Latest / Critically Acclaimed Network / Critically Acclaimed #337 | The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Naked Gun, The Bad Guys 2, The Home, Together, She Rides Shotgun, My Oxford Year, War of the Worlds

Transcript

Critically Acclaimed #337 | The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Naked Gun, The Bad Guys 2, The Home, Together, She Rides Shotgun, My Oxford Year, War of the Worlds · Critically Acclaimed Network

0:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello everybody and welcome back to critically acclaimed the movie review podcast where things explode My name is Felanda be on me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I am a film critic.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I write for the rap and everybody calls me bips.
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Whitney Sybel.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I contribute to slash film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't have a cute nickname.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just review movies.
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not bad.
0:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Be proud.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We are the review.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We are the guardians of art.
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is our movie review podcast here on the critically acclaimed network.
0:46
[SPEAKER_01]: We missed last week's episode because we had a really big episode of the iron list where Whitney and I presented our picks for the greatest westerns ever made.
0:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you haven't listened to that, now we could actually wait.
1:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to this one first thing.
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Go back.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You're ready here.
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You can listen to them both.
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We're fine.
1:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You listen to both of the same time.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Get it out of the way.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We're like Zyrica set up my multiple stereos.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the flaming lips record.
1:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, that was released on several discs and they're designed to be played simultaneously.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even heard of this.
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they put out a record that's four discs.
1:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Each one with a slightly different track, but they're all timed the same.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can listen to each one individually, but if you set up four stereos, like four CD players at the same time, hit play at the exact same time, they all into play.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: do they sync up with the Wizard of Oz as well?
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that would be a little too much, but I would not put that past when going.
1:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so we've a lot of movies to review this week.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: This week, we were reviewing the fantastic four first steps.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Ironically, they're fifth step.
1:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The naked gun, the most recent, twenty-five version.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The bad guys too, sequel to the animated hit film.
2:02
[SPEAKER_01]: War of the worlds, the ice cube avalungoria sci-fi Amazon original
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Stick around for that one.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, is this one put out by Amazon?
2:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Stick around.
2:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to have to have a talk about that film.
2:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The, yes, it's based on the H.J.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Wells novel.
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Very Lordly.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We also have the new romantic horror film.
2:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, with Dave Franco and, um, Harry Larson.
2:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Harry Larson.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Harry Larson.
2:34
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right,
3:03
[SPEAKER_01]: This is gonna be interesting thing to talk about.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We have been.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: throughout the history of the show, reviewing more superhero films than, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's genre.
3:34
[SPEAKER_00]: genres don't die.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They fade.
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They fade.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Trends eventually die out.
3:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's frustrating.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fade.
3:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But this has remained a foul for us.
3:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say this about that.
3:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Will superheroes always be the biggest thing.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they're not currently the biggest thing.
3:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the fantastic four had a big opening weekend.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It drops like a spectacular amount of the second weekend.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even though reviews were really good.
4:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like sixty-some percent.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but like a big drop, a big big drop.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they didn't even have a lot of competition.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like it was a kids movie and naked gun.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it wasn't like some, wasn't like Jurassic World Open the next week.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So superhero movies are not the sure thing.
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They once were.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're not driving the industry the way they once were and I'm not here to tell you that's good or bad.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What I am here to say is that we've had variations on superhero stories since the silent era.
4:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They've always been around.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They hit an unprecedented level of popularity over about the last twenty-five years.
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Up and down through that bit, but especially the last fifteen.
4:39
[SPEAKER_00]: When I refer to superhero movies, like the recent wave, the one that's sort of been rolling along since like the mid-two thousands.
4:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually refers to a very specific type of character from usually just one or two companies really.
4:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But comic book adaptations and this sort of modern rendition of what a superhero looks like is not nearly the same as even what they look like in the third.
5:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, great.
5:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So the ventures of Robin Hood is what we're doing now.
5:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this is actually a very contemporary text that we're dealing with.
5:13
[SPEAKER_01]: My point is this.
5:14
[SPEAKER_01]: My point is this.
5:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We have over the years, I think, each had our own perspective on superhero movies, I think.
5:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it would be fair to say, without going into detail, we can get into that in a minute, that you're a little more cynical about the genre than I am.
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Or at least pessimistic.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true of just any kind of lockbuster, but yeah, the the gigantic interlocking super narrative has never impressed me.
5:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care that these films interconnect, but even set a lot of side.
5:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Even setting that aside, they don't excite you the way they do a lot of people.
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: or haven't, even at the height of their popularity, whereas I have been a fan of a lot of these.
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I've also not been a fan of a lot of these.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say that my overall interest in enthusiasm has waned, but I always want a good one.
6:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And in particular, it's fantastic for I was really hoping would be good.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: because I love the Fantastic Forest comic book.
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very important comic book.
6:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the sort of foundational texts of modern superheroes.
6:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's when Stanley and Jack Kirby really just tore down all of the more prominent cliches that existed about comic book superheroes.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: secret identities, certain types of people get to be heroes, heroes with a lot of like, you know, interterm oil and bickering and the protagonist was a big nerd.
6:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a lot of things fantastic for them that were very atypical, comics at the time.
6:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And by breaking those rules and being a huge success, it really set the stage for a lot of other risks to be taken and for superheroes to have a new renaissance in the nineteen sixties.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I love Stanley and Jack Kirby's original run.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got some problems, but it also is some of the best comic books ever created.
7:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's always been frustrating to me that this really, really great comic book series has had such a hard time being translated into a movie not because
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: not for any particular reason, it just felt like the vibe to me felt pretty simple, pretty straightforward, and yet everyone kept wiffing it for one reason or another.
7:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The Roger Corman won, I think, had the tone right, but it was way too cheap, and there wasn't a lot of talent behind it, unfortunately.
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the secrets to cracking
7:30
[SPEAKER_00]: the fantastic for in particular uh... it was one of marvels like first star comics of like the so-called golden age and it was a super here like a space adventure sort of comic uh... but it was also a family sitcom
7:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about how these four characters kind of bickered a lot.
7:50
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of spending time with them at home in between their space adventures.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was like, before Indiana Jones existed, it was like Indiana Jones, but for science, you know, they were finding new dimensions and monsters underground.
8:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, it was very big and demonstrative.
8:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The characters all spoke with exclamation points.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, pretty typical of the era to be fair about it.
8:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like, especially when you're dealing with such an operatic supervillain like, Dr. Doom,
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So, say if Doom, like he'd like, yeah, recite to himself.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very Shakespearean kind of a villain.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I feel like that kind of demonstrative exclamation went out of fashion pretty quick.
8:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time a film technology caught up to something like the Fantastic Four, that kind of dialogue was an interesting thing.
8:40
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, that kind of training.
8:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, people have been trying to crack it ever since, not really realizing that it has to be old fashioned.
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is ironic because, again, when it came out, it was breaking new grad.
8:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It was new fangled, not old fashioned.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But now,
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: because everything's fantastic for did to push the medium forward has been, you know, everyone took that ball on ran with it.
9:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If you faithfully adapt the fantastic for it, we'll never capture the feeling of reading the fantastic for it.
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll never capture the feeling of reading something new and exciting.
9:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It can only be retro.
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, I feel the Roger Corman won, got the old fashioned melodramatic tone, right?
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But they didn't have the talent and they didn't have the money.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we had the Tim Story movies, which was like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: decade later.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but better decade later, and they really leaned into the family aspects, especially in that first movie with mixed results at best.
9:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I think, I still think there's a lot of really good stuff in Rise of Silver Surfer.
9:39
[SPEAKER_01]: There's great scenes, there's a few big ideas, but it's better than the first one, but it's all doesn't work.
9:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they got the characters right, but they didn't find a good story for them, and there was no heroic.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just about them having these superpowers, but not going out and stopping crying.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of studio.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Tinkering.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Tinkering.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Tinkering.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Tinkering.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Tinkering.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Tinkering.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: basement dwelling computer nerd characters they were all young yeah there was a cool body horror elements yeah like when they got their powers they was kind of horrifying like Johnny was on fire and he didn't know why and he was really scared read like stretched out over everything and a really creepy yeah like uncontrollable wet that part was really cool that part was cool and there was also an element to that movie where uh the thing he turned into this gigantic man made of rock uh he's indestructible and he's super strong now
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they immediately put him to work as a murderer as a soldier.
10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's a mercenary or not a mercenary.
11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like working for the government.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: and that immediately ate away his soul.
11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that was something they could have explored.
11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But those are just little ideas in a movie that's just a mess.
11:11
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing is that that movie, I feel like that movie just didn't, it did a few interesting things.
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think that movie really understood why we're adapting this thing in the first place.
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They were trying to change what made the fantastic for me.
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel, and I think there's precedent to that version of it.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like, isn't there an ultimate standard for something?
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a version of it.
11:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a version of it.
11:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a version of it.
11:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a version of it.
11:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a version of it.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a version of it.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a version of it.
11:33
[SPEAKER_01]: good for a while, but they just they're there and been a few other darker takes some fantastic for but they never never they never collect then ever like stuck around the reason so so we have this new version
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first one put out by Disney.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of Marvel Studios.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Marvel Studios, although it's only nominally part of the grander Marvel Cinematic Universe.
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's its own alternate dimension where the other heroes don't exist.
12:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm a it's a little unclear whether it's taking place in a futuristic, nineteen sixties or a very nineteen sixties like present day.
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I assumed it was set in the nineteen sixties but it definitely has a big retro tomorrow land kind of idea about science fiction it's this retro futuristic thing everything looks kind of like the nineteen sixties there's high tech
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: like information devices, but they're pressed onto like vinyl records or gold records.
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like metal records.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like discs.
12:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still using chalkboards.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They have tail fins and bubbles.
12:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything looks like really in the sixties.
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Great look.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really fun.
12:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Fun aesthetic.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, reminds me of like the ultra lounge records that I collected from capital records and put on the nineties.
12:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but something that I appreciate about this, and this is something that I didn't really realize I was missing from a lot of super.
12:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is why I brought up our difference about super hero movies because ironically, you really dig this one.
13:02
[SPEAKER_01]: really like this after just a planning about how superhero movies weren't doing it for you was Superman.
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a couple of weeks later.
13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Gotcha.
13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And this actually pointed out to me exactly what I thought was missing from Superman.
13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You introduced a character like Superman.
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This ultra powerful being can, you know, not indestructible gets injured and just needs like to sit underneath a magnifying lens for a couple of minutes and it's okay again.
13:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is established in that movie that he can stop wars.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: He went in, he saw like a war was breaking out, he flew down, he threatened the leader of one of the antagonist nation and decided to stop this war.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: People were gonna die.
13:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, if Superman can stop a war, he should be doing nothing else.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is he in Metropolis at all?
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does he have a job or a secret identity at all?
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't need to have three, he has three homes, he has crystal castle, he has Kent Farm and he has his apartment in Metropolis.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Drop two of those, live in one of them, and spend the rest of your time changing the world for the better.
14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have a character as powerful as Superman, you're not using her imagination to use his superpowers in a way where he's actually doing good in the world.
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: The way superheroes, and this is, I think, my central objection to superheroes.
14:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The way they've been depicted specifically in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the genre in general.
14:31
[SPEAKER_00]: are their military force.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Often they're their fighters.
14:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They're costume fighters who are sort of like the front lines against invading aliens and bad guys and outsiders.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're coloring behind them thankful for their protection.
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank God.
14:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is a really unimaginative way to deal with magical abilities.
14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
14:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If you did indeed, and think of Watchman, Watchman has this as well.
14:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's better in the comics, because that movie's not very good.
15:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you were introduced to some sort of high-tech supernatural elements that say Iron Man invented, he invents new elements.
15:11
[SPEAKER_00]: He invents this like powerful suit of armor.
15:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, nanotechnology, eventually they're going into space.
15:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, changing science as we know.
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: But did they?
15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They changed the sciences.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: We know it, but we paned out to the regular world and Scott Lang still needs to work at a thirty-one flavors to make ends meet.
15:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that mean people are still struggling out there?
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, we have these miracle technologies change the world with them.
15:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Guess what the fantastic four finally fucking did.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is something that I think is actually kind of interesting.
15:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, you're describing the Superman, if you look at the way Superman originally was created.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, the way he was originally presented.
15:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a strong man.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how I'm talking about it.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: He was Clark Kent and Clark Kent had a secret.
16:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
16:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're talking about it much more conservative era.
16:04
[SPEAKER_01]: where you would have to like, dress up an act normal.
16:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you wanted to flounce around in tights and get in wrestling matches for fun or because whatever, that is something you would have to hide.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not something that was socially acceptable.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: We've moved on from that and superheroes have become so normalized that we no longer think of the secret identity as being relevant because I mean look what we do now.
16:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We live out in the public.
16:30
[SPEAKER_01]: We live out in the public.
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's my point.
16:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic four was the comic that threw that out.
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The Van Hastic Four had no secret identities.
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They were public.
16:41
[SPEAKER_01]: They did live that super-growing was their day job.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That was what made them different.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess in a way, you're making the argument that this does feel novel on the way the Van Hastic Four did in the comics, only for that.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they're actually like, and they're not doing it in name only.
16:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, yeah, Tony Stark said at the end of Iron Man, I am Iron Man.
17:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna live, we're not gonna do, we're basically not gonna do secret identities in the book universe.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The DMC, yeah.
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's got a rate of secret identities.
17:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
17:08
[SPEAKER_01]: with a few exceptions, but mostly.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But correct.
17:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't really extrapolate on that.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And the world doesn't evolve because they want to constantly, they want to make sure that the world feels recognizable to us.
17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Still, we're fantastic for they just said, fuck it.
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to introduce a different reality in which they did.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That is different, that is exciting.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's interesting because the fact that it feels so self-contained, that you don't really need any connection to any other superhero universe to tell the story.
17:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, ironically, the thing that Marvel assured that made them so exciting to so many people is now the thing that makes them refreshing.
17:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
17:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it just is.
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
17:48
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just doing their thing.
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I know the superheroes to help.
17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got it in hand.
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The interconactivity is not the exciting thing anymore.
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's become something that they're leaning on instead of story.
17:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
17:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a real problem.
17:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And fantastic, let's talk about the story.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fantastic four, got read Richards played by Pedro Pascal, big, big old nerd with stretchy powers.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got the visible woman played by Vanessa Kirby.
18:11
[SPEAKER_01]: She has a can turn a visible, make force fields.
