The 10 Best Movies of the Year ... So Far

22:49Like, what's happening? Starts off with a really seems like a scene that the scene that, you know, is some kind of dream sequence. It doesn't seem real, but you're wondering why it's there. And then the movie takes you on some twists and turns turns, shall I say, that you really honestly didn't see coming. and then it has something to say. It's not unlike Ex Machina. I mean, it's kind of like the fun version of that movie because that movie is not fun. It's fun to watch, but it's... Yeah, it doesn't end well. It's serious. Yeah, and it's existential dread and all of that stuff. But this one is, it's cool and it's funny and it's a little sexy and it's a little rebellious and it has a villain turn from Jack Quaid who you can't even see as a villain.

23:37Very unexpected, and I really, really enjoyed it. Pretty good pick. It's a really good movie. It's like kind of the perfect first half of the year down the middle, modest genre movie. It just works. And it did okay at the box office, but I feel like it's now actually a little underseen. It doesn't quite have the cachet. Why didn't it do better? I saw it in a hotel in New York when I was waiting to do something on CNN, which Bill really loves when I do that. so it is one of his favorite things so like what what's the do we do we not market films like this when i say just cool movies it is a little bit of it like it has a twist and so to be able to it i think it wisely did not put the twist in the marketing uh but or maybe or maybe it did it puts the first part of the twist but not the second part of the twist right but it's hard to sell people and that was also a little bit like pre-jack quaid moment because that was the first of the two Jack Quaid movies of the year.

24:33See also Novocaine. Right. So people, I guess, were just kind of asleep at the wheel. But I agree with you. Really, like, smart, funny script executed just perfectly for what it is. Good performances. And, like, the thing you're saying of where you're trying to figure out, like, what's going on. And you're like, oh, I do want to know what happens while it also being, like, very recognizable. Like, here are the genre beats that I need. But like the Tesla scene is just like extremely funny. Yeah. And you're like, oh, I know. I mean, it's a Tesla, right? It's not actually a Tesla. But it's meant to be a Tesla.

25:08It's supposed to be. Yeah. And you're like, oh, of course, if I thought through this, like this is exactly what you would write. But I'm very amused and entertained by it. And then like, you know, the film gets a little light where it should be dark. Gets a little dark where it should be light. there's a little there's some ominousness in some of the things earlier I don't want to spoil it for anyone that hasn't seen it but I wonder for a movie like that if I'm not in any way trying to recast the film or saying that the leads of the movie didn't do a great job but if Florence Pugh is your lead and then Paul Mescal is in the Jack Quay part is that movie it's bigger it's like it's but like I don't know but I don't think it would be as surprising in a way you know there's something surprising Sophie Thatcher in that part holding we're holding our stock right we're not selling yeah really really good and heretic no just that this movie didn't like pop pop oh yeah yeah yeah but it did okay yeah I think it's a great pick Drew Hancock was on the show writer director it's his first movie he'd written a lot of screenplays but he never directed a movie before I like it man and I'll say this before I get out of here about that there's intention okay so in this being the first thing that a guy like that would direct because if i was looking to get into the director's chair i wouldn't think what is my best script i would think what is my most directable script like what can i apply of it because these guys make these movies and then like later on the stuff that they're making by their fourth or fifth film a lot of times doesn't look like the first thing that they made, right?

26:52They've perfected their visual craft. They've perfected the way that they work with actors. But a lot of times, young directors bite off too much when they want to sit down because they want to show people how badass they are. This is a movie that's well-directed, but it's a very lean film. Yes. So it's a perfect film with a great script if you're going to take your first shot at it. It's very smart of him. Very savvy of him. Great pick. Companion. Boom. Go see it. Also see Sinners. and we love sinners. And Rob Mahoney, to hell with you.

27:33Coming to us live from Bulgaria, it's CR Chris Ryan. CR, where are you, man? I'm on the front lines. We're trying to bring Wheel of Time back just for Amanda's husband. I'm going to be filming it myself on my iPhone. Never let them tell you something's impossible, guys. Well, we miss you here in Los Angeles. Hopefully we'll be reunited soon. In the meantime, we're talking about the best movies of the year so far. You've talked with us on some episodes about some very good movies. 28 years later, for example, recently. Has this been a good movie year for you? It's been a really, really fun movie year.

28:06I think that I was just talking with Andy about how we're kind of missing a show of the summer and that the two big ones that we were kind of thinking about, if you had asked us six months ago, we're like, well, Squid Game, last season of Squid Game and The Bear would be the big shows of the summer and they both binge dropped and have had mixed responses. No spoilers. Haven't gotten to the bear yet. I just said I had mixed responses and no spoilers, but they are over in a day. And I feel like there's been more conversation. You hear people talking about more movies. You get more text messages about movies.

28:36You see lines outside of movie theaters, people dying to get in. I got to see F1, vroom, vroom. So yeah, it's been a good year of movies and ever since Sinners, I've just been feeling really fired up. I think early part of the year, I was like, eh, Black Bag's good, but I don't know what else. And now, ever since Sinners, I feel like we've been on a real hot streak. It does feel that way. That's been a recurring theme through some of these conversations today. So for you, Sinners was off the board. Black Bag is off the board. 20 Years Later is off the board. I don't know if those movies would have been your number ones.

29:11I know you like them, but what is your number one favorite movie of the year so far? Materialists. I've been I love you I'm so I wanted to talk about something that I usually wouldn't get a chance to talk about on this show I mean I've talked about warfare I've talked about 28 years later I I love sinners like yeah I guess numerically it wouldn't be my number one movie of the year but this is just an example of like a pretty I would say the best part about this year is it's been interesting and it hasn't been boring I've had lots of years where I've been like I admire the craftsmanship but Jesus Christ tears are coming out of my eyes and that's one you can't say about materialists is while I'm sure some people may have felt like they were watching old people eat with this movie like I found myself at least deeply deeply deeply engaged and I think a lot of that has to do with the choices that Selene Song made filmmaking wise but uh and also maybe some of our our performers made and their styles of performance which I'm sure was directed to do so but I found myself like talking and thinking about this movie and then reading about it, having a great time reading about people being extremely mad about this film afterwards.

