In short
Screen Talk (IndieWire) covers: box office prospects for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another; the fallout around Jimmy Kimmel’s return to ABC; and five must-see New York Film Festival titles.
Guests
Anne Thompson (Los Angeles) and Ryan Latoncio (New York), both film journalists/hosts.
Key claims
One Battle After Another is expected to open around $20M but has “legs” due to strong reviews and a destination audience; format options (IMAX Digital, VistaVision, etc.) are seen as needlessly complicated but not decisive. Sean Penn’s extreme MAGA-like villain is unlikely to alienate conservatives; he could win another Oscar. Kimmel’s return drew ~6M viewers and 15M YouTube monologue views; Disney/affiliate disputes (Nextstar/Sinclair) may cause ongoing preemptions. NYFF examples: Scarlett (June Squibb in Eleanor the Great, plus Hosoda’s Scarlet); Continental 25 (Radu Jude); Pillion (Alexander Skarsgård); Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rossi); plus animated Angel’s Egg (Mamoru Ishii) and Bukhra (Orion Barki, Mariam Benani).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VONYFF Must-Sees and Festival Buzz
1:12 to 3:52
Discussion of must-see films at the New York Film Festival and personal favorites.
“which opens this week and runs until October 13th.”
Exploring 'One Battle After Another'
3:52 to 5:48
Overview and expectations of the box office prospects for Paul Thomas Anderson's film.
“Yeah, of course, Pillions, one I'm always going to root for.”
Controversy and Character Analysis
5:48 to 8:05
Debate on character portrayals and potential audience reactions in the film.
“and with this movie I'm a little unsure what it leaves you to contemplate other than the pieces of its own puzzle until it becomes this kind of funeral for cinema and dreaming and imagination.”
Sean Penn and Jimmy Kimmel's Monologue
8:05 to 14:00
Discussion on Sean Penn's performance and Jimmy Kimmel's emotional monologue.
“the Academy people here in LA and in New York too.”
Analyzing Jimmy Kimmel's Emotional Return
14:00 to 17:58
The hosts discuss the reasons behind Jimmy Kimmel's emotional monologue during his return to late night television.
“And he's not necessarily helping himself on the PR circuit.”
Critique of New TV Shows
17:58 to 22:28
The hosts review new television series including FX's 'The Lowdown' and HBO's 'Task,' discussing character development and themes.
“And then there's this whole other thing where Disney shareholders are now questioning whether this decision was in violation to their company's obligations to them.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:03Anne Thompson:This summer serve up the cookout classics Heinz ketchup and Kraft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly melty cheese and thick rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft.
0:29Ryan Lattanzio:This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics with Eleanor the Great. June Squibb shines in Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, a moving, funny, and unexpected tale about truth, loss, and second chances. Eleanor the Great, now playing only in theaters.
0:47Anne Thompson:Welcome to Screen Talk, IndieWire's weekly podcast, bringing you up to speed on what's going on in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson in Los Angeles.
0:55Ryan Lattanzio:And I'm Ryan Latoncio in New York. This week, we will look at box office prospects for Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, a movie we are both very much a fan of. We will also assess the Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha.
1:08Anne Thompson:And we will give you five must-see titles playing at the New York Film Festival, which opens this week and runs until October 13th. I'm skipping the opening night movie After the Hunt, which we don't believe will play well for the sophisticated New York crowd. And I will start sampling the movies I've missed on Tuesday. I'm looking forward to Radu Jude's Berlin entry, Continental 25. Did you ever see that, Ryan? Yeah, I like that one very much. I'm going to go to that. Set in Transylvania. And then I still haven't seen Pillion, which you liked in Cannes.
1:43Ryan Lattanzio:with Alexander Skarsgård in leather.
1:46Anne Thompson:What could be better? And then we have, I'm a big fan of the Oscar nominated director Mamoru Hosadas. He got a nomination for Mirai. He's an animated director, very gifted. And he has a new one called Scarlet, which Sony Pictures Class is going to push for the Oscars. And then there's another one that's a documentary that could be in the Oscar race, which comes from Oscar-nominated Fire at Sea director Gianfranco Rossi. It's called Below the Clouds, and it's about the still-looming threat of Mount Vesuvius. And then there's these bigger movies I can't wait to see. There's Anemone from the Daniel Day-Lewis family.
