Latest / Secret Movie Club Podcast / SMC Pod #222: 2025 Movies Pt 2 & Disclosure Day
Transcript
- 0:00Hello, Secret Movie Clubbers, and welcome to Secret Movie Club Podcast 222,
- 0:072025 Movies Part 2, and Disclosure Day.
- 0:16My name is Craig Hamill. I'm the founder, programmer of Secret Movie Club.
- 0:21It is wonderful to be here with you. Thank you for letting me do this podcast.
- 0:26Today, as I said in the podcast previous, I'm probably in the future just going
- 0:32to wait to do a podcast about the previous year's movies.
- 0:36Because when I did movies of 2025, I hadn't seen something like three or four
- 0:43that I desperately wanted to see. I've now seen them.
- 0:46And today we're going to talk about four of them. Surat, Marty Supreme,
- 0:51Sound of Falling, and The Secret Agent.
- 0:55And it just made me realize, see at least 10 or 20 before you do a podcast on
- 1:00them. So I wanted to follow up.
- 1:02Also, I've seen Disclosure Day and in Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day,
- 1:07which came out June 12th.
- 1:09And I realized in a previous pod, I said I'd talk about it. And it seems right
- 1:14in this one to talk about Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day,
- 1:19even though that is a movie of 2026.
- 1:22Secret Movie Club Podcast 223 will be about movie structure.
- 1:28And this is something, if you're a movie maker, if you go to film school,
- 1:33you spend a decent amount of time talking about.
- 1:37A lot of people know the three-act structure. That's often what people are taught
- 1:40in screenwriting classes, but that's not the only structure for a screenplay.
- 1:46And in fact, I think the more that you make movies and the more you talk to
- 1:50people, you realize there's the symphonic structure, which is four movements in a way.
- 1:56You could call it four acts, and I think that's fair, but I think the way you
- 2:00think about it is a little different. So we're going to talk about that next.
- 2:04Next week, which will be July 3rd, there will be no podcast.
- 2:10As we always do, we do three pods and then we take a week off.
- 2:14It just happens that next week is the week off. We would love for you to go
- 2:17through our back catalog. We have something like 200 plus episodes.
- 2:21We hope you enjoy them. When we come back, it'll be July 10th.
- 2:27I'm also really happy to say I can announce our next movies, our next events.
- 2:32So here we go. August 1st, Saturday, August 1st, at the Palace Theater in downtown
- 2:38Los Angeles, We are showing on 35mm the sixth sense in Unbreakable,
- 2:44probably my two favorite M.
- 2:45Night Shyamalan movies, also with two of the best twists of the last few decades
- 2:51on 35mm. I'm very excited to do that.
- 2:55And then that's going to be a matinee.
- 2:581 p.m. is Sixth Sense. 3.30 p.m. is Unbreakable.
- 3:03Then Saturday, August 1st in the evening at 7.30, we are showing The Big Lebowski,
- 3:09one of my favorite movies of all time, my personal favorite Coen Brothers movie.
- 3:14And the reason we're at the palace, among other things, it's an incredible theater,
- 3:18and we would love to show you guys all the amazing movie palaces on Broadway.
- 3:23The palace also happens to be the location, That loft on the top of the palace
- 3:28is where they shot Maud's apartment.
- 3:30And we are going to do a Maud's apartment after party. So 730,
- 3:34we're showing the movie. The movie's about two hours.
- 3:37And then from 10 to 1, we're going up. There are four flights of stairs.
- 3:41There are also two elevators. So everyone can get up there.
- 3:44We have a hard cap at 500. And I'm not even sure we're going to go to that.
- 3:49Right now, I'm looking to see if we go 300 and then make a decision.
- 3:53But it is a huge space up there.
- 3:55Maude's apartment is actually pretty huge.
- 3:58We're going to have music, art. We want it to be fun.
- 4:02It's definitely going to be a, and I hope Maude would be proud of this,
- 4:06kind of a performance already thing. We'll have some actors there.
- 4:10It is a bar, so it'll be 21 plus. And we just want it to be fun.
