'Fantastic Four' Review, Fall Festival Lineup Analysis, & Steven Colbert Reactions

0:00Anne Thompson:This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook.

0:35Anne Thompson:Welcome to Screen Talk, IndieWire's weekly podcast, bringing you up to date on what's happening in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson. I'm back in Los Angeles, fresh from Maine. This is as relaxed as I'm ever going to be. Enjoy it while it lasts, Ryan.

0:51Ryan Lattanzio:You do sound very relaxed. I'm not very relaxed at the moment, so we will make for good contrast. This is Ryan Latanzio in New York, and this week we're going to debate the merits or demerits of the latest Marvel entry, The Fantastic Four First Steps. And we're also tracking the latest lineups at the fall festivals, including Toronto, Venice and Telluride.

1:14Anne Thompson:And we're going to dig into what's going on with the exit of Stephen Colbert from Late Night TV and remind the studios that they should release their commercial movies in theaters when they can. That's their primary business. Okay, Ryan, what do you think of the Fantastic Four First Steps?

1:32Ryan Lattanzio:Well, this is the latest installment of, this is like the fourth summer tentpole movie I've seen in a row. This is maybe the most ever I've seen in my life. As you know, these movies aren't to my particular taste. I got to say, I did think this was certainly better than Superman. Obviously, that's a different universe. And the other thing I'm going to give it is that it's coherent, which is more than I can say for a lot of Marvel movies. And even there's a final battle sequence that I think relative to something even like Superman is more minimally staged than almost any other Marvel or DC movie that I've seen.

2:08Ryan Lattanzio:I actually think Vanessa Kirby is kind of good in this. She's a fascinating act. She loves giving birth on screen, by the way.

2:16Anne Thompson:This is her forte. What was the name of that other one where she was pregnant and a horrible birth?

2:23Ryan Lattanzio:Pieces of a woman. And in Fantastic Four, she's in zero gravity. She's dilating. She's grunting. And it really brings to mind that movie from 2020, Pieces of a Woman, in which she is giving birth indeed.

2:36Anne Thompson:That was her big breakout role, in fact. That's what gave her. By the way, I'm just going to insert that, remember, I made some comment about how Rachel Brosnahan never looked so good? In this case, I'm going to say that Vanessa Kirby, who is only 37 years old, has gone the route of being more beautiful than she's ever been. And that doesn't happen all by itself.

2:58Ryan Lattanzio:I'm seeing in the press tour now for Fantastic Four, there's definitely been some freshening of the face. But regardless, she still is very beautiful. She's dating this really hot soccer player now. A fact, though, she used to date Callum Turner, who now is, of course, engaged to Dua Lipa. So what a lucky guy.

3:17Anne Thompson:Oh, my God. Also, she's pregnant on the red carpet right now. Right. So she's really pregnant in real life. So I would respond to I enjoyed it. I actually want to praise as well as Vanessa Pedro Pascal. As you know, I've been disappointed in some of his recent material. I didn't think the materialists served him well at all. I love The Last of Us, and I love him. I even loved his supporting actor portrayal, you know, crazy, crazy guy in Wonder Woman 1984. So this is Pedro back in form carrying the movie, carrying the Fantastic Four, leading them and being very anxious as a father-to-be and being a dad, a protective dad.

4:02Anne Thompson:And that's what he's good at. I'm afraid we have to admit that this is his role in life, perhaps, to keep in mind.

4:10Ryan Lattanzio:And not in his personal life, though. It's interesting. So that is something to be said that you're able to project that. Funny you say that. I actually found him to be the most lacking in charisma compared to Kirby, compared to Eben Moss Bacharach, who is, of course, behind prosthetics. And even Joseph Quinn, who I thought was really charming. I sound like I like this movie more than I did. Honestly, there's nothing here that felt unforgettable or like something that is destined to be etched into the annals of the franchise. But what is good about this movie, which has some mixed reviews, including from our colleague David Ehrlich, unsurprising there, is it's still a little bit about resetting the needle after what was clearly a very cursed run for the MCU.

