No Other Choice

24:59David? Yes. This episode is brought to you by Mubi, the global film company that champions great cinema. It champions it. Unlike the others. No, they... To cry it. Barbarian it. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover. With Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema. You can log on to Mubi and check out all the movies they got. Art house, cool indie stuff, foreign stuff. Okay, this is awesome. There's a movie star movie now streaming on Mubi in the US covered on blank check soon. Well, I think that's the headline.

25:38Yeah, Die My Love. Yes. You're going to need to watch it if you want to keep up with the show. True, true. I mean, I guess, you know, do what you want. You don't have to, but we recommend viewing the film. Please view the film. Die My Love, Lynn Ramsey's film. Great film. It came out last year. It was a canon that came out last fall in 2025. It's a visceral and uncompromising portrait of a woman engulfed by love and madness starring Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for Golden Globe. Robert Pattinson. It's kind of mostly those two. They're very heavy on the two of them. Yeah. Some top shelf.

26:09Nolte? I was going to say, some seasoning of Nolte and Spacek. Like dry age, let me tell you. Oh. Yeah, you've got them in there. But yeah, it's a lot. It's a big showstopper movie for J-Law. And R-Patz. Yeah. And R-Patz knows he's playing sack and fiddle. Sure, but then there's like a lemon pepper dry rub of Nick Nolte. I love lemon pepper, guys. I love Nick Nolte. I love Nick Nolte, too. Look, it's Lynn Ramsey making her eagerly awaited filmmaking return. Obviously, that's why we're covering her on the pod. We've been waiting for her to make another movie. and it was on the short list for cinematography at the 90th Academy Awards.

26:52I didn't even know that. That's awesome. It's a passionate, complicated, destructive love story between two major stars in Lawrence and Pattinson who'd never been together on screen before. I know. I guess that's not that surprising, but they are quite a pair. The bat and the cat. K-A-T-N-I-S-S. Oh, Katniss. Yeah. The bat and the steek. Mystique, that is. Oh, sure. Yeah, it's an awesome movie. The Steak and the Freak. Is that something? He's played a lot of Freaks. Sure. Sure. Spoiler alert for the episode, but I was a big fan of the film. I know you were. Yes. Ben, probably. Have you seen it yet?

27:25I haven't seen it yet. Whoa! You're going to like it a lot. It's also based on a book by Ariana Harwick. Mm-hmm. Anyway. There's so much good stuff to watch on Movie. There's also awesome. Look, if you're not a member, this is a perfect month to sign up in order to keep up with the show. To stream the best of cinema, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free.

28:03It's a fan of introducing this podcast. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want, and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. Yeah. Three years ago now, Park Chan-wook won our March Madness competition. I think an incredibly cool fucking win. It was awesome. One of my favorite living filmmakers and someone I transparently don't think I personally ever would have had the courage to be like, we can put this guy on main feed. I don't think he is the rare.

28:33Often our March Madness winner will be someone we're like, right, that makes sense. That's a big name. That's someone. And he was, you know, he was in our international series. so obviously the choices were a little different, but he wouldn't have been in my top five of like, I think this guy's going to win. He beat out Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson. He beat Steve McQueen, Peter Jackson, Peter Weir, and Guillermo del Toro, and then Bong Joon-ho, of course, by one vote. By one vote, which was really fun. And we remind you all that every vote matters, but going into that, Bong felt like, well, he'll probably steamroll.

29:09Bong certainly felt like a big one. again those legacy guys like PJ or or I want I rewatched another hot take I rewatched those Lords of the Rings because I do it every Christmas with my wife Middle Earth yeah you gotta do that Peter Jackson series sometime I agree my friend I know we keep saying like oh could he make another movie I just you know I also rewatched all three the fucking Ents man they're talking ass those are my favorite guys yeah the Ents rule they are pretty good I like how the one guy is on fire and then he's like then he's Oh, one of the best moments. He takes a little bath.

29:45It's just so funny that Saruman is like, I've thought of everything except maybe that if I cut down some trees, the trees will march on my tower. Can I say it? Yes. I think Saruman is funny. I know he's not woke. Oh, but he pushes boundaries? Have you seen his Kill Tony set? He was really good. He came out with the floating orb. Uh-huh. Keep going with this bit. It had an eye in it and then it turned into like a dick. 2023 was our Park Chan Wolf series. Yeah, so that is... Oh my God. Two and a half years ago. Yeah, and we did them in the summer too. So it was... Yeah, it's been a little while.

30:23But I thought that was a great series, a rewarding series. Really, really great series. I really enjoyed going through his filmography, you know, along with the podcast because I'd only seen like Old Boy and The Handmaiden. This is also, knock on wood, a guy who is in the prime of his career, the prime of his life. What is most exciting for me is now, this moment where for the first time we get to do a follow-up new release Park Jam book, something we will hopefully get to do many, many more times over the next couple of years. Certainly seems like the guy's working. And this movie, I think, fucking rules.

30:58Marie, Ben, and I went to a screening about two months ago, and then I went a second time over the weekend, right before recording, to refresh myself on it because it's a naughty film. And I know you just saw it again, Marie, as well. I went last night. It jumped way up for me. The first time watching it, like I do with a lot of Park movies, I spend the first half at least going, where is this going? I'm not enjoying this, but I'm struggling to like prioritize the threads and understand what this is all building towards. And then it gets to the end and I'm like, holy fucking shit, I see it all now.

31:33And then watching it the second time, knowing everything from the beginning, I just thought this thing is like a fucking, uh, it's a knockout. It's a knockout in my opinion. I think Handmade will probably forever be my favorite film of his, but I think this is quite possibly my number two now. And it's in serious contention for my number one on the year. And I, I think it's like a masterpiece. What was your second viewing? Like Marie? Uh, I too, you know, uh, enjoyed it more on rewatch because I was less concerned with like, I guess the structure of it and wonder what it was. how like okay he killed this person now I'm waiting for like how are how is that aspect of the film going to pace itself out it does some interesting wrong footing to that the first time can throw you a little off balance and I think that he has there is like he has a sense of humor but there I think some of his films deal with more like shocking or upsetting things in them.

32:39And so sometimes when I think I didn't know this movie was going to be as goofy. I'm a cyborg, but that's OK. It was. I think is his closest thing to an out and out comedy and does seem to be the film that Americans have seen the least of his oeuvre. And I would say after that, this is like his second most overtly funny movie. It's like an insane tonal juggling act movie where he's constantly keeping three different balls in the air simultaneously and switching which tones he's mashing up. And, you know, what's interesting is, like, the first viewing, I wasn't expecting it to be as silly as it was, and then I think I kind of was stuck on that.

33:20The second time, while I do think I laughed more than anyone else in my audience, like, I was surprised that the other people watching the movie with me weren't connecting with the comedy as much, But I actually was a lot sadder this viewing because I thought about what is like what was lost by these men not having solidarity with one another and how not having solidarity with your like your peers is what has led us to the world that we live in. I mean, I think like at almost all moments, this film is simultaneously operating as like a social statement tragedy, a like farcical comedy and like a screw turning thriller, which is insane.

34:14And it's not even doing like tone management, switching off between those. It is like within each scene, you're choosing which one you're almost prioritizing in your read. I also felt like I saw it with like a sold out Saturday night crowd, which was just very exciting to see this movie doing well at the screening I was at. I saw it at the Alamo downtown Brooklyn. But, you know, I felt like Neon has had this crazy year where it now looks quite possible, if not probable, that they're going to get all five Best Foreign Film nominations. I wouldn't be surprised if this one missed. This is, I was going to say, this feels like the least secure of them.

34:55and also people now think that at least two or three of those will probably get into Best Picture as well. I think they're going to get three Best Picture nominations. Sentimental Value. Secret Agent. It was just an accident. Secret Agent. That's right. And then people are now assuming Surat is in fourth place and No Other Choice is in fifth place for international film. Yeah, it's funny. Surat is clicking more. I would assume that, yeah, maybe one of those misses for like Sound of Falling or there's some sort of like prestige voice of Hinesh Rishabh. The President's Cake is a movie I liked a lot.

35:28Yeah. Oh, The President's Cake? Have you seen it? No. Tasty. I know it's from Iraq. It is. I don't know anything else about it. It's not about the orange buffoon, is it? It is not. Okay. It's about Saddam Hussein. What? The beret-wearing buffoon. No, it's quite a good film. I liked it a lot. Highly encourage people to check it out. When did you check that one out? Went to a screening a month or two ago. Wow. Yeah. Did you get the neon screeners? Yeah. I get it every year. I get their beloved box. Yeah. Well, David Ehrlich will not let me borrow the Surratt screener. Why? Because he's cranking it to Surratt every day.

36:02No, because he's like, you're not allowed to watch that at home. Why? What? Because it's like the thing about Surratt, which is another film. You have to be in a full theater and the noise needs to be really loud. I'm like, bro. Gatekeeper. Stop it. Oh, okay. But so he's saying like, is the music? I mean, I guess so. People are like, wow, Surratt's really intense and gnarly. And I watch it and I'm like, well, yeah, intense and gnarly things happen in Surratt. But that's a very like sort of absurd and strange movie. I don't think it's like Avatar where like if I watch it on my TV. You can watch it however you like.

36:42Thank you. I certainly do not agree with it. Thank you. If you want my neon box, you can have it. I think that was kind of the, yes, the lead. I just want to watch Surratt. The point I'm trying to make here. Yes. when this film was announced, I feel like fairly early in 2025, this is happening. Neon is partnered, right? And we will talk about how, we can briefly talk about how, you know, this is a a Park Channel project that has long gestated. And he would keep saying like, that's one of my future things. I want to do that adaptation of the axe. It has been 15 years of him saying, this is my potential masterpiece.

37:13Like, not Babe Ruth calling a shot, but he's just like, I have located this book that to me, feels like the vehicle for me to make my grand statement about everything that animates me. He has called it a lifetime project. He said it could be his masterpiece. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So yes, long, long gestating. So it was like announced this is finally fucking happening. Neon is on board. It's going to get a significant American distribution, presumably because they're co-financing and not buying it after the fact. And it's going to play festivals this year. And we were just like, holy shit, this fucking thing is happening.

37:46Well, according to Wikipedia, the poor man's J.J. Bursch, this was supposed to be in English. We'll get into all of that. Okay. But that was part of it. I didn't know that. The part of the announcement was it's happening and he's decided to make it a Korean film. Obviously, this film is based on a Donald Westlake novel called The Axe, which is an American. You say obviously, and I did not know that until last night. Wow. Well, I know because I've read many a dossier by J.J. Burchard, dossier maker. Oh, the rich man's Wikipedia? When we did the Park Chan-wook series in which he talked about this as a potential.

38:23There's the book. And you may not also know that, of course, that book had prior been adopted by Costa Gavras. 20 years ago. Yes. As Le Coupé. Which is French for. The Axe. The Axe. Coupé. And Costa Gavras' widow and one of his sons are credited as producers on this movie because they still held rights. All three are different. I've not been able to track down the French movie. There seems to be no way to watch this film. Even with VPNs, I could not figure out a way to watch it anywhere. It has only ever been released in an out-of-print Blu-ray Costa Gravis Volume 2 box set. They don't got this shit on Kurt Gaga?

39:02No, it's insane. I couldn't find it anywhere. If anyone has a link, please let me know. But yes, this has been a long in the works thing. it's announced, Neon's on board, it's happening, it's going to come out in 2025. Then it plays Venice. I feel like it got a really strong initial burst of excitement. It got a very, I feel, very strong reputation. Even going into the festival, there was this feeling of, like, Park is kind of one of those filmmakers where you could see it just being his moment. Here is a Parasite kind of crossover moment. Here's a guy who's had films that have, like, connected here in the States before.

39:37And is this the year that in an increasingly international academy, puts their arms around him and starts taking him seriously as a major filmmaker. And then it like didn't win any of the major awards of Venice. And then it has kind of felt like this movie was on ice between the beginning of September and its release at the very end of December. And from the moment I saw it, I was like on its face. This feels like the most commercial and accessible of the movies Neon has. And look, it got three Indie Spirit. Oh, no, no, Gotham not. It got two Golden Globes. for picture and actor. Yeah, it did pretty...

40:10I thought that was good. Nominations. It got close, though? Because it's a comedy? Because it's a comedy. Right, right, right. So there you go. Yeah, I just think it's like... Okay, so I'm just gonna push back a little bit. It had a very good opening weekend. Yeah. Do push back. Yeah, because I mean, I think this movie is very long. It takes kind of a... It's got like such a killer premise, literally. Mm-hmm. But it takes a long time to actually start executing, literally, on that premise. and it's got the tonal switching and all that. That I actually think audiences can handle and other Korean movies have broken through that also have that kind of...

40:46I've seen people compare this to Parasite in terms of subject matter and tone. A little simplistic. I agree, but I think, you know... They are filmmakers who are very closely tied, are close friends, have come up together. There is a part of me that imagines knowing that this is a book he wanted to adapt for so long that he sees Bong making Parasite and he's like, is it finally time for me to make this? You know, there are similarities in the material. Did it help motivate him to be like, fuck, I got to prioritize this. But they feel like very different films dealing with similar themes. Yeah, no, sure.

41:23But I've had it, multiple people text me saying like, I liked it. Had a little, had a little bit of a hard time cracking into it, like whatever. Like, I've definitely gotten some vibes from people of like, yeah, and that is not quite how I felt. I had a great time watching it. I was very engaged. I thought it was funny. It hasn't, it didn't quite stick with me. Where do I have it on my list? You know, I have it in kind of like the 20s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like 20s, teens, kind of close to like Sirat. It is. My question truly is like, is it? It's more like a four star movie to me. Yeah. No, you're, you have it right at the top there.

42:04Yeah. And I was more just like, yeah, my first watch, I had it like five or six and now it's moved up to like three, two, one. I was recently at the Criterion office. You were too, but yeah, let's say we. Well, no, because you were un poco late. What are we talking about? Well, I had a meeting at Criterion with Griff. We had a meeting at Criterion and you were waiting for me. That's a better way. Well, you were 20 minutes late. You were 20 minutes late to your Criterion meeting? It was 15. It was 15. You were 15. Wow. Wow. A lot of things were going on. It was in a chaotic week. And as I walk into the lobby of their building, like not even the offices, Lee Byung-hung is just there, like checking in at the desk, like signing, you know, like you have to in a Manhattan office building, just like on your name here and a signature here.

42:52I love how multiple times in the movie, people are like, you know, you're really good looking. He's just a shiny motherfucker. You're just like, whoa, like, you know, he's such a movie star. considering the character you're playing and how good looking you are. The movie kind of frames it as like, is it a little past tense? The guy has aged unbelievably. When we did our - Obviously, he's all the way back in joint security. But that's the thing. When we did that episode, it boggled my fucking mind where I was like, this guy's 15 years older than I think he is. You know, like how could he have been in this movie this early?