2:25Anne Thompson:There's the centerpiece film Father, Mother, Sister, Brother from Jim Jarmusch, which movie's going to release. And then you saw that at Venice, right?
2:34Ryan Lattanzio:I've seen a bunch of the ones you just mentioned, including Below the Clouds. I don't know that you're going to love that one, but I'm curious. It is an interesting documentary about, like you said, Mount Vesuvius, but it does feel like a video installation where you're in a museum and you sort of peek into the dark room and take a look at it and you move on after a couple of minutes. Oh. Whereas Anemone, my feelings about this one are technically embargoed, but I guess I can say I'm not not a fan. So read into that.
3:11Anne Thompson:And what is the name of the son of Daniel Day-Lewis who directed this film?
3:16Ryan Lattanzio:Ronan Day-Lewis, who is a very gifted director and makes you wonder maybe nepotism is a good thing.
3:22Anne Thompson:He's a Nepo baby. He's a Nepo baby. All right. Well, one of the other things I'm looking forward to is also from the Daniel Day-Lewis family, Rebecca Miller, his wife, who has done a few documentaries. And this one is about Martin Scorsese. It's a series. So I'm excited to look at that as well. they're supposedly sending that to me in advance since I don't think I'm going to sit down at the festival for the whole thing and then there's the closing night movie Bradley Cooper's is this thing on from Searchlight which nobody's seen yet as far as I know have they been screening
3:59Ryan Lattanzio:it in New York there have been no screenings to my knowledge I'm sure they're out there and I just
4:04Anne Thompson:probably wasn't invited they know how to make us feel humbled now you've got some films under the radar films to highlight.
4:11Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, of course, Pillions, one I'm always going to root for. This is a movie, it's a gay subdom culture movie that really is like, it's as if Richard Curtis directed The Piano Teacher is my really pat response to what this movie kind of is. A24 is releasing it early next year, but probably in time for Valentine's Day. But I do think this would have been a good cozy holiday movie in its own weird way. But the one that I saw last night that I'm crazy about that, and I don't think is going to be your cup of tea, was one I missed at Cannes, which is Be Gone's Resurrection, which is a total dream logic, art house only movie that reminded me actually of David Lynch's Inland Empire.
4:56Ryan Lattanzio:And though I think there are some references here to David Lynch's The Return, I don't know if that played in China, the third season of Twin Peaks, but it stars Shu Qi as a woman who enters the dreams of a monster in a world where humanity is no longer able to dream. And it's really interesting to read reviews of this movie that it seems like nobody really quite understood what was going on or had a different interpretation. And, you know, the phrase bravura sequence really gets tossed around a lot in our profession, but there is a truly incredible oner in this movie that is set during a vampire rave in 1999 that's being descended upon by a raincoat mafia and is truly the best scene of any movie I've seen all year and the comparisons to Lynch are there I suppose but Lynch's movies are at their most nonsensical in narrative terms they do leave you with something to feel and contemplate and with this movie I'm a little unsure what it leaves you to contemplate other than the pieces of its own puzzle until it becomes this kind of funeral for cinema and dreaming and imagination.
6:04Ryan Lattanzio:It was a funny screening because people were, it started quite full. And by the end, I would say it was half full. People were lunging out of their seats. So that would be the press screening. That
6:15Anne Thompson:would be the New York Film Festival press screening where you could do that. I've been caught in a couple of screenings. I'm not going to name which one it was. It was an Oscar submission from an Asian country. And I was so miserable that I was sitting there. I hate this movie. I hate this movie. I hate this movie. And I couldn't walk out because the publicist and top critics were in there. It wouldn't have been acceptable. I had to suffer. And it was long. It was three hours long.