- 4:15That being said, just make sure you're 21 or older if you get the ticket.
- 4:19Right now, we're selling the all-dude access pass. That's $50.
- 4:23That gets you into the movie and the after party.
- 4:25And that price is good until we sell out of the 300 or we get to July 26th,
- 4:31whichever one comes first, then the prices go up. So if you want to be a part
- 4:35of this, we'd love to have you be a part of this.
- 4:37Get your tickets now. You can find out about what we're doing by going to secretmovieclub.com.
- 4:43Scroll to the bottom of the page, get on our newsletter. The newsletter goes out every Tuesday.
- 4:48And we are hard at work planning more events. So if you're on the newsletter,
- 4:53you'll hear about more events upcoming.
- 4:55And you can write us at community at secretmovieclub.com. Email us there.
- 5:01And our socials are at secretmovieclub. You can follow us there.
- 5:06We have a lot, I hope, that we are about to do.
- 5:10But let's focus on what we are doing. We are showing two M. Night Shyamalan
- 5:14movies on 35. We're showing The Big Lebowski.
- 5:17We're partying in Maude's apartment Saturday, August 1st. We would love to have you.
- 5:27I wanted to talk to you about four more movies from 2025, three that are on
- 5:35my top 10 now, one that is not, but I think is fascinating.
- 5:39And then we're also going to talk about Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day.
- 5:43So when I recorded a number of pods ago, the movies of 2025,
- 5:48I had seen, you know, something like 10 to 15 movies from 2025.
- 5:53I picked a few of them to talk about, and there were movies that really captured my imagination.
- 6:01But I had not seen a number of films that I really wanted to see,
- 6:06and I've now seen them. So I wanted to talk to you about them.
- 6:10And it just reminds me that, you know, I was glad that I saw them because when
- 6:15I recorded the first movies of 2025, I thought 2025 was a good year.
- 6:19You know, I don't know that there's ever been a year where I thought,
- 6:23oh, man, this year was horrible for movies.
- 6:26I know other people might think that way, but I always see two to four movies,
- 6:31in any given year that I think are dynamite. And if you can get two to four
- 6:35movies that are dynamite out of a year, that to me is you're doing good.
- 6:40But when I saw these movies, I suddenly 2025 looked like a much better year
- 6:46to me than it had when I recorded the first podcast. So let's dive into it.
- 6:51First, I want to talk about the one movie that I didn't that that wasn't in my top 10.
- 6:58But the more I think about it, the more I really think it was an ambitious film,
- 7:04a fascinating film and a film that really was going for it. And that really
- 7:09earns a lot of respect from me.
- 7:11And that is the movie by Oliver Lachey called Surratt, produced by Pedro Almodovar, a Spanish film.
- 7:22It's a really fascinating film. You have to pay attention to catch some of the
- 7:28details that I think, to their credit, they don't hammer on the head.
- 7:32But if you don't pick up on them, it might affect the way you think about the movie.
- 7:36Basically, it's a movie where we're in some very near future dystopia where
- 7:43society is basically about to fall apart.
- 7:47There are shortages, climate disaster things happening. It's very children of men in a way.
- 7:54Because it's clearly our world, but it seems like maybe 10 years from now,
- 7:585, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there are soldiers,
- 8:02there's a lot of violence, there's a lot of chaos.
- 8:06And a group of people are in the Moroccan desert and they just set up raves.
- 8:12And their answer to whatever is going on in the world is to just dance and be
- 8:19part of this rave culture, maybe because they just don't feel they can do anything about it.
- 8:23And so that's how the movie starts at a rave. And then we meet a father and
- 8:27a son who are looking for their daughter, sister, because she sort of disappeared into this rave culture.
- 8:34And she's not at this rave, but a few of the people at the rave are going to
- 8:38some kind of secret rave even further in the Moroccan desert.
- 8:43And the dad begs them to let him tag along.
- 8:45And then as the movie goes on, the way that they get there is so harrowing.
