Netflix’s Unabomber Is the Worst Law & Order Episode Ever Made | SVU

14:28Matt Singer:Those scenes could have been good. They weren't good, but they were in the ballpark of a real movie. We can get to the performances in a minute. The 1990s FBI sequences are just embarrassingly bad. Just horrible. I mean, these are supposed to be the FBI. Now, we can criticize the FBI all we want, but these are some actual lines of dialogue that high-end FBI agents, and by the way, what was, according to the film, the most expensive manhunt in the history of the United States.

15:08Jordan Hoffman:The largest manhunt in history, the end credits tell us.

15:11Matt Singer:When these are some of the lines they say, they're looking at surveillance photographs and there's a photograph of a bear trap and it's a close-up. It's what we call an intercut. I think, I don't know what it's called in film. Whatever. I just spent 10 minutes on the Kuleshov effect. You don't know what this is called. It's called a cut. You look at it. It's a close-up of an enemy. Yeah, you look at it. It's a cut. A bear trap. And then you have one of the FBI agents say, bear traps. You don't want to step in one of those.

15:50Jordan Hoffman:but not like as a joke, like as, oh my God. It's as, as we have talked about before, it's they assume no one's looking at the screen and they need to make it clear what is happening.

16:01Matt Singer:Then there's like a wire up because it's the, they're looking at the, at Ted Kaczynski's cabin in the woods, right? His compound in Montana. His compound. Yes. And there's wire, security wire, like neck length that's clearly there as a defensive measure. Yeah. Now they show an image of it. And anyone who is not a complete moron will know what that is. But it's important for someone who works at the FBI in a top level, who's been on the case for years, to say, what's up with the wire?

16:35Matt Singer:This is the level of screenwriting that happens in the new motion picture Unabomber, which is terrible. Shailene Woodley is the—and for a minute I was like, oh, I'm going to Google this. Is she based on a real person? I'm like, I don't care. This is so bad that I don't care if she's a composite, if she's real. It's so bad. And it's unfortunate because I lived through the 1990s, as most of our listeners probably did. And I remember the Unabomber arrest. I remember when his manifesto was printed in the paper. And, like, it was a big deal. And I'm interested in, you know, movies that I lived through, you know, like The Social Network.

17:14Matt Singer:I'm interested in that because I lived through that. And even though the new one looks pretty lame, I'm going to go see it because I'm interested in it. It's something that I experienced. I'm an easy lay with this sort of thing. But this movie is so atrocious in that half, the new half. And then the earlier half is a smidgen more interesting, but it just has nothing to say. And it's also probably fake. This I did look up. I'm like, how much – like Kaczynski – I mean, sure. Kaczynski was a crazy person who bombed people through the mail. So take what he says, not necessarily at face value. But he was asked, hey, those experiments he did at Harvard, do you think that turned you into the man you are today?

17:55Matt Singer:A crazy guy in the woods writing manifestos? And he's like, no, absolutely not. Right. He's like, I actually had a – I was like, I look back on those days fondly. It was no big deal. So maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. It is interesting that he was part of – but this movie, like you say, postulates that it was born in the crucible of Harvard Yard. when the monster Crow is tinkering with his mind. And then there are the performances. Now, I actually thought Crow was fine. I thought he was - He's fine. He's totally fine. He's actually, right now, Russell Crowe's in a little bit of a zone of being a good bad guy.

18:32Matt Singer:He's a good bad guy in this. There's a pretty lousy movie that came out last year that he's good in called Nuremberg, where he plays Herman Goering, of all people. It's not the world's greatest film, but he's actually pretty good in it. And he's in a great movie right now called The Weight, which is in theaters still with Ethan Hawke. He's marvelous in that. Much better than this film. Yeah, great movie. The Weight is probably one of my favorite movies of the year. But Tremblay, who I haven't really seen since he's been a kid. I mean, I can't even think of anything other than this and Room that I'm sure I've seen him in other things, indie films.

19:07Matt Singer:What did you, Matt Singer, specifically you who likes to do funny voices, what did you think of Jacob Tremblay's performance?

19:16Jordan Hoffman:I know what you're setting me up for, and I don't know if I should take the bait because I know exactly what you're trying to do. He's playing a 16-year-old prodigy at Harvard. He's very young, even to be a college student.

19:29Matt Singer:Yeah, you know how he's only 16? because one of his room, I wrote this down too, his roommate goes, you're only 16 and you're running circles around us all in math. That's one of the lines in the film Unabomber.

19:40Jordan Hoffman:Okay, so there's a lot to get into here. We could actually probably talk about this movie for the normal length of an episode of SVU. Do you want to hear another great line? Sure. Another great line?

19:52Matt Singer:Sure, I wrote some down too. Because they're so good. Russell Crowe, the great professor, when he begins his lecture, I think it's the first thing he says. center frame, Russell Crowe takes the stage and he says to the students, in the Herman Melville book, Moby Dick. Oh, that Moby Dick. Yeah. The one written by Herman Melville.

20:14Jordan Hoffman:As opposed to Jordan Hoffman's Moby Dick. Look, so you're kind of, this is what I wanted to say. You were like the, the Shailene Woodley section is, is God awful. It's a bad movie. It's a terrible movie. The Shailene Woodley sections are God awful, but the Harvard sections are a little better. I think they're both equally horrible. And I think part of you're saying why, I mean, a lot of what you're talking about is why it's so bad. The dialogue is horrible in those sections. And, you know, I loved your, I didn't think about Ghostbusters and that famous scene in the beginning of the movie, but you're right.

20:50Jordan Hoffman:But imagine if Ghostbusters was of two hours, one hour was those scenes Because they have Jacob Tremblay strapped to a chair arguing with this grad student over and over again. And you're going, are we the subjects of some sort of psychological experiment meant to torture an audience? Because you're going, what could possibly be gleaned from doing this over and over? And eventually we learn there is some sort of twist that frankly is not – does not justify the amount of time that's spent. But you at least go, OK, I see now why he had to endure all of these experiments. But Jordan, this movie is so offensively bad.

21:41Jordan Hoffman:It's awful. It might be the worst thing we've ever done. What it made me think about was a couple of weeks ago, I saw a movie called By Any Means, which is the movie with Mark Wahlberg. And it's based on a true story about – a supposedly true story about the FBI using a mafioso to kind of off the books and with going around the law investigate civil rights cases in the South in the 1960s. Something that I don't think we have concrete proof happened, but he claimed – the mafioso in question later claimed that he did this, right? And watching the movie, a fascinating subject but not a very interesting movie.

22:26Jordan Hoffman:Also a very repetitive movie, kind of like Unabomber. And I was sitting there going, I want to know what the true story is here. And afterwards I was reading the Wikipedia page for this guy. And the Wikipedia page was so much more interesting that I was like, this should be the official test for every biopic. Is your movie more interesting than the Wikipedia page of its subject? And I don't know that any movie in history has failed that test worse than Unabomber. Absolutely. And after the movie, I was reading about – and like you, I remember the Unabomber. I remember him being arrested. And I remember the publishing of the manifesto.

23:05Jordan Hoffman:But I wasn't all – it wasn't like if you asked me, well, what was the Unabomber angry about? I don't know that I could have told you. But reading about it afterwards and how some of his ideas – now, obviously, the man was sending bombs in the mail. He was a disturbed, bad person. But that in the years subsequently, some people on all sides of the political spectrum have started to look at his manifesto and see that he was in some ways prescient. Oh, sure. There's articles in the New York Times about this, interviewing experts on technology. Very interesting stuff. None of which is even – there's nothing interesting in this movie.

23:46Jordan Hoffman:It is purely this kid being abused in these scenes and having a couple of scenes with Russell Crowe, who I agree is not bad in the movie. He's good, yeah. But just kind of sipping wine or cocktails and seeming kind of ominous. and these scenes in the present day searching for him, which are so boring and so pointless. It's like the worst law and order you've ever seen.

24:08Matt Singer:It's like the Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox. And Shailene Woodley is terrible. She's a terrible actress anyhow. She's always sucked, but she sucks so much right now.

24:17Jordan Hoffman:She's not good in this movie. I'm not willing to say she's a bad actress, but she is bad.

24:21Matt Singer:Retroactively, she's bad for just doing this.

24:23Jordan Hoffman:That's your opinion. I would say, but also she's given nothing in this movie to do other than to look sternly at people. we don't know who this woman is we don't know why obviously she's an fbi agent she should want to do her job and catch this guy but like we know nothing about her background she is not a character she is a pure cipher she just goes around yelling at people in her office i'm so glad you brought this

24:45Matt Singer:up because it's one of my other notes you know who else is pure cipher we know nothing about but we can't take our eyes off of jessica chastain and zero dark 30 which this movie is uh whatever zero divided by zero dark 30 there's an absolute the true zero i mean that is one of i think zero dark 30s major selling points is that you there's like a 0.03 seconds of her like having dinner with a friend before a bomb goes off you know nothing about her until the very last shot when she cries to give away spoil the movie and i think zero dark 30 is fantastic i'm sure at one point a producer when they were trying to sell this thing.