43:26And he's just starting to show age in a kind of Paul Rudd way where he still looks great, but you're like, the guy no longer looks 35 forever. He's a mid-50s guy. He's 55. I know, man. I think the movie weaponizes it so perfectly and such an incredible choice I think it makes is that they give him like a weirdly just a little bit too unnatural dye job. That it's not that they dye out his grays. It's that he's got that aging guy thing where he starts putting colors in that would never be in hair. Yeah, his hair is like, there are some times when the sun shines on his hair. It's a little light brown.

44:01Yeah. Right, right, right. and like this guy being like, do I have a mustache or not? Like you can start to feel the crisis of him being like, are my looks gone in five years? Are these the last years of me being able to use that as a tool in my life? Right. But he is an astonishingly hinchy man. And I think it's a really good performance. I think it's a tremendous performance. He's got so many good facial reactions during the sequence when he is like, stalking out the gummo, bummo, goo bummo. Yes. The first guy he kills and his wife. The record collector. Yeah. The analog man. All of the snakes and stuff.

44:43And, you know, it's just so... He's funny. It's that thing I associate with a lot of Korean cinema, especially where, like, you know, you see these actors in these movies that cross over. You're like, God, this is such an incredible like... This guy's like, I, you know, I see this guy, I've seen this guy in like five movies in my life, but he's always so dramatic and interesting. Of course, he was Storm Shadow. He was, and Lee Biong-Hung, of course. And G.I. Joe, Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe, Retaliation, a performance that swept the nation. And he's in Terminator, Genesis. He's the T-1000. And was he also in, no.

45:17He was not in Magnificent Seven? He is. He is, okay. He was one of the seven. Yep. Yeah. You know, I've never seen that. I know. But then you like look at their and it's like, yeah, but also they do like a bunch of like crazy comedies. And like, you know, in their native country, they're doing all this stuff that would never translate. He's a bit of a Mads Mikkelsen type where like he has been in many major American studio films, basically always hired to do the exact same thing. And then you're like, oh, in his home country, he does everything. In his home country, he is like the most versatile, powerful movie star.

45:47And we always kind of hire him to be a kind of stealthy. Is he also in Red 2? Let's see. Yes! Right. Red 2. So he had like five big studio films. He did a bunch of action movies in Hollywood. But it was always kind of being icy, intense action guy. Definitely often I feel like not being handed even much dialogue. Just like, right, because that's what Storm Shadow is. Just like a silent assassin. Slick, cool, deadly presence. Right. Supporting character. But yeah, I feel like he's such a comedic talent. And this spotlights that in all kinds of fun ways. Even just the way he plays his tooth problem in this movie, a thing I relate to deeply as someone who spent a year of his life tangled in fucking dental nightmares.

46:31And he plays it almost in like a pantomime-y way. They like establish this visual language of him tapping the side of his mouth to try to relieve the pain at like his back jaw. That feels like how you would illustrate in a pamphlet at a dentist's office what tooth pain looks like. But it makes it so easy then to have any scene get heightened by him starting to tap the jaw and be like, oh, right. And that's also part of it. This can be a recurring visual. Speaking of tapping. Yeah. They do the tapping as a psychological exercise in the beginning of the movie. Yes. Have you done that in therapy?

47:09I've done versions of that. Yeah. Yeah. Marie and I share a therapist. We do. We're very close. So I sometimes will do that. I feel like I don't do the head one. Oh, I do the head one. Which they do in this movie. There's a forehead tapping that's a centering that you see. This movie shows both alcoholic recovery groups and also unemployment recovery groups that are so twinned and almost overlapping and intertwined. But yes, there's a forehead tapping that's a centering. And then there's a jaw tapping that's a sort of like redistribution of focus and pain. I don't know how that's showing up on Mike, Ben.

47:45I apologize now that we're all tapping. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. But I just, I love any time a movie can do that, where it's just like, oh, there's now this really clean sort of physical gesture that can just, as shorthand in a scene, add another layer. So, let's talk about the movie. Okay, Donald Westlake publishes The Axe in 1997. Yes, Westlake, you know, gigantic, like, crime writer, has, like, hundreds of books. He's the Richard Stark guy? Yeah, Richard Stark. Right, which is Spencer. the Parker series. I'm sorry, not Spencer Parker. Yes. But, you know, he wrote a bunch of other, you know, heroes and all.

48:29I'm not a crime fiction guy. It's always such a deep world, but I know the name, obviously. So the axe comes out in 1997. Guy at a paper company is laid off, looks for employment for 18 months and starts to hunt down the people who could take the job that he thinks should be his. Donald Westlake wrote Point Blank. Yes. Yes. Right, because that's also part of the Parker series. The Parker books have been adapted so many times, but half the times they're adapted as Parker books and half the times they're spun out to be different things. So like, what? Play Dirty, the recent Shane Black Amazon movie, which I regrettably still haven't watched, is a Parker adaptation.

49:10But then there was a Taylor Hackford, Jennifer Lopez, fucking Statham Parker. Yeah, called Parker. Right. Anyway. He wrote the screenplay for The Grifters, but did not write a book. Because I think that's an original. No, it's a Jim Thompson book that he adapted. It's published in 97. It's adapted by Costas Gravis. Costas Gravis. Excuse me. I apologize. About eight years later, and then Park gets to it like 20 years after that. The decision to keep it in paper. Yes. The passage of time. It is one of those things that like just pays off so greatly that you're like, in 1997, there's not as much of an existential threat to paper.

49:53And paper is the perfect thing for me because it's not like, oh, this is a technology that's going to be completely replaced. Well, is that true, though? Because, like, 97 is, like, the beginning of, like, the internet and email. But we're still very far away. I mean, people are reading books and newspapers and all that still. I just think that, like, paper will never not exist. Yeah, we do need paper. I do feel like it will always exist, but it's the perfect industry because you're like, it's only going to shrink. It will never shrink to zero. It's never going to be nothing, but it's clearly on the downturn.

50:29Have you guys thought about what your AI-proof job would be? Wait, what does that mean? Like I'm looking at AI copy and... No, like what? No, like what job? Because... Oh, AI-proof job. My answer is... and no AI can fucking figure that out. My answer is just keeping this podcast sloppy and unstructured enough that AI can't do it. Can't do it. Can't get this sloppy. Because I'll see some of these other AI podcasts and they're good. And people try to, they try to do the AI blink check and they're like, these guys are so unprofessional. There's no way to replicate this. You mean you'll see like an AI replica of a podcast?

51:09People have done AI Joe Rogan with dead people and it's like 99.9 % spot. Well, isn't that because Joe Rogan is most just going like, yeah. Correct. Like he's not really. But here's what like AI can't figure out. Which episode we'll talk about Becker for 20 minutes. That's true. I'm trying to make this show AI proof in that way. That's so true. Who thought we'd talk about the floor and the belly of the Stranger Things creature? Why does it have a... It should be like a stomach. It's a strange thing. With like a lake of acid. But I think they're like trying to switch things up on you. Yeah. in a strange way.

51:45That would be pretty normal if it was a stomach like a acid. Even circling back to the belly, that's another thing that AI wouldn't do. AI would be like, clearly put that tangent to bed. You're actually talking about the movie in question now. No, if AI... I might like AI, actually. Maybe we should bring in it. It's going to shut him up. Jesus Christ. Suddenly this show is hosted by AI and David's happy because it has a quote ready to go. Exactly. It starts on time. right it obeys the clock no I would never I decry AI look it's heightened and it's more extreme but watching Blue Moon I did have a couple moments where I was like it's kind of like the Griffin and David dynamic the working relationship with Lorenz and Hart yeah a little bit oh so you're interesting are you I'm the I'm the little guy what do you think you said Lorenz and Hart but that's no it's Lorenz I'm sorry Lorenz and Rogers Lorenz and Rogers I am I am Richard Rogers, I suppose, in that scenario.

52:47In that you're coming up and you're like, big idea. Okay, what if we... And I'm like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, maybe. We could also not do that. The scene where Andrew Scott very empathetically is like... That seems fucking incredible. Will you actually commit to a schedule? I would say... I was like, got some black chat vibes. You know what, Griffin? I will say you're not as... You're not as toxic. I said it's a more extreme version. I think that character is both more toxic and less functional than I am. I don't think you have like an alcohol problem. No. No, I don't. Yeah, no. And you don't like, you're not like relentlessly talking shit to anyone who listened.

53:23No, I also got like five inches on Loren's heart. You do. If nobody else. Because he was like under, he was under five feet. Yeah. Was he really? Yeah. Like he was like medically. That movie rules. Really short. Like he wasn't just normal short. He was around five foot tall, which is a DeVito size. I could fucking dunk on that guy. Yeah, you could. Especially because, and the movie makes this very clear, he had this weird medical condition where he couldn't move in place. He could only take steps if he's being filmed from the shoulders up. Well, people are like, I can't believe they cast Hawk.

53:56He's too tall for it. I'm like, well, there's not a lot of people who are that short. Like, I guess, are we getting DeVito? Lil' Kim. I mean, it's funny to imagine, but you can't put DeVito at a bar because then I'm just thinking of It's Always Sunny. Oh, that's so true. And why does the Mind Flayer's stomach look like a floor? Why isn't it? You know what I mean? Ben, have you seen Blue Moon? No. Ben, I think you'd like it. You'd love it. I would be really interested in Nelly's take on it because it's very much about show people. And it takes place at the after party for the opening night of Oklahoma.

54:32Is Ben Hammerstein or is he? No, Ben is Bobby Cannavale. Yes. So who's Hammerstein? Hammerstein is whoever I kick your ass out and replace you with someone good Hammerstein's the Mets podcast good luck with that I don't think you've listened to my Mets podcast but not a highly structured hour I would say I would not call that my Oklahoma and I'm Margaret Qualley because I'm the woman you're a woman and when you show up everyone's like how's woman who is woman just before we move on from this from the movie No, from what would your AI job be? Because I actually spent a lot of time... My AI proof job.

55:13I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I would get into mortuary services. Interesting. I actually thought about this during COVID. Like embalming or just like helping organize the funeral as an event? All of it. So you're going to have a big house? You'd be pumping like the green juice into the bodies and shit? I would do the makeup. Okay. But like there are always dead people. So this to me feels like that is a job that there will always be room for. I hear you. I mean, but what if it's just a robot that does it? You say that. A robot won't, because it's truthful. They always say, well, a robot won't do it.

55:48Well, maybe it will. Marie, you say there will always be death, but I'm friends with a certain tech billionaire who keeps injecting young penis blood into his face and has promised me that he will never die. And he has so many stats about how many erections he gets. And he has all of them to show you. I'm good friends with that guy. Oh my God, this episode is already so good. It's just so funny that you look at pictures of him before he decided to cheat death and it's like, oh, it's a regular person. Then he looks like Boo from Super Mario Bros. He's just the whitest ghost you've ever seen. Did you see that clip of he did some interview recently and the interviewer goes, true or false, you will die someday.

56:24And he goes, false. How do you feel that? There's a hesitation of how slowly he tries to be like, no, but he can't say it confidently. For those who may not know who the fuck you're talking about. He's my good friend. Who is this? His name is Brian Johnson. He's some fucking tech monster. I don't know. I don't think he's even affiliated with any sort of like noteworthy website. He started some company that sold for a billion dollars that we've never heard of. So Ben, here's a guy who looks like a normal sort of tech guy to you, right? He like created like the semicolon on the keyboard or whatever.

56:57What if I told you he's done so much cheating death work and spinning his blood and whatever that now he looks like this hottie. Oh, God. Wow, wow, wow, wow. He's like, I'm trying to be the first person to not die and not age. And one of his things is he's got like a teen son or like a 20-something son, and he does like daily blood transfusions of the young blood, and he's like, this is one of the ways. Like, he's just got all these weird treatments he does, and he just like, fucking poison tech bro brain people will be like, look at how, can you believe this guy is 55? and I'm like, he doesn't look 25, which is what you're arguing.

57:35He just looks like a different species now. So this is what's fucking crazy. He's not even 50. He's 48. You know what? Lee Kyung-Kung looks younger. 100%. Than this fucking dude. Yeah, and that guy's murdering people. Yeah.

58:01David, I am so excited about this episode's sponsor. might truly be the most excited I've ever had for anything to sponsor this podcast we're excited to like sponsors that tell you how to like help your finances okay sorry sorry sorry easy today's episode of Blank Check is brought to you by Nirvana the band the show the movie Nirvana the band the show the movie Marie's here too because everyone's so excited I love this movie I mean I love this band this show this movie yes important correction This film is finally coming to theaters. February 13th is the start of the theatrical rollout. Yeah. From our friends at Neon.

58:42Neon's bringing it out. We have been waiting impatiently for other people to see this film. We saw this at South by Southwest. One of the best screenings of my life. Truly. Truly. It was an unbelievable experience. Ben, you were there. Had a blast. And I had never seen or engaged with this show previously. Me neither. Most of the group had not. And you don't really need it. No. You don't need the context to enjoy. Absolutely. I think you need to know what Toronto is. Because you knew nothing other than us hyping you up for you. Well, this was the problem. And we should say, it's a city in Canada.

59:14Yes. I went in. You guys had just been like, it's the best thing ever. And not just you. Other people. I can't believe how good. And I was like, this is so overhyped. And here's the great thing about David. I'm walking in. I felt mad about it. I was just like, they primed it too much for me. I like that you acknowledge this. Because sometimes if we tell you something's good, I see you go like you put your fists up. Well, I'm just like relaxed because I need to. I can't go in with too much hype because that's not good for my critical experience of a movie. And then I thought it was better than the hype.

59:43This is the thing. This movie is truly a miracle. I think it is the funniest movie of the last 10 years easily. And listeners of the show know I am often bemoaning the state of the theatrical comedy. And this is a movie that provides the thing I've been longing for, which is you go see this with a crowd. It is just electric every five seconds, rolling laughter. And the movie just builds and builds and builds. This is a movie for Matt Johnson. Yes. Director Blackberry, one of my favorite movies the last couple of years. Him and Jay McCarroll started as a web series, became a TV series, and now is a movie.

1:00:19But you don't need to know any of that. This works as a clean entry point. It's a movie about two friends who are obsessed with their band playing at one venue. They want to play at the Rivoli. That's all you need to know about these guys. Before the lights went down at the South by Southwest screening, I believe you turned to me and said, what do I need to know? And I said, all you need to know is they want to play the Rivoli. They got to play the Rivoli. I've been to Toronto many times. Have you been to the Rivoli? Never. I've stayed on Queen West, though, and I've certainly walked by the Rivoli many times.

1:00:47And I've always been like, oh, yeah, the Rivoli. There it is. It's not Carnegie Hall. No, it's a fucking bar. And you never see these guys. What do you mean? It's the most important music venue in Canada. You never see these guys practice their music. But all you know is that every episode starts with, here's the plan, here's how we play the Rivoli, right? We got to play the Rivoli. And this movie starts from there and explodes in unbelievable ways. I think this movie is truly like a magic trick beyond just how funny it is. And for how much it's caked in the deep lore of this Nirvana, the band, the show universe that's existed for 15 years.

