems to think it's about obesity.
36:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, it's specifically about his weight gain.
36:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And his eating habits.
36:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, those are details, but that's not what his life is about.
36:55
[SPEAKER_04]: No, his life is about his depression.
36:58
[SPEAKER_04]: the religious extremists and and fundamentalists around him that sort of forced him and his boyfriend to just sort of fall down this pit of despair.
37:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
37:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a movie
37:12
[SPEAKER_03]: that is allegedly sympathetic, but Darren Aronowski's, I don't know if it's his conscious or subconscious views on obesity or if it's, or what, but my point is this, visually, the presentation is discussed by fat people, in a way that genuinely, as I'm watching it, it's not that I'm offended, it's that my feelings are hurt, like I feel that you genuinely don't like me.
37:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, is the vibe.
37:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And that you want a medal for finding a humanity in one of us.
37:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And I want to, and I want you to seriously go fuck yourself.
37:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm still, I don't know if I'll ever forgive him for that movie.
37:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Does it mean he's incapable of making good movies?
37:54
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I kind of like God's stealing.
37:56
[SPEAKER_03]: The whale pissed me off.
37:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And I realized as I was watching the whale that
38:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I respect a lot of Terran Aranovsky's movies.
38:04
[SPEAKER_03]: There's only one or two I actually like.
38:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
38:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Like which do?
38:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, pie.
38:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
38:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Pie is a very good, very interesting low budget sci-fi movie.
38:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I think it is.
38:15
[SPEAKER_03]: It does a whole lot with very little full of big ideas and it's a very interesting film.
38:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm also very fond of how absolutely off the rails know what is.
38:26
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, it's pretty great.
38:27
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it no way is besongers and we do not talk about that enough.
38:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of other movies, even though once the people celebrate, like I get it, I think there's good stuff in it.
38:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's excellent stuff in Requiem for a dream, but I think and as much as, you know, you could throw this on Hupert Selby Jr.
38:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, I don't almost have certain, no, not even almost.
38:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It is an absurdly blunt movie.
38:53
[SPEAKER_03]: You're making a point, you're not wrong.
38:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But also, come on.
38:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to, you don't have to put us through that.
39:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I get it, I get it, I get it, but stop.
39:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And even Black Swan, which is a lot that I respect.
39:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I also, I just feel I find it annoyingly derivative.
39:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel he's not actually adding much to a lot of his influences.
39:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think he leans so heavily on, I mean, Natalie Portman and Millicunus make that movie for me, not down there and off.
39:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the performances are what really make that movie work.
39:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think mother is maybe the most effective realization of what a panic attack feels like.
39:33
[SPEAKER_03]: that I've ever seen in this week.
39:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't enjoy watching it.
39:35
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why I like it.
39:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't like it, but it is effective.
39:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's a distinction we can make.
39:42
[SPEAKER_03]: God's Dealing is a fun, ninety-nineties-esque post-Terrentino crime comedy.
39:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's totally different.
39:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It's well out of his wheelhouse.
39:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I think
39:55
[SPEAKER_04]: The whale did when Brendan Fraser, the lead actor and Academy Award.
39:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That was one best make-up.
40:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm best make-up.
40:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Which is a shame because the make-up was actually bad in that movie.
40:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like he realized that
40:14
[SPEAKER_04]: He was off base with that one.
40:16
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope so.
40:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know where you're getting that.
40:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting that from caught stealing because that caught stealing is him taking a sodaberg turn and that he is trying a new genre and he's trying an entirely new tone he's trying to do kind of a little bit more of just a regular mainstream movie because maybe something about the whale made him lose his taste for that kind of a story.
40:38
[SPEAKER_03]: see I think that's interesting because to me what you're describing let's let's assume from a moment that that is true and we're we're reading a lot into it to be fair we're invited to it's part but no no we're invited to it's art just for the record we don't know but we're making something's based on the text
40:56
[SPEAKER_03]: If that's the case, I feel like that's more about him, and it's more about him than it is the audience.
41:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why that turn doesn't impress me.
41:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's not about telling this about him.
41:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It is about him, exactly my point.
41:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just about, oh, I want to do something different.
41:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, no, I want you to reckon with what you did to us.
41:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing.
41:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't really see this as being that.
41:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not an apology.
41:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just sort of like, hey, you know what?
41:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I did this.
41:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I did this thing.
41:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I started reading criticism of it.
41:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to do something really safe now.
41:27
[SPEAKER_04]: If he had moved on to something really kind of complex and difficult, the way it would seem like a part of it.
41:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And now he's trying to kind of distance himself from a lot of his earlier filmography.
41:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd be interested to see if he does other kind of lightweight genre pictures.
41:42
[SPEAKER_03]: The script he's starting in AI studio.
41:45
[SPEAKER_04]: He can do what he wants.
41:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Technically he can't.
41:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I do not have to approve.
41:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
41:50
[SPEAKER_04]: That's his business.
41:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And if he makes a piece of shit out of AI, then I'm going to tell him he made a piece of shit with AI.
41:59
[SPEAKER_04]: The script for caught stealing feels like somebody fished it out of a drawer that had been there since nineteen ninety four.
42:07
[SPEAKER_04]: The script is actually really cliche.
42:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really derivative.
42:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:11
[SPEAKER_04]: There's not a lot of wit to it.
42:13
[SPEAKER_04]: There's not a lot of complexity to the characters.
42:16
[SPEAKER_04]: They're pretty straightforward off the rack archetypes.
42:19
[SPEAKER_04]: What Darren Aronowski brings to it is a good sense of pacing and a good sense of atmosphere and he directs his actors very well.
42:28
[SPEAKER_04]: He does.
42:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like Austin Butler is the star of this movie as a transplant to New York from San Francisco.
42:35
[SPEAKER_04]: He's going to remind you of this because he's a huge fan of the San Francisco giant.
42:38
[SPEAKER_03]: This will be mentioned in every scene that he is in.
42:42
[SPEAKER_03]: not just because he's wearing the hat.
42:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And it does become a plot point very similarly to a plot point in highest to lowest.
42:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought that was weird, right?
42:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't seen, there's like a foot chase through New York and it ends up getting like outside of baseball stadium and they use the baseball fans to distract people.
42:58
[SPEAKER_05]: But like, by the way, by the way, exactly what happened at highest to them.
43:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure that's a coincidence, but it's a hell of a coincidence that they came out so close.
43:03
[SPEAKER_04]: That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
43:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Consulting of one another the plot.
43:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the plot of the movie is though.
43:11
[SPEAKER_03]: He's he used to be a professional baseball hopeful people thought it was gonna go back in high school Yeah, he was in a car accident And he messed up his knee and now that's gone and now he's just working as a bartender All he does all day is drink and have sets with Zoe graphics.
43:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you poor man.
43:29
[SPEAKER_05]: What a hard life.
43:30
[SPEAKER_03]: What a hard fucking life
43:31
[SPEAKER_05]: and he looks like Austin Butler.
43:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And you look more like Austin Butler.
43:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They don't even like make him look like uncamped.
43:37
[SPEAKER_03]: He's just like, no, I just super fucking hated him.
43:39
[SPEAKER_03]: He's just like, I'm dazzling.
43:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
43:42
[SPEAKER_04]: But the camera loves that guy.
43:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god.
43:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he craves it too.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he's so beautiful.
43:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Very pretty people.
43:48
[SPEAKER_03]: The black kicks in when they go up to his apartment one night and his next door neighbor played by Matt Smith from Doctor Who.
43:54
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a British punker with big mohawk.
43:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
43:58
[SPEAKER_03]: It's set in nineteen ninety eight but it's very important which is the your pie came out of memory serve so kind of all coming full circle ninety seven I did yeah, right in the area I But anyway, yeah, Matt Smith says listen I have to go back home to England for a couple of days of family members sick I need you to take care of my cat
44:18
[SPEAKER_03]: An Austin Butler says, yeah, okay.
44:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he's going to take care of his dad.
44:22
[SPEAKER_04]: He says no, I don't want to do that, but yeah, we kind of force the cat on him anyway.
44:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I will appreciate this.
44:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is one of those.
44:28
[SPEAKER_03]: This is another save the cat kind of situation.
44:31
[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't want the cat.
44:33
[SPEAKER_03]: He will die for that cat.
44:35
[SPEAKER_04]: by the end of the movie.
44:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's he will absolutely risk his life for that cat that cat matters and I appreciate that and that that is that is save the cat in action right there just the whole damn movie.
44:48
[SPEAKER_03]: but anyway, long story short, a series of goons keep showing up to Matt Smith's department and they're like doors are right next to each other and Austin Butler keeps kind of interacting with them and they start kicking the crap out of them.
45:00
[SPEAKER_03]: They beat him up so bad he loses a kidmate early in the movie.
45:04
[SPEAKER_03]: First act and then the rest of the movie he's like sprinting through New York and like drop-in-off of buildings and stuff like that and I'm like, who the fuck put those sutures together?
45:14
[SPEAKER_03]: They are a vundercane.
45:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, and there's even a scene part right through the movie where some some goons hold him down to torture him and start pulling the staples out of his wound.
45:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
45:23
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, well,
45:25
[SPEAKER_04]: They do get that fix.
45:26
[SPEAKER_04]: They kind of explain why.
45:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's going to leave Latin.
45:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody says this is going to leave an nasty scar and they fix it.
45:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
45:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's the hand wave, but the fact that he's still kind of sprinting and they even say it one point.
45:39
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't drink and then he gets drunk later in the movie.
45:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's he's going to die.
45:43
[SPEAKER_04]: He's he's a bit of a scoundrel.
45:45
[SPEAKER_04]: He's depressed.
45:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I appreciate how rich they made the character.
45:50
[SPEAKER_04]: for a movie like this because he's clearly a good guy and there was always the sense that he's being forced in over his head like what I really appreciate this about caught stealing he makes good decisions but it still fox him over
46:07
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a thing.
46:09
[SPEAKER_03]: He gets blackout drunken for gets where he puts an important black point in billiards.
46:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not all good.
46:13
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not a good decision, but like some goons come to his apartment and they beat him up and what's the first thing he does?
46:19
[SPEAKER_04]: He calls the cops.
46:21
[SPEAKER_04]: He tells people about it.
46:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not one of those thrillers where
46:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I get so frustrated with so many of these Hitchcock-derived thrillers, where it's just the man on the run.
46:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And they always have a line of dialogue along the lines of, well, I can't tell the cops.
46:36
[SPEAKER_04]: It'll get me in trouble, or I'm moving too quickly.
46:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't stop telling anybody.
46:39
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you tell someone.
46:41
[SPEAKER_04]: You get hell.
46:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You tell someone, you get hell.
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
46:45
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't call the cops.
46:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry.
46:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
46:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I get it.
46:50
[SPEAKER_03]: The line of dialogue is, well, why don't we call the cops?
46:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they're the cops.
46:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you watched the news and no?
46:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Given how bad the the goons are like the cops are almost a preferable option Grant and of course there's there's going to be a of some plot about corrupt cops and doesn't always go great
47:11
[SPEAKER_04]: The goons we meet at first are like part of like perhaps the Ukrainian mob, but they don't know it first.
47:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but they're also going to eventually run a foul of the Hasidic mob, which is a very nine to use twist.
47:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there was there was an undercurrent of
47:34
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a conspiracy involving keeping a mathematical secret from the Torah out of capitalist hands.
47:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And Dernernowski is not terribly religious.
47:46
[SPEAKER_04]: You can see that he is exploring his Judaism through
47:49
[SPEAKER_04]: his movies, like in subtle ways.
47:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes very obviously it's not a subtle way.
47:54
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, you know, there are two criminals who are very, very Jewish and it's like, listen, we have to go kill these guys.
48:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But first, we have to go see our mother Carol Kane because she's made massive soup and we don't want to offend her.
48:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you've got to come with us.
48:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
48:11
[SPEAKER_04]: These two characters, they're brothers, one of them is a rabbi, and they're played by Shriver.
48:17
[SPEAKER_04]: We have Shriver and Vincent and Offrey, who are just great actors.
48:22
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just gonna bring it.
48:25
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing really novel in caught stealing.
48:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I've seen this in all kinds of crime movies.
48:30
[SPEAKER_04]: the way he gets in trouble, the way he hoodwinks things, the trauma he's suffering through his past, his relationship with his girlfriend.
48:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Some shocking twists, I didn't quite see coming here.
48:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing, nothing that like rewrote the script or anything.
48:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't think that character was gonna do that.
48:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't expect the movie to go quite there.
48:56
[SPEAKER_04]: All of this is stuff I've seen before.
48:58
[SPEAKER_04]: But it just happens to be done exceptionally well.
49:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually enjoyed watching.
49:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I was engaged throughout the entire thing.
49:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I liked all of the characters.
49:06
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the way you're supposed to make a movie like this.
49:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Attention to detail, appealing characters and a plot that I can follow.
49:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And it does all of that to a T.
49:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I, I think you liked it a little more than I did, but I do think it mostly works.
49:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a fun, energetic, crime comedy occasionally, very, very dark, but it always springs back from it.
49:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's incredibly well filmed.
49:31
[SPEAKER_03]: There's this one shot of like Austin, Austin Butler has to like
49:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Some bad guys are in an apartment awesome.
49:37
[SPEAKER_03]: It has to climb it onto a fire escape.
49:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I've never seen that shot.
49:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I've seen people climb out of fire escapes a billion times in movies.
49:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I've never seen anyone film it with that shot.
49:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It just makes you feel like so small in the New York skyline.
49:49
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a drone shot.
49:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it amounts to much.
49:55
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think it's trying to amount to much, but I also think it's really, it's supposed, it's trying to be slight.
49:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It's trying to be slight, but I think it's idea of
50:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The appeal of this is maybe a little simplistic.
50:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Austin Butler's boss at the bar is played by Griffin Dunn.
50:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think that's a coincidence.
50:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Griffin Dunn started after hours.
50:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
50:17
[SPEAKER_03]: After hours as Martin Scorset, one of Martin Scorset's dark comedies that nobody appreciated at the time and everyone thinks is a classic now.
50:23
[SPEAKER_03]: They're right, but they should have appreciated at the time.
50:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Griffin Dunn played a guy who
50:30
[SPEAKER_03]: calls the girl up in the middle of the night goes across town to get laid.
50:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't work out and he ends up to sort of wandering the streets getting into one sick joke after another.
50:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And by the end of the movie, everyone in New York is like running after him trying to kill him.
50:44
[SPEAKER_03]: He has just completely had the worst night of ever.
50:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a sick joke film.
50:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It is someone having the worst day of their life.
50:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a sucker for that kind of a movie.
50:54
[SPEAKER_03]: But that movie has an energy and it also has scorsese-like
51:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Catholic cautionary tale mentality where it does feel like.
51:04
[SPEAKER_03]: The filmmaker is punishing the protagonist, whether it's fair or not, there are rules and you broke them.
51:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like Darren Aronowski doesn't even have that level of point of view.
51:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he's just doing stuff to do it.
51:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that the end of the world?
51:16
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's a slight crime comedy.
51:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Could it have benefited from a stronger point of view?
51:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that's fair.
51:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But I like this Darren Aronowski.
51:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not convinced it's the same Darren Aronowski.
51:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I was watching this and I was like,
51:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Is this tearing W. S. Aronovsky?
51:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Is this other two tearing Aronovsky's like we have two Paul Anderson's and like we have to like certainly making a distinction because this doesn't feel like tearing Aronovsky.
51:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it's so different from not just his body of work, but specifically from the last one he just made.
51:52
[SPEAKER_04]: That's cool.
51:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like he is clearly
51:56
[SPEAKER_04]: attempting something new he's trying to turn a corner in some way.
52:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if this is him trying to atone for for the way if you read the criticisms of the way.
52:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure I buy that I'd like to think that but I'm not sure I buy that.
52:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he's just bored.
52:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, I think he's just been making the same type of drama.
52:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Whether it's a realistic or fantasy or whatever for so long that I think he just kind of burned out and wanted to do something different.
52:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Great, honestly, because frankly, I find his work hit or miss and mostly miss.
52:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm always done with like, zeal, always done with a lot of talent, but I think ultimately his stories aren't necessarily as ingenious as he seems to think they are or the very least, I think he's got some weird ideas that undermine them.
52:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Here, yeah, it's a shallow crime comedy.
52:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a good one.
52:51
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's good one?
52:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it does, it does what it sets out to do.
52:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't completely fuck it up.
52:56
[SPEAKER_03]: No, the way the whale did.
52:58
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't, it's not like so oppressive that it's hard to watch.
53:03
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a genuinely entertaining movie.
53:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't love it.
53:06
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's, I guess, one of the very few Darren Arnowski movies, I consider it to be likable.
53:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And I, and I'll applaud him for that.
53:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Seriously, good.
53:16
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a good, this is a good change of pace.
53:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if you're just getting it out of your system, where you really want to turn a big turn in your career, but Kudos regardless.
53:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm going to be, I'm interested to see where he goes next.
53:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Is he going to go back to Heady Panic Trip kind of movies?
53:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Or is he going to continue with crowd pleasers?
53:34
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I guess.
53:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean crowd pleasers, let's be fair here.
53:37
[SPEAKER_03]: This is like the kind of movie that would have been a modest hit in nineteen ninety seven and a barely made a dent today.
53:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if the audiences are like.
53:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Crowley's there would be him doing like a franchise movie.
53:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like this is just him trying to make his job.
53:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Crowley's are in this it's just a mainstream entertainment to this my point.
53:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess my point is I don't really see this as being all that mainstream by today's standards.
