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Headless Horsemen & Warring Angels - Sleepy Hollow (1999) vs. The Prophecy (1995) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Tonight on Meet Your Double feature, a Headless Horseman
• 0:13
  rides, leaving a trail of decapitated bodies in his wake.
• 0:17
  It's up to New York constable Ichabod Crane to solve the case
• 0:21
  and put evil to rest in Sleepy Hollow.
• 0:25
  Then warring angels descend to Earth, battling to claim a
• 0:28
  powerful human soul. It's up to LA policeman Thomas
• 0:32
  Daggett to find the soul 1st and end Heaven's war in the
• 0:37
  prophecy. It's a Halloween double feature
• 0:40
  and it starts right now. Hello and welcome to Meet Your
• 0:53
  Double Feature, a double-blind movie review podcast.
• 0:56
  My name is Thomas, joined as always by my brother Frank.
• 0:58
  Frank, how are you? As always, excited to be here.
• 1:03
  Excited to be here, ready to get going.
• 1:04
  It's been a minute since we recorded.
• 1:06
  We took a week off on our schedule on the back end, so
• 1:09
  it's fun to get back into it. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 1:12
  Well, for anybody who has never listened to Meet Your Double
• 1:14
  Feature before, I'll go ahead and give a brief rundown of how
• 1:17
  things work. Essentially, this is a movie
• 1:19
  review show with a slight twist. Frank and I have both selected a
• 1:22
  movie for the other to watch and review on the program today that
• 1:25
  neither of us had ever previously seen.
• 1:27
  We picked it out pretty much based on vibes and we're going
• 1:30
  to compete today to see who gave the Better Blind movie
• 1:33
  recommendation. After the end of our
• 1:35
  conversation about both films, we're going to give each movie a
• 1:38
  score out of 10. We've been keeping track of
• 1:40
  those scores as we go throughout the episodes.
• 1:42
  I think series totals, I am still in the lead.
• 1:45
  But Frank, as always, today is a chance to turn that around.
• 1:47
  Do you think, do you think today's the day that you get
• 1:50
  more points and win an episode? I'm pretty confident.
• 1:52
  I think I made some good choices out there in the past.
• 1:56
  So we'll see. We'll see.
• 1:58
  You tell me even. Arguably in the past you didn't
• 2:00
  because you've been losing for like 6 episodes in a row, but
• 2:04
  maybe today. We're working on it, we're
• 2:07
  putting it together. We're putting it together.
• 2:09
  So I'm going to go first today, starting with the movie that
• 2:12
  Frank, you asked me to watch, 1999's Sleepy Hollow.
• 2:16
  Now, we picked this out at the end of our previous episode, but
• 2:20
  as a reminder, Frank, can you tell me and the folks at home
• 2:22
  why you selected Sleepy Hollow? Well, I mean, it's spooky
• 2:26
  season, you know, Like this seemed like a good Halloween
• 2:30
  movie. I don't know if it's necessarily
• 2:33
  a scary movie because I haven't seen it myself, but it's one
• 2:37
  I've heard of before and it seemed to have a good cast to,
• 2:41
  you know, like it's like Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci are the
• 2:44
  leads. So I'm, I'm genuinely curious to
• 2:48
  to hear how it is because this is 1.
• 2:49
  I might want to go check out myself.
• 2:51
  Yeah, absolutely. You reminded me that yeah, if
• 2:53
  this episode comes out on time, then it should be the day before
• 2:57
  Halloween at the time of release.
• 2:58
  So spooky season indeed, But following up on your other
• 3:02
  point, Sleepy Hollow, not that scary.
• 3:05
  I, I was misinformed. I thought it was, I think I said
• 3:10
  at the end of the episode last time that I'm not much of A
• 3:13
  horror movie guy for that reason.
• 3:15
  Like I, I'm just the type who while watching the movie, I'll
• 3:17
  be fine, but then sometimes I'll just have like actual nightmares
• 3:21
  over stuff I've seen. It's it's scary movies if
• 3:23
  they're like a little too much. And I think I had a whole
• 3:26
  conversation with my wife where like we were going to watch
• 3:28
  Sleepy Hollow and she was looking at the IMDb parents
• 3:31
  guide as if I was six years old. And she said, I don't know, this
• 3:35
  might be too much for you. Is that what I've seen the movie
• 3:38
  insane. It's like not even it's it's Tim
• 3:42
  Burton. It's a Tim Burton movie with
• 3:44
  like the horror Dial turned up like a little.
• 3:48
  She just did not have a lot of faith in you.
• 3:50
  She's like, you got to go to bed, you got to go to bed,
• 3:53
  watch. 8:00 PM. Drink your juice and just go to
• 3:56
  sleep. But yeah, Sleepy Hollow is, I
• 4:00
  guess that's one of the main points about it that makes it an
• 4:03
  interesting film, is that it's classic Tim Burton.
• 4:05
  You know, for anybody who doesn't know, he's the one who
• 4:08
  did stuff like Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, what
• 4:13
  else? Edward Scissorhands, He's worked
• 4:15
  with Johnny. Depp, Edward Scissorhands yes,
• 4:17
  so his whole brand is essentially accessible horror
• 4:22
  movies, a lot of stuff geared towards kids.
• 4:24
  It seems like he puts kids in a lot of his movies.
• 4:26
  There's there are fairly family oriented horror films that work
• 4:30
  for younger audiences and Sleepy Hollow is probably the most
• 4:34
  adult horror film I've seen from him personally.
• 4:37
  It is rated R. The violence is definitely tuned
• 4:39
  up quite a bit, but it actually still has that familiar Tim
• 4:43
  Burton tone. I mean, we still have Danny
• 4:45
  Elfman doing the music and those scores are always so like bouncy
• 4:49
  and fun. So it's not actually scary.
• 4:51
  It's just a little bit more adult in its themes.
• 4:54
  Which seems like it would be maybe a good thing.
• 4:56
  Like 'cause I think I have mixed feelings about Tim Burton
• 4:59
  overall. Like I do really enjoy some of
• 5:03
  his movies but I'm not obsessed with his style.
• 5:08
  Yeah, I think that's fair. I'm.
• 5:09
  I'm kind of in a similar boat. I've enjoyed a number of his
• 5:11
  films, but I'm not someone who would be like, Oh my God, new
• 5:14
  Tim Burton just dropped. I got to run out the door.
• 5:17
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:17
  Mostly because you could watch movies at home now so I wouldn't
• 5:20
  need to go anywhere but. You're running away because
• 5:22
  you're scared because it's. Just running away.
• 5:24
  Yeah, I got to go to bed and crawl under the bed or
• 5:27
  something. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:29
  Sleepy Hollow, I don't want to like jump ahead too much in in
• 5:33
  talking about how the movie landed, but I do think that the
• 5:35
  tone is maybe one of the most divisive elements for me.
• 5:38
  Because everything that Tim Burton and company do to make
• 5:42
  the movie a little bit more of an adult horror film, in terms
• 5:44
  of being a little bit more serious and violent throughout,
• 5:47
  is at times undercut by the familiarity of like, the score
• 5:52
  and the cast and the overall production style just reminding
• 5:55
  me of much sillier movies, you know?
• 5:58
  Sure, yeah. Like the production design in
• 6:02
  Sleepy Hollow is awesome. It's following the classic
• 6:05
  Legend of Sleepy Hollow story, which a lot of people have
• 6:08
  probably heard some iteration of with Ichabod Crane and the
• 6:11
  Headless Horseman and people getting their heads chopped off.
• 6:13
  And it has this very fun kind of pop up storybook quality to it
• 6:19
  where there's a lot of very obviously fake sets, but they
• 6:22
  have so much depth and detail to them that they really kind of
• 6:26
  pop off the screen anyway. Like a lot of the story takes
• 6:28
  place in the woods, which are very small spaces.
• 6:32
  Like you could tell they don't really go that far back, but
• 6:34
  they used a lot of interesting techniques to like pump fog into
• 6:37
  the background of shots that give the impression that the
• 6:39
  woods go on forever. It's a really interesting
• 6:42
  quality, but if the goal was to make the movie a little bit more
• 6:45
  authentically scary, it doesn't really get there because the
• 6:50
  whole time it does kind of just feel like you're watching a
• 6:52
  sillier, more family friendly movie.
• 6:55
  But then at the same time, why is it so violent?
• 6:57
  Like you could just cut down on the depictions of violence and
• 6:59
  then you'd be right back in PG13 Tim Burton territory.
• 7:02
  So it's kind of lost in between those two extremes.
• 7:05
  I mean, maybe he was trying to push it further than some of his
• 7:09
  other films, you know, like maybe this was his attempt at
• 7:13
  heading more in that direction, but it is just kind of at odds
• 7:16
  with his. So I would describe his style as
• 7:18
  very filmic or almost even like theatre esque with like, I'm not
• 7:23
  thinking of like what's the musical he did with Johnny Depp.
• 7:28
  Sweeney Todd. He did an adaptation of Sweeney
• 7:30
  Todd. Yes, I mean, like, again, I
• 7:32
  haven't seen how this, what's called this Headless Horseman.
• 7:35
  I haven't seen Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow.
• 7:37
  Yeah, Yeah. But I'm visually, I'm picturing
• 7:41
  it looking somewhat like Sweeney Todd.
• 7:44
  Is that accurate? That's pretty spot on.
• 7:46
  Sweeney Todd's another film, and I'm sure people who know his
• 7:48
  filmography better are like, actually he did much more
• 7:51
  serious films at some point. But I would compare this most in
• 7:55
  the ones I've seen to Sweeney Todd because that's another one
• 7:58
  that I think is a little bit more serious.
• 8:00
  And to my memory, Sweeney Todd's probably scarier than this one.
• 8:04
  Sleepy Hollow is tinged with comedy underneath the whole
• 8:09
  thing that never really gets all too scary, even though I do
• 8:12
  think at times it was trying to be so.
• 8:14
  So again, I I don't know what was lost in what Burton and
• 8:18
  company were attempting to do with this movie versus what
• 8:20
  actually ends up on screen, but it is something that just I
• 8:23
  found myself thinking about the whole time.
• 8:25
  Sure. I mean, that's I, that's seems
• 8:27
  like something that's going to take you out of the movie.
• 8:29
  In a way, like you said, that stage quality to it, it's not
• 8:32
  always a bad thing. That's a lot of what people
• 8:34
  appreciate about Tim Burton. I mean, one of the movies of his
• 8:37
  that I like a lot is Batman Returns.
• 8:40
  He did the. Oh yeah.
• 8:42
  Or did he do the first and second live action Batman in the
• 8:45
  80s? Or did he just the second one I.
• 8:47
  Think he did the 1st 2:00. I think he did as well, Yeah.
• 8:50
  So those two to me, probably just 'cause I like the source
• 8:53
  material as is and watched it as a kid.
• 8:56
  Those land a little bit better as Tim Burton movies that are
• 9:00
  not completely recognizable as his.
• 9:02
  They do have those elements of like expressionistic
• 9:07
  architecture and and interesting backdrops and miniatures and
• 9:11
  sets, but they kind of blend into a different aesthetic
• 9:14
  quality, which is more like just the Batman proper stuff.
• 9:18
  Sleepy Hollow is just, it's just Sweetie Todd, it's just Tim
• 9:21
  Burton all over the place, mixed with a couple of key pieces of
• 9:25
  iconography from the original story, like the The Headless
• 9:28
  Horseman. So it is an interesting movie
• 9:30
  and it's very enjoyable. But the whole time, I don't know
• 9:34
  if in the end that's bad or good that you spend a lot of the
• 9:36
  runtime just thinking about how the movie is made.
• 9:40
  You and I do that a lot in general, but I feel like even a
• 9:42
  more casual audience would be thinking about the production
• 9:47
  while watching the production, and that it's kind of up to
• 9:50
  interpretation whether that's a bad thing or not.
• 9:52
  Yeah, I mean, I feel like Tim Burton is one of those directors
• 9:57
  where it's almost, the film is sold on his name.
• 10:00
  You know, there there's some directors where they have such a
• 10:03
  stamp on their work that people will go see a new movie.
• 10:06
  Like if it is, especially during this time period, like when he
• 10:10
  was kind of in his prime. So I think people would go in
• 10:13
  expecting that like visual style, at least from him.
• 10:19
  But that's kind of what I was saying before.
• 10:20
  It's like, I feel like it definitely works better in in
• 10:24
  something like Batman and some of his other films, but it
• 10:27
  doesn't always land for me. And I feel like he's so
• 10:29
  consistent with that visual style that it's like.
• 10:33
  Right. You have to be in the mood for
• 10:35
  it. I think if you're ready, if it's
• 10:37
  Halloween time and you want to watch a movie like others of
• 10:42
  his, maybe you're a big fan of Nightmare Before Christmas, but
• 10:44
  you've seen it 20 times, Sleepy Hollow is a good one to throw on
• 10:47
  to switch things up because it's going to feel like cozy.
• 10:50
  It's it's warm and familiar. But if you're looking for again,
• 10:54
  this comes back to what the movie's goals are.
• 10:56
  If it's trying to be an authentically scary adaptation
• 10:58
  of the story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, it achieves that
• 11:01
  in some ways, but definitely not in others.
• 11:03
  And I guess maybe rather than continue with the top down
• 11:05
  summary, I can kind of start to pick out what actually goes on
• 11:08
  in this one. Yeah, sure.
• 11:10
  I mean, because I don't, I mean, Sleepy Hollow is like, I think
• 11:13
  it was a short story originally. So it's one of those things that
• 11:16
  can just be iterated on a bunch of different ways.
• 11:19
  So I I don't I'm curious as to what actually happens in this
• 11:22
  one. It's probably public domain at
• 11:24
  this point, given how many different versions there are and
• 11:26
  how often those characters come up.
• 11:28
  So I don't know, because I haven't read the original
• 11:31
  source. I don't know if this is a really
• 11:32
  straightforward adaptation of the original short story or not,
• 11:35
  but it does have a very simple premise.
• 11:37
  Essentially, our lead character, Ichabod Crane, is played by
• 11:40
  Johnny Depp, who, when the movie opens, is living in, I think,
• 11:44
  London, working as like, a police investigator.
• 11:47
  And the sort of joke underneath the entire opening of the movie
• 11:51
  is that he's essentially trying to invent, like, criminology and
• 11:56
  being left out the door for it. Like, they're talking about
• 11:58
  these murder cases. And he's like, well, what if we
• 12:01
  use evidence and deductive reasoning to figure out who
• 12:04
  might have done this or even could have physically possibly
• 12:08
  done it? And they're just like, Nah, we
• 12:10
  already got a guy. We threw him in jail.
• 12:11
  We got a guy. It's that guy.
• 12:14
  It's that guy. So that's the premise at the
• 12:16
  beginning is that Ichabod Crane, Johnny Depp is driven by logic
• 12:22
  and reason. He has a lot of strong dialogue
• 12:23
  about this, that he's a very, I don't know, he's an
• 12:26
  intellectual. He wants to be able to prove
• 12:28
  things. He doesn't believe in
• 12:29
  superstitious things like a lot of his peers do.