6:46Ryan Lattanzio:You might be suffering in this one, which is over two and a half hours long, but I was totally along for the ride. And then there are just quickly a couple animated films I wanted to highlight. This movie called Angel's Egg, which is a restoration of an early anime film from the director of Ghost in the Shell, whose name is Mamoru Ishii. And it's another one that's totally speaking in a symbolic dream language. Then there's another one in Currents that was also at Toronto called Bukhra, directed by Orion Barki and Mariam Benani, where the filmmakers weave their personal experiences into these animated doubles, and it's shot in 3D animation and with a documentary style and features a coyote who is also a cardiologist living in Casablanca.
7:33Ryan Lattanzio:So these are two animated movies that work totally in allegory and are not maybe as narratively driven as some of the other movies we will highlight or we'll be seeing at NYFF, but exciting nonetheless.
7:44Anne Thompson:Okay. Well, that's a lot to look forward to. I may have to add some tickets to my requests. And then, you know, it'll be fun to, there's going to be like a premiere for Nouvelle Vague and a premiere, you know, various things like that, which will be fun to revisit. So, I mean, the thing for us at this stage is that we're kind of ahead of a lot of other people, the Academy people here in LA and in New York too. I mean, they're just starting, they're just starting to watch things. They haven't seen most of the movies that we've seen. Okay, so we are going to look at one battle after another and its box office prospects.
8:25Anne Thompson:And I, if you look back at all the movies that he's released so far, and Licorice Pizza being the last one in 2021, he's never been expected to deliver big box office. And he's had limited release films. They've been platformed. They've been, you know, shown in just a few cities, and then they've slowly broadened out. and licorice pizza costs 40 and and it only made 34 worldwide so so that was even if we love licorice pizza which i do i don't that's not it's it's like the one i think it's the one uh unsuccessful pta movie yeah so he you know there will be blood was his most successful movie back in 2007 which was nominated for best picture and won best actor for daniel day lewis that grossed uh 77 million dollars worldwide uh which is a little more than half of what one battle after another cost you know uh so what do we expect you know i mean we have we have michael de luca and pam abde at warner brothers his old pals putting the full weight of the studio behind the movie with a wide release with commercial expectations for a non-stop action movie that has been very well reviewed.
9:41Anne Thompson:And I'm going to compare this to Quentin Tarantino. You know, it's that kind of movie that is that is commercial at the same time that it's a smart, violent cinephiles, you know, fantasy, you know, and it and this one is a non stop action movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in it. So I'm expecting it to, you know, continue the run started by sinners and weapons at Warner Brothers. What do you think?
10:06Ryan Lattanzio:Well, I totally agree about the Tarantino comparison in the sense that it's a destination movie that has some of the best reviews we've seen of any studio movie in years. And it's a movie that everyone feels like they should go and see. I don't know. Well, okay. Yes, it does remind me of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in that way. But given the projection that One Battle is supposed to only open at 20 million, that doesn't mean that it's a bomb necessarily, because this is a movie that has legs. And I think is going to play really well throughout the season. I think that there is a couple factors that are working against it.
10:40Ryan Lattanzio:First of all, there is this whole rigmarole of what format am I supposed to see it in? Am I supposed to see it in IMAX Digital or VistaVision? And how many perforations should I see it in VistaVision?
10:51Anne Thompson:Do you find this a negative?
10:51Ryan Lattanzio:I find it to be needlessly complicating.
10:54Anne Thompson:That's what they did with Sinners.
10:56Ryan Lattanzio:And why and where to see this movie. Yeah, I don't think it wasn't as elaborate at Sinners because with this movie, there's like five or six different ways you're supposed to see it and it's good enough that i don't think it really matters how you see it like any great movie should play well on any format and i saw this on an imax digital presentation i think it would play just as well on a standard
11:16Anne Thompson:digital screen okay well we'll see we'll see what happens um you know and the and the other thing i
11:22Ryan Lattanzio:want to say about this movie is that it does seem like its core audience has already you know we're living in the world of film twitter and so forth but it does seem like its core audience has already seen this movie and multiple times. And this is a movie that people really need to vote for with their dollars rather than RSVP to impress or industry. You're living in a little bubble here,
11:46Anne Thompson:Ryan. You're talking about a very small niche of people that you talk to every day. There's an enormous audience out there that needs to go, as I agree with you, needs to go vote with their feet right now.
