Highest 2 Lowest Review, Jaws Review, Weapons Feedback

13:27Josh Larsen:So you get a little bit of that sports element. Here's the other direct, direct address bit. Adam, there is a Yankees fan leading the cheer. Let's go Yankees. Boston sucks. The whole car is chanting this. It's Nick Turturro, John Turturro's brother, a Spike Leavitt, a great face for cinema. And he turns and looks right in the camera and delivers a Boston sucks. I mean, that's the sort of stuff you're going to get in the midst of a high-stakes suspense action sequence that gives you that spike flavor, that spike texture. I mentioned the Puerto Rican festival going on. We get cutaways to the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra playing the street festival.

14:12Josh Larsen:He's introduced by Rosie Perez, just a nice little touch there as Rosie Perez. And so we're cutting back and forth with this music, this amazing salsa orchestra music interwoven with the chant, Boston sucks. And this is the texture. This is the great New York City stew, the texture that Spike Lee is going to bring to what could have been a rote standard suspense sequence. And I loved it. I was like, you're not going to get this from anyone else. So that's the Spike answer. But as I said, it's not why I liked High Soloist quite so much. We'll get to that. But, um, what did you, first of all, did you like it?

14:55Josh Larsen:And what did you, what was the spikiness level for you?

14:58Adam Kempenaar:Well, first I'll say if this was a game show, you win. That's, that's the right answer, or that is my answer. And I don't know how much I can add to it, but I'll try. I do first want to say that going back to my little preface here, I had this setup in mind, as I mentioned. And for some reason, my assumption about my own reaction was even though I walked out of the theater liking it, I knew I liked this movie. I was going to be positive on it. Somehow I thought that hit to miss ratio was a little bit tighter. And I thought, oh, when I sit down to really prepare for my review, I know here are things I like about it.

15:39Adam Kempenaar:And I know there are many things I like about it, but I was going to have to acknowledge some of those, those bold, those audacious spike choices that maybe don't totally work or maybe don't work at all. And then, Josh, I started preparing, and it's almost exclusively positive. And so then that's where I really started to doubt myself, and now I'm all in on this film. We'll get to a few things, or at least I will, that maybe we can talk about not totally working, but there is so much that does work about this film. And you talked about that sequence, that key sequence in relation to what Spike is doing in terms of incorporating New York and that cultural heritage.

16:21Adam Kempenaar:That is there. That is so important. I think what I'll try to do is just mention it in terms of or discuss it in terms of how important the music is there. But not only there, how important the music is to the entire film. Right. So I do think that entire sequence, and we have to mention not only Matthew Lubatik, the director of photography, who also shot Inside Man, shot Chirac for Spike, but a few other films as well. His cinematography and the editing by Barry Alexander Brown and Alison C. Johnson. The work they're doing here is incredible. It is intense. It is unpredictable. It is such a long sequence from the moment Denzel leaves the condo.

17:04Adam Kempenaar:And a combination of different types of shooting, handheld, but also some very elegant work. But it's unpredictable, it's chaotic, but it's very controlled filmmaking. And because it is Spike Lee, it is, you're right, fundamentally, culturally, at its core, New York. And that choice to have the music coming from Eddie Palmieri, that song Puerto Rico, to have it be a parade that's going on, have it be so core to this sequence and thus this movie, and have it be diegetic, not imposed on the sequence. Have it be diegetic. It's happening. This is happening in this neighborhood now. That only adds to that intensity and the suspense.

17:50Adam Kempenaar:And I think that sequence, it isn't just the standout sequence in this film. And there are a lot of great scenes and moments, but it's the standout sequence here. And I think it is as suspenseful and thrilling as the famous French connection chase scene, which is clearly an influence for Spike Lee on this sequence. But as suspenseful and thrilling as anything, Spike Lee has done. Also, I don't know if you saw this. It popped up for me somewhere that Eddie Palmieri had passed away. And not only has he passed away, Josh, he just died on August 6th. Oh, no, I did not see that. Wow. Yeah, so just died earlier this month, sadly.

18:29Adam Kempenaar:But that's Eddie Palmieri and his salsa orchestra that's featured playing Puerto Rico in this movie. Incredible sequence. But it doesn't just stop there.

18:38Josh Larsen:Can I ask you a quick question about the sequence? Yeah. Did you, did it seem like they were using different stock, at least film stock possibly? Maybe it was switching from digital to film for the subway sequences?

18:49Adam Kempenaar:I feel like that's where it's introduced, isn't it? Is when he goes into the subways the first time in the movie where we start to see potentially 16 millimeter or something that's a lot brainier. It speaks to your French connection point, I think. Like you're thrust into that area. He's adding different textures in that sequence. And that feels like something Spike would do, right? A great rhetorical device there. But the beginning of this movie also just brought me right in. The use of, oh, what a beautiful morning. Those shots of the city. It's the harbor, the Brooklyn Bridge. It's majestic.

19:25Adam Kempenaar:And it's showcasing the city in a way that somehow feels new and different, despite the fact that that Spike Lee himself and so many other filmmakers have already shot these same vistas so many times before. But it's Spike too, Josh. So he's got this great ironic sense of humor. Even just taking the song, it's ironic because we know going in how his day is going to unfold. But what he thinks his day is going to unfold like, there's the irony there. But just taking that song out of its milieu, written originally for Oklahoma, and adopting it, transplanting it to New York City is genius. And it works on all of those levels.

20:11Adam Kempenaar:But it is more than that too, Josh. And I think this is one of those areas. I think this goes back to my setup. It actually is the key element here that maybe inspired what I was thinking when I was talking about something that might turn off people who are just coming to Spike's work for the first or second time and they're not as used to it. There is music. It's not just these big flourishes, these big choices where songs are playing throughout these entire sequences. There is music almost constantly throughout this film. the the score and I think I think most of it works very well but the score here I want to make sure I get the get the name right the score is done by Howard Drossen and there's other artists that you hear as well in addition to the ones that we've mentioned and I'll mention a couple artists here or at least one more famous artist in a second but there is scoring that is underneath so many scenes especially through the first 45 minutes to an hour of this movie.

21:13Adam Kempenaar:And in some cases, I feel like there are folks who might feel like it's almost soap opera-ish. But that feels right for Spike because it's almost as if he is so musical and so musically inclined. It's like he wants to give each scene, not just broad pieces or sequences, but each scene its own theme. And just as I'm thinking that, just as I'm thinking that there's a moment early in the film where Denzel's, you know, David King gets in the car with Paul for the first time and he says, I need a theme. And what happens? Paul picks out the perfect theme. And the song I think is Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now, which is like a disco hit from the 70s.

21:59Adam Kempenaar:But that's what they're feeling at the time. So that becomes the theme for that moment. But later, when they're in the car again and they're heading off to do something, what's the theme for that moment? It's the payback by James Brown, right? But there are also themes, musical instrumental themes for every other moment that is in the movie. And so that use of music, especially in the money drop sequence, is incredible. But how we used it throughout is one of the touches that for me really made highest to lowest. something worth seeing and worth listening to.

22:34Josh Larsen:Totally with you on the soundtrack selections and the use of those. One of the things that did hold me back about High Siloist was the score by Howard Drossin.

22:43Adam Kempenaar:There are times I loved it and a few times it held me back.

22:46Josh Larsen:And I know, again, the things you know going into a Spike Lee film, the wallpaper score is a common element. I know Androssin has worked with Spike Lee before, I believe, but a lot of times this, this sort of texture was established by his father, Billy, a jazz musician. And his early films would have these wall to wall scores, which are, you're not used to them. And sometimes they do take a little getting used to, I did find it at times more intrusive than I have in other films. Um, but that's, that's more of a quibble. I completely agree about the use and the specific selections. When you're mentioning that song, the opening song being from Oklahoma.

23:23Josh Larsen:That's another part of the cultural fabric Spike Lee weaves because it's not just black culture, sports culture, New York City culture. He also often takes quote unquote American approved historical culture and subverts it, questions it, reappropriates it. And that's what you were describing in that opening number, which I love.

23:46Adam Kempenaar:What about you reference the art, Josh, but also in addition to the art, we cut to a lot of pictures of Denzel Washington from his actual past. Maybe some are contrived, but they are actual pictures. I mean contrived in the sense that maybe they're using using actual photos of him on mock covers. But I think right actual images and covers and their images of his former self. And maybe, Josh, this isn't a major flourish, not as bold of a choice as some of the other things we're talking about. Maybe it's even arguably an obvious one. And I'll say briefly, too, I don't think it's something that works on the same level as what Steven Soderbergh does in The Limey.

24:29Adam Kempenaar:I mentioned this movie last week, the casting of Peter Fonda in that movie, the footage of Terrence Stamp from the Ken Loach movie Poor Cow. The way those work in that film for me are not just stunts and not just practical. We needed to show Terrence Stamp as a young man, so we found this footage. They're choices that significantly add to the meaning and the experience of the movie. So maybe not quite on that level, but there are constant references to the art that you mentioned and different artifacts. And when David King is doing his most soul searching and really what he's wrestling with is his legacy, his legacy, there is some added.

25:07Adam Kempenaar:I think it was for me, there was added potency to seeing these celebrated, authentic visages of himself, of his, of his actual self haunting him. Would it be more potent if there was a meta element to it? If Denzel was a problematic figure or someone who truly was wrestling with his legacy? I don't know. Maybe I'm not going to wish that on him, certainly. But also, I don't know that it's necessary because he's 70 years old and there is going to be a logical reckoning with that legacy for him. And then vicariously, vicariously through us as the audience. And I also don't think it's a stretch to suggest that within the black community over the last 40 years of popular culture, Denzel Washington is one of those figures.

25:58Adam Kempenaar:those visages certainly portraying just the image of him portraying Malcolm X portraying Alonzo in training day but just him as a sex symbol what he's meant as a philanthropist that added that

26:10Josh Larsen:element I thought was really crucial to the film I think so too I think it's also part of what we should talk about is how much highest to lowest is an old man movie and by old man I'm saying that respectfully, but you pointed out the age. And I mean, old man in terms of Hollywood age, because both Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, I believe Spike Lee is just a couple of years younger, are at a different phase of their reputations and their careers. And I did worry a bit at the beginning about this quality and how it was going to play in this film, Because to my mind, David King, when he first appears, is a little awkward, a little out of touch, a little acting younger than he should.

27:00Josh Larsen:And I was wondering, has Denzel lost it? Are we starting to see? But of course, I mean, this is just me being dumb. That's part of the nuance of the performance is what I came to understand. because David King is a little too old and characters reference this. He may have lost his touch or if he hasn't lost his touch, it's because he's been focusing on the wrong things. He's been focusing on sales and stock prices, um, rather than new artists and music. There's a reference, his wife references that he doesn't listen to music as much as he used to. And so I do think the, it's awkward to see an awkward Denzel Washington, but I think that's an intentional part of the performance because as the movie goes on and David King makes different choices, both moral and artistic, he begins to reclaim some of that swagger we recognize.

27:57Josh Larsen:And there's a moment that's very distinct for me, Adam. There's an early scene where he's trying to make a business negotiation with a partner and there's a gold mic in the conference room, like a gold embossed mic. And he's kind of using it as a prop, like talking into it, then holding it to his partner. And at first I'm like, oh, that's kind of like clever charisma, charisma, right? But then he keeps doing it. And I'm thinking, okay, you're pushing this a little bit. Like you're pushing this bit a little bit. And it's tied into what I eventually realized is it's because David King is pushing that, right?

28:28Josh Larsen:It's him trying to rely on the old charisma he used to have. Notice Denzel Washington's shift into real charisma later in the film. And I do think it correlates with his reclaiming his moral and artistic integrity. I think that's when we start to see the real David King come out, which to us as audience viewers is the real Denzel Washington. So I could talk about this more in detail in a climactic scene where there's a face-off with the kidnapper, but I don't know how much of that I want to spoil because I think that's the brilliant performance because we see, let's just say we see David King try to rap a little bit and it's not, it's not great, but it's not, it shouldn't be great in that scene.

29:16Josh Larsen:Yet somehow he balances real swagger, authority, charisma, gravitas in that scene as well. So it's different from the early David King. It's a different David King at that point. And again, I think it's because he's come to understand who he is as a music producer on the artistic side and as a man making the right moral choice as it regards to the ransom for his driver's son.

29:43Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. I think that's an accurate reading of the performance. I think it's a great performance overall. I do think generally compared to a lot of other Denzel Washington performances, it's it's not that it's bigger but it is busier he's he's just a little bit more of a it's a good word yeah he's just fidgety compared to other denzel characters and especially the more unraveled he becomes but we see it even early on as you said when he isn't really himself because he's trying to get things done and he's not sure he's not going to be able to pull them off he's unsure if He can. Yes. There's an insecurity to the swagger.

30:24Adam Kempenaar:That's it. He's not used to being in that position when he doesn't have his swagger. That's really where I think that that busyness comes into play. So I do think you're you're right about that. And yet what's what's interesting for me about it is that I noticed I'm going to go back to the words from the title here a little bit. It isn't as busy as it is. It's not a high volume performance. There is some swagger and bravado to it, but he doesn't get loud. It's not Alonzo from training day type of loud. And in fact, the more serious and pointed he gets, the lower his volume gets throughout the film.

31:01Adam Kempenaar:And he he does have once he finds himself, he does seem to have that natural confidence and command. And he doesn't have to like people who actually have that type of swagger. He doesn't have to be overly forceful. Right. And you see that.