• 12:32
  And again, he's kind of getting laughed out the door in London
• 12:35
  because of this. But it also gives him a unique
• 12:38
  opportunity because he is summoned by, I think, just like
• 12:42
  a magistrate or a judge or something who sends him from
• 12:45
  London to the town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series
• 12:48
  of murders that have started taking place, wherein all of the
• 12:51
  victims so far have been beheaded and had their heads
• 12:54
  stolen. Oh well, that's a fun setup.
• 12:57
  I I'm interested. Yeah, no, it's a good way to
• 12:59
  kick things off because Depp, you can tell, is like excited.
• 13:02
  Or as I come back, Crane is excited to get the opportunity.
• 13:05
  But also it's like, what do you mean he stole their heads?
• 13:07
  You know, it immediately punches him into interesting territory.
• 13:11
  And when he leaves London and goes to Sleepy Hollow, I hope
• 13:14
  it's London because I'm going to keep saying that and if it's
• 13:16
  wrong, it's going to be very funny.
• 13:17
  But he leaves London and goes to Sleepy Hollow.
• 13:20
  And essentially the rest of the movie he spends in this small
• 13:23
  town with this big cast of characters who live there, which
• 13:26
  is sort of a who's who actor wise, which I'll get into.
• 13:29
  And he's adamant from the start that while the locals believe
• 13:32
  the murderer is the legendary Headless Horseman of folk tale
• 13:36
  and myth, he thinks it's just somebody out there doing murders
• 13:39
  and he's going to prove who's actually doing it.
• 13:40
  He's kind of trying to Scooby-doo the whole thing it.
• 13:43
  Is, yeah, it is kind of giving Scooby-doo, which is great.
• 13:46
  Yeah. And so that's really the framing
• 13:48
  device for the whole rest of the movie.
• 13:49
  You get him to Sleepy Hollow within the first like 10
• 13:52
  minutes, and then we're kind of just off.
• 13:53
  We have this big group of characters, many, many of whom
• 13:57
  get beheaded by the horsemen. We lose almost everybody by the
• 13:59
  time this movie is done. And they all get their heads
• 14:03
  chopped off. Pretty much.
• 14:04
  I think almost all of them. That's kind of the horsemen's
• 14:06
  gimmick, you know, They didn't take their head then.
• 14:09
  He's just horse guy. He's.
• 14:11
  Just yeah, he likes it. It's funny to him.
• 14:14
  Yeah, that's his whole thing. So early on, you get these whole
• 14:18
  sequence where you're introduced to all the important characters
• 14:21
  in the story. And I guess here's where I'll
• 14:22
  focus in on the cast, because it's probably the most stacked
• 14:24
  cast for Tim Burton movie that I've ever seen.
• 14:27
  We have Johnny Depp as the lead and we have Christina Ricci as
• 14:30
  essentially his love interest in the story.
• 14:32
  She's like one of the first people he meets when he gets
• 14:34
  into town, and I believe the web of characters here is a little
• 14:38
  complex, but I think she is the daughter of essentially the head
• 14:41
  of the town. I don't know what their title
• 14:43
  is, but like the main person in town, she's part of that family.
• 14:47
  He's the town captain. He's the town quarterback and
• 14:51
  she is part of that same family, and family trees become
• 14:54
  important. So that's why I'm trying to
• 14:55
  clarify that as we get into it. But the rest of the town,
• 14:58
  there's essentially this tribunal of old white guys who
• 15:02
  kind of run things in town. And the grouping here is kind of
• 15:04
  insane. We have the actual head of the
• 15:08
  town is Michael Gambon, who was the second guy to play
• 15:11
  Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies.
• 15:14
  So that's fun. And we also get an appearance
• 15:17
  from, I don't know the actor's name, but the guy who played
• 15:20
  Harry Potter's uncle, Uncle Vernon.
• 15:23
  Oh. Really.
• 15:25
  Wow. Yeah, so we got back-to-back on
• 15:26
  Harry Potter, but then we go full Star Wars because in this
• 15:30
  movie, we have Ian McDermott, who you might remember as
• 15:33
  Emperor Palpatine. Of course, we get a brief
• 15:37
  appearance at the beginning, the guy who sends him to Sleepy
• 15:39
  Hollows, played by Christopher Lee, AKA Count Dooku.
• 15:43
  And the I'll. I'll leave this to you, Frank.
• 15:45
  I'll see if you can get it. Guess who the main stunt
• 15:47
  performer was who did all the action scenes for the Headless
• 15:50
  Horseman? Oh, Ray Park.
• 15:52
  Ray Park AKA Darth Maul. So we literally have like the
• 15:56
  Sith trifecta in this one movie. Oh, that's true.
• 15:58
  It's, yeah, it's specifically the Sith characters.
• 16:02
  Yeah, we get Palpatine, Dooku and Darth Mole.
• 16:04
  And this movie came out in the same year as Phantom Menace, so
• 16:07
  some of those characters hadn't even shown up yet.
• 16:10
  Wow, that's actually really fun. Yeah, so that's fun.
• 16:13
  I feel like when the movie started and we got to Sleepy
• 16:15
  Hollow and I saw this group unfold, I was like, I'm so on
• 16:17
  board. The movie really has you at the
• 16:19
  beginning with like almost a Hercule Poirot murder mystery
• 16:22
  shaping up where it's like clearly all these guys are
• 16:24
  suspicious. Which of them is actually behind
• 16:26
  this? And unfortunately, I will say
• 16:29
  that while some of these characters get time to shine,
• 16:31
  others definitely don't. Like Ian McDermott has like 2
• 16:34
  lines in the whole movie I want to say.
• 16:37
  That's a bummer that's I feel like I haven't seen him in much
• 16:40
  outside of Star Wars. Yeah, that was why it was a
• 16:44
  bummer. I was like, oh man, I want to
• 16:45
  see him like play somebody else and he's there.
• 16:49
  But again, he's not really a focal character.
• 16:51
  And so as it like wore on, I was like, oh man, we're not actually
• 16:55
  going to get this like group of old guy famous actors having a
• 17:00
  lot of dialogue scenes together. It's mostly just a couple of red
• 17:04
  herring suspects and then again, people are just getting picked
• 17:07
  off left and right, so some of them just don't really make it
• 17:09
  that far. Sure, yeah.
• 17:12
  So the the cast, again, probably one of the strongest points in
• 17:15
  the movie in terms of drumming up interest as it begins.
• 17:17
  But then also maybe one of its disappointments is that a lot of
• 17:20
  them are arguably wasted. They don't have a lot to do.
• 17:23
  I will say that for Christopher Lee, he actually said at around
• 17:27
  that time that his career was kind of struggling and that he
• 17:30
  credits his brief appearance in Sleepy Hollow with being the
• 17:33
  thing that got him noticed and cast in Lord of the Rings, which
• 17:37
  in turn got him into Star Wars. So he credits the movie, kind
• 17:39
  of, for rejuvenating his like, late stage career.
• 17:43
  Wow, that's really interesting because I mean, I've always kind
• 17:46
  of had this image of him as this like prolific actor that always
• 17:51
  had that status. That's what I thought too.
• 17:54
  I was surprised to hear him frame it as in an interview, is
• 17:56
  that he was really struggling at that point to get like
• 17:59
  significant roles, and even the role in this was not huge.
• 18:02
  But it must have just been enough of a showcase that
• 18:04
  anything that can get you cast in Lord of the Rings is probably
• 18:07
  a win. Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:09
  And he's perfect in that too, so.
• 18:10
  Exactly. So that's fun.
• 18:12
  Again, I just really like that trivia that we have all the Sith
• 18:14
  Lords here in Sleepy Hollows. The Sith Lawrence, meet Johnny
• 18:17
  Depp. Which I mean, even hearing you
• 18:20
  describe it is a fun like if I sat through like that first act
• 18:24
  and that set up, I would be I would be hooked with this movie.
• 18:27
  I would definitely want to see where this goes.
• 18:29
  I think that the combination of those elements, the production
• 18:32
  design, it's a really strong opening.
• 18:35
  And I think that maybe the hardest thing about it for me
• 18:40
  was that the mystery at the center of it all doesn't live up
• 18:42
  to that expectation. Because I think when that
• 18:44
  starts, I'm like all in Gibby, like an Agatha Christie murder
• 18:48
  mystery with a bunch of interesting monologuing and
• 18:51
  dialogue between all these fun characters.
• 18:52
  But I'm guessing in part because of the constraints of the
• 18:56
  original story, it's primarily focused on Johnny Depp and
• 19:00
  Christina Ricci, and to a lesser extent Mr. Dumbledore, And the
• 19:04
  rest of them are kind of just tertiary characters around that
• 19:06
  story. Yeah.
• 19:08
  I mean, I guess even still though it is nice that they
• 19:11
  filled out those kind of side characters with competent and
• 19:15
  like recognizable actors too. Like could be worse.
• 19:19
  It adds weight to those performances.
• 19:22
  Like I said, maybe this was me being a victim of my own
• 19:24
  expectations here of being like, well, I'm assuming if we got all
• 19:27
  these guys in a room, it's for a reason.
• 19:28
  And instead, it's more so just like these might just be people
• 19:31
  Tim Burton knows. Sure.
• 19:33
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 19:35
  So anyway, that's, that's all I had on casting in terms of the
• 19:37
  actual beats of the story here again, the whole first act of
• 19:41
  the movie, Johnny Depp's thing is like, there's no mystical
• 19:46
  Headless Horseman rising out of his grave to kill people.
• 19:49
  That just doesn't make any sense.
• 19:50
  I believe in logic and reason. I'm going to get to the bottom
• 19:52
  of this case. And sure enough, within the
• 19:54
  first day of him being there, multiple other people get killed
• 19:57
  in the dead of night. Basically everybody living in
• 20:00
  this small town is is being preyed upon by what they think
• 20:03
  is the Headless Horseman. And surprisingly.
• 20:06
  Near the end of the first act, we do find out that no, it's,
• 20:09
  it's real. It's a real mythological murder
• 20:11
  creature. Does Johnny Depp figure that
• 20:14
  out? Or the audience.
• 20:15
  Does he? Does He does.
• 20:16
  So he traces the evidence that he has so far alongside this
• 20:22
  young boy who's helping him out, whose father has been killed,
• 20:24
  and Christina Ricci herself. They all end up going into the
• 20:28
  depths of the woods to this big spooky tree that they all heard
• 20:31
  about. And when Johnny Depp gets there,
• 20:34
  he discovers that all of the heads that have been severed are
• 20:36
  being kept inside this tree and that the corpse of the Headless
• 20:40
  Horseman is there too, and that the reason he is being called to
• 20:43
  life again is because someone stole his skull.
• 20:47
  Like, if he was laid to rest properly, that he wouldn't be
• 20:49
  out. But somebody has taken the skull
• 20:51
  from his grave and is using it to command him to kill people.
• 20:55
  So it's kind of both. It is still a person, a living
• 20:57
  person responsible for these crimes, but they are doing it by
• 21:01
  summoning an undead murder horseman.
• 21:04
  I mean, I like that too. I like that too.
• 21:06
  Like, I honestly though, I think if I was in Johnny Depp's
• 21:08
  position at this point, I'd be like, well, I'm going to go
• 21:10
  home. Just be like.
• 21:12
  He does amusingly, kind of completely freak out after this
• 21:17
  happens. Like, the next scene is just
• 21:19
  him, like, holed up in his room. And Michael Gambon goes in to
• 21:22
  talk to him. And Johnny Depp's like, you
• 21:24
  don't understand. He's, he's real.
• 21:26
  He's a real Headless Horseman. And Michael Gambon just goes,
• 21:29
  yeah, we know. We told you.
• 21:31
  Everyone told you that. So that part's funny.
• 21:33
  We do get a realistic reaction where he just completely
• 21:36
  shatters his worldview. But then eventually he kind of
• 21:38
  gets his mojo back and he's like, hold on, there's still a
• 21:40
  mystery here. Clearly somebody is trying to
• 21:43
  get specific people killed. I can tell that the horseman has
• 21:46
  targets and it's not killing Billy Nilly because in at least
• 21:49
  one case, somebody attacks the horseman while he's out doing a
• 21:52
  murder. And the horseman tries to just
• 21:55
  ignore him and like, leave him be until the guy presses too
• 21:57
  hard and then the guy and then the horseman kills him.
• 21:59
  So there's an angle here of like, this is targeted.
• 22:02
  It's not just random killings, but.
• 22:04
  Yeah, but I mean, which that's, that's the thing with like
• 22:08
  murder mystery, like movies and stories in general is I feel
• 22:12
  like they're inherently captivating at the beginning,
• 22:15
  but then they have to not even just stick the landing.
• 22:18
  But it's like in the execution of everything that comes after
• 22:21
  that, 'cause I feel like it's kind of easy to set up an
• 22:23
  interesting murder mystery, but then to like follow up on it is
• 22:28
  is where it's more difficult. I'm glad you honed in on that,
• 22:31
  cause to me, that's where Sleepy Hollow starts to lose me.
• 22:35
  There's a point near the middle, essentially after they find out
• 22:39
  that the Horseman is real, where the actual plotting of the
• 22:43
  mystery becomes less and less interesting.
• 22:45
  Johnny Depp's main theory at this point is that a lot of this
• 22:49
  has to do with land ownership and titles.
• 22:53
  They're aware that some of the first people to be murdered
• 22:56
  owned all of this land and essentially owned the town and
• 23:01
  all the riches within it because they had settled it or
• 23:03
  something. And he starts to track down
• 23:05
  like, who would stand to inherit all of this money and titles if
• 23:09
  such and such person died? Well, and then he kind of traces
• 23:12
  like, well, that explains why they killed this person next,
• 23:14
  because this was the daughter of this first person.
• 23:18
  And he eventually traces it all the way back to believing that
• 23:21
  Mister Dumbledore is the one behind the whole thing, which
• 23:23
  obviously makes his relationship with Christina Ricci much more
• 23:27
  tense because he's accusing her dad of being a, you know, evil
• 23:31
  murderer mastermind. And so that's where things get
• 23:33
  tense for those two. And is it him or is that?
• 23:37
  That's your first misdirect. They think it's Michael Gambon.
• 23:40
  But then in one of the more interesting action beats in the
• 23:43
  movie, The horseman shows up at night when everybody's still out
• 23:46
  and about, and everybody freaks out and runs into the town
• 23:48
  church. And they discover that the
• 23:50
  horseman can't actually go into the church.
• 23:52
  And so there's a scene in there where everyone's kind of
• 23:55
  freaking out and wondering what to do.
• 23:56
  And Michael Gammon goes up onto this elevated platform in the
• 23:59
  back where you'd presumably give the sermons from.
• 24:02
  And then there's a window behind him.
• 24:04
  And the horseman shoots like a grapple thing through the window
• 24:08
  and impales him with it and just drags him outside the church,
• 24:11
  which is just kind of a funny beat that he can't go inside.
• 24:14
  So he had to just physically get his body out.
• 24:17
  And so then Michael Gammon's dead, too.
• 24:18
  And it's like, OK, clearly he didn't do it because he is dead.
• 24:21
  What? The horseman has a grappling
• 24:23
  hook, though. I don't know what you would call
• 24:25
  it. He fires something like a
• 24:27
  grappling hook that shoots through a person and then uses
• 24:30
  it to drag him through the plate glass window and like all the
• 24:32
  way outside the grounds of the church.