1:01:19You can just go in knowing nothing and be blown away. and for a movie that seems kind of slapdash and roughly made from the start, it starts to pull off genuine cinematic magic tricks where you cannot believe how this thing was made. What was my Letterboxd review, Griff? Did you see it? No, please tell me. LOL, how did they make this? Truly. That was how I thought. How did this get made? Serious questions. I was also just like, how did they make this? I don't get it. You don't understand how they're getting away with it legally. You don't understand how it was cleared for release. and there is a melding of scripted and non-scripted, them engaging with real people on the street where the line between what is planned and what is not boggles your brain.

1:02:02It was my favorite thing I saw all of 2025. And now it's coming out in 2026. Now, listen, I do have to do some talking points, okay? Do some talking points. Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie is in theaters February 13th. Get tickets now. We must say this. Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie. They're very clear that we have to say the title of this thing a few times. Nirvana the Band, the Show, the Movie. Why? It's a really simple, easy title. Nirvana the Band, the Show, the Movie. It really is a kind of like going cold expecting something fun. I don't think you need too much more than that.

1:02:34No. I know it sounds unwieldy or whatever, but just like, I think you're going to have a pretty good time. If you trust our opinion at all, take this recommendation. Yes. Don't look it up. Go in. and I really, really doubt there is any chance you will be disappointed. In theaters, February 13th. Get your tickets now. Nirvana, the man, the show, the movie.

1:03:06David. Yes. Happy New Year. Yay. That was a little party horn. Yeah. It's February, but it's still the new year. I mean, I liked it. I'm not going to call it out. But with the new year comes a kind of time for reflection, right? You think about the past year. You think about your aspirations for the year to come. Yes. And you start to think about your finances. It's true. But look, paying off debt, building an emergency fund, saving for something major like buying a home or college or retirement, stuff like that. I plan to do all three of those in 2026. You're going to go back to school? Yeah.

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1:05:34Suko. He was the little Kong baby. Suko. Suko. Suko.

1:05:52No other choice. No other choice. So it's, yeah, so Park Jan-wook, the great Korean director Park Jan-wook, as far back as 2009, says, I want to remake the axe, or I want to, you know, adapt the novel. The book feels much more kind of like capital-esque satire. and it's more kind of like American corporate rat race thinking. And also, as you called out, Marie, in the very setup, it's like this guy goes through 18 months of unemployment and is just like, fuck, nothing's working. I guess I go to murder. And it feels a little bit like a sort of Dr. Strangelove-esque heightening of an anxiety, if that makes sense, versus this movie that is sort of about how short a walk it is for someone to start justifying those things.

1:06:40I feel like this movie also is probably, you know, it is definitely about the crisis of AI a little bit. Like, you know, it's sort of woven in a little thin, you know, like, but the end of the movie, The Robots. Yes. Like, I certainly was thinking about it. And the crisis of whatever, I cannot speak to Korea's current economic situation, but knowing the economic situation of most countries, I'm guessing it's tenuous. And that there's like, you know, sort of employment crises. Yes, there's also like a decline in unions and employee protections. And this sort of this attitude, which is very much.

1:07:18I feel like it's an American thing of the sort of like every man for himself. Right. Sort of ethos, which is now spreading outside of America to other countries that used to be more community based. Yes, I think it's a bad AI. but I think the ending certainly hammers that home. I think the larger thing it's about, which all these things are tendrils of, is this sort of like point of no return too far down the road path we have put ourselves on to self-inflicted redundancy. Right? Sure. And being like, are we outmoding ourselves? Are we making ourselves obsolescent as a species? and also I think this extension of, he for a long time thought he wanted this to be his big American debut.

1:08:08I think because he was like, this is a book about America and specifically the American idea of capitalism and corporate culture and endless growth and all these sorts of things. He hires Don McKellar, who is Canadian, but is an English speaker, to write it for him. And then he gets offered Stoker. And Stoker is suddenly served on a plate. here's a Hollywood movie here's Big Stars Attached he goes and does that and then he goes through years of like well should I do this should I do that and he keeps it on the kind of back burner he and McKellar end up doing The Sympathizer together there was a story that I feel like got a lot of traction whatever months ago that both of them were like kicked out of the WGA and if you read just the headline The Sympathizer was the HBO show that Robert Dine Jr.

1:08:55was on that kind of came and went despite getting some Emmy nominations. The two of them wrote it together every episode and part-directed the first two, I think. And it was sort of framed as if they had scabbed during the writer's strike. When in fact, and it speaks to the murkiness of all these things, what they had done was in editing while the strike was happening and production had finished, made certain narrative changes in the edit. Yeah, no, it felt like a little... The WGA's panel ruled that they had not Right. But the headline about the original accusation was louder than when they were sort of absolved of it, if that makes sense.

1:09:35It was all just sort of like weird corporate stupidness of like the way you're defining writing is wrong. It's all about what constitutes, quote, writing services. DGA does not think what they were doing is writing. The WGA does. A WGA trial committee recommended a censure. The board decided to expel them. Unsure why. Everyone was a little baffled. An incredibly stupid thing I just wanted to acknowledge quickly. But as you said, for years, it was always this like, well, does he want to make another Korean film before he makes this big Hollywood film? He wants No Other Choice to be a Hollywood film.

1:10:11Does he then need stars? Does he then need financing? What scale does he want it to be? And then there was this sudden announcement of like, he's doing it as a Korean film. He's re-teaming with the star of his first movie ever, or I should say his breakthrough film. Yeah, not his first. I forgot the two movies that we clumped together. Yeah. And it's happening right now, which was just a really fucking exciting announcement. And it does feel like one of these movies where you're like, unlike certain directors' dream projects that they sort of stew on for 20 plus years. And when it ends up coming out, you're like, fuck, is it a little overcooked now?

1:10:43Did they miss the window? You sort of feel like if he had made this any earlier, it wasn't going to be ready. This movie kind of had to meet the moment, which I think is, as we're saying, there's this notion of, did we finally sell other countries on the success of our societal system? On the functionality and the value of... Of capitalism. We're talking about capitalism, baby. Yes. And then individualism, rugged individualism, just in time for like us to start like collapsing. What? And everyone else to look around and be like, why did you fucking trick us into this? We're doing great. Things are good.

1:11:23It's I think it's more impactful to not have this movie be set in America and have it set in a place where like the movie starts with him being fired because an American company has bought his South Korean company. And the whole thing is like, so like our whole sense of like tradition and civilization, we basically allowed to be transformed by this Western way of thinking that is now crumbling on us as well. Like, we've handed everything over to these sort of self-appointed geniuses in, like, finance and technology. And now we're all just kind of, like, placing ourselves on a conveyor belt to be chopped up for bits.

1:12:00I would like, though, to... I don't want to maybe complicate or add more, like, shading to that thesis. is I do think that outside of like a nationalistic point of view I do think there's a lot in the film about like masculinity and the like need to sort of present this image of masculinity that doesn't feel necessarily like American to me I think it's a universal idea of masculinity that yes I think this movie is very much about a crisis of masculinity and how it relates to being employed, you know, and being the breadwinner and all that. It's the idea of, I think, a larger emphasis on a sociological level, on a psychological level of your identity is your career.

1:12:54And to a secondary degree, your identity is sort of like what you do with the spoils of your career, right? You are what you do, and what you make from that funnels into the second aspect of who you want to be. Whether it's you define yourself by, look, I'm a provider with a family with a nice house and a beautiful wife, or the final guy he has to go to whose wife leaves him but is like, but I always wanted a house like this and a barbecue like this. I thought I'd be having barbecue every night. I want a pit like this. He wants to be on Instagram showing all his hobbies. Did you have any notes on his pit?

1:13:31I thought it was interesting. I mean, it speaks to him being a little green, a little novice, a little bit of a... Yeah, new viewers, new listeners should know, not viewers. He's a barbecue tourist. That Griffin is apparently a really experienced pit master. I've never actually seen him run a pit. He's buying for optics rather than for function, I would say, which is you get into a... I mean, look, this is the problem of social media, barbecuing, you know? Oh, yeah. It's like what's going to look good versus what's going to taste good, which for me, I just care about. the look on my friend's face is when I serve them my delicious Q.

1:14:06That's the only thing I care about. And it's actually the only thing I've ever cared about. I do. Which just makes sense because you're always serving us barbecue because you consider us good friends. Correct. And we're always going over. Yes. I've been to Griffin's house so many times. I love having guests. Zero. Zero. Yeah. Because this is a real slow cook. Yeah. Yeah, that's why we can't come over. The brisket I'm working on right now. It's been a couple years. Also, the apartment is just a cloud of smoke. It's really hard to even see in there. I will say that South Koreans, they have a barbecue culture of their own, which feels distinct from the American barbecue tradition, which Griffin is an expert in.

1:14:50Yes. No, I love Korean barbecue, but I would not profess to understand it. I'm just an enjoyer. in that case, I'm just a consumer. I agree with you. And I think it's sort of this feeling of like, how do you define the value of a man in a society that basically has evolved past the core skills of what a man should be doing? You know, like this, the kind of, this is the general like masculinity and crisis stuff of like, men feel like they're pointless now. Well, yeah. And the whole, even the fucking title, No Other Choice, which I like, I made this list of things that I liked in every movie that I saw, which I think is...

1:15:30I read it and I thought it was great. Thanks, David. I think it's a really fun exercise and more people should do it. But I love how many different times different characters utter that they had no other choice in a situation. I think, and I could be wrong here, I think everyone who says it is a man. Correct. There is a difference in flexibility between the way women are presented and men are presented in the film. Whereas the wife in this movie is like, well, here, this is the situation that we're in and I'm going to adapt to it. And she is very proactive. She gets a job. She is willing to change immediately in order to help her family and adapt.

1:16:16He doesn't want to tell her what's going on because that is more uncomfortable to him. than, you know, having a proper conversation. He'd rather murder than sit down with his wife. Things in this movie, and one that the second viewing really unfolded for me, not falling for its misdirect, right? I feel like roughly the first half of this movie, it's putting you in his headspace of the ultimate stakes here are she will leave him. He's going to get cucked. She's going to fuck someone else. The second he doesn't have a good career, she's going to leave him for someone's house. And the yes. Right.

1:16:54Which a lot of these movies do operate this way. They introduce like a potential love interest for her. Immediately. Immediately. Like he's on the phone with her telling her that he lost the job. And then the dentist walks over to her on the tennis court. And here's this handsome guy standing above her. And you feel like the movie is telling you, oh, clock is ticking. Like he has to prove his worth. And it ends up to be a complete red herring. That is never really at risk in the movie. And in fact, the only thing that even potentially puts it at risk is his lack of transparency with her. Which starts to just look like he's having an affair or whatever because he's so suspicious.

1:17:31If he had just realized that she's not the volleyball player that she used to be, but she's still a whole person. If we've learned one lesson about marriage from the films of 2025. It is... Guys, stop taking photos of your wife from behind. Take photos of them from the front. No one wants to see their back despite how impressive the spike is. Show me the face. I tried to keep track on the second viewing of every time No Other Choices Said. And I think I got the complete list in my head. Marie, you were saying right before record, it's not a direct translation. The title is sort of transliterated literally as it cannot be helped.

1:18:16Now, I don't understand the nuances of the Korean language well enough to know if that's just like, whatever, how that sounds literally. I don't know. My analysis, the through line of every time it is said by someone is the lie they are telling themselves. They are convincing themselves it is why they are going through the trouble of saying it out loud. They have to convince themselves of what they're about to do. Possibly a terrible thing. that they're about to do. Is in fact... This is the only option. There's no other choice. There's no other choice. Right. In every case, there is many other choices they could make at that moment.

1:18:50Yes. The first time it is said, this movie opens, here's this guy. Monsoon. Two kids, two dogs, beautiful house, beautiful wife, works at a paper company. Yep. Under my phone. They've been bought out by a larger American company. Stanley shows up. Creed. Do you think it would have been an easier sell? Oscar. If they called this movie The Paper. Yeah, they should have called it that. They should have called it that. The paper now only on Peacock. That's the name of the film. The American bosses want the senior employees to create the list of potential redundancies. Creed, first to go. Creed's got to go.

1:19:26Creepy vibes. Meredith, a drunk, a partier. Wow, she's crazy. Yeah. Angela, a philanderer. Tight ass. Yeah. Right, yeah. He has this big moral grandstanding speech to his underlings. I refuse to do that. That's not the character of this place. It's not the history of this place. I'm going to go to that American, these fat American cats, and I'm going to tell them what for, and I'm going to explain to them why they cannot do this, and I refuse to do this. He gets half a sentence out before the American guy goes, sorry, there's no other choice, closes the door on him, and then he finds out that he is fired.

1:20:03Right? So it's like this big stance he was taking up, I'm not going to be this kind of guy, is irrelevant. He doesn't get the chance to try to prove what he thinks he needs to prove to himself. Then he's out the door. The second time no other choice is said is Fumo, the first guy who ends up dying. Mr. Analog. Yes. Who says, why can't you get a job in another field? And he says something like, I'm a paper man. There's no other choice. I cannot do anything but work in paper. It's the only thing that fulfills him. It is my life. It is intertwined with my sense of self so inexplicably. The third time he says it is when he's, we're obviously going deep into spoiler territory here, about to kill the shoe salesman, and he's doing the tapping on his forehead.

1:20:44It's the first time that he's really going to just unequivocally murder somebody, and he's telling himself it's what he has to do. And then I think the fourth time is the guy with the house at the end is talking about stealing a competitor's product and their process in order to survive. And I think we should just spell out, but why? Is there no other choice? He's like whittling down the candidates that he has deemed who will be better suited for the one position. The premise of this one open job. No, the job isn't even open. He needs to kill. Yes, he needs to kill everyone ahead of him in terms of like kind of a job score.

1:21:25And then kill the guy who's currently holding that. Well, no. So it's like, let's say I want David Sims' job at the Atlantic. So I can kill David Sims and then I'll be hired, right? Wrong. Because I'm going to be competing with thousands of other people for that job. Well, there's also another problem, which is David has signed up for Project Phoenix, an experimental initiative in which his consciousness is being backed up onto a Navee Avatar. That's right. And if you murder him, a taller David Sims will arrive. It's a potent mix. He says it in the first Avatar. Yeah, he doesn't say it in the second one.

1:22:09You said he says it. It's the first. I think he says it in the second. I think he repeats it in the second, possibly as a callback. But he says it the first time. I just rewatched Avatar 1 because, you know, I like to have a good time and party. Yeah. I'm imagining David with a party hat and a noisemaker watching Avatar 101. I'm not going to have a great time over here. His wife comes out. What are you doing? Fucking Avatar. I'm having a good time. Party animal. And he's throwing confetti into the air. I'm a cool dude. Happy New Year. And it's when Jake is saying to Kwarich, like, so, you know, this is the situation.