18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And in this particular version, I do appreciate that they make her a bit more active.
18:17
[SPEAKER_01]: She's doing a lot of like diplomatic work with like the old people who live under New York.
18:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, she's working at the UN.
18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she's she's like the star diplomat at the UN as well and it's implied this is the vibe I got from the movie that she was with her diplomatic powers the one who was able to unify the world
18:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And many ways, yes.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And we do see a scene of her using those diplomatic skills, not powers, to basically alleviate a crisis.
18:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of heavy handed and doesn't quite work, but the point is very, very clear.
18:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got her brother Johnny played by
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: use some guy.
18:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not familiar with him.
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He's played by Joseph Quinn.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Joseph Quinn.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the hothead, a younger brother.
19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: He can get turn himself on fire and do fire things.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: He can fly.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: He can fly.
19:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I do appreciate that he's not portrayed as he often is as a bit of adult.
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he was always like a pilot, but that was it.
19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And here he can actually, he's actually like doing his important work.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: He's more valuable.
19:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he's more valuable in this movie as a linguist.
19:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: He has his like a fighter.
19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it's odd, but okay.
19:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's Ben Grimm.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He's put by Evan Moss backrock from the bear.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not familiar with him.
19:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't watched the bear so I don't know.
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I hear it's great.
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's realized to CG.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I will say this.
19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a huge fan of how they realize Ben Gremont-CG.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm finding, making him in CG, that makes sense.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that the physical costumes that they made in the Koran version and the Tim Story ones were mixed bags at best.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the Michael Chickle's costume.
19:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I really, really thought it was, I felt like the Koran one was rocky enough that it actually felt we're just in to look at it.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And they gave it to us one was more expressive.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like there's a there's a happy medium in there somewhere.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the overall micol check list.
20:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a smoother on his face.
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You can actually see his physical performance.
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The other one was like Halloween mask but just barely articulated.
20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like with this one they were so worried about making sure that like in a still fraying he looked accurate then they weren't really thinking about
20:26
[SPEAKER_01]: his performance, especially his face, his eyes are very much receded into his face.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's really taking a lot of tools away from the actor, I feel.
20:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, there's a few shots, or I feel like it doesn't look great, mostly fine.
20:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just think that they're not giving the actor the tools he needs to really give the most expressive performance, even though he's doing a good job.
20:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So that for me is a different thing that quite works.
20:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But in any case,
20:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Read and sue or about to have a son.
20:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, first of all she spent finds out she's pregnant.
20:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and they're they're trying to get everything ready trying to get themselves ready to have a kid There's a there's a fun bit where read the sides to defeat all their villains in the same night just so that they don't have to worry about it anymore, which is cute, but then immediately
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: The silver surfer shows up and says, hey, Galactus is coming.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what to say, Paris.
21:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But what's Galactus?
21:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we don't know in this universe.
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they get the slay ship and they fly out to try to stop Galactus from eating the earth.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the silver surfer is played by Julia Garner.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in the wolf man.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: She was in the city too.
21:30
[SPEAKER_01]: She's been in a long life.
21:32
[SPEAKER_01]: She's really, really good at.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:36
[SPEAKER_00]: came into prominence because she was on my show Ozark, which is another show I haven't seen.
21:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she's really, really great.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this depiction of the silver server.
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's just a nude person with silver skin.
21:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is the first time I've been terrified of the silver server.
21:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she was scary to me.
21:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she had death in her eyes.
21:57
[SPEAKER_00]: She just didn't care.
21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:58
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an ominous in this one.
22:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a shot where she flies up into space and human torch, so as after her.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: and the surfboard stops and he's coming up from underneath.
22:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And just sort of see her head emerge from like the other side of the board.
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh shit.
22:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's nice.
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she's other world land.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, they flying to space, they have faster than like travel.
22:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:21
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the design is more than just aesthetics in this case now.
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We are dealing with a universe that has been changed by what the fantastic four had, have brought.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They went into space.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: This is their origin story.
22:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We get it in sort of an opening montage.
22:37
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of news reals.
22:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of news.
22:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I realize it's interesting.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I'm fine.
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only a time savers so that we don't have to actually do the whole origin story.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But the time savers ironically takes up a lot of time.
22:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The first to have a significant percentage is clips from the news.
22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Very fine.
22:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But these four people went up into space.
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: They were bombarded with cosmic rays, the nature of which they don't really know, but that's what sort of gave their bodies their super powers.
23:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And they came back because they were interested in this with their super knowledge, their nerdy obsession with science and their willingness to research into this to build these numerical technologies.
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And because they were also celebrities, people listened to them, which allowed Sue Storm to say, wait a minute.
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we should be okay to one another.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we should unite all these people and just sort of share this technology.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's be the, let's actually be role models.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Star Trek.
23:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I like it.
23:34
[SPEAKER_00]: The presence of superheroes would, in a very practical sense, turn the world into a utopia.
23:45
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a very optimistic view, but in this universe we're doing that.
23:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I appreciate that these fantastic four, although there's like a couple scenes of them doing like head-to-hand fighting.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not bruzers.
23:55
[SPEAKER_00]: These people don't charge into combat with weapons.
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
23:58
[SPEAKER_00]: The most violent thing that happens is Mr. Fantastic kicks a monkey into the Hudson River.
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's unlike a little, and that's in a news where it's very, very short.
24:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not about the action isn't about
24:10
[SPEAKER_01]: violence.
24:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The action is about problem with all the problem solving.
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So what happens without going into a ton of detail, it's been out for a while, but whatever.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They run into galactis and galactis is like, glass basically gives them an ultimatum and they're not going to do it.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Galactis is a giant.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a huge
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Tim Story Films, I think they weren't able to do a giant or maybe they would look too silly.
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't find a design so they turned it into a sort of like a space-eating cloud.
24:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, which had no personality and didn't work.
24:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Jack Kirby image of this giant giant big odd thing.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what.
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Fucking looks cool.
24:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks cool.
24:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks cool.
24:53
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a way I know it sounds.
24:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I have the one thing you needed to change because in the original version of Galactus, he had a big G. You don't need that.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Good for you for taking that out.
25:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, he's fine.
25:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He looks bizarre.
25:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're worldly.
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like the filmmakers did a really good job of capturing the scale.
25:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course, especially when we first see him.
25:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, oh yeah, and the way like he sort of emerges you think there's like this giant machine and then you realize that these just oh wait that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a one single be and the decision to cast Ralph innocent as a Galactus his voice perfect
25:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's one of the movements as well.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, but like specifically the voice.
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got the voice.
25:35
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got one of the, he's like, he was a James Joel Jones and Marlon Brant and, and, uh, Orson Wells.
25:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, epic, deep delivery.
25:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you wanted to like recast Darth Vader, Ralphinson would not be a bad idea.
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he was the guy with the really scary voice in the first Omen, right?
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Wasn't he the... At the beginning, yeah.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, and then throughout.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: He was that guy.
25:58
[SPEAKER_01]: He was the dad and the witch.
26:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right, all he was in I think was a game of thrones like yeah, he's he's been in all of Robert's movies Yeah, he was in Nusferante wasn't in the lighthouse, but yeah, fair enough, but yeah, he's got a wonderfully deep booming voice perfect casting But basically what happens is the fantastic where I've to come back to earth and Galactus is coming they weren't able to solve the problem and they have to figure out how to solve it your point of reference Pub Culturally was Star Trek I totally get it mine
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Go math, which is an issue of harmony.
26:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we had a podcast for a year called Thank Godzilla.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Friday where we reviewed every single Godzilla and Godzilla adjacent film.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the Godzilla adjacent films film that eventually tied into Godzilla in a later film.
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: is a disaster movie from the sixties called Gorath from the director of the original godzilla Gorath was a basically a giant like rogue planet that was coming for the planet earth and there was nothing we could do to stop it
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of Earth scientists, all of every country in the world, banded together, much like you do in this movie.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And their plan is to move the Earth.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They installed giant like jet engines and like the polar ice gaps to try to just push it to the side so that the planet won't collide with them.
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's such a fucking ridiculous idea.
27:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But what else are you gonna do?
27:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's not what the fantastic for try to do, but it's not dissimilar either in terms of like, we're going to solve the problem in a way that would only make sense in a comic book.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that.
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I think when we have years right, it's problem solving.
27:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also trying to solve a problem, not by beating Galactus up.
27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't be that won't solve our problem.
27:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to actually save the Earth and a completely different way.
27:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to unify the Earth behind us.
27:59
[SPEAKER_01]: All of this stuff is good.
28:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually think this is a low bar, but this is clearly the best fantastic form of it.
28:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's by a and I rather and rather fond of the quorum in one but come on.
28:13
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't really really good movie.
28:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to be like But I'm watching you didn't wonder myself Not that I knew you're taking on a yet, but why am I doing this less than with me?
28:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is this, what's holding this back for me?
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's frustrating because in many respects, all I wanted was the best fantastic form of music.
28:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little boring, I got it.
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But then it's so good that the places where it falls a little flat for me really stood out.
28:39
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, all the A plot, all the Galactus stuff is pretty solid.
28:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not seeing a lot of interiority to these characters.
28:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We've abandoned the idea of Ben Grimm being conflicted about his transformation.
28:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Johnny is basically just distracted by a research project the entire time.
29:01
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't really have even the character beats that he will talk about.
29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, Johnny.
29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a womanizer.
29:08
[SPEAKER_01]: We never see that.
29:10
[SPEAKER_01]: That's purely academic.
29:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't even see that in a single shot of him walking into a building with a girl on his arm.
29:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have none of that.
29:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Read and sue have a little bit of concern about whether or not their child will be born okay.
29:22
[SPEAKER_01]: There worried he'll be mutated or something.
29:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They have their cosmic superpowers.
29:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're not terribly conflicted by it.
29:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a few moments in the plot where they disagree on the course of action.
29:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, Reed seems to feel kind of guilty about what he did to his friends, but that's something he mentions in a couple of scenes.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Sue is fine, except for the machinations of the A plot.
29:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not seeing a lot of interesting character work.
29:49
[SPEAKER_01]: These are basically just stock action figures, versions of this that are going through the plot.
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, I think there's so many moments in this movie where you could have had more
30:02
[SPEAKER_01]: internal conflict, or at the very least, more interesting interactions between the characters.
30:07
[SPEAKER_01]: When things are going bad, I'll just make her last point.
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: When things are going bad, Ben Graham goes back to his hometown, his history.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: His own neighborhood.
30:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
30:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a woman who teaches school there played by Natasha Leon.
30:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Natasha Leon.
30:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Natasha Leon.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: who is barely in this movie?
30:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like to the extent that I wonder how they got her.
30:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it a bigger role on the original script?
30:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: She's just passing by the sad on the way to poker face.
30:34
[SPEAKER_00]: She gave you a lot of into scenes, Ash.
30:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's in the movie for less than sixty seconds.
30:40
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you want now?
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Do it for fifty bucks.
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like there's even like a bit where like everyone's like thinks the world is gonna end and she's in a synagogue and it comes to my Jewish neighborhood and she's like, are you here for spiritual advice?
30:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, no, I'm just here for you.
30:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Ben Grimm is one of the very few very Jewish characters.
30:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna have them here.
30:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let him be Jewish.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to see him like friends from the town mode, you know, just studying.
31:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw I saw a Superman again with a lady friend who
31:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And she had a good point, which is, you know, Superman is a Jewish myth.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: How well is he probably?
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but like even so, like he's Moses, he was sent down the interlactic river to protect all of us
31:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, they've never really embraced that.
31:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Have they?
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: No, in fact.
31:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I think canonically he thinks he's methodically.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, canonically Superman is raised in Kansas with by United Methodists.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not by Jews.
31:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like it's interesting because like there's so much ingrained in him.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I would be nice to see some of them.
31:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sometimes a Ben Green was the perfect opportunity.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, can you imagine like a scene where they take the baby Superman to his bris?
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: and the rabbi gets really frustrated because it just doesn't work.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
32:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That's something you have to tackle at some point.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But listen.
32:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, there's a lot of like little, there's a lot of character things that I thought got dropped just so that they could just focus on me.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'll say this.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I appreciate that the characters are a little broad.
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: A because they are
32:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They're sort of the masters of this universe.
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the leaders of the world.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't need to have conflicts because they've already arrived.
32:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big part of it.
32:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, man.
32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You look like conflict.
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: People with a lot of power and charge everything, you've conflict all the time.
32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose so.
32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But Reed Richards is like a super nerd.
32:43
[SPEAKER_00]: He's constantly thinking of what could go wrong.
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a little bit of a worry word.
32:47
[SPEAKER_00]: That's his only character.
32:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.
32:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's fine in this universe for these characters to not be necessarily conflicted by something because they've already figured it out.
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to maintain what they have rather than overcome something.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about Star Trek.
33:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, comparing this to Star Trek.
33:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Star Trek, the next generation started with a mandate from Gene Rodney that could be no interpersonal conflict on the ship.
33:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And that really made his writing staff struggle because that flies in the face of all television writing logic and really most Western narrative logic.
33:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What they realized over time is that in order to have those kinds of stories that they want to tell each episode needed to be a story about personal improvement.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Jordi LaForge is going through something this week.
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Data is going through something in the next week.
33:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to crush and show them the next week.
33:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so on.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't even have that.
33:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Well imagine Star Trek, where every character is perfectly crusher.
33:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like a boring Star Trek.
33:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we have with Fantastic Fool.
33:47
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my point.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my point.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's a missed opportunity.
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's maybe, you know, if this movie had bigger problems, I wouldn't even be thinking about this, but it doesn't have bigger problems.
33:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking about this.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing that I think about when I'm thinking about this movie is that we're going back and we're very much
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're going for retrofuturism, the way that we thought the future would be like in the nineteen sixties.
34:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
34:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a certain charm to that.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, what we're doing is fetishizing the nineteen sixties.
34:16
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of other things were happening in the nineteen sixties.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one.
34:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually my point.
34:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:21
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no worse now.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a multicultural world.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that part is good.
34:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't get me wrong.
34:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But my point is this, that's also
34:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't find that terribly interesting.
34:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like, I feel like you can, because it's all fixed.
34:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's your ideal superhero movie, because we talked about this and you even wrote a newsletter about what you think a superhero needs to move in hands-in, but that's before you.
34:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So your ideal superhero movie is one in which everything is fine.
34:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
34:51
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not or a drama, so what?
34:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say that's dramatic.
34:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, you're thinking of this like a screenwriter.
35:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You're thinking of this from a script level.
35:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You're thinking of this.
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It does have a script, but you're focusing very heavily on this idea that a character needs to have
35:13
[SPEAKER_00]: some sort of internal conflict or some sort of growth.
35:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not in order for the story to be good.
35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not fair enough, but let me let me just clarify before we move on.
35:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, my point is there.
35:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying we need a ton.
35:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying that if a character has none, they seem less real to me.
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
35:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, in a way that even on a fantasy universe, I want to be able to connect with them.
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But they are kind of unreal and I kind of liked the unreality of this because it reminded me of a, it just, it presented a world that I wish we could live in.
35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like if you're going to tell a superhero story, it's okay.
35:49
[SPEAKER_00]: to start with the superheroes and expand outward into the rest of the planet.
35:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are two few superhero stories, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and especially in Superman, they don't do that.
36:01
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not enough imagination in the characters themselves to use their superpowers in the creative way.
36:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like the Fantastic Four
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: did it all, that they were able to fix the world with their superpowers, and I like that it's just sort of set in that world.
36:16
[SPEAKER_01]: See, I like a lot of that, but I feel like we've sacrificed a lot of that we didn't need to sacrifice in order to get there, and it leaves the film feeling a little shallow from that.
36:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're presented with this gigantic cosmic horror from beyond the stars, and this scary silver being that can pass through solid matter.
36:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some awesome shots in this movie.
36:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a silver server.
36:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still reserved for surfs on lava in one scene.
36:41
[SPEAKER_00]: She shoots the curl across a warp field.
36:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm coming across as the naysay or much like you can't cross the naysay or Superman, but the difference is that I really like this movie.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: My thing is why don't I love it the way you do it.
36:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm asking myself this question.
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are these little things, these little opportunities, character stuff, the magic stuff, the way that they fantasize about this world that struck me as a little superficial.
37:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And it didn't have to be.
37:13
[SPEAKER_01]: One more thing I do want to say before we move on.
37:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I really, really like
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul Walter Houser is the mole man.
37:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because he's a guy in a suit.
37:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's just having fun.
37:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when they finally included the mole man and then in a movie and I'm glad he ended up actually being a fun character and not just some random throw away villain.
37:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Paul or Houser is really having a good time.
37:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That was really smart play.
37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but in any case, yeah, we both like it.
37:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You just like to a lot more than I did.
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I really liked it.
37:39
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's move on to a very different movie.
37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, it is a like a sea sequel.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: to a classic movie franchise, The Naked Gun, based on police squad.
37:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, if you're unfamiliar with the history of the Naked Gun, you may remember that in the late seventies, seventies, seventies we started seeing.
38:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was, but before that we had the Kentucky Friday movie.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We started seeing the, the ascendancy of the Spoof genre as we currently from David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrams.
38:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Zucker Abrams Zucker is easy to move.
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and, and to be fair, they clearly took several cues from what Mel Brooks had done with like blazing saddles and young Frankenstein.
38:21
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to take something that people are familiar with as genre, a particular type of film, and we're going to,
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: completely disrespected.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna play all the rhythms, but we're gonna mock it mercilessly, mercilessly, and we're gonna fill it with the whole bunch of silly jokes.
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they did that for airplane, which was a satire of what was at the time a blockbuster disaster genre, specifically the airport movies, and like the first airport movie, which is about an airline disaster, was an Oscar-winning film, it was huge.
38:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, in its wake, we had films like The Poseidon Adventure.
38:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that was after airport.
38:55
[SPEAKER_01]: We had the towering in Furno, which was nominated for Best Picture.
38:58
[SPEAKER_01]: These were giant ep... These were the epics of the time.
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have the Superman movies weren't there yet.
39:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Airplane came along and pissed all over that.
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And to be fair, it was on the way.
39:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But Airplane just completely mocked and burstlessly.
39:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were, it's one of the funniest movies ever made.
39:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The joke, they'd hit to Mr. Joe Cracio, even for the stuff that has an age great, like specific references to commercials that nobody remembers anymore.
39:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So the whole scene just plays kind of weird.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still funny, but it's not, you don't get the reference anymore.
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Jim never vomits at home.
39:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's a different, two commercial that nobody remembers anymore.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll say this.
39:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still funny.
39:36
[SPEAKER_00]: ZAZ were exploding television.
39:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Mel Brooks was going back to a lot of like borscht built theatrical traditions and it's moving film as well, especially with young Frankenstein in particular and the blazing shadows where they fight off the set of the movie and out of reality.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The story goes that they stayed up late and they were just
39:57
[SPEAKER_00]: watching late night television, the oldest random stuff.
40:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what Kentucky Fried movie was inspired by.
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They wrote it.
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: John Landis directed that one.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were just sort of flipping through channels and they were kind of emulating that experience on the big screen, which was novel at the time.
40:12
[SPEAKER_00]: This idea of staying up late and watching TV all night.
40:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Channel surfing was kind of a new experience in nineteen seventy.
40:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And late night is when they played the programming that wasn't good enough for primetime.
40:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So they were to old bad movies if you catch like Edward movies on it.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Redubbs kung fu pictures.
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We're so badly edited.
40:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They came across as like really terrible.
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Kung Fu pictures were camp in the United States for a long time because of those recon.
40:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because they were recut and they were redubbed and they were not taken very seriously, which is a damn shame because a lot of those movies were genuine classics, but they weren't presented.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't clean up.
40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like hurried into Grindhouse and on to late night TV.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where Kentucky very movie came from and they were able to catch
40:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they even had like an early VCR, like they were taping things and they were able to catch the film zero hour, which was one of these offsuits of the disaster genre.
41:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, your power predated the disaster genre as we know it.
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Zero hour was in nineteen fifties moving.
41:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a little later than that.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: The original, in zero hour there was a couple of inversions of zero hour that got, man, it was in a different type of way thing.
41:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it was about there was food poisoning on a plane, the pilots are incapacitated and someone on the plane has to land it.
41:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Specifically, a pilot with PTSD.
41:26
[SPEAKER_00]: has to land it.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the story of airplane.
41:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, airplane is actually remake of zero out.
41:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
41:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And, but, and they even took a lot of the same lines of dialogue that were that they thought were hilarious, you know, like we have to find someone who can fly this, who could not only fly this plane, but who didn't have this picture for dinner.
41:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a funny line.
41:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They were dead series about it.
41:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, and there are some other way written by the same guy who wrote airport.
41:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no good.
41:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he had a niche.
41:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess so.
41:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Get that guy.
41:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I learned the writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
42:00
[SPEAKER_00]: He writes so many of like Indiana Jones knockoffs and jungle adventure pictures because they knew we could do it.
42:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
42:08
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote the phantom same screen writers, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of them, anyway, they're multiple.
42:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they, uh, Zachary Bromzucker, uh, decided to, that same year, turn around and also spoof, uh, cop dramas that were really being a set of days.
42:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
42:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, they've been big since the dawn of TV.
42:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like going all the way back to DragMan, but yeah, they'd
42:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The cop genre was not a whimsical genre.
42:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very stone-faced.
42:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the thing that made it work, because police squad was airplane buffer cop shows.
42:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But the thing is, and the reason why airplane was so perfect, and the reason why cop shows were such a perfect fodder as well.
42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have a sense of humor.
42:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Zero hour didn't have a sense of humor.
42:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Dragnet had no fucking sense of humor.
42:55
[SPEAKER_01]: the banner check and like all all of those other cop shows in the nineteen seventies at little to no sense of humor they were and they still are to the state cop again the cops are right the cops are protecting you the cops are badass and if there is a bad cop a good cop is out there to put him away
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: cops save lives there is nothing funny about being a cop and then police squad comes along and again takes a big ol shit on that and it's hilarious there was no police squad what the last five episodes six episodes yeah four actually yeah before they can't it and then re-rand the episodes like leader in the summer
43:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when they ran the last two.
43:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were so funny, they had such a cool audience that they would keep replaying them.
43:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they would show up on like, just those six episodes.
43:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Comedy Central used to run them all the time.
43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Leslie Nielsen played Lieutenant Frank Dreben here.
43:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And Leslie Nielsen was best known for playing heavies at the time.
43:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was actually played it very stone-traced, like played it straight.
43:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
43:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was able to say these like really ridiculous lines of dialogue with the straight face.
43:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the whole thing.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't have a sense of humor.
44:01
[SPEAKER_01]: He was doing it very seriously.
44:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So every time he said something absurd, he didn't sell it like a joke.
44:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the genius of that.
44:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are you?
44:07
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you get in here on a locksmith?
44:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm a locksmith.
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the funniest lines everyone.
44:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not delivering it right.
44:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Liam makes a note.
44:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But when it is, police won't even succeed as a show.
44:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But who does to whoever realize we can make this work weekly?
44:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just too much.
44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you look at episodes five and six of police squad, they're already running out of material.
44:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They're repeating a lot of ads.
44:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But we can workshop enough gags to get a movie out of it every couple of years.
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember, they repeated a lot of the gags for the movie.
44:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Eight years had passed since this show went off the air.
44:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but Zucker Abram Zucker, uh, they had a hit with, uh, airplane.
44:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Their next film top secret wasn't a big hit.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the funniest comedies ever.
44:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
44:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's beloved now.
44:51
[SPEAKER_01]: The time not.
44:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Not big hit.
44:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But they were able to sort of gather up their brothers and make, uh, the naked gun colon from the files of police squad.
44:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
45:00
[SPEAKER_00]: In
45:02
[SPEAKER_01]: they constructed a cop movie out of it and it's again it's all the fodder you need such a damn funny movie it's a very funny movie the sequels they could gun two and a half and then they could gun thirty three and a third they're both very funny are they like do they have jokes that that land flat yeah
45:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're onto another joke within five seconds.
45:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So generally speaking, we're good.
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a big fan of like, there's some like transphobia in there.
45:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some jokes that don't land good today.
45:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Ninety eight percent of the jokes are still funny.
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Or at least as funny as they ever were.
45:38
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing that isn't great about them is that O.J.
45:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Simpson was in them.
45:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But he played a character who was horribly mutilated and refilled, which ironically makes that a little bit more watchful now.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: There were hit films.
45:56
[SPEAKER_01]: They had their time.
45:58
[SPEAKER_01]: They ran out of steam.
45:59
[SPEAKER_01]: The spoof genre started to make less and less money.
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They did three.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They were good movies.
46:04
[SPEAKER_01]: They went away.
46:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They've been talking about rebooting the naked gun for a while.
46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But the question is, who do you get?
46:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I...
46:12
[SPEAKER_00]: that Spoof genre moved into this very dark place.
46:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And that kind of light-weird send-up of media wasn't only had a certain length of shelf life.
46:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't last.
46:26
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time we got around to spy hard, people weren't going to these movies anymore.
46:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd run out of movies.
46:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And things kind of like took on new life after the scary movie series started to become big, with the Freeberg Seltzer movies, which were
46:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Taking the same ideas that Zucker Abrams Zucker put out, but making them not funny at all.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's two, there's a very different one.
46:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I think scary movie mostly works because the movies it was lampooning, the neo slasher boom.
46:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Although those were films where meta and sometimes funny, they were taken themselves very seriously.
47:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it made sense to take the piss out of them.
47:05
[SPEAKER_00]: There were tropes to unpack.
47:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
47:06
[SPEAKER_01]: There were things that people were taking very seriously about them that you could play with and they got away with it.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: When the date movie started to come out, the superhero movies, the epic movie started to come out, they're focused started to get a really, really broad and be they started spoofing stuff that had a sense of humor.
47:26
[SPEAKER_01]: They started spoofing stuff that didn't.
47:28
[SPEAKER_01]: A spoof isn't going to tear it down or make a point or even just make something respectable less respectable.
47:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just doing stuff.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And it felt really unfocused and most of their jokes weren't even jokes.
47:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just, hey, remember that?
47:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they were recognizable.
47:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks.
47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We're doing the Jennifer Lopez is a character in this movie, but her butt is very big.
47:54
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the whole joke.
47:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm cartoonishly bit.
48:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm laughing already.
48:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So the genre kind of died for a bit.
48:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of died for a bit.
48:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to those movies.
48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we are here or back again.
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way to really kind of breathe life into it again is to bank on nostalgia.
48:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're making another film called The Naked Gun.
48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a sequel to The Naked Gun in that it stars Liam Neeson as the son of Frank Dredden.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Brain casting yes because Liam Neeson also not he's been some funny stuff he's never
48:30
[SPEAKER_01]: He's always been super serious.
48:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Even when he was in a silly comedy, I get a cameo, one of the peds.
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
48:36
[SPEAKER_01]: The joke was he's super super serious.
48:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He played it straight.
48:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He has the same mistake.
48:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And unlike Leslie Nielsen, who hadn't really played like a hard-willed cop a lot before, Leslie Nielsen has played hard-willed tough guys a lot, especially in the last fifteen years or so.
48:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That he's like his late career renaissance.
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's doing everything he does in a movie like non-stop or a walk among the tombstones.
49:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But now there are farts.
49:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Now there are silly stupid jokes throughout the entire thing.
49:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I love about this movie, it's very funny.
49:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep a shade for direct to take it in pop star.
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows what he's doing.
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows from funny.
49:13
[SPEAKER_00]: He did pop star.
49:14
[SPEAKER_00]: He did that chip and Dale movie, which was pretty good.
49:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That was really good.
49:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a funny director character who actually understands how to tell jokes.
49:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But I love that this movie.
49:25
[SPEAKER_01]: is actually, first off, cop movies and shows are still the same as ever.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They haven't changed.
49:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They still spoof that.
49:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:33
[SPEAKER_00]: People still don't want to answer.
49:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Law and order is still out there, Reagan and the money.
49:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's taken until super seriously.
49:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You can tear that down.
49:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Liam Neeson is tearing down his whole career.
49:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I look at this movie now, and I realize not that I was constantly revisiting earlier Liam Neeson films, but if I ever watched nonstop again, I'm gonna be seeing Frank Dreb in June.
49:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna be a funny note.
49:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this Frank Dreb in just like the Leslie Nielsen character is he's a tough sort of straight-laced character, but he's also kind of a moral.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a cops can't break the laws.
50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Since when?
50:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he's kind of this not very heroic character Yeah, takes everything very very seriously, but it's very incompetent Yeah, like he drives a car and writes a hole in a prison wall for him Yeah, and I think he's very good Yeah, starring opposite him as Pamela Anderson also very very good.
50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's always been a very good actress, but you know, well, you have that material for a long time
50:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a very funny role, but she was asked to be sort of like the token babe character.
50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: First up, everyone was a token babe character.
50:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess every character on babe.
50:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the thing about Baywatch.
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Baywatch was a show that was
50:50
[SPEAKER_01]: partly kitsch, but they really were trying to pick themselves very, very seriously.
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: The show wasn't particularly good, but it was fun to watch, and to become a huge one of the biggest hits ever.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, gigantic huge succession in the nineteen nineties, and Pamela Anderson was only on for a few seasons, but she became like the breakout star of that show.
51:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's because
51:10
[SPEAKER_01]: She had more charisma than pretty much everyone else on that show.
51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Like her and Hasselhoff, like those were the two.
51:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though she didn't always have a lot to do, she was magnetic.
51:19
[SPEAKER_01]: She very, very clearly had natural star power.
51:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet when she tried to make other things of her career,
51:28
[SPEAKER_01]: being the sex pot that they had, like, built her career around and, like, you know, various magazines and model shoots and so on.
51:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, the sex tape came out, which is horrible to that happen.
51:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Her privacy was invaded.
51:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
51:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And that became part of her, that I'm sure that heard her career unfairly, but I'm sure it did.
51:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It was hard for her to get serious roles.
51:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And when she finally had, like, a big breakout movie role, it was barbed wire.
51:53
[SPEAKER_01]: A movie, which is, let's be fair, camp.
51:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Not the best camp, but it's not her fault.
51:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She did good in it.
52:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's it's sci-fi Casablanca.
52:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the story of Casablanca.
52:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's but's fun.
52:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But by way of like tank girl like that.
52:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Take it at the point seriously.
52:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So like she never really had
52:11
[SPEAKER_01]: a really good showcase for what she could do until last year she had the last sugar what she's amazing in she was seriously had Oscar buzz and I wish she'd been nominated because she deserved it she's gives an amazing performance that movie she proved that she can do drama and we always knew she was funny she's fucking hilarious in this movie
52:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Really giving her off.
52:31
[SPEAKER_00]: She's strolling herself into this and she's doing the same thing with me.
52:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's she's playing it completely straight.
52:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, always really absurd.
52:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
52:38
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's a funny movie.
52:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think it's gonna be funnier if you see it with more people if there's energy in the room because my wife and I saw this and empty theater with one other person.
52:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, energy is kind of low.
52:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We're shortling
52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no one's very funny.
52:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, we're not full on over at full and out overseas.
52:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I was, I was, I was.
52:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Christopher is a very skilled comedy director.
52:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
52:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But he is, he and the screenwriters of this movie are not cracking the whip on the jokes.
53:06
[SPEAKER_00]: The same way that Zucker Abrams, Zucker did.
53:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think anybody can.
53:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just sort of their particular form of lightning.
53:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So if they're not coming, the jokes are not coming so fast and furious that you're breathless.
53:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You can kind of see it coming.
53:19
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some really funny running gags.
53:20
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a bit with coffee cups that they just threw out the entire room.
53:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And which is weird because it's the same joke they had in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
53:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Every time Willem to foe walked in a room someone handed him a cup of coffee.
53:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
53:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But like here's that to a certain degree.
53:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like there's like leave me some walks of room.
53:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The hand him a cup of coffee.
53:35
[SPEAKER_01]: He walks into another room with that coffee.
53:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They hand him a bigger cup of coffee and throws that cup of coffee to the ground.
53:39
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a bit where he's driving around, giving one of his inner monologues.
53:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And as he's driving just a hand just casually
53:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we see in the background, he's like speeding down the Pacific coast highway, but then somebody's still handing him a call.
53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a funny joke.
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
53:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good, good visual gag.
53:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing that I keep a favorite game gets, I think, and the reason why the hit-to-miss ratio on this note is really great in joke wise.
54:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's effective.
54:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you a chance for knows that in order for the silliness to land, we needed to be ready for something serious.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though we're in a spoof movie, he needs, like, leave me some camp break character.
54:15
[SPEAKER_01]: No, because we need a story of some kind.
54:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We took to hang the jokes on.
54:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, it's a story, but also it's beat for beat.
54:22
[SPEAKER_01]: We know
54:24
[SPEAKER_01]: what will happen next in a cop show or a cop movie.
54:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, yeah, it's time we need to like get this car.
54:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This dead man is in a car and the car is like in a lake.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to remove the car from the lake.
54:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're used to like, we'd see that'll winch coming out or something like that.
54:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Very dramatic like the end of psycho and instead they use a claw machine like an arcade.
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: that's funny because for a split second you know where that's going and then they flip it on you and we've we're so familiar with all the clichés that all I need to do is reset it to serious for like a second and then boom the silliness hits yeah it's really really good it's it's good peace second
54:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a philosophy that Zuckerbrain Zucker had.
55:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll notice that there's going to be a period in each of their movies where there's not a lot of gags.
55:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a little like three or four minute period where they're doing exposition and they're building mood and there's not like a lot of slapstick going on.
55:14
[SPEAKER_01]: The ground in the audience a little bit.
55:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it grounds the audience and in their words, it's so you can go to the bathroom.
55:19
[SPEAKER_00]: They knew people would have to leave at some point.
55:22
[SPEAKER_00]: a little bit of a break.
55:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that's something this naked gun is missing.
55:26
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not building any kind of mood.
55:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no sense of like triumph or fun in watching Frank Dreben get the bad guy.
55:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a little bit more silly.
55:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's trifling.
55:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit of a throwaway.
55:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's odd that we're nostalgic for a script of a comedy.
55:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's all about our comedies.
55:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like a lot of a lot of recent comedies have been very either character oriented or very comedian oriented and that the comedians can just sort of riff and say funny things and panic and the things are very loosely.
56:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't feel as carefully constructed as say a Monty Python movie where every joke is builds up to a very different things really.
56:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like the timing could have been a lot tighter in this movie.
56:13
[SPEAKER_00]: There's I know Liam Neeson is playing it straight, but
56:19
[SPEAKER_00]: He needs to know what comedic timing is, even as he plays it straight.
56:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a lot of scenes where he could have done that a little better.
56:28
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a bit where he gets very upset about episodes of Buffy the Vampires.
56:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I thought was dead weight.
56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I thought that whole bit wasn't that funny.
56:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That was that was funny to me, but okay.
56:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That felt like Todd McFarlane is a producer on this movie.
56:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like Farlane.
56:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Todd McFarlane.
56:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, excuse me.
56:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Seth McFarlane.
56:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Not Todd McFarlane.
56:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Seth McFarlane I thought he was a at first that it was going to direct and then I thought it was going to write and it turns out he's just producing but some of the
56:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The pop culture references feel very systemic farline, like just sort of extraneous sides that are only going to mean a lot to somebody exactly Seth McFarlane's A. I will say that there's one extraneous side in this movie that is the best movie of the year so far.
57:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bit in the middle, as if you've seen it.
57:15
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've seen the trailer for the naked gun, you might remember there's one shot of a living snowman running down a hallway shooting a gun.
57:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not gonna tell you how that comes to pass.
57:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the best part of the movie.
57:31
[SPEAKER_01]: increasingly of the opinion that we need like an award and award ceremonies for the best part of a movie.
57:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like just like for for ten minutes this movie was amazing.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like you would have given it to like the first act of John Wick III before he gets out of New York after everyone's hunting him down.
57:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You give it to the rock DJ scene from better man.
57:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, there you go.
57:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like just like one chunk of a movie that's just sublime even though the whole movie can't sustain it.
57:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the snowman scene.
58:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Good, seems bright.
58:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, I like it more than you, but I still think it's really, really fine.
58:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We should move on because we have a lot to get through.
58:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't see the bad guys, too.
58:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about the bad guys.
58:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you see the bad guys won?
58:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Most of it.
58:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I've watched part of it with my son.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I missed that when I first came out.
58:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I finally caught up with it not that long ago.
58:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And the bad guys, the first one, is really good.
58:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really, really good animated movie.
58:26
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're unfamiliar or you're hazy about it, it's an animated heist movie about a heist team comprised of animals that people are typically scared of, a wolf, a spider, a piranha, a shark, a shark, and a snake.
58:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're all played by people like Sam Rockwell and Aquafina and Mark Marin and Greg Robinson.
58:49
[SPEAKER_01]: They steal things.
58:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They're bad guys.
58:51
[SPEAKER_01]: People are afraid of them.
58:54
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the reasons they steal things is because people were afraid of them anyway, so they might slowly lean into it.
58:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they are caught, they decide they're going to play a play.
59:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, no, no, we're going to reform.
59:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us an opportunity to prove ourselves.
59:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And at first, it's a scam.
59:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But then they realize they like being good.
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't actually want to be bad guys all the time.
59:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they try to redeem themselves and end up saving the town.
59:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone's like, oh, the bad guys are good.
59:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Really good movie.
59:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The story works good.
59:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The acting is solid.
59:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The animation is gorgeous.
59:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really funny.
59:24
[SPEAKER_01]: How are we going to do bad guys too?
59:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're going to do that thing where nothing in the first moment.
59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Learn their lesson again.
59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they learned their lesson.
59:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They learned their lesson.
59:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem with society is I'm learning the lesson.
59:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So they were they were formed.
59:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They serve their time, they went to prison, and now they're out of prison, they're unparalleled, and they're trying to move into society as decent human beings, or animals, I guess.
59:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the only animals in this world, by the way.
59:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people are human, but they're some anthropomorphic animals, and it's a little confusing.
59:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of muppet laws, but it's like I'm curious where the, where the internal logic is about who is what, but whatever, it's not really important.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to have a real respectable life, and they can't, because even though they have saved the day on the first movie, nobody trusts them.
1:00:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a cute bit at the beginning where the wolf applies for a job at a bank.
1:00:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, yeah, that's one of the best times in my life in banks.
1:00:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, yeah, you robbed this one three times.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, that was this bank?
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Cute.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, so no one wants to hire them, and they start realizing that they don't have a lot of options.
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to get kicked out of their apartment.
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What else is there but crime?
1:00:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Now to their credit, what they decide to do is there's another string of heists around town and they're like, we're gonna help the police catch them.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But then it turns out it may be one of them who did it.
1:00:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they're torn between wanting to catch the guy and wanting to protect him and yada yada yada.
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The long short is what this movie is really really about his prisoner recidivism.
1:01:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a really kind of a like it's like once you once you like don't let the happy ending that first movie kick in it becomes about society not letting them retain themselves which is real problem.
1:01:12
[SPEAKER_01]: People go to prison, a lot of people serve their time, they want to not live that life again, but societies and set up to give them more opportunities to give them a chance.
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of people like, oh, you are a criminal, I am wary of you.
1:01:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they don't have a lot of other options in terms of how to live their life and how to make ends meet.
1:01:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fucked up.
1:01:37
[SPEAKER_01]: not really great fodder for kids' movies kind of depressing and it's in its presence, but I think kids can understand it.
1:01:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I think kids can understand it.
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I just find it sad.
1:01:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I found myself sad a lot while I was watching this funny movie.
1:01:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's supposed to be very funny.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But in any case, they end up with another team of criminals who are framing them and say, listen, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll
1:02:07
[SPEAKER_01]: She sent the air of Owen widows, but she's a cat.
1:02:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Whoever came up with that is a genius.
1:02:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I'm talking about it.
1:02:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They want the bad guys help to do this really big heist.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And they do that, they'll help clear their name.
1:02:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But it turns out it's all part of the thing.
1:02:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It ends up in an outer space with like a gold laser.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, OK, we've kind of lost the thread here.
1:02:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're just doing a bunch of weird animated shit.
1:02:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the thing.
1:02:40
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing terribly wrong with that.
1:02:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the end of the fucking world.
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is frustrating that the first film was so cohesive and really, all the fun stuff and all the characters stuff and all the thematics stuff really tied in together really effective way and just made a film that just worked from beginning to end.
1:02:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And now we have a film that tries to tackle like two big a theme for them to really deal with and the plot ends up becoming so ludicrous that it's just harder to really get invested in it and it ends up just feeling like a bunch of stuff that happened.
1:03:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So as sequels go, it's not painful.
1:03:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's some funny stuff in it.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't really live up to the first movie, which is a sham.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, it's still order.
1:03:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, on again, a sequel doesn't need to be better than the original.
1:03:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It just needs to be good and it's on right.
1:03:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And this one is just okay and it's on right.
1:03:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the first one was this good.
1:03:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we'd have a sequel.
1:03:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But first one is really good.
1:03:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So have you never seen that I highly recommend it?
1:03:40
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
1:03:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But what else did you see that I didn't see?
1:03:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that you didn't see?
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I saw the home.
1:03:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about the home.
1:03:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the home is the new horror film from James Demonico.
1:03:56
[SPEAKER_01]: James Demonico created the purge movies.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And if there was an air apparent to George Romero, I think it's got to be James Demonico.
1:04:04
[SPEAKER_01]: because the idea of the purge is kind of like the modern zombie thing.
1:04:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone else is out to get you to society is really really terrifying.
1:04:13
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain amount of immorality out there like society will crumble at any excuse.
1:04:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But unlike like the zombie movies where it's like a space virus or there's no more room in hell or whatever, people just turn into a rampaging homicidal mob because they have the option.
1:04:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're allowed to.
1:04:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's deeply cynical, but it feels right, honestly.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And I maintain that the purge movies, up and down though they may be, or maybe the most important political franchise we've had.
1:04:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're really going to decades from now we're going to look back on the twenty-tenths and we're going to say the purge movies kind of nailed it.
1:04:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The irony is that first purge movie is the worst one.
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, which made for the least amount of money, I have the least, least things to say.
1:05:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It just had such a tantalizing premise that kept on going back to it.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:05:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's back with a new thing.
1:05:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It is called the home.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It also wants to get at some big stuff, but it doesn't find a great way in.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Pete Davidson from Saturday Night Live, he plays a guy who is down on his luck.
1:05:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Stoner, he does graffiti, just because he is caught by the cops, he's been caught by the cops doing this a lot, and his foster parents say, listen, we can't really belly out of this one, but we were able to get you a deal for community service.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So you need to go work at this retirement home.