31:16Josh Larsen:You know, it's a great example of that. when he's agreed at this point, I think, to pay the ransom for Paul's son. And they get another phone call. And all the investigators in the penthouse are like, pick up the phone, pick up the phone, like rushing him. Yeah. And he just does this like, okay, relax. I know. It's like -

31:36Adam Kempenaar:Spike shoots it so well.

31:37Josh Larsen:There's an edit. Yeah. It's just like, that's to your point. That is when he's in control. I did want to throw in real quick, because there may be people who are going to call this an old man movie and he does david king does have an anti kids are on their phones too much rant early on an anti-ai rant early on and both of those wrong what exactly i mean we're old guys too we we agree but but in the moment i'm thinking like oh boy are we in for like a couple of older filmmakers using this chance to kind of like tell us what they think about the world again i realized it was all in service of the character and appropriately so yeah so you touched on this a

32:18Adam Kempenaar:little bit i also want to highlight i don't know if this counts as one of spike's bolder choices the actor the rapper has been in a few other movies but i don't know if he's been on quite this stage before casting agents you can go ahead and put asap rocky in bigger roles in more films Agreed. Absolutely. He clearly has it. He is a legit presence. And what is definitely a bold stroke, and I think it pays off, but we can't get into it because we aren't going to get into spoiler territory, is there is a music video moment near the end that I think absolutely works in the film. And I do agree with you.

33:03Adam Kempenaar:And this I know I've seen a few things here and there. So I know this has been talked about. It really isn't a spoiler. We won't spoil what what would be a spoiler about it. We're going to talk just vaguely. There is a showdown of sorts between those two characters. And I don't think, Josh, that what matters about that is we're supposed to believe that old man David King, that Denzel as old man David King actually has the rap skills of the Saprocki as this character. But he does have to match the swagger.

33:37Josh Larsen:That's the point I was making. Yeah. And I think Denzel is purposely not. I mean, who knows if Denzel Washington can rap? I have no idea. But in that scene, he's purposely, I think, not being very good. I think that serves the moment in the character. But he has the gravitas in the other elements of that scene. That's what makes him real. If David King walked in there and like outwrapped A$AP Rocky, you'd be like, what is this corny?

34:04Adam Kempenaar:Here's where I'll disagree with you a little bit, but it's only because I do know something. I read something that Spike said that made me think of another thing that's lore from a Denzel Washington performance in a Spike Lee film. And you may be familiar with this as well. He got game. Denzel Washington, well, any Denzel Washington performance or character, you hear this about his sort of method, if you will, is that he is supremely confident. He is never going to back down from anyone in a scene, no matter what they're doing or no matter who that other actor is. So on He Got Game, if, for example, he's playing legitimate star slash very good NBA player Ray Allen as his son one on one, and he knows in his heart he knows in his heart he's not as good.

34:57Adam Kempenaar:Sure. He's not going to beat Ray Allen one on one. But on that day, on that set, he is going to not give an inch and he is going to try to beat him. And in those moments, he is going to play as if Denzel Washington, the 40 year old actor or whatever, can absolutely beat him and he'll do whatever it takes to beat him. That's how he played that game against him as if he could beat him. And Spike said that a lot of that that sequence that we're talking about was unscripted. And Denzel decided to show up and basically be like, oh, young kid, you think you got it? Well, I've got some surprises in my bag.

35:39Adam Kempenaar:Right. So he, of course, just like the Ray Allen situation, he, of course, cannot actually outwrap ASAP Rocky. But that didn't mean he still wasn't going to approach it with the confidence as if he couldn't be as good as him.

35:58Josh Larsen:And that's what's important. That's what comes through. And that's what that character requires. So, yeah, I do agree with you. I think we're saying the same thing. Yes. There's just, there's, there's a lot of nuance going on there so that it's, it's more than just, I'm going to come in and show you kid. Right. Um, it's important that he's not quite as good as, as ASAP Rocky for this story and this confrontation. So I'm glad that they, they went that way. All right. Can I get to, can I get to what I loved most about high still lowest?

36:26Adam Kempenaar:Because I think, I think you're going to love it. What are we like 35 ish minutes

36:30Josh Larsen:in and I haven't heard what you love most. Okay. This is when I was like, I, whatever happens, whatever like weird turns Spike Lee might make, I'm, I'm on board because I'm having fun tracing this and it's partly obvious, maybe mostly obvious, but I love this as a mashup of Macbeth and the biblical chronicles of King David. The last part is obvious because he calls himself, He references it. He calls himself King David, right? Like the king of the Old Testament. And he walks around like that. And so obviously that's in my mind right away. And then I'm realizing that both Denzel and Toshiro Mifune, the star of High and Low, have played Macbeth.

37:14Josh Larsen:Yeah. Tragedy of Macbeth. Right. Yep. Throne of Blood for Kurosawa and Joel Cohen's Tragedy of Macbeth, where Denzel is just amazing in the part. Um, so I had a lot of fun, Adam, just tracing how this movie, who knows if this was on Spike Lee's mind or, you know, he loves Kurosawa.

37:34Adam Kempenaar:Exactly. Yeah, of course.

37:35Josh Larsen:First time screenwriter, I believe Alan Fox. Am I getting that right? Yes. Um, who knows if they were thinking of this, but I was having fun watching it flow back and forth. I don't think it's a perfect parallel for either of them, but you think about, you know, in the biblical story of King David, he sacrificed Bathsheba's husband to protect his reputation. And I realized right away this, this terrace, this beautiful terrace you referenced in the opening scene that, um, that David King has, has to be something like the palace roof that's described in the Bible where David spied on Bathsheba. So you got all that going on.

38:18Josh Larsen:And then, you know, the Macbeth stuff is fascinating to me because there is definitely ambition at play in this character. He is in the midst of this takeover deal when the kidnapping crisis occurs. So he's making a power grab, even though he's established, he is not satisfied with his career. The ambition eats at him and he is, you could describe it as protecting what he's built, but it's also an ambitious power grab. and you get, we haven't mentioned, um, David King's wife yet played by Ilfinish Hedera. I think she gets a lady Macbeth moment. They're in the bedroom together. And she's like, yeah, I don't know that we should pay the ransom for Paul's kid either.

38:58Josh Larsen:Like it might now overall, she's not played that way, but there's that moment where I was like, Ooh, that's, that's interesting. And then I want to talk about this, Adam, because I do think you'll like this. You reference the scene where he's looking at portraits of himself or photos of himself earlier. when he's trying to decide, do I pay the ransom or not? And he keeps repeating, what would you do? And he's saying that to his own photos, but he's also picking up like framed portraits of, I think I have this right, James Brown. I think Aretha Franklin's in there, possibly Stevie Wonder. And each one he picks up, looks at, what would you do?

39:34Josh Larsen:What would you do? Yeah. What would you do? So I've got this on my mind and I'm thinking like, oh, is this like Macbeth's dialogue with Banquo's ghost. Like he's, he's having this internal that the other people can't see who he's talking to. Maybe I'm going a little further afield there, but still think about it. Macbeth attempted to have Banquo's son murdered, arranged for the assassination of another boy. So there's this element of like sacrificing others' kids for your own gain, or at least to protect your own reputation. So this is where I just kind of started thinking whatever thread this might be, however strong or however intended, I was having a blast tracing that throughout and seeing how it played out.

40:19Josh Larsen:I do think, and we can't get into this, it's very interesting to ask yourself at the end of this movie, is David King more of a King David figure who experiences is repentance confession, or is he more of a Macbeth figure who, you know, obviously it's a tragedy. It goes bad in the end. So that's a whole other conversation we can't have without spoilers. But I do think it's interesting in this, in this parallel to see how, how this, uh, David King fits along these really, you know, grand classic narratives that I think it's possible Spike Lee is playing with intentionally a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

40:58Josh Larsen:Gabe. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not a risk. It's a rebirth. Look, the biggest mistake I ever made was selling off parts of Stack and Histom in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. It all came to me last night. The money, the buyout, the vote. It's not the ending. It's an opportunity for a new beginning. And when God gives you an opportunity for a new beginning, you got to take it. You don't tell God. No, you just you take it and you make it work.

41:26Adam Kempenaar:it's been too long since i took the hebrew bible in college josh i'll have to defer to you on the king david story i'd push back if we were really going to get into it on the lady mcbeth part or mcbeth because of the lady mcbeth part i think the the wife here is obviously far too passive it's just the one scene it's just the one scene yeah and it's there she's she's so supportive throughout right so if if i was really gonna argue that you know that would be what i'd point to but otherwise i think you're on to something especially when you consider ultimately and i guess this goes to where you are suggesting you may possibly read the film where it's going the end of the film we won't we won't discuss it too much but there's a question about whether or not this is ultimately a redemption film and i think the final choice made in this film it's a final choice it's a final scene that i'm not a huge fan of josh and it's also and there's a final there's a final utterance by the main character by david king that hammers home i think the idea of it being more redemptive than anything i'm not sure that we needed that final scene would be would be my argument there again for spoiler territory.

42:49Adam Kempenaar:Here's my biggest issue. And maybe this is the thing, Josh, that as I walked out of the theater, I thought, oh, I had more things going on. And it was really just this one thing that was kind of nagging at me. And it's funny because we talked about weapons last week or whatever week it was and two weeks ago. And then we're going to talk about spoilers later. And this might come up again. You talked about, How the movie kind of requires us to think the police department in this town must be the dumbest police department of all time. You found a worse one? Yeah, I found a worse one here. I think the detectives here in this city police department, because here's what I will say.

43:32The last 40 minutes, 40 minutes-ish of this movie only happen because we have to buy that these cops wouldn't pursue a lead that

43:48Adam Kempenaar:they obviously would immediately. And how they reject the lead in the moment doesn't even make sense. It's a terrible scene. But B, they wouldn't even be having that conversation because they would have started pursuing that lead and others like that lead immediately after the second phone call from the kidnapper. It's true. I know, Josh, that high and low is the Kurosawa movie that inspired this movie and not Stray Dog. But they're both Kurosawa movies and both police procedurals. And we're talking about Stray Dog for bonus content. So it's on my mind. That rookie cop and the post-war Tokyo Police Department with its archaic filing system of criminal dossiers and photos would have been on to this guy from the jump.

44:42Adam Kempenaar:It's crazy that they somehow didn't come up with a different screenwriting solution to justify the last 40 minutes of this film. And I think there are some other things, the contrivance with the headband that's so important to the film, some screenwriting, some dialogue moments that feel overwritten. But that's the big one. And we all, you know, you talked about it with the weapons. Clearly, you enjoyed the movie enough that you were able to get past that. I had a similar reaction to how that was handled. Some of the suspension of disbelief, I got past it there. I did have a little bit of a harder time getting past it here because so much of the movie hung on this and having to buy it.

45:26Adam Kempenaar:That said, the filmmaking here is still just too electric for me to care too much about it.

45:32Josh Larsen:You're so right. And I think I'm in the same place you are in terms of like, oh, that didn't work. And I'm going to forget that we had that scene and move on. And maybe it's a, again, first time screenplay thing. Um, but I will also add to it. The wonderful sequence we praised at the top, the money drop is somewhat ruined to me by a completely needless. It's, it's not ruined. I like to think of them as two separate sequences. It's followed after the drop by a needless and endless motorcycle chase with multiple motorcyclists changing hands of the money bag. Like every time they change hands, the guy who gets it next basically heads right back to where the police are coming from.

46:18Josh Larsen:So I didn't understand the logic of that. And then they catch the guy they think they do. And the backpack doesn't have the money. The guy they catch because they've been switching it out. That thread, we never hear again. They have a prime accomplice in custody. That's a great point.

46:37Adam Kempenaar:And we never hear from that again. You're telling me that they're not able to do something with that lead that leads them to the bad guy?

46:45Josh Larsen:Can I give you an element that I did like about the law enforcement though? Because this is a little twist on the Kurosawa film. You know, the Kurosawa film to me is, as much as I, which is very little, understand about Japanese culture, very about the severity of class distinctions. and one of the saddest elements of that is the chauffeur whose son is kidnapped in that film hardly speaks yet he's in almost every scene and he's just sort of like cowering in the background and while the whole conversation is going on of whether they're going to pay whether Mifune is going to pay for his son's release this guy doesn't say a word he just kind of cowers more and more and shrinks in the background and it's heartbreaking and clearly all about class like it's just it's inconceivable that a chauffeur would get the same, would deserve the same sort of monetary investment in his child as an executive.

47:40Josh Larsen:And Spike reinterprets that here with Jeffrey Wright in a great performance by him. By Jeffrey Wright. And I think we should credit maybe here the first time screenwriter, Alan Fox, that this was his contribution. There's more than a class element here. It's partly that because Paul, we understand, did grow up in the same Bronx neighborhood as David King, but has clearly not risen as high as him. Also, I think it is so crucial that we learn that he was formerly incarcerated because what is the effect of that in terms of the law enforcement? Well, immediately they suspect he's involved when they learn of his past and that he is King's driver, right?

48:19Josh Larsen:And then even when they clear him of that, because it's his kid's son, notice the difference in response to the investigation. When it's David King's son, It's all hands on deck, like bring out the 12 computers. And then when it's Paul's son, they're still on the case, but they're annoyed by him. They're not taking as much care. And I just think that's a nice extra wrinkle that is, you know, to bring us back to where we started. It's a little bit of cultural perspective that's injected that someone like Spike Lee brings.