25:26Matt Singer:It's like, yeah, it's like Zero Dark Thirty, but for the Unabomber, because it's a female lead who will stop at nothing to get her guy, but it ain't no Zero Dark Thirty at all. It's just awful. Now, just to back up a moment, what did you think of Jacob Tremblay's performance, particularly the voice that he did?

25:46Jordan Hoffman:Okay, okay. So he talks a lot like this. He's always saying, Russell Crowe, I want to be here. I love philosophy. My debate partner, he wasn't following the rules, but he still won. So I just wanted to know if there was something wrong with my performance or my ideas. Because I just want to do my best for you. My father sent me here to edit. I'm sorry, but that's how he sounds.

26:14Matt Singer:That's what he does. He's doing his impression of Matt Singer, doing his impression of the kid from The Simpsons.

26:20Jordan Hoffman:The pimply-faced teen from The Simpsons. and he's not bad actually he's he's he's again he's not the problem i don't think he's great in this movie but again he's the material he's working with here is so flat and uninteresting i mean i am not a conspiracy minded person by nature it's not something that i i don't really indulge in conspiracies but i am inclined to believe that i mean we're look we're talking about the Unabomber movie being made by Netflix, the biggest streaming service in the world. I don't know a lot about Ted Kaczynski, but I don't think he would have been a fan of that. And the idea and the idea of the biggest streaming service in the world, instead of treating his ideas about the danger of technology seriously, treat turning him into basically like Kitty Norman Bates.

27:11Jordan Hoffman:You know, this is like this is like, you know, he I mean, the end of this movie, which we don't need to spoil but there is a like scene that is almost like a alfred hitchcock twist where he reveals something did you not even catch this at the end you're looking at me slightly incredulously what you're talking about i saw i i this movie is such a piece of junk that you might have thrown out at the end i was i was i was still with it but just the idea that this movie from netflix like so diminishes him and treats him as such a cartoon horror villain you know like it doesn't engage with anything he had to say or any of his ideas and and and the way it it the origin of him in this movie is as we said it's like it's like he sat through a couple of these experiments and was like well that's it i'm gonna start throwing bombs at people whereas this guy you know obviously it's a movie obviously it's fiction but like no you can make a good unabomber movie again after reading about him a little bit it's like there was a great movie in here that they

28:11Matt Singer:just did not make and didn't want to make and you know it's funny that you but by the way things you didn't learn do you even know because i happened to know this bit of trivia i knew one piece of trivia about ted kaczynski the unabomber i know why the fbi called him unabomber because everybody thinks he's solo you know he's a one guy right that's not the reason why he's called that and i'm sitting there like millhouse saying when are they gonna get the fireworks factory i'm sitting there saying when are they gonna explain why the fbi calls him unabom they do not bomb task force they never explained it no and then they often call him unabomb not just unabomber

28:47Jordan Hoffman:but they use those those terms interchangeably well i didn't know it from the film but as i said

28:51Matt Singer:i read a bunch afterwards so i do know why unabomber is called unabomb i was not i've been waiting a week to hear you tell me he's called unabomb because he's a mix of cinnamon raisin and ghost pepper. No, no. Well, the UN is for university because the Unabomber sent a lot of his bombs to professors and people that worked in academics and administrative people at universities. The awe is because he also sent a lot of bombs to people that worked in the aviation field, like the head of United Airlines and people like that. Then he also sent a lot of bombs to people that owned computer stores, but that didn't make it into the acronym.

29:35Matt Singer:But UN, UN, UN is university, UN is airlines or aviation, BOM is bomber, and that's UNIBOMBER. And Shailene Woodley never says it. That being said, Matt Singer, as a result, much like you, I did a little poking around and I did something that I've actually never done in my life. Yeah. I actually read some of his - You read some of the manifesto? Yeah. Now, the manifesto is really long. It's 58 pages. So I did not – for a minute I was like, I'm going to print this out and take it with me and read it on the bus. That would go great. Yeah, that's a great idea.

30:09Jordan Hoffman:Go to the library and sit there reading the manifesto.

30:12Matt Singer:I just sort of went to a random page and started reading it. It is readable. Like you would think that because he looked like a lunatic and he – let's be very clear. He is a lunatic. He killed people he didn't know for no good reason. We do not support the Unabomber. You do not have to give it to him. No, no, under no circumstances. But I just kind of went to a random page and started reading. It's well-written. He makes his arguments intellectually. Right. And it's compelling at times.

30:42Jordan Hoffman:He was clearly a very smart person.

30:44Matt Singer:He ran circles around him in math at the age of 16. That's right.

30:48Jordan Hoffman:Even though he sounded like the pimply-faced teen from The Simpsons. But that is my point, is that after reading about – Lean into that. Lean into that. Make your movie like that. At least nod in the direction. Again, the fact that Netflix made the Unabomber movie and just like writes him off as this, you know, this weirdo who Russell Crowe was mean to and his parents were mean to. I got to say, we have reviewed some. Last week we talked about like how they're – we don't – you know, the race for the best movie of the year. I don't think this is the worst we've done. It's not quite that bad. No, it's not as bad.

31:29Jordan Hoffman:I'm not sure there is a moment in any of the worst movies overall that we have done. And we talked about him a little last week. The scene where he goes home and his father is outraged that he wants to be on a debate team. Like it's like when a guy goes like goes home. You know, it's like the stereotype of, you know, not my son. My son will not go be a Broadway singer. And what is he upset about? that the guy is interested in philosophy and he wants to do debates. I mean...

32:00Matt Singer:It's so by autopilot and like it just fills the beats and it makes no sense. I agree with you.

32:07Jordan Hoffman:You joined the piss ant debate club. That's the line I wrote down. I was like, what am I watching here?

32:12Matt Singer:It's so bad. And you're right. Like some of the movies we've covered, like In the Hand of Dante and the one, The Desert Warrior, were just like awful. This was bad in a way in that it was a missed opportunity. This is the most annoying. Yes. Because it could have been good. Yes. It could have been good. If a good team put this together and, you know, Crow and Tremblay are fine. I mean, the other performances, you know, whatever. It could have been. There's a good Unabomber movie out there that won't happen now. Likely will not happen now because of this film.

32:48Jordan Hoffman:I think that's it. It may not be the worst thing we have reviewed, but it may be the most frustrating. Yeah. Not just for that reason, but I think that's a big part of the problem. Yes. So there you go.

32:59Matt Singer:Close the door on this. Don't watch it. I mean, all the good parts we spoiled, those terrible lines about Moby. Watch something else.

33:06Jordan Hoffman:It fails the Wikipedia test. Go read the Wikipedia. Go read some of these. Literally just type in Unabomber and New York Times. I read five different fascinating articles. There was a long interview with his brother. the brother is a character in the movie that they treat like a just like again superficial and not they don't that could be a whole movie is to be the brother of the Unabomber that's barely it's you know just it's so much more complex than the movie suggests

33:34Matt Singer:now imagine now because you love movies remember The Fly

33:38Jordan Hoffman:do I love movies I don't know after seeing some of these movies

33:41Matt Singer:I'm going do I love them remember The Fly Jeff Goldblum and The Fly get in the machine and they cross now imagine if Jacob Tremblay as the Unabomber, went into the fly machine with, what's his name? Jason Momoa from In the Hand of Dante. What would that sound like? I'm asking you a voice. I think you would say,

34:02Jordan Hoffman:like the pussycat. I'm quite curious. Like the pussycat. Quite curious. I just want to do my best for you. Unabomber is streaming on Netflix.

34:19Matt Singer:All right, Matt Singer, now you're up. We've just bombed out on the Unabomber, but on the recommendation segment, also known as the... Rexick!

34:29Jordan Hoffman:Rexick!

34:31Matt Singer:We like to recommend movies, in this case, not in addition to, but in lieu of. In supplement of. Yeah, replacement of. What did Unabomber, I'm going to ask you first, what do you got for the listeners?

34:43Jordan Hoffman:I I maybe it was because this movie so frustrated and annoyed me that I was kind of I was kind of took me a while to settle on something. At first, I was thinking to do, you know, some other movie about a serial killer or a terrorist, you know, some, you know, a real true crime kind of movie. One, I didn't really want to after watching this, I didn't really want to watch another. And some of the ones that I really like were either too obvious or not on streaming. And so what I ended up doing kind of as a palate cleanser, kind of what I did when we did May Day a couple of weeks ago, I recommended Kenneth Branagh's Henry.

35:27Jordan Hoffman:Like let's move away from this and let's remind ourselves of what these talented artists can do and have done in the past. And so I decided to do that again for – this time for Russell Crowe, someone we talked about a little bit during our review, who's not bad in this movie. No, he's all right. I don't know how much he cares. He's not brilliant. He's there.

35:49Matt Singer:He's fine. He's actually probably was able to knock this out in a week. He's not in that many scenes. No. He went in and he went out.