1:05:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:05:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We lied and said you were a good handyman.
1:05:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just going to go out there and be like a custodian.
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
1:05:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So he moves into this home for the elderly where the various old folks there are trying to fill their time.
1:06:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The main old folk there is played by John Glover.
1:06:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I love John Glover.
1:06:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:06:10
[SPEAKER_01]: John Glover is a great actor.
1:06:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He's really, really fun here.
1:06:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You can always rely on John Glover.
1:06:13
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll always bring it.
1:06:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but yeah, B. Davidson moves in and he starts realizing there's something sinister a foot.
1:06:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an old there's one of the women there who he forms like a bit of a bond with and he's actually like he's he's actually a really nice guy.
1:06:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, which actually hurts the movie because like wire
1:06:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You really didn't do anything that bad.
1:06:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, what are you going to do?
1:06:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to do a lot of hard time for graffiti.
1:06:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you lose this job, what are you going to do?
1:06:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing in prison.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He's really not a lot of stakes to that.
1:06:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that he didn't do any serious
1:07:00
[SPEAKER_01]: unpleasant crime really just means he's a little puppy dog and honestly that whole setup is kind of nothing but yeah yeah he bonds with this older woman and she basically just says you you need to watch yourself there's there's there's something horrible going on here and then the next day she falls off a roof and dies right in front of him and so he's something is a foot
1:07:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And he starts looking into things, like he's told he's not allowed to go to the top floor.
1:07:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And he breaks into the top floor.
1:07:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like a whole bunch of like catatonic people in wheelchairs, just sitting in a one big room, I will mainly looking at random televisions.
1:07:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember what I reviewed the manner the film with Barbara Hershey?
1:07:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It was part of that series, welcome to the Blum House.
1:07:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember vaguely, vaguely.
1:07:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, nobody remembers this series.
1:07:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a Blum House and Amazon teamed up to make.
1:07:56
[SPEAKER_00]: There was like six movies.
1:07:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:07:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were releasing them like one of those.
1:08:01
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them was called The Manor.
1:08:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, you're describing that movement.
1:08:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same movie.
1:08:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't know that for certain, but it sounds very similar.
1:08:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, he starts finding out, like, oh, some of these people may have been marked for maybe some kind of experiment or something is going on.
1:08:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The doctor who runs the place might be really, really creepy.
1:08:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, someone's like contacting me through some sinister website and someone wrote on my walls and stuff like it only be read with a black lie.
1:08:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Not it makes sense.
1:08:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it doesn't come together in the garage.
1:08:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the thing.
1:08:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to ruin it because first of course, I was pretty fucking predictable, but it's also like the end of the movie.
1:08:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to take that away from me, but I will say this.
1:08:49
[SPEAKER_01]: They try to make the fact that it doesn't make sense makes sense.
1:08:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:08:55
[SPEAKER_01]: In a way that kind of works on paper, like it does explain away a lot of the inconsistencies, but it also reveals that a lot of these inconsistencies were inherently a waste of time and pointless.
1:09:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There's most of the movie.
1:09:10
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a difference between a fake out and a bunch of shit not actually happening.
1:09:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, it feels like we wasted a whole bunch of time.
1:09:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we finally reveal what's really going on, it's got more of like a get out kind of vibe in that there's something going on.
1:09:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It speaks to a certain
1:09:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, we live in a world where older people are not like boomers, are not willing to relinquish any sort of power or anything to your generations.
1:09:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we don't the the average age of a person in Congress in the Senate is quite old.
1:09:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:09:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not giving power away.
1:09:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not holding on to it.
1:09:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's unique to anyone generation, but an old person is not going to give up the power they have.
1:10:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, but it's it feels particularly pronounced.
1:10:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, lately.
1:10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's extremely frustrating.
1:10:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There will be plays into that.
1:10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But in a way that is frankly,
1:10:12
[SPEAKER_01]: By the time they get to it, they have no time left to explore it.
1:10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it doesn't really feel like it's not like the whole movie was leading up to that, like, get out where you realize we've been playing with this theme the whole time.
1:10:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So a bunch of stuff kind of happens.
1:10:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a kind of cathartic bit of violence, but even that just feels like it's ripping off, get out.
1:10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're done.
1:10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's wrote.
1:10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not terribly just interesting to watch.
1:10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I like Pete Davidson as a performer, but
1:10:45
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not bringing anything interesting to this.
1:10:47
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like they told him, your goal is to be likable.
1:10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, his goal should have been to be interesting.
1:10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's not.
1:10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not bringing anything to the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character in the character
1:11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It just kind of doesn't come together.
1:11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels... This sounds like one of the movies that you're going to have to fight to remember that you saw at the end of the year.
1:11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I suspect that's the case, honestly.
1:11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're watching it, you probably seen worse movies of its ilk, but you've also seen somebody better movies of its ilk that it's just not going to stand out.
1:11:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a real bummer.
1:11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a real bummer.
1:11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to tell me about, I just talked about a horror movie, tell me about it together.
1:11:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, together is the directorial debut from Michael Shanks.
1:11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like a YouTube star, I believe.
1:11:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: He's done some short films.
1:12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, together is a film about a young, I guess they're not young.
1:12:06
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple in their mid thirties, but Dave Franco, the young man in this relationship, is young for his age.
1:12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: He's thirty-five and he is still trying to make it as a musician.
1:12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: He's young for his age.
1:12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: He's young for his age.
1:12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I said that on purpose.
1:12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You heard somebody say I'm old for my age.
1:12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lyric in rent.
1:12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Where have you been?
1:12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... he's young for his age and that he's still trying to make it work as a musician they live in the big city i think it's Seattle in Washington state uh... and he has has agreed to move to the like the hills like out into the country with uh... his girlfriend who's played by uh... alson brin alson brie not brie larson yes i think they're married in real life they are married in real life and
1:13:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They also produced it.
1:13:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael Shanks wrote and directed.
1:13:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Their relationship is very strange.
1:13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: At the farewell party, the Alice and Breaker character gets down on one knee and kind of proposes and he boxed in front of everybody.
1:13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: He's at everything's really awkward.
1:13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Just when she's starting to stand up and saying forget he's like, oh yes, yes, I'll do it.
1:13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, OK, now everything's weird.
1:13:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:13:30
[SPEAKER_00]: A long portions of this movie are devoted to those awkward moments between this couple that these two people who are kind of in this space where they're not sure if they're going to commit that hard yet.
1:13:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what do they want to bring to this relationship?
1:13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it supposed to look like?
1:13:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And he still has a dream of being a musician.
1:13:47
[SPEAKER_00]: She has a job as a
1:13:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Excuse me, is a school teacher?
1:13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Will they ever connect?
1:13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, will they ever connect?
1:13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Will they see each other?
1:13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Will they be together again?
1:13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: They go out walking in the woods, near this sort of woodbound cottage that they live in.
1:14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And it begins to rain, they slip down a hole and they fall into this, obliet.
1:14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And inside is some very strange thing.
1:14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like paintings that are covered over by rock.
1:14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like wooden church pews that are embedded in the walls.
1:14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's this very mysterious font of water in the middle of this room.
1:14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Dave Franco, drink some.
1:14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: They revealed that they have some secrets like they're both trying to give up cigarettes and they're both secretly having cigarettes and kind of thing.
1:14:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Things are entirely healthy between these two.
1:14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Dave Franco drinks the water.
1:14:40
[SPEAKER_00]: They fall asleep next to each other.
1:14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: They wake up and their legs are kind of stuck together a little bit.
1:14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to pull really hard to unstick their legs and have the wounds on their legs.
1:14:52
[SPEAKER_00]: As they go back, they really, Dave Franco starts to experience some very strange things.
1:14:57
[SPEAKER_00]: When his girlfriend leaves the house, like whenever she turns a corner, his body is also somehow being pulled along.
1:15:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And this happens when he's like starting to fall asleep.
1:15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the premise has been revealed in the preview, they're being somehow supernaturally
1:15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Pushed together in a way and when they touch they start to like their flesh starts to bond in this sick cronin burgian sort of way.
1:15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: They they're being driven together physically You can just call it shunting Well, it's gonna say imagine if society was a love story and that's when together is okay.
1:15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It has a lot of wonderfully sick body humor or body horror and humor.
1:15:40
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it funny?
1:15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: In a dark way, I think it's dealing with like relationship troubles and a horror milieu.
1:15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's also a really fun, fun bits like what happens when your body's do stick to the other.
1:15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens when you have sex?
1:15:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh oh.
1:15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They get to find out what happened.
1:16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't be testing those waters.
1:16:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they haven't, they shouldn't have tested those waters earlier.
1:16:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They shouldn't be testing these waters.
1:16:07
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point, they haven't put together exactly what's going on just yet.
1:16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So they end up having sex and doesn't go perfectly well.
1:16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... it takes them a little while to figure out what's going on uh... there there is a long portion of the movie where we're just sort of waiting for them to figure it out but it is scary i think the uh... the idea of these people who are kind of being an extremely drawn to one another is
1:16:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's romantic and horrifying at the same time, but just I think the comment on the relationship that they're having.
1:16:38
[SPEAKER_00]: They're really drawn to each other, but are they ready to bond really?
1:16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, this is just sort of making it very literal.
1:16:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's here's it out.
1:16:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not an uncreepy concept, but it sounds a little on the nose.
1:16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that really all there is to it?
1:16:52
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all there is to it.
1:16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's literal.
1:16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called together.
1:16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about being together.
1:16:56
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some elements of trauma going on as well.
1:17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We give some backstory to the day Franco character about how he found his mom and bed with his dead father when he was a child and that's a sort of recurring motif throughout the film.
1:17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like if you cut out all the fat.
1:17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: if we didn't necessarily explore their backstory so much.
1:17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: If we didn't spend so much time exploring what they wanted to do for a living, spending time with their neighbor or the helpful other like supporting characters in this movie, this would have fit very neatly into a thirty minute tale from the crew.
1:17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just about to say, Whitney is going to say this is made just sort of in a better tell story.
1:17:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I wouldn't necessarily, I think they do pace it very well at all of the things they explored do expand on a lot of the themes that they're talking about.
1:17:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't feel over long, but I feel like they got to the point really early.
1:17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And they could have told the same story in three months.
1:17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I say this, I'm going to say that without telling me.
1:17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:17:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Any details?
1:17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Does it end satisfactorily?
1:17:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's scary or not scary.
1:17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's better.
1:17:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's better.
1:17:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Happy doesn't matter.
1:18:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this a satisfying conclusion?
1:18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a really great conclusion, because as they're sort of figuring out that their body is over at Mashendia, they're not ruining it.
1:18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: They bring up throughout this movie, something that bring up and headwig in the end range, play to his idea of love, that human beings used to be formed for like in creatures with a face on either side of their head, and to be sure to single heart.
1:18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were so capable at feeling love that the gods became jealous, sliced them down the middle, including right down their hearts.
1:18:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're in search of our other half.
1:18:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a song ahead of you in the image.
1:18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the Origin of Love, all about them.
1:18:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Great song.
1:18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: They bring that up in this movie because those bodies are coming together.
1:18:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:18:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And bringing up headvig in the angry end should give you a hint just to where this film is also going.
1:18:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:18:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like the way it concludes really kind of explores that that they brought up in a really fascinating way that actually starts a whole new conversation in the very last scene.
1:19:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's really great.
1:19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a good way.
1:19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good kicker.
1:19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm making things like something new.
1:19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be walking out.
1:19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that was a really fun.
1:19:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a really creepy movie.
1:19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a minute.
1:19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's actually getting at something entirely new that they were talking about in the movie and in an exciting way.
1:19:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, OK, now this is, that's bringing up a whole new possibility is to what was going on with this relationship.
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you know what that's interesting.
1:19:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well I'm sad I missed that didn't work out, but it is quite good.
1:19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good to hear.
1:19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
1:19:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we do more than world's next?
1:19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we end with war the world?
1:19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's end with war of the world's.
1:19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you've still seen a couple more than I did.
1:19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw two other movies and I'll get through them pretty quick.
1:19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: There's one I really like and one I got.
1:19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a new thriller starring Terran Etterton.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It is called Shi Rai's Shotgun.
1:19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is really good.
1:19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to make this clear.
1:19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Tara and Andrewton, you know, you know, he was in Rocket Man, great in Rocket Man.
1:20:02
[SPEAKER_01]: He was in the Kingsman movies.
1:20:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He's had an interesting, pretty successful career so far.
1:20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's getting older, he's not playing like the young, like, on-genue type roles anymore.
1:20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's starting to settle into an interesting thriller career.
1:20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: He was in that Netflix thriller carry on.
1:20:16
[SPEAKER_01]: around Christmas last year.
1:20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
1:20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize it was in that one.
1:20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that was that was him.
1:20:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's not a brilliant movie, but it's like a solid mid tier, you know, fun thrill ride.
1:20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of thing.
1:20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a thriller set in the airport.
1:20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and here he's doing a sort of guy on the run with his daughter, uh, movie.
1:20:39
[SPEAKER_01]: His daughter's played by a young actor named Anna Sophia Hager.
1:20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I pronounced in that right.
1:20:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Um,
1:20:46
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a little girl, I don't know, maybe ten, twelve, I don't know.
1:20:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, no, no one other than that.
1:20:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And she is, it's after school, and she's waiting for her mom and her mom isn't showing up, her mom isn't showing up, her mom isn't showing up, and then her dad rolls up in a beat up car with the window broken in, and says, your mom isn't coming, I'm here to pick you up.
1:21:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, did you get out of prison?
1:21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, yeah, yeah, I got out of prison.
1:21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so she gets in the car because he's still her dad and she's very nervous and weirded out and he's saying a lot of really shady things and But she's also never was been a lot of time with her dad so she's enjoying it and they get him with tellroom and they're having fun and he shows her like if anyone comes at you here's how you use a baseball bat
1:21:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's all getting, you know, we're seeing a lot of red flags.
1:21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But it isn't until she sees her face on the news.
1:21:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh dear.
1:21:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That she realized that she's been kidnapped by her father and she calls the police.
1:21:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but she calls the police and she realizes without really being able to put on her finger on it that calling the police was a mistake.
1:21:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Because her mom is dead.
1:21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Her stepfather is dead.
1:21:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And her father is trying to protect her from the people who did it.
1:22:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So he kidnapped her to protect her.
1:22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He kidnapped her to protect her.
1:22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not supposed to have done it.