48:50Adam Kempenaar:Yes, I agree. And I also agree it is crucial or it's very important that he is someone who was formerly incarcerated and they do immediately look at him as a suspect because of that. But even if he hadn't been formerly imprisoned, just the fact that he isn't of David King's status. Right. I think they would probably write still say, well, maybe he has motive. Yeah, yeah. Maybe because I agree because his son's involved. He he may have a motive. and they would treat him differently. They do treat him, they absolutely do treat him more harshly and more suspiciously though. Yes. And they do treat him with absolutely no respect.

49:33Adam Kempenaar:They treat him like he is nothing because of that background.

49:37Josh Larsen:And I like the thread that the A$AP Rocky character we learn to also serve time at one point. And I just like that there's something, there's something interesting there looking at Paul as an echo or mirror reflection in some way of the young man trying to make it out of his situation, in this case through music, and has had some similar experiences to Paul. So just an interesting touch they put in.

50:05Adam Kempenaar:Highest to lowest is currently playing in limited release. It does come exclusively to Apple TV Plus on September 5th, and we are recommending you look for it then. And if you see it and agree or disagree with our thoughts or have any other thoughts you'd like to share, please email us feedback at filmspotting.net.

50:25Josh Larsen:Listening is the number one thing you can do to support an independently produced show like Film Spotting. Here are a couple of more things you can do. Take a minute to give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Every new review we get really does help us reach new listeners. Another thing you can do is join the Film Spotting family. Now to continue our celebration of our 20th year, we have been sharing some voice messages from Film Spotting family members. These were submitted ahead of Film Spotting Fest back in March.

50:57Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, and we have a couple here. I said, I think a couple of weeks ago, that we only had one more. But I found one hidden in the Google Drive, Josh, that I wanted to make sure we featured. And we may even have another one that we'll feature in a couple of weeks. But here are two. As promised, you're going to hear from Film Spotting Madness Godfather, Mike Merrigan, and another one, two folks here that if you've listened to the show at all over the last 10 years, or if you've participated in a few trivia spottings, or maybe you were a regular IndieWire reader, these names will be familiar to you.

51:35Adam Kempenaar:So let's hear from them.

51:36Josh Larsen:Congrats, everyone. This is Steve Green here in L.A., where I have done most of my listening since the Cinecast days. The first memory that came to mind was something that actually has nothing to do with movies and didn't even happen in the course of a main episode. It's the outtake of Sam needing an extra try to introduce himself for the very first time as Sam Van Halgren. I was already a huge fan of the way show talked about filmmaking and everything that goes into it. but then to hear two people share a genuine spontaneous moment including if i remember correctly a rare adam kempenar f-bomb uh that just proved how special this show could be and indeed has been in all the years since everything i loved about the show has come from that same spark and that same shared passion and fun.

52:33Josh Larsen:You all are wonderful and have changed my life in ways that I can't even begin to fathom, but I know I'm not alone. So here's to you and here's to 20 more years. Hello, film spotting and happy 20th. It's Mike Merrigan, the godfather of film spotting Madness coming to you from Dover, New Hampshire. And what else can I talk about but the Film Spotting Madness tournament. This crazy idea that I concocted that Adam and Josh and Sam have made such an important part of the show. And it's been so cool every year when the tournament comes up to hear other listeners get excited for it, fill out their brackets, discover films that they hadn't seen before.

53:15Josh Larsen:It's just become so much bigger than I ever could have imagined. And I don't care what Michael Phillips says, the Film Spotting Madness tournament is awesome. There was that time that I won the whole thing, which was a little awkward, but it meant that I got to record an episode of the show with the guys. And I don't have to tell those podcast nerds out there, getting to record an episode of your favorite podcast with the hosts is beyond cool. So I look forward to this year's tournament. Good luck to whoever our eventual winner is. We all know that it's not going to be Josh Larson. And guys, happy 20th.

53:49Josh Larsen:I cannot wait to see what the next 20 years has in store for film spotting. Now, Mike, I respect his mad scientist skills as birthing film spotting madness, but unnecessary shot. I believe I haven't lost our internal bracket competition for two years now, three, maybe, possibly. You've been faring pretty well. Pretty well there, Mike. And Steve, yeah, so great to hear from Steve. Hung out with him a little bit at Film Spotting Fest, and he's pretty regular on Trivia Spotting, too, which we do with Film Spotting family members.

54:23Adam Kempenaar:Yes. We do deeply appreciate all their contributions to the show and having the opportunity to get to know both of them over the years. And that goes for all of our family members. We've had a chance to meet in addition to keeping us doing what we're doing. Your support comes with perks. You get to listen early and add free. You get our weekly newsletter. You get exclusive opportunities like being part of the Film Spotting family discord. We do have more members than this family members, but that discord is up to, I think, 400 now, Josh. And it's just such a wonderful community where we can have conversations, really serious conversations about film.

55:05Adam Kempenaar:We can have really silly conversations about film. Or I think there's a music spotting channel, a theater spotting channel, a food spotting channel, you know, book spotting, book spotting. I mean, you name it, you got really smart people that you can have any kind of conversation with. So I say that because if you are a family member who hasn't taken the plunge and maybe you're one of those family members who's like, I don't, I don't do the discord thing. I don't know what discord is. I'm intimidated by it. Guess what? I was in your shoes like six or eight months ago. It's really not that complicated.

55:38Adam Kempenaar:Josh, you probably felt the same way. It's not that complicated. It's easy. It's fun. Take the plunge.

55:43Josh Larsen:You can manage your involvement. I mean, it's, you don't have to like keep up with everything that is going on. You can jump in and out and choose what topics are interesting. So it's, it's definitely manageable. If you're worried about being overwhelmed, you don't have to be.

55:58Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. You can even shut off your notifications for certain channels or all the channels and just pop in whenever you see fit. If you're not a family member and that sounds like something you want to be a part of, then please join the family. You also get our monthly bonus shows. I mentioned it earlier. Our August bonus is a blind cow. I've seen it. Josh and Sam haven't. Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, which is available on the Criterion channel. You have to have a subscription to that. It's also available on Plex, which may have a commercial or two in it, but otherwise it's free. And spoilers, Stray Dog, really, really good.

56:37Adam Kempenaar:so watch it and then come listen to our discussion as part of our bonus episode if you'd like to learn more about the film spotting family you can learn that at filmspottingfamily.com

56:51Josh Larsen:those kids walked out of those homes no one pulled them out no one forced them what do you see that i don't show me where did you go there's something

57:03Adam Kempenaar:very, very wrong going on. That's from Zach Krager's Weapons, which we discussed a couple of weeks back. If you've seen it yourself, you'll know that it's the kind of film that raises as many questions as it answers. And if you haven't seen it yourself, well, you really should not be listening to this segment. Go into whatever podcast platform you're listening on and look for the chapter or look for the time code and jump ahead to later in the show because this will be a spoiler segment. We are going to read some feedback from listeners. All of it features spoilers on the movie. We'll have some responses.

57:45Adam Kempenaar:And that's how we're going to do a spoiler segment on this movie. Are you ready, Josh?

57:49Josh Larsen:I love it. I'm so excited for this. Let's jump right in, starting with Matt White in Indy. And I think we have a few here at the top that are about the humor in the movie. and yeah, that crazy, crazy ending. So here's Matt White in Indy. I enjoyed listening to your takes on the movie Weapons. Would love to hear some spoiler talk. In particular, I would enjoy hearing why people were actually laughing at the end of this movie. My audience was split about half and half. Half were laughing uncontrollably, absolutely uncontrollably. The other half was sitting in absolute stunned silence, myself included.

58:26Josh Larsen:I got to the end and asked myself how anyone could have found that funny. would love to hear your thoughts. You might check out the interview Craig did on the big picture podcast. He talks about the humor issue around the one Oh four Mark and says, I don't think of this as being a funny movie. He does acknowledge a couple of purposefully funny moments, but he honestly sounds surprised people are talking about the humor so much. Hmm. I would love to know.

58:51Adam Kempenaar:The one thing Matt leaves out is I haven't listened to that podcast. If Crager says that he doesn't think of it as a funny movie, but he acknowledges there are some purposefully funny moments, I wonder what he thinks the purposefully funny moments are. because for me, the only moments in the movie I thought that were truly funny and truly purposely funny, maybe there were a couple throughout Josh, but I'm thinking of the ones that were for me decidedly intended to be funny, borderline wacky were at the end of the film. So I'd wonder if, if Craig thought, yeah, I was trying to make those funny or for him, they were three other moments in the film that nobody else in the world might think were funny.

59:41Adam Kempenaar:Again, Matt doesn't mention that. And I haven't listened to the podcast. I would also throw this back on Matt and say the half of the audience, including you, you sat there in stunned silence. Why, why did you sit there in stunned silence? What was it about the ending that kept you from laughing? Because here's what I, I can say about the ending of the movie. Here's what I remember very vividly the i was i was already kind of chuckling before this but i can remember and i might get i might get some of the particulars wrong i'm not going to remember the exact shot but you can you can tell me josh if i'm misremembering here or how you recall the scene the moment in that sequence so this is the end the the clown gladys is running for her life and these kids, these 20 kids or whatever, 19 kids, however many there are, they are chasing after her, screaming.

1:00:39Adam Kempenaar:And to and they're they're trying to kill her like we know they're trying to kill her. They're they're going to attack her. We don't know exactly what they're going to do when they get to her, but we know it's not going to be good for her. And they're they're screaming and chasing her. And again, I was already kind of chuckling, but when I knew or I thought I knew, oh, he's going for laughs here was when there was a shot where the camera was like on the sidewalk or in a front lawn or something. and it's, it's looking at like the backyard, the, the, the part in between like two houses, right? So you can see the grass, but it's like in between two houses kind of thing.

1:01:25Adam Kempenaar:So you're seeing the backyard, but just that space in between. And, and you, I think you can hear the yelling, you can hear the shouting. So, you know, Pete, you know, it's coming.

1:01:34Josh Larsen:It's great sound design in that sequence. Yeah.

1:01:36Adam Kempenaar:And you, you see, you see Gladys run by You see Gladys run by just just going left to right on the frame by herself, then empty space, then 20 kids yelling and shouting across the frame. And that use of the frame, her running, then empty space, then yelling, shouting, 20 kids charging after it's maybe this isn't clear from the way I'm explaining it. But if we were watching it, if I could find it, it is it is like something out straight out of a cartoon. I was just going to say, here's the explanation. It could be a silent comedy. I was just going to say it is a silent comedy bit. it. It is, it is straight out of the Keaton chaplain playbook.

1:02:23Adam Kempenaar:And so if, if Crager, I don't care. I honestly don't care if Crager tries to tell me he didn't exactly that purposely funny. Or if anyone else tells me they didn't think it was funny, I refute. Well, first of all, it's funny. It just is funny, but also I can't imagine. I cannot imagine a world where he didn't set it up that way to try to elicit a laugh.

1:02:47Josh Larsen:I just don't believe it. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of things. So that's a bit, a familiar bit. Another familiar bit is, and I don't remember either where it comes in the sequence events or when I started laughing and I was never laughing as in like, I'm watching a straight farce here. I was laughing like this is insane. And the only way I can process it is that I will laugh, but also I'm prompted by the familiarity with bits as you just described another bit when they it's a common bit whenever there's a chase sequence that a family is going about their business in their house and james bond runs through a superhero runs through name name your character right here we get that except it's it's nothing we've ever seen before it's a crazed clown witch running through weird enough the family is like Normal suburban neighborhood.

1:03:42Josh Larsen:What was that? What the hell was that? Pause. Here come the kids running through streaming. So that's another example of a familiar comic bit. I am totally, you know, I'm with you. I don't care what Craig says. I could, I mean, it's interesting, right? When I say that, I mean, I don't care what Craig says in relation to my or anyone else's experience of the film. So Matt, I would say in response, I think your stunned silence is legit. But if that's how you experienced weapons, I don't think you experienced it wrong. Like there's no policing someone's interpretation or experience of a movie. This is why I love weapons because I think in a good way, so many people are responding to it so differently.

1:04:25Josh Larsen:So the stunned silence, I can understand, you know, there might be responses where I'm like, I don't know where you got that out of it. Right. But in this one, I can understand because it is deeply disturbing. That's partly why I laughed. It's some, you know, I have that response to some horror. And I will just say that I am less sure, as I think you are, Adam, and maybe this will come up in further feedback about the final section of the film where we get that voiceover narration of the young girl, I believe. That I feel is a little.

1:04:56Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, that's the next email.

1:04:56Josh Larsen:Yeah.

1:04:57Adam Kempenaar:Okay, let's go ahead and read that. Yeah. But before we get there, I want to go back to what you said because this ties together this whole idea of humor. I think what you're getting at, and I think this is what you were getting at during the review proper when you were talking about catharsis, it's a different type of humor than what we're describing when we're saying it feels like a very clear comedic setup. The ending or just before the ending where you have 20 little kids tearing apart an old woman, like ravaging her body, guts and blood and stuff spilling everywhere. Of course, that on on a visceral level, on the most immediate primary level is horrifying.

1:05:50Adam Kempenaar:And if you were someone sitting in the audience, you sat there in stunned silence and just thought that was awful and were not laughing at all. I completely understand that reaction. But if you were someone that may be like you, Josh, and me even to some extent, you almost couldn't do anything but laugh at the absolute absurdity of it. The absolute over the top absurdity of it. And in your case, maybe even like a sort of catharsis of the kids, like getting this revenge of it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The crazy, the crazy nature of their revenge. I can see that. I can see that, too.