4:53Ryan Lattanzio:But it's also about letting new audiences, whether younger or someone like me, who felt that once you missed the train previously, it's impossible to get on board.

5:02Anne Thompson:This isn't connected to the other ones. It's a standalone and it works very well. I think I want to praise them for the visual look of the movie, this creation of this 60s style future world. It's like an alternative universe, really. It doesn't exist. One of the other things that I marveled at, no pun intended, was that they were able to function as the Fantastic Four without any government interference of any kind. You know, they're blasting off, they're saving the world, they're doing all of these crazy things. And there's this one, you know, person who might be the mayor of New York, I have no idea, who sort of walks in and out and says, go for it.

5:44Anne Thompson:You know, it's a fantasy of free agency on the part of a group of people like that. Magically wealthy people also, like a little bit like Stark, you know.

5:56Ryan Lattanzio:Right. No, that apartment in New York City, that would be 20 million dollars. Their hubris, which is something I guess I won't spoil other than there is a intergalactic demon giant that basically is saying, give me your baby and I'm going to spare the rest of the earth from destruction. They don't want to give up their baby. So they're going to put their baby before the entirety of the human race. They are hero wise by the end of the movie. They do save the day, but it doesn't come without a lot of destruction to this sort of alternate universe, New York City. But everyone seems to forget about that.

6:30Ryan Lattanzio:But this is again, this is like when you start to think too much about realism, it falls apart. Like the fact that with the ride. If you're having a baby in zero gravity, there's going to be placenta and viscera and all manner of grisliness floating around the cabin.

6:47Anne Thompson:This magical newborn that looks like pristine. Yeah, yeah.

6:51Ryan Lattanzio:No breastfeeding here. Oh, God, no. Oh, God, no. I do wonder about Vanessa Kirby in the sense that I found her to be a really fascinating actress in projects like The Crown and The World to Come, which we both like, and Pieces of a Woman. But between this and Mission Impossible and a lot of the other things she's done, I wonder if she's more primarily interested in being a tentpole actor, which is OK. It's very much. I really hope not. But it is very much the Scarlett Johansson trajectory. And of course, now we see Scarlett kind of trying to return to her roots a little bit. But obviously, Vanessa Kirby, she's going to be in Doomsday, which is supposed to come out in the end of next year.

7:32Ryan Lattanzio:So that's still filming. There's going to be all the attendant press duties that come with that. I hope that this new regime of Marvel is willing to give its actors some more flexibility. I don't think someone like Sebastian Stan would agree to keep carrying on as Bucky Barnes if he couldn't also do something like the Christian Mungu movie that he desperately wanted to do. He wanted to shoot a movie in Romania and so forth. So I hope that these actors still retain their freedom.

7:58Anne Thompson:So I think we can weigh this as a successful Marvel relaunch, basically. It's not something you're going to think about for more than five minutes, but it's enjoyable while it lasts.

8:10Ryan Lattanzio:My thinking about it ends at the end of this conversation. And look, I'm not in pain. I'm not upset. I think I'm just inured now and resigned. And I was able to accept this movie for what it was after some successive blows to my cinematic.

8:26Anne Thompson:Oh, you poor thing. Okay. All right. So in other Marvel news, the studio is doing a bottom-up reboot of the X-Men franchise. So that's something else that they've got on their docket. They're going to do new casting all around. So let's get to the festivals. so one of the things that we know looking at you know there's the toronto lineup which is just massive and as usual and then there's venice where they announce everything and then there's telluride where they don't announce everything but if you look at the tea leaves on the toronto announcement especially if it says canadian premiere that means it's playing telluride first and most of the venice and telluride movies overlap at some point and you're going to go to Venice with Marcus Jones, and I'm going to go to Telluride with David Ehrlich.

9:19Anne Thompson:As far as Venice is concerned, I'm very excited about the return of Catherine Bigelow. House of Dynamite is playing there. She's going to line up another Oscar battle with her ex-husband, James Cameron, and his latest Avatar entry. But tell us about the other big titles debuting in Venice and what you were surprised about. I was surprised about Laura Poitras, for example, or Gus Van Zandt or Charlie Kaufman.