35:56Jordan Hoffman:And he is better, although probably did even fewer days on The Weight. He's better in that one. The Weight is so good. The Weight is a good movie. Yes. We recommend that film. So I was thinking about what Russell Crowe movies would be good here. A Beautiful Mind, obviously the most appropriate to pair thematically, but my favorite Russell Crowe movie and one that I found available on streaming, it's available right now on Prime Video, is L.A. Confidential. What a picture. What a picture. While this is a very different movie than Unabomber, it is a film about policing and crime. It is a movie about the corruption of society, people in power perhaps misusing their power.

36:42Jordan Hoffman:And the more I thought about it and thought about Russell Crowe in the film, he is kind of in the Jacob Tremblay role in L.A. Confidential. He is the young lump of clay that is molded into a weapon by a sinister mentor figure. In the film, Crowe plays Officer Bud White, a short-tempered cop with the LAPD. He's one of the three central figures in the story, based on the book, obviously, by James Elroy. The other two are Lieutenant Ed Exley, played by Guy Pearce, and Sergeant Jack Vincennes, played by Kevin Spacey. maybe not our favorite person in the world these days, but certainly as an actor, this was like the height of his powers.

37:26Jordan Hoffman:He's great. He's great in this movie. You can't deny it. And the film is about seeing the world of 1950s LA through their intertwining careers. And Russell Crowe's character winds up under the thumb of the powerful police captain, Dudley Smith, played by James Cromwell. He uses Bud because Bud is so, he's like a, You know, he's just like a burly monster of a man. And he uses him. He kind of like, in the same way that older Russell Crowe in Unabomber is kind of like warping Ted Kaczynski's mind. He's kind of like trying to like poison Bud White's mind and using him to his own ends, which is to intimidate these mobsters and drug dealers.

38:12Jordan Hoffman:The difference is, unlike Unabomber, where it's like, yup, that's all it took. That's how he became the Unabomber. It drove him crazy and he became a madman in LA Confidential, but isn't that simple. And he's not as singular a person. And he falls for this woman, played by Kim Basinger, and he winds up investigating this conspiracy involving these murders. His former partner is involved. So, you know, like we said, Russell Crowe isn't bad in Unabomber. He's not the problem with Unabomber. But he does seem to be an actor who will show up in almost anything these days.

38:53Matt Singer:I mean, he could, if he doesn't watch himself, he could be the next Cusack or before he, you know, Bruce Willis before he got sick. He could go that route and I hope he doesn't. He seems to be getting closer and closer to that route.

39:08Jordan Hoffman:I mean, he still makes good movies. We mentioned The Weight was a good movie that came out just a few weeks ago. But it's not like if you see his name on the poster, you could say, oh, well, it's a good movie because he's in it. He has, you know, he's got taste. He's only going to do something that's really worth his time and our interest. But you look back at this period and like the movies that he rattled off, L.A. Confidential, The Insider. You know, I'm not the biggest Gladiator fan, but no question. That was a huge movie. You're forgetting his what I think is his best movie, Master and Commander.

39:40Jordan Hoffman:I didn't forget it. I just hadn't gotten to it yet. I was going in chronological order, Master and Commander. And even, you know what else I like from that period? It's right at the very end of that period is Cinderella Man, underrated movie. Yeah. Not a bad movie. And he's great in LA Confidential. He is so, and so multifaceted. That was the other thing I was thinking about is that you have the, you know, the cop in, or the FBI agent in Unabomber is so much a cipher there. We know nothing about her. She has no personality. She has no motivations. She has no complexities, no nothing. She's a person looking at things and investigating something.

40:20Jordan Hoffman:And even though Bud White is one of three main characters in this movie, you just think of him. You still understand him, yeah. He's powerful. He's terrifying. He's a pathetic, melancholy figure. He's a romantic. He's actually a pretty good detective. He has all these different things in a movie that's only like two hours and ten minutes. It's not even that long. Yeah. It's like I put this on after watching Unabomber, and I've seen this movie a hundred times. It's one of my all-time favorite movies. I was like, God, this is a movie. And man, Russell Crowe, so good. How's it going to look in your report?

40:56Jordan Hoffman:It'll look like justice. That's what the man got. Justice. You don't know the meaning of the word, you ignorant bastard. Yeah? Well, you think it means getting your picture in the paper. Why don't you go after criminals for a change instead of comps? Stensland got what he deserved and so will you.

41:12Matt Singer:So good. That's my recommendation. It's a 10 out of 10 for me too. And I've seen it less than a year ago because I interviewed Guy Pearce maybe like December of last year. So I rewatched it and I hadn't seen it in a while. And it's so good. I remember the first time I saw it in the theaters. And I had no idea who Guy Pearce or Russell Crowe were. They were basically unknown in America. Although I had seen Crow in other things, but I didn't know it yet. You know, he was just like the guy. The guy who was in The Quick and the Dead. Yeah, exactly. I didn't put it together. The scene when they're in the interrogation room and they're listening and Crow, you know, he's got a thing about men who hurt women.

41:57Matt Singer:That's like part of his thing. And he's so angry and he's clutching the back of a chair. He breaks the back off the chair. He just turns into the Hulk, and he just splinters the chair in the theater. Saw it in New York City, crowded theater at night for opening weekend. Shouts of, oh, shit. I mean, really? I remember that being one of the great in-the-theater moments, seeing Russell Crowe's anger just vaporize a chair. And that's when, like, whoever this guy is, he's the next guy. And he was. And he is. and he is the next guy. All right. So that was my pick. LA Confidential. No one needs an excuse to re-watch LA Confidential.

42:40Matt Singer:Yeah, I don't know.

42:40Jordan Hoffman:I wonder how much it's watched today. I don't know if, you know, because of the Kevin Spacey-ness, maybe people don't watch it. But he plays a scumbag in it and he's great. He certainly does. He's not a righteous man in that film. I don't know. If you haven't seen it, I strongly, strongly recommend it. And if you haven't seen it in a while, it holds up. I was very, very happy to revisit it this week. All right.

43:03Matt Singer:So my pick was this. Well, I alluded to a little bit when we were talking about Unabomber. I joked around and I talked about the experiments in the university and I went to Ghostbusters. But of course, when those scenes in Ghostbusters were actually making fun of a real phenomenon that happened at these sort of Ivy League schools in the social sciences, the experiments of the guy that – the true thing that Russell Crowe's character did at Harvard, later experiments, I think it was at Cornell from a professor named Solomon Ash, very famously in the 1970s, something called the Stanford Prison Experiment.

43:44Matt Singer:But the big mama of them all, and something that I've been kind of fascinated with to the point that I've actually read more than one book on the topic, not even movies. I'm talking about a book, which is like a movie, but takes longer, is the experiments of Stanley Milgram. And Stanley Milgram, it was an interesting dude. And there is a biopic about, well, there's a movie about Stanley Milgram, a TV movie starring William Shatner, which I'm not recommending. Oh, boy. Wait a second. Who's in it? It's called William Shatner. Oh, Sam, can you, little red alert. Red alert. It's called The Tenth Level, but that is alluded to in a truly terrific but unusual biopic about Stanley Milgram called Experimenter by the hard -to-pin-down, low-budget, independent filmmaker Michael Almereda, whose movies are often good but not always good.

44:48Matt Singer:He made the black-and-white vampire film Nadja in the 1990s. He did something on Nikola Tesla with Ethan Hawke to bring him up again. And he's done some documentaries. He did a cool one about the photographer William Eggleston. But my favorite of his films is Experimenter, which stars Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram and Winona Ryder as Mrs. Milgram. And a lot of faces show up for one scene. John Leguizamo, Anthony Edwards, a lot of other really cool people. but it is an unusual movie uh it's not typical it's very for as my father would say it's a little artsy fartsy but it leans into it very very well now the Milgram experiments if you don't know it's the um obedience to authority experiments probably most people listening know about this happened at Yale University in the early 1960s Milgram um was a American Jew that he says at the beginning of the film you know had he been had he been born in poland he would have been killed in the concentration camps as a little kid but he was born in america and this this is something that uh disturbed him his whole life understandably so he didn't understand how an average person could could be part of the systematic killing of so many people in the in the nazi concentration camps so he decided to do an experiment about human nature and what he discovered, if you believe that his experiments are facts or concrete evidence of his theories, that people, not everybody, we could all say that we're part of the 2 % that wouldn't do it.

46:26Matt Singer:Most people will do what they're told to do when they're told to do it just because someone in authority tells them to do it. And it's a very, very disturbing thing. And basically, you know, the Milgram experiments are complicated. You can look them up on your own. It involves electric shocks and faking a whole lot of fake stuff and you know you think you're doing one thing but really you're being observed blah blah blah we adjust the script so that the learner bangs on the wall but says nothing we ask the teacher to physically press the learner's hand

46:59Jordan Hoffman:on a copper plate forcing him to receive the shock wrong 135 volts it was very very controversial so

47:08Matt Singer:much so that he was basically thrown out of Harvard for it. And then Milgram was haunted by this thing that made him famous his whole life, but he was disturbed by the results he found. And then he continued to do odd social science experiments. I mean, one of them was he would just take a guy and put him in the street and have him stare up at the top of a building. And you do that long enough, and you're going to get 100 people staring up at the building. And the guy doesn't have to say anything. And that's shown in the film. but the movie uses a lot of weird rear projection and there's a scene where he's talking about the holocaust which is the elephant in the room so to speak so an elephant shows up in the room and that's either visually interesting or you find that obnoxious i got in an argument with one of our fellow critics who thought it was stupid and i said no it's pretty cool actually so the movie experimenter is a straight and it's on amazon uh streaming uh what's it called prime so you can watch it if you want to for free if you subscribe to Prime and I think you should give it a shot I think you know people listen as you probably have heard of Michael Almereta he is what you would call like an art house filmmaker like early Steven Soderbergh type of spin on a film it's he's got that I hate to say you know the word indie doesn't mean anything anymore but the movies he was making in the early 90s are still the movies he's making when he made Experimenter 10 years ago it still has that I guess you could say underground feel to it.