53:58
[SPEAKER_03]: By today's standards it's a little niche.
54:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure I'm not sure.
54:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
54:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, can't think of one of the top of my head.
54:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
54:10
[SPEAKER_03]: That's my point.
54:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And that doesn't mean people don't like them.
54:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
54:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I just don't think that this is all that mainstream anymore.
54:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this is also a bit niche.
54:19
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just more fun.
54:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I don't know.
54:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I think people are probably going to discover it on home video.
54:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of tanking in theaters and they're really going to enjoy it.
54:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think you'll probably get a good word of mouth overall.
54:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
54:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But in theaters, I think this is a pretty tough sell because it doesn't really feel like something you have to go see.
54:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It looks slight.
54:39
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not my job.
54:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't care.
54:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just making the point.
54:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I just think I don't think crowds are going to be especially pleased because crowds aren't going.
54:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Given time.
54:47
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
54:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Got two more movies.
54:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I saw them.
54:50
[SPEAKER_03]: You didn't.
54:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll try to make a quick.
54:52
[SPEAKER_03]: The next one is the roses directed by Jay Roach.
54:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a remake of the War of the Roses.
54:59
[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't a play at first.
55:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a novel at first.
55:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there was a novel.
55:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The title is a cheeky historical reference, but it's actually about a very cultural war of the rose.
55:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, it's about a married couple whose last name was Rose, and the original film, Danny DeVito directed it and played a divorce lawyer, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
55:19
[SPEAKER_03]: They got married, their marriage hit the skids, and towards the end of it all boiled down to, they want to get a divorce, but neither were them wants to give up the house.
55:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So they start being more and more cruel to each other to try to get them to want to leave of their own accord until it starts turning more and more dark and more and more violent.
55:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very, very bleak comedy about marriage and divorce.
55:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't seen it a long time, but I remember the first time I watched it and I was like, I didn't know comedies could get this dark.
55:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's Danny DeVito's thing.
55:50
[SPEAKER_04]: He just tends to go a little bit bleak when he makes his movie.
55:53
[SPEAKER_03]: One hundred percent.
55:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, I've again, I haven't seen it a while.
55:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember being one of his best movies.
56:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The remake stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman Goodcast.
56:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Holy shit.
56:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I just, I will watch, you're telling me they're in it.
56:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll watch it.
56:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You're telling me they're married and they're gonna banter a lot.
56:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't.
56:16
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a famous architect.
56:18
[SPEAKER_03]: She is a chef, not very famous, but he's doing very, very well in the beginning of the movie.
56:26
[SPEAKER_03]: He buys her a little restaurant and she only keeps it open a couple of days a week.
56:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's basically per hobby or anything.
56:32
[SPEAKER_03]: She doesn't even need to make money on it.
56:34
[SPEAKER_03]: At the beginning, they also have two kids.
56:38
[SPEAKER_03]: At the beginning of the movie, there was a hurricane, a free hurricane off the California coastline.
56:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It demolishes his biggest architectural project.
56:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And he can't get any work after that.
56:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like not built to withstand that kind of weather, global warming.
56:55
[SPEAKER_03]: his career is destroyed but on that same night because there was a hurricane everyone stopped at her restaurant and also who was there a food critic who thought her work was remarkable gave her an incredible review and now she's successful in famous and he's not and this is what drives a wedge between this is what drives a wedge between initially
57:19
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like something that might be able to work towards, but it's a seed that just keeps growing and growing and growing into a very poisonous plant.
57:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not just that his careers fall on a part, his entire sense of self is destroyed.
57:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And she doesn't know how to talk to him about that.
57:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So she just decides not to.
57:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he decides they decide he's going to stay home and take care of the kids for a while.
57:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's going to focus on work for a while.
57:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Gradually, she starts focusing on work more and more.
57:51
[SPEAKER_03]: and neglecting him and the kids, and gradually he starts focusing more on the kids, and neglecting her more and more and more and more in resenting him out of time to spend a part.
58:01
[SPEAKER_03]: The movie takes place over quite a few years.
58:05
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a long, gestating seed of hatred, that grows.
58:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And the best running gag in the movie is that everyone in the, because they take place in California, they're British.
58:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone that they know,
58:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Mistakes, they're absolutely obvious hatred for one another as, oh, they're British.
58:28
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just British people like the Snipe.
58:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We've seen movies, Maggie Smith in everything.
58:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we get it.
58:35
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just how you are.
58:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But secretly you love each other.
58:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And even they seem confused by that.
58:40
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bit where they go to a marriage counselor.
58:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And the marriage counselor said, I want you to write down five things you like about your wife or your husband.
58:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And they end up writing five things that they absolutely detest about them.
58:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Where they find a way, like, sometimes I don't imagine caving your head in with an axe.
58:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're laughing.
58:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And the marriage counselor is like,
59:01
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys should not be married.
59:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You have an enormous amount of resentment and you're barely hiding it and you think it's funny.
59:10
[SPEAKER_03]: This is actually just genuine negative emotions and you're gonna hurt yourself and you're gonna hurt your kids and they don't Americans what do they know?
59:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I just stay married for another eight years and you're just like oh no
59:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Jane roaches.
59:22
[SPEAKER_03]: How are the kids planned to ask?
59:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So kids are interesting because initially when she's at home with the kids, she wants them to be very free spirited.
59:30
[SPEAKER_03]: She always makes them lots of cakes.
59:31
[SPEAKER_03]: She just wants them to enjoy childhood and enjoy life.
59:34
[SPEAKER_03]: When she goes to work, then it's a cumbersome batch of sides to take over and he makes them into fitness nuts.
59:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
59:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So that they're like jogging around.
59:41
[SPEAKER_03]: But here's the thing.
59:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They actually like it.
59:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
59:45
[SPEAKER_03]: They're actually really into it, and they become like just really kind of a good dad.
59:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of a good dad.
59:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of, it's more like it happens, stands that they happen to be into the thing you kind of force them to do.
59:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
59:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But they are, and unfortunately, this just makes Olivia Coleman feel that much more to attach from her kids.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_03]: because she didn't really have any say in that and now they are all into something that she does enjoy.
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_03]: How is this a comedy film?
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a thing.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, Jay Roach is paying an interesting tonal approach to this movie where he really wants you to feel like this marriage could be saved.
1:00:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just
1:00:22
[SPEAKER_03]: At some point they're going to talk and they're really going to have it out and they're going to realize they still care about each other and they're hurt by each other when they don't understand how to communicate.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, but some shit always goes down and it's always miserable and oh, it's it's faded.
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very dark comedy about life not working out the way you want to and they're being very very snippy.
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_03]: The example there's a part where
1:00:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Olivia Coleman comes home from work after like disappearing for a weekend and she was like, oh, you don't you want to have sex?
1:00:51
[SPEAKER_03]: No better to come back says, but how would you like a three hour circular argument that leads nowhere?
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a very funny line.
1:00:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That's that's it's that
1:01:00
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of repartage.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But over the course of the film, it gets darker and darker until they're actually thinking of killing each other.
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_03]: The problem is, here's the thing.
1:01:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what you're actually doing a pretty good job of nailing that tongue?
1:01:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Where it's a comedy, but it's also romantic tragedy.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_03]: He surrounds them with a couple of comedy actors at a Andy Sandberg, plays Benedict Cumberbatch his best friend, he's a lawyer.
1:01:25
[SPEAKER_03]: He's playing a pretty straight actually.
1:01:27
[SPEAKER_03]: He's kind of got a dry humor, but he's not doing stick.
1:01:31
[SPEAKER_03]: He's giving a genuine performance very grounded in the world of the film.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Playing his wife is Kate McKinnon, and I do not know what Jay Roach told her on set.
1:01:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably just do whatever you want.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And he should not have told her that.
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_03]: because I love Kate McKinnon.
1:01:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I think she's very funny.
1:01:48
[SPEAKER_03]: She's not in the same movie as everyone else.
1:01:50
[SPEAKER_03]: She is in a very broad comedy where the gag is that she's not terribly happy with Andy Sandberg, and he's not terribly happy, but they've decided to just sort of live with that.
1:02:05
[SPEAKER_03]: But she's under the table, she's very flirty with Benedict Cumberbatch, and it's not only clear that if you wanted to, they could have a flame.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, that absolutely fits in with the narrative that we're talking about here.
1:02:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It reflects the strife and their own marriage.
1:02:19
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes him confront the possibility of like, do you even want to risk this marriage?
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_03]: But she's playing it so fucking broad.
1:02:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, she's humping his leg at a dinner party.
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, that's not the movie.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not in that movie.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a very silly version of this.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe that could have worked.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not the movie.
1:02:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So every time she's on screen, the entire movie falls apart, which is a shame.
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Because again, I think she's really talented.
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I can only assume there was some miscommunication or
1:02:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Jay Roach thought that would be a good idea, and that was a miscalculation.
1:03:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But it all ends in a very, very dark fashion, and I will admit, the actual ending is deliciously bleak.
1:03:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very, very dark comedy.
1:03:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman are so good in it that if this isn't the kind of thing that would depress you because, you know, it's about marriage and divorce, it's really just going absolutely miserable.
1:03:21
[SPEAKER_03]: They're worth watching.
1:03:22
[SPEAKER_03]: They're very funny in it.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_03]: They're doing good work.
1:03:27
[SPEAKER_03]: As a movie, it's just okay.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Because Jay Roach kind of let some of it get away from him.
1:03:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Jay Roach is like he did Austin power.
1:03:37
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a mystery Alaska.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Like he's he's a mainstream comedy guy.
1:03:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Mystery Alaska is a pretty grounded comedy compared to Austin Powers.
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_03]: People forget that.
1:03:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's more like a slap shot kind of thing.
1:03:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
1:03:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Breaking really actually.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, no, Jay Roach.
1:03:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, his thing is broad comedies.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what he's best known for.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Like he does broad comedies.
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't have a huge amount of personality as a director.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Like you couldn't necessarily pick him out of my head.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, Peggy Roach film, you know, just by its style.
1:04:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So what is he doing here?
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, like how is he trying to make this and do I mean, I think he's been trying in the last ten years, I guess, to sort of reframe himself as a serious filmmaker who happens to be funny.
1:04:30
[SPEAKER_03]: He directed Trumbo.
1:04:32
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... with brine cranston which was okay but brankransom is really good in it uh... he directed bombshell the movie about what was going on but it seems to be really good and that's another movie that is just okay but there's some good performances in it the roses is just okay but there's a good performances in it i guess that's what he does now yeah like on the surface it looks like
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_03]: a really good movie, but it's not quite, but the actors are really pulling it through.
1:05:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I was watching the roses and I was thinking to myself, this was designed to fill out the ballot at the Golden Globes Comedy section.
1:05:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's not gonna get any Oscars traction.
1:05:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd be shocked if it did.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's a different comedy film, but it's meant to be kind of a dromedy.
1:05:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is words big.
1:05:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Coleman and Cumberbatch are probably gonna be nominated for Golden Globes.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Will they be out of for Oscars?
1:05:30
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
1:05:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I would be shocked.
1:05:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a bit of a cynical way to think about it, but it does.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes it just feels like who is this for?
1:05:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's not a crowd-pleaser.
1:05:40
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a crowd-in-bitterer.
1:05:44
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a pleasure in that.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't get me wrong.
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, no.
1:05:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It feels like he makes movies in an attempt to not make a great, subtle, great story or great cinema, but to impress people enough that they'll give him kudos.
1:06:02
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that they'll be nominated for it.
1:06:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, this is, I don't mean to put words in his mouth.
1:06:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what he actually thinks, but those are the movies he makes.
1:06:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the movies that get a few nominations here, there, and maybe Wings best to make up, and then we're done.
1:06:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and so the bombshell didn't make an impact.