1:22:48I've gotten kind of taken in by, you know, and I'm going to rub dry. And he's like, oh, a marine in Avatar. body. That's a potent mix. Potent mix. He does say it in the second one as well. I'm going to figure out when it is. He loses his job, and there's this immediate clocking. And this is one of those things that makes it a little bit hard to track the movie on the first go. It introduces like 15 primary characters in the first 15 or 20 minutes of the movie, the vast majority of whom our main character hasn't actually met yet. And might not really matter for a while. Some of them you don't circle back to until 90 minutes later.

1:23:28So they're front-loading so much kind of like landscape information because this guy basically immediately surveys the sort of paper industry landscape in Korea. And there's this feeling of like, all these companies are getting bought by larger, older American companies or Japanese companies. They're being consolidated. They're being folded. They're being merged. Like the number of jobs is just constantly being cut in half. And all these companies are using technology to also then further eliminate jobs. And so he's like trying to do the math on basically, how do I get on one of the last lifeboats off the Titanic?

1:24:07It is part of, for me, the like supreme kind of satirical greatness of this movie is that like all of his machinations are for something that might barely last. What are you laughing at, Murray? Did you just send us something? Marie just sent us a tweet. I'm sorry, a zeet. Okay. This is from the Avatar Wikia, which I've been spending a lot of time on. I find it really funny that because of Avatar The Last Airbender, the domain name is like James Cameron's Avatar, the wikia.com. Varong aliases. Cupcake, Lady, Baby, Sugar, Witch. I'm sorry. Cupcake, Lady, Baby, and Sugar are all credited to Recon Porridge.

1:24:52Witch, credited to Nate Thierry. And Bitch. Credited to Kitty. Yeah, but I just feel like it's kind of how I feel about myself, you know? I'm a witch. I'm a cupcake. I'm a lady. I'm a sugar. I'm a sugar. I'm a witch. I think there's this sort of satirical thing at the heart of No Other Choice of him thinking like, right, if I can just kill everyone off and kill this guy, I'll get his job. It's like, there won't be any jobs. Like you're saying, the jobs are just all going to go. It's an inevitability. You can't keep killing people. They'll just keep getting rid of jobs. They don't want to hire you or employ you or employ anyone.

1:25:31But symptomatic. They're sick of humans. Symptomatic of a larger issue that's just like, this guy goes like, if the 20 years I've spent in this one industry. Doesn't matter. Then who am I? My entire sense of self is gone. And then I assume my wife's going to fuck a younger guy. and I'm like I'm gonna lose my house I'm gonna look in the mirror because I see a handsome guy but yes no of course it's his sense of self has been devastated but like the Donald West like thing strikes me as more like it's a corporate satire dog eat dog world you do have to and I feel like Park Chan-wook's arriving at this like yeah that even that's not really gonna work for him and all these guys want is to have absurd houses filled with champagne and cigars and whiskey and fucking hot tubs and like all and just to live the most absurd kind of exodus.

1:26:19And look, that's what I want. That's why I do this shitty podcast. To collect your money so I can build my mansion. Excuse me. What? Ben, cut all that out. The podcast is shitty only so that AI can't replicate it. We're outfoxing it. Anything you think is bad about this show is just future-proofing. That's what Donald Trump does as our president. He's so shitty and all his decisions make no sense. So no one can think what he's doing next. He knows that the Democratic Party is going to run a language learning model against him. Anyway. 2026 is going good. Great. Got Mayor Zoran in there. Here's a detail.

1:26:55That's good. It's great. He's going to do our League of Theron episode.

1:27:02He's more of a soccer guy. Another thing I was tracking on the second watch. Yes, Griffin. The ways pigs are invoked and win. Right? And this association with them being like the lowest class, the thing you want to avoid being when is used as derogatory term, when it's spoken of a people's past of needing to work with pigs and his father, who is spoken of sparingly. There's sort of the one big scene where he talks to son later who was a pig farmer. And the sense of like, I was born into a class that I have spent my entire life trying to pull myself out of. Right. and he has built this big house that is very nice and modern.

1:27:42Well, he didn't build, it was his family's home. But they talk about how... But he like added the greenhouse and fixed it up. Right, because there's the moment he loses the job. Immediately the wife is like, let's just do fucking hard math. What has to go? I don't take dance lessons anymore. I don't take tennis lessons anymore. And we're getting rid of Netflix. We're getting rid of Netflix. We're scaling back all this shit, right? They have this... How expensive is Korean Netflix, by the way? $5 ,000 a month. And that's with ads. That's a line item for them. Streaming services are too expensive.

1:28:15They're getting pricey. Well, this is how they get you. They make you sign up and then they're like, hey, it's going up. And you're like, oh, how much? And they're like, and you're like, what? Is that$28? Yeah, technically$28. I should like, I need, this is my new New Year's resolution. I got to unsubscribe. Wow. from a lot of these things. Marie, do not promote unsubscribing on the podcast. Never! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to consciously uncouple from, I think Paramount Plus, it's like about time. I just keep... You're going to hang the pickaxe up? You're going to stop scaling them out?

1:28:54Did you reach the summit? Picard's up there and Spongebob. Did you freeze to death? They showed you Picard, Spongebob, and Cartman standing next to each other. What more do you need? Cartman? Maybe like a fifth tier Dutton. What are you doing here, Cartman? I don't know. That's what Picard would say, right? And John Taffer's like, I'm shutting this up. No rescue needed. You know what I subscribe to is MGM+. David? Deep movie library on that one. I'm going to dial 911. I have... That is... Hey, man, I had to get through winter break somehow. That is a red alert situation. They've got a great movie library.

1:29:39I have so many weird, fucked up Amazon Prime add-ons that I use once. Where it's like, Hello, Governor! Broadway World. I have four different Britbox services. Hello, Governor Plus. I have something called... Hello, Governor! Ad-free. It's either called Bad Moon or Blue Moon or something that's like... I signed up to watch some like Jean Roland exploitation movies. Blue Moon is Loren's heart streaming service where he just bitches to you about all the other streaming services. He just appears at a bar smoking. He's like, and another thing. Netflix is such a slut. No, it is funny when you're like, oh, I wonder, can I watch like, you know, you know, the Chamber of Flying Death, you know, and you look up, it's like, yeah, it's actually available on like shit field.

1:30:28Yeah. so that's my fucking heavy case dog thing I'm like why am I not signed up for anything so I just gotta get rid of all this shit I'm keeping Shudder on Amazon and that's it that's a really good service Shudder is a good service you know but I watched Love Story which Griff we've talked about this cause Love Story is one of the most financially successful films ever made right big phenomenon early 70s weepy and we had a brief where we were like is Love Story good like I've never seen it it was a hit is it good it's on MGM Plus I was like I'm going to fucking watch it. Two stars sucked. But, you know, at least I've knocked that one off.

1:31:04Are you happy for me? No, I'm thrilled. I watched Inherit the Wind. I'd never seen it. This is what you did over... No, because it's like one of those kind of homework-y movies that like... They showed it to us in school. I was going to say. I think if you had stayed in school in the United States of America, you would have seen it. I would have seen Spencer Tracy's Sweaty Shoulders. He's got some sweat. What's his name? J. Fred Muggs, The Monkey? Yeah. He's one of my favorite actors. He's on there. I have to, you know, give you a little bit of shit. You watched Love Story and Inherit the Wind instead of Saving Silverman this break?

1:31:35Yeah, David, what the fuck? Right, why would I want to watch those Oscar-nominated films? You had one job. You said on whatever episode we talked about Saving Silverman that you would fucking watch Saving Silverman over break. I'll do it right now. I'll watch it right now. I'll watch it. In the time since we said that, I watched Saving Silverman again. Yeah, and again, you're calling the police on me I called the police and they were like here is a medal of freedom sounds like the kind of thing the police would do here's a key to the city Eric Adams shook my hand oh yeah look at that there look at that there time is flying no other choice no other choice his wife says we need to cut the budget down we need to cut down the streaming services their youngest daughter we need to sell the house yes and he's like we can't yes there are too many mouths to feed we gotta get rid of the dogs the grandparents take the dogs it is sort of Even though they're like allergic.

1:32:27Yes. But it's this kind of emotional core to the movie of like, if we get the dogs back, it will feel like everything is right in the world again. The second we can afford dog food and there's this thing where the kids names are R1 and G1. R1 and C1. And then the dogs are R2 and C2. Yes. So they named the dogs like nicknamed versions of the children. And the wife is like brass tacks. We got to just like focus down. But the big thing is their daughter is seemingly a cello prodigy. The daughter who barely communicates with them, who seems sort of spectrum-y. She's like neurodivergent in some way.

1:33:03And it's like the cello is the only way she seems to be able to express herself. She rarely talks. She draws these complicated multicolored symbols. And they never, they'll see her practice like her fingering of the instrument on like a table, on other objects. But she never plays in front of them. She has this expensive tutor and the tutor is like, your daughter is too good for me. Right. You need to get like an even more expensive tutor or whatever. And basically says to them, like, you don't understand. She is like superhuman. She is once in a generational talent. You need to up her training.

1:33:35She is someone who will play in like the National Symphony or whatever. And they're like, we're going off of this woman. Is this like a con? She says that the cello she's playing isn't expensive enough. She needs to get a better cello to practice on. Musical instruments are so fucking expensive. We don't even hear it. And there was this notion of like, here's this guy who prides himself on how much he was able to like climb the ladder of class from his father. And yet they look at their daughter as like, she's the only way we continue to move up. We have to bank everything on her. And so they cut all of this down, right?

1:34:10And there's a scene where a couple comes to go look at their house. And their house is like uniquely designed. It's like a very special seeming house. I love the house. It's so modern, but still tasteful, not gaudy. I loved it. The real estate agent says, isn't this place impressive? And it used to be such a dump, what they've done with it. And they're really talking about how this is his family home, but it used to be run down. It felt haunted. It was a pig farm. His dad committed suicide there. But then they also say that he had this larger pig farm that they sold because he didn't want to be seen as a pig farmer after his father died.

1:34:47And they now live on a house that is partially the land that he had the pig farm for. And the real estate agent... I thought it was the pigs all got sick and then the father killed himself. That sounds right. Yeah. There was some sort of pig bite. So it wasn't like he sold... It wasn't like the pig farm was at the top of its game. I'm saying that after the father died. Yeah. There's this throwaway line where they're like, if he had held onto the land that the pig farm was in, he'd be so rich right now. Which I thought was really interesting. Right, like if he had only just, yeah, given himself over to, yeah, no, I get that.

1:35:23Right. But you get the sense that it's like, I don't want to be fucking associated with pigs. That was my father. That is what I'm working past. And they were like, if you just still were renting that land out to other people, you'd be set for generations. And this guy makes a pass at the wife and there's this sort of like, we're not fucking renting the house. So now we're like doubled down on. We're not selling it. We're not ranting it. We're staying here. We're getting the dogs back. She's getting the better cello teacher. This lifestyle creep has affected them where they now like cannot figure out how to scale down their lives.

1:35:57And all the families you're seeing here are like absolutely driven insane by keeping up with the Joneses to some degree. Right. They're all competing with each other in like an invisible competition. You cannot move down the ladder. You fight so hard to get where you are. you cannot move down the ladder. And I do think Korean society is very stratified. Yes. Even more so than some places or whatever. A lot of their movies seem to be about, you know, class. He gets the hot tip of the company that he should be working at. He goes and gets on his knees and begs outside the bathroom, these higher ups.

1:36:30Yeah. Who are just like, this is embarrassing. It's moon paper, right? Yes. Is the rival. And they've cracked the Japanese market. That's the big thing. And this is when he, he consider, where he has the kind of spontaneous after the humiliation, like, should I throw the fucking potted plant on this guy? Right? Like where, you know. The moon paper man. The thing I love about this movie. Where I thought the movie was like, okay, we're going into like murder, shatire mode. Same. I'm like, he's just gonna keep killing people one by one. The movie doesn't do the thing of having the scene where he sort of like out loud explains his thinking of how he gets from point A to point B of justifying murder.

1:37:07Right? It's sort of like, he has this embarrassment. The guy tells him to go to a bar. He's drinking apple juice because he's a recovering alcoholic. He's, like, looking up these guys on social media. And then he's just so angry at this guy that he, like, impulsively gets up on a rooftop, is ready to throw a potted plant at him. And then he, like, takes a step back and starts to formulate, like, wait a second. Well, doesn't he get the idea from his wife? His wife calls him. No, they're, like, laying, they're cuddling on the couch together. They're looking at, like, the guy's social media. He's showing her the guy's Instagram.

1:37:40And then she's like, oh, man, if only, you know, he could get struck by lightning. You could have his job. And then the look flashes across his face. But there is kind of the chancy, like he has the potted plant of like, could I just do this? There's also the moment when he's on the rooftop where he's looking at the shut down paper factory. Like he starts to formulate like, what if I create a fake job? identify who the other people are who would be in the running for any job like this that would open up so that if the job opens up, I have eliminated all the competition and then I need to figure out how to get that job to open up.

1:38:19And so he starts this triangulation of like, he calls these guys up, he gets a burner phone, he gets resumes, he buys a model gun because he has his father's like framed, encased gun as a military veteran. and he swaps it out so he has a real gun that no one's ever going to notice. He puts a plastic gun in the case and he identifies all the core skills of the other guys. He's basically like, there are five other guys at my level with my history who would be competitive for this type of... They're all winners of Pulp Man of the Year. Yes. And then he like, kind of does the math circling, like, what do they have over me?

1:38:58I may be third in line. How do I get here? The thing that I love is that it's not just paper. They all are in charge of specialty paper. So they are even super specialized within an already specialized industry. You will have these moments where guys will grab a piece of paper and go, fuck, that's good. You know, they're impressed with the recipe. Right, yeah, with the kind of... There's that moment where Gummo and his wife are reminiscing about when they first met. Not Gummo, Bummo. whatever gubamo gubamo where he's he's like uh she remembers that he touched her lips and we're like they're as soft as this type this brand of paper and then he was like you said that you're that that's like a you said the wrong name it's actually this brand and then it cuts to li byung hung like watching them eavesdropping on this conversation touching his own lips thinking about the paper and being like yeah that paper is really fucking soft he feels like a guy who fell into this and wanted to define himself by understanding the field as thoroughly as he could, right?

1:40:07And the industry and the product. Versus like, Gubomo is like a fetishist and like a zealot. And it like speaks to... And it speaks to his record, all his collecting, all his like fetishization of physical objects. that's like, you don't understand. It's like a way of life for me. You know? Like, I consider the materials of everything in my home. I only listen to analog records. I am analog only. Right. and here is this guy who's got this wife who he just like will not acknowledge that he is so caught up who's hot yes and he ain't hot no sorry and I like that they're the flashback to their meet cute is like this guy is still kind of not focused but it's charming enough when he's young and then when he's older and he's gone to seed I mean it's our fucking future and he's drinking yes I mean it's me it ain't gonna be cute age 55 where I'm like, oh, this Radiant set came in of this like fucking 70s Hong Kong movie.