48:32Matt Singer:Experimental? Experimental, yeah. It works really, really well. And Winona Ryder is great in it, by the way. She doesn't do too much. I mean, this is 10 years ago now already, but it's one of the better things she's done in recent years. And Sarsgaard is great. And he plays his delivery is, like he's hunched over all the time, and he's kind of joking, but not joking. He's just so sad. Like he's just like, holy shit, the world is terrible. Human beings are awful and I'm a human being too. That means I'm awful. He's got this all this weight on his shoulders. Maybe that's why he's hunched over. But he's also funny.

49:07Matt Singer:He's making jokes all the time. There's a lot of wit to it.

49:10Jordan Hoffman:President Kennedy's been shot. He was shot in a motorcade in Dallas. He was shot in the head. It's Milburn. That's just another one of his experiments. Yes. Kelly, you've got that radio, yeah?

49:24Matt Singer:Turn it on.

49:39Jordan Hoffman:this is real

49:43Matt Singer:I one time and then I'll end with this whenever the movie Poor Things came out when did Poor Things come out? like three years ago? two, three years ago I happened to be so lucky as to see it at the New York Film Festival And I sit down at Lincoln Center and I'm seated in a chair and directly to my right is Maggie Gyllenhaal and her husband, Peter Sarsgaard. They were right there. What am I going to do, not talk to them? Yes. So I turned to them both. You could have. And I said to Maggie, she had just recently had the film The Lost Daughter, The Last Daughter. Yes, The Lost Daughter. Which was quite good.

50:18Matt Singer:And I said, by the way, Lost Daughter, which I think was at New York Film Festival the year prior. And I said to her, Lost Daughter. great movie congratulations and she's like oh thank you very much and i meant it then i pointed to her husband very handsome husband as far as i by the way hello and i said did you see this guy in the stanley milgram movie and she's like i did i'm like he was so good in that this guy this guy that you got right here he killed it in the stanley milgram film that movie was phenomenal i think it's one of the best things i've seen in a really long time and he's kind of chuckling.

50:50Matt Singer:He said, security, security, please. I was being quiet. I wasn't calling attention to them. And I just said, he was great at Stanley Ringwald. I said, if you ever, I said, if you ever see this guy, congratulate him for me or something. And then I turned around and I looked at my phone. I just ignored them at that point. It was a 60 second interaction, but I, I don't think he was expecting a shout out to that. I mean, this movie made 25 cents at the box office, but it was truly, I think, I loved Experimenter and watching Unabomber, just like you, went directly to LA Confidential. I immediately went to Experimenter, watched it right afterwards and it cleansed me of the absolute dreck of Unabomber to see this film.

51:32Matt Singer:So hats off to that.

51:33Jordan Hoffman:All right. Well, I do want to, first of all, I just want to mention, you mentioned it is on Prime. It's also available, if people don't subscribe there, it's on Roku Channel, Tubi, YouTube TV for free with ads. It's on Canopy. It's on Hoopla. So it's on a lot of different places that you'd have to watch it with ads but you don't have to be a subscriber at Prime Video to watch it. And as much as it pains me to say it, this is a very inspired choice on your part. I like this movie a lot. I have not seen it since it came out but I liked it a lot when it came out. And it is a little bit of a strange and eclectic movie.

52:13Jordan Hoffman:And unlike Unabomber, which is like the most boring biopic you could make, here is a movie that uses like a biography to do something interesting. It's depressing, though. It's not a happy movie. It's not. Well, I mean, the experiment is not exactly a happy experiment. And I just thought like I'm looking back at what I wrote on Letterboxd from 2015. It's like it's a movie about the most famous electric shocks in the history of psychology. and the movie is all about shocking the audience with these strange and surreal moments like the elephant, like, you know, obvious process. Very clever. It's a clever and interesting movie.

52:53Jordan Hoffman:So I like that pick. Good job, Jordan. I don't like saying it, but I had to say it. All right, should we get to our listener request? The one that gave you so much agita for days and days. Would you like me to read the email that we received? Yeah, go for it. Go for it and read it. Okay, so here is the listener request that we will be answering this week. Hello, Matt, Jordan, and Sam. Hoping you guys can send me a recommendation based off one of my favorite movies. I absolutely love The House of the Devil from 2009. I enjoy it as a horror movie, but my favorite aspect is it being a modern... okay, not as modern now because it's close to its 20-year anniversary movie, but filmed like it was made in the era it was set, which is the 1980s.

53:49Jordan Hoffman:So, basically, I'm looking for something from the last 20 years or so that feels like it was made closer to the decade it depicts. Bonus points if it's horror or sci-fi, and the more obscure the better. I have Netflix, I have Disney +, I have Amazon, but I am also not afraid to shell out a few dollars. My Letterboxd handle is geek underscore lantern, if that helps, or if people want to follow our listener on Letterboxd. Thanks. Keep up the great show. Definitely one of my favorite listens every week. Help me, Matt Jor, Sam Kenobi. You're my only hope from Brian. So thank you, Brian, for that email.

54:27Jordan Hoffman:Now, can we help Brian Jordan?

54:29Matt Singer:Yeah, it's a toughie. I mean, when I, well, first of all, when I first read it, it was funny. because he wrote to all of us and you replied before I got to my email. So I saw that you replied and you said, oh, great. This was, I think, two weeks ago. Great email. We're going to get this one next week. And I'm like, oh, Matt says this is a great email. I can't wait to read it. And then I scroll down and I thought he wrote not House of the Devil, but House of the Dead. And I'm like, the Uwe Ball video game film, House of the Dead? What? That's a good one. What's Matt talking about? Then I saw House of the Devil.

55:04Matt Singer:I mean, he's right. I've only seen House of the Devil once. But yes, the whole shtick of House of the Devil is if you were told it was made in 1981, you'd believe it. It's not just set there. It's in the style of. And I'm racking my brain. What could it be? And for a minute, I'm like, well, what about Chinatown? Chinatown is a noir and it feels like a noir. And I'm like, no, it's in color and it's too randy. I don't know. And then I was going to go weird and I'm like the films of Guy Madden. right because he uses all those oldie timey cameras but I'm like those movies are set in another planet they're not even set like in the 30s or 20s just because he's using old film stock I thought about this as a possibility too

55:46Jordan Hoffman:yes they don't quite fit

55:47Matt Singer:yeah I kind of I'm Guy Madden's shorts are maybe better than his features because those can get a little tiresome after a while but alright anyway I settled on one of the all time great movies and I have cover I have I'm going to let you guys guess because I have given a shout out to this filmmaker once before. Okay. He's a filmmaker that made movies beginning in the very late 60s up until, I don't know, maybe the 2007, 2008 was his last movie, give or take. But his heyday was the 70s. And he made this movie and the other movie I mentioned on a rec seg earlier in the 1970s. And this is set in the 1930s.

56:31Thank you.

56:33Matt Singer:And it's in black and white.

56:35Jordan Hoffman:Oh, well, first I thought you were going to pick like Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, which looks like it takes place in the future. Right. No, no, no. The decade of the 33... What year is it? Well, it depends.

56:48Matt Singer:2300s. 23rd century. And that's what it looks like. No, it's not Star Trek II.

56:52Jordan Hoffman:Is it a film by Peter Bogdanovich? It is.

56:56Matt Singer:It is Peter Bogdanovich, yeah. who made one banger after another in the early 70s, including Paper Moon, which is a screwball, not screwball, no, I take that back. It's a 30s road picture with screwball elements that with some tweaks could be just a movie from the 30s. I mean, there are some elements that are a little bit more prurient than would have been allowed in the 30s. But I think, you know, he wanted to make a movie that could have been like that and came pretty damn close. The movie, of course, stars Ryan O 'Neill and Tatum O 'Neill and Madeline Kahn. And it is basically, it is a crime comedy, but it tugs at the heartstrings.

57:51Matt Singer:a little girl and a dastardly guy who's playing her dad. And then Madeleine Kahn is the floozy, but she's got the heart of gold and blah, blah, blah. And they're driving around the South during the Depression selling Bibles as a scam. And it's just the most charming film you've ever seen and looks phenomenal. The crisp black and white cinematography, the production design, the old timey cars with the funny ahuga horn. Not the bazooka horn, but the ahooka horn.