1:06:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Instead of a promo.
1:06:21
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a single way to look at it.
1:06:22
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no.
1:06:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a cynical, the pro stuff filmmaking, I think.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think this movie comes very, very close.
1:06:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, to maybe not greatness, but to really, really working.
1:06:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's just that one element where it's just like, why?
1:06:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Why did we do that?
1:06:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Why did we?
1:06:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Damn shit.
1:06:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, last movie is a little movie that happens to be very big.
1:06:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It is called the Thursday Murder Club.
1:06:50
[SPEAKER_03]: The Thursday Murder Club.
1:06:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It's based on a book series.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if it's a whole series yet.
1:06:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that it's intended to be a series.
1:06:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if the second book ever actually came out.
1:07:01
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what checking I guess.
1:07:05
[SPEAKER_03]: looks like they're multiple books.
1:07:09
[SPEAKER_03]: They're written by Richard Osman, who was actually quite a celebrity in Britain before he even wrote a book, so good leg up on that situation.
1:07:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It's in the cozy crime van.
1:07:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It is about a group of retirees who live at, frankly, the fanciest retirement home I've ever seen in a film.
1:07:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a beautiful castle everyone has, like not only do they have their own room, but their room is the size of my apartment.
1:07:45
[SPEAKER_03]: which is generally not how big those are and they all have very different aesthetics like one of them looks like the interior of like an Oxford College professors office another one looks like a man cave like I'm just like but like the wood has different aspects like I don't know who the fuck designed this house but anyway
1:08:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone at this retirement home is busying themselves in some way they have.
1:08:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Art classes, you can hang out with the llamas.
1:08:22
[SPEAKER_03]: They just have those.
1:08:24
[SPEAKER_03]: There's embroidery and a handful of them.
1:08:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Helen Merin, Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan are in a Thursday murder club where every Thursday they meet and try to solve a real murder, usually a cold case.
1:08:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, apparently it was started by someone who was at the retirement home, it used to be a cop.
1:08:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And that person is now currently in a coma and they're just going on without her.
1:08:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Joining their ranks is a new person at the retirement home played by Celia Inri, and they find it particularly useful because she used to be a nurse.
1:09:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can answer questions like, would this stab wound necessarily have killed somebody or might there be another cause of death?
1:09:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That kind of thing.
1:09:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And while they are trying to solve their latest murder, David Tennant shows up, he owns the land that they live on, and he wants to kick them out.
1:09:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But he can't do it because the other guy who owns the place, they co-own it, is kind of standing in the way, and then that guy ends up dead.
1:09:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So now they have to solve a new murder, a fresh murder.
1:09:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Real murder, a delicious murder, a delectable murder.
1:09:40
[SPEAKER_03]: That's it.
1:09:42
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the movie.
1:09:44
[SPEAKER_03]: They're gonna be cute.
1:09:45
[SPEAKER_03]: They're gonna solve that murder.
1:09:47
[SPEAKER_03]: One or two of them are gonna have a bit more of a badass background that you might have expected.
1:09:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's it.
1:09:55
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the movie.
1:09:56
[SPEAKER_03]: If you've seen a cozy murder mystery, you've seen this.
1:10:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Now it's not understanding, based on the people I've talked to or messaged me after I put my review on Blue Sky didn't write this one up in print.
1:10:12
[SPEAKER_03]: that the book is actually very witty, okay, and maybe a typical of the genre.
1:10:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You wouldn't know it from watching this movie.
1:10:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Chris Columbus has turned this into an incredibly generic film.
1:10:22
[SPEAKER_03]: More expensive, sure, with a bigger cast than you'd normally get, that's for God damn sure.
1:10:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Hell and Aaron Pierce Bros.
1:10:29
[SPEAKER_03]: and Ben Kingsley, Celia and Ray, these are
1:10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: These are big things.
1:10:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I've seen, you know, we got, well, so the Jonathan Price is in this as well.
1:10:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Paul Freeman, I won't reveal it, but there's another big actor who shows up towards the end.
1:10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a cameo, extended cameo.
1:10:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all full of big gets.
1:10:50
[SPEAKER_03]: But as I'm watching this movie, and I'm thinking to myself, this is fine.
1:10:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm also thinking to myself, you got this gigantic cast.
1:10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: a director who's directed some of the biggest movies of all time, we didn't home alone, even the first two Harry Potter's.
1:11:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And he threw all, you clearly threw money at it.
1:11:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And what you achieved was not significantly better than anything you'd see on hallmark the cost of a hundred thousand dollars.
1:11:19
[SPEAKER_04]: So all, and big directors kind of have to downscale in that one.
1:11:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if that's the case though, and here's what I was thinking about.
1:11:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that the cozy mystery defies any attempt to make it huge.
1:11:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Because otherwise, it's not cozy, is it?
1:11:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it has to be comforting and relaxing and making you want to hang out with these characters.
1:11:44
[SPEAKER_03]: If they start doing things that are hugely cinematic, it ceases to be what it is.
1:11:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you can do things that are cinematic in a cozy fashion.
1:11:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Production design, you know, the cast, for instance.
1:11:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure that's a lot.
1:11:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's my point.
1:11:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You put production design in a cast in there, but the actual narrative and tone that they're going for doesn't need any of that.
1:12:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't need a big cast.
1:12:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Hell, I'm mirroring, isn't gonna elevate this material because it can't be elevated.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just whimsy.
1:12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not saying Halamir and his English, right?
1:12:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And everything, but the effective whimsy, it's more pointless.
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's more serious.
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_03]: There's great more wrong ways to do.
1:12:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, there's absolutely right wrong ways to do that.
1:12:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's adequate whimsy.
1:12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's adequate whimsy.
1:12:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if you were to ask me, hallmark did a couple of movies based on the murder she baked series.
1:12:43
[SPEAKER_03]: which was about a woman who lives in a small town, she runs a bakery, and people die in her small town, and she happens to get involved with all the mysteries, somehow baking is part of the plot.