- 8:50And they go on these roads that are very narrow and are way,
- 8:54way high up. And I mean, it's a beautifully shot film. You get these Moroccan
- 8:58desert vistas, Moroccan mountain vistas.
- 9:01But as they recede further and further from society around.
- 9:06It gets more and more dangerous and things happen. Oliver Lachey is Muslim,
- 9:12and Surratt, as I understand it, refers to the bridge in Islamic spiritual belief
- 9:18that a person crosses when they die to the afterworld.
- 9:22And it is razor thin, supposedly.
- 9:26And this does actually play a really key part in the last third of the movie.
- 9:33I don't want to spoil it because it really is in some ways.
- 9:37The movie develops getting to this point. I had issues, and I can't really talk
- 9:42about the issues without spoiling the movie, and I don't want to spoil the movie.
- 9:46So I am going to be a little vague here because I do encourage you to see it. It's streaming now.
- 9:52I was initially totally in. I really liked the open. I really liked the dad
- 9:57going with these ravers.
- 10:00You wanted to judge the people, but you couldn't. You were trying to figure
- 10:04out the world and what was going on.
- 10:06The filmmaking is cinematic and gorgeous and incredible.
- 10:11And then something happens. And it's very much meant, I believe,
- 10:17to, I mean, it's very intentional. It's shocking.
- 10:20For me, and I think for a lot of people who would be in my situation.
- 10:26When movies do a certain thing, a whole group of people in the world are you're going to,
- 10:33really trigger their lizard brain because it's it's kind of the worst nightmare
- 10:37for a lot of people and oliver lachey does something and he does it in a very
- 10:43head-on way and i actually had to stop the movie when this happened and i had
- 10:47to look up a certain fact about him and sure enough it was confirmed that,
- 10:52his situation is not the situation i'm in i'm so sorry to be vague.
- 10:57But I thought, yeah, OK, there we go. This is something somebody would do if
- 11:02they didn't if they weren't in the situation that a lot of people in the world are in.
- 11:07They would think of it as a very bold, artistic, challenging, emotional thing to do.
- 11:16And I understand, I think, why
- 11:18he did it, but I think you have to be very careful when you do this thing.
- 11:23And I was out of the movie for like 40 minutes.
- 11:26I mean, I watched it, but I just couldn't believe one of the characters motivations after that.
- 11:31It just seemed like Oliver Lachey didn't know how somebody in that situation would truly react.
- 11:37It started to feel like the movie was trying to get us to a point through screenwriting.
- 11:42And and and I just was like, I'm out.
- 11:46But then towards the end of the movie, there's an incredible sequence in a minefield,
- 11:51that I quite liked. It's funny. I was talking to a friend and that was the sequence that took him out.
- 11:56So there you go. You never know. But I thought that sequence was quite good.
- 12:02And then I thought the ending of the movie was a little less profound than it thought it was.
- 12:09And that's me. What I will say, though, is that Surat as a movie certainly doesn't
- 12:14play it safe, and you have to give it credit for that.
- 12:17Certainly Oliver Lachey knows how to direct a film, and it is certainly a gripping
- 12:23and fascinating film, and there is something going on in it,
- 12:27spiritually, that I'm still wrestling with.
- 12:31So I do recommend you see it, but I will say, I mean, if we ever meet on the
- 12:35street or what have you, I can tell you what it was.
- 12:38You'll know when you see it. I did feel that the choices made were made by somebody
- 12:43who had not had certain life experiences and had Oliver Lachey had those life experiences.
- 12:49I do not think he would have chosen to do what he did in the way that he did.
- 12:58That I've now seen. These now all went on my top 10, and that is Josh Safdie's
- 13:04Marty Supreme starring Timothee Chalamet, the incredible Klaber-Mendoza-Filyeu
- 13:10movie The Secret Agent starring Wagner Mora,
- 13:14and a Brazilian film, and then an incredible German film by Masha,
- 13:18Schlinsky called Sound of Falling.
- 13:21These three movies absolutely went on my top 10.