58:21Jordan Hoffman:Well, let's give him some money. No. Just a little bit. We got$305.16. A whole nother business giving it away. It's bad enough you give away Bibles. But they're poorly. The whole country's poorly. I told you before. But Frankie Roosevelt said we got to look out more than that. I don't care about Frankie Roosevelt. But he says it. That so?

58:38Matt Singer:She's adorable. She's like an eight-year-old girl. I mean, a precocious eight-year-old girl who frowns and stamps her foot is the funniest thing in the world to me. I mean, one of these days we'll cover a Shirley Temple movie. Have you ever watched a Shirley Temple movie? I don't think so. No. She's hilarious. Sam, have you ever actually watched a Shirley Temple movie?

59:00Jordan Hoffman:Clips, but no movie. No.

59:01Matt Singer:She's very funny. I mean, she's a little girl who's all cute and stuff. So I don't know. When my niece was the age of Tatum O 'Neill in Paper Moon, she'd have to do anything and I'd crack up. She'd have to say, like, is it dinner time? They'd be like, she's the funniest thing in the whole world. Look at this little girl. Well, Matt, you've got two little girls at home. They're hilarious, aren't they? They're fine. Anyway, Paper Moon. I'm not reinventing the wheel here. It's a great picture. It got nominated for every Oscar under the sun, and it deserved every one of them. Whatever beat it out for Best Picture shouldn't have won.

59:35Matt Singer:But it's such a sweet and funny movie, very clever. It's when Bogdanovich was unstoppable. He was just a machine pumping out one great movie after another. What's up, Doc? Last Picture Show, this. Well, I guess those are the big three, really. And I recommend it. I forgot to check where it was streaming, but I would have to imagine that it's streaming somewhere. It's probably on Criterion, right?

59:58Jordan Hoffman:It's on Canopy, or you can rent it.

1:00:01Matt Singer:Not on Criterion?

1:00:02Jordan Hoffman:It's not on Criterion.

1:00:04Matt Singer:It deserves to be in the closet. So I don't know. You love Paper Moon, right? Who doesn't love Paper Moon? Sure. No, that's a great pick.

1:00:11Jordan Hoffman:What is your pick? Because this is a difficult question we got. I thought it was fun. I thought of a few options. I couldn't quite find another horror film for Brian, or at least not a very obscure one. The best example I could think of where you're making something that feels like an object made in the time it is depicting is actually a comedy. and it uses the crude technology available at the time the film is set, which is the early 1980s. The name of the movie that I recommend is called Computer Chess. It is directed by Andrew Buzelski. This film is currently available on Canopy, on Hoopla, or on Plex.

1:00:55Jordan Hoffman:Those are all free with ads or Canopy. You need a subscription through your library perhaps, but I watched it. I revisited it on Plex. It is also available for rent if you don't want to use any of those things. The movie is set in a hotel in the year 1980 where a bunch of computer nerds gather for a convention where they can test their computers, their like homemade kit-bashed computers against one another in games of chess. And whichever computer wins the tournament against other computers then gets to face off with the chess champion, the human chess champion who hosts the competition, who in a very nerdy meta element is played by the famous film critic Gerald Perry.

1:01:46Jordan Hoffman:And, you know, Buzelski was one of the leading figures in what was called the mumblecore movement of the mid-2000s. 2000s, these movies that were kind of defined by a lack of apparent style. They were very shaggy and they were made with digital cameras. Most of them are terrible. A lot of them are not great. Yeah, I'm not a fan. But Budzelski's movies, he always kind of got grouped in just by kind of proximity and maybe some of subject matter a little bit. But his movies are always more composed than a lot of the others. And in computer chess, the aesthetics and the form absolutely are central.

1:02:33Jordan Hoffman:The film was shot with these antique analog video cameras. The one that's listed, I think, on the Wikipedia page is the Sony AVC 3260, which produces these kind of milky, low-res, black-and-white images. Frankly, they look awful. I mean, it looks like Dark Shadows. Yeah, it almost has a kind of kinetoscope look to it a little bit. But it absolutely enhances the feeling of authenticity, as if you're watching kind of a documentary about this 1980s, early 80s world of computer dorks working on their chess programs. I am Pat Henderson. I am very excited. We have players from all over America, Canada, Quebec, just great.

1:03:26Jordan Hoffman:And we have something new this year. We have a lady who is competing way in the back corners. I'm happy about that, too. She's welcome. And there is some of that mumblecore style to the dialogue. It does feel at times a little improvised. There are some recognizable faces. Wiley Wiggins is one of the programmers. And then there are also nonprofessional actors in certain parts. and it has really amazing period costumes and glasses, hair. And computers. And computers. It is this strange, quirky little marvel of a movie. And I didn't rewatch the whole film this week, but I watched like half of it.

1:04:08Jordan Hoffman:And seeing the characters discuss artificial intelligence and the nature of computer brains, and doing that now where we are now it just gives the film an even greater like weird resonance than when it came out in 2013 and it's also just a really funny movie because it has these all these weird oddball characters just wait until you meet the character Mike Papa George played by Miles Page what an unforgettably human character in this movie about you know the growing computer intelligence so that's that is my pick

1:04:44Matt Singer:yeah it's a really good computer chess and when you talk about like the video look like it's the type of thing where if there's like a flame it'll leave a streak on the on the screen and i think

1:04:55Jordan Hoffman:that does happen or like early in the movie the cameraman like pans up or pans past the sun and another character scolds him he's like don't do that don't do that you'll blow out the tube

1:05:05Matt Singer:yeah exactly so good uh but you know but so that that really does fulfill the assignment in a remarkable way so hats off to you but it's also a really really good movie that much like for you an experimental uh you hadn't i have not seen this since um since it came out in 2013 i'd love to revisit it so that's that's a good pick so uh i'll wrap up the rex egg then matt's recommendation in lieu of not in addition to in lieu of unabomber he recommends la confidential the great curtis Hanson nominated for best picture and also um won Kim Basinger the best supporting actress that's on Prime Video I recommended Experimental Michael Amareda's Experimenter which is also on Prime Video but also on Hoopla Canopy Roku Channel and Tubi for the listener Rex Egg Brian who threw us a curveball but I think we both hit it out of the park I recommend Paper Moon Peter Bogdanovich from the early 70s it's on Canopy or you can pay a few bucks on VOD and Matt's coming in with the weirdo hard to describe computer chess which is on canopy hoopla plex or you can pay a few bucks on vod for a running list of all the films we've ever talked about and recommended on the show all you have to do is go to letterboxd and search for now streaming on bazooka and it's in the notes to this week's show.

1:06:35Matt Singer:The list is now well over 100 titles. It's over two pages long now.

1:06:40Jordan Hoffman:You have to, there's a second page

1:06:41Matt Singer:if you want to see all the titles. Turn every page. You could also just go to Google and type in Bazooka Letterboxd and it'll come up. If you would like a personalized streaming recommendation, much like Brian, although you got to come correct now because Brian had a good one, send us an email.

1:06:57Jordan Hoffman:I love these very specific ones we're getting. It's not just, I just want to see a movie. It's like, I want this kind of movie. I love it.

1:07:03Matt Singer:I want, it's a challenge. This kind of movie. A challenge is good. Yeah. Yeah. It really did take me a couple of days to come up with Paper Moon. Okay. Send a note to feedback at filmspottingsvu.com. Feedback at filmspottingsvu, all one word,.com. And we'll get you on the list. We're always looking for more.

1:07:28Jordan Hoffman:Bazooka, when you gotta scream, Bazooka, it's cream of the crummy, make a smile at the top of your favorite streaming

1:07:49Matt Singer:app.

1:08:01Matt Singer:Last time on FilmSpotting SVU, we played the game where Sam was reading song lyrics to us. And at first I was down. I was down, but I came from behind. And then I defeated Matt Singer. I think there was something wrong with my mic. I think you hacked into my mic. You muted it. And then as a result of my winning, I am now blessed and cursed to come up with this week's game.

1:08:30Jordan Hoffman:Well, I think there was a documentary on ESP. It was like winning time. Jordan.

1:08:34Matt Singer:Jordan Hoffman. Exactly. So this week's game, I don't actually. Oh, I do. I did finally come up with with a funny name for it. It's called. Well, it's you know, it's the game is set in the 1990s. OK. Because half of Unabomber is set in the 1990s. Okay. And the game is called LLLE. Ladies Love Law Enforcement.

1:09:06Matt Singer:And Unabomber. LL Cooley, you couldn't go to the name? I couldn't come up with a good name. I could not come up with a good name. It's the hardest part of the game. It's the hardest part of the game. He's coming up with a name. Ladies Love Law Enforcement. Well, the movie Unabomber is terrible. Correct. But it does include Shailene Woodley as a 1990s detective working for the FBI. So the films that I have submitted today are all movies from the 1990s. And I just want to say normally the 1990s are 1991 to 2000. No, they're not.

1:09:47Jordan Hoffman:They're 1990 to 1990? Let's not go down this rabbit hole.