30:20So it's definitely, I think, something I hope people go check out and continue to talk about. So we're three weeks out from the great materialist freak out. But the feedback is not done. I was personally confronted on Saturday night by two close friends with their opinions. Okay. Not just a materialist, but of our podcasts about materialists. Okay. Because people are engaged. They were excited to see this movie. They thought it was going to be one thing. They got another. They were outraged. And so I just, Chris is right. Everyone wants to share their opinion about this very loudly. I had a fun journey to this movie.

31:02Yeah. I'll tell you about it. Because I hear a lot about, I wasn't expecting this. This was not the movie that was sold to me. Reverse for me. I read everything and listened to you guys before I saw the movie and I think it actually helped in the case of materials because you don't get the rope-a-dope you don't get the classic Celine song okie doke which we've come to expect I think that's more on the movie studio for the record yeah sure of course but if you go into this movie and expect it to be a little bit more like Hal Hartley or Whit Stillman than Nancy Meyers I think it plays a lot better.

31:38It makes a lot more sense if you understand that there's like an affectation going on to the acting and that it's very like literary and it's writing or dense, maybe not literary, but very dense writing style with the dialogue. And then about 20 minutes into the movie, I noticed something because it's set in New York City and in a very social part of New York City, weddings, dates, restaurants, street corners. You can't hear a thing. She makes this really interesting choice to zero out background noise so that all you hear are these whispered conversations between these actors. And then I found myself deeply focused on what they were talking about, even though I didn't really think it was like reflective of a character or like that these were real people, quote unquote.

32:22But it just got my brain going in this interesting direction that rarely happens in the big summer movie. This was my positive spin on the movie. It's a really good idea movie. I agree with you. It's a really fun movie to think about and take apart even though those things that we're talking... We are very now all comfortable being like, the acting in this movie is bad. Just outwardly saying that, which is not something we usually say on Pods. I think it's because we hold Celine Song in some esteem and we hold a smart urban drama in a certain level of esteem. And anybody who's lost a mother while they were in the Amazon researching spiders, I think we owe them respect and deference.

33:02I couldn't agree more. And she's obviously still experiencing that trauma. And that explains why she is the way that she is in the film. But I agree with you. I think the writing is actually quite interesting. And I think it's okay that it is at times inhuman. Right. You know, that there is a kind of philosophy textbook quality. I think the subtext of the film is the text of the film, right? Like it's like all the ideas of the movie are actually the characters in the movie itself. And the people are merely like the vessels for that. But and then they also look pretty for the most part. So that's good.

33:37And then there and there is good music. Yeah, I I they are chess pieces in her in her, you know, playwriting turned, you know, serialized exploration of love triangles and cinema. But but that's OK. And, you know, I found myself at this dinner and my friend Aaron like sent me a text to apologize the next day. And Aaron, it's OK. You were like you made some great points. But I found myself defending like not only that it was an idea movie, but like the ideas itself. I was like, I don't know. It's you know, it is Jane Austen. It's Edith Wharton. It's this like long tradition of the the romantic world as like a financial and status stand in for women.

34:24And like, I guess we're supposed to be past that. But are we? And like, how do people think about that? And to me, because I have watched literally every single other movie and read almost all the other books in that tradition, I find it interesting. Other people didn't care so much, but that's okay. Let me ask you this, Chris. I know you're not the world's greatest romantic comedy expert, but the exasperation that the romantic comedy faithful have around the movie, does that indicate that we should also just be greenlighting significantly more rom-coms for movie theaters? That seems to be an obvious takeaway, right?

35:01Yeah. I mean, I think just maybe like a broader genre, like policy in general would be good. But yeah, I definitely think if you took away like three tongue-in-cheek John Wick ripoffs and made like a more expensive version of whatever Netflix, Amazon, or Apple rom-com we get twice a year. I don't know. I mean, I also really just appreciated the fact that lover, hater, like one movie, dislike another movie. Celine Song's obviously really talented and really interesting. I mean, I think Past Lives was something that affected people a little bit more deeply and personally and had a more emotional curve to it.

35:39But this was provocative to me. I mean, now people might be like, yeah, provocative in the sense that I want to throw it in a dumpster. But I think that's cool. I think it's cool. Honestly, it made me kind of think of Warfare a little bit too, where it's just like, yeah, it's kind of neat to have movies that people are like, I want to light this on fire. I hated it. Yeah. It's way better to have that feeling than be like, I guess ballerina had some cool scenes. Did it. I couldn't agree more with that position and the idea of there being some division in point of view on whether a movie works or not.

36:11And even the writing that's been critical of the film, which I think a lot of it is very entertaining. It's like that writing is entertaining because people are being engaged in a different way than when they're like, ah, yes, another CGI slop fest where a car drives through a building and then lands on the moon. It's like, no, it's like this is, you're reacting because maybe you don't want the world to be like this or you do want the world to be more like something. And I think that that's fascinating. It's what I want movies to do more of. I couldn't agree more. I have also noticed, as I'm sure you have, that Celine Song has kind of, with the movie, been able to elevate herself out of the typical kind of movie discourse into appearing on the Modern Love podcast for the New York Times and becoming the subject of a kind of discourse that is more national, not just kind of entrenched in Hollywood, A24, all that stuff that past lives was kind of dominated by.

37:02And even within like film culture. I, you know, I did notice that my friends who are, who don't listen to this podcast, bless them. We're also like, I would like to go see Materialist. I have an opinion about this. Like I have heard from everyone in my life about this movie, which is fun. Movies are back and Materialist to Chris's point being like so divisive, I guess, or at least inspiring such reaction is another way of saying like, yeah, everyone is paying attention to movies. So that's good. CR. Thanks, buddy. You're welcome, guys. We'll see you soon. Come home. Only when Wheel of Time is back.

37:46Joanna Robinson is here. Pod princess of the Ringer Podcast Network. Oh, princess. Yeah, house of our prestige TV podcast. What other pods are you on? You know, this one as much as I can be, you know, just trying to infiltrate where I can. Hello. Speaking of infiltration. Yeah. A useful word for your selection. But before we get to your selection, good movie year? Have you been enjoying yourself? Mixed? Meh? Bad? Mixed, but with a message that is exciting. Like the things that are hitting are really interesting to me. That makes sense. What do you mean by that? You know, we're about to talk about an original mid-budget film and whether or not those can succeed.

38:30And in some cases, they have succeeded this year. And that's really exciting for what we might look at going forward. it's not just IP stuff to talk about this year if that makes sense at the box office I know you're relieved you're very relieved about that I am though I'm with Jo it's like mixed positive so far and she stole what I would have picked had I yeah I think probably my on paper number one for sentimental and personal reasons so that's okay that's exciting you've just given it away what is it? what's your pick Joanna? oh it's black bag It's Steven Soderbergh. It's Cate Blanchett. It's Michael Fassbender.