1:41:04I'm like putting it on a giant pile. That's what the group text is for. Yeah, I know. It's a safe space. Yeah. But yes, she's just like, fuck me. And he's like, paper is the only thing that has ever mattered. Well, she's also like, why don't, you're passionate about other things besides paper. Why don't you open a cafe where like a music themed cafe because that's something that would do well. Like my father would invest in it. Like, this is a great option. And once again, it is the first time no other choice is said in the movie. Yes, he's like, I have no other choice. I am a paper man. I am a paper man.

1:41:35I can't just pivot like that. You know, and then I love when Lee Byung-hung actually goes to kill him. Well, he observes them having like a picnic where she's coming on to him so hard and trying to go down memory lane. And he just is like not with it. And only wants to eat his chicken. They're eating fried chicken. and then Lee Bion Heng gets bit by a snake and she has to come like rescue him and give him the wrong advice. And you're like, oh, so this is the tone of this movie. It's going to be a thing in which like, it's really hard to kill him. He keeps fucking it up. Right, right, right. That we're now in like full slapstick mode.

1:42:11That picnic looked really uncomfortable. Even before the snake. I liked their box though. Their little picnic box. But they're in like the Blair Witchwoods. Yeah, it's like they picked a kind of weird location. It's like a lot of sticks. I'm assuming no one here has ever been bitten by a snake. No, no, no. I thought you were going to ask if I've been to Korea. I'd love to go. I have not been bitten. I don't like snakes. I got to say. As a Northeastern person, you know, Northeast America, like where they're less of a thing. And, you know, there's other parts of the world and country where they're just like, oh, yeah, there's snakes.

1:42:43I would be like, no, there's no, that's not allowed. Yeah. Just like poison ropes that just slither around and they can be fast. That slither around. It's a pretty good place. I used to be very anti-snake and then I saw Zootopia 2. Of course. You met Gary DeSnake. I met Gary DeSnake and now I feel like I was, you know, my former prejudices have washed away. I was very charmed by Gary. I love Gary. His grandma, Agnes DeSnake. We need to start asking more questions about the weather walls. Yeah. What's up with those? Who built them? The Lynx, I assume. Well, that's debatable. I like that, well, No, I won't say that.

1:43:23No, what? Come on. It's just very funny to me that like David Strathairn is one of the main villains in that movie. He's good at it. He's very good, but it's such an un-Disney voice to have Strathairn doing like a very sort of unctuous mean. I didn't know that was him until the final credits. I spent the whole movie trying to figure out who it was. I was like, I don't recognize this. I, with Zootopia 2 and with the original, but going into 2, I was like, I know there will be a charming end credits sequence set to a bumping Shakira song in which I will see all of the voices labeled clearly while they all do a dance.

1:43:59The character does a dance next to their name. The villains will be imprisoned watching the concert on TV and I'll see their names too. And they like point to the credit. And I was satisfied. Yeah. Got exactly what I wanted. Yeah. I enjoyed the hell out of Zootopia. I liked it. Yeah, Griff was a little more measured. Yeah. I liked it. I thought it was fun.

1:44:27Ding dong, ding dong. Oh my God. Hello, Creek. Hey, how's it going? And who are you? Mack Black. And what's that? That's my name. You asked who am I and that's my name. What are you doing here? You don't know what the name is. What do you want? I'm a construction worker, obviously. As you can tell from my general demeanor, temperament, and this hard hat here. Yeah. I'm sure you've noticed the interruption, the sound. Yeah, I guess. Jack cameras. We've been hearing some construction noise. In the building. But I've been struggling. Yes. This construction project's not going well. I have no idea what's going on.

1:45:06I explained to you my name is Mac Black. I'm a construction worker. I've been working in the building. He's winding up. He's winding up. He's winding up. Literally. I don't know what's going on in your life. I knocked on the door. I open. I'm interrupting. I don't know what's going on in your life. You're struggling. What's going on? This construction project's not going well. Okay. Okay. Been trying to build a better wardrobe. There it is. Yeah. And so what you're referring to, of course, is the sort of the furniture, the physical thing. Incorrect. That's a weird assumption for you to make. I'm talking about pieces that work together and hold up over time.

1:45:38Well, Mac, we've got news for you. Come on in. Take a seat. I have a pair of pants and I've been jackhammering them for months and nothing's coming together. We have ad copy people can't see with prompts that are a little esoteric. And one of the people who works for our show responds to those prompts in interesting ways. But nobody knows what like it's like going to an improv show where you didn't hear what someone yelled out. David, excuse me. I'm sorry to interrupt. Mac doesn't know any of that. He's living his own life. You're right. Mac is such a he's such a thoughtfully realized character.

1:46:08Thank you. I'm a construction worker, surly demeanor, hard hat. And I've been taking the jackhammer. Is Mac short for Macintosh? Absolutely. Macintosh, Blackintosh. That's pretty funny. Thank you. Quince has the everyday essentials. You got to go to Quince to get a good wardrobe. Well, that's the recommendation I've been waiting for. What took you so long? I said fast. Turn his mic off. Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality of the last, organic cotton sweaters, polos for every occasion, lighter jackets to keep you warm in the changing seasons. The list goes on. I love Quince. I've got a nice quarter zip that I've been sporting around.

1:46:46Well, well, well, you're looking pretty smart if I dare say so myself. You know, they got obviously very, very cheap and comfortable cashmere stuff, Merino stuff, a lot of good. I got myself a cashmere scarf from Quince. It's cold in New York City. You need to bundle. Now, I'm a little bit wary. Quince sounds good, but is this one of those companies that works with bottom factories and cuts in the middlemen? No, they're top only. Top factories cutting out the middlemen. Oh, that's the exact opposite. Just to be very clear. Yes. That's what I was worried about. You're not paying for brand markup.

1:47:19It's just quality clothing. Everything's built to hold up to daily wear and look good season after season, okay? And let's not forget that, of course, every night I sleep under a quince comforter and quince sheets. So it's not just your wardrobe. Everything. Everyday life. Ben, can I say how much I appreciate that I feel like you're making the effort to communicate with me. You're making eye contact. You're giving me recommendations. What can I say? Unlike Silver Spoon Sims over here. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash check for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

1:47:51Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash check. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash check. That's great news because I live in London, Ontario. Mac, see you later, man. By the way, big fan of the pot.

1:48:13where do we leave off so he has this like total fumble right and you're like okay this is gonna be in the line of the kind of classic thing we often talk about that like snake bite and not being able to we've talked about on this show because a lot of these times a lot of times when big directors make these these end up being their greatest funnies the sort of like pitch black mainstream murder comedy that tends to turn audiences way off. And it feels like this is what this is going to be down to when he goes back to actually do the thing in a scene that is like such a pure distillation of like the Park Jan-Wook is the only filmmaker on the planet who would conceive of the scene this way.

1:48:52He goes back in a full suit wearing four gloves over the gun being wrapped in saran wrap. Not just gloves. They're like oven mitts. But like of increasing size to go in and murder this guy who's in his like record room, like fucking drunk off his ass, blasting Korean pop music. His wife is cheating on him with a guy who's got a tarantula tattoo. What's the tattoo? I don't remember. But this is the whole thing he's trying to balance is like, he tries to stop, he goes to try to kill the guy. He walks in on the wife. He realizes she's... Fucking the young dude. Yeah. And then he's sort of like, I need to block him from discovering them.

1:49:33But then he fucks up. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He calls and says, there's a job interview. Can you come meet me? Because he sees him going home. This is what I'm talking about in this movie. It's a little exhausting. This whole sequence is a good example of it. And he's like, well, then I got to go change. Then he walks in, sees the wife. The wife doesn't know that he's seen him. He's in a despondent state. And then he's like, I guess I got to go kill him now. So he goes in while he's in this stupor. And he's so drunk and doesn't understand what's going on. And thinks that he's the guy his wife is fucking.

1:50:06They're yelling at each other over the record player at full volume. So the scene is all happening with like subtitles. But I have to imagine even in the Korean version, it's subtitled. Because you wouldn't be able to make out what they're saying. So just there were like two little, I guess you could call them Easter eggs that I pulled out from my second viewing. The first is that I listened to the soundtrack on my walk over here. That song that's playing is called Red Pepper Dragonfly. But it's notable because the fake company that he invents to get all of these applications is called Red Pepper Paper.

1:50:47Yeah, because of the potted plant. Because of the potted plant. Yes. So I thought that was cute. My other Easter egg is that in the scene where they go to the dance party where they all have costumes, there's a couple that's dressed as like an NFL player and a cheerleader. And the name on the back of the NFL players jersey is Boucher. And it's the colors of the team in the Waterboy. It's a Bobby Boucher cosplay. That is my reading of the fact. It's an orange, blue, and white football jersey. Does Park love Adam Sand? Well, I was about to say, is Waterboy like a really, you know, big movie in Korea somehow?

1:51:35It just introduced a lot of questions. I will say someone else on threads noted a blink and you'll miss it reference to the Waterboy. Okay. So maybe this is true. Maybe we're all, you know, crazy. I don't know. Yeah. Interesting. He has this confrontation with the guy where the guy thinks this is the guy cucking him. Then the wife... We gotta also shout out though in the sequence where he has, I don't know, seven different gloves on? I think it's at least four. It's so funny. To reveal the gun. Yeah. Because the guy at first is like, why are you pointing an oven mitt at me? Yeah. And then his wife comes in.

1:52:10Do you like to bake? You like to bake, motherfucker? His wife comes in and thinks that he's just like a home inviter, takes the paper trophy that he won. Yeah, Pulp Man of the Year trophy. Yes, and his rain knocks him over the head and then recognizes that he's the snake bite guy. And like, all three of them are yelling at each other and no one understands what's going on. It's like such a perfect, and the music doesn't stop. And then they all start inflicting violence on each other. He like, shoots him by mistake because the wife hits him with the trophy, which like, causes him to like, pull the trigger, but it's not a lethal shot.

1:52:45No, the wife kills him, right? Yes, and then she takes the gun away and then shoots him out of, like, anger and says something to the effect of, like, I wasn't angry at you. I don't hate you because you lost your job. I hate you because you gave up trying or something like that. This sort of core thing of, like, Lieberhan doesn't understand what the actual threat to his existence is, which is, like, absolutely unraveling, like this guy, right? That all three guys he murders are kind of like Ghosts of Christmas future versions of best and worst case scenarios of how he can handle his current situation.

1:53:21But here you have this first death down that he's not totally responsible for. There's a lot of misunderstanding and because the fact that she's the one who delivers the lethal gunshots, it's like she's now covering up the crime for him in a way that helps him. So he's kind of gotten away from this one scot-free, which means the second killing is super surprising because it is just like incredibly cruel and vicious. What were you going to say, David? No, I was the second killing. That's exactly what I was. You know, I think I had that sort of, that after the first murder, that one, like, okay, am I watching a very high slapsticky black comedy where every death will be this convoluted?

1:54:06This kind of accidental. Where there will be this emotional Rube Goldberg-y. Well, he keeps not being sure but then like a fucking bunch of final destination shit happens too. And, and yes. And then I feel like park is like, no, no, no, no, that's not quite it because the next death is the opposite. It's sort of like, you have to look a man in the face and shoot. Well, I actually, when I said that my second time watching the movie, I felt sadder. I did like they really, he really hammers home the like personal connection with the second guy. And that's pretty devastating when he ends up killing him.

1:54:41But for every other paper man in this movie, you do recognize that these guys all would probably be friends. Yes. And would be stronger together if they weren't competing with each other. The shoe sales are the most extreme version. Maybe they start their own business. Exactly. But instead of teaming up together, they're competing with each other in a way that is ultimately super destructive. Yes. Well, so he goes to this guy who has taken a job at a shoe store. Right. And he's done with, or he's at least trying to move on or whatever. He has taken pride in a shoe salesman job that he is trying to do to the best of his abilities.

1:55:23You feel this guy being a little bit desperate. And there's a sort of dangled out that he's gotten the call about this fake job that Lee Byung-Hun has set up. And he says something to the extent of like, I'm unemployed, but I'm looking to get back into the paper industry. That to a certain extent, even though he has regular employment now, it doesn't feel like he has a career. He won't feel like he's actually employed again until he's got a paper job. But this guy is doing the hard work of like, you know what? I just have to go out and get a job and support my family. And he starts talking. His daughter comes to the store to borrow money.

1:55:59He talks about what it's like to raise a young daughter. You're like, this guy is fucking locked in as a parent. He seems locked in in his marriage. like his life is not easy, but he is showing up and doing what he can one day at a time. And Lee Byung-hun has this moment where he starts talking to him like a therapist. He, in sensing that this guy has a very similar setup to him, starts talking about his difficulty with his daughter, how she doesn't talk, how expensive the cello lessons are. And you're like, this guy, he should fucking hold close as his like tightest ally in the world. and in that moment it's like I want the last moments of empathy from this guy before I decide to kill him.

1:56:42Like it doesn't change his path which is so fucking upsetting. Yes, this is the sort of dark turn point of the movie. We're out of silliness. But it is also another like when the gun does go off it is not as like intentional. no in the exact moment, but he's like no he's like resolved to do it but again set up a trap at the side of the road he's not like cold bloodedly shooting him in the face no and he's panicking and he's like dry heaving on the side of the road and he's like tapping the forehead that's when he's saying no other choice to I gotta go through with this of like this is the moment I become like unequivocally a murderer what's been going on in the side plot here of course is that like the wife gets you think kind of propositioned by this hot young dentist who's clearly trying to like make a play for her.

1:57:33But in fact, she's just getting a fucking dental assistant job. One of the women from her like sort of class of mothers and wives comes as a patient and is sort of like looking down on her as like, I didn't know you were a nurse now, you know, and she's just fucking taking it. Like, she's just like, this is what I gotta do. She is not having the male crisis. She's like, they were in the same dance class together. Are you going to come to the show? I can't because I can't afford the classes anymore. You should still come to the show. it's totally fine. And everyone thinks this dentist is so fucking hot.

1:58:06And you're like, well, clearly there's this looming threat of the dentist is going to fuck the wife. And it amounts to after he kills this guy on the side of the road, he like pulls over to a phone booth, calls the kids at home and they're like, mom's going to be so fucking angry at you. And he's like, why? Realizes the dance show is that night. So he like rushes home, puts on the costume, which looks like a naval captain, like an American or British naval captain. It's giving Horatio Hornblower, in my opinion. Goes to this dance show. Our favorite guy. Sees her dressed as a Native American woman dancing with the dentist who's dressed as a Native American man and, like, spirals out.