1:09:52Matt Singer:Why are we then in the 21st century? Please don't do this. Okay, all right. Anyway, this includes the year 1990. Okay, so you're happy. Yeah, I am happy. Okay. For the purposes of this game, the 1990s are 1990 through 1999. Great. These are movies. You mean the 90s then? No, the 90s. What century are we? There's no year zero. Let's do it. Okay. So these are movies from the 1990s in which a woman, a female woman, plays. I got one. The first one is actually quite easy. The first one you might as well guess now. Sounds of the Lambs. Sounds of the Lambs. In which a female woman plays a member of law enforcement, either an FBI detective, potentially, well, not the CIA because that's not law enforcement, but a cop, LAPD, or some kind of member of law enforcement.

1:10:54Matt Singer:And we named the movie? I'm going to start giving you clues, and you're going to name the movie. Sounds of the Lambs. Well, I wanted to start out.

1:11:04Jordan Hoffman:Let's each start with one point. Come on.

1:11:06Matt Singer:No, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to move it around. I wanted to start off real early, real easy. Silence of the Lambs. No, the answer is here is the first question. Okay, okay. Silence of the Lambs. Shush. Okay. Law enforcement. Law enforcement. Ladies love law enforcement. Ladies love law enforcement. Okay. This movie's Wikipedia page includes a whole section devoted to whether or not this film is based on a true story, which is usually not a topic of debate, but for this film it is. That's our only clue? No, it's not the only clue, but I'm taking a pregnant pause.

1:11:44Jordan Hoffman:Okay, okay, okay, because I don't know.

1:11:46Matt Singer:I'm taking a pregnant pause. It's not Silence of the Lambs, I know that. No, taking a pregnant pause. Right. This movie inspired a television show that has lasted five seasons. Taking a pregnant pause. We got it. We got the joke. I thought you would have known. Oh. This movie. Fargo. Matt Singer. Fargo. The answer is Fargo. I thought you were just making a pregnancy joke in general. It took me a minute to realize you were making a specific joke. This movie is, you know what? To this day, nobody really knows if this is based on a true story. It's hogwash.

1:12:26Jordan Hoffman:It's made up.

1:12:27Matt Singer:Well, if you go to the Wikipedia page, there's a lot longer than you'd think. Fargo, the Coen brothers, what's her name? Frances McDormand plays Marge Gunderson. She is a woman in law enforcement in a movie from the 1990s. Oh, yeah.

1:12:43Jordan Hoffman:I never watched the TV show, but I've heard it was good. I've heard it was real good.

1:12:46Matt Singer:It has only trace elements connected to the film, is what I'm told. And it has the blessing of the Coens, but they don't watch it either. They have nothing to do with it. They have nothing to do with it. They probably get a nice paycheck. Okay, here we go. this movie features a song by Q Lazarus I don't know who that is

1:13:10Jordan Hoffman:Silence of the Lambs

1:13:11Matt Singer:that's right come on

1:13:16Jordan Hoffman:it's what the Buffalo Bill listens to while he's doing the thing with my horses or whatever I said Silence of the Lambs at least five minutes ago so I think I should get a point too

1:13:28Matt Singer:Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, is the woman in law enforcement in this game, Ladies Love Law Enforcement. Okay, now it gets a little more complicated. I will now read to you the character name, the lady of law enforcement of this film from the 1990s. Inspector Mary Jane M.J. Monaghan. Who plays M.J. Monaghan? this movie features cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs who also shot Paper Moon yeah this movie's co-stars MJ what? Monaghan we're talking about law enforcement and movies in the 90s we're going to have a lot of Irish names on this list this movie's co-stars include Harry Connick Jr oh I know this This movie is double the women in law enforcement slash investigation.

1:14:31Matt Singer:There are two women, not just one, but two. What? And the other woman's character is Dr. Helen Hudson. M.J. Monaghan and Helen Hudson on the case. Have I seen this movie? I don't think I have. It was a success in like 94 or so. Okay. This movie's co-stars include Dermot Mulroney in addition to Harry Connick. This is such a 90s movie.

1:15:00Jordan Hoffman:I love it. It sounds so 90s. This movie was set in San Francisco. I'm going to take a guess because I recently, I think I found a movie because obviously Sam doesn't know and I'm just going to guess. Go for it. I saw this movie when I was trying to find potential serial killer movies to watch as a potential and it definitely had two female leads. I did not watch it. I've never seen it. It is the movie. Is the movie? Question mark. Copycat.

1:15:27Matt Singer:Yes. Sigourney Weaver, right? Sigourney Weaver and Helen, not Helen, Holly Hunter. Holly Hunter. Yes. She's the cop. And Sigourney Weaver is the doctor of professor of psychology or something. And they're on the hunt.

1:15:45Jordan Hoffman:I, I, this, this one, I was looking for potential serial killer movies to watch that I could and then I was like, I don't want to watch any of these movies. But this one, I glanced at it and I go, I've never seen this movie. It has Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter.

1:15:59Matt Singer:I didn't see it, but I read about it in Premiere magazine. There you go. We're all beyond 90s right now. The director of Copycat later went on to make two very entertaining motion pictures, Entrapment, which stars Catherine Zeta-Jones' Behind, and The Core. Oh, The Core. Yeah, they go to the core. They go to the core. We got to drill into the core. All right, next up, next up. This one's a little tougher. What is the score? Is it two to one? Two to one in favor of Matt. How many questions do we have? We're going to seven.

1:16:34Jordan Hoffman:And how many answers are Silence of the Lambs? Do I have another shot?

1:16:39Matt Singer:Women in law enforcement. The woman in law enforcement in this motion picture has the name Amelia Donaghy. Oh, Donaghy. Do you know it? No. Very 90s. she plays a rookie NYPD officer she's paired with a gentleman by the name of Lincoln Rime

1:17:02Jordan Hoffman:which one is it though crap which one is it do you want to buzz in or you just want to talk I'm going to guess the bone collector

1:17:15Matt Singer:yes Matt Singer collecting points like Denzel Washington is the spider yes uh no no no no you're thinking of kiss the girls into a long came a spider

1:17:28Jordan Hoffman:they're all of that that genre of like paperback thriller a male adaptations and a male star and

1:17:36Matt Singer:a female star and ashley judd yeah and she does not play a woman in law enforcement which is why she was on my first draft and then when i went to do it i could have sworn she was a cop and ashley judge does not play a woman. Well, I don't want to give it away. Don't give it away. Don't give it away.

1:17:51Jordan Hoffman:But the bone collector is like, it's Denzel. Angelina Jolie. Denzel in a wheelchair. He's like, yeah, he was going to say he's paralyzed or something.

1:17:59Matt Singer:Denzel's in a wheelchair. Angelina Jolie is a rookie cop. Queen Latifah shows up. Ed O 'Neill shows up. What a picture. This is very 90s. The bone collector.

1:18:09Jordan Hoffman:Ed O 'Neill. Does Ed O 'Neill play like a cop? A hardened cop? I would imagine

1:18:15Matt Singer:that a water cooler yelling at screaming. God, what a career Ed O 'Neill has had.

1:18:20Jordan Hoffman:God bless that man.

1:18:21Matt Singer:Alright, we're moving on. And Matt's in the lead, but I think Sam can pick it up. There's still time for Sam.

1:18:27Jordan Hoffman:Last week when I let Jordan

1:18:29Matt Singer:come from behind. Alright, let's continue our look at 1990s movies involving women as law enforcement. This time, the woman in law enforcement has the name Megan Turner.

1:18:44Jordan Hoffman:It's astonishing how little information that first clue gives us every time.

1:18:49Matt Singer:Well, if I said Clarice Starling, you'd know. No, I know. That's true. Megan Turner. This movie came out in 1990 on the early side.

1:18:59Jordan Hoffman:So the 80s. Okay.

1:19:00Matt Singer:Yeah, yeah. All right. 1990. This movie is set and was shot in New York City. New York, New York. A town so nice, they named it twice. And what was it?

1:19:11Jordan Hoffman:Give me the name of the character again. It was... Megan Turner. Megan Turner, 1990. Megan Turner's shot in New York.

1:19:18Matt Singer:And one of the co-stars is Richard Jenkins. Richard Jenkins. Another co-star is Tom Sizemore. Another co-star is Clancy Brown. Wow. We're in deep that guy territory. It's a good movie. The director of this motion picture was later nominated for best director twice and won one of those two times. So this Clancy Brown cop movie, the director of this later went on to win an Academy Award for Best Directing. This one is not ringing any bells. Furthermore, this person who was the director also won the Best Picture Oscar because they were also the producer of the film that won Best Picture and also won the Best Director.

1:20:11Matt Singer:you might have to read the plot description Megan Turner you're going to get it not this one but the next one Megan Turner is a rookie cop she's not just NYPD she's a rookie she's new on the beat co-stars include get ready to buzz in if you don't know this you don't know it

1:20:28Jordan Hoffman:I think I know what it is but I'm trying to remember what the name of the movie was co-stars include Ron Silver okay I think I know what it is Sam's making a face I should have buzzed. Is this Blue Steel?

1:20:42Matt Singer:It's Blue Steel!