1:22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They are on the run, but they're not just running from the cops.
1:22:10
[SPEAKER_01]: They're running from skin head meth dealers.
1:22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: He befriended in order to survive in prison, white supremacists.
1:22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: says over and over again he isn't a white supremacist and that he did what he had to do survive in prison but also that feels like a moral complexity that the movie could have explored a little bit more but whatever you're trying to have your cake and eat it to um he betrayed them and now they've basically put out a hit on him and his whole family and everyone it whether drug addicts drug dealers
1:22:45
[SPEAKER_01]: and corrupt cops alike are all just trying to kill them.
1:22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:22:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it.
1:22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's on the run with his daughter.
1:22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have a lot of options.
1:22:53
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to like rob a liquor store together in order to get money or other movies like that.
1:22:58
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not something we haven't seen before.
1:23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is an a typically good one.
1:23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is like legitimately like there's a few wonky bits where we're kind of like again.
1:23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels to me like the character was probably originally conceived as a skinhead who has seen the era of his ways, but they kind of don't want to go there, so they feel like they're trying to fudge that.
1:23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's just take that out because whatever, they're trying to gloss over it.
1:23:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Beyond that and like one little tiny plot hold towards the end that isn't even worth talking about.
1:23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This is very well constructed.
1:23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: This is very well constructed.
1:23:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Terran Etterton is great.
1:23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: The little girl Annissa Fiahager who plays his daughter.
1:23:39
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a fine.
1:23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: She's great.
1:23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I would not be surprised if she has a huge career.
1:23:43
[SPEAKER_01]: She's really, really good.
1:23:45
[SPEAKER_01]: She's carrying a lot of emotional complexity in this movie and she does it great.
1:23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: The director is a guy named Nick Roland.
1:23:55
[SPEAKER_01]: okay and Nick Rowland has been directing stuff for a while like a lot of movies that I'm not like I've never even heard of before like calm with horses or floodlights or group B like he's done some shorts and a few features but none of them have ever like gotten any real traction do knows where to put a camera do knows how long to keep it rolling all right it was like there's this great bit we're like turn attention is like gonna go try to solve the problems that he has to leave this daughter behind and
1:24:24
[SPEAKER_01]: The camera just stays on like the dashboard of the car as he's like driving out and we can see behind him out of focus.
1:24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's driving away.
1:24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We see her away.
1:24:32
[SPEAKER_01]: She starts running after him, but instead of like lingering on that or turning for her perspective, we just get a quick glimpse of it in the back.
1:24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sells all the drama, but it's subtle about it.
1:24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not overplaying it.
1:24:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's full of stuff like that.
1:24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Just really smart filmmaking.
1:24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: This is someone who knows how to tell a story.
1:24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And even if the story is a little formulaic,
1:24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He's giving it so much more than I think a lot of other filmmakers would.
1:24:58
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something to be said for novelty.
1:25:00
[SPEAKER_01]: We all like novelty.
1:25:00
[SPEAKER_01]: We all like something that we haven't seen before or something we've never seen done in this particular way.
1:25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also something to be said for this story.
1:25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: We keep doing it because it works.
1:25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But we forget how to make it work sometimes.
1:25:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We just take it for granted that we assume it well.
1:25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a slash movie.
1:25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You see a slash movie, it does the formula and you kind of just let it slide.
1:25:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But every once in a while a slash movie does the whole formula doesn't really change it much, but it's just really well done.
1:25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And you remember why a slash or works in the first place.
1:25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
1:25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's this for like crime movies with like people on the run with their kids.
1:25:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just really impressively real.
1:25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:25:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, it's not, I don't know if it's, I don't think it's going to make my best for the year or anything.
1:25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, it just seems like the kind of, like, star, not actor necessary.
1:25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, star that can pull off or like this, like a scoundrel that you're still gravitated towards.
1:25:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, he's really, really good in this and he's like, excepting these like more mature roles, but he's finding the ones that fit him.
1:26:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think he's been very canny about it, and I really, really give him.
1:26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I also want to give a shout out to, there's a couple of cops who are after them, but the one who, it's not that he's not corrupt, but he's not corrupt in the worst possible way.
1:26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, like he does things that he's not supposed to do, but he is at least trying to do the right thing as a result, but the movie does admit,
1:26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, we shouldn't trust this guy.
1:26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not doing things we should.
1:26:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's, he's played by Rob Yang, an actor who I'm not too.
1:26:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been terribly familiar with, but he was in succession.
1:26:32
[SPEAKER_01]: He was in the menu.
1:26:33
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been doing stuff.
1:26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I've just mostly missed him.
1:26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He's really good.
1:26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to see him in a lot more stuff.
1:26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: He really commands the screen, but in a very subtle way.
1:26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't have to really play anything out, but just his intensity is not oversold.
1:26:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like, you get the impression you're in the room with a guy who knows his job better than anyone else in the room and has zero patience for anything else.
1:26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a, that's a Michael Mann character who found his way into this movie.
1:27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's really, really good.
1:27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So she, right, Chuck, you will not see a movie that you've never seen before.
1:27:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You will see a really good movie though.
1:27:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So good as to that.
1:27:12
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the other film that I saw that you didn't is a new Netflix movie.
1:27:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It is called My Oscar Year.
1:27:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It is based on a novel by Julia Weeland, which I have not read.
1:27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is a romance starring Sophia Carson and an actor who I'm sure I'm gonna miss pronounce his name Cory Milchrist.
1:27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Milchrist.
1:27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Milchrist.
1:27:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Milchrist, NYL, C-H-R-E-E-S-T.
1:27:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Milchrist.
1:27:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:27:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably doing that some disservice.
1:27:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Sophia Carson plays an American who just getting out of college.
1:27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: She has a job lined up at Goldman Sachs, big banking job, right?
1:27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Cold life ahead of her.
1:27:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But she differs her own employment so that she can spend one year studying Victorian poetry at Oxford.
1:28:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Already, I'm not entirely relating to this.
1:28:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know you could do that.
1:28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I just take a long sabbatical, the studying poetry before you even take the job.
1:28:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We would like you to work at Goldman Sachs.
1:28:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
1:28:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to go to Oxford to study Victorian poetry for a whole year.
1:28:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, we'll just give that job to someone else.
1:28:25
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'll take it any year.
1:28:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
1:28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, wait.
1:28:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, thinking of that job filled, right?
1:28:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What's going on?
1:28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to engage with that.
1:28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole thing is her life is planned out, but this is like her gap year, where she's going to study the one thing she really wants to do.
1:28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to do all the touristy stuff she wants to do in England.
1:28:40
[SPEAKER_01]: She just wants to live that fantasy for one year.
1:28:44
[SPEAKER_01]: She gets to England.
1:28:45
[SPEAKER_01]: She is immediately splashed with water by a Jaguar, like driving pastor.
1:28:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Like at the beginning of sex in the city.
1:28:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, man, and it turns out the guy driving it is a sexy, hunky man.
1:28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You're such a splashed by a Jaguar.
1:28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought you meant the cow.
1:29:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know you did.
1:29:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you did.
1:29:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We were all thinking.
1:29:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That would have been different.
1:29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Jaguars in town.
1:29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, don't you hate it when a Jaguar walks into town and splashes people?
1:29:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they're known for.
1:29:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:29:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, these flashes are with his car, so she hates him.
1:29:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But wouldn't you know it?
1:29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: He's her poetry professor.
1:29:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.
1:29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, man.
1:29:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is so awkward.
1:29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to have to spend so much time together.
1:29:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They start boning almost immediately.
1:29:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I looked it up.
1:29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Oxford has been around for nearly a thousand years.
1:29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how old that institution is.
1:29:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, started in like one thousand.
1:29:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually like ten ninety seven.
1:29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't set a rule that forbids faculty from being an intimate relationship with the student body until twenty twenty-three.
1:29:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I realized that probably didn't go co-ed until sometime in the twentieth century.
1:30:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So probably a thousand years they weren't terribly concerned about that.
1:30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But setting aside the fact that they probably, you know,
1:30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: There are other people who aren't straight in the world, but you know what I mean?
1:30:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're probably not thinking about this for a long time.
1:30:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's weird that this isn't the plot point.
1:30:21
[SPEAKER_01]: That no one says like, should you be dating your professor while you're in his class?
1:30:27
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's unethical.
1:30:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It is unethical.
1:30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Not brought up.
1:30:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like one moment where he's like, I don't know if we should do this.
1:30:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But then he does.
1:30:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So okay, almost immediately.
1:30:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So everything is going great.
1:30:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to keep it supercash.
1:30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're just they just they blanked throughout the school year.
1:30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a thing that some movie studios do, not for every movie.
1:30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Very rarely actually, but a couple of times a year.
1:30:53
[SPEAKER_01]: where they're gonna show you a movie, give you a screener, take your show you a screening or whatever, and you get like some notes, and the press notes include things they would like you not to tell people.
1:31:03
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a surprise.
1:31:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's supposed to be for the audience.
1:31:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the first half of this movie is very rom-com.
1:31:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Very bright, very funny.
1:31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a couple of like comic relief best friends who are trying to find love, but they won't.
1:31:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Will they eventually find it?
1:31:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
1:31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's very, it's very light.
1:31:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it takes a turn.
1:31:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I will say this.
1:31:26
[SPEAKER_01]: If Netflix didn't want anyone to know this, two things they know that the Plots can take a turn.
1:31:32
[SPEAKER_01]: There's two things they should have done differently.
1:31:34
[SPEAKER_01]: One, when you click on the movie on the Netflix homepage, it probably shouldn't say tear-jerker and bitter-sweet on it.
1:31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of gives the game away.
1:31:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Secondly, every other like sentence in the dialogue shouldn't be about how life is fleeting and that love matters even if it's not forever.
1:31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I see where this is going.
1:31:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We're kind of, we're kind of telegraphing something pretty hard.
1:32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So I will say this.
1:32:05
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've ever heard the words, uh, Ali McGraw disease.
1:32:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.
1:32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We will, we will engage in Ali McGraw.
1:32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It is extremely, extremely obvious.
1:32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's extremely telegraphed.
1:32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And when it comes along, it is not a surprise.
1:32:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and that's the movie base.
1:32:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the thing.
1:32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm watching this movie and it's got that very,
1:32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: When Netflix does a hallmark romance, they throw more money at it.
1:32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it'll take place at a really good location.
1:32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They actually clearly went to Europe to film this.
1:32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They were able to get a couple of big songs that there's a karaoke scene and they actually sing yellow by Coldplay.
1:32:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure that wasn't cheap.
1:32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So they threw some money out of it.
1:32:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels bigger than that.
1:32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But the tone is still that kind of lightness.
1:32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of the movies are actually really reassuring.
1:32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the end of this movie, I'm watching, I'm like, oh, you know, that was kind of pleasant.
1:33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I realized,
1:33:03
[SPEAKER_01]: but it wasn't supposed to be.
1:33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That was supposed to be like really, like there's just like clawing away at your soul making you feel really sad about tragic shit.
1:33:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And that did not happen because it never sells that.
1:33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Every time it's like, oh, we're gonna talk about our feelings and how, I feel about the situation and I really, really sad.
1:33:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's like wacky comic relief Gary Marshall characters are at a dance and it's like that completely undermines that.
1:33:32
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to actually commit to being a weepy, if you're gonna be a weepy.
1:33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're dark comedic weepies though.
1:33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love story with Alan McGraw disease.
1:33:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not one of them.
1:33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a comedy film.
1:33:45
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't know what Alan McGraw disease is, Alan McGraw disease is the thing that happens in movies where a character is extremely sick.
1:33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, terminally ill.
1:33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, usually terminally ill, but certainly very, very sick in the hospital like their life or death sick.
1:33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: but they have no symptoms.
1:34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no symptoms and they never stop being gorgeous.
1:34:04
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't like lose weight.
1:34:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't get pale.
1:34:07
[SPEAKER_01]: They look absolutely gorgeous until they either miraculously get better or they grow.
1:34:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We've been making fun of it since the seventies, because that's not the way it works.
1:34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've ever known someone who was either extremely ill and maybe they went to chemo and got better, I hope, but certainly if they don't, they don't just look gorgeous until the very end.
1:34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: People go through a lot.
1:34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's hard to take it seriously when they do it on a movie because they don't want to ruin the fantasy of everything being pretty and normal.
1:34:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you could make the argument that in these movies, we are seeing it from the perspective of the person who will theoretically unless, you know, they're actually to get better outlive that person.
1:34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing it through their eyes and through their eyes, they still love them so much.
1:35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But they still love them.
1:35:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not gonna think they don't look beautiful.
1:35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Do still need to show the audience that that's what's going on in order for that to work.
1:35:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And very few movies ever bother doing that.
1:35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it's trying to be like very slick and sweet and reassuring and sometimes it hits that, but it's more importantly it's trying to be a romantic tragedy.
1:35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And it never hits that.
1:35:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There was like one bit right at the end where I was like, oh, that's kind of sad.
1:35:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
1:35:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I got.
1:35:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It never hit.
1:35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a real damn shamp.
1:35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't hate it or anything, but it doesn't do what it sets out to do.
1:35:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So much better than more of the world's though.
1:35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: A word of the world is a piece of shit.
1:35:49
[SPEAKER_01]: The world's is bad in a way that I forgot bad movies could be.
1:35:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so word of the world's
1:35:57
[SPEAKER_00]: is indeed based on War of the Worlds.
1:35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, H.D.
1:35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Wells is classic sci-fi novel about Martians attacking the planet Earth.
1:36:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It has been adapted many, many times over the years most famously perhaps as the Orson Wells radio drama that was presented as almost like
1:36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Was present as a news broadcast.
1:36:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it was presented as it was presented as like a simple like radio broadcast of like a live band.
1:36:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That was then interrupted by the news.
1:36:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
1:36:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And the news kept getting scarier and more apocalyptic until it seemed like aliens were actually invading.
1:36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the second half is more of a traditional radio drama.
1:36:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:36:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But characters after the fall of humankind.
1:36:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the stories go that a lot of people got really, really scared and were genuinely concerned with the thought like, and that's those stories have probably been overblown, but some people thought it was real.
1:36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it was presented very realistically.
1:36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If you missed the beginning, which a lot of people would, it was live radio.
1:36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: If you didn't catch the first thirty seconds, you wouldn't necessarily hear it being introduced as a radio drama.