39:10It's spies. It's marriage. It's wigs. It's turtlenecks. It's everything you could possibly want. Wait, who's wearing a wig in the movie? Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett. Sorry. Oh, come on. I think I knew that. I think I knew that. It's a really good one, though. It's got supporting billing in this movie. It's incredible. So, you know, we did an episode about this movie, And this was a film that was a real problem for this show because I knew that like a billion people weren't going to go see it. Right. And it's all in the telling, right? It's all in the plotting and the elegance of the story unloading.

39:47And like, you don't want to spoil a movie like that for people on a podcast. It's been like four months since it came out. Do we feel that the world has watched Black Bag? Can we talk about it freely at this point? I mean, I feel like, A, we could talk about it freely. really but I also don't think people are watching Black Bag or have watched it and that's part of why we're here I think to promote something that people haven't like decided to check out yet but they can they can press pause on this podcast right now and go watch it and only 90 minutes later they will be done so 90 beautifully orchestrated wonderfully shot but slick, witty.

40:2590 % well-performed. Elegant. I have one casting note, but that's okay. I don't know. Everyone's doing great. Yeah, and it's available to watch at home, and then you can say, yay, movies. Let's just talk about the... I don't want to get too deep into your problems with a movie. No, I don't have any problems. I thought this was like an amazingly well-cast movie, and it does feel like all Steven Spielberg movies, or Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh movies now feel like they are like I'm almost watching him make them in real time because of what we know about the way that he produces the movies where he you know produces shoots edits and directs the movies and cuts them in real time and that that idea being in my head makes it feel like the movie is happening in real time to me you know what I mean I'm kind of like metatextualized my experience of watching it and this movie is clearly an homage to a certain kind of 60s there goes the ember 60s and 70s spy thriller but it also feels like a very modern relationship drama.

41:26What was it about it that clicked for you, Joanna? Yeah, I love a spy movie. I love marriage inside of a different genre movie. I'm a huge Mr. and Mrs. Smith fan personally. I love the Thin Man movies. All of this is paying homage to that but I think what's been so interesting to hear Steven Svoderbergh talk about, David Keb, the screenwriter, talk about is how who's afraid of Virginia Woolf was their main influence for this movie. And, and it's got these banger dinner scenes and you can just see that dynamic inside of just something that feels very slick, very oceans, very, you know, high gloss.

42:07The, the thing that, you know, Steven Soderbergh gave interviews after this movie came out and didn't do very well about how, uh, the audiences didn't show up for this movie the way that he hoped they would, or they, that he needed them to, or the way, you know, we could deliver a message to wider Hollywood of these are the kinds of movies people will show up for and they didn't for this movie. And, you know, his theory was something about, you know, original movies or something like that. But I worry that Steven Soderbergh in doing so many direct to video, you know, he had his Netflix deal and then his HBO Max deal.

42:43Like, I feel like Steven Soderbergh did a disservice to the idea of a Steven Soderbergh film. It doesn't feel as big as it, I think it should. He made a bunch of small movies and there's something wrong with a small movie. But then when you try to make something like this with a$50 million budget, it's not massive, but it's, you know, they have to make their money back. It's not$2 million, which has been, you know, some of his other budgets recently. And then it just doesn't feel like an event the way that it really deserves to, I think. I think there's definitely something to that. I respect the fact that he wanted to just continue working through COVID.

43:20And so one of the reasons why he signed that HBO Max deal, I think was just to kind of continue to put films out. I think those films are now going to end up a little memory hold for some people because they're only on that service and they don't have physical media representation. And so movies like this maybe don't feel like as much of an event. But I think it also goes back even to like Logan Lucky and kind of his return post-retirement and thinking that he had kind of cracked a new paradigm of how to release movies like that. Right. And that didn't really work out all that well. And I just think there's something to the fact that he likes a certain kind of adult drama.

43:55Yeah, he's making movies for grownups and the grownups who watch Steven Soderbergh movies are watching them at home. And maybe they'll do PVOD. Like maybe they'll pay for it, but like probably not. They'll just rent it and they'll check it out and be like, that was really great. I agree. And I think like the things that are encouraging this year, the Sinners and the 28 Years Later, they're all kind of like attached to a little bit more spectacle. And this is not a spectacle, right? It is sharp and cool and really smart, but there's not a lot of whiz bang in Black Bag. It's not vampires and it's not zombies, but it is spies and it is movie stars.

44:33And I think that we might just not be in that air anymore. and it's not that I disagree with what you said about his approach. It's just thinking about how stubborn Christopher Nolan was. The people who are so stubborn about my movie needs to feel like an event, their movies still feel like events. And for Soderbergh, who chose to do something different, it's interesting, but when you really need it to come through and feel like an event, it didn't for people. And that's too bad because this movie, I thought, was just really phenomenal. I had such a good time. I did too. I think it's interesting to think about in the arc of his career too because he wasn't, he's certainly the oceans guy and the traffic guy, but he's also the bubble guy and the full frontal guy.

45:18And, you know, he always is kind of on these like digressions and discursions through whatever kind of distribution style he's making within the kind of movie that he's making. And maybe he's, I don't know, lost some standing in the mind of the movie goer. I'm not really sure. He just, he wanted to keep working through COVID as you said, but like this is a man who likes to work. This is the second Steven Soderbergh film of the year. There was also presence. Also quite good. And there is something to the way that he makes movies and the way that he likes to make movies, which is not that it is.

45:56There's just a lot of them. He wants to keep trying stuff. He wants to be in the moment. And so that is, but I think just like the volume and the experimental, like, oh, let's do this. let's try this. What if we did this? Does sort of run counter to what is, we've been waiting 45 years and I had to, you know, carry the film canisters on a ship by myself to every theater. What's wrong with that? What is wrong with that? Listen, that's great. But it's like part of the Steven Soderbergh experience is like, oh, look, like, and another great movie. Yeah, I couldn't believe there was an announcement that he's got another film premiering at TIFF, The Christopher's.