• 24:35
  Oh that's crazy I didn't know he had like gadgets.
• 24:37
  I assume he has like a sword too or what is he cutting people's
• 24:40
  heads off with? He's got a sword, He got a
• 24:42
  pumpkin head and a sword. And then I guess that grapple
• 24:46
  thing, that's really his only other gadget.
• 24:48
  It's just an interesting one to pull out of nowhere.
• 24:50
  Just like, yeah, cool grapple. Hasn't leveled up enough times
• 24:53
  to spec into new gadgets. You know, I think he's gonna
• 24:55
  unlock a smoke bomb eventually. Yeah, of course.
• 24:58
  Yeah, yeah, for those stealth kills.
• 25:01
  So that scene is interesting. I think maybe one thing to
• 25:04
  highlight is that the action in this movie is kind of nuts.
• 25:06
  Like there's some interesting action stunt work in what is for
• 25:10
  the most part supposed to be like a Horror Story because on
• 25:12
  occasion people try to fight the Headless Horseman.
• 25:14
  And that's where Ray Park shows up to do stunts.
• 25:16
  And they're just like interesting little scenes.
• 25:18
  They're they're played for horror more than action, but
• 25:21
  there is actual like choreography to those little
• 25:23
  sword fight sequences. Oh that's cool.
• 25:25
  I wouldn't have expected that at all, honestly.
• 25:28
  I agree. I I thought it would be pure
• 25:30
  like slasher movie stalker imagery of someone just
• 25:33
  inevitably failing to get away. But there's this one dude who
• 25:36
  shows up with like a musket and just tries to fight him.
• 25:39
  And it goes on for a minute. And then that guy is the one who
• 25:43
  Johnny Depp is aware the horseman doesn't want to kill
• 25:45
  because he has no reason to. But eventually he gets pressed
• 25:47
  enough that he does not behead that guy.
• 25:48
  He cuts him in half. Wait, why?
• 25:50
  Why didn't he cut his head off though?
• 25:52
  That's his whole thing. Because he was just, I guess the
• 25:54
  horseman was just in self-defense mode.
• 25:56
  He didn't need the head. He just was like, get out of
• 25:58
  here. Oh, that's interesting.
• 26:00
  There's so many rules like with this horse, is he unkillable?
• 26:03
  Could they? Were they shooting him and it
• 26:04
  wasn't working or? Correct.
• 26:06
  He is seemingly immortal, which again is part of Johnny Depp's
• 26:10
  evidence that this is like a mythical creature.
• 26:12
  There is also a legend given that the Horseman was this weird
• 26:17
  vampiric warrior guy hundreds of years prior that just died near
• 26:23
  the location of the town and you get a brief flashback and this
• 26:25
  is where Christopher Walken shows up.
• 26:27
  I know we talked briefly last time that we both picked a movie
• 26:29
  with him in it, but the only appearance of Christopher Walken
• 26:32
  in Sleepy Hollow is in flashbacks of him as the
• 26:34
  Horseman. Oh, he is the horseman.
• 26:38
  He's the horseman, but most of the time you're not seeing him.
• 26:40
  He's in a couple of scenes at the beginning and then you see
• 26:43
  him as himself once towards the end.
• 26:46
  Oh, that would have been really funny if it was his voice coming
• 26:48
  out of the pumpkin head. That would have been a lot of
• 26:49
  fun. That would have been pretty
• 26:51
  funny. I I was about to judge do a
• 26:53
  Christopher Walken impression like I've never attempted.
• 26:56
  There's no way of letting that go on the airwaves.
• 26:59
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. You want.
• 27:02
  Me to feed the horse. The man is the horse and the
• 27:07
  pumpkin. The pumpkin I'm picturing like
• 27:10
  the pumpkin mouth is like moving to almost like a muppet and
• 27:14
  it's. For.
• 27:14
  Walken's voice coming out. Yeah, I got a sword, but also a
• 27:19
  grappling hook. You know what?
• 27:23
  That was not bad. By the time you got to a
• 27:25
  grappling hook, I think I, I heard it.
• 27:27
  It's like he was in the room with us.
• 27:29
  Yeah, that that's something I hear from Impressionists a lot.
• 27:31
  You got to find the one phrase that really speaks to that, you
• 27:35
  know, that actress performance. And I guess Christopher Walken
• 27:37
  just loves to talk about grappling hooks.
• 27:39
  It's his favorite thing. It's his favorite thing in the
• 27:41
  world. All right, now I'm glad I did
• 27:44
  it. There you go.
• 27:46
  One's for me anyway. Christopher Walken is in the
• 27:49
  film, but if you're wondering, as I went through the cast, why
• 27:52
  he didn't show up yet, it's because he's only there a little
• 27:53
  bit. He you see him essentially being
• 27:56
  killed in the past and he interacts with these two strange
• 28:00
  girls in the woods, which feels like it's not related to
• 28:03
  anything. But then you find out later that
• 28:05
  one of those strange little girls in the woods has grown up
• 28:08
  to be the person who is controlling him in the present
• 28:11
  day of the story. And the reason I set that up so
• 28:14
  kind of lazily is because the movie does too.
• 28:15
  We get the most boring reveal at the end of who's involved and
• 28:20
  behind all of this. It's just this witch lady who
• 28:26
  married into What's up? I just was shocked that there's
• 28:31
  a witch now that's that's A twist.
• 28:33
  There's a witch in the middle of the story.
• 28:34
  I I'm not maybe not doing this justice.
• 28:36
  It's been a few weeks since I saw it, but they go to visit a
• 28:39
  cave. Witch in the middle of the story
• 28:42
  and she gives them a clue about what's going on and basically
• 28:45
  where, oh, she tells Johnny Depp where to go find the spooky
• 28:47
  tree. So that's like a first act beat.
• 28:50
  But in the end, maybe I should reset.
• 28:53
  I don't want to leave anybody confused.
• 28:55
  So as we talked about, Christina Ricci's dad was not the person
• 28:58
  behind the murders because he got murdered himself.
• 29:00
  He got grappling hooked out of a church.
• 29:02
  So then at that point, Johnny Depp actually starts to suspect
• 29:06
  Christina Ricci herself because he sees a couple of weird signs
• 29:09
  from her, like she burned some of the evidence that he had
• 29:13
  collected that pointed back to her dad.
• 29:15
  He finds this inscription under the bed he's been sleeping.
• 29:18
  Yeah. That he thinks is some sort of,
• 29:20
  like, witch ward. And so he starts to wonder if
• 29:22
  maybe she's partially responsible for this.
• 29:25
  And then in the end, it turns out that was a misdirect and it
• 29:27
  was her stepmother. It was the woman who had married
• 29:32
  Dumbledore after Dumbledore's first wife died.
• 29:35
  And the reason that's supposed to be somewhat of a surprise is
• 29:38
  because we think that she died earlier, but it was never shown.
• 29:41
  They like cut away from what looks like her being killed and
• 29:44
  then we find out that she was behind the whole thing.
• 29:46
  Oh wait, you lost me there. So the.
• 29:49
  Stepmother, I got lost. This movie loses me when you're
• 29:52
  watching it because it doesn't put enough emphasis on the
• 29:56
  actual suspects in a way that feels satisfying when any of
• 29:59
  this comes to light. So in the middle of the movie,
• 30:01
  yes, Sorry, You tell me what? You tell me where you get lost
• 30:04
  and I'll fill in the rest. No, no, no, I was just going to
• 30:06
  say like in regards to like murder mysteries in general,
• 30:11
  they're so tricky because like I've seen a few recently.
• 30:16
  Like there's some fun murder mystery shows like Only Murders
• 30:19
  in the Building. I know we've both watched.
• 30:21
  I, I recently watched The Residence, which was a Netflix
• 30:25
  murder mystery show like set in the White House.
• 30:29
  And you have to strike this balance where it's like, you
• 30:32
  can't make it too obvious what's going on, but you still need to
• 30:36
  leave the audience with like enough bread crumbs.
• 30:38
  So that, like, I think if you wanted to be like a satisfying
• 30:42
  story, that the audience could kind of figure some things out
• 30:46
  on their own if they're paying enough attention.
• 30:48
  I think the best case scenario is where the whole thing clicks
• 30:52
  for you like 3 seconds before they say it out loud because it
• 30:56
  allows you to fill the gap yourself which is like rewarding
• 30:59
  but also kind of get back fills everything you've seen and helps
• 31:02
  you immediately understand. Like, oh, they were telling me
• 31:04
  this, I just didn't know it. Yeah.
• 31:06
  Oh, totally. Exactly.
• 31:07
  Yeah. Which is hard to do.
• 31:08
  You really have to like thread that needle and like most of the
• 31:11
  time it winds up being some tertiary character is the one
• 31:15
  that's been behind it all along and not like the obvious
• 31:18
  suspects, so. I think the reason that it
• 31:21
  becomes frustrating in Sleepy Hollow is because we don't
• 31:23
  really spend enough time building up suspects in general.
• 31:26
  Most of the plotting is just Johnny Depp finding out the
• 31:29
  mystery of the horsemen as a whole, and then he finds like 1
• 31:33
  suspect. That person dies.
• 31:34
  He kind of half heartedly thinks maybe it's somebody else and
• 31:37
  then he's like Oh no, it's this witch lady who I just found out
• 31:39
  was a witch like 5 minutes ago anyway.
• 31:41
  Yeah, that's that's why I was shocked.
• 31:43
  I was like, wait a minute, a witch like.
• 31:45
  There's more spooky stuff. There was references to a witch
• 31:48
  before that, and there's other elements in the movie that
• 31:51
  helped get us through the runtime about Johnny Depp's
• 31:53
  relationship with like, myth and superstition and why he's so
• 31:57
  devoted to logical deduction. There's flashbacks about his
• 32:01
  relationship with his mom, who was seemingly married to a very
• 32:05
  devoutly Catholic man, and she was kind of just like a free
• 32:08
  spirited nature person. And I think the implication is
• 32:12
  that she got accused of some kind of witchcraft and was like
• 32:14
  killed for it. So Johnny Depp has this like,
• 32:17
  traumatic relationship with the same kind of thing of people
• 32:21
  being accused of magic when they're really just interacting
• 32:24
  with the world in a way that people don't understand, much
• 32:27
  like how he is trying to interact with things in a new
• 32:30
  way and people write him off because they don't understand
• 32:32
  it. So there's like recurring
• 32:33
  elements there. But like, that's what the
• 32:35
  movie's about. It's not actually really about
• 32:37
  the mystery. And I think maybe that's where I
• 32:39
  got let down. I wanted a mystery.
• 32:41
  Sure, because I mean like when it's done well, I feel like it's
• 32:44
  one of my favorite like genres actually.
• 32:46
  It's like a good like kind of murder mystery.
• 32:49
  But I do like this whole like, you know, again, like scooby-doo
• 32:53
  type stuff. Like is it real?
• 32:54
  Is it not? Like, it could have been fun if
• 32:57
  they'd, like, gotten to the end of the story and ripped the
• 32:59
  pumpkin head off and then Christopher Walken was
• 33:01
  underneath, like. He's like it.
• 33:03
  Was me. All along with the grappling
• 33:05
  hook. In the kitchen, like it's like
• 33:10
  clue. I realize my my impression is
• 33:14
  starting to sound like Barney the Dinosaur if I go.
• 33:18
  That would have been good. They'd take the Pumpkinhead off
• 33:20
  and then it's Barney the Dinosaur.
• 33:21
  Is that Barney the dinosaur head?
• 33:23
  Yeah, that's good. That's good.
• 33:24
  People would like that. People in the 90s hated Barney
• 33:26
  for some reason. Yeah, there was a documentary
• 33:28
  about that. I haven't watched it, but I've
• 33:29
  been curious about it. There was like, I think it was
• 33:31
  like a meme almost like to hate Barney.
• 33:35
  A lot of people like they liked it as a kid and then when they
• 33:37
  reached a certain age they were like, Nah, I hate this dumb
• 33:39
  dinosaur guy so I'd buy it that he was the Headless Horseman.
• 33:43
  So anyway, I, I, I'll have to go back in the edit and make sure
• 33:45
  that this plotting made sense. But the movie is primarily about
• 33:49
  Johnny Depp's relationship with Christina Ricci, his
• 33:51
  relationship to the nature of magic and superstition as
• 33:55
  opposed to stuff like religion and just things people can't
• 33:58
  understand. There's this interesting
• 34:01
  recurring imagery, like he has this toy that his mom gave him
• 34:04
  that is a little picture of a bird in this little circular
• 34:09
  thing that has these strings on it.
• 34:10
  And if you pull on the strings, it spins and the other side has
• 34:13
  a picture of a cage. But if you spin it fast enough,
• 34:16
  the images start to overlap and it creates the illusion of a
• 34:18
  bird in a cage. So there's like very specific
• 34:22
  visual motifs about illusions and perception that do play into
• 34:27
  the whole thing. And I give the movie credit for
• 34:29
  that. Like there's consistent thematic
• 34:32
  imagery, but you just can't hang so much of this on a murder
• 34:35
  mystery and then give like a super uninteresting resolution
• 34:38
  to that mystery. Yeah, exactly.
• 34:41
  That's it's what was that you'll have to help me out here.
• 34:45
  There was there was a murder mystery that you and I watched
• 34:47
  together that I that I think both of us really liked like 90%
• 34:51
  of the way through until it got to the reveal and it was really
• 34:55
  disappointing. Was this like?
• 34:56
  A Sam Rockwell movie. Yes, yes it was.
• 34:59
  It was pretty recent ish, I don't remember.
• 35:01
  Exactly when it was released. Newer movie The past few years
• 35:04
  but I think it was a period piece setting.
• 35:07
  Oh gosh, I don't remember the title, I'll have to.
• 35:09
  Maybe I can really awkwardly dub in me saying the title from like
• 35:12
  much later. Just say it as Christopher
• 35:15
  Walken. And Blondie the dinosaur.
• 35:23
  How was that? How was that?
• 35:25
  It was Bjarni. Bjarni the dinosaur, I don't
• 35:27
  know, I I know which movie you're talking about and I
• 35:29
  agree. That one also had a really
• 35:31
  interesting build up. It kept the mystery at just the
• 35:33
  right level of like, I kind of follow it and I kind of don't.
• 35:36
  And then the ending was just like a super flat misdirect that
• 35:39
  I don't yeah, if you don't stick the landing, you kind of lose
• 35:42
  everything in retrospect. Which you shouldn't.
• 35:45
  I mean, like, I feel like, I mean, it's almost unfair to
• 35:49
  judge it on that entirely, but it is in that type of film
• 35:52
  really important because I, I still remember like it.
• 35:55
  Like I said, I feel like we liked we were with that movie
• 35:58
  like 90% of the way. And then I mean, a bad ending
• 36:01
  can just leave a really sour taste in your mouth though.
• 36:05
  It can. And I think that's, I think the
• 36:07
  two things that hold back Sleepy Hollow is that the ending to the
• 36:10
  mystery is not interesting. And the core relationship
• 36:15
  between Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci is complete lack
• 36:19
  of chemistry. Like it's not believable at all.