1:06:30Josh Larsen:Yeah. And that's another example of like the your body response in laughter, even though it's not like ha ha punchline laughter. Right. It's a different sort of laughter.

1:06:40Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, that's it. So if Crager there, if he's saying, I didn't intend that to be funny. Well, OK, great. Here again, doesn't really matter. But I would understand that if he didn't. But also, I'm sure he understands or he has to understand that it still might elicit that response in viewers. Yes, because it's crazy. It's crazy. It is. OK, so here's Aviv from L.A. who's a listener since 2010 and a proud owner of a film spotting T-shirt. Oh, as someone who considers himself a horror fan and horror filmmaker, I want to thank the scaredy cat Adam for perfectly articulating what didn't quite work for me about weapons.

1:07:17Adam Kempenaar:While it's still a movie, I recommend the necessity of including all of the storylines due to them being woven together by grief didn't ever fully gel for me. I also don't know that you can really say that about the Benedict Wong segment. That's the one I was referring to when I had a quick aside and I said, it's the only one that doesn't really fit. But like Josh, I was very into the gonzo ending. The part of the ending that really didn't work for me is the voiceover over the final image. I might suggest listeners who haven't seen weapons yet plug their ears the moment that thing happens to that character and watch the last 30 seconds of the movie listening to your own heartbeat.

1:07:49Adam Kempenaar:it will make for a much more powerful final moment. So Josh, I would actually love for you to maybe fully express or paint a picture of what Aviv is articulating there, because I don't know if I fully remember exactly what he's referring to here. What's being said, what that final image is, and do you agree with what he is saying?

1:08:17Josh Larsen:Yes. Yes. And I don't recall the exact final image, but there is a postscript epilogue. I don't know what you'd want to call it, but, and you do understand Craig or maybe wanting to giving the audience this and not ending with the kids tearing the witch apart. Right. You you're worrying like what happens to these kids now? Right. You're, you're still, so I know we want

1:08:40Adam Kempenaar:to see them, but it was sort of, yeah, it was sort of, some of them might even talk again or something like that. And this is the voiceover.

1:08:47Josh Larsen:The movie starts with this child's voiceover describing about, you know, that day was like any other day. And I understand the sort of fairytale fable element. Again, I've likened this to the Pied Piper. So I like that choice, but I don't know who's talking, what the timeframe is. They seem to be talking as if this happened years ago, but then the voice appears right at the end of the, like we see parents coming to gather their children up. Right. And I think Josh Brolin reconnects with his son. Yeah. And the voiceover tells us like some of the kids eventually spoke again. And to me, I guess the way that was handled was it opened more questions to me about the timeline, about what the kids experienced.

1:09:37Josh Larsen:because I think those who express concern that children or at least child characters are forced to endure such horror in this movie, you don't want that to be flippant. And so maybe this is a gesture on Crager's part to attend to these kids as actual children. But to me, the way it was done, again, just confused me. I didn't quite understand. Are these kids now, why are they out of the spell and other characters were under different spells? It started to open this can of worms that it then did not squeeze back in by the time the movie eventually ended.

1:10:19Adam Kempenaar:Doesn't it seem to make sense? I don't recall there being something that would make it a contradiction that as soon as, well, she hasn't otherwise died. So doesn't it make sense that if she dies, the spell is broken? I guess. Yes. That's how I interpret it. So the spell is broken, but I'd have to watch that ending again. As I said here, when I asked you that question, I kind of forgot about, I mean, I didn't forget it. It came back to me, but I wasn't really reckoning with the ending as far as that final line or that idea. For me, it's about the voiceover. Yeah. It wasn't something that bothered me.

1:10:54Adam Kempenaar:I was thinking about the ending in terms of the number they pull on Gladys and how crazy it was. Yeah. But but I guess I would say, at least in quick response, that your your defense of it, even as it didn't totally work for you, I do think is the right one in that the risk. craiger takes as a filmmaker is if you end on that note of the spell is broken because they just tore her limb from limb and then the movie ends somehow just with the kids kind of walking off into the neighborhood or the parents reuniting with them or whatever is then it does almost it potentially lends i think that actually potentially opens up the door for more questions than answers because then it makes us think, well, maybe they just all go back to normal after that.

1:11:45Adam Kempenaar:And that, that opens the door for us to think that somehow the trauma, the trauma's over. And at least this ending tells us that, no, they're probably never going to be the same after this experience, whether it's spells broken or not.

1:11:57Josh Larsen:Yeah. And I think that's the right instinct on the storytelling part. I guess it's just the execution of that, that impulse for me. Yeah. So we're going to move on to a few emails here on the addiction theme in weapons. And the first one comes from Emilio Barrientos, long-time listener and first-time writer. After listening to your review of weapons, I felt compelled to send in some thoughts on the movie after some conversations on Reddit really unlocked the movie for me. I also easily latched on to the school shooting aspect of the film on my first viewing. But the theme I missed out on was that of addiction and perhaps specifically alcoholism.

1:12:36Josh Larsen:Several Reddit users pointed out that the triangle inside of the circle that was seen in the beginning of the movie is the symbol for Alcoholics Anonymous. From my limited internet research, it sounds like alcoholism and addiction has touched Kreger's life significantly and that he wrote Weapons in response to his longtime collaborator Trevor Moore's death, which sounds like it was in part caused due to being intoxicated. I think this theme unlocks the movie in a lot of ways the school shooting theme does not. Not that both cannot be in the movie, but from the characters we follow to the idea of transference of pain, I think the addiction theme is the stronger theme of the movie.

1:13:13Josh Larsen:Once I started thinking about addiction, I started seeing it everywhere in the movie, and I am curious as to your thoughts on this as well. I also have taken issue with people seeing the final scene as just kind of bonkers and random. To me, this scene is vital to the idea of the youth being abandoned and leached off from their elders, elders who are fine with stealing their children and grandchildren's future for their present. Once that younger generation has had enough, they will rebel and tear everything down and it will feel fun, crazy and satisfying until it's over. And everyone realizes the problem still needs solving and they have been left with few tools to solve them.

1:13:53Adam Kempenaar:That's a deep reading. Yeah, it's a lot of good stuff there. I don't know quite what to make of it, right? Like, I don't necessarily have a response. I can't say I feel like it's misguided. I also can't say that I totally agree with it. It's an interesting read on the end of the film.

1:14:10Josh Larsen:Yeah, well, his point at the end there about how the movie concludes and the generations, I think does tie into what I eventually laughed onto was the school shooting interpretation. And I think that applies. As I said, sacrificing kids at the idol of gun rights. So that works for me. But when we go back to what he was saying at the top and this being maybe perhaps intended as an allegory, a parable about addiction, here's where I'll say this is what I love about weapons is that I saw that there. I didn't know either that the triangle in the title represented Alcoholics Anonymous. Like we all see the triangle in the A.

1:14:53Josh Larsen:I didn't know that. Obviously, I traced that several characters are alcoholic, you know, suffering from alcoholism. And so I recognize that as a narrative thread. It didn't register with me as strongly as the Pied Piper School shooting interpretation. But yeah, that's why weapons is so great is because I think both are valid to me. And your interpretation too, Adam, about transference of pain, that is valid as well. So a good movie opens it up to these readings as long as what's on the screen can support each of them. And I think it does support, you know, those three that we just mentioned and possibly some more.

1:15:32Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, that was that was it for me, because there are multiple. In fact, at least three characters in the film who have addiction issues. That's that's there. That's clearly text. And so for me, I thought, well, what else might he be dealing with here? clearly based on what people have written in and said the movie was inspired by i mean we have to allow for that i don't think that necessarily that doesn't suggest that we have to read the movie only one way but objectively if if what inspired the movie was him dealing with the death of a friend and that was brought on by someone who had a problem with addiction and And maybe that was also addiction to something that touched his life prior to that.

1:16:18Adam Kempenaar:Then, yes, that's something he's working through. But that doesn't mean that's the only thing that that's the only thing this movie is about. It can that can open the door to lots of kinds of pain or lots of kinds of issues. But, yes, this is fascinating. And it's really interesting to hear from people like Emilio and like this one from Mike Bell in Dallas. And as I read this, if anyone hearing it says, oh, is Mike really comfortable with Adam sharing this on air? This is usually very private. Yes. Mike is a longtime listener, and I asked him if he was OK with this or if he just wanted to keep it between us.

1:16:54Adam Kempenaar:And he said, absolutely. Read it. I went straight from a certain meeting that I go to every Thursday to see weapons. Imagine my surprise when the symbol adorning the door at the very meeting that I had attended, a triangle embedded in a circle, appeared in the title of the movie. Imagine my greater surprise at the fact that the movie thematized the subject matter of the meeting I had attended and even mentioned such meetings in Alden Ehrenreich's phone conversation with his fiance. Imagine my even greater surprise when one character successfully tempted another to do what we call going back out, leading to regret and ruin.

1:17:27Adam Kempenaar:I don't know exactly how it all adds up, but clearly alcoholism is somewhere near the forefront of Crager's mind here. I read an interview in which Crager, himself a recovering alcoholic and the son of an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis, said that he intended the final segment to be a metaphor for living with an alcoholic parent. A nefarious force invades the house, taking away the personality of the parent you once knew. It's food for thought, and I'll need to see the movie again to develop a stronger read on it, but there's something there. I was a longtime listener from the beginning of the show until around 2015.

1:17:56Adam Kempenaar:I used to write in from Staten Island and later Astoria, Queens, but I only recently returned to the fold. Glad to see the show is still growing strong. Thank you, Mike.

1:18:06Josh Larsen:Yeah. Thanks for that, Mike. The description, nefarious force. That definitely describes the boy's parents when they're overtaken by the witch's curse, right? So that tracks.

1:18:17Adam Kempenaar:But even it applies to Gladys, of course, as well, who is causing that. Like that, that, that specific part there is something that really resonates with me when you think about that.

1:18:27Josh Larsen:Right. Also on this topic, we got this from Michael in Kiel, Germany. I'm going to say Kiel. Yes. And here's Michael going into a little more detail about a few of those points. For me, Michael says the chapter with Alex had an interesting subtext. It reminded me of children who live with parents that are alcoholics or drug addicts. These children have to grow up way too fast, take care of their parents, feel shame and guilt, and don't dare to ask anyone for help, but instead try to maintain the facade of a functioning family. Finally, I want to highlight the cinematography. I generally love it when filmmakers use long, uncut takes as they make a movie more immersive.

1:19:05Josh Larsen:Weapons was full of these, and I really love them. You already discussed the one with Justine sleeping in the car. I agree that it worked great, especially the part where we only hear the car door and don't see what is happening. Oh, I'm already getting goosebumps there. I'd like to add two more examples that were more dynamic. When Paul chases James and the camera is in the car, it really feels like we are sitting in the backseat taking part in the chase. It also made the geography of the space much easier to understand. If the chase had been shown with many cuts instead, we would have needed to reorient ourselves after each one.

1:19:38Josh Larsen:Whereas here, we always know who is where. Another long take highlight for me was at the end when the camera follows one of the kids running through gardens and houses and jumping through windows. In my opinion, the movie deserves an Oscar nomination for best cinematography.

1:19:53Adam Kempenaar:Really good stuff there from Michael. And I like the way he expanded on the point there that Michael in Dallas, Mike in Dallas made. So thank you everybody for that. We'll close with this one from Alex. You know, he's a longtime listener because he has his Sam Van Hulgren nickname. Very handy. Alex Mitch and Murray, a near in San Francisco. I know that Alex is such a longtime listener that if he had just said Alex and near, I would have been able to tell you his Sam Van Hulgren nickname. Impressive. I know it's Mitch and Murray.

1:20:26Josh Larsen:Alex and I would have recognized I wouldn't have known the nickname before.

1:20:30Adam Kempenaar:I would have been able to pull out the Glenn Gary Glenn Ross reference there. He says,

1:21:03Adam Kempenaar:Police procedural, drug abuse, school closures, COVID came to mind, Arashomon riff, which came to mind watching these slightly differing recollections of the police slash junkie interaction from each perspective. But no, we get a much more rote witch story. Yeah, because we needed more Kurosawa in this show, Josh. And boy, do we get a witch story. By the end, you almost entirely forget about all those other far more interesting avenues the movie opts to bypass. And like you guys pointed out, we had some gory fun while getting there. I believe I get what he's getting at, namely a school shooting allegory.

1:21:37Adam Kempenaar:But other than showing or rather telling at the very end the impact of the trauma on the survivors, it skips over that idea. The very real and wrenching story turns into a total supernatural cop out, tying the whole movie up in a nice bow so you don't have to think about it after leaving the theater. Welp, it was just a witch. That explains it. The filmmaking style is excellent. The acting is superb. The setup is gripping. And instead of what could have been a powerful evocation of an all too real social problem, it becomes a boring old witch story like any Blumhouse jump scare movie. What a shame.

1:22:07Adam Kempenaar:I'm definitely game to keep seeing Craig or movies, but I wish he'd done so much more with the potential here. Cheers to 20 years. Please keep up the great work.

1:22:16Josh Larsen:Well, I disagree with Alex, but I can't be too hard on him because he's essentially presenting the argument I made when we reviewed together that it had, you know, this central metaphor allegory as a horror movie. and to my mind, tantalized us with a few ways it could have gone and didn't really follow any of those tracks and was just content to really explore, honestly, a lot of the gory possibilities of its metaphor. So this is an eye of the beholder thing. I go to weapons and I find a movie that Alex isn't wrong. It is ultimately a witch story, but in this case, it's a loaded witch story that as we've been discussing now for a number of minutes in concert with a number of listeners did sustain the readings that Alex described with enough on-text evidence to support them.