1:58:45And goes home. She gets home. He's, like, ransacked her closet. He's taken all her bras and panties out. He's like, you're wearing the good panties. That means that you're fucking him. You love to fucking cars. Let me smell them. Yeah. She's like, are you drinking again? you start kind of unraveling how much work this guy has done. That his drinking problem used to be major. That his emotional mood swings used to be like dangerous. He was abusive to his stepson. That his wife was a single mother. He meets her. He takes the son on as his own. The son was young enough that he doesn't even know that it's not his biological father.

1:59:22They have this conversation of didn't we say that we'd always tell him when he's 16? And he's like, he thinks I'm his dad. I'm his dad. I've been here the whole time. What reason is there to even change his reality? The wife brings up in this scene that he, in his drunken days, beat the son in a sort of show of favoritism towards his biological daughter in like super unprocessed, like incredibly terrifying emotional distortion. And like they're suddenly hashing everything out. And she like comes clean with him basically of like, I'm not fucking anyone else. You're clearly in crisis. Something's fucking going on.

2:00:02Let me know so I can help you. Like, it is, why are you pushing me away? I'm ready to serve alongside you in the war our family is engaged in. You just got to tell me what to do. He's such a fool. I mean, he thinks he should fucking murder people. But from that moment on, they're totally aligned, except he's always giving her like 85 to 90%. he's trying it feels like to give her the plausible deniability of the worst stuff yeah sure while also like there's some logic too towing just up to the line of like you gotta talk to this person you gotta distract from this you find out that their teenage son throughout this has been like running a scam with his friend whose dad owns an electronics store it's the same guy who's gonna buy their home who makes the pass at the wife um and they've been stealing iPhones they get caught by the cops and they're like we're fucking ruined if our son is sent to jail, if we're like tarred and feathered in our community from this.

2:01:04But also, the cops show up the day after he has buried the second person he has murdered. After bonsaiing him. Oh, God. Which I thought was so cool. It's so good. Yeah. Yes, he brings him into the greenhouse. He's ready with like a chainsaw to just like hack him to bits. The son sees what he thinks is a glimmer. He's like, of human flesh, right? It happens in that one? Yes. Which is also part of when they bust the son and they go up to his little hiding space where they find all the iPhones, he finds a pack of cigarettes. And he goes to the son and he's like, here, while your mom's not looking, take this back.

2:01:42And the son's like, I quit. Don't worry about it. Throw it out. And he goes like, you throw it out. You're good with me. It's your decision. And then the next thing we see is the son on the rooftop smoking. You do get the sense he would have let the dad throw out the cigarettes and would have been so ashamed that he might have tried to avoid smoking after that. But his dad gave him the like, it's cool, like us men have to stick together. We're in the secret club kind of speech. And then only because he's on the roof smoking does he see his dad carrying in a body. And I hate in movies like this where a character sees something way too clearly and then the movie tries to sell us this, they're not sure.

2:02:18Right, right, right. I think there is plausible deniability. The shot is so good because he's put these tarps up in the greenhouse. You only kind of see a foot. It's a second before it moves. And you could fully believe, like, was I wrong about what I thought I was seeing? Well, yeah, we all slaughter pigs in our greenhouses sort of late into the night. Especially when they're like, our family is defined by the fact that we got out of that pig shit. Oh, yeah. He is a pit master. He does kill his own animal. That's true. But I like how much the line they're selling the son goes against everything he would know about his family, which is like, well, you know, my father went crazy with a pig disease and then we sold the land and like disassociated our family from that like lower class field altogether.

2:03:05But yes, they blackmailed the guy because they know he's having affairs. The wife takes her bra off to try to like seduce him. They're like doing like a two-pronged attack at the same time. We should mention, of course, also his tooth is hurting more and more as the movie. It's kind of like that Joaquin Phoenix is getting more and more COVID or the... I like movies with that. I love this. Where you're kind of like the whole time you're like, and his tooth hurts more. He's not dealing with the fucking tooth. But this is what I was saying earlier. I know, I know, I know. Anytime he taps, you're like, oh, right, that too.

2:03:35It's Tom Hanks with the cold and British spies. I agree with you. I always love this as a device. And so when he has the big showdown with Sion Chol, I think it's, you know, the guy in the fancy house, where he just gets drunk and pulls his tooth out. it does feel like yes we've been building to like this kind of grand guignol this insanity like yes I found that very funny on first viewing I I averted my eyes tooth stuff's a little gross but this time I watched it I felt really proud of myself look at you Marie you got a strong stomach where's the woman who hid inside her coat watching Skinnamarang exactly she's dead We left her in the past.

2:04:21Yeah. We bonsai'd her. I want to shout out the Boilermaker shot where they show inside the cup with the shot like coming down. It is the best beer has ever looked on screen. Incredible. And this movie is like, everyone's worried about him falling off the wagon. You need it to look that good. And once again, he taps his forehead and goes, no other choice. He has convinced himself after this whole scam was, I'm going to make him do rounds and rounds of shots with me, but I actually have a bowl here and I pour my shots out into the bowl so I'm not getting drunk at all. But he is. And then once the guy makes the boiler maker, he's like, I guess there's no way to fake this.

2:04:57And I'm like, it would be harder to fake this, but he's pretty quick to surrender. It looks so good. The sound of the pouring is so good. I just want to bring up, because the tree is important. They say, like, let's just bury all the iPhones so we can just settle this. If we return to the store, to the police or whatever it is, it makes this more of like an open case. One quick more thing before burying is there's the scene where the mom tries to barter with the, like, lecherous other dad. That's what it was. Yeah, they're both bartering at the same time. She's trying to use his attraction to her, and then he comes in and just tries to, like, fucking scare him.

2:05:38And she's, like, kind of turned on by that. That she has the power. Yeah, powerful. And that she feels like involved in we need to do whatever it takes to get ahead, to stay alive. But they bury the phones under the tree. He's going to butcher the guy with the chainsaw. He can't do it. He keeps on like crying and hyperventilating and puking. So then he just bonsais him, buries him under the phones. Like part of the thinking is no one's going to dig because this is already a secret plot of a crime that we're covering up. And now digging doesn't always have to be shameful. It can be celebratory.

2:06:16No, but it does fall into your well-established theory, Ben. If you're digging at night, nothing good has happened. Nothing good has ever come from digging at night. The sun has set in your digging. It's time to think about what you're doing. For sure. So he goes to the final house of the guy who's the Instagrammer. Yeah, the guy that he almost dropped the potted plant on. The guy that kind of started this sort of wave of jealousy and why don't I have his job. Views as kind of like a silly dilettante, like hype beast. I'm better than this guy. He's never won Pulp Man of the Year. He's not. Yeah.

2:06:48And Starvis Cocker? That's a really, really good question. He has this sort of like tricking the guy, getting into drunk that turns into a bonding. This moment where the guy talks about how overwhelmed he is by his job and he can't handle all of it. That's the thing. You're shooting for this position, buddy. Yeah, and it sucks. Right. A, the position sucks. and B, he's like, oh, well, maybe you convinced them to hire another person. Right. Maybe you need help. Maybe I don't have to kill you. Maybe you get me hired. You know, but then, you know, he chokes to death, chokes him to death, and he doesn't go for that.

2:07:24He gets him super fucking drunk. Then he wants to stage it. Right. Where it's believable that this guy who's sort of like... This guy got shit-faced and jumped in his own vomit. Right. He had a wife who left him because all of his sort of like self-created mythology of wanting to be much like Justin Timberlake, a man in the woods, you know, work in the pit. Like the entire thing he's selling on Instagram is like a big truck. It's an aspirational. I want to be this type of guy that his wife was like, I hate living in the country. I hate this. Like everything about this sucks. And you get the sense that he just like let her walk away, you know, because he wouldn't surrender this shit.

2:08:09And like, right, here's the guy who just like lost it all to retain all the things that Lee Byung-hang thinks he needs to keep. But what if you have all of that alone? and yeah he like buries him in the dirt then like wraps saran wrap around his mouth after he's already started puking from alcohol poisoning then puts a funnel in his mouth and puts a bunch of pork in it and then pours more liquid over the pork to get him to basically choke to death on his own vomit yeah it's a little nasty his wife calls while he is doing this yeah he tries to like FaceTime with her his mouth is bleeding and swelling because he's just pulled his own tooth out with pliers.

2:08:54And he is drunk. He is drunk now. Which is a problem. Yeah. And he's sort of saying to his wife like, I just need you to trust that this is almost over. This is the path and we're almost done. Exactly. I'm not showing you what's happening but everything that's happening right now looks suspicious on your end and I just need you to trust me. At the same moment that she has successfully killed her son's concerns. Right. about the burial. Because she's figured out. She's figured out but the sun doesn't want to believe. She starts digging and like there's a great shot. It's another great like just the right amount where she's digging down hoping that she's not going to find a body down there.

2:09:34But she needs to know for certain. And you get to the moment where there's like dirt over an object but only a thin layer and she touches it and is just kind of like, okay, and then starts putting the dirt back on top. There's not a moment where she like pushes dirt away and you see a person's face. You know, like it's she's constantly trying to be like how do I maintain 1 % denial of what's going on here but then comes up with the story for the son she thinks the son bought it. She wants He does such an interesting thing with the like cross cutting well the swing but also just there's like a cross cutting between like the wife and the son having that conversation but in two different places and it keeps cutting between those things.

2:10:17But it looks like they're watching each other from afar. There's like, and then it also cuts to Lee Byung-hong, like digging a ditch and burying the guy at the country house. I think it like, could be very disorienting, but instead I found it like, I don't know, fucking cool. There are like a million things that he does in this movie that I think I truly did not know how he did some of them. There's stuff that like the first time I was like, why am I getting confused by this? And then I watch it the second time and I'm like, oh, there's sequences in the first like act of the movie where he is going from like basically within like sort of a montage, a present tense conversation that is then like flipping back to flashbacks to have set up how things got to this place and like hypothetical flash forwards or his visions of the people he's talking about where you're moving within like time and space like so quickly to kind of communicate things to the audience rather than the character's own knowledge or perspective.

2:11:24And he has the moment where there's like this hallucinatory connection of the sun. It being like in the bonsai tree. Yes. Or it's not a bonsai tree. It's like a apple tree or whatever. Which he buys from the rooftop when he's going to murder the other guy that he's placed now in his greenhouse. And it's like he's talking to his son at this small scale. But again, no, he's just like, I did what I have to do. The cops who came to the front door after the iPhone store break-in, when he's ready to be like, they got me, and it's like, unrelated thing happens to be the next morning. They circle back, I want to say slightly earlier.

2:12:03They come in a few times. They notice that there's this weird pattern of these two guys who are both in the paper industry. There's the one, there's the main kind of partners. There are the detectives working on the missing papermen. Yes, sorry, sorry. The papermen detectives are like, we have noticed that these two guys who both work in the paper industry died. Isn't that a little suspicious? And he says something like, or they don't say died. They go, these two guys have gone missing. And he goes, that's scary that both of them have died. And they go, why did you say died? And he says like, well, the way things are in the world today, if you hear someone goes missing, unfortunately, it probably means they're dead.

2:12:40They immediately buy that. it almost endears him to them where they're like this guy gets how it works. It's a tough world. It's a tough world. And we have to deal with it. And their conclusion is just like looks like someone's targeting paper men. You should keep your head on the swivel. Right. And at the end they come to him and they're like yeah it was the lady. You know. And she implicated that the guy she shot you know I can't say my name. I'm bad with the names. Right. But like the woman the wife of the first the wife of the first murder victim implicates him as the gun owner, right? Implicated her husband.

2:13:15Yes, yes. And that he murdered the second guy. Murdered the second guy. Because they find this connection that there was an attempted merger between two companies that those two guys were trying to negotiate together that went awry, that obviously Lee Biong knew nothing about. But like that's a plausible enough reason for them to resent each other. And so one murked the other one. But the wife, she is the one who's killed her husband, has buried him. Yes. So she's covering her own ass in a way, too, that benefits our main character. There's enough mutually assured destruction. Accidental, but suddenly everything fits together perfectly.

2:13:51And they're like, you're so lucky that he didn't get to you next. And dammit, don't we love it when everything works out. This is what's great is it's like, here is a classic Ben. Everything works out, right? He had a crazy plan and it all worked out. He goes in for the meeting, and this is my favorite kind of movie ending. Anytime a movie can successfully stick this kind of landing, I'm fucking hooting and hollering in the theater. He goes in for the interview. They're like, so it's our new warehouse. It's a new interesting thing. It's a dark warehouse. And they were like, what do you mean? And they're like, well, we can save X number of dollars a month by keeping the lights off.

2:14:31Right. Because it's... It's all machines anyway. They don't need lights. They don't need lights. Machines don't need lights. Right. And then he's like, it's all machines. and they're like, yeah, you would just be the one person overseeing the machines. Yeah. So the first order of business would have to be you laying off a ton of people. You don't mind, do you? And he's like, no other choice. Makes perfect sense. And then we see this guy who is just, feels so triumphant. He is falling to his knees and like laughing in celebration. He gets the... I've won. I've made it. You know, the dog's back and the, you know, the daughter's gonna be better.

2:15:02You know, like everything's gonna work out. She finally plays cello in front of her family members. She's even better than they thought. They realize the symbol she's been doing is her way of writing music notes. She's a genius. It's like all there. And he grew his mustache back and he's comfortable, right? And you're like, here he is just being like, I fucking did it. I won. And you're like, you're in a giant dead warehouse with the lights being turned off. You have earplugs in because like, you're constantly surrounded by just like, so you're just like in silence, in isolation all day with the lights off.

2:15:37I love that this is like you're seeing him his first day on the job. You see him have to like jump around to avoid being run over by three separate machines. You're like the rest of this guy's life for as long as this job exists before they also decide he's not necessary is trying to make sure machines don't kill him by accident. They go like the industry's changed. No more tapping on paper, which one of the first things you see at the beginning. he's got his little wooden stick you tap the paper to make sure it's all good right? and he shows up on the that's so crucial it's part of the magic of papermaking and instead they got this like fucking Tony Stark arm that's like and it has a laser and it cuts the sheets and he shows up on that first day with his little wooden stick and he's tapping it just to be like it's good to be back he has a fucking little iPad where he like has to like turn on like different segments of like It's so pathetic.

2:16:33You're just like, how long does this fucking last? And for what? So what do you mean? He has Netflix back. He has Netflix back. He can see the floor of the beast, the mind flayer. Yeah. And it ends with him hugging his family, them deciding that they're never going to move because they planted the tree and that's an investment in the future. But also it's like they got a fucking, they got a dead body and a bunch of eyes. They don't need anyone doing remodeling. Now that the dogs are back, they're starting to dig it up. Right. Right, right. She panics that they're sniffing at the tree. But it also, I feel like they're, you know, she will never feel the same way about her husband.