• 36:21
  They don't have a lot of scenes to drive home that there's a
• 36:24
  romance between them. Even though the movie ends with
• 36:25
  them together. It just drags.
• 36:29
  Any part that's those two together does not hit.
• 36:31
  And I think that mostly just comes down to casting.
• 36:33
  Oh really? I mean, do you think their
• 36:35
  individual performances were good, but it was just their
• 36:38
  chemistry was not there? I think Johnny Depp's
• 36:40
  performance was quite good. I think that he gave a
• 36:43
  surprisingly muted role as Ichabod Crane.
• 36:47
  Like, he's nowhere near the most outlandish character in the
• 36:50
  story, and that's so rarely the case for him.
• 36:52
  He's always like the big wacky guy.
• 36:53
  So for him to kind of be the straight man against a lot of
• 36:56
  more strange characters was really fun.
• 36:59
  But Christina Ricci, some of it was just in how the character
• 37:02
  was written. But I just think that those two
• 37:04
  had, like, negative chemistry. And Johnny Depp even made some
• 37:06
  allusion to it in an interview where he was like, yeah, I met
• 37:09
  this girl when she was like 8 years old on a movie set.
• 37:12
  So it's a little bit weird now that we're like, we're playing
• 37:15
  romantic leads in the same movie.
• 37:18
  Oh, well, yeah, I mean, that's going to translate on screen if
• 37:21
  he felt that uncomfortable about it.
• 37:23
  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it was some of
• 37:25
  it's the scripts. I mean, it's, it's not a very
• 37:28
  romantically charged story. It just has that element
• 37:30
  underneath it. All right, so that's Sleepy
• 37:33
  Hollow. I, I wish I had more to say
• 37:35
  about it, but I don't know. I, I don't want to give the
• 37:39
  impression that the movie's like a dull watch.
• 37:41
  It is kind of like that one you mentioned where I was enjoying
• 37:43
  it a lot and just felt deflated by the time it was over because
• 37:47
  I didn't like the ending. And so because of that, my
• 37:50
  reflections on the movie are skewed a lot more negative than
• 37:53
  they otherwise would have been. Yeah, that's, that's that you're
• 37:57
  really gambling with that type of story because basically
• 38:04
  regardless of how you feel about most of it, if if that ending
• 38:07
  does not satisfy audiences, then I think a lot of people would
• 38:12
  just consider it a failure of of film at that point.
• 38:15
  And. That could be why people don't
• 38:17
  talk about this one. I mean, I had not, I didn't even
• 38:20
  know it was a Tim Burton movie because I feel like, like you
• 38:23
  mentioned, he's an auteur that people Group A lot of his work
• 38:26
  together. And despite it having all his
• 38:28
  usual collaborators, it like it's not really in the
• 38:30
  conversation for him. So I think something about this
• 38:33
  kind of works and kind of doesn't.
• 38:36
  And so it just fell through the cracks as a result.
• 38:38
  I, I think some people like it. I I think at the very least it's
• 38:41
  like a Halloween time movie that that.
• 38:43
  It is not a bad movie. As always, we harp on the
• 38:46
  negative because it's a little bit more interesting to flesh
• 38:49
  out how they could have done something differently.
• 38:51
  The strengths of the movie are obvious the moment you turn it
• 38:53
  on. It's got good performances, an
• 38:55
  interesting cast, the production design is very charming.
• 38:58
  The dialogue is actually pretty good, which I was not assuming
• 39:01
  it would be. I don't always associate
• 39:03
  Burton's movies with having really strong scripts or
• 39:05
  anything, but Johnny Depp just has a lot of cool dialogue and
• 39:07
  interesting. I don't know.
• 39:09
  The language is a little, you know, it takes place in the
• 39:13
  1800s or whatever, so it's not modern and it has an interesting
• 39:17
  kind of flavor to it. Yeah.
• 39:19
  I mean, this is probably somebody's favorite movie, and
• 39:23
  they really disagree with you. And they're like, if you didn't
• 39:25
  have such a good Christopher Walken impression.
• 39:28
  Yeah. It's not for the walk in
• 39:30
  impression. I would have already turned this
• 39:31
  off, but stay tuned when we do our scores at the end.
• 39:35
  I'm not that harsh about Sleepy Hollow, I just wanted it to be
• 39:40
  even better. I think if they had cleaned up
• 39:42
  the mystery element, we could have had like a 10 out of 10 for
• 39:45
  what this movie's going for because it hits in all the right
• 39:48
  ways except for essentially how the third act plays out.
• 39:53
  So you're just watching it. You're like, you know, it'd be
• 39:54
  good if this was better. That would be good, yeah.
• 39:57
  Basically, that's how movie watching goes.
• 39:58
  Sometimes you're like, if the movie starts and you don't vibe
• 40:02
  with it immediately, you don't really care where it goes.
• 40:04
  At most you're like, well, they they found this towards the end
• 40:07
  and they're like that. But this one had me hooked.
• 40:09
  It was a really strong opening. Even as we got towards like the
• 40:12
  midpoint in the story, I was really engaged and I kept
• 40:15
  finding new things to like about it.
• 40:17
  And so I was just disappointed by the ending because I was
• 40:19
  like, Dang it, Sleepy Hollow. Frank is down by so many points
• 40:23
  he needs. This.
• 40:25
  Don't worry about me, OK? Don't worry about me.
• 40:29
  Yeah, I'll don't. Worry because the movie I gave
• 40:32
  him probably sucks. Anything else?
• 40:34
  Any questions? Sleepy Hollow.
• 40:38
  Honestly, no. I mean, I feel like, I feel like
• 40:41
  you did a good job actually, like of talking about the appeal
• 40:45
  of the movie because it's, it sounds like there were some
• 40:47
  things that you were disappointed by, but I'm not
• 40:50
  turned off by it. Like I I'm curious enough that I
• 40:53
  would still want to watch this movie based on what you told me.
• 40:56
  Here's the benefit for the folks at home, it's the day before
• 40:59
  Halloween. But Frank, for you and I, we got
• 41:00
  weeks. So you have time as we enter
• 41:02
  spooky season to watch Sleepy Hollow.
• 41:04
  And I would not recommend against it.
• 41:05
  I think it's a fun movie and I think he would like seeing all
• 41:08
  the Sith in it. All the Sith.
• 41:10
  Out there, all the Star Wars and Harry Potter folks that pop in.
• 41:15
  It's a fun movie. Yeah, that's good.
• 41:16
  I mean that's, that was that was the impression I got.
• 41:18
  So I am curious to to hear your closing thoughts and score on
• 41:24
  it. But it sounds like something I I
• 41:26
  would be entertained by at least.
• 41:28
  I would say so. If you're looking for a
• 41:29
  Halloween movie and you want one that you've not already seen 10
• 41:32
  times, you know you're tired of watching Hocus Pocus.
• 41:35
  Check out Sleepy Hollow. There's something.
• 41:37
  There's something to it. Yeah.
• 41:40
  And then try out your Christopher Walken impression.
• 41:43
  We can all do 1. And he's in the next movie too,
• 41:45
  so he's. In the next movie, somebody who
• 41:48
  was hoping that that bit was over at the halfway point is
• 41:51
  like, no. Never ends.
• 41:55
  All right, well, we're going to head into our intermission now,
• 41:57
  but stay tuned after the break when we get to hear Frank's
• 42:00
  Christopher Walken impression. Uh oh.
• 42:04
  Nothing. You got No.
• 42:06
  I did. I didn't.
• 42:07
  I don't know if you heard me. What'd you do?
• 42:10
  I did a uh oh. I did a Christopher Walken.
• 42:11
  Uh oh. Uh oh oh.
• 42:16
  Sound like some sort of weird cuckoo clock.
• 42:32
  Right, coming back after the break, Frank, now we throw
• 42:34
  things over to you. The film I asked you to watch
• 42:37
  for today is I have forgotten, I want to say 1995's The Prophecy.
• 42:44
  The prophecy, like many of our recent picks, is I gave it to
• 42:47
  you just based on who's in it. Coincidentally also has
• 42:50
  Christopher Walken as we mentioned before the break.
• 42:52
  But in addition to that it has Viggo Mortensen, who for the
• 42:56
  most people they only really know is Aragorn from Lord of the
• 42:59
  Rings and I just honestly can't even really picture him playing
• 43:02
  anybody else so I'm curious. I don't know how heavily he
• 43:05
  features in the prophecy, but I just thought it'd be neat to see
• 43:07
  him do something pretty different it.
• 43:10
  Technically has Viggo Mortensen in it.
• 43:15
  He is in. He does not show up for the
• 43:19
  first time in the film until I think the last 15 minutes
• 43:24
  really. But is he like an important
• 43:27
  character or is it just like a coincidental appearance?
• 43:31
  He's. The devil so Well, Listen, I
• 43:36
  know you're mad he wasn't in the rest of the movie but you?
• 43:38
  Don't gotta be so mean. No, he's that's his character.
• 43:42
  He is Satan, so he's great. He is great in his limited
• 43:49
  appearance and role in the film, but we'll get to that at the
• 43:55
  end, I guess. I I know it's like a horror
• 43:58
  fantasy movie of some kind, but I didn't really read what the
• 44:01
  actual plot was so I didn't know the devil was in it.
• 44:04
  I'm, I'm curious, my immediate association is like Constantine
• 44:08
  or something. Dude, I was thinking of
• 44:10
  Constantine too actually. Oh my God.
• 44:14
  Like, but like from the content of the film too, just like
• 44:18
  visually and like the what they like we're talking about and how
• 44:25
  the film right away establishes its own kind of lore.
• 44:31
  I'm like, I feel like I've jumped in in the middle of like
• 44:34
  the Constantine verse and and that's where where, where the
• 44:38
  space we're in right now. I'm trying to pinpoint what
• 44:41
  specifically that is. I think it's because of people
• 44:46
  in regular spaces, like people in just buildings and cities
• 44:51
  talking to men in suits to tell you they're the devil.
• 44:53
  Like that's kind of where I go with like Constantine imagery is
• 44:56
  It's not pure fantasy imagery. It's just like a weird melding
• 45:01
  of that into like very recognizable spaces.
• 45:04
  Totally. Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:05
  Like I'm looking at my notes for the film and my first note is
• 45:09
  the pacing is ridiculous and then my my second note is movie
• 45:14
  feels like Constantine. So it wasn't #1 but it was #2.
• 45:21
  It was #2 I should really quickly, I think my top.
• 45:25
  I always write a note in my movie notes before the movie
• 45:28
  actually starts. I don't know if I've really made
• 45:31
  that aware to everybody, but at the top of Sleepy Hollow I just
• 45:34
  wrote Spooky, and then right below it I wrote Danny Elfman
• 45:38
  again. Again.
• 45:40
  Wait, what do you mean you make a note before the film begins?
• 45:43
  Like what? You.
• 45:45
  OK, so logistically I open a note on my phone and I start
• 45:48
  like a bulleted list and I find that sometimes if I don't put
• 45:52
  something in the first bullet and then I click away, it goes
• 45:55
  rid of the bullets. And so I just need to put
• 45:57
  something there so that the list exists.
• 45:59
  This is a. Technical workaround, yeah.
• 46:02
  So I just started writing like what's on my mind, you know?
• 46:04
  It's just word association before the movie starts.
• 46:07
  OK, that's interesting. You know, I'm not normally like
• 46:09
  a text to talk or talk to text kind of guy, but I do find
• 46:13
  myself doing that during like when I'm having these screenings
• 46:17
  because it's just like I want to pay attention, but I also want
• 46:19
  to be taking notes at the same time.
• 46:21
  Oh that's an interesting idea. I just paused the movie a bunch.
• 46:24
  I do that as well. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:26
  Like I was watching Sleepy Hollow with my wife because
• 46:28
  she'd already seen it and she likes it.
• 46:30
  And I could tell there was a bit of like, OK, you got to stop and
• 46:33
  write down Ian Mcdermid. Like, you're going to forget he
• 46:35
  was in the movie. Anyway, sorry that was a
• 46:38
  tangent, but. No, I like it.
• 46:40
  I like it, yeah. Speaking of pausing during the
• 46:45
  movie, I did fall asleep while I was watching the prophecy.
• 46:47
  Well. Hold on, you can't just bury a
• 46:53
  lead like that. What do you mean?
• 46:54
  Was it late or was it boring? It was, it was late, I'd had a
• 46:59
  long day. This was the day before the
• 47:01
  screening and so I was getting a lot of stuff ready for.
• 47:04
  The day before one one of those screenings for your film.
• 47:07
  Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, yeah, before, before I was
• 47:10
  screening here in LA and I was like, but I was like, I gotta I
• 47:15
  gotta watch this movie tonight. I gotta stay on schedule here.
• 47:18
  Yeah. So it was pretty late when I
• 47:20
  started it, which I I knew this might have been an issue.
• 47:23
  And then the score was so soothing.
• 47:26
  It was just. Oh, OK.
• 47:29
  Yeah, it had. Just so it relaxed you to sleep
• 47:31
  it really. Did it just kind of rocked me to
• 47:33
  sleep. And then I woke up during the
• 47:36
  climax of the film, which to Fast forward a bit, is Elias
• 47:40
  Coteus hitting Christopher Walken in the face with a tire
• 47:44
  iron. And I was like I missed
• 47:46
  something here. I missed something, Yeah.
• 47:50
  I was waiting for that to be like and then I just figured I
• 47:52
  got it and I came to the review today.
• 47:55
  It was pretty good. Pretty good movie.
• 47:57
  I, I don't mean to knock. I growing up, we would watch
• 48:01
  movies as a family and I fell asleep during probably 90% of
• 48:04
  them. There is something about if you
• 48:06
  get the atmosphere right and you're like comfortable enough
• 48:10
  that you just fall asleep. And then I always felt that it
• 48:12
  was like the movie credits would wake me up.
• 48:14
  Something about that transition would instantly wake me up and
• 48:18
  I'd be like I've done it again. Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:21
  Well, I mean, it's just you're in a relaxed environment, you're
• 48:24
  comfortable, you're happy. The devil's there.
• 48:26
  The. Devil's there, but it's Aragorn.
• 48:28
  So you're like, I guess I'm OK with it.
• 48:30
  Like, OK, positive, positive masculinity, devil situation.
• 48:37
  Son of Air Thorn over here. But but yeah, but like, people,
• 48:43
  people will get mad. People will be like, oh, you
• 48:45
  fell asleep during that movie. And I'm like, that's like a
• 48:47
  compliment more than anything else.
• 48:52
  That's hilarious. I'm just picturing somebody at
• 48:55
  your movie screening falling asleep and trying to play it
• 48:57
  off. I was like, no, no, no, no.
• 48:58
  Just that's how much I liked the movie that I felt safe enough
• 49:01
  around it to stop watching and fall asleep.
• 49:04
  Yes. I would appreciate it.
• 49:05
  I would be like I understand. I understand your logic
• 49:07
  completely. Thank you.
• 49:12
  I How did we get through multiple unrelated tangents
• 49:15
  before I fell asleep during the movie?
• 49:18
  So I did have to. I was at that moment where I was
• 49:24
  like, do I try and like, because at this point now it's really
• 49:26
  late and I'm like, do I, do I power through or do I do I just
• 49:30
  come back tomorrow? That's what I did.