11:57Ryan Lattanzio:But that bubble is a large contingent of who the PTA audience is. Well, we're going to find out.
12:03Anne Thompson:We're going to find out how small that bubble really, really is. I think this has, it's interesting. Somebody was trying to argue with me that the Sean Penn character, who is a very extreme soldier, MAGA kind of racist creature, that this guy is so offensive, would be offensive to a right-wing conservative audience. And I wondered if that was true. I wondered if they wouldn't just laugh at him the way we laugh at him. He's extreme.
12:38Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I think they would. I mean, it's a hilarious character and it's meant to be funny. I don't see people being offended by him or even maybe necessarily even getting the joke that he has somewhat a comment on these people that we're talking about. Yeah.
12:52Anne Thompson:So I think, I think that's, I think that's a, I don't think that's going to be the issue. He seemed to think that there would be some blowback on, on this. I don't, I don't agree with that. So we'll see.
13:04Ryan Lattanzio:We've talked about this already, but it's all, I could see Sean Penn winning another Oscar, which is weird to think of Sean Penn as an actor who wins a third Academy Award. He's not someone you put up there with Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis. But this is one of the great cinematic villains, I think, that we've seen in a while. But people don't really like Sean Penn, right? There is animosity against him. You know, he's got various scandals.
13:30Anne Thompson:I mean, Sean Penn has been a character in Hollywood for decades. And in two cases, Mystic River and Milk, he rose above whatever animosity he had grown around him to win because the actors and everyone in the Academy ultimately believed that they, he had delivered an undeniable performance. Every once in a while, there's just a performance that you cannot argue with. And I don't know if this one is going to rise to that level or not. I'm sure he'll be nominated. I'm positive of that. And he's not necessarily helping himself on the PR circuit. He can be surly at times at these, they're doing a lot of press for this movie, way more than usual, at least for PTA and Sean Penn and Leonardo DiCaprio.
14:18Anne Thompson:They usually do not do this much press or late night TV or any of that stuff.
14:24Ryan Lattanzio:Well, Sean Penn is getting through the Q &As without needing cigarettes, so he should be commended for that, I guess. You're not allowed to have those in the Regal Union Square or the Walter Reed Theater.
Read the full transcript
14:34Anne Thompson:All right. So one of the things we've been debating on the Jimmy Kimmel front is just how much his perfectly calculated monologue on Tuesday was a performance. I mean, of course it was a performance. It was rehearsed, it was written, it was presumably to some degree vetted and approved. But I couldn't help wondering why he was crying so much. Why was he crying, Ryan? What's your take on what was making Jimmy Kimmel cry?
15:07Ryan Lattanzio:I mean, maybe he's very good at just putting on the waterworks. I don't know. I've never seen him cry before.
15:14Anne Thompson:I've seen him cry before. Sometimes he talks about his son.
15:17Ryan Lattanzio:Well, obviously he's feeling a wave of appreciation. I mean, I don't know that Jimmy Kimmel was necessarily the bell of the ball in terms of late night until everything that's transpired. And also look at the ratings that happened for this, his return, uh, an estimated 6 million viewers on Tuesday night, which is a surge compared to other episodes. This viewership was the largest for a regular episode in the show's history, despite the broadcast being blacked out in a number of places, including about 23 % of the country due to various disputes with ABC affiliates, Nextstar and Sinclair. Nextstar is in the middle of a merger, which puts us in a similar situation as we saw with Stephen Colbert.
16:00Ryan Lattanzio:And additionally, over 15 million people watched the opening monologue on YouTube, which we know is the biggest television network around, with the total online viewership across social media platforms exceeding 26 million. And that's including all the excerpts and the clips. And I personally just watched his opening monologue.