2:17:11We are a family like a giant tree. That's the tree, right. There's a big poster for this movie. And what is the line? Like, fertilizer is made from the most rotten, disgusting things. Like, you know, we use feces and piss and dead animals to make our, you know, plants grow. Get that Netflix. Pay for it. David Harbour? Winona Ryder's still there, right? Yeah, thank God. Well, they're all out. Maya Hawke. It's all over. Yeah. No other choice. CD Sink. I love it. Barb. Stranger Things or No Other Choice. I love No Other Choice. I have never seen a second of an episode of Stranger Things outside of clips being played in the context of other things.

2:17:54The one I showed you just now where the guy had a floor. That's the longest clip I've seen. I feel like I've only seen Stranger Things in the context of people like cutting to like, of course, Netflix is big as heck. Right. Right. It's going like rolling dice. Yeah. Christmas, Griffin. This had a good opening weekend. Very strong. I will say this. Very limited release. How much we were talking about $650 ,000 on one screen. Neon's embarrassment of riches with their international slate this year. It also made like 20 plus mil in Korea. Yeah. It's a big hit. Yeah. But it basically opened in one weekend in limited release with a crazy per screen average.

2:18:34It is outgrossed, I think, Secret Agent. Surratt has basically not gotten a release. It's done half of what Sentimental Value has done in like three months. Like, it does seem to be a breakout. Who knows if it will continue to grow? I think that the, you know, Korean and Japanese films, like, you know, younger audiences are a little more plugged into those cultures. Like, they're like, you know, whatever. instead of like, hey, you want to see fucking this like Bergman knockoff? I mean, I like sentimental value, but you know what I'm saying. The kids are, maybe they're rushing to it. I don't know.

2:19:05It's about the difference between plays and movies. Elle Fanning did wear that shirt that said Yochan Trer summer. Yeah, we love that. That was a moment. No, no, wasn't it like Dua Lipa did that or someone? No, it was Elle Fanning. I think she wore it at Cannes. I think that's right. No, I'm sure you're right. Elle Fanning had a good year. She did. Yeah, she's great. I think she's really, really good in sentimental value. Charlie XCX also. Well, she had her thing at like Coachella where she had like Sean Price Williams summer. She had Joe Kim Chiris summer. Charlie XCX is following David on Letterboxd.

2:19:37Charlie XCX is. Yes, that's right. Your close personal friend, Charlie. So I can simply... Comment on a review. We should have her on. I could do that. Absolutely. I hear her movie's pretty good. I mean, maybe I shouldn't say... Oh, The Moment? Yeah. This isn't The Moment to say that yet. I'll see it. But no other choice to open to like one point. Well, it's made... It's limited release was on one screen. It's currently made $2 million in two weeks of release. So it's doing pretty good. It's not in the top 10, but in the top 10, number one is a film that we liked and covered on this podcast, Griff.

2:20:09It is called Avatar, Fire, and Ash. That's right. I've now seen it twice. I saw it in 4DX. It ripped. Oh, how was the 4DX? Wonderful. What did they do for the space drug segment? Just kind of like a kickback. But there was no like fog. Like a random person on Twitter tweeted like, saw Avatar without a bra. Don't do that. And everyone's like, quote, she's like, I saw it in 40X. But she didn't specify that in the first. I thought that it was because the movie just like blows your clothes off. I thought it was because she was so horny because of her rung. No, it's just, I think the 40X was Jocelyn.

2:20:47I thought, I mean, once again, that's the only 40X movie you've ever seen is Avatar. Yeah. The re-release. That was enough for me. still have never seen any 40X. I think those movies, especially because they're long, they keep a pretty strong control of the dial on the 40X. Right. So as not to completely burn you out. Okay. Right. Yeah. But they do get your NIP card. They do. Apparently, it's made a billion dollars so far. A billion. And it is only January 5th. And I mean, I think everyone knows the film is a success. I've seen some people being like, is it this big? And I'm like, guys, it's made a billion dollars and it's January.

2:21:24We are in an interesting position where it's like the movie is going to end up somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars. If it ends up at 2, no one can say shit, even if there's a drop off. I don't think anyone can say shit in any scenario. I agree with you, but it's like we're possibly getting to the first time ever that a movie makes 1.5 billion dollars and people go, is that good enough? you can just feel it already happening which it's like I don't know nothing makes sense anymore it's a hit it's a hit and it's a fucking awesome movie and I'll say a lot of my little gripes were resolved on the second watch there's still stuff I think there are a couple things that hold it back from like true five star greatness in my opinion but I think it's an excellent movie and a ripper on thrill right number two the box office Gary Dysnake it jumped up it did in like week family films at Christmas five week five that's right And it went up 20 %?

2:22:18Uh, 34%, my friend. Pretty good. Yeah, so the two highest grossing domestic films of 2025 at this point are A Minecraft Movie and Lilo & Stitch. Lilo & Stitch ended like$200 ,000 behind Minecraft. But both are obviously done theatrically. Zootopia is now at$350 ,000. $365 ,000. And Fire & Ash is currently at two... Fire and Ash is at two something. Yeah, 220. No, no, no. Domestically, it's at 305. Okay. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 423 is the thing to cross. Great. Let's do it. Get Lilo out of there. And if Avatar can make it to 500, then I think everyone stops fucking complaining. But yeah. Anyone complaining.

2:23:04I would just love to get Lilo and Minecraft both knocked down a little bit. Number three, the box office is... The housemate? Nope. Marty Supreme. Oh, yeah. Marty Supreme is number three. The Housemaid is number four. The Housemaid quietly is going to make $200 million worldwide and at least$130 million domestic. Just a big old hit because people like to go see movies. Marty Supreme similarly. Or what's A24 thinking? Making a Josh Safdie World War post-war table tennis drama. Why did this movie need to cost$70 million? Why do you need to talk to me? I don't know. Maybe because they shot it in fucking New York City with a bunch of real extras.

2:23:45It's got like 200 extras. Yeah, I mean, don't... No one actually understands how much movies cost. And what costs money in making a movie? I think we've now gotten tricked into only understanding certain actors' salaries and the idea that CGI is expensive. And if a movie doesn't have a lot of apparent surface-level CGI, people are like, why the fuck did that cost more than$5 million? Didn't they just shoot their set for table tennis plays? Come on! It's the same with One Battle After Another where people are like, I don't understand how it costs this much. And they're like, he filmed it in California.

2:24:17Well, beyond that, that is half of it. Sure, but beyond that, I mean, One Battle has so much fucking elaborate shit going on. Jesus Christ. So does Marty Supreme. Yeah, I know. I know, I'm just saying, but like these people are like, why do we have to stop getting mad at Twitter? Most of that movie is New York. Great movie, great movie. Just be happy this film wasn't shot in like a green screen in Bulgaria. Number five at the box office. Best film of 2025. It's a huge hit. People love it. Everyone's talking about it. it's a new this week. It's David? No, it's Anaconda. Oh. Oh. Which has made $45 million domestic almost$100 worldwide.

2:24:51It is chugging along basically on the back of its stars. They're saying that movie has a$45 million production budget which I don't quite understand. I think it has some very aggressive tax credits. Okay. From Big Snake. I don't know. From Gary? I don't know. I'm also like, did they get Jack Black and Paul Rudd to do like fucking Blumhouse deals where they're getting like money off the back end. 20 % of first dollar? I mean, maybe. Yeah, so Anaconda is out there. I haven't seen it. I won't see it until I see The Quest for the Blood Orchard or whatever it's called. Or The Blood Orchard? The last sequel to Anaconda.

2:25:25I can't be going out of order on these, Chris. There are also like three direct-to-video sequels. I gotta watch those. We gotta watch them all. And of course, they're our next Patreon series. You and I just keep saying like, if they had just been like Christmas Day, here's a movie. It's Jack Black. It's called Guys. and Paul Rudd. It's called Guys. They live in a fucking house. It takes place in a city and they drink beers and they fart one time. It's truly like I'm Switch in the fucking Matrix. They're like, comedies are back and I'm like, not like this. Not like this. But truly like showing her the anaconda trip.

2:26:00Show us two comedy stars we love in a movie called Guys. They don't have to pick up any guns. Two comedy stars who have not been able to make just a kind of pure grown-up comedy in a decade have been stuck in CGI shit and we still love them. And you're like, what if we promise you they're really funny in this? We'd be like, yes. And then the pitch for Anaconda is like, what? They were kids when Anaconda came out. I'm like, let me stop you right there. No, they weren't. I was alive when it came out. They were adults. They were Clueless. The fuck are you talking about? Oh boy. Number six in the box office, of course, is my film that I made in my image.

2:26:40David. I hope you all enjoyed it. David! Speaking of Reddit, do you guys get the movie theater employee subreddit served to you? Good sub. No, so what did they say in that one? It is fascinating, but I was reading some thread where they were talking about, like, so, like, which crowd is the worst of all of the Chris... The movie theater employee subreddit, they all agreed that the David crowds were by far the worst. Oh, wow. Did they say that the... Because they all brought slings with rocks. I did notice that they all say the church group crowds tend to be the most entitled. Interesting. I started reading the subreddit because of Minecraft and Chicken Jockey and everyone being like...

2:27:24Right, right. Being like, what is happening? Sharing the war stories. And it's been interesting since then to see them talk about like which movies are a problem. And also for them, they're like frustrated by Hollywood scheduling where they're like for six weeks. no one's been coming in for a while and then like three big movies the same weekend and we're all just gonna have to work like 20 hours what can I tell you I mean it's the thing about Avatar where you know this movie's doing well it's not you know and you're like oh the comp wise it's a little below Way of Water and then you look at Way of Water and you're like damn it was the only thing out there when that came and like this is a more I mean there's great stuff in theaters like David and Anaconda you know but no no but there's Housemaid there was a great stat which was like the weekend that Way of Water opened the like combined top 10 box office that weekend was like 90 % way of water.

2:28:13Right. It was, yeah, it was the only game in town. Versus Fire and Ash had like four movies performing above$20 million. It was the first time it happened in years. Right. And Avatar, of course, had the like first week into itself, second weekend, Sherlock Holmes and Squeak will come out. That was at the time the biggest weekend of all time where you had like multiple movies. But it's just generally better if multiple things are doing well. We love product. such as the Spongebob movie Search for Squarepants. The ultimate example, I've been saying this for fucking months, why didn't they release that in September or October?

2:28:45That's a dumb movie to release right now. There was no family film for months. They would have gotten such easy automatic money. The number of parents who have texted me over this winter break, I guess I'll go see Spongebob. I'm like, you would have been doing that in right when there was no movie. Instead, it's competing with like seeing Zootopia for the second time. Well, and kids love Song Song Blue, which is number eight. I went to the last Last Nighthawk trivia of the year. Congratulations. Thank you. Shout out Shay and Kevin again. Shout out again. The best trivia night in New York City.

2:29:15There was a question that was, what is the subtitle of the new SpongeBob movie? The SpongeBob titles are so annoying. And we did not get it right. Yeah. I have watched that fucking Ice Spice video. Yeah. Like 20 times. Here's what's annoying. And I still didn't know that this. No, I'm not. The first one is called The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. And then over a decade later, the second one is called The SpongeBob Movie Sponge Out of Water. The third one is called The SpongeBob Movie Sponge on the Run. And the fourth one is called The SpongeBob Movie Search for Square Pants. But at some point, they just decide the titling structure is The SpongeBob Movie Drop Square Pants.

2:30:04And then the subtitle always reuses Sponge or Squarepants. Yeah, the fact that they reused Squarepants really threw me for a loop. They're so murky. They're no numbers. I hate it. I still have not seen the fourth and I like SpongeBob and I defend the movies. I saw the trailer in front of Zootopia to expecting my daughter to like it. She didn't like that there was a pirate in it. I think the first two movies are both quite excellent and the third movie which was planned for theatrical and went straight to Paramount Plus I think is quite stinky. And so I've been a little dubious about this one. Everyone's sort of mixed on this one.

2:30:35I also, I hate that they they fucking jump to CGI. The first one is all 2D. The second one is 90 % hand-drawn, and then the final set pieces, they come out of water, and they're CGI in our world. And then three and four are just entirely CG. Mr. Krabs, he's there. He's great. Mr. Krabs is so great. Number eight song, Song Blue, haven't seen it. Griff's a big fan. I enjoyed it a lot. Kate Hudson is pretty good in it, and it's pretty nice to see her deliver. Beyond pretty good. She's very good. Shout out to Eddie Vedder. Yeah. The guy who plays Eddie Vedder is not as good. Real Eddie Vedder rules.

2:31:12John Beckwith. Wow. Calling him out. Belushi's in this? No. Oh, Jim? Yes. John's not in that one. I thought you were asking if someone plays John Belushi in the movie like Eddie Vedder. No, Jim is in it. Jim is giving quite a large performance. I don't know why I thought that was so funny. I don't either. It was funny. uh LeBron Imperiali is in it he's a delight yeah it's got good people in it number nine in the box Kate Hudson's really good uh is Griffin's favorite film of the year Wicked for Good I it took me a while to catch up with that one I saw it finally in anticipation of us doing our Patreon episode on it I I like I cannot get over how bad they fumbled that it's a bit of a it's a bit of a tough I'm excited to watch it it was a bad idea to begin with I still haven't seen it I um I would like to be on the the Patreon.

2:32:07Please insist. You will be... You'll get me through that. Your mind will be blown. Because we were like danger ahead. Bad idea to split them up. Well, good idea and bad idea. Yeah, made more money. First movie really benefited from it. They fucked it up so much worse than I anticipated. It's that Simpsons gag where Homer's holding like all of his back. Yes. You know, and like the front. Truly. Yes. Number 10 of the box office, Griffin's favorite film of the year, Five Nights at Freddy's 2. I did watch the first Five Nights at Freddy's. Here it's not so good. For the first time. And? It's not good.

2:32:39I hear this one's really bad. I'm excited to watch two now. This one cleared 120 domestic, despite, I don't think I've seen one positive reaction to this film. Like, even the, like, brain-dead teenagers seeing it are, like, kind of disappointing. I have heard it is barely legible. The lore of those movies is so strange. Yeah. The lore of, I guess, the whole Freddy-verse. It's not really. But you know what? Directed by a woman, Emma Tammy. Yeah, she did both of them. So there you go. Yeah. We support ladies making films. Mayor. Mayor. Me. Mayor. Of course, of Easttown over here. And we got Hamnet.

2:33:15No other choice. Eternity. A film I find people have been very, like, sort of mixed, positive on. I watched it and I was like, I don't like this at all. The trailer made my teeth hurt. I kept seeing the trailer for months and I was really turned off by it. I could not vibe with Miles Teller. he was to me a terrible casting decision for like this kind of like i'm an ordinary joe like you know like and then callum turner as the sort of one who got away i was like so uninscited it was a reel where i was like are there no men do we not have like charming men where are the men wait you don't like callum turner no so you don't want him to be the next james no fuck off i mean look i'll give the guy he you know if he's james bond like i'll give him a shot to convince me or whatever I am not convinced.