1:12:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, the books are great because every recipe that she cooks, they also include the recipe.
1:13:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can make the recipe yourself.
1:13:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Very, very fun.
1:13:03
[SPEAKER_03]: We made a couple of those, two or three, maybe even four.
1:13:06
[SPEAKER_03]: If you were to ask me, which is better?
1:13:10
[SPEAKER_03]: The Thursday murder club, which had this huge cast,
1:13:13
[SPEAKER_03]: and put a lot of money in production design stuff, or the first murder she baked, which clearly cost one hundredth of that budget.
1:13:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say they're the same.
1:13:26
[SPEAKER_03]: in terms of overall entertainment value.
1:13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just that comfy and disposable.
1:13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's not bad.
1:13:34
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not a bad thing to be.
1:13:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just if you try to goose this up, it's still the same goose.
1:13:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you're just, it defies.
1:13:46
[SPEAKER_03]: the super star treatment, the reason why the Agatha Christie adaptations pulled this off, because you'll remember stuff like Merdy on the Oregon Express or Death on the Nile, the United States brand has versions, the original as well.
1:13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: They run in an all-star cast.
1:14:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The reason why that worked is because every member of the cast, except for Plaro or Ms.
1:14:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Marple or whoever, was a suspect.
1:14:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Oftentimes in a murder mystery movie, you'd say to yourself, well, that guy is played by an inexplicably big actor, so I'm constantly looking at him because I figure you can't get that guy unless he's got a good role.
1:14:29
[SPEAKER_03]: probably him, like it just kind of gives the game away.
1:14:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But if every actor is huge, anyone could have done it.
1:14:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
1:14:36
[SPEAKER_03]: That's, that's the appeal.
1:14:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And so everyone gets something juicy.
1:14:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone gets to be the suspect.
1:14:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone possibly is the killer.
1:14:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And the audience feels like they're really getting into their mummies' worth out of these actors because we're really staring at them.
1:14:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And it goes to a mystery like this.
1:14:49
[SPEAKER_03]: All the big stars.
1:14:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Are the heroes?
1:14:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they're the detectives.
1:14:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and that's cute.
1:14:54
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like only murders in the building.
1:14:56
[SPEAKER_04]: The three leads, they're the celebrities, and they're also the detectives.
1:14:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:15:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But you're not getting as much out of that star power if you've got a big ensemble cast of great actors who's only thing is to be like, yes, that is a clue, isn't it?
1:15:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, we should make another cake.
1:15:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that's cute.
1:15:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's the mystery at least.
1:15:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Interesting.
1:15:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, like, does it surprise you?
1:15:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it really?
1:15:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fine.
1:15:21
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like, I've, I've, I've, I've read and watched a lot of mysteries.
1:15:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I've, I've, it takes a bit to, it takes a bit to, it takes a bit to really blow me away with the solution to the mystery.
1:15:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, and usually, but here's the thing, a good murder mystery.
1:15:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It really just, any murder mystery that's like leaning into it.
1:15:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's in a game with the audience.
1:15:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going with you.
1:15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: It wants you to try to solve it.
1:15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully, the movie beats you and it happens at its satisfying, but it's something that you didn't predict turns out to be correct.
1:15:52
[SPEAKER_03]: But also, if you predict it correctly, you're still playing the game.
1:15:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not beating the movie.
1:15:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You're just playing in your one.
1:16:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just stands fine.
1:16:06
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bit towards the middle where it's like, oh, it's probably that guy and then you check the timestamp and I'm like, oh, it's not that guy.
1:16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no way it's that guy because they would not reveal it this early.
1:16:15
[SPEAKER_03]: They would not reveal it this early.
1:16:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they'd reveal like later on that his alibi was bullshit, but usually not or maybe that or they could only do that one time maybe.
1:16:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's just sort of like, oh, yeah, no.
1:16:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's fine.
1:16:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.
1:16:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the kind of movie that's specifically designed for you to watch with your parents because everyone can agree on it and no one will be offended and everyone will have the reasonably okay time.
1:16:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But to treat this like a giant project, didn't make it any better.
1:16:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe someone's gonna watch it because there's a big cast that they wouldn't otherwise, I guess that's something to it, but it doesn't make them really better.
1:16:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It just makes them movie slightly more marketable because there are more heads on the thumbnail.
1:17:02
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just sort of fine.
1:17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, let's review some movies on the movie review roundup.
1:17:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to see it, just because it looks cute.
1:17:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It's cute.
1:17:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm too long, but it's fine.
1:17:12
[SPEAKER_04]: I know the cozy mystery is like a bit of a boldalorization of what I get through Christy was doing.
1:17:19
[SPEAKER_04]: With Miss Farple in particular, yeah.
1:17:22
[SPEAKER_04]: If you know anything about what I get the Christie thought about her own movies, she tended to hate them because of the movies.
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Like most adaptations, TV movies, even once she was involved with her, she didn't like because the filmmakers tended to make them cozy or winsicle or silly or comedic and some way.
1:17:41
[SPEAKER_04]: She's gone on record saying, you know, I love this actress, but that's not my mismal.
1:17:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's
1:17:51
[SPEAKER_04]: The cozy mystery is sort of like this weird derivation of Agatha Christie that I think she never wanted to see happen.
1:17:57
[SPEAKER_03]: No, and I think it's fair to say that Agatha Christie didn't really write them, although certainly Ms.
1:18:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Marple is a progenitor.
1:18:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:18:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you can see it clear through line.
1:18:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like
1:18:07
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the word?
1:18:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Psycho is not a slasher.
1:18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: But it clearly inspired what would become the slasher.
1:18:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Like over the cup of the next fifteen years.
1:18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: It evolved into Halloween.
1:18:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the genre was that particular genre was codified.
1:18:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:18:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But you can definitely see that it came from this.
1:18:23
[SPEAKER_03]: The cozy mystery.
1:18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a great fondness for cozy mysteries.
1:18:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that can be really, really delightful.
1:18:28
[SPEAKER_03]: They're easy reads.