1:20:44Jordan Hoffman:That's what I thought. Jamie Lee Curtis? It's Catherine Bigelow. It's Catherine Bigelow, later won the Oscar. I have not seen this one since the days of Blockbuster video. I don't have any memory of it at all. I kind of wanted to say V.I. Warchowski just for fun.

1:21:03Matt Singer:She's like a private eye, right? Does that count? as a lady in law enforcement? No, that is not law enforcement, which is why one of the Ashley Judd movies isn't on this list. Okay, Sam's coming in three to two. All right, here we go. Two more ladies love law enforcement. In this motion picture, which I saw in the theaters, the lady of law enforcement has the name... Wait, no, that's autocorrect. Hold on. That's not... Please hold. Please hold for just a moment because that can't be correct. No, that was autocorrect. Okay. Joe Christman. Autocorrect wrote Joe Christmas, and I don't think that's correct.

1:21:49Jordan Hoffman:Joe like J-O? Correct. Joe Polnicek.

1:21:53Matt Singer:Okay. Joe Christman. Joe Christman. Is our lady in law enforcement. Okay. But, not to give away the ending, Joe Christman is just an alias. She really plays special investigator Emily Harper. This movie is set in Pittsburgh.

1:22:11Jordan Hoffman:Oh. Matt Singer? Wait, wait. I can see. Is it Striking Distance? Yes. Yes.

1:22:20Matt Singer:It's Striking Distance. Very good. The only action movie ever made in Pittsburgh. Sarah Jessica Parker. Do you remember? Wow. That's right. Sarah, could you imagine Sarah Jessica Parker as in an action adventure comedy? I can remember. And she plays a cop? I've seen this.

1:22:35Jordan Hoffman:This one I saw. this was a movie that was on HBO in heavy rotation for like six months. And it was Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker. And I definitely watched it at least eight times.

1:22:45Matt Singer:Do you remember the name of the director of this film?

1:22:48Jordan Hoffman:That I don't remember. No.

1:22:49Matt Singer:His name, according to lore is Rowdy Harrington. Oh, Rowdy Harrington. Sure. Yeah. Roadhouse.

1:22:56Jordan Hoffman:Roadhouse.

1:22:56Matt Singer:Yeah. Rowdy Harrington. He also did a movie called gladiator, but not that gladiator. All right. Well, you know what? Mathematically, uh, Matt has won, but let's give Sam a chance to come in within striking distance. That's right. This movie is set in the District of Columbia. This movie's lady of law enforcement is named Secret Service Agent Nina Chance. Come on now. They didn't do that. You don't remember Nina Chance?

1:23:29Jordan Hoffman:You don't remember Agent Chance? That very real name.

1:23:32Matt Singer:her backstory is before she was secret service agent Nina Chance. She was a former Olympic gold sharpshooter. Of course she was. This movie co-stars Alan Alda. Oh, oh, oh, I've actually never seen this movie. What year did we get the year yet? The year was 1997.

1:23:57Jordan Hoffman:I'm going to take a guess. I might be wrong. Go for it. I don't know for sure, But the vibe I'm getting is Murder at 1600. Matt Singer is unstoppable today. You couldn't have done Out of Sight in Cancisco. I know my 90s schlock, I think, is what we've proven here.

1:24:16Matt Singer:Murder at 1600 was, I believe, the premises. There's been a murder at the White House. Murder at the White House, yeah. Now, wasn't there a Clint Eastwood movie that came out around the same time?

1:24:25Jordan Hoffman:Absolute Power, yes.

1:24:27Matt Singer:And was that not also about a murder at 1600?

1:24:29Jordan Hoffman:Yeah, and that was based on a best-selling book, like David Balducci or something like that. Balducci, yeah, yeah. Balducci, something like that, where it was like he's like a thief, and he's like robbing – he may not be robbing the White House. He may be robbing like a hotel or something, like the Watergate. Right, and he like stumbles upon the president like murdering a woman or something like that.

1:24:50Matt Singer:Oh, yeah, okay.

1:24:51Jordan Hoffman:So it is a very similar premise.

1:24:54Matt Singer:Yeah, Absolute Power came out February 14th, 97. Hey, that's a great Valentine's Day gift. Let's do tickets to Clint Eastwood in absolute power. And then April 18th, right after you pay your taxes, you go see Murder at 1600 starring Wesley Snipes. And who was the lady of law enforcement? I did not know this.

1:25:12Jordan Hoffman:I had to look it up. Diane Lane. Rene Rousseau? That's 90s.

1:25:15Matt Singer:It should have been Rene Rousseau. It was Diane Lane. Well, listen, Matt Singer, you know your ladies of law enforcement. I do. Look at me. Congratulations. You win hosting the next game. You get to host the next game. Good, good. It's been too long.

1:25:29Jordan Hoffman:I enjoy hosting. And I lose so much that I don't get to do it very much.

1:25:34Matt Singer:Well, you know, the game has ended. But luckily, there's still time to talk about movies that are available to watch on streaming. Because we are the streaming video unit. There are some new movies that are just coming out of the theaters or perhaps even are still in the theaters that are soon going to be able to rent for premium rental fees. But might be worth it among them. We've talked about it on the show already. Coyote vs. Acme. a movie I love. Good movie. Great movie. Great movie. Funny.

1:26:03Jordan Hoffman:Funny.

1:26:04Matt Singer:They're falling down. Sure. Rocks are falling on their head. They're getting hit by trains. It's hilarious. Paul Greengrass's The Uprising with Andrew Garfield. Funny movie. Nobody saw this. People are falling down. This came in one week. This was at one week at the local AMC.

1:26:20Jordan Hoffman:This movie will have a very strange legacy. Here's what it will be remembered for if it is remembered. will be remembered for a very bizarre marketing campaign where like a week before it came out, they suddenly started some ads, suddenly started like calling it like the uprising colon, like the rise of Robin Hood. They started like they without anyone's and apparently without approval of the filmmakers or something. It was a very strange story. They just started saying, actually, it's a Robin Hood movie. And then they stopped after like two days. And then the other strange element of this movie.

1:26:54Jordan Hoffman:Do you know what I'm going to say? The other thing I remembered. this movie was being shown somewhere, I think in California, maybe. And a man was so annoyed with the people in the theater on their phone that he pepper sprayed them. And he was arrested. At the uprising.

1:27:13Matt Singer:At the uprising. My God. Well, you know, it's funny. Don't be on your phone,

1:27:18Jordan Hoffman:but don't pepper spray people.

1:27:19Matt Singer:I happen to be very, very good friends with somebody who works. With Andrew Garfield? Somebody who works at the company that distributed this movie, The Uprising. And when that whole thing broke. The Robin Hood kerfuffle? The Robin Hood thing. We're in a group chat. And I didn't want to bring it up. Somebody else in the group chat is like, so what the hell is going on with that Robin Hood thing? And he just wrote back. He's like, very difficult week at work. Would rather not talk about it. He may be listening right now. So if you're there, we love you. Okay. Let's continue now. theatrical releases coming to streaming evil dead burn directed by sebastian vanacek i almost saw this and then didn't i heard it was very violent and very gross did you see it i have not seen it

1:28:07Jordan Hoffman:i don't i didn't love the last evil dead movie i'm not crazy about like turning evil dead this franchise that i adore that had a very like clear point of view and like a distinctive quality I don't know how I feel about just making like really gross, gory, like zombie movies and calling them evil dead. I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I will watch this. Where is this one streaming, Jordan? This one can be streamed on. I can see HBO Max. It's on home box office maximum. I thought you were paying attention, but I will. I will watch it there, but I didn't get a chance to see it. Like I missed the screening and I just I couldn't bring myself to catch up with it.

1:28:46Jordan Hoffman:But I will. I will watch it. To me, this is what modern Evil Dead is for. They are streaming movies to me.

1:28:53Matt Singer:I like my horror movies funny. That's why I liked the most recent Resident Evil. I love the most recent Resident Evil.

1:29:01Jordan Hoffman:Resident Evil is very good, and it is very funny at times.

1:29:05Matt Singer:So I was about to go see Evil Dead. I got the AMCA list here, and I even secured a ticket, and then something came up, and I'm just like, eh, I guess I'm not going. No money wasted. So anyway, next up, Jane Schoenbrunn's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. I saw Jane Schoenbrunn's prior film, I Saw the TV Glow, and really liked it. But I didn't see this one yet. Did you see this one yet? I did see it.

1:29:29Jordan Hoffman:And if you like horror movies that are also comedies, this movie definitely has strains of both. It's probably more comedy than a straight horror film. It's not that scary. But it is working in the language of the horror film to explore a lot of ideas, but also is very funny in the process. I liked it. I saw the TV glow better. I thought that was an amazing movie. This one I thought was good. But I would prefer, I would start with, if you haven't seen I saw the TV glow, I would start there and make sure I saw that one first.

1:30:01Matt Singer:But this movie. That's a really good movie. And I got the impression that this is sort of playing in the similar vein of like obsession, nostalgia, playing with tropes. But the last one, I think, had a little more English on the ball. I haven't seen it yet, but the responses have been more positive. I don't think that's totally unfair.