1:37:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You might have thought you just tuned into some music show and the news was breaking, and
1:37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really, really interesting bit of chapter in history, but not every version of War of the Worlds has really played with that.
1:37:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's even Spielberg did a very big version, right after nine, eleven, which really played into those anxieties.
1:37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be they should really well, by the way.
1:37:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a while since I've seen it.
1:37:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember it being one of Spielberg's worse.
1:37:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, it's really, really exciting cinema.
1:37:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it has a bit too much of a mega happy ending.
1:37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of fall into that trap.
1:37:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But looking at it today, I just re-watched earlier this year.
1:37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It really captures a certain kind of intensity that I think I think we're missing from modern blockbusters.
1:37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like we blocked something when we moved away from what that movie was doing.
1:37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: A critic hurley-mire named Andy Klein, a writer review of War of the Worlds, who said that the entire movie was mostly in the protagonist's tent.
1:37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It was his fantasy.
1:37:56
[SPEAKER_00]: of how we could win his family back and the only way to do that is to fight off aliens.
1:38:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a fun interpretation.
1:38:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's what I don't think the tech supports that as well as he thinks.
1:38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's just an interpretation.
1:38:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But now we have a version of War of the Worlds, starring Ice Cube.
1:38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting.
1:38:15
[SPEAKER_00]: As a kind of ill-defined government agent of some kind, who was for like home one security, he works in the department that has access to everybody's computers.
1:38:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's an Edward Snowden department.
1:38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:38:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But he has no co-workers.
1:38:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an incredibly cheap movie.
1:38:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's in an office with empty computer banks behind him.
1:38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:38:35
[SPEAKER_00]: This might be the first post-doge movie for all we know.
1:38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, here's a feel.
1:38:39
[SPEAKER_01]: There's going to be was to be fair film during COVID.
1:38:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and it's only just coming out five years later.
1:38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, okay.
1:38:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So it feels like a postdo's movie, but it's actually a COVID movie.
1:38:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose so.
1:38:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:38:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can kind of tell because every character is filmed in their own little windows.
1:38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: This is filled in that hyper not hyper like, um,
1:38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What are they called?
1:38:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The screen capture style.
1:39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, live screen or whatever like that.
1:39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've seen the movie on friend aid, if you saw the movie searching with John Chow, there's a certain new genre of movie where it's the entire movie is like you're looking at a computer screen.
1:39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and although that's not entirely this movie, it's most of this movie.
1:39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's he's at work and he has access to everyone's surveillance data.
1:39:23
[SPEAKER_01]: He is just picking random people out of the country and just checking on their phones, seeing if they're a risk.
1:39:29
[SPEAKER_01]: He keeps spying on this one.
1:39:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This one is like a very ordinary everyday thing.
1:39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't like threatening.
1:39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't the conversation.
1:39:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like cool.
1:39:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
1:39:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not presenting that way.
1:39:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It says that invasion of privacy is just a normal everyday part of American government.
1:39:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they treat it like some sort of nanny state.
1:39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea is like as he is like preparing to like help catch us like hacker who's going to reveal government secrets he's like trying to figure out where the guy is and you know send the FBI to go get him while he's doing that at this highly classified government base.
1:40:07
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also on Facebook and Gmail, which you would not be able to do.
1:40:13
[SPEAKER_01]: If you know anything about government security, you would know that you don't get to use the computer that has access to every private piece of information in the government.
1:40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: and also Google Drive.
1:40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You just, you, they're not, you know how to do that.
1:40:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's weird.
1:40:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But like returns out he's using satellites and everything to like, stock his daughter, his pregnant daughter.
1:40:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like following her, she's like with satellites, she's going to work.
1:40:42
[SPEAKER_01]: He calls her and says, I'm look, I hacked your refrigerator to see what's in there.
1:40:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not eating enough protein.
1:40:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, dad, and I'm like, this is, this is bad and creepy shit.
1:40:54
[SPEAKER_00]: This should be,
1:40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: terrifying but it's you you need to depict this character as a as unbalanced yeah as I'm you I have the power is gone to my head I have full government position to do this there should be something kind of dystopian about it is to fund the mentally dystopian the movie doesn't think so no the movie thinks it's yeah cute
1:41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, movie things that's heroic in the end, because he's a son who is opposed to the government surveillance.
1:41:22
[SPEAKER_01]: He tells him you shouldn't be doing this and they have an argument and ice cube makes the argument.
1:41:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more important for people to be safe than it is for them to have privacy.
1:41:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And is that thesis?
1:41:37
[SPEAKER_00]: holds to the end of the move.
1:41:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the movie point.
1:41:40
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not something that's going to be refuted by the move.
1:41:42
[SPEAKER_01]: The movie does really reinforce.
1:41:44
[SPEAKER_01]: The movie does say that the government has done some things wrong, but the actual act of like taking data and like spying on their own citizens constantly.
1:41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And we meet without cause without Warren is a good thing.
1:42:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They just did it wrong.
1:42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We need that data.
1:42:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to have control of it because the enemy needs it for more in nefarious purpose.
1:42:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
1:42:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So aliens, aliens land the attack of the cup of tripods.
1:42:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the big tripods.
1:42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The design of the tripods is okay.
1:42:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it doesn't look alien.
1:42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks more like iPod.
1:42:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it looks like that will design.
1:42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, which honestly fine.
1:42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever.
1:42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what that's perfectly valid.
1:42:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That could be an insidious design part on the filmmakers decision on the filmmakers parts because this is an Amazon commercial.
1:42:40
[SPEAKER_04]: It is
1:42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it sticks to the apple of the apple products then that it just sort of reinforces that this film's existence as an Amazon app.
1:42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: This movie is an Amazon Prime exclusive and we're gonna talk about that in a minute So aliens land and so from this point on most of the rest of the movie will be ice cube looking at his camera going oh damn
1:43:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh hell no.
1:43:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they'll cut up to like yeah, we got him or he's like explaining things he goes along.
1:43:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I think I guess I better look this up and it's it's all ADR.
1:43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's like he's not on camera.
1:43:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all ADR.
1:43:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of ADR.
1:43:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quick editing.
1:43:17
[SPEAKER_00]: There's quick editing between like stock footage.
1:43:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just reminded of Edward saying I could make a whole movie.
1:43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That's stock footage.
1:43:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So much of it's all the the gun.
1:43:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a massive and I'm like you just that's literally stock footage.
1:43:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like cutting together so quickly, but it's just stock footage and it's this voiceover.
1:43:33
[SPEAKER_01]: of dice cube to say yeah oh that's what that is and that's what it is it's chaos yeah it's idiotic it's it's impressively incompetent and as the story so to speak progresses and you realize that not only is ice cube like in charge of like US government surveillance
1:43:52
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the only guy doing it.
1:43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, when the president needs to be briefed, it's like, hey, we need like a danger assessment or risk assessment of all of these things that the aliens are doing.
1:44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Ice Cube, who has been multitasking on Facebook and trying to get his daughter to safety by hacking into her phone and shit?
1:44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, there's some of these largely in real time.
1:44:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess he also put together a risk assessment package of this thing he didn't know was going to happen until five minutes ago.
1:44:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And he tells them all about these things happening all over the country.
1:44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the only person in the government who used a computer for something other than Zoom.
1:44:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Like everyone else that's all they're doing.
1:44:30
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just ice-cube, running the entire country.
1:44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And while he's doing all of this, he's writing his farewell letter to his kids.
1:44:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, about how hard it is to be a dad, but I'm a hero after all.
1:44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it turns out that the aliens, what the aliens are after, is data.
1:44:44
[SPEAKER_00]: They're eating our data.
1:44:46
[SPEAKER_00]: They're eating their literally live off of the live off information.
1:44:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see the first Futurama movie?
1:44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
1:44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember very vividly.
1:44:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember the new aliens, new Darwin, his compatriots?
1:45:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They have an organ in their next.
1:45:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They call it a sprunger because it's comedy show.
1:45:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It encorges in the presence of information.
1:45:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I can remember it.
1:45:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I just pictured those new aliens from Futurama with their swollen sprungers eating information.
1:45:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a joke in Futurama.
1:45:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:45:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's meant to be a absurd, absurd, absurd plot control.
1:45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, here they think it's a powerful metaphor.
1:45:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, the government took so much data that like aliens are conquering the planet in order to get it.
1:45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, what?
1:45:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And the aliens are not like,
1:45:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Gathering it to better no human kind.
1:45:44
[SPEAKER_00]: They literally eat it as food.
1:45:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now if you'd like, they'll be attracted to like a thumb drive if it has a file on it.
1:45:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:45:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what?
1:45:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And they'll eat it.
1:45:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it was it any original novel or was it just in the fifties movie of War of the Worlds where we were being watched by an alien intelligence and they felt envy.
1:46:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That's literally the first line of the novel.
1:46:07
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the novel.
1:46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's literally the first line.
1:46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in there, yeah.
1:46:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a while since I've read it.
1:46:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
1:46:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the motivation of these creatures.
1:46:18
[SPEAKER_00]: They're envious of humanity.
1:46:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're coming here to destroy us.
1:46:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know how though no ones, the aliens were defeated by our own native germs.
1:46:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They caught a common cold and their systems couldn't handle it and they all died.
1:46:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Unexpected way to destroy these aliens.
1:46:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't about destroying them with tanks.
1:46:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about just their immune systems were too weak for our human nature.
1:46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the opening line for more of the worlds?
1:46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligence as greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own.
1:46:58
[SPEAKER_01]: That as men busy themselves about their various concerns,
1:47:01
[SPEAKER_01]: concerns that they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope, might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
1:47:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to give them a little bit of credit because if that's the way this story opens, then using this from like a surveillance perspective is not out of theme.
1:47:19
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but it would have helped if we had some alien surveillance as well.
1:47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if we'd that tied into something other than aliens eat gigabytes.
1:47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a concept.
1:47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's okay to tell I don't hate this format sort of telling things just through computer screens.
1:47:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it can be done very very well.
1:47:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing is a great movie.
1:47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The host is a great movie.
1:47:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't be done.
1:47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like host a lot.
1:47:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a great COVID movement.
1:47:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and it's just host as I thought.
1:47:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my bad.
1:47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a brilliant COVID movement.
1:47:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's because of surveillance is actually seen as a very positive thing in this movie.
1:47:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't have that as a theme that the aliens are surveilling us in this kind of insidious way.
1:48:04
[SPEAKER_00]: surveillance is not insidious in this movie.
1:48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's expected and it's great to be surveilled.
1:48:10
[SPEAKER_00]: To be surveilled, to be able to
1:48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: to get people's information in a way that helps everyone, that's the argument of this movie.
1:48:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I have information on this person.
1:48:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I can manipulate them in a way that is beneficial for everybody.
1:48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because that's the thing.
1:48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: If this movie was arguing that like listen, it's what the aliens want, it's a bad thing in a very simplistic way, then the way to defeat the aliens.
1:48:38
[SPEAKER_01]: would be to not employ that technology.
1:48:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be to issue it and say, you know, this is wrong.
1:48:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to solve a problem.
1:48:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll hide from it.
1:48:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Except the solution is to double down.
1:48:48
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no way to defeat them without engaging in the same things that the movie should probably be arguing around based on the theme of the film.
1:48:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What it boils down to in the end.
1:49:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I won't say specifically how, but in order to save the day,
1:49:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Ice Cube has to buy something off Amazon.
1:49:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And when a problem occurs, and it looks like I know might not get there in time, the second solution is to buy an Amazon gift card.
1:49:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Holy shit!
1:49:24
[SPEAKER_02]: What in it's all?
1:49:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Brandon, fuck.
1:49:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's all my stuff.
1:49:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But the M-Sign gift card scene is very interesting because they're trying to, they need help from somebody and they need to sort of incentivize this character.
1:49:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:49:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first thing they offer him is a year of free internet.
1:49:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he says what so the government can buy the government can can spy on me and they all roll their eyes He's one of those He's like this villainous character.
1:49:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't believe in the internet surveillance state Yeah, dare he like we can cause he's right Yeah, they are a parent instead.
1:49:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I will bribe him with an Amazon gift car
1:50:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's a guy who doesn't use the internet because the money is going to break through even the most staunch like anti.
1:50:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't use the internet because the government will spy on me, but it could make use of an Amazon gift card.
1:50:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Explain.
1:50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be out here.
1:50:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That was in fucking work.
1:50:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was Andy Richter, the comedian who wrote once.
1:50:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I bought one toilet seat once.
1:50:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm getting nothing but ads for toilet seats.
1:50:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I've solved that problem.
1:50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They think I'm a toilet seat fiend.
1:50:34
[SPEAKER_00]: The advertising bots don't understand, and they're tracking you so they can show you those ads.
1:50:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:50:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever clicked on an ad by accident?
1:50:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.
1:50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you're stuck with that for four years.
1:50:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There should be an option to first up they shouldn't be doing this at all.
1:50:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But if they must do this, I wish there was at least an option to say, I'm buying this as a gift for someone else.
1:50:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I am not actually interested in this.
1:50:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I will never buy this again.
1:50:59
[SPEAKER_01]: This is for someone else's interests.
1:51:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Please, I beg of you, stop.
1:51:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, the movie thinks that Amazon will solve all our problems.
1:51:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Amazon original movie.
1:51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And it all comes together quite nicely.
1:51:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't say exactly how it ends, but I will tell you that one of the last things that happens is Joe Rogan approves of what just happened.
1:51:24
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the last things we see is a tweet from Joe Rogan saying, everyone did great today.
1:51:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, great.
1:51:29
[SPEAKER_01]: This tells us a lot about who the target for this movie is.
1:51:32
[SPEAKER_01]: People who really think Doge are great.
1:51:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:51:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, that's what we're doing here.
1:51:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Except Ice Cube is like old enough to be a Doge's grandfather.
1:51:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would never be able to remember when Ice Cube said fuck the police.
1:51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember that.
1:51:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he said that.
1:51:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He's making these pro-proser valence days, pro-police.
1:51:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He's throwing his cops for all he was a funny cop and ride along.
1:51:55
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a funny kind of corrupt cop and then moving.
1:51:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he wasn't corrupt, he was a cop.
1:51:59
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a cop, but he did a lot of things that are technically, like, big ultradivist.
1:52:03
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not having a heart for mirroring, he's thought it.
1:52:05
[SPEAKER_01]: He's corrupt in the cute way.