1:23:16Josh Larsen:So that's, I need to think more about why together didn't work for me and weapons did in this central issue of having an easy explanation for your horror story, but it can hold deeper resonance together. It didn't weapons did. I think the answer I would give right now is that I find more support for the interpretation I latched onto on the screen, as well as your interpretation, Adam and the addiction one we've been talking about. I think it's a richly conceived enough film that it can hold all of those interpretations at once while being a simple witch story. And I'll go to another witch story that does that the witch.

1:23:56Josh Larsen:you know i i think that is clearly at the end of the day a witch story but it's also about religious oppression and fundamentalism and all you all these other things and and feminism in ways you know it holds all those things too i think i think weapons does that for me at least

1:24:11Adam Kempenaar:yeah i get the connection you're making between the two films but i don't think it's a stretch to say that weapons is a more finely crafted film than together is and more importantly right more importantly, though, they're trying to do very different things and that I don't think together is is trying to be mysterious. It it does want to wrap itself up very neatly and tell you exactly what kind of movie it is. And that's what that's what Alex is saying, though, that that weapons presents a clear I'm pushing back on that a little bit. And I'm saying that weapons weapons wants to be a more mysterious movie.

1:24:47Adam Kempenaar:I think it is inherently a more mysterious movie that clearly does open itself up for more interpretation. Now, here's where I'll talk out of both sides of my mouth, if you will. I think I think it's a little more nuanced than that. I think that's true. And that's why I'm more positive on weapons than Alex is and why I like it more than I like together. But where Alex and I agree a little bit, because I expressed this a little bit during the review, is unlike you, rather than having that that moment of catharsis when the when the witch was being torn apart, all the witch stuff. only distracted me from the catharsis I wanted, which was more about the catharsis of the characters themselves, Alex and his parents, Josh Brolin, Archer and Matthew, Justine and all of her storylines.

1:25:38Adam Kempenaar:Like, that's what I was invested in. Yeah. And maybe going back to how we started this conversation about, you know, where the movie ultimately wraps up. I left the theater kind of like Alex did just thinking, oh, it's kind of a silly witch movie, even though I still was thinking about pain and all that stuff. I kind of was thinking, oh, that was kind of a that was kind of a silly witch movie rather than thinking about the the characters and their pain and and how the story resolved or didn't resolve around them because I was too busy still thinking about the absurdity of the ending.

1:26:15Josh Larsen:Yeah. So we don't, you know, neither of us tries to get into here's what the filmmaker should have done conversation. But all of this feedback does make me think what weapons would have been like if Craig had chosen rather than that voiceover ending that, you know, I've argued doesn't entirely work, had gone back to the multiple story structure and given us a postscript from each person's perspective. Yeah. Like, yes. And maybe it could have been a year later. Maybe it could have been from that, those same last three minutes, but I, because I, I think you're onto something good here is it spent so much time with those characters.

1:26:55Josh Larsen:It is a little disappointing not to, to find a bit of closure with each of them. And maybe that would be an, maybe that's a terrible idea, an ungainly way to do it, but it just popped in my head as you were talking there.

1:27:09Adam Kempenaar:Well, if you do have more thoughts you'd like to share on weapons, We would love to hear them or anything else we talk about here on the show. Email us feedback at filmspotting.net. And Josh, the conversation around weapons does not stop here when it comes to the film spotting network of shows, it seems.

1:27:27Josh Larsen:That's right. The Next Picture Show, looking at cinemas present via its past, their new pairing. It's the one Scott Tobias hoped to get. When I talked to him coming out of that weapons screening, he thought right away about Adam Agoyan's 1998 Oscar nominee, The Sweet Hereafter. You brought it up in our review, Adam, that it popped in mind to you while you were watching weapons. And yeah, it really is a good pairing. So right now they're going to be talking about the suite hereafter, and then they will get to their weapons review on the following episode. New episodes of the next picture show drop every Tuesday, and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

1:28:04Adam Kempenaar:Next week here on film spotting, we're off sort of, we never really take a week off. We still will have a show to drop, but it's labor day week. It's my anniversary week and it's Josh Larson off to Scotland week. Scotland for a year. Flea in the country. Not just a vacation. So we will have something in your feed and we think right now we still have to have some conversations here behind the scenes. But our plan right now, you know, we've been sharing some film spotting fest audio from March, doling that out over the course of the past few months. And we haven't shared yet our conversation with Koganada about the movie Columbus from Film Spotting Fest.

1:28:52Adam Kempenaar:And with his new movie coming out here in September, we thought we would share that. We might also share your conversation with Dana Stevens. Wonderful conversation about Padra Panchali. She was so great. She was so good. So we might share that as well, or we'll save that for later in the year. So you will have new audio or audio you haven't heard before unless you were in the audience at Film Spotting Fest in your feed next week. And then the following week, we're planning on another Sacred Cow, another Pantheon Project review, 35th anniversary. We're finally doing it. Been in the Pantheon all this time, but we've never discussed Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

1:29:33Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, how is that possible? I mean. I don't know. I don't know. And I don't remember, you know, it's one of those with Goodfellas. It's one of those movies where if you ask me, when is the last time I saw it? You know, I don't know if if I've seen the movie in one sitting, maybe since I was in high school when it came out. But I've seen the movie 4000 times, you know, like like it's it comes on TV. If it ever has come on TV, I watch it. If I'm at someone's house and it's on. Yeah, I watch it. Like I, I know every scene from that movie almost by heart.

1:30:09Josh Larsen:So. Yeah. Yeah. I think the last time, so the Irishman was what, 2019, 2020? Around there. Something like that, right?

1:30:18Adam Kempenaar:17, 18, 19.

1:30:19Josh Larsen:So I did a rewatch of all of Scorsese's gangster movies back when, when Think Christian was still a thing exploring sort of the morality of the mobster and the laws that all the mobsters have to follow, even though they're criminals. and revisit Goodfellas for that, which was fascinating. Spoiler, Adam, it holds up. I think you don't say. I think even watching it all in its entirety, you will find that it's a good film.

1:30:44Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, yeah. I have a feeling it will. And you were right. 2019 on The Irishman. We will also have results from the current deeply flawed film spotting poll. We thought this was going to be a real death match that was going to just tear people apart. And based on the comments, some people were really in conflict about this. But if you look at the overall voting, Pixar or Studio Ghibli, you can only choose one. There is a clear winner in this one, Josh. It's not close.

1:31:14Josh Larsen:That confounds me. And now I don't know which way to go. Like, are listeners leaning more, you know, like the art house, I guess, pick you would say in going Ghibli?

1:31:27Adam Kempenaar:What do you think about film spotting listeners? What's your guess? I think possibly that's it. Yeah. Yeah. You might be right. Really? You might be right. Yeah. So if you want to try to even things out a little bit in Pixar's favor, you can vote now at filmspotting.net. The polls are still open for another week. And yes, we'll, we'll see. I don't know if Josh will get to anything as he's moving into his dorm room. What's your dorm room going to be like, Josh? Gosh, are you going to hang up a poster of Apocalypse Now? Reservoir Dogs? I'm worried about my roommate, quite frankly, and what they think of my wife.

1:32:02Adam Kempenaar:Exactly. How's that going to go? We'll see if we are able to view anything else. We're both curious about Darren Aronofsky's Caught Stealing with Austin Butler. There's a few things coming out that we'll see if we can catch up with for a current show schedule. You can visit filmspotting.net slash episodes.

1:32:22Josh Larsen:Time now for Massacre Theater. We perform a scene and you get a chance to win a film spotting prize. Last time we massacred, oh boy, this scene.

1:32:34Adam Kempenaar:Mom, you've been bad.

1:32:39Adam Kempenaar:I may have been bad. I may have kept the chain in that road. But it was for your good.

1:32:50Josh Larsen:Don't you remember when I used to sing to you? When you were little, my hair.

1:32:57Adam Kempenaar:Rock-a-bye, baby, on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rise. When the bar breaks, the cradle will fall.

1:33:09Josh Larsen:Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I only dropped you once. Well, maybe twice. That was John Matusik as Sloth and Anne Ramsey as Mama Fratelli in 1985's The Goonies, written by Chris Columbus and directed by Richard Donner. That massacre was part of our weapons show a couple of weeks ago. There's always a tie in. So why that scene from The Goonies?

1:33:37Adam Kempenaar:Colton Butcher says superb performance, stunning, Oscar worthy. I just got to introduce The Goonies to a friend's tween for the first time and he loved it. It's an evergreen summer favorite of mine. As for connections, I assume it's Josh Brolin as the dad searching for his kid in weapons and as the older brother following the kids on their adventure in Goonies. It's a stretch. Not really. But you also mentioned the cinematographer is the same guy that shot Everything Everywhere All at Once, which stars a grown up Dada Kihei Kwan. Wow.

1:34:07Josh Larsen:What a poll, Colton. Yeah. Nice. We heard from Kimo Watanabe from Rose Park, Utah. It's been a while since I knew the movie Massacre Theater, and you are 100 % correct. The real winners are all of us who got to hear that. Ha ha. Talk about unlocking a core memory. I'm glad that you didn't veto this one. Josh was completely nailing those sloth articulations with an accuracy that was both incredible and incredibly disturbing. I guess it's probably equally disturbing that I know how accurate they are. This was maybe my favorite movie Massacre Theater ever. Adam's Ma Fratelli. kudos to you for really going for it half james cagney half gonzo all and ramsey so you'll notice

1:34:51Adam Kempenaar:josh there's ellipses in there and that's because he had a line from the script in there and i didn't want to have to try to replicate it i didn't count on the fact that you might be the

1:35:00Josh Larsen:one reading it you could have done it oh no i i think your performance was immortal and should be enshrined and never duplicated here's frederick from norway this is great

1:35:12Adam Kempenaar:Well, my gym membership may finally get revoked. It's not uncommon for me to listen to your show while exercising, and sure, it promotes the occasional giggle, but your Massacre Theater performance of The Goonies had me laughing out loud in a way I'm sure dissuaded the use of treadmills in my immediate proximity. So thanks for that. Not having seen Weapons yet, I'm sure there are many connections between Goonies and this week's show I missed, but the most obvious one was that it features Josh Brolin. Brolin has said he believes weapons is a project that has the potential to have a lasting impact in the same way as Goonies.

1:35:45Adam Kempenaar:This was somewhat echoed by Josh in that he believes the imagery of the kids' running arms spread out into the night is something that could become something lasting and iconic. Again, I have not seen weapons, and it does not arrive in theaters in my little backwater part of Norway for a couple of weeks. But your review has me excited, and I'm looking forward to checking it out. As always, keep up the good work. Well, thank you, Frederick.

1:36:06Josh Larsen:I hope they let you back into the gym. Here's Patricia Collins. You must have wanted to hear from all your Oregon listeners and 80s kids with your massacre theater choice. I'm not great at this game, but got this scene by the second line. The performances were so spectacular that I played it for my partner who also got it before you were done. Goonies is such a part of Oregon coast culture that one of the hotels in Cannon Beach I recently stayed at had three DVD copies. Why do you need three? Such high demand. Uh-huh. Because what else would you do while staying at a place that overlooks Haystack Rock than revisit the quest for One-Eyed Willie's treasure?

1:36:46Adam Kempenaar:Finally, here's Brian Spinks. It may seem absurd now, but watching this film as a kid, a couple years younger than Mikey, it felt like only one small compass click away from our reality. Oh, I get it, Brian. Could there be a lost treasure map in our attics? Among the dusty detritus of the past? Possibly. What adults saw as a fun romp was to us kids a call to action, the makings of a plan. Join forces with your friends and despite any adversity, go on life-changing adventures unbeknownst to our parents or lack thereof. To us kids, Goonies was as real as the evening news. The performances Donner derives from these kids are spectacular.

1:37:23Adam Kempenaar:I think of this film as existing in the Spielbergian school of directing kids. Spielberg having served as the original story writer and producer. it's our time down here. Wow.

1:37:36Josh Larsen:Did you feel that, Josh? Did you feel that? Inspiring Brian. And Goonies is fine. It almost makes me want to like the movie. It's fine.

1:37:47Adam Kempenaar:We just ruined it. We had built up so much goodwill.

1:37:51Josh Larsen:We could have pretended. We could have just gone with a... We could have pretended. I know.

1:37:54Adam Kempenaar:It's not that great. It's fine. You're right. It's fine. Reach into the brimming, the brimming film spotting hat. Brian, that really was inspired though. I'm not, I'm not joking. It moved me three stars for your email, two and a half out of four for good news. Reach into that hat. It is brimming and pick out this week's winner. Our winner is Ethan Johnson. Yeah. And he didn't include a location, but I'm pretty sure Ethan Johnson is from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, or at least at one point in his life was. So that's what I'm going to say. Congratulations, Ethan email feedback at filmspotting.net. Let us know if you would like your Film Spotting t-shirt, a Film Spotting tote bag, or a trial membership to the Film Spotting family.

1:38:37Josh Larsen:The sound goes through the cable to the

1:38:40Adam Kempenaar:box. A man records it on a big record in wax, but you have to talk into the mic first in the bush. we move on now to this week's edition of massacre theater a couple things so this scene actually has a plethora of voices in it and we are we are combining them into obviously just two voices there's one character and he's versus a bunch of other characters so one of us will play that character and the other will play all the other characters which will be

1:39:18Josh Larsen:me. So I'm like, imagine a bunch of demons possessing my body, but not yes. Possessing

1:39:26Adam Kempenaar:your body, but not actually on screen.