1:30:18Jordan Hoffman:It is certainly exploring a lot of similar ideas about identity, about gender, about horror fandom and being obsessed with horror movies. It's meta. It is about a filmmaker who is like hired to remake like a really schlocky and very problematic slasher movie. But from like a more modern and more sort of socially conscious perspective. So it's but it's also doing a lot of jokes about the very idea of such a project. It's very smart. It's very kind of cleverly done.

1:30:54Matt Singer:It sounds like the blue sky of the movie a little bit. I mean, I haven't seen it yet, but maybe I'll watch. I mean, like I said, I really, really liked I Saw the TV Glow. So I do intend to watch it and I can watch it. That's right. On Mubi. Mubi. Well, I can because I don't have a Mubi account, but I'm going to be watching it. If one did. I will watch this movie before the end of the year because it is an important film. Okay. Direct to streaming. Now, this is no money exchanges hands if you have one of these accounts. Tyler Perry's Doing Life. I feel like we just talked about a Tyler Perry movie recently.

1:31:29Jordan Hoffman:Well, look, two lines down on the script, Jordan. It says, you're not crazy. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Again. Just came to Netflix two weeks ago.

1:31:40Matt Singer:Two weeks ago. Okay, well, he's very busy. He's got a new one. He's a busy man. You know, I think, who's that, the director? Alex Gibney, the guy who makes a new documentary every 15 minutes. Alex Gibney should make a documentary about Tyler Perry making so much movies. All right. So anyway, a single mother fighting for survival and a reformed ex-con with untapped talents forge an unexpected bond. That's Tyler Perry's doing life. Fine. That's on Netflix. Infirmary on Shudder. We're getting close to October. That's the scary month. That's right. Infirmary. A guard vanished on his first night at an old psych hospital in 2023.

1:32:20Matt Singer:his body cam footage shows unexplainable incidents that continue to baffle investigators. Has potential. I don't know anything more about it than you do, but what is coming up next, Matt Singer?

1:32:34Jordan Hoffman:Well, that's what we're discussing is like, what are we going? We've talked about, it's October, maybe we should do a themed month of scary movies, of streaming scary movies. We've talked about maybe we could do like a week just about Shudder, do one of our state of streaming episodes that we do occasionally where we focus just on one streaming service. It feels like if we're going to do one on Shudder this month or next month would be the right time to do it. So that's up there. The other thing is there is a blockbuster on streaming right now, a movie that is burning up the charts wherever those charts are.

1:33:11Jordan Hoffman:the love hypothesis on Prime Video, an extremely hot streaming movie right now. It's like, if you go to Letterboxd and you look up like the most popular movies on all of Letterboxd, I think the last I looked, it was like the number two movie on all of Letterboxd right now. So now obviously that's just among Letterboxd users, but it's usually a pretty good gauge of what are people talking about? What are people watching? And it's usually the big movies. So right now, the number one movie, Resident Evil. Makes sense. Number two, The Love Hypothesis. Number three is Primetime and number four is Avengers Endgame Encore.

1:33:54Jordan Hoffman:So it's the only streaming movie in that batch. Wow.

1:33:58Matt Singer:I'm looking at this movie. I've never heard of any of the people in this movie. I feel like an old man. I don't know any of this. It's like a rom-com from a novel that's apparently popular. Yes. I don't know. Should we do this? Should we watch this?

1:34:14Jordan Hoffman:I think under normal circumstances, we would have to do it. But it doesn't – it clashes with our idea of doing an October scare-themed month. So I guess that's the dilemma we have to resolve before our next episode. And maybe –

1:34:28Matt Singer:Well, you know, the listeners don't have to listen to us talk about it. I mean, we can talk about this on our own, but the listeners should know these are the top. You know, we don't when we hang up, we continue to work for you. We think about putting together the best show possible, including coming up with brilliant names for games like ladies love law enforcement. I mean, we're really now we do already have.

1:34:50Jordan Hoffman:We do have a listener request that is horror themed that we can do for next week. So we could, you know, just lean into that. That will be part of the show for right. We're off of the first show in October. We could do Love Hypothesis or there are a couple notable Shudder originals. Jordan is not feeling the love. Wait, did we read the plot synopsis of the Love Hypothesis? This might sell him. Oh, I can read it. I've got it right here. Olive Smith, a biology PhD candidate, and Dr. Adam Carlson, a hotshot professor and well-known tyrant. Is this like a metaphorical tyrant or a literal tyrant? I don't even know.

1:35:31Jordan Hoffman:Enter into a fake relationship, seeing each of their carefully calculated theories on love get thrown into chaos. So I got to say, it's closer to Unabomber in subject matter than I would have expected. Well, you know what? And just looking at the poster, these people look – don't they – these beautiful people, they just look like biology PhD candidates and hotshot professors, don't they? No, they do not. They have PhD candidate and hotshot professor written all over them in their tight T-shirts.

1:36:07Matt Singer:She was on Riverdale, which I never watched because I'm an adult. And Tom Bateman. I don't know if he's Jason Bateman's son or something. I've seen him in things. Oh, he was very good at you.

1:36:15Jordan Hoffman:Did you see Hedda last year? Very good. He was in Hedda. He was the husband, I think. He was like one of the supporting characters in those Braana. I forget the name of his character, but he's like Poirot's friend. Oh, yeah. He's in Definitely Not. In a couple of those. Yeah, in a couple of those movies. He's been in a bunch of things. Guess what else Tom Bateman is in? Oh, he's in Experimenter. He plays Dick Cavett. Oh, that's right. Dick Cavett. Yeah, I remember.

1:36:41Matt Singer:And he was in the Liam Neeson movie Cold Pursuit. They have, by the way, experimenters so weird. They have somebody playing William Shatner in it and somebody playing Ozzy Davis because he goes to the TV movie.

1:36:52Jordan Hoffman:They have someone playing who?

1:36:55Matt Singer:All right. You know what? This show's over. We've been talking so long. No, it's not too late.

1:36:58Jordan Hoffman:Play the red alert sound. All right. With that out of the way, let's just say this. I've got a book coming out comes out one week from the day that this podcast drops Funny Business A History of 2000s Hollywood Comedies I'll be doing book signings I'm on the main film spotting mothership I believe this week talking about comedy boom movies with Adam and Josh ranking our top five movies of the period that the book is about and I'm doing signings in New York, in LA, in Chicago, in Iowa City coming up. So get more information about that at my website, matt-singer.net. I would love to see you at a signing or some kind of book event.

1:37:49Jordan Hoffman:Please justify the years I spent working on this book. For the love of God. I would take a triplet say it.

1:37:58Matt Singer:You got to do it. You got to read this book. I haven't read it yet because it's not the date. I did not ask for a friend copy. I was offered one, and I said, no, no, no. I'm going to spend my money, and there's a copy. I pre-ordered it on one of those services. Look, what a guy. What a great. It's coming, and when it comes, I'm going to read it. It's actually very funny. Matt Singer, we should let the listeners know, I have a lot of friends that are very intelligent friends. Your book comes out the same day that Annalee Newitz's new book comes out. Competition? The same exact day. and Anna Lee is someone that I work with over at Starlog.com, one of my other podcasts.

1:38:38Matt Singer:So I'm going to get both of your books on the same day are coming in through – I'll admit it. I ordered it on Amazon. And they're both going to come in and I'm going to flip a coin to see. I can't read them both simultaneously. I can't read one with one eyeball and one with the other. That would be crazy. So we don't know. But I cannot wait to read Funny Business. It's going to be exciting. and all the listeners must pre-order. You can go to Amazon. You can go to barnesandnoble.com. What's the other one? Bookshop.org. If you want to spend a dollar or two more, but it's for good cause. Bookshop.org is the righteous way to -

1:39:14Jordan Hoffman:Or get the e-book version or get the audio book. I read the audio book. I narrate it. If you're not sick of me talking after this nonsense for an hour and 40 minutes, it's like 10 hours of this. Oh my God. But no interruptions from me. But no Jordan. Yeah, there's no... And Sam doesn't make a game in the middle. Nobody says the phrase Rexag in it. No, no. Not yet, anyway. Nobody talks about William Shatner in Stanley Milgram biopics. No, no, no. Yeah, the first book signing event is October 6th, the day the book comes out in New York City at the Barnes & Noble on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. So if you're in Brooklyn or the New York area, come on out.

1:39:57Jordan Hoffman:There you go. All right.

1:39:57Matt Singer:Go get two slices of pizza and eat them on top of each other. Like, that's what they do in Brooklyn.

1:40:02Jordan Hoffman:That's what they do. In the meantime, send your feedback to feedback at filmspottingsvu.com. You can find me on Instagram and Letterboxd at SuperPulse. On Blue Sky, I'm at Matt Singer. And Jordan is on there at Jay Hoffman. FilmSpotting SVU is produced by Sam Van Hulgren. And we are, as always, a part of the FilmSpotting family of podcasts. Learn more about us and all of the FilmSpotting family's great other shows at filmspotting.net. I'm Matt Singer

1:40:28Matt Singer:and I'm Jordan Hoffman we'll catch you next week