• 49:32
  I came back the following morning.
• 49:34
  The next day. Yeah, came back and watched the
• 49:36
  rest of the prophecy and I was like, what is this movie?
• 49:42
  Like I thought this might be a weird one.
• 49:43
  Everything I read about any time the genre tags have like 6
• 49:46
  different things in them, you're you're in for something.
• 49:50
  This felt like. A passion project film from the
• 49:54
  writer, director OK like he seemed to be really into
• 50:01
  whatever this was these. Are some of the most backhanded
• 50:06
  compliments I've ever heard. You know what?
• 50:09
  It's fine though. It's fine.
• 50:10
  I, I I could. Tell this really matter to you,
• 50:13
  and that to you, this really must feel like something.
• 50:19
  This must feel like something, this jump around a bit here,
• 50:24
  though. This film had four sequels.
• 50:28
  Like this was a franchise. Yeah.
• 50:31
  And Christopher Walken is in the following two.
• 50:35
  He's in the second and third one.
• 50:37
  Is he the main character in this one?
• 50:39
  He's the main antagonist in this film.
• 50:41
  The main protagonist is Elias Koteas which is great.
• 50:45
  I I love Elias Koteas. Stacey Jones, Casey Jones that
• 50:50
  that also, this is just sort of just a non sequitur here, but
• 50:56
  the early dialogue in this film, well, I'll get into it a bit.
• 50:59
  So Elias Coteus was a former, I don't know the correct
• 51:05
  terminology for this. He was a priest in training.
• 51:09
  Like, he was like about to pass his priest exams and then he,
• 51:14
  like, saw a vision of the devil and he was like, you know what?
• 51:18
  I'm going to go be a cop actually.
• 51:20
  So I got to go. Wait, wait.
• 51:23
  He was training to be a priest, saw the devil and thought, well,
• 51:28
  if the devil's involved, I'm going to go.
• 51:29
  I think I need a different approach than being a priest.
• 51:33
  Yeah, I'm going to need someone to walk me through that.
• 51:37
  No, that was it. You got it.
• 51:40
  I mean, that's not any more nonsensical than like, well, I
• 51:43
  was studying to be a cop but then I heard there was a
• 51:45
  murderer on the loose so I decided to become a priest.
• 51:49
  It sounds like he just wants to get as far away as possible.
• 51:52
  Yeah, he's like, I don't like, I don't like this.
• 51:54
  I didn't know if the devil would be involved in any of this, so I
• 51:56
  got to. Go.
• 51:56
  I thought this whole thing was made-up.
• 51:58
  I thought this whole priest thing was just like a gig, you
• 52:05
  know? He's like Johnny Depp and he
• 52:07
  just doesn't believe in religion, but he's.
• 52:10
  Like I was going to pass around the the hat that they put the
• 52:13
  money in. He's going to grift everybody.
• 52:16
  That was his plan. Well, maybe, OK, I don't want to
• 52:19
  make, I don't want to make judgements on fictional Elias
• 52:21
  Cateza's behalf about the Church.
• 52:23
  But that is insane that he saw the devil and thought, you know
• 52:26
  what, I need to beat the devil? A gun, I guess.
• 52:33
  Yeah, yeah. So something about that made him
• 52:39
  like question his faith and he left and then.
• 52:42
  Question his faith. That's like the most literal,
• 52:44
  OK, I got to yeah, I got even talking to.
• 52:51
  He is just like Johnny Depp. He's going into the church, he's
• 52:53
  talking to the priest and he's like, guys, I think this whole
• 52:55
  God thing might be real. And they're like, no, we told
• 52:58
  you that. That's why we're here.
• 53:02
  But he's like the only one that has like, concrete evidence and
• 53:05
  like, he's just like, I gotta go like, this is this is this is
• 53:08
  crazy, OK. So yeah, this is the first
• 53:16
  scene. We're still in the very first
• 53:17
  scene. Of the movie, we have proven
• 53:20
  that the Christian devil exists and decided to go anywhere, but
• 53:24
  it's yours to deal with it, yeah.
• 53:26
  Well, he doesn't. OK, I should clarify.
• 53:28
  He doesn't see the devil because the devil is Viko Mortensen.
• 53:31
  He sees some kind of like chaotic imagery, though it's not
• 53:35
  clear what it is but. It's like the Battle Helms deep
• 53:39
  or something. Exactly.
• 53:41
  Exactly like that. It's like a battle.
• 53:44
  It's it is some kind of battle he's seeing like angels being
• 53:47
  killed or something. It's very abstract imagery.
• 53:51
  But no, exactly, it's your point.
• 53:53
  It's like this should really you should like should double down
• 53:55
  on what you're currently doing, not go do something else.
• 53:57
  But. It really calls into question
• 53:59
  what he thought the point of being a priest was.
• 54:04
  Like I thought this was going to be just like all good good
• 54:07
  vibes. I thought it was going to be all
• 54:08
  good time. I was just going to be like a
• 54:10
  celibate man and and just hang out with the homies that.
• 54:13
  Was that was the selling point for him?
• 54:16
  He's like, sex is scary. And I heard there's none of that
• 54:19
  here. So yeah.
• 54:22
  Well, I don't know. I wish the movie would tell me
• 54:24
  because I feel like we just were about to gloss over that and get
• 54:27
  back to him being a cop. Oh yeah, yeah, right into right
• 54:30
  into cop stuff. So anyway, the very next thing
• 54:39
  that happens to him that we see as the audience like this,
• 54:42
  obviously we've jumped ahead in time.
• 54:43
  He's a but he's a cop now. Yeah.
• 54:45
  And the very next thing we see is a literal Angel comes to talk
• 54:49
  to him in his apartment. OK.
• 54:52
  And then after this is done, he's like, I got to go be like a
• 54:54
  cobbler. Yeah, he's like, I don't know
• 54:56
  what he just this whole just religious stuff just keeps
• 55:01
  following me around. I can't escape it.
• 55:03
  Only there was a place I could go to better deal with this
• 55:06
  religious imagery. Yeah, so he's really dumb.
• 55:11
  OK, so he sees something that he does not yet know is the devil.
• 55:15
  He freaks out, he goes to be a cop, and then he gets visited by
• 55:18
  a just a human Angel. Yes, exactly.
• 55:21
  Yeah, That's, that's good clarification.
• 55:23
  It's an Angel in human form who comes to, like, warn him of
• 55:30
  what's coming. I don't know why he comes to
• 55:33
  talk to him specifically. Maybe he somehow knows he's
• 55:36
  going to be involved in this. I don't know what, I don't know
• 55:38
  what powers angels have in this universe, but yeah.
• 55:42
  Neither does Casey Jones because he refuses to go learn about
• 55:45
  him. No, so anyway, this is what was
• 55:47
  getting me back to the Casey Jones thing.
• 55:48
  So he's he's a cop. Just Fast forward a little bit
• 55:51
  that actually, no, I can't. I can't Fast forward over this
• 55:53
  part because this part. 'S kind of crazy.
• 55:57
  I'm sorry, I was just. I was just going to jump right
• 56:00
  past it, but so that Angel comes to talk to Casey Jones, which is
• 56:06
  what we're going to call. Him.
• 56:08
  I mean, why would you call him anything else?
• 56:09
  Stacy Jones, he hits people with a bat.
• 56:12
  Yeah, yeah, he hits people with a pipe in this one.
• 56:15
  So comes to talk to him and then the next scene is that Angel
• 56:22
  gets attacked by like a bad Angel, like full leather trench
• 56:26
  coat and everything and. The titular uniform of bad
• 56:31
  Angels. Yeah, of course.
• 56:32
  Yeah, exactly. That sounds like AK Pop, man.
• 56:35
  So they fight in this angel's apartment because he has an
• 56:38
  apartment. I don't know how he did this.
• 56:40
  Angel good to have a job. The good guy Angel has his own
• 56:42
  apartment. Yeah, he does OK.
• 56:46
  You know what? I'm gonna stop asking.
• 56:48
  I should stop asking for clarification.
• 56:50
  And no. No, no, please do, because it's
• 56:51
  good. It's good stuff because these
• 56:53
  are valid questions to ask. Oh man.
• 56:57
  So the good guy Angel gets attacked in his one bedroom
• 56:59
  apartment by bad, it might be a studio, who knows by bad trench
• 57:06
  coat Angel and he throws him out a window.
• 57:09
  Good guy throws bad guy out the window.
• 57:11
  Good Guy Angel throws Bad Guy Angel out a window.
• 57:13
  And then Rorschach says tonight, a comedian died in New York, and
• 57:17
  that's the movie. Yes, but also no.
• 57:20
  Not at all, but also no. Yeah.
• 57:23
  What's that meme? It's like the like Clamation
• 57:26
  Pirate guy where he's just like, well yes, but actually no.
• 57:30
  Yeah, yeah. That's.
• 57:31
  The whole movie. That's the whole movie.
• 57:34
  Yeah. So bad guy Angel gets thrown out
• 57:35
  a window, and then Detective Casey Jones comes to investigate
• 57:41
  this. And this is this is the point I
• 57:43
  was trying to get to, which is totally unimportant, but it
• 57:45
  matters to me. They like these cops, they all
• 57:50
  like talking one liners. It's crazy.
• 57:51
  I'm like the dialogue early on, I'm like, this is just silly.
• 57:54
  The way that you're all talking to each other.
• 57:56
  It's like exclusively in like buddy cop guy, one liners.
• 58:00
  But the cop guy that's explaining to Casey Jones, like
• 58:02
  what happened? He was like, yeah, this guy came
• 58:06
  out the window, did 1/2 gainer into the back of this garbage
• 58:09
  can. And I was like.
• 58:11
  Wait a minute. Wait he literally says did 1/2
• 58:13
  gainer? Yes, yes.
• 58:15
  And I was like, that is that is a line straight out of Ninja
• 58:17
  Turtles like. That's yeah, that's right at the
• 58:20
  beginning of Secret of the Use. That's how RAF describes what
• 58:23
  happened to Shredder. Yes, Yeah.
• 58:25
  And I was like, was this just a really?
• 58:28
  Do people just love? Like, what is, is that like a
• 58:30
  diving term? I don't even actually know.
• 58:32
  Yeah. What is 1/2 gain?
• 58:34
  Is that surfing or gymnastics? What is that?
• 58:37
  Something, but it must have been really popular in the 90s
• 58:40
  because I was like, that is such a specific phrase that I have
• 58:44
  not heard like since that Ninja Turtles movie until this guy
• 58:48
  said it to Casey Jones in this movie.
• 58:50
  That's bizarre. Yeah, now I'm now my belief
• 58:53
  system is getting all messed up. This is really.
• 58:56
  I know, right? So then from there this body
• 58:59
  gets taken to the morgue and Casey Jones goes there and the
• 59:04
  guy who's the mortician is played by the guy who did the
• 59:08
  like that's gold Jerry on Seinfeld, which it was also
• 59:17
  funny because like he's also talking in like 1 liners.
• 59:19
  But this is like, not a comedy film in any way.
• 59:23
  You could have fooled me. But like, he's just his.
• 59:27
  That guy's funny. He's got a good screen presence.
• 59:30
  Actually, he's. A funny guy.
• 59:32
  Yeah. Seinfeld.
• 59:33
  He should be on Seinfeld just a few times.
• 59:36
  Just a few times. It's not that funny, all right?
• 59:40
  We're not talking series regularly.
• 59:42
  Just recurring. Just a recurring.
• 59:44
  Yeah, Yeah, We know this guy. What?
• 59:46
  I thought that was fun. No.
• 59:48
  Don't like I'm derailing you, sadly.
• 59:50
  OK, so just a recap. I just want to make sure I know
• 59:52
  what's going on. So Casey Jones is a dedicated
• 59:55
  atheist priest who's almost ready to become a priest until
• 59:58
  he realizes that the devil is real.
• 1:00:00
  So he becomes a police officer and then a year later is visited
• 1:00:03
  by an Angel who lives in a studio apartment and gets into a
• 1:00:05
  fight with a bad Angel, throws him out the window.
• 1:00:07
  Casey goes to investigate. Here's a bunch of 1 liners to
• 1:00:10
  Ninja Turtles. And then?
• 1:00:13
  This is right around where I fell asleep.
• 1:00:14
  OK, Yeah, OK. Now when you went back and
• 1:00:19
  watched it again, did you skip this part?
• 1:00:20
  Are we sure this is not you dreaming about a different
• 1:00:24
  movie? No, no, this was not.
• 1:00:26
  These were not Nyquil visions. This was this happened.
• 1:00:28
  This was. This is the first act of the
• 1:00:34
  films, obviously. Oh my God, yeah.
• 1:00:38
  OK, I mean, at least I'm caught up, yeah.
• 1:00:40
  No, that was, that was good. That was actually a really good
• 1:00:43
  synopsis of the beginning there. How does this end with Viggo
• 1:00:51
  Mortensen is the devil? I'm so confused.
• 1:00:55
  As you should be. So anyway, we can get into the
• 1:00:57
  like. So this is what this is what
• 1:00:59
  sets up our narrative here. And our narrative is so poorly
• 1:01:04
  explained, like almost intentionally so.
• 1:01:07
  Like it's keeping it vague as to kind of what exactly is
• 1:01:11
  happening. Like it it's they're trying to
• 1:01:13
  keep the audience in the dark as some of these events are
• 1:01:16
  unfolding early on, but to kind of, I guess, skip forward to
• 1:01:22
  what is actually happening to make it easier to understand.
• 1:01:25
  Basically, good guy Angel is there kills bad guy Angel.
• 1:01:30
  Bad Guy Angel worked for Christopher Walken who is head
• 1:01:35
  Bad Guy Angel. Mouth of Sauron.
• 1:01:38
  Exactly. Well, he's he's Gabriel.
• 1:01:39
  So he's an actual, like, biblical figure.
• 1:01:44
  Yeah. So, yeah.
• 1:01:47
  But their objective is so strange because the two of them
• 1:01:54
  are both trying to get this specific soul of this Korean War
• 1:02:02
  veteran. Because apparently this guy,
• 1:02:06
  this Korean War veteran, committed such heinous war
• 1:02:09
  crimes that he was like, he has like the most evil soul there
• 1:02:14
  is. Like, like the mostest evil soul
• 1:02:20
  is this guy. An American veteran of the
• 1:02:23
  Korean War. Yes, correct.
• 1:02:25
  OK. And so they need his soul
• 1:02:29
  because apparently there's a war going on between the angels.
• 1:02:33
  Like there's two sides and whichever side gets this super
• 1:02:37
  evil soul like they're going to win for some reason.
• 1:02:41
  Why would the good angels win by having the most evil personal
• 1:02:44
  life? Well, I don't know.
• 1:02:46
  I don't I don't know as. Far as movie Mac guffins go,
• 1:02:53
  just weird things to drive the plot.
• 1:02:55
  I think we need the most evil soul of a war criminal.
• 1:02:59
  That's that's up there for for weirdness.
• 1:03:03
  I kind of like it because it's not your average like movie
• 1:03:06
  Mcguffin. It's like, no, this is very
• 1:03:08
  specific. It's this guy really sucks and
• 1:03:11
  we need his his evilness. So that's what the bad angels
• 1:03:18
  are who work for the devil I assume are after.