- 13:26And Sound of Falling in particular, even though I thought it had some issues,
- 13:31I thought the cinema was so,
- 13:35unique and Masha Shlinsky and her cinematographer and her team were finding
- 13:40new ways of expressing things cinematically that every few years a movie like
- 13:44this comes along that I really anchor my belief in cinema on.
- 13:48I'm like, okay, good. People are still doing new things.
- 13:51And it is still a vital form. And Masha Shlinsky's Sound of Falling is one of those movies.
- 13:57Before that, for me, it might have been 2021's The Worst Person in the World by Joaquin Trier.
- 14:02Before that, maybe 2018's, I think it was 2018, Into the Spider-Verse.
- 14:08I love that film. 2015, Fury Road.
- 14:11I loved Um Prophet, which was from 2009 is a film I love. So every few years
- 14:17a movie comes and I just go, wow, you know, this is one of the greatest films I've seen in a few years.
- 14:23And Sound of Falling was one of those. Let's start with Marty Supreme.
- 14:27Now, I went into Marty Supreme. I don't know exactly what I expected,
- 14:32but I didn't expect to love it as much as I did.
- 14:35And I loved it probably because it is a character study of somebody who is.
- 14:43So ambitious and so determined that they will do anything. Nothing will dissuade them.
- 14:50And that really appeals to me. That really spoke to me.
- 14:54Marty is played by Timothee Chalamet, actually based, interestingly,
- 14:59partly loosely on a real 1950s New Yorker ping pong champion before ping pong really got big.
- 15:06And basically the movie is that Marty goes to England. He's clearly a grifter
- 15:10and a con artist and cocky.
- 15:13He eventually gets to the finals against a superlative Japanese ping pong player
- 15:18who is deaf, actually. And the Japanese ping pong player wins.
- 15:23Marty is embarrassed. He goes back to New York and he spends the rest of the
- 15:28movie trying to get to Tokyo, where the next ping pong championship is going
- 15:32to happen for a rematch. That's basically the movie.
- 15:35I have not seen Benny Softee's The Smashing Machine starring The Rock.
- 15:40The Safdie brothers had done a number of movies, and then their last two movies
- 15:44really catapulted them to fame.
- 15:47Good Time starring Robert Pattinson, which I initially did not like at all.
- 15:51And then something happened to me about two-thirds of the way through that movie
- 15:54where I was like, actually, I do really like this movie.
- 15:58But I found it very abrasive, and I was wondering how I was supposed to like
- 16:02the Robert Pattinson character.
- 16:04But then something happened and I just I was all in.
- 16:07And then specifically the Adam Sandler starring Uncut Gems. And then they went
- 16:12their separate ways, which is a bummer.
- 16:14But, you know, Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme feels of a piece with Good Time and Uncut Gems.
- 16:24It's an incredible movie, and there are a lot of choices that are a lot of fun.
- 16:28Safdie uses 80s music, even though it's a 1950s film.
- 16:33He uses a synth score, which are interesting choices.
- 16:37He continues this thing that the Safdie brothers were doing,
- 16:40especially in Uncut Gems, where the casting is crazy. It's like all over the
- 16:44place. You've got Chalamet as Marty Supreme, and you've got a number of actors.
- 16:48Then you've got rappers.
- 16:51Tyler, the creator, I believe, stars in it. You've got Gwyneth Paltrow as a
- 16:56Hollywood actress trying to make a comeback in Broadway, and she and Marty have an affair.
- 17:01You have this guy from Shark Tank. I've not really watched a lot of Shark Tank,
- 17:05but Kevin O'Leary from the reality business TV show playing,
- 17:11a businessman that Marty has a love-hate relationship with because the businessman
- 17:16could possibly get him over to Japan.
- 17:18And so it's just Fran Drescher is in the movie.
- 17:22So it's this really eclectic cast. And Abel Ferrara, the director,
- 17:27plays a really major supporting part as a gangster who's really attached to his dog.
- 17:33And you have to give it up for the eccentricity of the characters and the casting,
- 17:40and it does somehow cohere.