16:20Anne Thompson:I watched it on YouTube like everybody else. Where does it go from here? I mean, fallout for Disney pulling Kimmel extends to not only the 400 plus people who signed a petition to put him back on the air and all the brouhaha that, again, I'm using that word, that has erupted. But the Disney shareholders are even questioning if Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, did the right thing. And they want documents behind the decision. I feel strongly that Iger capitulated too soon and that FCC chief Brendan Carr and the ABC affiliates applied pressure and he and ABC chief Dana Walden caved and they should not have caped.
17:01Anne Thompson:They shouldn't have taken him off of the air in the first place. It's a good thing they put him back on. And I think he's good to go. And I think it's going to be all right. But it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. you know, will the affiliates be allowed to preempt the show indefinitely? There's rules around how long you can do that. Or will the chasm between the studio and its affiliates grow deeper? There are contracts to be fulfilled or possibly canceled between the affiliates and the studio. So Disney actually has leverage here. And it'll be interesting to see if people demand the return of the Kimmel show in markets where it's been taken off.
17:44Anne Thompson:So stay tuned. It's going to continue to play out.
17:47Ryan Lattanzio:It's definitely not a good sign for the White House move against the show that even Ted Cruz stood up for Jimmy Kimmel, which he called out to in the opening monologue while saying, I hate this guy, I want him to be fired, but he has a reason to exist and should be able to say what he wants to say. And then there's this whole other thing where Disney shareholders are now questioning whether this decision was in violation to their company's obligations to them. And they're saying, you know, this is a small pool of shareholders that are reacting, but it's representative nonetheless. And they're saying that a lawsuit is not off the table if they're not happy with the findings.
18:23Anne Thompson:Yeah, they have to look at those documents. No, it's interesting. Comedians in general, even on the right, recognize that this is not a good thing, you know, that you have to be able to make jokes, you know, that the politics cannot dictate what you're allowed to do. And, and it, you know, there's, there's clips galore that show Trump, you know, advocating for free speech. So this is not playing well for, for the, for the, you know, even on the right, they don't like it. So a lot of them don't like it. So, so we'll see what happens. And it's going to be, I mean, I don't think they're, nobody wants them to go after anyone.
19:05Anne Thompson:Like, it's not going to go well if anyone goes after Jimmy Fallon or any of the other late night talk show hosts.
19:14Ryan Lattanzio:But then there was also Trump saying, maybe any show that does speak negatively against me, I should take off the air. So that is a little bit, there's some asymmetry there and what he has said previously.
19:26Anne Thompson:Well, he's caught, you know, and he's nothing if not transparent. And, you know, I think even even Carr has pulled back his rhetoric a little bit lately. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. And then on the television front, there's some new shows. I looked at the first five episodes of The Lowdown, which stars Ethan Hawke. That's on FX. And he it's a scruffy Tulsa, Oklahoma noir in which he plays a rumbled journalist, rumpled journalist he he wears one of the great hats that this journalist would never be able to afford by the way I mean a very stylish hat um and he keeps getting beat up I love Ethan Hawke I happen to have a soft spot for him uh he keeps trying to speak truth to power and then he gets beat up the showrunner is Sterling Harjo from Reservoir Dogs it's it's worth checking out
20:16Ryan Lattanzio:what else are you watching well I haven't watched that one yet but I do love shows of journalists that are embedded on the beat a little too much and get too close to their subject. So I'm excited to watch that one. I also love Ethan Hawke. The other FX show that I don't even know if it's still going on, to be honest, that I bailed on was Alien Earth, which I think turned out to be quite bad and sort of a total rewrite of the mythology of the movies, but not in a good way.
20:45Anne Thompson:How far did you get with it?
20:46Ryan Lattanzio:I got through episode three and there were all these other creatures that were really stupid and terribly animated and realized that there are other, it's like this ship goes to another planet and extracts all of these creatures for research to bring back to earth. And one of them is the, you know, the famed xenomorph from the film series. But then there's all these other monsters that complicate it.