46:38I was like, where the fuck? When is he doing all this? And he's reading every single great work of literature. It is really amazing. The movie itself, we've had a bit of a Michael Fassbender comeback here. He's kind of playing the same character in everything he's been doing recently. I didn't spend a ton of time with The Agency, the American remake of Le Bureau. I finally finished it. Yeah. Did you watch it, Joanna? I did, yeah. We covered it on Prestige. And I thought... It was fine, but the agency felt like just completely fine. And this feels actually quite special to me. The agency is what I was worried this was going to be.

47:16And then this wound up being a bit more special than that. So, yeah. Yeah, I think this and The Killer, I think, are two of his best performances. They are playing a very similar tune. Yes. Like massive restraint. Process. The expression of intellect. Yes. kind of suavity. Sure. Fincher and Soderbergh are also simpatico in the let's just like, let's a respect for getting this done exactly right. Yeah. And then, and maybe not showing all our emotional cards all at once. Though I do find this, I find Black Bag to be incredibly romantic, which says a lot about me, I guess. No. It's like in a deeply demented, fun way.

47:57Yeah. It's very romantic. Like him talking to her about what he would do for, you know, the premise of the film being, and this is just premise, not twist, but premise of the film being that there is a leak at the agency. He has to investigate fellow spies. And one of the people on the shortlist is his wife, Catherine, played by Gabe Blanchett. And so he is both investigating, but also has a vested interest. And they're like obsessed with each other. Yeah. And that comes through. It's not cold and chilly, actually. It is reserved and elegant and precise, but there is this sort of underneath obsession with each other.

48:34And then the messiness of the other spies around them, the frailties of the other spies around them, I think is just makes it really, really potent for me. Potent for me is Marissa Abella. I'm very pleased to see her bounce back after back to black and would like to see her in more films, her toe to toe with Fassbender. I thought very amusing as someone who kind of can't hold it together in the face of his, his chill, his cold. Tom Burke. I was going to say, this movie has an incredible supporting cast across the board. Tom Burke is excellent in this. Very, very funny. It's a very funny movie as well.

49:07Very knowingly written in a lot of ways. And Pierce Brosnan also. And Naomi Harris. Like, the terrific cast. Is Rajayjan Page your issue? Yeah. Okay. A little bit. What's the issue? That's, I just, I don't totally want to split for everyone, but like, when he has to play his role, you know. Okay. It's okay. He's not at the level of everybody else around the table. I see. He needs to feel like a credible threat to Fassbender's character just in terms of all the various machinations. And he doesn't, really. Like a Tom Burke would feel like more of a credible threat to me than a Brigajon Page. Yeah, I think that that's one of the key wrong-footing moments of the movie is you think that this is going to be Tom Burke and Fassbender toe-to-toe and in fact it is not that movie at all.

49:53Joanna, great pick. This is a really, really good movie. This is without a doubt one of the, I think probably our collective top five movies of the year. Can I just say, I love doing this podcast with you every year. This is the third year in a row that Rob Mahoney has sniped my actual number one. Listen, it's like, take the complaints to Rob. You see him more than we do. That's true. No, no, no, no. I am not complaining to you. He has already heard my complaints. Every single person that's come on this episode. It's a big pick of their tradition in a way that Rob just screws everyone over. I had lunch with Rob yesterday.

50:26Here's what he told me. he was like, I'm just fast on the Slack response. And I was like, that's true. He's just the quickest on the Slack response when someone sends out a message saying, what's your best movie of the year so far? I would say that this was also Van's, his was also Van's number one. And Van added a note of sociocultural acknowledgement to Rob sniping, you know? Jack O 'Connelling down the rocky road to Dublin. Here's a true story. I texted Rob after Jack told me what had already been taken. and I was like, wow, Rob, this is the first year you didn't take my number one pick. And he's like, what do you mean?

51:00I was like, yeah, Van took it. He was like, I took sinners. I was like, oh, I assumed Van got sinners. I was like, you got sinners? He was like, yeah. I was like, okay, I'll go look in the mirror about that. But yeah, exactly. But he said this would have been his number two. So we're all sort of on the same page about Black Bag. Joanna, thank you. This was a great pick. Thanks for having me.

51:27Charles Holmes is here. One quarter of the Midnight Boys. Okay, best movie. Has it been a good movie here for you? How are you feeling? Yes, because I just saw F1. Just saw Jurassic World Rebirth. Did you like Rebirth? Don't tell us any details, but did you like it because we haven't seen it yet? Just like do a gladiator. Like put it out and then... Yeah! That was a thumbs up for the listeners at home. I will just say it is in the same, not even quality, but just like F1 and both of those movies I'm just like okay we can make blockbusters like you can get from point A to point B to point C and I'm just like you didn't waste my time okay I'm not saying that the movie has necessarily like put rebirth life into the Jurassic Park series but I'm just like hey it's better than the other fucking ones we were getting that's good do you think that I need to rewatch any of the previous I remember the events of Jurassic World 1993 but anything after that Do I need to rewatch to know where I am?

52:25No. Literally the thing Van said walking out where he's just like, yeah, they just kind of force awakens it. And I'm like, that is literally, you just need to watch the originals and then you're like, all right, I get it. You're a legendary hater too. So this is like a mixed positive is a pretty big positive for most. I'm just at the point where I'm like, when I go to the movies, I'm just like, oh, I'm glad this is the only place I wanted to be. And a lot of the movies recently have just been like, guys, you have forgotten it. And F1 and Jurassic World, not perfect movies. I'm sure. I'm like, movie stars doing shit.

52:58Hell yeah. Okay. All right. I'm happy to hear that. But you did not pick either of those movies. What movie did you select? I picked the most cursed comedy of the year, Friendship. Yes, please. Let's talk about it. I picked this one because I feel like it kind of located something. I'm a huge fan of comedy that I've been noticing that's been in the work of Nathan Fielder on the rehearsal, Seth Rogen with the studio, and Friendship. which is like either they all have a similar line or a similar moment where these like 40 plus year old men are like what are the rules and just kind of that like that all of these are about different things but i'm like oh they're locating something that i'm seeing in my older friends and my younger friends and just everybody in general which is just like wait how do i not get canceled but also how do i get my friend group and also how do i like not offend anybody but and it's just all of these comics and especially friendship just located in such a funny, interesting, disturbing, it was almost a hard movie for me to watch.