- 17:43The movie is shot by Darius Kanji, the famed cinematographer. It is gorgeous.
- 17:48The production design is by Jack Fisk, one of the greatest production designers
- 17:51ever to, you know, practice the craft.
- 17:55What really blew me away is I think you can say that Good Time,
- 17:59Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme are really a trilogy of New York grifter hustlers
- 18:05who are basically amoral and will do anything to get what they want.
- 18:10But each movie represents a kind of evolution.
- 18:14And Marty Supreme, the character arc is the strongest because ultimately,
- 18:19and I don't think this spoils it too much, but ultimately Marty does change.
- 18:23He is not the same person he was at the beginning.
- 18:26Not to sound trite, but he does actually learn something.
- 18:30And it really moved me. I am a father. And in the movie, there are these issues
- 18:35of fatherhood that are very well planted and paid off.
- 18:38And by the end of the movie, you know, you feel like Josh Softee is making a
- 18:43comment on that sea change that happens when you become a father.
- 18:47And I was all in for it. And then, like I said, I really was moved by its portrait of ambition.
- 18:56Also, the style is incredible. It's just this sort of two-hour panic attack,
- 19:02but cinematic panic attack.
- 19:04But maybe even—I don't even know if that's the way to say it,
- 19:07because who wants to go through a two-hour panic attack? It's more like just—.
- 19:11And Softie's ability to pace a film is really impressive, really enviable.
- 19:18You know, I'm watching Michael Curtiz right now. I'm watching We're No Angels.
- 19:22And I would say that, you know, Curtiz is someone who knows how to move a film.
- 19:27Spielberg often is someone who knows how to move a film. And Softie,
- 19:32Scorsese, is someone who knows how to move a film.
- 19:34And Softie is now somebody who really knows how to move a film.
- 19:39The next movie, The Secret Agent, Brazilian film by Kleber Mendoza Filiu,
- 19:45I had seen his movie just before this one called Baccarat, which I loved,
- 19:49which was a most dangerous game riff where basically sort of entitled obnoxious.
- 19:56First world white people come to a small Brazilian town to hunt people.
- 20:02And they think that there's going to be no consequences.
- 20:06And then the town kind of rebels and fights back.
- 20:09It's got Udu Kier in it. Udu does a great job. And I love that film.
- 20:14And so I was really looking forward to this film.
- 20:17And when I finally saw it, I loved it.
- 20:20Again, like Marty Supreme, very eccentric film.
- 20:25There's a whole subplot about a severed leg. and Phil Yu devotes a whole sequence
- 20:31to the leg attacking mashers in a kind of make-out park, which is very funny.
- 20:37And you're like, what is this about? But it's, I mean, it works because it's
- 20:41sort of about the Brazilian media and the Brazilian press and how they run wild with the story.
- 20:46The essential story is it takes place in the 70s in Brazil when dissidents were disappeared.
- 20:54A very common story in all of South America. and,
- 20:57We follow one dissident, played incredibly by Wagner Mora, who is trying to
- 21:03get his son and get out of the country.
- 21:05And so he gets to an apartment, kind of a safe apartment where other dissidents
- 21:10are staying. He reconnects with his son. His wife has died.
- 21:14And so, but his wife's parents are there to support him.
- 21:18And then Wagner Mora is trying to find a way to tell his story and get out before he gets killed.
- 21:24And that is essentially the the movie the plot of the film.
- 21:30It definitely goes places you don't expect it to,
- 21:33it definitely is doing something different it's not meant to just be a genre exercise and in fact.
- 21:43It has a lot of echoes and rhymes with a movie like no country for old men among
- 21:48others it zigs and it zags in fact so much so that it seems like no country
- 21:53for old men probably directly influence The Secret Agent.
- 21:56It's not a spy movie, really, but it does have thriller elements.
- 22:01It does have political elements and it does have it is a political thriller
- 22:06in a way, but it but it's a political thriller the way that Phil you wants to do it, which is great.