1:39:27Josh Larsen:And then speaking through one voice. So that's what I'm going to be channeling. This is not a horror movie, by the way. Well, but let's be clear about that.

1:39:34Adam Kempenaar:It is definitely not a horror movie. Here's the, here's the other hint I'm going to give you. Well, first it does tie in with this show though. Josh, is it fair to say it may be, it is a clear tie-in but it may be a little bit of a deeper cut once removed usual it's a tie yeah it's not it's not as clear as like josh brolin's in the goonies and he's in weapons it's not that clear yep okay the other thing i'm going to say is we recently talked about how film spotting madness the upcoming film spotting madness goes way back to the 1940s And the further back you go in time, the fewer movies generally people have seen.

1:40:19Adam Kempenaar:And I bring that up only because I'm not telling you what decade this from, but I'm going to say that it does suggest we may have a case where the hat is not going to be as brimming as the Goonies was.

1:40:34Josh Larsen:You're worried about submissions.

1:40:35Adam Kempenaar:I am a little worried, but I like the tie-in. I don't know if I'm going to like the performance. I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth in about five seconds. I mean, that's how every massacre theater should begin. Yeah, but you usually do the funny voices or the attempts at funny voices, and here I am. So are you ready? I mean, I am. Are we going to change the one name in it, though? No, let's just go. Okay, I love Josh's approach. Josh's approach to scene study is don't overthink it. Action. I'm going into the hills for winter. Where am I going to get the food for my men? Buy it or grow it.

1:41:17Adam Kempenaar:Or maybe even work for it. Somehow, I don't think you've solved my problem.

1:41:23Josh Larsen:Solving your problems isn't our mind. We deal in lead, friend.

1:41:28Adam Kempenaar:So do I. We're in the same business, huh? Only as competitors. Why not as partners? Suppose I offer you equal shares. In what? Everything. To the last grain. And the people in the village? What about them? I leave it to you. Can men of our profession worry about things like that? May even be sacrilegious. but if god didn't want them sheared he would not have made them sheep what do you say right on you hear that so tarot you hear what he said right on to me

1:42:12Josh Larsen:and scene wow i mean i argued we had to keep that last line in i because it was so important i didn't know you were going to do that well it's because you argued for the line that i knew i had to

1:42:26Adam Kempenaar:delivered. Did I deliver? Oh yeah. Oh, you delivered. Nicely done. If you know a film we just massacred, email the movie's title and your name and location to feedback at filmspotting.net. The deadline is Monday, September 15th. And Josh, when you brought up the demon thing, I didn't realize you were actually going to do separate voices.

1:42:46Josh Larsen:I didn't either, Adam. Your show off. No, that wasn't my plan. You were possessed.

1:42:50Adam Kempenaar:They took over as I often am in massacre theater. Wow. Your deadline's Monday, September 15th, we'll select the window randomly from all the cracked entries and announce it in a couple of weeks.

1:43:00Josh Larsen:There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine. It will attack and devour. anything. It is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws.

1:43:35Adam Kempenaar:We couldn't resist Jaws. One of the greatest movies of all time, Josh. It's back in theaters for its 50th anniversary. Go see it. We didn't want to wait. We couldn't wait till its 50th. Back when it was celebrating its 45th birthday, we gave it the sacred cow treatment. We had what we thought was a pretty long and pretty thorough, pretty eye-opening conversation about the film at the time. We thought it was worth sharing. We'll see if this leads to another two or three comments on Apple Podcasts telling us that we're too woke.

1:44:10Josh Larsen:That's right. What do you think? I believe we may have lost six or seven listeners the last time. So if that happens again, we'll be struggling. But yeah, this was a fun one. And we'll still replay it at 55. There you go. And 60.

1:44:25Adam Kempenaar:Doesn't matter to us. From June 2020, here is that sacred cow review of Jaws. Sometimes, probably often, we have a convenient hook for one of these setups that doesn't really reflect the whole substance of our conversation about a movie. But a convenient hook is a convenient hook. Which is all to say, for those of you who aren't particularly interested in hearing a discussion of Jaws framed around our current administration, just give us a little wiggle room here. I'm pretty confident we're both more excited to talk about Steven Spielberg's camera tricks than his politics. But it's a little eerie how prescient his game-changing 1975 blockbuster is 45 years later.

1:45:05Adam Kempenaar:The movie that promised we'll never go in the water again also presents an all-too-dangerously familiar type of huckster politician during a crisis who fails to heed the warnings of scientists, dramatically downplays and dismisses the potential loss of life, can't wait to pat himself and his cronies on the back, loves to preen for a TV camera, and who demands those beaches be open because business demands they be open. Yep. Sorry. Even the scary shark movie is actually about coronavirus. And I'm far from the only one who has noticed. My Twitter timeline has jumped the snark over the past couple of months, including this from Frank Rich just a few nights ago, commenting on a New York Times breaking news tweet that read, Vice President Mike Pence encouraged governors to repeat a misleading claim about coronavirus outbreaks.

1:45:55Adam Kempenaar:Rich wrote, Pence makes the Jaws mayor look like Churchill. mayor vaughn is played with a pensy and affable smugness by murray hamilton and one line i had always kind of overlooked that struck me on this rewatch is when he's spurning the pleas of roy scheider's chief martin brody and richard dreyfus's matt hooper to keep the beaches closed on july 4th america's day to celebrate its independence and preeminence and he explains i don't think either one of you are familiar with our problems. Our problems. You see, Matt is a visitor to Amity, and the chief, well, he's an interloper. He's a cop from New York City who just moved his family to the island a year ago.

1:46:38Adam Kempenaar:Mayor Vaughn translated, why should I take advice on what my people should do from you foreigners? Maybe he would have listened to the warnings of a police chief who was a born and bred islander, maybe not. But Martin's otherness sure makes him really easy to ignore. So Josh, I'm curious, as a starting point anyway, on this viewing, was your mind still mostly blown by Jaws' remarkable craft? Or in the midst of this pandemic, starring an insatiable predacious virus that's always lurking out of sight? Was it the movie's surprising relevancy that had you jumping out of your seat?

1:47:14Josh Larsen:Yeah, we'll get to the craft. I mean, that's the reason this movie is ultimately still so masterful these many decades later. But I'm glad you're starting here because obviously this came to mind, even if you hadn't revisited Jaws recently, as soon as, I mean, even if you, we hadn't had the one-to-one correlation of beaches, people desperately wanting beaches to be open. I think this would have come to mind and you're right. It was all over Twitter, but sitting down to watch the movie again, it's the details that are so one-to-one that did absolutely shock me. And I want to say at the start, you know, I realize that this is not as cut and dried on the one hand that the administration wants things to seem.

1:47:56Josh Larsen:It's not as cut and dried maybe for some people. On the other hand, I don't own a small family business, but my livelihood is not tied to something that is directly affected by these closings. So I do get it that this is a real issue for some people. Yet the broad scale opening, I think, that the White House has been pushing not only seems unwise, but is very much in line with what we see Amity's mayor pushing for in this movie. And just quotes like Murray Hamilton saying, we need summer dollars. You basically have been hearing that for two months now. And I think there are other details worth mentioning.

1:48:36Josh Larsen:The Pence correlation, Adam, is absolutely the amended autopsy report, right? They fudge the autopsy report to make it not look like a shark attack. That's what's going on in the case, in this recent case of Pence. You mentioned Hooper and there's this distrust of Hooper. I didn't make the, you know, the outsider immigrant connection quite as much. I think that's really smart. But I think of him as like the outside expert who's bringing scientific evidence and data, right? This is who is immediately distrusted is the person with the facts. And that again is all we're seeing from up on top right now.

1:49:17Josh Larsen:The eagerness for an easy solution when the fishermen catch the first shark and right away, it's like, let's have a parade. It's over. Everybody get in the water immediately. And how about this one? This is a more subtle one that it's maybe not as easy to laugh about, but the distraction from the issue at hand. I mean, how much nonsense, we're always putting up with nonsense coming out of the White House, but how much did that amp up after COVID-19 hit? And it's very much in line with that conversation Hooper and Brody and the mayor have underneath the Amity sign. And it's been vandalized, right?

1:49:57Josh Larsen:And so immediately for the mayor, that's issue number one.

1:50:02Adam Kempenaar:Sick vandalism. That is a deliberate mutilation of a public service message. Now, I want those little paint-happy bastards caught and hung up by their Buster Browns. That's it.

1:50:14Josh Larsen:That's to him what's plaguing the island. Law and order. Law and order. Let's get that and not worry about all this other stuff. So, you know, all that said, the other revelation to me, as long as we're dumping on Trump, which I'm happy to do all day, I don't think he's the mayor. I mentioned this right after I revisited it on Letterboxd because it struck me. Remember the scene where there's a scare in the water. Everyone's on the beach and it's just chaos. Everyone is rushing to get to shore. There's one guy. There's one guy who, A, was dumb enough to go in the water, right? But then when things go bad, he pushes those kids off the raft and steals it and desperately paddles back to shore in terror.

1:50:58Josh Larsen:That's Trump. If you want to look for Trump in that movie and how he's behaved throughout his presidency and particularly when crisis hits, he's that dumb guy.

1:51:08Adam Kempenaar:Man, I am so willing to buy the Trumpian elements to both the mayor and to that guy, which I don't think I had never really noticed before until this viewing. And it's also so perfect, right? Because this terrible thing he does, this horrible act of prioritizing his safety over these kids is also so stupid because wouldn't he probably move faster if he just swam instead of not only yanking the float, but trying to use the float? How is the float going to get him to shore any quicker? He seems to be having trouble. Yeah, it speaks to the panic. It speaks to the selfishness. It speaks to all the things that we're talking about.

1:51:47Adam Kempenaar:And yes, we definitely will geek out on the formal elements of this movie, I'm sure. But having not really devoted a lot of time to studying this movie or having discussed it in detail before on the show, I got all the Twitter jokes over the past couple of months. But it was because, yeah, of course, I've always just kind of taken the idiot mayor aspect for granted. That was part of the story. It wasn't really some kind of statement on Spielberg's part with regard to American politics or Americans in general. But it is very hard to watch it now and separate that aspect. And even more interesting for me than all the parallels that we're touching on and you really nicely articulated.

1:52:26Adam Kempenaar:For me, what's fascinating is where the political and the personal intersect in this film, which I think fits nicely with what this movie does as a whole so very well, which is mixing the horror and those thriller adventure aspects with the personal, too. It's in getting to know these people. It's having an attachment to Chief Brody and his family. That great scene at the dinner table after the slap is one of my favorites. I think I may have had it in my top five Spielberg moments. But just going off memory coming into this film, I thought of Chief Brody as this purely heroic figure and that it was the idiot mayor and the greed of the townspeople that prevent this guy, this stand up righteous man from doing his job and saving lives.

1:53:11Adam Kempenaar:And that he's almost this Cassandra like figure who unfortunately is ignored. Except when you watch closely, you realize he doesn't really put up a fight when the medical examiner changes the police report. as you pointed out from a shark attack to a boating accident he doesn't actually really protest what he does is what so many of us do he just tries to cover his ass the exact lines are that's not what you told me over the phone and when the me says i was wrong we'll have to amend our reports brody says and you'll stand by that so in other words as long as the medical examiner will go on the record and say that that's the cause of death then chief brody's willing to wash his hands of it right yeah and when they catch the tiger shark and they all do preemptively celebrate he's all too eager like how much attention spielberg pays to shider smiling and how willing he is to congratulate everyone and even pose for the picture himself triumphantly right it's not because like the others he really probably wants the glory and he wants the publicity i think we understand that about who he is as a person but you know what it is it does make life so much easier, doesn't it?

1:54:18Adam Kempenaar:If the shark was caught, it makes his life so much easier. So he's immediately willing, again, like so many of us are, he's immediately willing to assume the truth of what is told to him and what seems to be shown to him rather than dig deeper and actually confront the truth. And what finally does prompt moments of reckoning for both Brody and the mayor, I think it's really worth pointing out that it isn't until Mrs. Kittner slaps him. Yeah. Brody doesn't show much remorse. You can tell that this is weighing on him, but he is willing to celebrate, as I said in that moment. And he doesn't reflect or really show remorse or awareness of his guilt that Alex's death could have been prevented if he hadn't been complicit in basically covering up the shark attack.

1:55:03Adam Kempenaar:and for the mayor it's the same it's when he says my kids were on that beach too so it's that it's that hooper line that's actually the response to the line i quoted in the setup from the mayor about not wanting to hear from them they don't understand our problems he says i think that i'm familiar with the fact that you're going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you on the ass until it swims up and bites them on the ass the chief is willing to look the other way. The mayor is willing to look the other way. A lot of us are willing to look the other way.

1:55:35Josh Larsen:Yeah, I think you're right about Brody. It is more complicated. You know, he does have an immediate instinct to protect, right? His instinct is to have the deputy make the beaches closed signs. But once things get complicated and political, his position shifts a little bit. And here's another resonance with, you know, COVID-19 that I'll just say I've been experiencing. How about the fact that Brody lets his kids go in the water, but they go in the pond, right? And so there's a negotiation there. And I don't know about you, but as things are opening up and we're trying to follow what actual experts say is safe to do right now, just not governmental bodies who have perhaps other interests.