1:52:07
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
1:52:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, where it's technically, you should be fired for all of this at least.
1:52:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's fine because you're a cop.
1:52:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You would think that the joke would be casting ice cube as a cop, right?
1:52:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was in like, twenty one jump straight.
1:52:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:52:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, but like, yeah, yeah, no, we're just, we're just on ironically doing this now.
1:52:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:52:28
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that goes back and look just, just,
1:52:32
[SPEAKER_00]: On vinyl CD, however you want to get on a cassette, I don't care.
1:52:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Get straight out of the Compton.
1:52:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to it beginning to end.
1:52:37
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to see a great ice cube movie, he's not the star he's a sporting character in this.
1:52:42
[SPEAKER_01]: See the glass shield.
1:52:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's directed by Charles Burnett, one of the great filmmakers.
1:52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It is one of the best movies I've ever seen about police corruption and one of the biggest plot points is ice cube is railroaded by the police.
1:52:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They see him at a random traffic thing and they decide to pin every fucking crime they can on him.
1:53:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's absolutely brilliant.
1:53:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It is incredibly precious and it's talking about exactly what was happening at that time.
1:53:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It is aged really well unfortunately.
1:53:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's bright.
1:53:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I missed that ice cube.
1:53:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:53:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like this ice cube.
1:53:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like this movie.
1:53:23
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this movie has nothing but on savory things to say.
1:53:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:53:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It thinks that villainous things are heroic, like genuinely thinks that.
1:53:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't even hide behind a veneer of competence.
1:53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's an incredibly incompetent.
1:53:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The director is actually a very experienced in the music video realm.
1:53:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He's done dozens and dozens of music videos.
1:53:42
[SPEAKER_00]: He's worked a lot with M&M.
1:53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And you would think that that would bring a certain degree of style of music video directors like Michael Bay or a adventure.
1:53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all of these people got their start in music videos.
1:53:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a limited amount of time off in the concept.
1:53:59
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a little abstract.
1:53:59
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a little Tarzan.
1:54:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Tarzan sent.
1:54:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Tarzan sent.
1:54:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:54:02
[SPEAKER_01]: These are people who are able to really capture the imagination using only a couple of minutes, sometimes not even a cohesive narrative.
1:54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But they, they, they, they, they're, they're different talents.
1:54:13
[SPEAKER_00]: When you see these, when you see the, when you see the Michael Bay, you, however you think of them.
1:54:18
[SPEAKER_00]: When you see someone like Michael Bay or David Fincher move into future films.
1:54:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They're bringing that style with them, and their films tend to be pretty big and bombastic and share the style that they had in their music video.
1:54:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're exciting to watch.
1:54:30
[SPEAKER_00]: What the fuck is this?
1:54:31
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, this is, this is like worse than something somebody would make in their dorm room.
1:54:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:54:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the COVID wave of filmmaking, where people were trapped in their houses and trying to make art.
1:54:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:54:45
[SPEAKER_01]: two varying degrees of success.
1:54:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So some of them were very good.
1:54:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Host was very good.
1:54:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Host was very good.
1:54:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Bo Burnham's inside is very very good.
1:54:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, what was the princess bride on quibi?
1:54:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That was very good.
1:54:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That was cool.
1:54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That was cool.
1:54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Hold on.
1:54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the the guy suit?
1:54:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:55:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Something as I enter the dirt, something into dirt.
1:55:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Something in the dirt.
1:55:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Something in the dirt.
1:55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Something in the dirt.
1:55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Something in the dirt.
1:55:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Something like that.
1:55:12
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a movie called Yeah, it's something in the dirt.
1:55:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Something in the dirt.
1:55:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I was by Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead.
1:55:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like this odd sci-fi very self-contained in a kind of apartment sci-fi thriller.
1:55:24
[SPEAKER_01]: The interesting work was done.
1:55:25
[SPEAKER_01]: People had resources because, you know, our consumer grade cameras and editing equipment are all available and, you know, they could produce okay stuff.
1:55:35
[SPEAKER_01]: People were trying to experiment with telling stories on Zoom to varying degrees of success.
1:55:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really interesting to look at the output of that time.
1:55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: When people were kind of desperate and trying to be very creative and some people were able to make the most of that and some people
1:55:56
[SPEAKER_01]: shit this is not this is one of the very very very bad ones and even though there's a slickness to some of it like it's got CG there's actually there's like a drone flying through the like a POV of a drone flying through like the legs of a tripod which is you know fine you know it's got a certain amount of energy to it at least but like
1:56:19
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't a competent piece of filmmaking.
1:56:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The screenwriting isn't competent.
1:56:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The acting isn't very good.
1:56:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Even from actors who are actually pretty good.
1:56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Clark Gregg is in this.
1:56:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Ava Lomboria is in this.
1:56:30
[SPEAKER_00]: She should have directed this one.
1:56:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah.
1:56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's just...
1:56:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting that like it just pays, it feels like it comes across like a someone just like scribbled out a screen and decided to film it.
1:56:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like making a move.
1:56:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's based on tweets, not an actual screen.
1:56:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like on X specifically, like it feels like that.
1:56:56
[SPEAKER_00]: The special effects are fine when we get to see them.
1:56:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But in order to give it that digital screen effect, they added this sort of like fake static or files to it.
1:57:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't look realistic at all.
1:57:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't really do that anymore so much.
1:57:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Can cameras don't do that.
1:57:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Computer screens don't do that.
1:57:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And it also prevents me from seeing it.
1:57:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually makes it less clear rather than more mean.
1:57:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like they're hiding the fact that they couldn't pay to render it better.
1:57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna, can I quote you, what you texted me earlier?
1:57:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I saw this movie, I realized that I was only part of the movie when I gave this assessment time to stand by it.
1:57:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So I watched this movie because I realized I was just on my TV and I was like, there was a new world of the worlds with ice cube.
1:57:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested now.
1:57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody's talking about it.
1:57:44
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this?
1:57:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realized it's less than ninety minutes.
1:57:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had time.
1:57:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So I put it on.
1:57:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realized this is one of the worst movies I've seen in an extremely long time.
1:57:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I knew Whitney needs to see this because as I said before, if we're doing it right, film criticism is a full contact sport.
1:57:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So I told them you have to see this before we do the podcast.
1:58:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And Whitney was watching it.
1:58:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've asked me a couple of things.
1:58:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've never put it but no.
1:58:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But the line you had.
1:58:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, this is
1:58:13
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like Robert Benchley and Witt, as far as I'm concerned, although the more class any of you probably read.
1:58:20
[SPEAKER_01]: If shit could barf, it would barf this time.
1:58:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you should stand by that.
1:58:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a pretty accurate assessment.
1:58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we talk a lot about like should our critics like too negative.
1:58:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's entirely wrong to it.
1:58:38
[SPEAKER_02]: In this case, it's warranted.
1:58:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:58:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's not even like I stand by that you got to admit it's at least confidently filmed.
1:58:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Not this time.
1:58:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Nope.
1:58:45
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
1:58:47
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty good.
1:58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just shit.
1:58:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just so bad.
1:58:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, they don't make like the kind of bad movies you'd see on MST-III-K very much anymore and certainly not with like big stars.
1:58:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:58:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost refreshing to see it.
1:59:02
[SPEAKER_00]: If I hadn't seen this in a big theater, there would have been like a level of exhilaration to seeing something bad bad on a big screen.
1:59:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:59:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and all right, we need to wrap this up.
1:59:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's review our movies on a scale of C minus to C plus.
1:59:18
[SPEAKER_01]: C minus is the lowest grade we give.
1:59:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are movies that we don't recommend.
1:59:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They are below average.
1:59:23
[SPEAKER_01]: A C is an average rating mixed bag.
1:59:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We're only only so good.
1:59:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a C to average.
1:59:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And a C plus is above average.
1:59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: These are movies that we genuinely recommend, whether we simply like them a lot or think they're private.
1:59:35
[SPEAKER_01]: On that note, War of the Worlds.
1:59:39
[SPEAKER_01]: With me.
1:59:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
1:59:42
[SPEAKER_01]: What grade do you give it?
1:59:44
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no letters.
1:59:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We only, we gave it elf of that.
1:59:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We gave a D plus to cats.
1:59:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
1:59:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, I don't think we can do that again.
1:59:53
[SPEAKER_00]: No, D plus a special.
1:59:54
[SPEAKER_00]: D plus is a little absurd.
1:59:56
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just a piece of shit.
1:59:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is just really fucking bad.
1:59:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the worst movies of the year.
2:00:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a C minus three minus three.
2:00:03
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a definition of a C minus three.
2:00:05
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing to redeem this.
2:00:06
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing else to say about it.
2:00:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's a lot to say about it, but there's no other way to
2:00:13
[SPEAKER_01]: while a natively describe it.
2:00:15
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
2:00:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's see what else.
2:00:20
[SPEAKER_01]: My Oxford year, I think, is the last one of the things.
2:00:23
[SPEAKER_01]: My Oxford year is another C-minus.
2:00:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not as a passionate as C-minus.
2:00:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It just doesn't do what it sets out to do.
2:00:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some good people in the supporting cast.
2:00:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope do well in the future, like the people who play like the fun best friends.
2:00:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They're charming.
2:00:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, things go well for them.
2:00:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's some really bad maybe.
2:00:43
[SPEAKER_01]: doesn't make you a weep in the in the right way.
2:00:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I like a good weepy.
2:00:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she rides shotgun.
2:00:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't break any new ground in any particular way, but it's a really well done crime thriller with a really really excellent cast and it just knows how to tell the story really really well.
2:01:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It shows that you it can be done together.
2:01:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Together is a high sea.
2:01:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't knock it out of the park.
2:01:08
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of good creepy body horror images.
2:01:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I like all of that stuff and I like it's common but it is on the nose.
2:01:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It does repeat its point a lot.
2:01:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But the performance is really good and the direction is really good.
2:01:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's some interesting horror
2:01:21
[SPEAKER_00]: to come from these people.
2:01:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see.
2:01:25
[SPEAKER_01]: The bad guys, I don't know, sorry, the home.
2:01:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That was when we did networking backwards.
2:01:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The home is a C-, it's a dispassionate C-, it's not terrible.
2:01:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also doesn't work.
2:01:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not very scary.
2:01:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Aside from John Glover, the performances aren't particularly good.
2:01:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And the overall story, it turns out, is mostly filler.
2:01:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
2:01:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like it's all coming together and then you realize, oh, oh, most of the movie was bullshit.
2:01:52
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, never mind.
2:01:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't work, of course, not only.
2:01:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But a bit of a shame, because I like the film maker.
2:01:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope he continues to make better movies.
2:02:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What's in the bad guys, too, is a sea.
2:02:05
[SPEAKER_01]: The original is a sea-plus, I think it's one of the better animated movies of the modern American studio mold.
2:02:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But the sequel is, it's got some really energetic animations, it's got some funny bits.
2:02:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it just loses control of itself.
2:02:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It starts off with the kind of solid but depressing premise and just completely goes off the rails by the end and loses track of anything that made it work as a story.
2:02:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it's bright.
2:02:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's colorful.
2:02:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Your kids will probably like it.
2:02:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, it's not, it's not much to it unfortunately.
2:02:36
[SPEAKER_01]: The naked gun.
2:02:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, God.
2:02:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's is also a high say.
2:02:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's very funny.
2:02:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not nearly as tight as the ZAZ films back in the day.
2:02:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing really could be though.
2:02:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of it's a high bar.
2:02:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a high bar.
2:02:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a high bar to clear.
2:02:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in shooting for it, it gets the spirit right though.
2:02:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
2:02:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, definitely.
2:02:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like it can.
2:02:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it manages to salvage what of the spoof genre from the drags and really show what these movies are supposed to look and feel like Yeah, it's not funny all the way through some of the gags are just sort of me but it's
2:03:12
[SPEAKER_00]: admirable.
2:03:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was funny all the way through.
2:03:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually did laugh pretty consistently throughout this movie.
2:03:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are really, really good at that.
2:03:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a key mistake for her understands how to make a rapid fire gag a second comedy work in a way that very few other filmmakers I think do now it is.
2:03:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I thought it was really, really funny.
2:03:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I enjoyed it.
2:03:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm giving it to C++.
2:03:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's certainly one of the better spoof movies that I've had in a long time.
2:03:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, the fantastic four first steps.
2:03:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, C++.
2:03:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I really love this movie.
2:03:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been so negative about the Marvel machine.
2:03:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And here recently, the last two, they put out this one in Thunderbolts, are two of my favorites.
2:03:56
[SPEAKER_00]: There's stuff that they're dealing with, some concepts and images that feel very striking and
2:04:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Really get at the heart of what superheroes are supposed to do.
2:04:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that Thunderbolts is the opposite of this.
2:04:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
2:04:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And that it shows that superheroes live by a coat of violence and that destroys them on the inside because they can't change the world.
2:04:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And this one is about superheroes whose natural intelligence does.
2:04:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like both of those things.
2:04:20
[SPEAKER_00]: They should be violent.
2:04:21
[SPEAKER_01]: That does change the world.
2:04:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:04:22
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you like it more than I do, but it is really good.
2:04:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give it a C+.
2:04:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it is.
2:04:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The cast is really, really charming.
2:04:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it has a sense of the epic that we don't get enough of from Blockbuster movies these days.
2:04:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It really does feel like everything is this really gigantic and a very fun way.
2:04:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, when it works, it works really, really well.
2:04:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And when it does end, I find it a little shallow in a way, it didn't really need to be at least characterized by overall works.
2:04:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
2:04:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I like it quite a bit.
2:04:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is it for critically claimed this week.
2:04:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Thinking about it for listening.
2:04:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us.
2:04:56
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to talk about anything we discussed in this episode, we would love to hear from you.
2:05:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Our email address is lettersacriticallyclame.net.
2:05:04
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it feel about?
2:05:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, send us a physical letter, postcard, whatever you like.
2:05:07
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2:05:08
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2:05:38
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2:05:42
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2:05:49
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2:05:57
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2:06:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What have you and that really really helps a lot of really lovely to get a few new reviews in.
2:06:07
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be great.
2:06:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you to anyone who puts like to do that.
2:06:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We're on social media, actually, to claim I'm out willing to be on a hot wedding cycle and that's it everybody.
2:06:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you very much again.
2:06:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I never forget everyone is a great.
2:06:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to go to the Midnight Show.
2:06:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry I went.