9:44Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, it's actually, it's really informative to get up as I do at 4.35 a.m. to watch Alberto Barbera's press conference. This was the longest. I've done the last three. This was the longest one because there are now there's 15 documentaries that Venice has programmed within its own section, which, you know, between Cannes and some of the other festivals, this is the

10:05Anne Thompson:biggest can tear is terrible with terrible terrible and and venice has some really good ones they've

10:13Ryan Lattanzio:got a mark jacobs documentary by sofia coppola there is a new werner herzog documentary called ghost elephants and note that herzog is getting the golden line for life achievement this year there's a documentary called nuestro tierra from lucretia martel which has been on our list of can possibilities for the last three years and that's finally coming to be and yes there is a once again sort of made-in-secret Laura Poitras documentary called cover-up which she made with frontline producer Mark Obenhaus and basically there was no information about this movie until Alberto gave us a little bit of a taste it's about Seymour Hersh a longtime investigative journalist who covered Watergate other US misdeeds including a bombing of Cambodia during Vietnam, as well as exposing torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

11:08Ryan Lattanzio:So it's all about this journalist. There's also a Marianne Faithful documentary directed by Jane Pollard and Ian Forsyth called Broken English that features reenactments with Tilda Swinton and George McKay, who start together in the end, that musical that I hated. But there's other hidden gems in here, two there is a documentary called mega doc directed by mike figus of all people that is a behind the scenes making of of megalopolis our favorite movie from can 2024 uh there is indeed a new guys van sant movie called dead man's wire that's a 1970s true story uh hostage thriller with

11:52Anne Thompson:bill skarsgård and al pacino oh yes and then there is the charlie kaufman's a short there's a short

11:57Ryan Lattanzio:film called How to Shoot a Ghost by Charlie Kaufman that reunites him with I'm Thinking of Ending Things star Jesse Buckley. That's something there's truly no information about prior to yesterday's announcement. And now there barely is anything. There's a very bare bones Spartan IMDb page. So but it's supposedly I think I saw it's about 28 minutes. So the other interesting bit is that after The Hunt is showing out of competition in what was apparently a mutual decision between Amazon, MGM, and Luca Guadagnino. Though I'm actually moderating a Q &A with Luca Guadagnino this weekend, so I'm going to ask him if it was truly mutual.

12:35Ryan Lattanzio:We'll see if he said...

12:37Anne Thompson:Well, it may have something to do with the fact that it's opening night of the New York Film Festival.

12:40Ryan Lattanzio:Yes. And it's a North American premiere at New York Film Festival, which means it will not be at Telluride. I have to think that, you know, Guadagnino's gone in the competition at Venice before. He is a champion of rising first-time filmmakers. I don't know how there's, by my estimation, there's one here, which is Shuki's directorial debut, which she is privileged in the sense that she's a very famous Taiwanese actress. But this is a movie that he's directed with Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Iowa Debery. Maybe he feels like he doesn't want to have a particular edge over some of the more up-and-comers in the lineup.

13:18Anne Thompson:It would be more likely that the distributor would rather not have any potential negative scrutiny if the critics don't like it that much.

13:28Ryan Lattanzio:Well, this is the other thing is that maybe it's not that great.

13:33Anne Thompson:That's the issue. That's the issue. If they were confident, you know, you might you might see that. Well, Telluride will have the world premiere of Edward Berger's Ballad of a Small Player, which I'm looking forward to. that has to do with, you know, that's a Colin Farrell gambling movie, which is another world for him to tackle. And then we have Chloe Zhao's Hamnet from Focus, which you thought was going to be in Venice, but I knew that was going to be a Telluride premiere.

14:02Ryan Lattanzio:Well, how? How did you know that? Just your six cents?

14:05Anne Thompson:I had some sources on that one. Yeah. Okay.

14:07Ryan Lattanzio:I wonder why it's not at Venice, though. I mean, the Venice programmers, they are pretentious. So maybe it's quite possible they didn't deem it worthy.