1:56:15Josh Larsen:Yet at the same time, we have teenage kids who are desperate to associate with their friends. and we have some friends whose families are making some decisions, some who are making other decisions, we're kind of like, do we let our kids go in the water? Like which body, which body of water do we let our kids go into? And how are we making our own compromises? So I'm glad you brought that up about Brody because it does complicate things in a way that I think is more true to life. And it adds absolutely, and maybe here's where we can get into other aspects of the film into what you were talking about, Adam, is how personal this film is, not only tied to Brody's family, but really to an extent, this community at large.

1:56:58Josh Larsen:And let me give you an example that'll also get us into the craft. It was Michael Phillips' number three Spielberg scene, and it is that first beach attack sequence. First of all, just the patience of the filmmaking there, watching it again, how much time is spent on building the suspense. But here's what I mean about it being personal. Each potential victim in that sequence gets a story. It's patient enough to give them a story. So we have the boy who's begging to go back in the water, right? That's a mini picture of a real family right there. Any of us with kids know that conversation. There's also the woman floating peacefully alone.

1:57:35Josh Larsen:The shot is long enough to wonder, is she just at the beach by herself? Is she just chilling for the day? What's her story? Then how about - age couple in the horseplay. Yeah. The horseplay. And then how about the teen with a dog, the dog who gets a name, Pippin. And that turns out to be Alex Kittner, who is the one who obviously gets killed. So just the time spent where it's not just a shark attack on these strangers who are screaming. It's all of these people who, yes, we don't get to know intimately, but we formed Spielberg is patient enough. And the shot selection is intentional enough to allow us to form a little bit of relationship so that when the chaos strikes, it's all the more terrifying.

1:58:17Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, you are so right. And the math doesn't work out. But when I heard Pippin as the dog name here, I, of course, thought about Roy Scheider in one of my all time favorite films, All That Jazz, playing Bob Fosse. And Pippin was one of his seminal musicals, one of his real masterworks that he got a lot of acclaim for. But obviously, this film came before, not before Pippin, but before all that jazz. I don't think I had that. I didn't go back and look at our top five list, which you can find over at filmspotting.net. Just click on list. I don't remember my exact top five Spielberg moments, but if I was redoing it now, that sequence wouldn't be just at number three.

1:58:54Adam Kempenaar:It would probably be at number one. And let's be honest, we could do at minimum a top five moments just from this film. For sure. I forget Spielberg's filmography, but I do think certainly on this rewatch, that prelude to the Alex Kittner attack is the sequence of this film. Brody on the beach, he's watching obsessively. And I'm going to come back to why I think that part of it is actually important in a second. And we get those wipe cuts on movement. The residents, the residents walking in front of him, almost like it's the blinking of his eye. And every time we get one of those blinks, we get closer to his face.

1:59:39Adam Kempenaar:And it does just take everything you were talking about, all that tension, all that dread is just mounting. And it mounts with every single one of those little innocent cuts, those little innocent blinks. And it's all just sound, right? There's no real dialogue. There's no music at this point. It's all just sound in motion, sound in motion, which is filmmaking, right? Filmmaking at its core is sound in motion. And even then we get that shot where Spielberg employs a little trick that is a preview of another trick that's going to come where Brody's perspective is obscured by the guy, another guy who kind of gets a story, Josh, to your point.

2:00:18Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. The guy we all know who's the busybody who only cares about what the reckless hoodlums in town or whatever are doing to him. And he's really got to take a look at that. He's telling the chief. Right. And his perspective is obscured by that guy in his shoulder. And we watch as Brody does what we want him to do. lifts his eyes, lifts his head over the guy's shoulder so we can see. And then we get a diopter shot. I'm pretty sure it's a diopter shot that obscures the perspective between what Brody's seeing and in the foreground, that guy's face, and then in the water, what he's looking at, which again, it does just continue to heighten the tension.

2:00:56Adam Kempenaar:Something seems very off in that moment. And that diopter shot actually comes the second before a scream, but it's a scream in the water that isn't the attack yet. So it's all just a tease still. It's the scream of those kids who are playing in the water, the teenagers. And all of that is what actually sets up the classic shot, the vertigo trick shot. It's one thing to think of that when you take it just on its own as a scene to analyze. And you recognize that he is zooming forward at the same time he is pulling back. That's the technique that gives that amazing effect of fear and awareness of what's happening when the Kintner attack actually begins as the camera focuses in on Brody.

2:01:40Adam Kempenaar:But that's exactly what it's doing. Just as the shots before it, those cuts were playing with distance and playing with perspective at once. That's what's happening here. Time and space is completely collapsing in that moment.

2:01:52Josh Larsen:So we've both mentioned the editing in this sequence. We should probably point out Jaws edited by Verna Fields and looking at her credits. This was her last credit, at least at IMDb, but before that edited medium, cool paper moon, American graffiti with Spielberg here on the Sugar Land Express as well. So, man, just masterful, masterful work, the camera work, but also the editing in this sequence. And I agree, you know, my pick from Jaws for our top five Spielberg scenes, which we'll probably get to, though I went on and on and on when we did that episode is show me the way to go home, the comparing scars scene.

2:02:30Josh Larsen:But I do agree in terms of craft, maybe in terms of characterization, that's the best scene in the film in terms of craft. It's this one here that we've been talking about. But you know, you're in for this high level of craft from the very start of this film. And one thing I did not remember watching it again is that John Williams score is the first thing we get. I think I think before even any images, we're getting that score. So how supremely confident the filmmakers were right of of Williams work here to do that. And then we get the teenagers on the beach at nighttime. And I loved how the camera movement shifts here and really moves us into the terror.

2:03:08Josh Larsen:Because when they're on the beach hanging out, there's a tracking shot along all of them that shows us clearly we're on stable ground. It's a smooth shot, right? Before we get on the water, things are smooth. Then the two of them run to the water and the movement increases. The camera picks up speed, still tracks, but is going faster now, a little jostling. And then finally, when we get in the water, it is when we start to have that sort of lulling effect that we'll have throughout much of the film. And that's just kind of a way to take us from stable land to a place of instability and fear. And I think, you know, that attack itself is scary because at first she's confused.

2:03:52Josh Larsen:You know, there's, there's, we know what's happening because we're here to see Jaws, even if this is the first time we saw it. Right. But she does not, doesn't understand what's happening to her. Then she gets that moment of reprieve hanging onto the buoy. Right. Then the final bite comes, pulls her under, and we have stillness and silence. So all of this establishes the water as a place of danger compared to the land. And what do we get after this sequence? The first shot, Brody uneasily looking out the window of his house at the bay, at the water. So you know you're in the hands already of someone where every shot is going to count.

2:04:28Josh Larsen:Not a second is wasted. Even think of that moment right there with Brody and his wife, who I do want to get to. There's another shot. I don't know if it's a diopter, but he takes the phone call in their kitchen in the foreground while the mother and son are attending to the child's cut in the background blood. Right. That's what we're getting. There is more blood in the background. Again, a little kind of a setup scene for the narrative, but Spielberg is doing so much, squeezing so much efficiency and important imagery into that shot as well.

2:04:58Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, there are so many moments like that. I even think about when they are finally departing with Quint, Hooper and Brody. They're heading off on the boat. And we get a moment, if I remember the sequence right, where he cuts to that shot from inside Quint's little shack and the big jaws of the shark. and the camera is moving forward and then we cut to outside and the camera is still moving, but now it's pulling back a little bit. He's just always playing with movement, right? In a really, really fascinating way. And all of those shots matter. I think I went with when we did that top five Spielberg moments, my cliche, and there are so many of them that are just so great and so classic from this movie to pick from.

2:05:36Adam Kempenaar:I think I went with the chalkboard sequence, right? The one where we get that great, one of the all time great character introductions in cinema to Quint. But But the other one that a lot of people would point to, and it's still great no matter how many times you watch it, is the Indianapolis speech. And I did notice one thing this time. There was always obvious before. I just never zeroed in on it is one little touch, one little decision with the framing I think Spielberg makes that heightens everything with that speech is that he keeps Richard Dreyfuss in the shot. we know how invested Matt Hooper is in all things sharks, right?

2:06:17Adam Kempenaar:And their history, their legacy, almost, if you will. He knows that story. We know, without him even saying it, that he knows, and he does actually verbalize it, I think, at one point, but we know that he probably is familiar with all of the lore of the Indianapolis. And he's also fascinated by, and also terrorized by, to an extent, Quint. And so when Quint starts telling a story that puts him in that place and having had that experience, he's in awe. And just by keeping him in the right of the frame, visible the entire time, Dreyfus plays it perfectly, doesn't react at all, is just completely focused on Quint's words.

2:06:57Adam Kempenaar:His investment in the story, that becomes our investment. It already is a reflection of our investment as viewers. But I think then we're just hanging on every word in a way that maybe we wouldn't even if it wasn't for the fact that we've got a surrogate there in the scene who is showing us how important every word is, how important this experience is and how important the storytelling itself is, the act of storytelling.

2:07:22Josh Larsen:Yeah, he's like an audience plant in a way, and it works perfectly. And I don't know if this came up when we talked about this scene on that show, but I had forgotten, and so I had to look it up again, that this speech was not in the Peter Benchley novel. So found, you know, just doing some Googling that Spielberg credited Howard Sackler for coming up with that. Now, Sackler didn't get screenplay credit, but Spielberg mentioned that he came up with the idea and inserted it. And then John Milius apparently did some work on the speech at some point. And then Robert Shaw himself, you know, brought his own edition, Spielberg said, which you can imagine.

2:07:58Josh Larsen:So I think I kind of cheated and rolled the show me the way to go home scar scene right into Indianapolis. And that was my pick. But a little touch I noticed this time was after they, the two are comparing their scars. So Quint and Hooper, and it's really like, you know, they're, they're pretty close. Hooper's had some, some tough experiences there, even compared to Quint. At the end of that, Brody pulls up his shirt quietly in the corner away from them. He's not at the table and we see he's got a scar too across his abdomen. He just looks at it and pulls his shirt down. And it looks like a pretty big scar.

2:08:35Josh Larsen:I don't think it was just like a bike accident, but still, it's just like the levels of manliness at play among the three of them. It's not enough for him to enter that contest. Another great character touch that I love. What's that one? What? That one there, on your arm.

2:08:53Adam Kempenaar:Oh, it's a tattoo. I got that removed. Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Mother.

2:09:05Adam Kempenaar:what is that

2:09:11Josh Larsen:that's the USS Indianapolis

2:09:19Adam Kempenaar:I am glad that we've mentioned all the other screenwriters who maybe had a role in this movie we haven't mentioned Carl Gottlieb yet who is the credited screenwriter on this film and I don't know the original version of this script I haven't read the Benchley novel either, but in talking about whatever pointed statements it may be making about America that are still very timely and relevant now, probably some credit should go to Gottlieb and his interpretation of the Benchley source material. But another new thing for me watching this time, Josh, and this is where I was going when I was hinting at the obsessiveness of Roy's watching is I don't think that classic shot on the beach.

2:09:59Adam Kempenaar:The zoom pullback is the only Hitchcock theft in this film or the only direct homage to Vertigo, even in this film. Right. Because that's where it comes from. Right. And maybe there are other instances in cinema history. But famously, that shot in Vertigo, Scotty, Jimmy Stewart hanging over the ledge, looking down. We get that same effect, zooming and pulling back in that disorienting sense that it gives us as viewers. Well, Brody is a lot like Scotty in Vertigo. Both are cops. Both effectively are retired from being police officers. There's some little character details that we get that I'd also never paid attention to really before about what being on the beat or being on the job in New York City was like and and how different that is.

2:10:49Adam Kempenaar:And instead of heights, what's his fear? He's afraid of water, right? It's elemental. He does not want to go near the water. So there's a perfect correlation here, actually, to Vertigo. And I do think that whether that's just Spielberg film school playfulness at work and we can geek out about that a little bit, that fear and making that a psychological foundation for Brody is something that really gives this film a richness that maybe another filmmaker would not bring to what could have been obviously just kind of a B movie. Where the types of scares we get when the face pops out at Hooper under the water and maybe some of the shark attacks could have been more gruesome and bloody.

2:11:33Adam Kempenaar:We could have gotten that type of B picture here, but it's not just the craft. It's those character touches that you have pointed out. And it's also that psychological underpinning that's there.

2:11:42Josh Larsen:Yeah. And that fear comes to fruition when he gets on the boat later, right? For the last third. It's that we understand that he's out of his element in so many ways at that point. He's almost helpless. The only thing that doesn't, you know, I would say in terms of, you think of Jimmy Stewart being such an obsessive character in Vertigo, the most obsessive character in this movie is the shark. This thing will not give up. And I love the touch of the show-off touch of the shark. At this point, I think it has three barrels harpooned to it. Should be impossible to go underwater at all. Not only does it go underwater, it goes under the boat, right?

2:12:17Josh Larsen:To just kind of like, kind of give them a little middle finger there. To toy with them. To toy with them. I do want to jump back because I mentioned her character briefly, Brody's wife, but not the actress, Lorraine Gary, as Ellen. And I just, you know, I think she stands in a line of, and I don't want to give Spielberg too much credit here. He's a male-dominant filmmaker. Absolutely. But Lorraine Gary as Ellen is in a line of fully envisioned and fully performed women characters. Again, they're sidelined because they never really get their full stories. But think of Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

2:12:51Josh Larsen:Think of Dee Wallace in E.T., the extraterrestrial, Terry Garr in Close Encounters. Again, you could reorient most of those movies perhaps around each of those women, and they might be just as interesting, obviously a different experiences. And it's sad that we haven't gotten a cinema like that alongside the cinema of men. But for the amount of screen time they have, I think they are given attention by Spielberg as a filmmaker. And I think the actors, these actresses give such great performances. Lorraine Gary here. I love how she's supportive of Brody. Like, you know, she's got his back, but she also has her own ideas.