• 1:03:22
  No, they don't work for the devil he is.
• 1:03:24
  Work for the devil? No.
• 1:03:25
  This is a. Angel Civil War correct,
• 1:03:29
  separate from the usual Angel devil situation.
• 1:03:35
  Yes, make sure he didn't. Turn on like an anime or
• 1:03:37
  something. Dude, that's what I'm saying.
• 1:03:40
  This guy that wrote and directed this movie, he knew exactly what
• 1:03:46
  was going on. He was like, this is it, This is
• 1:03:49
  is my thing and people are going to love it.
• 1:03:52
  It's going to make total sense. There's.
• 1:03:54
  Going to be 4 sequels. There is, there is.
• 1:03:58
  This is the only one that went to theaters to my knowledge.
• 1:04:00
  I think the rest were all direct video, but they happened.
• 1:04:04
  He made five films in this franchise.
• 1:04:07
  That is kind of Constantine ish, but I respect him for it.
• 1:04:10
  You know, he did his, he put his weird stuff out there.
• 1:04:14
  There was some weird stuff in it that I really liked.
• 1:04:17
  Like it's kind of morbid, really morbid.
• 1:04:19
  Actually the so Christopher Walken is our main antagonist
• 1:04:26
  cuz he's too bad. And how does he talk?
• 1:04:34
  Sorry, let me phrase Does he have a grappling hook?
• 1:04:37
  He doesn't need one cuz he's got like evil evil Angel powers in
• 1:04:42
  this. One evil Angel powers, not to be
• 1:04:44
  confused with devils and demons. That is Season 2.
• 1:04:48
  Also actually to tie this to anime all the like a weird quirk
• 1:04:53
  that angels on both sides have and the devil Viggo Mortensen
• 1:04:56
  does this too. Is is they all sit.
• 1:05:00
  I don't even know how to describe this on this audio only
• 1:05:03
  platform, but like they kind of sit like Ryuk from Death Note
• 1:05:08
  where they're like like they don't sit in chairs.
• 1:05:11
  They like, they like put their feet up and like sit on their
• 1:05:15
  haunches on a chair. Is that, does that make sense?
• 1:05:18
  They're like balancing atop the back rest.
• 1:05:21
  So they're perching their entire body weight like an owl on the
• 1:05:25
  back rest of chairs Yes yes and it doesn't got it.
• 1:05:29
  OK so and it's supposed to be magical.
• 1:05:32
  Why they don't just tip over and?
• 1:05:35
  I smell. Their faces every time.
• 1:05:36
  OK, Yeah. They all just.
• 1:05:38
  Gonna say I could try that right now.
• 1:05:39
  I don't think it would work. No, but you should try it again
• 1:05:43
  for this audio only podcast and tell us how that goes.
• 1:05:45
  I'm. Gonna download a sound effects
• 1:05:47
  package that's just like cartoon crashing noises?
• 1:05:50
  Crash noises, yeah, probably wouldn't even need to.
• 1:05:53
  You'd probably just make those noises on your own.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah, most likely. But then I might break my
• 1:05:56
  computer on the way down, so we'll see.
• 1:05:58
  Sure. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:06:00
  So isn't that fun? That's fun.
• 1:06:02
  That fun is a word I would use. To describe, but OK, but that's
• 1:06:06
  yes, but that's not that's not the fun thing I was getting to
• 1:06:08
  the fun morbid thing I was getting to is Oh yeah, that was
• 1:06:11
  morbid walking. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:14
  You know, Christopher Walken like after he sent his his
• 1:06:18
  French coat Angel in and he got thrown out a window did a half
• 1:06:20
  gamer out the window. He starts recruiting like people
• 1:06:24
  who have just died. So he finds this guy who just
• 1:06:30
  who had just ended his own life and like reanimates him
• 1:06:36
  basically. Like he doesn't stop that
• 1:06:39
  process. He just kind of like reanimates
• 1:06:41
  his body and and that guy kind of becomes his like sidekick
• 1:06:47
  character throughout the film. But it's really like, again,
• 1:06:50
  kind of fun and interesting in a morbid way because he's like,
• 1:06:53
  each time you see him, he's like slowly, like decomposing and
• 1:06:57
  like. He's like a zombie.
• 1:06:59
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:07:01
  Yeah. And so like that guy's, I guess
• 1:07:05
  you could almost call him like a the light Comic Relief in the
• 1:07:07
  movie, but his whole character is just very sad.
• 1:07:10
  You know what this is reminding me of now, too?
• 1:07:12
  Is Spawn like the Marvel character Spawn?
• 1:07:16
  It feels like the OR like the Crow, like the 90s seem to have
• 1:07:19
  this counterculture aesthetic stuff about angels and devils
• 1:07:24
  that was very like, I don't know, kind of grungy.
• 1:07:28
  Like metal. Like, what if he made it like
• 1:07:30
  metal and like, yeah. Like, what about like, yeah, the
• 1:07:33
  Rock'n'roll version of this stuff?
• 1:07:36
  I just feel like that was in a lot of things at the time that I
• 1:07:39
  don't know if those would get the same play today or if people
• 1:07:41
  would be like, maybe we don't, maybe we don't do this.
• 1:07:44
  I'm sure there's a lot of people that love that specific
• 1:07:48
  aesthetic though. It's so of the time.
• 1:07:50
  I think that's what I like about it is I can relate it back to so
• 1:07:54
  many other things that were such peak 90s aesthetic stuff.
• 1:07:58
  And I will say for this, to this film's credit, like from what I
• 1:08:01
  read online, this film does have a cult following.
• 1:08:04
  It's it's sort of become its own kind of cult classic in a way.
• 1:08:07
  I would maybe describe it as like a camp cult classic.
• 1:08:10
  But like people do gravitate towards this film.
• 1:08:14
  I think it did poorly upon release.
• 1:08:15
  But since people have have developed a fondness for like
• 1:08:18
  the whole series cause again Christopher Walken did like the
• 1:08:23
  first 3 movies he's he's in the next two even though they're
• 1:08:26
  like direct to video releases. That's crazy.
• 1:08:28
  I mean it's such a common pipeline in the home video area
• 1:08:32
  to make direct to video sequels. I mean I just mentioned The
• 1:08:35
  Crow. There's like 5 Crow movies too,
• 1:08:36
  but I guess they couldn't have brought back the guy from the
• 1:08:39
  Crow. But either way, they don't
• 1:08:40
  normally bring back the lead actor even for the second one,
• 1:08:43
  and it's especially. Interesting, I didn't look up
• 1:08:45
  the the plot of those following films, but I mean like he's the
• 1:08:48
  he's definitely the antagonist in this film, like but he's the
• 1:08:52
  one that returns and I don't know if it's it's in a different
• 1:08:54
  role in the following movies. But and he's great, honestly, he
• 1:08:58
  he has a great charisma. Like he is kind of chewing the
• 1:09:01
  scenery a bit with this. Performance.
• 1:09:03
  I mean, if you had to put someone in a movie like this,
• 1:09:06
  Walkin is perfect because he's going to go all in on it almost
• 1:09:09
  just out of instinct. And somehow I feel like he could
• 1:09:13
  sell me on all of this making a lot more sense than it does in
• 1:09:16
  summary. Sure, sure.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm just telling you what
• 1:09:21
  happened, man. It's just what happened, all
• 1:09:22
  right. So Walking and his Hells Angels
• 1:09:27
  are after the soul of an evil Korean War veteran who's the
• 1:09:32
  most evil man of all time and not the people who started the
• 1:09:37
  Korean War, but OK. Sure, sure.
• 1:09:41
  It was this guy. This guy specifically.
• 1:09:42
  Who got sent there to be a part of it?
• 1:09:44
  Definitely. Who was almost a victim in his
• 1:09:46
  own way, but. Yeah, So that's like the driving
• 1:09:50
  force of the rest of the story does Is Elias Cateius aware that
• 1:09:53
  this is the Mac Guffin he needs to chase down?
• 1:09:55
  How does how does he come back in So?
• 1:09:57
  He gets involved in this because through, I guess what he found
• 1:10:03
  on the on the body of evil Angel and what he found in the
• 1:10:08
  apartment of good guy Angel, who was also looking for this soul.
• 1:10:11
  He sees, I think the obituary of this army guy.
• 1:10:17
  And so he knows what town to go to because this guy just passed
• 1:10:20
  away. So that's like, I guess why his
• 1:10:22
  soul is up for grabs now. Got it.
• 1:10:24
  And so he he, he goes to this town, good guy Angel gets there
• 1:10:28
  first, gets the soul, and then puts the soul into the body of a
• 1:10:34
  young girl to protect it. I.
• 1:10:39
  Guess I don't know like a. Kid or just like a young adult
• 1:10:43
  one a kid. Like a child, a kid.
• 1:10:44
  OK, yeah. Because I guess because he had
• 1:10:49
  it with him and then I guess he knew that like Christopher
• 1:10:53
  Walken would find him eventually.
• 1:10:54
  So he had to kind of like put the soul somewhere else to like
• 1:10:57
  hide it 'cause then Christopher Walken does show up and like he
• 1:11:01
  kills good guy Angel 'cause he doesn't have the soul with him.
• 1:11:05
  And so, you know, Heis Koteas is doing his detective
• 1:11:09
  investigating stuff. And remember at this point in
• 1:11:12
  the movie, like anytime I'm watching like a movie or TV show
• 1:11:16
  with like detectives, you know, like doing that kind of stuff.
• 1:11:20
  I'm always like. Is this really how this job
• 1:11:22
  works? Like, you know, like, 'cause
• 1:11:25
  this guy's just doing whatever the hell he wants.
• 1:11:27
  He's not reporting to anybody. He's not punching a time card.
• 1:11:30
  He's like, yeah. And then I went into this guy's
• 1:11:32
  house and there was some weird Angel stuff or whatever.
• 1:11:35
  It's like, are you telling your boss this?
• 1:11:36
  Like, are you? This feels like movie.
• 1:11:38
  Leading his jurisdiction. Yeah, I feel like the movie.
• 1:11:41
  Movie Cop is such a different lore and I can actually
• 1:11:44
  understand how in this world if you thought you need to go fight
• 1:11:48
  the devil and Movie Cop was an option, I would actually take
• 1:11:50
  that route too 'cause if the if, if the goal was to become a
• 1:11:54
  regular cop, I'd be like, ah, it's a lot of red tape to fight
• 1:11:57
  the devil, but Movie cop has no rules.
• 1:12:00
  You could be a loose cannon and the most you get is like a stern
• 1:12:03
  talking to. Yeah, they also specify that he
• 1:12:06
  like at the beginning when he's talking to the the guy who tells
• 1:12:09
  him about the half gainer that he like works nights
• 1:12:11
  specifically. And so like this he's like night
• 1:12:15
  cop, but this is all during the day.
• 1:12:16
  So he's like really tired, I guess, a lot of the time.
• 1:12:21
  OK wait, why doesn't he just pursue?
• 1:12:24
  Is he doing regular cop stuff at night?
• 1:12:26
  I don't know. Is he just sleeping through his
• 1:12:28
  shift? He's.
• 1:12:30
  Just I don't know, but this is this is like they called him in
• 1:12:36
  in the morning because of this body and so he had to deal with
• 1:12:40
  it during the day instead of doing his nighttime detective
• 1:12:43
  work. I don't know how movie cop
• 1:12:44
  detectives work. OK, so this.
• 1:12:46
  Was maybe an exception, but it's just the with the pace of the
• 1:12:49
  story, he's he's he's tired. That's like a character beat.
• 1:12:53
  I think so. I think so, But it doesn't come
• 1:12:55
  back that much. It's just kind of which that
• 1:12:56
  would have been kind of fun if he was like always really
• 1:12:58
  sleepy. But I guess that's probably not
• 1:13:00
  good for like your main character to be falling.
• 1:13:02
  I mean, I fell asleep but. Like it's just like, oh man,
• 1:13:07
  who's playing that music? And like what music?
• 1:13:09
  He's just. Dead Asleep can hear the score
• 1:13:11
  of the film. Oh I'm so confused.
• 1:13:17
  Like every new piece of information makes this more
• 1:13:20
  confusing. They're like, well, we got a
• 1:13:22
  body. It's 6:00 in the morning, better
• 1:13:24
  call night cop. And it's like, well, hold on.
• 1:13:26
  Who relieves night cop? Where's Day Cop?
• 1:13:29
  That's true. Who relieves it?
• 1:13:30
  But does anyone really need to relieve him?
• 1:13:32
  Because when they're just doing detective work, they're just
• 1:13:33
  doing whatever they want, seemingly.
• 1:13:35
  So like. Maybe they have somebody ready
• 1:13:37
  to tag in, like he's in the middle of searching someone's
• 1:13:39
  apartment illegally and then he just is like whoops, it's 1:00
• 1:13:42
  AM, better tag in day cop. Day Cop get in here buddy.
• 1:13:46
  The cop's just like, super happy like.
• 1:13:48
  Yeah, it's like the grumpy sunshine like like fanfic trope
• 1:13:54
  thing where one of them super miserable and the other one's
• 1:13:55
  super cheaper all the time. Right.
• 1:13:57
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, gotta go find the devil.
• 1:14:04
  You bet. You bet your buddy here's a
• 1:14:07
  protein bar anyway. And he's always like walking in
• 1:14:12
  and like taking the booze out of night cops hand.
• 1:14:14
  He's like, no, no, no, remember what your doctor said?
• 1:14:17
  You don't get any of that. You don't really get a lot of
• 1:14:20
  like, depressed, like Elias Coteus, you know, like.
• 1:14:25
  OK, so he's not like a hard nosed cop who's who's seen too
• 1:14:29
  much. He's just sleepy.
• 1:14:30
  He's just sleepy. And his main thing is that he's
• 1:14:33
  really like, it's supposed to be.
• 1:14:35
  His crisis of faith is his main kind of thing, which again, like
• 1:14:40
  you said, you shouldn't have one because you.
• 1:14:42
  Had you should not have one. I mean, I can understand if it
• 1:14:46
  was like, well, the church isn't prepared to deal with this, but
• 1:14:48
  he just what does having a being a policeman have to do with
• 1:14:52
  that? That was his backup plan.
• 1:14:55
  He was like, I'm going to be one of two things.
• 1:14:57
  A no sex heaven priest. He.
• 1:15:02
  Probably thinks that's a rule of being a cop too.
• 1:15:04
  He's like, good. There's two jobs.
• 1:15:07
  There's two jobs where sex can't get you.
• 1:15:10
  Those women will leave you alone.
• 1:15:13
  Policeman and a priest. Oh my God.
• 1:15:19
  Anyway, so. God, this show has the heaviest
• 1:15:24
  anyways that I have ever heard. Well, especially with this film,
• 1:15:28
  I mean, it's just like, I'm so lost.
• 1:15:31
  Of soul lost so we are OK framing wise it sounds like
• 1:15:35
  we're bouncing you. Tell me, you tell me what's?
• 1:15:37
  Happening. I'm telling you my understanding
• 1:15:39
  as a stand in for our audience who's also very confused.