- 22:12There's a whole in fact, talking about Steven Spielberg, there is a whole subplot
- 22:17that revolves around Jaws, which is being shown in movie theaters.
- 22:20Movie theaters play a big role in the film.
- 22:24And I love films that about a country's.
- 22:29History and what it's gone through and somehow communicate to you the socioeconomic
- 22:34and the sociopolitical realities of a country, but somehow do it in a way that's captivating a cinema.
- 22:44And Secret Agent does that. It's anchored by a number of great performances.
- 22:49It makes you fascinated with Brazil.
- 22:51And it's just a tremendous film, a tremendously shot film, tremendously performed
- 22:56film, and a tremendously directed film.
- 22:59Sound of Falling, the Masha Schlinsky film from Germany, in some ways is the
- 23:05most incredible in terms of its cinema.
- 23:08And at the same time, there are some things that I thought didn't work,
- 23:13that I thought were a little too much.
- 23:15But basically, it's a German film about a farm, basically, right on the border
- 23:21of East and West Germany.
- 23:23And we see five generations, I think four or five generations of women who live
- 23:28on this farm and the movie cross cuts between their stories.
- 23:32And like so much world cinema that is an American cinema, Sound of Falling isn't
- 23:39there to spell things out for you, even though I think it does a really good
- 23:42job of having you follow the story. There is a.
- 23:47A really fascinating thing Shalinsky does where you're never quite sure what,
- 23:54is real, what is daydreams or fantasy in the minds of the women.
- 24:00What is maybe distorted given the narrator.
- 24:06And I think in some ways that's really the movie saving grace because there
- 24:10are a number of things that happened in the movie that I found,
- 24:13and maybe it's my American sensibility, but like too dramatic,
- 24:16too, like too dour, too depressing.
- 24:20And I was like, there's just something about when too many depressing things
- 24:24happen in a film, you just start to go, okay.
- 24:27I mean, look, and the world is a thousand times more difficult and brutal than any film.
- 24:35I'm not trying to sound pie in the sky or delusional, but there's something
- 24:38about cinema where if you get a little too fetishistic about your fatalism, it can feel like a pose.
- 24:46And I would say that A Sound of Falling suffers from that a bit,
- 24:49I thought, especially towards the end. But that being said...
- 24:53There are just these incredible sequences where
- 24:57she'll cut to this kind of shoegaze song and there'll be a woman in the river
- 25:02and it'll be a slow-mo shot, a single shot locked off, and a face will come
- 25:06out of the muddy silt, come towards the camera,
- 25:10recede back, and you're just like, wow, this is beautiful cinema.
- 25:15There's also really interesting things where something that doesn't make sense.
- 25:22In one scene, several scenes later, you get the information to go,
- 25:26oh, oh, that's what was going on. OK, that makes sense.
- 25:30And then there are characters who reoccur in several of the generations.
- 25:34A teenage boy character in one of the earlier stories is a man.
- 25:40He's an amputee, and he reappears as sort of an older, sexual,
- 25:46virile man, even though he's missing a leg and becomes sort of the object of
- 25:51obsession of a woman in a later story.
- 25:54There are characters who were younger sisters who become mothers, and they're.
- 26:00But the movie also is a pretty rough, brutal takedown of how women were treated
- 26:10in this society from World War I through really to the present moment.
- 26:14Although the present moment feels much more enlightened than the World War I,
- 26:19the interregnum, the World War II, even the communist Russia,
- 26:23or communist East Germany.
- 26:25This farm is, I think, on the East—in fact, I know it's on the East German side.
- 26:29So there are these things you find out about that are pretty rough,
- 26:33like that the women are forced to be sterilized so that the men on the farm
- 26:41can rape them, essentially,
- 26:44although the men on the farm don't look at it that way.
- 26:46Basically, the women are expected to gratify the men's sexual urges.
- 26:51This isn't all the women, but it's a few key women, and it's really hard to
- 26:55take, but it does force you to think.
- 26:58And then in later stories, there are teenage girls or young women who –.