2:34:01I don't get him at all. No. Okay. I don't think he's a bad actor, but I just like, I do not get it. He like bounces off me. Do you guys know how he met Dua Lipa? No. How? Did he follow her on Letterboxd? No. Is he like a king poster? I think they met, they met through friends. He like Kenny Dalgans. Wow, so far I'm gripped. This is thrilling stuff. No, get this. They both found out they were reading the same book. What book? It was like a book, the book that, you know what? You guys are being assholes. What was the book? What is the book it won? What is the big prize for American literature? The National Book Award?

2:34:37The Booker Prize? Yeah, what won the National Book Award last year? I'll find out for you. All right. I'll get right on that. Trust. Yes, Trust. Okay. By Hernan Diaz. Yes, so they both were reading Trust. They saw that they each had the books on them, and then they realized that they were at the same part in the book, and he said, well, at least we're starting off on the right page. I'm Dua Lipa. I'm like, remove this man. No, I love it. I think it's so cute. She's so pretty. I think they're both really hot. I'll just say him. I don't see it. Okay, you know what? Fine. He's not for you. He's for me.

2:35:18I guess so. I mean, well, apparently he's for Dua Lipa. And I like Dua Lipa. I like her too. No, I said I'm like her. Oh, you're like, we're both women. You like Dua Lipa. Our Woman. What's the Dua Lipa song? The song? She's got multiple. She's a talented singer. Well, she's got the one from the Barbie movie that's like, dance, dance, the night away. I like that one. My daughter fucking loves that song. She loves that song. That's the best Barbie song. That's the one that should have won the Oscar. That's a solid pop song. She's got a lot of solid pop songs. I know of her, but I just feel like I could not name it.

2:35:57Levitating is really bouncy. The album that she released during COVID is like no skips. Pure like disco-y pop bops. Her most recent album. Kind of a flop. But she's, I like her. I think she's very unproblematic. She's from West Hampstead. Yeah. Not that far from where I grew up. She went to, when I went to Hampstead Heath, I walked by a. She went to Parliament Hill. I walked by a school and I was like, ooh, what cool kids go to this school. Cool, because I saw some kids outside smoking cigs and looking hot. And I'm like, oh, Dua Lipa went there. David, I was... Sorry, no, finish your thought. The thing with Parliament Hill...

2:36:35I'm just eager to tell you something. Okay, fine. It's in a sort of consortium with four schools. Acklin Burley, William Ellis, and the Saint Union. My brother went to Acklin Burley. So he was in there. Anyway, what was your... I was working. I did this little part in a film shoot that will go unnamed. Draft day two. Draft day two. Always be drafting. there were several British actors working on it and they were like making small talk about like where do you live in London and one of them said I'm in Islington sure and the the strength it took to not say Islington to just literally close my throat so the words couldn't jump out I live there from 95 to 97 that's a very it's a very fancy place to live these days wow very cool neighborhood you made it hip you gentrified it I did I think I moved in as what Well, I was just going to ask, what episode did that come up on?

2:37:27It's fucking Totoro. Oh, God. Don't listen to that one if you've never heard of this inside. Dizzlington? I bring up Islington. I don't even know. Is it just that it sounds... It's a funny word, Islington. The whole thing... It's where Tony Blair lived. And the fucking day he got elected prime minister. So that's 97. So we probably lived there for two years. You know, in England, when you get elected, you just move the day that it happens. like there's no transition and I remember my mom being like they kick you out you know and it had been 17 years of Tory rule it was this big deal like Labour won Tony Blair you know mixed record but you know this is the big oh he got elected yay my mom was like we're fucking going like let's go watch him move and I got I shoved my way to the front because I was a kid so they let me like go to the front to watch him so you watched him I watched him like you know wave to ever all the crowd was he like carrying boxes yeah he was suitcases and shit Sheree was there all his kids Big ears?

2:38:24He had big ears? Big ears. Sticky out of ears. Wait, so you lived in England when the Spice Girls were like... I lived in England when the Spice Girls were happening, yes. And I had this VHS tape. And when Britpop was happening. Oh, yeah, I know. Cool Britannia, England. David, I'm familiar, but I really... Spice Girls are... So I had this VHS tape that was sort of like a behind-the-scenes Spice Girls thing. It came with the first album. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that I watched over and over again. It was just like talking head interviews with them. It was like the most slapped together. Were you up scary?

2:38:58You were scary? Obviously. I was going to guess sporty. I always... I was going to say Ginger. No, I was Ginger. You were Ginger? You're a baby. I was Ginger on main. I was a little bit too Ginger. I always insisted on playing... We would role play Spice Girls. Yeah. And I always insisted on being baby. Yeah. Okay. To be clear, I was saying I had a crush on Spice. That's what I was saying, too. No, I know, I know. We did so much roleplay. No, I know. But everyone has their favorite Spice Girl. Mine was Baby, but people would be like, but you have brown hair, you have to be posh. The girls at my school would roleplay Spice Girls, and I would roleplay being the manager.

2:39:38I was like, who's the guy? They must have a manager. You're Richard Grant? Richard E. Grant? I would pretend to... It was before the movie came out, but I'd be like, we'll get you, Mike, a founts. No, I was a big scary fan. You know, Scary got a lot of guff. You know, people were mean to... Sorry, Sporty got a lot of guff and people were mean to Mel C. And I think even as a kid, I felt bad about it. I didn't like that. Why were they mean to Mel C? She was ugly. But she's not. She also had the best voice of anyone in the group. She was the best singer and dancer. I'm just... She had the biggest solo hit.

2:40:10I turn to you. She had some bangers. That song was so big, though. Yeah. Mel B and Mel C, I feel like both released like a couple records that charted. Isn't it crazy that Mel B had a baby with Eddie Murphy? It's crazy. And she had to like fucking chase him. Eddie Murphy was like, I swear to God, that's not my baby. Prove it. And she was like, here. Her baby was like doing the laugh and sticking bananas in her life. Jerry had like a genuine solo hit, but it was while the Spice Girls was, it was after she'd left. I don't think it was a US hit though. No, but in Britain, it was like a solid seller.

2:40:47And Victoria did like the one release and everyone was like, okay. And she was like, you know what? I know. Forget it. Forget it. I won't try that again. I'm so glad we got Spice Girls talking to us. I was very obsessed with the Spice Girls. They were humongous. And I was, you know, obsessed with Oasis and Blur. Ben is holding up his Pulp Man of the Year award. Yes, of course. No, Spotify was gracious enough to send us a bunch of junk. Excuse me, a bunch of worthwhile merchandise. They sent over a water bottle with an included MagSafe stand. Well, right. For your phone. And it has the name of the show branded on it, which is cool.

2:41:23But it had like a manual. And you're like, why? It's a water bottle. Put liquid in and sip. Like, what the fuck is it going to say? Put water in mouth. Swallow. Don't spill on body. No, it has like a MagSafe ring at the top of the bottle. And I was like, oh, is it like a water bottle that charges your phone? No, you can just tilt it up to get like a good selfie angle. To make content with. Yep. It also then included a trophy that has my name on it for some reason. And it says The Crate Digger Wrapped Awards 2025. What does that mean? I have no idea. We don't know. Who knows? We don't know. AI is probably just doing this without even telling anyone with Spotify.

2:42:08But I do want to just share having previously worked for Spotify for a couple of years I had pitched a show because, you know, Spotify at this point point, I feel like there's maybe a couple of Ringer shows that still do this format, music and talk, where they're able to play a full song. That kind of classic radio show format that you love. I pitched a show called Crate Digger. Okay. Wait. So then that must be related to that. It's definitely not because I heard on the Seth Meyers and Lonely Island podcast that one of them also got a random award with Crate Digger. What the fuck? Crate Digger?

2:42:47Yes. It's also interesting that the award is addressed only to you. I don't know. I gotta go. And it has Digger in it. Coming to theaters 2026. Interrupt you. I also love that I was like, hey, just double checking. They only sent one water bottle and you guys were like, yeah, you can have it. The water bottle says, the inscription is blank check with Griffin and David. So the water bottle acknowledges that at least two people do the podcast. Maybe it's things you guys will share. you know that'd be cute we stick two straws have you seen Ann Lee yet Griff no Ann Lee's my next view I saw it you seen the plague no that's also I'm like to see this I've been doing some hyper catch up I was behind for a little while because of plague I watched but I don't like going to IFC center why not David's got the plague because they don't they don't have like a lobby it's a lot of NYU students you like the lobby I just don't fuck with it I'm sorry it's two in the morning there's never anyone at IFC center I work it is nice that IFC does tend to do really early screenings.

2:43:47Like, sometimes you can sneak in like a fucking 9.30 a.m. at IFC, especially for movies that have been out for a while. Yeah, but that means I have to commute at peak commute time into Manhattan. I need to see The Plague. I need to see Testament of Anne Lee. I need to see Resurrection. I need to see The Jarmusch. I need to see The Voice of Henry Job. Those are my major ones, I feel like, that I'm trying to knock out right now. I have yet to see The Jarmusch or Resurrection. Those are kind of my only... I got a moosh. You got a moosh. I think I'm going to stop watching movies. No. They're arguably the only good thing we have left.

2:44:24I don't know. It's like a big commitment. You can redefine your rules. Do you know what I did all break? Slept. It's not going to be a good answer. You watched that fucking hockey blowjob show. I watched the hockey blowjob show. It is funny they called it that. You don't see any penis in the fucking show. None of these shows show you penis. That's the terrible thing. That's the terrible thing. Now that's the terrible thing. I played The Sims. Marie. Which is the sign. Maybe we should take this off, Mike, but are you depressed? We definitely got to wrap up. Take us out, Griff. Hey, next week. Yeah.

2:45:00Starting a new miniseries. I've been playing a lot of Civ VI, by the way, so no judgment here. Yeah. Is that what you call your, or I guess you're The Sims 5? Your family? No, no, Civ VI. Civilization VI. Oh, I think I said Sim VI. Another video game that is old. But I was like, you know what? You could be the, you're literally the Sims. That's why you don't play it. We are the Sims. I certainly do not need to imitate being at home on my computer. That's not an experience that I'm longing for. Sorry. What is it, Griffin? You got a rueful smile. A rueful smile? The developers who made my beloved, dearly departed Disney Infinity, a game I was obsessed with 10 years ago in which all Disney IP was mashed together.

2:45:44I have a new game that's been a giant flop called Funko Fusion. Oh, no. In which everything is mashed together through Funko and Funko Pops, but they only have access to Universal. So it's the weirdest collection of things. It is Wicked, Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz, The Thing, Jurassic World only, I want to say, Back to the Future. He-Man is in there. the Umbrella Academy and maybe one other thing I'm forgetting. Anyway, that's the terrible video game I'm playing right now. Wow. I'm a little Funko Pop and I collect coins and shit. Oh, I certainly play Hades 2. It fucking rules. I've cracked away at Hades 2.

2:46:22Good times. Yeah. I never was able to beat Hades 1 but I do just enjoy... You just get in there and muck up some skulls. Just get in there and muck up some skulls. Having a little fun. Learning a little bit about Greek mythology. Learn a little bit, exactly. About these hot gods and goddesses. Yeah, goodbye. I will see you next week. Rat Catcher. Lynn Ramsey kicking off our five-week, six-week Lynn Ramsey miniseries. Five-week Lynn Ramsey miniseries is one of my favorite filmmakers on the planet. Turn your subtitles on for Rat Catcher. Heavy accents. Yeah. Followed by Peter Weir. After that. But we'll do five weeks of Lynn Ramsey and we will do Sam Raimi's new film as well.

2:46:59People were so, like, we had the episode where we were like, and our next miniseries is, Lynn Ramsey, we tricked you. You all thought we were doing Peter Weir next? we recorded that and then we started teasing Lin Ramsey so by the time it came out everyone knew it was Lin Ramsey and then we're like you fucking idiots Peter wheel all along over on the Patreon actually on this date our episode on the whiz was released oh good honestly a fun episode a cool movie yeah it's got it's got you know little foibles but cool movie no I think a great episode and you know it was tough with like the holidays and breaks and everything that my therapist was off duty so the Wiz episode got to function as kind of an on-mic therapy session.

2:47:43Oh, I can't wait to listen. We dig a lot into my childhood and why do I like this movie so much? There were some discoveries made. Nothing sensational. No, it's not like a, yeah, right, like a wrenching episode. But there was a real why did you watch this 40 times and cry kind of thing going on. For that kind of bonus content and so much more, please, you know, sign up for Blank Check special features, $5 a month, Or if you want an ad-free, we got an ad-free tier,$10 a month. Yeah. And listen to Critical Darlings. Critical Darlings, which I should mention, is the only thing that happens on our main feed that will not be going onto the ad-free tier on Patreon for a number of reasons that are too complicated to get into with our partnership with Vulture.

2:48:23I understand if you are supporting this show and paying for the premium of the clean feed, a thing I value above all else. I totally get it and I apologize for the annoyance. It would be appreciated if you could support Critical Darlings by just downloading that one episode every Thursday. That's what I do with shows that I cherry pick. I don't subscribe. I go over to the feed and I just hit the save button and I just keep those episodes. That's what I'm doing. I understand your frustration. Don't ask me. I don't care. I'm not asking you for anything. Do we have any more things we need to apologize for?

2:48:57Definitely. And sorry for the audio cues that take you in and out of the ad breaks. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry we do this thing that's supposed to be... That is jarring for you. Even though so many other shows do it. I'm gonna go pick it. But hey, you know, my bad. Festivus delayed. Grievances getting aired. I'm sorry that this podcast is about movies. Movies are problematic. Bad people have made movies before. Film used to be projected on nitrate prints. Those caught on fire. Those would cause accidents. I'm sorry that I called out my parents for getting Wyclef Jean and Will. I am confused when I got Vic Mensa and Vince Staples confused.

2:49:36Yes. Sorry for AT Aliens. AT Aliens, which we called Alt Aliens. The Outcast album that we all professed to love and didn't know how to pronounce. We are white. It's just like it goes. I'm sorry. We're white. I'm sorry. I apologize for it every day. I'll keep apologizing for it I assure you I'm not proud of it Hey we're human we make mistakes always seems like only other people get the breaks it's like what do you freaking want are we gonna keep all of this in the episode this is all absolutely in the episode oh I'm a freaking guy I make a mistake come on this guy is great and I'm promising you that he's gonna be a big part of the show in 2026 thank you all for listening and as always we're sorry Sorry.

2:50:27Sorry. We're so sorry. Sorry.

2:50:37Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell artwork by Joe Bowen Ollie Moss and Pat Reynolds our production assistant is Minnick special thanks to David Cho Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit join our Patreon blankcheck special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes follow us on social at blankcheckpod Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack.

2:51:28This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.