• 1:15:42
  So we're tracking between Gabriel the Devil Angel
• 1:15:47
  searching for the soul, not the devil.
• 1:15:49
  Because the devil is here, he just hasn't shown up.
• 1:15:50
  Yet he'll be here. Gabriel, the misguided Angel
• 1:15:54
  searching for the most evilest of souls, and Casey Jones
• 1:15:59
  filling out his cop paperwork. It just kind of, but not.
• 1:16:03
  And he's just on the trail. He's just trying to catch up.
• 1:16:06
  Does he find where the good guy Angel got killed?
• 1:16:09
  Does he find the girl? Yes, so OK, he finds she's not
• 1:16:15
  even really a love interest, but his like, you know, female Co
• 1:16:18
  star of the film. Oh, it's a different person,
• 1:16:22
  yes. We just said that was a kid.
• 1:16:25
  No, no, no. I'm sorry.
• 1:16:26
  Yes, yes, yes. To clarify, she is the teacher.
• 1:16:29
  The person that he meets is the teacher at this school where
• 1:16:32
  this kid. There was like half a sentence
• 1:16:36
  missing in there, and I knew what you meant, but I was like,
• 1:16:38
  let's be really specific. The teacher of the girl who's
• 1:16:41
  imbued with the soul of the evilest war veteran, which would
• 1:16:46
  be the title of the series if it was an anime.
• 1:16:50
  Just so people know exactly what they're getting into and they're
• 1:16:53
  like, and also I was turned into a fridge or something but.
• 1:16:55
  So I was turned into a fridge vending machine.
• 1:17:00
  Yes. So he eventually his
• 1:17:04
  investigation leads him to this girl who was possessed and they.
• 1:17:11
  Wait, she's possessed by the spirit.
• 1:17:13
  She's she's semi possessed. Semi just a little possessed.
• 1:17:17
  Just a. Little she's like saying things
• 1:17:20
  that this warrior guy would have said.
• 1:17:22
  I guess cuz like, you know, you know how it goes.
• 1:17:27
  You know how it goes. We've seen movies.
• 1:17:30
  We've seen movies, not this one, but.
• 1:17:32
  Not this one, OK? So he finds that they they
• 1:17:40
  discover that they need to have this soul exercised from her.
• 1:17:46
  And this girl lives coincidentally on a Native
• 1:17:52
  American preserve. Is she Native American?
• 1:17:56
  I don't know. I assume so.
• 1:17:58
  She might have been a adopted. There were some details.
• 1:18:01
  There was. I felt I fell asleep.
• 1:18:02
  Remember, there was. Every time the movie was right.
• 1:18:10
  We should just, I don't know, she lived there.
• 1:18:12
  She lived there. OK, We're just mixing
• 1:18:15
  mythologies again. I'm sure we're gonna get some
• 1:18:16
  Native American spiritualism. Exactly.
• 1:18:19
  So they're like, we need to exercise this soul from her
• 1:18:23
  body. And Christopher Walken doesn't
• 1:18:26
  want that to happen. So there's an initial
• 1:18:29
  interaction where Christopher Walken finds her, but Eliza
• 1:18:32
  Koteas and his teacher, they like intervene or able to rescue
• 1:18:36
  her. Eliza Koteas, like, shoots and
• 1:18:38
  kills Christopher Walken's like, sidekick guy.
• 1:18:43
  And he's like. He killed the undead zombie.
• 1:18:45
  Yeah, and, and he, like, thanks him.
• 1:18:46
  He's like, thanks. You're a real pal.
• 1:18:49
  Zombie thanks him. Yeah, cuz he wanted to die.
• 1:18:52
  He wanted so he wasn't like cool because he came back.
• 1:18:56
  He's like, no, I was trying to be.
• 1:18:57
  No, yeah, he hated it the whole time.
• 1:18:59
  He hated Christopher Walken. He was just like, why are you
• 1:19:02
  doing this? Like.
• 1:19:05
  Man, yeah. And so Christopher Walken goes
• 1:19:08
  and does that to another person. He gets like another sidekick
• 1:19:12
  person, which I'm like, this felt unnecessary.
• 1:19:14
  I feel like we could have just done this with the one.
• 1:19:15
  We could do. You don't want to do too many
• 1:19:17
  zombie sidekicks. That's a common trap people fall
• 1:19:19
  into, and they're scripted. Yeah, especially.
• 1:19:22
  Rule of three zombie sidekicks. He only does the 2 but anyway
• 1:19:28
  they get the girl away. Another anyway they get.
• 1:19:30
  The girl away. And they're figuring out what
• 1:19:33
  they're going to do. I think they're figuring out how
• 1:19:35
  they're going to do this exorcism.
• 1:19:37
  And this is near the end of the film.
• 1:19:38
  And this is where Aragorn the devil shows up.
• 1:19:43
  And. Yeah, cuz that, you know, now I
• 1:19:46
  feel like we're going to tie everything up.
• 1:19:48
  This is the crazy thing. OK, So I'm just going to lead
• 1:19:50
  into like the end of the movie here.
• 1:19:54
  Aragorn devil Aragorn. He he solves all their problems.
• 1:19:58
  He is basically he solves the problem like he like he just he
• 1:20:04
  shows up and he's talking to the the teacher woman and he's like,
• 1:20:09
  he's like, hey, you know what? I don't like what's going on
• 1:20:12
  here because if evil, evil Christopher Walken Angel like
• 1:20:16
  gets his way, then he's going to turn heaven into hell.
• 1:20:19
  And that's my business. So we should stop him in what
• 1:20:22
  he's doing. And like, so in the climax of
• 1:20:26
  the film, like Elias Koteas and this woman, I think they like
• 1:20:30
  hit him with a car, the Christopher Walken that is.
• 1:20:32
  And they like shoot him with a gun and it's just like he's like
• 1:20:35
  semi immortal. So they like can't stop him.
• 1:20:38
  But then Devil Aragorn just shows up and and like rips his
• 1:20:43
  heart out and it's just like, oh, well, OK, well, thanks,
• 1:20:46
  devil. That kind of solves all our
• 1:20:48
  problems actually. Like yeah, you.
• 1:20:51
  Know I've always said not so bad.
• 1:20:55
  So bad that Satan guy. That Satan dude, if you take the
• 1:20:58
  time to listen. Really, in this case, he he does
• 1:21:04
  nothing to what you're going to say.
• 1:21:06
  Put down your what because. I put down your phones.
• 1:21:08
  Put. Down your.
• 1:21:10
  Phones and just live in the moment with Satan, Lord of
• 1:21:14
  Darkness. I think you'll find he's got a
• 1:21:17
  lot of, he's got a lot of interesting stuff to say.
• 1:21:19
  Yeah, he's just popping a squat there like an owl and.
• 1:21:21
  That's right, I forgot. He's just like an owl saying you
• 1:21:24
  guys are weird. Yeah, and then they finished
• 1:21:29
  their exorcism or whatever, and Airborne Satan's like, hey, you
• 1:21:33
  guys want to come with me to hell?
• 1:21:34
  It's pretty cool. And they're like, now we're
• 1:21:36
  good. And he's like, all right, well,
• 1:21:38
  see you later. Well, and that's, that's how the
• 1:21:41
  movie ends. Wait.
• 1:21:43
  Why did he want them to go to hell?
• 1:21:45
  Like actually. I don't know, he's just always
• 1:21:48
  recruiting, I guess. Just looking for He's just like,
• 1:21:50
  before I go fill out this survey card, Yeah, tell me how likely
• 1:21:55
  you'd be a recommend hell to a friend.
• 1:21:59
  Yes, yes, exactly. OK, so he has like maybe 5
• 1:22:02
  minutes of screen time, but he solves all their problems.
• 1:22:05
  He just just kind of wins the movie at the end.
• 1:22:08
  OK, so understanding that the plot is intentionally vague and
• 1:22:12
  a lot of this he's just kind of going on vibes and that we do
• 1:22:15
  have somewhat of a resolution to the story.
• 1:22:17
  Is any of this movie any good? Dude, I was weirdly except for
• 1:22:24
  the time, so I fell asleep weirdly.
• 1:22:26
  It just like engrossed in it. I was like, yeah, just in a way
• 1:22:31
  of like, what what? What is happening?
• 1:22:33
  What am I looking at like? You're just like rubbing your
• 1:22:38
  eyes. You're still not convinced
• 1:22:39
  you're actually awaiting at this point.
• 1:22:41
  Yeah, I was just like, this is something's happening here.
• 1:22:44
  Somebody's somebody's trying to do something.
• 1:22:47
  I feel like this is either I see what you're going for but this
• 1:22:50
  bored me to tears or it's like I don't even know what's going on
• 1:22:54
  but I liked it. I, I, it's tough, it's tough to
• 1:22:59
  say because like, from a filming, like film production
• 1:23:02
  standpoint, it had a certain aesthetic to it, but it, it
• 1:23:06
  wasn't, it didn't have a large budget.
• 1:23:09
  Like, I mean, like I was just glancing at like the budget of
• 1:23:13
  like Sleepy Hollow and that was like $100 million film.
• 1:23:16
  This was a $16,000,000 film. So it looks a little rough
• 1:23:21
  around the edges. So I mean, that's still a lot of
• 1:23:24
  money. But, you know, in terms of film
• 1:23:28
  at this scale with the story they're trying to tell, it
• 1:23:32
  looked a little cheap at points. You know, visually it wasn't
• 1:23:36
  awful, though. And like Elias Koteas, I haven't
• 1:23:39
  talked about him a lot, but he was a, a good lead.
• 1:23:43
  You know, he, he, he like he, he didn't bring a lot of energy to
• 1:23:47
  the role, but he, he had, he brought a certain charisma to.
• 1:23:50
  It well, he would say he he told you he's.
• 1:23:52
  Sleepy. So sleepy, I mean.
• 1:23:54
  And he did that really well, you know, so.
• 1:23:58
  This is reminding me that this happened.
• 1:24:01
  We talk every now and again about I think you should leave
• 1:24:03
  the show, Tim Robinson comedy show.
• 1:24:05
  And there's that one skit where he's trying to eat a hot dog out
• 1:24:09
  of his sleeve during a business meeting without anybody
• 1:24:11
  noticing. And the first person who clues
• 1:24:13
  in, she's just like, are you, are you trying to eat a hot dog
• 1:24:15
  out of your shirt sleeve? And he just goes, I'm so tired.
• 1:24:21
  That's his. That's his like excuse.
• 1:24:26
  That's yeah, that's exactly Elias Koteas trying to eat a hot
• 1:24:31
  dog out of his sleeve while he's doing his detective work like.
• 1:24:33
  I cannot get my head like you, I could take this description of
• 1:24:38
  the plot and jumble up all the segments and put them out of
• 1:24:41
  order and I don't think I'd have any better idea of like what
• 1:24:43
  this movie was trying to say. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:47
  In terms of the message of the film, something about faith,
• 1:24:51
  something, something, again, I'm convinced there's one man out
• 1:24:56
  there that knows exactly what he wanted it to be, and it's the
• 1:24:58
  guy who wrote it. Yeah, but I didn't hate it.
• 1:25:03
  It was like, it was interesting. It was new.
• 1:25:07
  It was like you took, you took some stuff.
• 1:25:10
  Like, again, it's so silly in a way and like, funny that it's
• 1:25:15
  like, this is what they want. And it's like, this one dude was
• 1:25:17
  just the worst and we just need his soul specifically.
• 1:25:22
  Like, like there's been nobody worse than him.
• 1:25:25
  I would like this guy like maybe he was super statistic or
• 1:25:29
  whatever, but it just immediately, as soon as you put
• 1:25:31
  it in a military context, like who is his commanding officer?
• 1:25:34
  Who is his? Who sent him there in the 1st
• 1:25:36
  place? Did he volunteer?
• 1:25:38
  Did he start the Korean War? Did he manufacture the entire
• 1:25:41
  conflict? Sure.
• 1:25:43
  And I'm sure this guy sucked. I'm sure he was super bad, like
• 1:25:46
  you know. I just feel like if you're
• 1:25:47
  trying to pitch this as worst guy ever, why wouldn't you just
• 1:25:51
  go like crazy famous like Jack the Ripper serial killer, You
• 1:25:56
  know, I just that that yes, that's such a weird way to frame
• 1:26:00
  like worst person to ever live is one of an invading army.
• 1:26:05
  Yeah, exactly. I'm sure there were people just
• 1:26:08
  as awful as him. Like, why?
• 1:26:09
  What did he do? That was because they don't.
• 1:26:11
  They're vague about it. They don't go into a lot of
• 1:26:12
  detail. They're like, this guy was just
• 1:26:14
  really bad, let me tell you. OK, ever washed his hands?
• 1:26:20
  Yeah, like sure, yeah, OK. I.
• 1:26:24
  Don't, and this is normally the part where I'd be like, all
• 1:26:28
  right, what wrap up questions do I have to get a sense of what
• 1:26:32
  the prophecy was about? I have no questions.
• 1:26:34
  I mean, I have questions. I have no helpful questions.
• 1:26:37
  Sure. Yeah, of course.
• 1:26:38
  Of course. Yeah.
• 1:26:39
  It was just, it's so hard to even surmise my own feelings
• 1:26:43
  about it because I don't even, I was like, did I like this?
• 1:26:48
  I don't know. We're going to find out shortly
• 1:26:51
  when we do scores. But you know, art is meant to be
• 1:26:55
  challenging at times. I think it is also meant to be
• 1:26:58
  comforting if it's entertainment.
• 1:27:00
  But sometimes someone comes along and really wants to ask
• 1:27:03
  the big questions, like why is why is a cop better prepared to
• 1:27:06
  fight the devil than a priest? And why doesn't anybody tell
• 1:27:10
  these priests that all this stuff they're talking about is
• 1:27:12
  real? Cause 'cause faith or something
• 1:27:16
  right like that. Yeah, there's a theme in there
• 1:27:18
  somewhere. What's 1/2 gainer also is an
• 1:27:21
  important question. What is 1/2 gainer?
• 1:27:23
  Yeah, please let us know. Yeah, let us know.
• 1:27:26
  We don't normally ask for feedback, but let us know in the
• 1:27:28
  comments of you, without looking it up, know what a half gainer
• 1:27:31
  is. Because we have assumptions.
• 1:27:34
  We have assumptions. We have assumptions.
• 1:27:35
  Just don't know exactly. Maybe it's a term for throwing
• 1:27:38
  people off of tall places in New York City into trash,
• 1:27:42
  specifically into trash bins or a garbage truck.
• 1:27:45
  If there's enough litter, it counts.
• 1:27:48
  Yeah, yeah, we'll make exceptions.
• 1:27:51
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:27:54
  Moving on. Yeah.
• 1:27:56
  Thank you. Thank you for your time.
• 1:27:57
  Welcome. Thanks for coming to my Ted
• 1:27:59
  Talk. I can't.
• 1:28:01
  I can't with any of this. OK, so after that illuminating
• 1:28:10
  conversation about the prophecy, Frank, I think we need to move
• 1:28:13
  into scoring. I am at a loss for Sleepy
• 1:28:17
  Hollow. I know a lot of what I talked
• 1:28:20
  about today was criticisms of the storytelling and the
• 1:28:24
  mystery, but there's so much to like about the movie overall.