- 27:04Are toying with the power they have in their sexuality, but also unsettled at,
- 27:13the libidinousness, the cravenness of some of the men they're even related to.
- 27:18So it is a rough movie, and yet it's a beautiful film.
- 27:23And really the thing that is the most incredible about the movie is its cinema.
- 27:29There are scenes where characters run through the house and almost in a Theo Angelopoulos way.
- 27:36You get different time periods in a single shot.
- 27:40There are incredible compositions, incredibly edited aspects of the movie.
- 27:45There are ghost elements that you're trying to figure out.
- 27:50It's just an incredibly made film, and I cannot recommend it enough.
- 27:56If you love cinema, you are going to be inspired, and Masha Shlinsky made an incredible movie.
- 28:03Okay disclosure day so i saw disclosure day with my son uh actually june 11th
- 28:10right before it opened wide on 70 millimeter at the vista theater and,
- 28:16you know in a nutshell what i would say would be ultimately i thought it was
- 28:22a good movie i mean ultimately i agreed with what spielberg was saying Ultimately, I thought,
- 28:28he subversively, in a way, took the genre he's most known for, sci-fi, aliens.
- 28:35It definitely felt like a summing up. There were elements of Close Encounters,
- 28:39there were elements of E.T., there were elements of War of the Worlds,
- 28:42but there were also, unfortunately, elements of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
- 28:45Some of the CGI was not good.
- 28:49There were elements of AI, but he's not there to do the greatest hits.
- 28:55He uses the alien genre really to talk about where we're at right now as a society and as a culture.
- 29:02And I thought that was really interesting. The opening shot of the film is of
- 29:05a wrestler just stomping the camera at a wrestling event.
- 29:09And there are a lot of people in the audience of that event who are wearing red caps.
- 29:13And you can't, you see it and you're like, oh, whoa, okay.
- 29:17And then by the end of the film, it's very clear that Spielberg has something
- 29:21on his mind that bothers him about where we are as a society.
- 29:25And I respect the hell out of somebody who makes a movie that is determined
- 29:34to make a sociopolitical comment.
- 29:38It's kind of a, I think you call it a cri de corps, a cry of the heart.
- 29:42It feels like that. Now, it is a slow movie, and I thought the script was not good.
- 29:50There were scenes and dialogue and exposition I thought was really clunky,
- 29:56and there were long portions of the film where my eyes kind of flared,
- 30:00and I was like, I cannot believe that they did not take scissors to this.
- 30:05The movie runs about two hours, 20 minutes. I don't think it needed to be in
- 30:08more than an hour 45, personally. Now, look.
- 30:12Far be it for me. I am not Steven Spielberg. So, you know, that's an obvious.
- 30:18That was just sort of my feeling. And I wondered, like, didn't anybody tell
- 30:23him that this doesn't work or you didn't need that or this feels like it's lagging?
- 30:28I didn't feel he was super engaged in the action sequences. Some people are
- 30:32praising them. There are really only two, I thought, in the entire film, or three.
- 30:36And I really liked the last one. My son did, too.
- 30:40Even though it's the most comical, but it's the most comical in a way that felt
- 30:45very Spielbergian and it was enjoyable.
- 30:48You know, Emily Blunt did a great job. I'm sure you've heard this.
- 30:51She has one incredible scene where basically something, she has some relationship
- 30:56to the aliens and we don't know what at the beginning of the movie,
- 30:59but a certain thing happens that triggers something inside her or opens,
- 31:03unlocks something inside her.
- 31:04And suddenly in the course of a scene, She's speaking three or four different
- 31:09languages with her boyfriend, played by Wyatt Russell, like flawlessly.
- 31:13And it really is fun to see an actor that good.
- 31:18Everybody is fine in the film. I felt like Colin Firth was not helped by whatever
- 31:24the backstory was supposed to be.
- 31:25He plays the bad guy kind of in a way of the movie, although he's a bad guy,
- 31:29a bad guy with heart and soul and one of those people who thinks they're doing
- 31:33things for the right reason.
- 31:35But there's this subplot that has to deal with his wife that never was explained.