53:57Yeah. Because I've had to have talks with my friends who are like, have been in relationships a long time and their friends have moved away and they're like, how do I make friends? And I'm just like, oh, we got the version of this movie in 2009 with Paul Rudd and Jason Segel and now we get the darker version with Tim Robinson. So were you a Tim Robinson fan before this movie? Did you watch, I think you should leave. Yes. Huge Tim Robinson. Detroiters? Did you watch Detroiters? Didn't watch Detroiters. I watched the Netflix show. And the funniest thing is like locating where Tim Robinson is in the like comedy firmament is when I was in LAX the last time, I saw Tim Robinson with his family.

54:39And he's the type of celebrity where like a person who lives in Highland Park, he's just like, Tim Robinson. But like nobody noticed him. all I saw it was like a sketch there was just a little old lady who didn't know how to use the airport kiosk to check out all of her stuff and it's just like Tim Robbins be like no you gotta do it like do it like this and his kids his teenagers are just like and no one is no one's pointing at him no one is like you're Tim Robbins and it's just like an old lady be like fuck this guy who's cute or you and that's it's interesting where I'm like he is what the a top five comedian in the United States in terms of like fame and getting stuff made, but he could still walk through LA and say, I don't know who this guy is.

55:19Yeah, his ordinariness is kind of a feature. That's sort of the point of a lot of what he's doing. But you said that a lot of your friends are maybe experiencing some of this angst that men have in 2025. I mean, before we started recording, we were having a conversation about Charles' weekend and the various social conundrums that you found yourself in and people not knowing how to act and people not picking the right places. I mean, I also, I went I had a friendship weekend where I had a male friend who was turning 40 who doesn't drink as much. So he was having a house party where we were singing karaoke.

55:57And then it was like, by 10, 11, it was like all my 30 and 40-year-old friends who are single. And I'm just like, this is depressing. We're just fucking out of town getting fucked up. And that's how friendship felt. Because the moment when they're like, oh, we're going to go see a Marvel. that is literally my life just in general when I just meet like let's say I have like a girlfriend she brings her boyfriend and is like oh what are we talking about hey you see Deadpool and Wolverine I'm like yeah pretty good pretty good and I'm like that's that's what kind of being 30, 40s is like starting to feel like so you do relate to this movie I feel like I've been the Tim Robinson character especially because you knew when you hired me I was in New York yeah moved here this is what I'm going to ask you're a transplant You have to make new friends.

56:44Making no, like they tell you we have all these movies, but like making friends in your 30s is the wildest experience ever. Well, walk us through what your experience is. Because we did talk about this when we talked about the movie on the show. It's a fascinating thing. Men and women have to deal with this. Yes, and I do think, I mean, I thought this was like a very funny movie, but I read it as a sociological text. So I'm with Charles. And it is very specifically about the challenges of men right now making friends. We actually do have a lot of how hard and miserable it is to have female friends movies.

57:17But you guys get your moment and it seems fraught. I feel for you. It's fraught, but it's also the intensity of two 30 plus year old men or three or four finding someone this late in life that they connect with is such a, it's a relationship in itself because it's just like, like all of us have the same story. It was like, oh, well, my best friend is back in New York or in Chicago or they're having kids and it's just like locating someone where it's like oh I can ask you to go to the movies with me I can ask you to get a beer with me and then when you have that first fight it's like it's the funniest thing because all your friends are like are you guys do you need marriage counseling are you okay like and that's what this movie felt like where I was just like oh all fights of men at this age are that dumb where it makes no sense it's just like I broke some taboo We try to meld our friend groups together.

58:10Right. And you're just like, oh, we're not in college anymore. We can't do that. But also, we don't actually talk about it with words. We only talk about it through unspoken social rituals of ostracization. Well, one of the funny things in this movie is that there is one conversation that Paul Rudd has with Tim Robinson when he's basically officially breaking up with him. He comes to the door and he confronts him and he's like, we had some fun, but it's over. And that was a very resonant moment for me, not because I've been broken up with as a friend, but... Very quick to slip that in. You're the one breaking up.

58:48Are you the one breaking up? Are you the phone? I'm probably more just like quietly ghost away over time. That's really more my move. But making new friends in my 40s at least is the closest I will ever get to dating. Like I haven't really been dating in 20 plus years. So I don't, the rituals of, do I text you or do you text me? Or do I put myself out there and say, let's make a plan that like the anxiety that comes from that. This movie is like that, you know, to a teeth, like at 10 the whole time. And Tim Robinson also, you know, I mean, look at the man's face right there. Like he is, no one believes in that confidence.

59:24You know what I mean? It's like an absence of confidence that is rippling through, which I think is pretty representative of how a lot of guys feel right now. And it's just, it's this awkward feeling of, I was thinking about the movie that Paul Rudd was in, I Love You Man. Which was like, that was at a time in like the Judd Apatow. Yes. Type where it's just like, and even Jackass. And I remember watching that movie as a kid and having two thoughts. I'm like, fucking 40 year olds don't have friends. They have to make new friends. I'm never going to be there. but also that feeling of like we are no longer in that era of comedy where it's like Will Ferrell we're gonna be boys forever like our buddy comedies aren't even like that our stepbrothers our super bads that like hey guys we're teenage forever we're never growing up friendship to me feels like a kind of wrinkle in that which is just like we're not teenagers anymore but we're also not adults like no there's no actual everything is broken down The internet has broken anything down.

1:00:25Yeah, it feels of the moment. And we've all forgotten how to speak to each other or how to be people. Like even his friends, like when he's at work and they're just like, what are, I've had that feeling before where I'm like, oh, I'm going to go hang out with my friends. And I'm like, I don't end up in a garage, but I do end up, we all just end up at this like third space where we're like, all right, can we go? Like, I'm just going to watch you play the drums. and that is like that to me isn't just like a male friendship thing. To your point that is like oh we don't know how to like hang out. We don't know how to like go to a bar and talk to each other and have interest.

1:01:02It's like the only interest we have is like Marvel fucking movies. It's a great pick. Any lingering feelings or concerns about men that you have in the aftermath of this? How do you feel about white men after watching Friendship? Well you know I do now watch it in the context of raising the next generation. So that's pretty troubling. And, you know, everything I do is to try to avoid a situation where my sons are in a garage screaming, this is a Marvel spoiler-free zone. No Marvel spoilers. Sorry, it's coming. But on the other hand, were they all to sing my boo acapella with their closest friends, I would feel a sense of accomplishment.