• 1:28:28
  I don't think I've ever come closer to wanting to give a
• 1:28:31
  movie A7 out of 10. Here we go.
• 1:28:34
  It's happening. As we established in our very
• 1:28:37
  first episode, giving a movie A7 makes you a coward with no thing
• 1:28:41
  to say. Oh, not literally though.
• 1:28:44
  You can give a movie A7. It is a loud and acceptable.
• 1:28:47
  My original point was that people love to just say this
• 1:28:52
  one's a 7 out of 10 with no context and no elaboration
• 1:28:55
  because it's a really hard opinion to tear down because
• 1:28:58
  anything could be a 7, because it's basically saying it's OK, I
• 1:29:02
  didn't love it. And that's up to me.
• 1:29:04
  That's my interpretation. Like how am I supposed to argue
• 1:29:07
  against someone saying, ah, it's a 7 out of 10?
• 1:29:09
  If you go any lower or any higher, I could be like, come
• 1:29:11
  on, like, gosh Dang it, Sleepy Hollow might be a 7 out of 10.
• 1:29:17
  It's all right. Exactly in the middle of being
• 1:29:21
  on the side of the coin of like, I like it.
• 1:29:22
  It's a fun movie and it's good, but it messes up some very
• 1:29:26
  crucial things that would stop me from rating it any higher
• 1:29:29
  than that. I mean, that's fair.
• 1:29:31
  Like what? But what would you say, I guess
• 1:29:34
  I didn't get from your review like what it what it messed up
• 1:29:36
  the most in terms of like how they handled the the end of the
• 1:29:40
  film? I think that the story after the
• 1:29:44
  first portion where he's in Sleepy Hollow, like everything
• 1:29:47
  from like the halfway point onwards, because the mystery is
• 1:29:50
  not very clear and the way they're going about solving it
• 1:29:54
  is kind of aimless feeling. The movie just starts to drag
• 1:29:58
  and it's kept up by some strong performances and some
• 1:30:02
  interesting sets and just production elements.
• 1:30:05
  But by the time you get to the third act and the stepmom, which
• 1:30:09
  lady is revealed as the villain, the actual resolution with her,
• 1:30:12
  it's just odd. Just a series of odd choices and
• 1:30:17
  story directions that by the time it was over I was like
• 1:30:20
  really deflated. But that doesn't discount that
• 1:30:22
  like 1/2 to 2/3 of the movie were pretty engrossing.
• 1:30:27
  OK. I mean 7 out of 10.
• 1:30:30
  How was that? Anyway, so that's our first, our
• 1:30:33
  first 7 out of 10. I really didn't think we would
• 1:30:35
  happen across 1 so soon. But over to you now for a
• 1:30:39
  complete mystery of a movie from my end, The Prophecy.
• 1:30:44
  The prophecy gosh question mark out of 10 is that a is.
• 1:30:49
  That a like I don't what I don't.
• 1:30:54
  I have no conclusive thoughts about what we talked about.
• 1:31:01
  I'm floating. I'm floating between a couple
• 1:31:02
  numbers right now, OK, Like I did not like, I don't think I
• 1:31:08
  hated this film. I'm I'm going to say, I'm going
• 1:31:11
  to say 4 out of 10. 4 out of 10. OK, yeah, that seems acceptable.
• 1:31:17
  Yeah, right. Because there was definitely
• 1:31:20
  things I enjoyed. I like the cast.
• 1:31:23
  Like, you know, Viggo Mortensen, for all 5 minutes that he was
• 1:31:26
  there, he killed it, you know? Yeah.
• 1:31:29
  Sounds great. That was like his silence at the
• 1:31:31
  lamps. You know, few minutes of screen
• 1:31:33
  time. Academy Award.
• 1:31:34
  Except he did that one cuz nobody saw this weird movie.
• 1:31:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Christopher Walken, of course,
• 1:31:42
  like did what Christopher Walken needed to do in that role.
• 1:31:48
  Like, and Eliz Koteas, it was fun seeing him in like the
• 1:31:51
  leading man role, even though he was he was a little sleepy.
• 1:31:55
  Made you sleepy. Yeah.
• 1:31:59
  And just the weirdness of it. Like I always, I've maybe said
• 1:32:04
  this before on the podcast, but I advocate for like, let's get
• 1:32:06
  weird, you know, let's not make traditional choices.
• 1:32:10
  And it's refreshing to see those abstract, out-of-the-box choices
• 1:32:16
  being made in something that has a sizable budget.
• 1:32:20
  You know, I, as I mentioned, this one has a smaller budget
• 1:32:22
  than maybe some like contemporary films of the era.
• 1:32:25
  But it was still, you know, like, I'm not sure what studio
• 1:32:28
  put this film out, but for somebody like a writer, director
• 1:32:32
  to get this weird movie made, like, I appreciate that.
• 1:32:37
  It's something you wouldn't get now.
• 1:32:39
  This was a cheap movie, but the fact that it made it to theaters
• 1:32:42
  and I'm sure some people saw it, that's something you wouldn't
• 1:32:44
  see anymore. This would have been somebody's
• 1:32:46
  weird to be original. I mean, we've talked about like
• 1:32:49
  Blockbuster, yeah, exactly. Like, or like a 2B.
• 1:32:52
  Like there's a lot of stuff buried on, like, streaming
• 1:32:54
  services that like, only a few people have ever seen.
• 1:32:57
  But like, we've talked about like those, like them, you know,
• 1:33:00
  go to Blockbuster on the weekend, take something home.
• 1:33:02
  You'd get some stuff like this. Sometimes you'd get some.
• 1:33:04
  Stuff like, what the heck is this?
• 1:33:06
  What did I just watch? I don't know if we just weren't
• 1:33:08
  discerning enough, but when we would go grab stuff from the
• 1:33:10
  Blockbuster, it kind of felt like everything was on equal
• 1:33:12
  footing. Like, everything had poll quotes
• 1:33:14
  on it claiming it was good and you couldn't always tell from
• 1:33:17
  the cover what you were actually getting.
• 1:33:19
  I mean, that's why I didn't know from looking at it now if what
• 1:33:22
  it was going to be. So sometimes you'd go in and put
• 1:33:24
  the movie on and just be like, Oh no, what have we done?
• 1:33:28
  Family Movie night has taken a turn.
• 1:33:30
  Yes, exactly. Like but that's how movie like
• 1:33:33
  movie marketing has always it's always been sold on the stars.
• 1:33:36
  You look at like, OK, I recognize people in this film.
• 1:33:39
  You look at like the genre of the movie and you're like, OK,
• 1:33:42
  you know, spooky, maybe it's Halloween time.
• 1:33:44
  Like so like that's how it's always worked and how it
• 1:33:48
  continues to work in a lot of ways.
• 1:33:50
  So like that's where these movies come in.
• 1:33:53
  And then yeah, somebody sees them.
• 1:33:54
  And like, I'm happy for that guy that made this and clearly
• 1:33:59
  really cared about the lore of this, that a lot of people have
• 1:34:04
  seen it. You know, he got his stuff out
• 1:34:06
  there and he got 5 movies out of.
• 1:34:08
  It so 5 movies. I cannot imagine what happens in
• 1:34:13
  those other prophecy movies. I don't want to watch them.
• 1:34:16
  I really actually kind of want to watch the other prophecy.
• 1:34:19
  Movies which like, we're still looking at, you know, prizes and
• 1:34:24
  punishments for who wins cumulative points wise for
• 1:34:27
  season. One my gosh, you have to watch.
• 1:34:29
  If we have to sentence somebody to watch 5 prophecy movies and
• 1:34:33
  do like a bonus episode about it wouldn't.
• 1:34:36
  Be bad. Write that down.
• 1:34:38
  Write that down. Because that might be.
• 1:34:41
  Especially because if I I lose the season, I'd have to start
• 1:34:44
  with the first one. I'd have to watch a whole extra
• 1:34:46
  movie. Hey, listen, it happens, all
• 1:34:48
  right? I watched an extra movie for.
• 1:34:50
  You did watch. Kick fighter, shoot fighter,
• 1:34:52
  you. Whatever the hell it's called,
• 1:34:53
  shoot. A fighter movie?
• 1:34:55
  OK, well we'll earmark that as a potential option.
• 1:34:58
  Whoever loses season 1 has to do a book report on the prophecy
• 1:35:03
  verse. Report whatever.
• 1:35:06
  Yeah, I like that. Yeah.
• 1:35:10
  All right. Well, that brings us to the end
• 1:35:12
  of what I believe is Episode 8 of our programs.
• 1:35:15
  So 2/3 of the way now through Season 1 in terms of our 90s
• 1:35:18
  movie theme. Frank, for the first time since
• 1:35:21
  Episode 2, you have won the episode of Meteor double
• 1:35:25
  feature. Congratulations.
• 1:35:26
  You don't gotta phrase it like that.
• 1:35:29
  That's a big deal. You're turning your life around.
• 1:35:33
  Oh my God, it was all the prophecy.
• 1:35:34
  I'd like to thank the prophecy. Prophecy Prophecy Prophecy 2.
• 1:35:38
  Prophecy 3. So what?
• 1:35:41
  That means it hasn't come up in a while.
• 1:35:43
  You get to pick first and selecting a movie for me to
• 1:35:46
  watch for next time. All right, let me relish in this
• 1:35:50
  for a moment. Also, you've closed the gap on
• 1:35:53
  Season 1 totals, so going into this episode you were like the
• 1:35:57
  total score of the movies you designed me was like 6 points
• 1:36:00
  lower than the ones I've given to you, and you've cut that lead
• 1:36:03
  from six points down to three. OK.
• 1:36:06
  He's coming back. I told you that pep talk.
• 1:36:07
  Remember that pep talk? Remember the halftime pep talk?
• 1:36:10
  Yeah, he's coming back. We still don't know who is going
• 1:36:12
  to be assigned the prophecy verse by the end of Season 1.
• 1:36:16
  I might just watch him my other way, but.
• 1:36:18
  Wow. Well, don't you know it's
• 1:36:20
  supposed to be a punishment? Oh yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 1:36:22
  Yeah, Oh no. The prophecy verse.
• 1:36:27
  OK, so you want a movie? Yeah, I love a movie.
• 1:36:30
  What are we watching for? For episode 9.
• 1:36:33
  You are watching 1998's Rushmore. 1998 Rushmore.
• 1:36:39
  Why do I feel like I've heard of this?
• 1:36:41
  You've heard of this because it is a Wes Anderson movie.
• 1:36:44
  Oh OK, but must be. Was this like his first movie?
• 1:36:48
  It might be, yeah. I didn't actually double check
• 1:36:51
  that, but it was at least one of his first movies, if not
• 1:36:55
  actually his first one. I mean, I know he was already
• 1:36:57
  working in the 90s. Maybe this won't be literally
• 1:36:59
  his first feature film, but yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:37:01
  I, I've seen a lot of his more recent stuff, so I'd be very
• 1:37:05
  curious to see one. That is, I'm going to guess that
• 1:37:07
  this would be before his filmmaking style was, was
• 1:37:12
  completely solidified, because if you watch a Wes Anderson
• 1:37:14
  movie now, they all are. So Wes Anderson, you know,
• 1:37:19
  they're, they're like flat frames, the geometric shapes and
• 1:37:22
  the arrangements. It's unmistakable.
• 1:37:24
  And I wonder if when he was making stuff earlier in his
• 1:37:26
  career, it was a little bit more fluid between that style versus
• 1:37:30
  more traditional like filmmaking imagery.
• 1:37:33
  I mean, his early career. I know I I'm not up on my Wes
• 1:37:38
  Anderson lore. That's it's all prophecy now.
• 1:37:41
  But him and Owen Wilson have always been, I think they went
• 1:37:47
  to film school together maybe like they've always been like
• 1:37:50
  collaborators like this. The screenplay for this film was
• 1:37:53
  like Owen Wilson's in it, but it was also written by Wes Anderson
• 1:37:56
  and Owen Wilson. So OK, I'm on board.
• 1:37:58
  This sounds great. I I like Wes Anderson's stuff.
• 1:38:02
  I feel like this might turn into a conversation next time about
• 1:38:04
  his filmography as a whole. Because I do think that he's
• 1:38:06
  been, he's like boxed himself in of late.
• 1:38:09
  And a lot of his most recent movies have been like more
• 1:38:11
  middling in their critical reception.
• 1:38:13
  Because I feel like he's just stuck in his ways now.
• 1:38:16
  Well, it's similar to Tim Burton, who we talked about
• 1:38:18
  earlier. I mean, I think I think both of
• 1:38:20
  them have maybe failed to adapt their style later in their
• 1:38:26
  career, which it would have been interesting to see both of them
• 1:38:30
  branch out from what they're so heavily associated with.
• 1:38:35
  OK, so Rushmore 1998, I have been struggling with what to
• 1:38:40
  pick for you next, but I know that up until now, despite
• 1:38:44
  picking like 20 movies, we still haven't had 1 from 1994.
• 1:38:47
  It's the only year that we haven't touched on.
• 1:38:49
  So I'm going to, I'm going to hone in on that.
• 1:38:51
  I think that Frank, for next time, I'd like you to watch
• 1:38:54
  1994's No Escape, a science fiction action film starring Ray
• 1:39:01
  Liotta. Ray Liotta Oh, OK, Mr.
• 1:39:04
  Goodfellow, That's not not. I was expecting that sentence to
• 1:39:07
  end, but yeah. Ray Liotta.
• 1:39:09
  It's got Ray Liotta. I think it has Ernie Hudson from
• 1:39:11
  Ghostbusters. OK, my interest is peaked.
• 1:39:16
  Yeah, 1990. 4 We've covered all the years now.
• 1:39:18
  If you look back at our list, we have at least one movie from
• 1:39:21
  every year of the 90s, which is good because we're we're trying
• 1:39:24
  to help people find the the forgotten gems and flops of that
• 1:39:28
  decade. And maybe, yeah, some that they
• 1:39:31
  might be familiar with. I feel like, you know,
• 1:39:32
  Rushmore's people have seen this movie, but we haven't so.
• 1:39:36
  Yeah, and it's still arguably kind of overlooked because it's
• 1:39:39
  just not even remotely the thing that comes to mind when you talk
• 1:39:42
  about Wes Anderson now, because it's just not in his most
• 1:39:45
  famous. I think this is one for the
• 1:39:47
  diehards, you know the the big fans, the prophecy years.
• 1:39:51
  Prophecy years, it's true. OK, well, that's gonna do it.
• 1:39:56
  We have our picks for next time. Frank, as always, thank you for
• 1:39:58
  joining me, and thank you, everyone for listening to Meet
• 1:40:01
  Your Double Feature. We'll be back in two weeks with
• 1:40:05
  probably more conversation about the prophecy, if I had to guess.
• 1:40:09
  Probably, probably right. All right.
• 1:40:11
  Well, we'll see you then. Bye.
• 1:40:14
  That's not keeping that in. There's no way we have kept in
• 1:40:18
  the buy like 6 times. Coming up next, it's No Escape,
• 1:40:34
  followed by Rushmore on Meet Your Double feature.