- 31:40Like, I never fully understand what that what that was supposed to be about.
- 31:43And obviously it was meant to be important for decisions he makes at the end
- 31:46of the film. But I couldn't really follow it. I mean, I think if you're being
- 31:50brutal, you have to say the movie didn't work in a lot of ways.
- 31:54And yet, at the same time, you have to say that it was a daring film and a fascinating
- 32:01film and a film where Spielberg could have easily done a feel-good layup.
- 32:06And he didn't. He wanted to do
- 32:08something different. And I think that's the hallmark of a great filmmaker.
- 32:11And the fact that Spielberg is 80 and he is still trying to do things that are
- 32:18not obvious home runs, but are really ambitious and interesting.
- 32:24You know, that won me over. That did win me over. And I do think ultimately
- 32:28a lot of his points about how God and aliens can coexist and how.
- 32:33I don't feel his point was actually overtly liberal or conservative.
- 32:36I felt his point was, and this is very Spielbergian, I felt his point was very empathetic.
- 32:42It was about like all of us trying to put aside our pettiness to try to find
- 32:48a way back to having some kind of connection and civility and productiveness
- 32:54with each other. And I commend him for that.
- 32:56And the final sequence of the movie, which is the disclosure,
- 33:00where they disclose to the whole world through all these different news feeds,
- 33:04was a lot of fun and really well edited.
- 33:06That part was great. I was down for that and that was really really well done
- 33:10so go see it be ready for it to be slow and clunky and for a few times for you to be like what the fuck,
- 33:18but by the end i'd be curious to see what you think it did win me over.
- 33:23Thank you guys for listening. That is the end of Secret Movie Club Podcast 222.
- 33:28Secret Movie Club Podcast 223 will not come out next week. That's an off week for us.
- 33:34But the week after, July 10th, we will be back and we will be talking about
- 33:39film structure, which often has to do with screenwriting, but not always.
- 33:43Sometimes the structure of a film is found in the editing and whatever the screenplay
- 33:47was. I mean, there's so many famous stories.
- 33:50American Beauty being one of the great ones where that whole movie was about
- 33:53a court case and it was bookended by these courtroom scenes that they cut out entirely.
- 33:58And, you know, Annie Hall, Woody Allen's Annie Hall was originally a much more
- 34:03expansive, zany comedy that was pared down to like 89 minutes and just focused
- 34:09on the ebb and flow and the rise and fall of a love relationship.
- 34:13So oftentimes structure is found in the editing as well. And so when I say film
- 34:19structure, we are not just talking about three-act screenwriting structure,
- 34:23but I do want to get into it. I do find it fascinating. I do find it important to understand.
- 34:28We'll get into all that in two weeks. In the meantime, please go to secretmovieclub.com,
- 34:34go to our socials at secretmovieclub, get on our newsletter.
- 34:36August 1st, 2026, we are at the Palace Theater.
- 34:40We are doing the sixth sense and unbreakable on 35 millimeter as a double matinee.
- 34:46And then at seven 30, we are doing the big Lebowski and we are having a 10 PM
- 34:50to 1 AM party in mods apartment where they actually shot the mods apartment
- 34:54scenes above the theater. And we're going to make it, we hope to make it a blast.
- 35:00We would love to have you there. And we only have, we have a set number of tickets
- 35:03and we cannot just, we cannot sell more than those. So if you want to watch
- 35:07Lebowski and party in Maude's apartment. Grab those tickets now.
- 35:11Email us as always at community at secretmovieclub.com. I hope you guys are
- 35:15making movies. I hope you guys are fighting the good fight, running the race, keeping the faith.
- 35:20I am under the weather, but that's what happens when you have got a family of
- 35:26four and my wife and I are both under the weather.
- 35:29But, you know, being able to do these podcasts, being able to keep on keeping
- 35:35on with cinema and with movies and with you guys, it helps.
- 35:38It helps when you're not feeling great. So thank you.
- 35:41And I wish you guys a great few weeks. Happy 4th.