1:01:48I would feel a connection. So... I sang thinking about you at a 40-year-old's party and it went terribly. Okay. Do you have that falsetto? I mean, I think I have a falsetto. The women at the party were just like, turn this shit off. Oh my gosh. But yeah, friendship is... Yeah, beautiful. Great pick. Thank you, Charles. Hell yeah.

1:02:16So honored to be joined by the face of the ringer, Mallory Rubin, as recently decreed by Van Lathan, Rachel Lindsay, and frankly, all of America. Right. Wouldn't you agree? Yes. Mal, how do you feel? I feel that we all know the truth, which is that every single person alive thought it should be Chris except for Rachel. So I'd like to say thank you to Rachel. True story. I ran into Rachel on the way in today. She's returned to the United States of America and she was unashamed of her decision-making. And I think she feels good about making a point to Chris that he's not all he's always cracked up to be.

1:02:51Wow. You know, there's some flaws in the design and you filled those flaws now. Was this the same conversation where we were briefly confused as the same person because of the hair length? Because you were white women, I think is why. Yeah, sure, right, yeah. Listen, I've been saying it since little tiny headshots were first introduced on The Ringer a decade ago and since our voices started making it out into the world. Being confused for Amanda Dobbins is the honor of a lifetime. I feel similarly. Except for when people come in and yell at me about sports takes that I don't really understand, you know, or being like, you got this wrong, the shield that someone uses in something.

1:03:32And I'm like, man, you know, I don't know. Take it up with Mal. Every now and then I get some very confusing messages about a celebrity culture thing that I'm like, did I have a stroke? and I have no recollection of having said this in a public forum, which is entirely possible. I was just complaining to you both before we started about my back pain. So I guess I'm at that age. And then I realized, oh no, this must be something Amanda said on Jam Session. You will always be two beautiful individual snowflakes to me. Thank you so much. And you are specific and dissolving in my hand at all times.

1:04:05Yeah, that's how we both feel about it too. Yeah. But I would like to thank Van and Rachel, the Thought Warriors and everyone else who's just waiting a year for Chris to receive the trophy that we all know he deserves. Okay, Mel, best movies of the year. Good movie year. Are you enjoying it? Bad movie year? You're having a great time yeah i have been to the movie theater a lot recently which i know you know you guys both know me very well i'm a real like unless absolutely forced to uh to do the contrary i'll stay at home in pajamas for as long as humanly possible but it's been really fun to go to the theater and uh you know explore some some different confections at the concession stand and test out some different screens i've been on a real dolby kick okay that's been fun i'm having a blast with Dolby, listen, I managed at the last second to snag, and after texting you guys bitching about the fact that I could not find such a ticket, I managed to snag in response to the urgent request from Megan Schuster to join her on the Ringer F1 show to talk about F1 the movie.

1:05:09I managed to snag an IMAX ticket. It's just fun to go to the movies and see movies on a big screen. That's how I'm feeling about it. You know, movies are back. Yeah. They're really back, and it's just wonderful. And one way you know that they're back is that we are now regularly getting screenshots of seating charts. I've been sending a lot of those. I should apologize for that. And various theaters around Los Angeles. And I'm like, oh, OK. So if that's where this, that's where Mallory is. Here's what I'm prepared to say right now. I am willing to stop sending you screenshots of various open or taken seats.

1:05:44and in exchange from now through next March, we'll only text you about Project Hail Mary. Listen, open. We like, I can't even tell you. So we saw that at CinemaCon, okay? Let me set the scene for you by saying that it was an evening presentation in Las Vegas. And so I had had exactly two Negronis and then I sat down in my seat and then it was a cold open. No one came out, no one introduced anything. They just they knew they had it so hard that they just project, you know, they gave us the trailer for Project Hail Mary. And then Ryan Gosling was there in front of us upon the stage. Incredible. And I like I felt my soul leave my body.

1:06:27Back in April, we were not back at the movies when we went there. And then when they showed that, I was like, I think I think this is the moment when we turn the corner. And lo and behold, we have turned the corner and we have we have good movies now, which is very exciting. So what movie did you choose now? I chose a very just gentle, calm, subtle. Yeah, a quiet family drama. For all family film called 28 Years Later. The latest from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland back together again, reunited in the 28 verse. I thought this movie was absolutely sensational. I loved it and I loved the pod that the two of you and Chris did about it.

1:07:10I had a blast talking to Joe about it. I really love 28 Days Later, as many do. I have fun every so often watching the second film in the franchise that I think has largely been rendered moot by this third installment. So I don't know how often I'll be revisiting it in the future. But I really just like I love Alex Garland movies because every now and then one of them I consider just like an absolute genuine masterpiece, sex machina, etc. And even the Garland stories, whether it's something that he's directing, show running, writing that don't work for me, that I don't find myself enjoying and that maybe even I am like actively in some way repelled by.

1:07:51They just take root in me and lead me to like such a contemplative state that I really I admire basically everything that he does as a result of that. and I just thought that this was like a visually stunning return to this world. Great cast. Alfie Williams as Spike, like, holy fuck. I had absolutely no idea that young Spike was going to be basically the main character in the movie and I thought that he was sensational. Ralph Fiennes, one of the great loves of my life. Like, what an absolute joy to be in the Bone Temple with him always in more ways than one. And I just thought that this movie was exceptional.

1:08:23Genuinely exceptional. You know what? Listen, you don't miss a step, Mal. Val goes to the bone temple. Love it. Thanks. How did I not see that coming? Yeah, we love this movie too. And I'm kind of surprised a little bit by the overwhelming positive reaction to it. I know that there's a lot of players involved that we have a lot of warm feelings towards, but it is quite an audacious movie. I mean, it's a real tonal clash. It's really violent. It's really crazy. Even the zombie stuff is quite intense intense and, you know, explicit, I would say. There's zombie dick. There's zombie birth. There's all kinds of things that we're kind of like, we're entering the final stage of zombie storytelling, I feel, in some ways.

1:09:10I also think, you know, Mal, you covered The Last of Us really closely, and I wonder if this movie operates in kind of like an opposite emotional tenor to that TV series, which I think people were kind of like a little bit more mixed on the second season, And so the like the the thrilling thrash of 28 years later might have been a little bit of a bomb in the aftermath of that season. What do you think?

1:09:35Great point and question. I mean, I think that like in general, in any sort of I know that the filmmakers would not want us to use the term zombie, but in any sort of dystopian tale featuring the infected. did. You know, you're going to hit at some point, inevitably, I think, a moment where you were confronting the fact that the real monsters are other people, right? Like that is a core aspect of this type of genre storytelling. And so, you know, as is always the case with any type of story, the degree of success is going to be determined by the execution and how compelled we are by the relationships inside of the story.