21:08Anne Thompson:I kept going for a while. They become characters. That's what's sort of interesting about it. So you've got these kids who were going to die. And so this sort of tech bro whiz, you know, young guy who's like a trillionaire who I liked in this. I think the most interesting stuff is less about the aliens than it is about these children who are implanted in silicon bodies, you know, and how human are they and how well are they being treated, you know. So they're set up against the aliens a lot because they're presumably more resilient, but they're children. So there are a lot of issues that are raised by this, and I think the actors are all quite good.
21:55I would say the actors are wooden.
21:59Anne Thompson:Well, the one who's wooden and it's a complete waste is, I want to say. Kyle Chandler's daughter. The one I adore, Timothy Allifant. What a waste. You don't want this sexy guy playing a robot.
22:15Ryan Lattanzio:The other one I think we're both watching that's on HBO is the latest show from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Inglesby, which is Task, which like that show takes us back to Philadelphia. and this is kind of a TV spin on Michael Mann's Heat where you have Mark Ruffalo playing an FBI agent and Tom Pelfrey who was outstanding in Ozark as Laura Linney's brother who they killed off very unceremoniously in that show. Sorry for people who haven't watched it. He is playing a criminal and they are closing in on each other and the show really makes you care about both of them. It's also a very good performance from CODA star Amelia Jones who plays Pelfrey's niece who is sort of left to take care of their family amid this mess that he's created and these drug capturing operations, which end up with him kidnapping a child.
23:04Ryan Lattanzio:I normally find her to be kind of vanilla. And you know, I'm not the biggest CODA fan, but she's very good in this. And she's got a mullet that I think she's really leaning into very nicely. It's a really dark, sad show that really just shoves your face in the misery of the characters. Not unlike Mark Ruffalo's last go around at HBO, which was the Derek Cian French show. I know this much is true from, uh, I think.
23:29Anne Thompson:Ruffalo is one of our great actors. And in this one, uh, you know, on the one hand, he's a perfectly efficient FBI agent who's running, you know, this, this task force, uh, of sort of miscreant young, uh, people who are not necessarily on top of things. Um, but, but the other group, the other family, they're all sorts of, of, as the show is revealed along the way there are losses and deaths and grief and family issues on both sides that come come into the into play and I'm I'm fascinated by this show I think it's really brilliantly written this
24:10Ryan Lattanzio:guy's a good writer Brad Inglesby yeah no no me too and Mark Ruffalo is really good at playing an alcoholic he does something in the mornings where he fills his sink with ice cubes and dunks his face in it. And our critic, who we love, Ben Travers, said it so that he can wake up to feel something in the morning. But I know this from, just to bring it back full circle, the Ethan Hawke directed Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward documentary, that Paul Newman used to do that every morning to reduce the swelling from his hangovers. So that's what the Mark Ruffalo character is doing.
24:43Anne Thompson:It could be both. All right. Well, that's, I think we, I think we gave everybody a bit of a picture of the waterfront right now. And I look forward to seeing you in person in a few days, Ryan.
24:55Ryan Lattanzio:Well, on that note, actually, we will be doing a live screen talk at the Eleanor Boone and Monroe Film Center, which is at Lincoln Center on Monday, October 6th at 4 p.m. And we have a special guest.
25:07Anne Thompson:We're bringing on the relatively new executive director of film at Lincoln Center, who is Daniel Batsek, who I've known for years. He's a British guy. He worked at Miramax. He worked at Film4. You know, he's someone who's been around our world and loves film and is one of us. And we'll talk to him live at the New York Film Festival.
25:34Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, we love Daniel. And I'm excited to talk with the two of you in person.
25:38Anne Thompson:See you soon.
25:51Anne Thompson:Good energy in. Good energy out.
25:59Anne Thompson:Storm. Zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and immunity support. Storm. Energy for life.
From the publisher
IndieWire's 'Screen Talk' podcast hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio look ahead at the box office odds for Paul Thomas Anderson's superb 'One Battle After Another,' preview what to see at the New York Film Festival, and weigh in on the ongoing Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha.
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