1:18:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And really, they're cozy not because
1:18:32
[SPEAKER_03]: you know they're cute they're cozy because they're reassuring because he because you want to live in that small town or you want to have tea with that mystery solver you know it's it's it's it's in many ways it's is sort of like hallmark in general like you know the whole thing was like
1:18:53
[SPEAKER_03]: You're moving to the big city to focus on work and now you've kind of lost touch with like, you know, family values and Christmas or whatever and then you realize all that was nice.
1:19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's kind of thing with the murder mystery and the cozy regenerates.
1:19:06
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, yeah, murder happens, that sucks, but everyone's pretty nice, usually.
1:19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, meat down.
1:19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, so really, you know, these things happen and it's bad and we'll stop that.
1:19:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And I want to pet my cat.
1:19:20
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just kind of, you know?
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:19:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's nice.
1:19:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I find nothing wrong with reassuring cinema, reassuring TV, reassuring books.
1:19:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think you should acknowledge what that is.
1:19:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think a movie like the Thursday Murder Club is doing that.
1:19:38
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think they've tricked themselves into thinking that this is more than that.
1:19:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:19:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Just because it's got a big cast, just because it's got a big budget.
1:19:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not.
1:19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just the material is the material.
1:19:52
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like,
1:19:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I use this analogy online, but like imagine if, you know, they made the Christmas Prince, that Netflix movie about like an American who falls for a Prince at Christmas.
1:20:07
[SPEAKER_03]: The hallmark asks just more expensive.
1:20:09
[SPEAKER_03]: But like imagine if you did that, but you cast Daniel Day Lewis and Jodie Foster and Sean Penn and whatever.
1:20:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It would still be the Christmas Prince.
1:20:22
[SPEAKER_03]: You didn't have to do that.
1:20:24
[SPEAKER_03]: They had better uses of their time.
1:20:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you would be the exact same movie and you wouldn't have like, built up everyone's expectations for it to be something and then Dan O'Day Lewis is like, and so I didn't quite believe in Christmas and now I do.
1:20:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Great, but I've got him, that's great.
1:20:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we didn't need that.
1:20:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That didn't amount to much.
1:20:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, let's review movies.
1:20:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We review movies on a scale of C minus to C plus C minus is the lowest grade we give.
1:20:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are movies that we think are below average.
1:20:54
[SPEAKER_03]: We do not recommend them.
1:20:56
[SPEAKER_03]: A C is an average movie, these are movies that are just okay, mix bag, solely for one audience, most other, you won't gonna dig it.
1:21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And then a C plus is above average, these are movies that we genuinely recommend.
1:21:06
[SPEAKER_03]: We think they're really fun, really good, maybe even great.
1:21:09
[SPEAKER_03]: On that note, Thursday Murder Club textbook C, just boom, middle of the road, the cast is a little overqualified for this, but it's still what it is and what it is is competent.
1:21:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And if that's all you wanna see, you'll get it.
1:21:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And bully for you.
1:21:29
[SPEAKER_03]: The roses.
1:21:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Another sea.
1:21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a high sea.
1:21:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the good, mostly outweighs the bad.
1:21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman carry the movie.
1:21:40
[SPEAKER_03]: It is there a movie.
1:21:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But sometimes J. Roach lets the movie get away from him and it doesn't quite
1:21:47
[SPEAKER_03]: add up to as much as it should as a result.
1:21:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you liked our comedies and you liked Benedict Cumberbatch and Levy Coleman, definitely we're checking out.
1:21:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Otherwise, take your leave it.
1:21:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Cots dealing.
1:21:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to give it a C-ploss.
1:21:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's a pretty typical high-st comedy, but I feel it just does it exceptionally well.
1:22:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Doesn't reinvent the wheel, but I like seeing it done as well as this.
1:22:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, we still use wheels.
1:22:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm going to do it high-st.
1:22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I like it fine.
1:22:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It never
1:22:17
[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing wrong with being a slight crime comedy, but as I'm watching and I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to forget this existed.
1:22:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, this is, eventually this is going to be that other movie Darren Arinowski did.
1:22:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:22:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm going to, I like it.
1:22:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Fine.
1:22:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But I don't like it so much that I feel it as a confident recommendation.
1:22:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just pretty good at this.
1:22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, but it's not bad.
1:22:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Not bad.
1:22:38
[SPEAKER_03]: That's for sure.
1:22:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So high seat.
1:22:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And finally, the toxic adventure.
1:22:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I see plus.
1:22:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I love how gross and strange, but also kind of sweet and earnest it was.
1:22:49
[SPEAKER_04]: It's mutated skin.
1:22:50
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I think making Blair gets this.
1:22:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he gets the material.
1:22:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he's assembled people who know what movie he's making.
1:22:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:22:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it is.
1:22:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You're right.
1:22:58
[SPEAKER_03]: It's sweet and it's gross.
1:23:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It's innocent and it's cynical about the right things.
1:23:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:23:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that they clearly actually cared about and studied the trauma aesthetic and did a wonderful job recapturing it.
1:23:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:23:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Who knows to them?
1:23:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Seriously, they didn't just make a good toxic eventor movie.
1:23:16
[SPEAKER_03]: They made an actual toxic eventor movie.
1:23:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And who would have thought?
1:23:20
[SPEAKER_03]: In twenty twenty five.
1:23:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:23:23
[SPEAKER_05]: We could still do that.
1:23:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not ironic.
1:23:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a genuine toxic and good for them.
1:23:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Big ol' C plus.
1:23:29
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, that is it for critically claimed.
1:23:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you everybody for listening.
1:23:31
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1:23:33
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1:23:54
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1:24:08
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1:24:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and, uh, that's fun.
1:24:35
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1:24:37
[SPEAKER_03]: We couldn't do this without you.
1:24:38
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1:24:40
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1:24:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that credit to claim for all that.
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1:24:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, that's it.
1:24:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Never forget.
1:24:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone is a critic.
1:24:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to go to the Midnight Show.
1:24:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, what?