1:10:13Now, in 28 Days Later, when we watch like Cillian Murphy's character, Jim, wake up. That's another type of story I really love. That is more about found family, rooting yourself in an unexpected relationship so that you can make it forward another day. I would say that that is more akin ultimately to how we enter Last of Us. 28 years later, everything that happens on Holy Island, the causeway, obviously, again, this is just visually astonishing as a place to set this film. But that question about then, And like, what community have you built? And what are you trying to protect and why? And what do the inhabitants of that world even like understand about it?

1:10:53I thought that was, there are plenty of comps there, I think, between Last of Us, whether it's the stretch in Jackson, Wyoming or elsewhere, where like the question of what your role in sustaining a community is and then how your perspective shifts when you walk outside the walls. I thought that was also amazing. As you noted, this is a deeply explicit and violent story, but on some level, it is a coming-of-age story, and it is a story about revelations and awakenings, whether that is Spike having to confront his father being a liar or confront who or what might be waiting just a few strides further across a given cresting hill.

1:11:33when your perspective is that locked into one place and that place equates to the ability to sustain human life. Like that's just a really fascinating setting and dynamic for a film. And then I thought like, the other thing, the thing that I think is not similar between this at all and Last of Us is like in Last of Us, not much of a spoiler, this is the premise of the story. Like the cordyceps infection just takes over the world and it's like, that's it. To open this movie, And again, this is like some of the where the retconning to the second film takes place because that ends with like, you're going to Paris and it's like, fuck, oh no, whoops.

1:12:11And the idea here that the rest of the world has just quarantined the United Kingdom and left everybody there to either figure it out or not, I found so unbelievably harrowing and in some ways much more disturbing than seeing a spinal column ripped out of a head or body. It was just like what that says about people and humanity was – that's like real Garland stuff to me. And the current geopolitical state of the world. It has both, right? It has spinal columns and it has ideas. And, you know, I do think some people still just go to the movies for the spinal columns and for a zombie dick. And if you go for that reason, you are getting your money's worth.

1:13:00And then maybe you leave with, you know, some expanded ideas about, you know, how we live in a society. but we do live in a society we live in a society yeah we do Alex Garland movies do be saying that they do be saying we live in a society you know and they have incredible foresight but we don't know how and we don't always understand it they don't always give us the conclusions to those societies but yeah I mean this is right near the top for me in terms of the first six months of the year this is probably my second favorite movie of the year right now and And it's a great pick. And I'm just, you know, as somebody whose origin story of Los Angeles is very neatly tied up in the movie Sunshine, it's very excited.

1:13:47I'm like, I'm very excited that they're still working together and that this is still something that, you know, they can make possible at the movies. And I'm quite curious to see if we get, we're definitely getting the second one in January. The third one is a little TBD based on the performance of the movie, I guess. And the second one is also, with respect to Anita Costa, not Danny Boyle and Alex Garland working together. And it's not, you know, two people bringing out the best in each other. So let's enjoy this while we have it. Mal, great pick. Great to see you. Listen to Mal on House of R, the F1 podcast here at The Ringer.

1:14:21What else are you on these days? You know, who knows? Who knows? Just waiting to be invited to chat with my friends on Big Pick and The Watch, basically. Have you been on The Watch? When was the last time you were on The Watch? Great question. Something for Chris to reflect on. Sounds like an Andy problem. I think Andy's blocking you. You want to come on Jam Session? Before the summer's out? You want to bring all your celebrity DMs to the table? We can talk about it. Sure, yeah. I would be thrilled. I don't know if I'm equipped to come on Jam Session, but I would be delighted. I would be delighted to try.

1:14:53And it's always a pleasure and a thrill to be with you both. Thanks for having me. I look forward to being back at the movies with you both and with Jack O 'Connell at the start of next year. Okay, no spoilers. Thanks, Mel. Bye, guys.

1:15:12Mean Pod Guy returns. Adam Naiman, our pal, critic par excellence, is here to talk about the best movie of the year so far. So do you want to share any of your runners-up before you give us your pick? I think I saw one of them the other day. I wrote about it for the site, which is 28 years later. What an impressive piece of filmmaking. Pretty darn good. I know you guys have talked over it, and there'll be more to say about it as the year goes on, but it's very moving and, you know, goofy and fun. And I did not, I guess I knew Danny Boyle had it in him because these exact people did make this exact movie for a version of it 20 years ago, but I didn't know they still had it in him.

1:15:51It's really good. Little redemption for your guy, Alex Garland, who you've been just beaten up on over the years. You know what? I think it's just about the best script he's written. And I will say to, not to Alex Garland, but about the script, that is a smart, emotional, resonant piece of screenwriting. And it deals with aspects of history and culture in ways that are very smart. And I just have to, got to give it up. Very happy to hear you say that. Okay, well, what did you choose and how did you decide on the film that you chose? well i had some taken away from me by you know other guests talking you know what's covered and then the only reason i'm not going to talk about the shrouds by david cronenberg is we talked about it already and i don't want the bit to be he only talks about the toronto filmmaker for the record if i'm making a i think i'm doing a half year list for this site you know i mean that's the movie of the year and probably will be for the end of the year for me but we've we've done that so you know whether it's 20 years later or the shrouds or friendship you know i these are movies that i've kind of talked about on the site already so i wanted to talk about one and to cheat you know a second movie which i think i'm even more interested to argue with you about okay that even if i wrote about them elsewhere i didn't write about for ringer so my real pick which i think will also be on my year end 10 and just by a absolutely amazing filmmakers caught by the tides by the Chinese director, Jia Zhangke, one of the great contemporary filmmakers who's repurposed and reused and remixed 20 years of some of this, I guess, behind-the-scenes footage or alternate takes or unused scenes.

1:17:26It's really interesting to read about what the material is. But he's taken it and made an entirely new film out of it, which shows in some ways how similar his movies are narratively. He's interested in movies about, you know, couples that break up or become separated and one kind of pursues the other across the country. He uses the same actors. But it's also a film that, because it's essentially shot in real time, has been compared to people. And it's a different kind of project, but it's like Boyhood, the Linklater movie, where you just simply see time at work over a 20-year period. And so it's not production design.