2:13:31Josh Larsen:Like she pushes back on him. She has her own ideas about their family, but when it comes to, if it's going to come down to the Island or them, she's going to stand right next to him and protect the family against the Island and the, and the mayor and that sort of stuff. She also has a sardonic sense of humor about that community. She deflates their pretensions. I love the little line, like how much work does a line like this do and the delivery by Gary when she just says, want to get drunk and fool around? I mean, in a second, you have that marriage, right? You know them. You know them. And it's because of how she delivers it.

2:14:07Josh Larsen:And again, you mentioned the dinner family scene, just another wonderful domestic touch, which was such a strength of Spielberg's early films in particular, when it ends with Brody's son mimicking him. And Brody just says to him, give us a kiss, you know? And again, another line interaction delivery where this family becomes so fully formed, even though it's not really about them. This story isn't meant to be about them, but it still becomes so much about them because of performances like this.

2:14:36Adam Kempenaar:If they weren't there, this is such a lesser film. Oh, my goodness. Everything that happens on the boat, we would probably still be impressed by because of the craft of so much of it, but we would not be drawn to this film. We would not all continually, consistently come back to this film as an all-time American great if it wasn't for all of these elements we're talking about, including its timelessness. And I'm really glad you brought up Lorraine Gary because I agree with everything you said. And I also get to point out that if someone would like to, while they're listening, go to Google and type in Lorraine Gary Jaws and look at her hair and hairstyle and see if it maybe reminds you of someone like, I don't know, Kim Novak from Vertigo, just a little bit, that blonde hair, the way it's up.

2:15:17Adam Kempenaar:But I will also point to a character moment with her that I love that I also think is so indicative of human nature. It just speaks to who she is, but who we all are. And it's in that moment where after the first attack, I think after the first body is washed up on shore, he's reading all the books and he's trying to learn what he can about sharks. and he looks out and he shouts at his kids who are out in their little boat that one of them got for his birthday, but they're just along the dock. And the mom's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? They're just along the dock. They're in the boat.

2:15:50Adam Kempenaar:They're fine. But then what happens? She glances down at a page in the book where a boat is being attacked by a shark. And in that moment, she then screams at the boys to come in and Brody has no idea what's happening. And I love that because wouldn't we all do that very same thing? You have that initial dismissal. You go, they're fine. What are we worried about? But the moment, and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, the moment it becomes visual, the moment it becomes real in your mind, and you can actually imagine what you just saw in that book happening to your children on that boat right this second, then the panic sets in, then the protective instinct sets in, and she shouts at the boys to come in.

2:16:32Adam Kempenaar:Speaking of fear, I will also say this, and this is not an exaggeration at all. So I go back all the jokes about this movie making people afraid to go in the water. I think I've alluded to this before. I remember as a kid being afraid. I'd lay in my bed. This is like from ages maybe seven to 10 or maybe maybe past that, Josh. We don't have to get into the numbers here. Who's counting? but seven to ten 28 yeah at least i would lay in my bed and i would not lay with my legs fully extended even though they didn't go off the bed i would not lay with my legs fully extended because just the thought of my toes sort of dangling or it was it was some monsters i'm sure i was afraid of but i also was very afraid of this idea of jaws i was afraid of the shark somehow being in my bedroom and and being able to get my feet.

2:17:27Adam Kempenaar:And I am not kidding you. It was like I was seven years old all over again. I'm watching this movie. I'm sitting on the couch in my office sort of viewing area. And it's one of those where the side also reclines like a chair. And there were two moments where I caught myself pulling my feet back off of the extension. I couldn't let myself fully recline because my my toes were dangling on the floor and Joss was going to get them.

2:17:52Josh Larsen:Recoiling from the movie. Yeah, it's that effective. Would you ever do, I've seen park districts do this where they have pools. They'll do a screening of Jaws and you sit in an inner tube and watch it in the pool. I would kind of love to try that sometime. No, thanks. But just to go back to your note about the books, the pictures in the books, it's effective in that scene as a character development and motivation for that moment. But also I noticed, you know, We've talked, I'm sure, at some point on the show, and everyone talks about all the filmmaking tricks Spielberg had to do to get around this faulty mechanical shark, right?

2:18:26Josh Larsen:John Williams' score is one thing. Using the camera point of view as the shark is another way. But it struck me this time. That's why we get so many insert shots, I think, of these books is because he can't show the shark attacking. So let's show something even scarier, not like a janky mechanical shark, but actual photos of attacks from real life. And the autopsy description that Hooper can barely get through, that serves the same purpose. So those are just a few other things that stand in place of the actual shark here, in addition to the more traditional ones people mentioned, like the barrels or like the pier breaking and then turning around and coming after the guy.

2:19:06Josh Larsen:Yeah, there's just again, it goes back to the efficiency, the killer great white shark like efficiency of this movie where yes, even an insert shot of a shark attack in a book is going to serve multiple purposes for the film.

2:19:21Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. And that efficiency and that sense of how to use the camera and get around the shark problem, if you will, also manifest itself so clearly in just the decision to focus on using point of view as a tool. Yeah, it goes back to the the feet of the woman dangling in the water below below the surface. And we are the shark in that moment. And how many times throughout the film, instead of showing us the shark, does he show us what the shark would see? Yeah, that's all we need to experience to really feel the horror of Jaws. Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws. See it before you go swimming.

2:20:04Josh Larsen:Hope you enjoyed that June 2020 sacred cow review of Jaws. For now, that's our show. If you'd like to connect with us on social media, you can find Adam and FilmSpotting on Instagram, Facebook, Letterboxd. And how about this? YouTube. That's all at FilmSpotting. I'm at, I think, yeah, I'm at all those places and throw Blue Sky in there as well. You can find me, Larson on Film. We are independently produced and listener supported. You can support the show by joining the Film Spotting family at filmspottingfamily.com. Listen early and ad-free. Get a weekly newsletter. Get monthly bonus episodes and access to the entire show archive.

2:20:48Josh Larsen:For show t-shirts and other merch, go to filmspotting.net slash shop.

2:20:52Adam Kempenaar:In that archive, you can hear our top five Denzel Washington performances from 2017. We had a guest on for that comedian, TV host, and film director, W. Kamau Bell. He's the host of the Denzel Washington is the greatest actor of all time period podcast. Makes sense we had him on, right? We did share that in our feed earlier this week. And my favorite part of that top five is when I was certain I was going to get praise from Kamau Bell for including that deep cut of deja vu in my top five, only to have him laugh at me for putting it on my list.

2:21:33Josh Larsen:You didn't have to bring that up again for everyone to hear, Adam.

2:21:36Adam Kempenaar:You know what? I want people to go ahead and listen to it. It is what it is. It happened. and it filled me with shame. And it doesn't keep you up at night. Yep. 2018, episode 693, we shared our top five Spike Lee shots. Other Spike Lee conversations, Do the Right Thing at 35, episode 975. American Utopia, the David Byrne collaboration, episode 797, Defy Blood, 781. Black Klansman, 693. Chirac, 566. Old Boy, episode 477. That's 470, actually, an inside man. episode 89 out new on VOD the Thursday murder club. Actually, this is on Netflix streaming a retirement community or friends from a retired community form the club of the title to work on cold cases for fun when they find themselves in the middle of a live murder case.

2:22:30Adam Kempenaar:It's directed by Chris Columbus, but the cast Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan.

2:22:35Josh Larsen:You know what? I, For some reason, I thought this was a streaming series, and I was like, could be good, but I'm not committing. Sit down, knock it out movie. Maybe I'm in.

2:22:45Adam Kempenaar:Maybe. In limited release, A Little Prayer, David Strathairn tries to protect his daughter-in-law when he discovers that his son is having an affair. It's directed by Angus McLaughlin, who wrote the movie Junebug. It premiered at the 2023 Sundance to pretty strong reviews. It's just getting a theatrical release. Brian Tallarico says, a gentle dramedy about a decent man realizing he hasn't raised a decent son. Phenomenal work from Strathern. Really great. He's always great. Also, we should mention the Telluride Film Festival is starting through September 1st if you happen to be out there. Now, this is a good one.

2:23:19Adam Kempenaar:I've actually never seen this somehow despite being a huge Prince fan. Prince, Sign of the Times, in IMAX, in limited release. This was originally out in 1987. Now it's out in IMAX. producer sam this is his four-star letterbox review like if gene kelly directed porn i mean sam would know and i'm just gonna leave that there we'll leave it there

2:23:44Josh Larsen:sam no sam really likes gene kelly i feel i have to say josh we need to leave it there

2:23:51Adam Kempenaar:it was funnier when you left it there suspended time directed by olivier aseas the director of Personal Shopper, and Clouds of Sils Maria and Carlos. I really want to see this one. He returns to his childhood home and discovers isolation to be an artistic curative. It was shot during the pandemic. Out in wide release, Aronofsky's new film, Caught Stealing, a 90s crime drama starring Austin Butler as a former baseball player who finds himself mixed up in New York City's criminal underbelly. This also has a really good cast. Zoe Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, They have Schreiber, Vincent D 'Onofrio, and others.

2:24:27Adam Kempenaar:The Roses. I've never been interested. I wasn't interested in the Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner version. If you just, on paper, seeing another version of the 80s black comedy, The War of the Roses, this one with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samberg's in it, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney. On paper, I don't care. I've seen the trailer a few times, though. And maybe it's just how game Coleman and Cumberbatch are. They are. It actually looks kind of fun.

2:24:54Josh Larsen:They are game. And every once in a while, I mean, Debbie's open for most movies, not horror, but most movies that I want to go to. But this is one where she came up to me and was like, can we go see this? She saw the trailer somewhere. And so maybe we'll check it out and I'll report back. Okay. There you go.

2:25:14Adam Kempenaar:Also out, The Toxic Avenger. I think Debbie has this number one on her priority list. It's a remake of the cold eighties film directed by Mason, Macon Blair from blue ruin with Peter Dinklage as the Avenger plus Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood and Taylor page. It was the opening film at 2023 is fantastic. Fest didn't get distribution. It's in theaters now in an unrated version. Tasha Robinson, our friend from the next picture show caught it back in 2023 and said this, there's a whole lot of, huh? I've never seen anyone explode quite like that before in this extremely goofy, utterly self-aware remake.

2:25:53Adam Kempenaar:Also, there is no scenery left in the entire world because Kevin Bacon has now eaten it all. I don't know.

2:25:59Josh Larsen:I think you got a little in Massacre Theater. You found some to eat. Yeah, I will not be seeing this with Debbie. If I see it, it'll be alone in a theater, which is maybe how the toxic Avenger was meant to be seen. So that'll be just fine.

2:26:13Adam Kempenaar:Of course, Jaws and IMAX as well. Next week, we are off. No new content, but new to you content, sharing at least one film spotting fest Q &A and maybe more. Look for that. Come back in a couple of weeks. We'll have our Pantheon project review of Goodfellas at 35. And I'm really looking forward to the debut of Josh's Scottish Broke.

2:26:39Josh Larsen:we're going to have a problem, Adam, if you can no longer understand me. True. True. Well, actually, it'll be probably business as usual. There you go. Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe Dessault and Sam Van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Special thanks to everyone at WBEZ Chicago. More information is available at WBEZ.org. For Film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson. And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.

2:27:10Adam Kempenaar:This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

2:27:37Adam Kempenaar:episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and for the first time, all in one place, the entire FilmSpotting archive going back to 2005. That's at FilmSpottingFamily.com.

2:27:50Josh Larsen:Panoply. Apple Vacations, where your story starts.

2:27:56Adam Kempenaar:The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations. It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. Ugh, the washer won't start and the laundry's already piled to the ceiling. Hopping on GrandAppliance.com.

2:28:29Josh Larsen:Great idea. I heard they have next day delivery.

2:28:32Adam Kempenaar:Uh-huh, I'm seeing that too. And they have a bunch of GE options in stock. Oh, that's great. We've always had good luck with GE appliances. This one looks perfect.

2:28:42Josh Larsen:Scheduling for tomorrow.

2:28:43Adam Kempenaar:Gosh, Grand really makes it easy.

2:28:45Josh Larsen:Another crisis averted by the team at Grand Appliance. Visit GrandAppliance.com today. Grand Appliance, appliance experts since 1930. The Hulu original series Furious is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Starring Emmy Rossum as Alice Black, Furious follows a rookie FBI agent on the hunt for Catherine, played by Lola Petticrew, a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. While Alice upholds justice, Catherine kills for it, terrorizing the rich and powerful men of New York in her pursuit of vengeance. With secrets that change everything, Alice discovers there's a thin line between Hunter and Prey.

2:29:24Josh Larsen:Watch the Hulu original series, Furious. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Find the vacation you're looking for in Missouri. Whether you're searching for this, wanting something like this. Oh, that's cute.

2:29:41Adam Kempenaar:Maybe up for something like this. Or just really, really need something more like this.

2:29:49Josh Larsen:You'll find the vacation you want in Missouri. Missouri, it's the getaway that gets... You. Plan your fun at visitmo.com.