1:18:01It's not a period piece. It's just all the actual gradations of fashion and music and technology. and it narrates this incredible history of a country kind of changing where even if in the foreground you have this very minimal plot of a woman sort of trying to find her boyfriend who has left her in this small town and kind of abandoned her and she's sort of chasing after him you know the plot is very simple it's almost a in a way a silent film there's very little dialogue in it a lot of the story is told through text but the background is sort of the protagonist and even just the way the third part of the film shows you 21st century technology and the way that the formats that the movie itself is being shot on the different levels of film and digital video like every second of it is just completely compelling on that level so yeah I mean a very well-reviewed film played at festivals last year played at Cannes it's definitely a kind of art house pick.

1:18:59But, you know, I think, I think Jha's career is sort of magnificent and seeing him revisit that career in the space of this one kind of shape-shifting time-traveling movie would, would, you know, is going to make my year endless. You saw it and liked it. I haven't seen it yet. It has somehow eluded me through all the festival season. And I, I want to say that one of the very first movies that we talked about on this show was Ash's Purest White. This is his first movie since that movie. That was 2018, right around when you started coming on. And I love that film. And I've seen most of his movies in the 21st century, but I definitely have not seen the early films and not even the early work when he started shooting this movie.

1:19:41So the thing I wanted to ask you about for people who are listening at home and thinking about this, you know, it would be very easy to start with A Touch of Sin or Mountains May Depart. He's made a number of acclaimed movies in the last 15 years. Can you watch this new film and feel like you're getting it, feel like you're getting its depth and a deeper understanding of it if you haven't seen the last five Xia movies? It's a good question because honestly, kind of not. Kind of yes, kind of no, because the way he shoots and the way he frames, let's say, landscapes is inherently compelling. And Zhao Tao, his consistent star, his creative collaborator, his life partner, one of the most beautiful and accomplished and expressive actresses I've ever seen.

1:20:26I mean, you know, just watching her is amazing. So I don't know if someone would watch Caught by the Tides, if they were to watch Caught by the Tides fresh, like I don't think they'd be bored. I think that it has that narrative hook. It has this underlying emotionalism. It is compelling, even if you haven't seen his other movies, if you understand that it's shot over a 20-year period, you'll be alert to all that stuff. But the nostalgia and the sense of just seeing an entire career and an artistic lifetime kind of distilled into two hours, I think that would be missing. So what I would say to your question is it's kind of a hard movie maybe to watch cold, but that means everyone should just go watch a couple of other genre movies and then you can watch this one.

1:21:07And in that case, you can never run out of good ones. I mean, they're all, most of them are amazing pickpocket the world unknown pleasures there's a great movie he made in 2006 called skill life which is about the three gorges dam project and a big chunk of caught by the tides i think the biggest chunk of the movie is footage from that period in 2006 where you essentially just see this entire community on the shores of the yanksy river just basically wash away and it's not a natural disaster it's a man-made construction project And if you've ever just wondered, well, what does displacement look like?

1:21:42This is documentary footage of what that kind of wide scale displacement looks like. And it has an eerie feeling of a kind of future prophecy as well. Three Gorges Climate Damn isn't climate change exactly, but it gives a little snapshot of what some things might look like going forward. and uh you know he just he's so attuned to the way that history works the title of the movie is about history it's about that idea of being caught up in this kind of larger almost kind of oceanic pattern and you know parts of the movie are very funny it actually has my favorite use of like robots and ai in any movie that i've seen this year there's a whole passage toward the end that's kind of like a live action version of wally like a live action kind of documentary version of WALL-E.

1:22:31And the whole last part was shot during COVID as well. So again, reality never kind of totally disappears in his work. And I think this got the widest distribution of any of his movies because it came out via sideshow. So they were pushing it. He traveled with the film. He did Q &As in the US. It had a good trailer. So while it's never going to be as big a movie on this kind of year-end or half-year-end list as talking about F1, it is possible that people could see it. It's not asking too much of people to seek it out and find it when it's on streaming. It's a great recommendation. I would imagine it's going to come to the Criterion channel at some point, probably in the fall, I would guess.

1:23:10And it may be still kicking around in some art houses out there. Yeah, I mean, I think Criterion's a good guess. And again, I think one of the nice things about this show is you talk about, you know, movies of all kinds. You're always very, you know, conscientious about telling people to see, you know, that which is not all that immediately or instantly available. So I hope that people who are listening are motivated and curious to check it out. The other movie I want to talk to you about is one that you gave two and a half stars on Letterboxd and I like far more than you. Let's fight. What is it?

1:23:41No, let's discuss, which is Jean-Claude Serra's Woman in the Yard. Oh, yeah. Which I like a lot. And I know that it's a... I try not to say that it's a bit because auteurism isn't a bit. Like if a tourism is a problem, then, you know, we have a big problem. But I love this filmmaker. And I like this way more than his Netflix baggage claim movie, which I thought was kind of fun and impersonal. This one I thought was really emotional, expressive, kind of formally gorgeous horror. And you, my friend, were not on board. We're not really. You weren't fully on board the JCS Express on this one. Yeah, broadly speaking, I'm a big fan of JCS.

1:24:26He was on this show some years ago. I liked talking to him. He's obviously an incredibly dynamic, formal filmmaker. He's got great aesthetics. He tries things in studio movies that very few filmmakers would consider trying. And he's an assignment director. You know, he's someone you call when you've got a nifty script that is very fungible for somebody with some big ideas. I just thought The Woman in the Yard was yet another studio horror programmer shot in one location that was like a little bit more bereft of ideas than I wanted it to be and a little bit too stuck on the kind of post-trauma narrative train that just way too much horror is attached to right now.

1:25:12And so it just didn't feel like I liked the moves he was making in the movie. And I felt like a lot of the strategy was immersive, but I didn't think the script was very good. And I'm usually a very big Daniel Deadweiler fan, but I just thought that character was like deeply one dimensional. And so I was just a little bit down on it. As you know, I don't really talk too much about movies that I'm really down on, especially from filmmakers who I actually broadly like their work. But JCS, I don't know, it's been kind of a weird five or six years for me. He got linked up with The Rock. I didn't really like what came out of that.

1:25:45I also was not huge on Carry On. I thought it was fine. Also an assignment movie. Very much. And it wore that assignment movie thing, I think, maybe not intentionally, but it was kind of a movie about someone who was trying to buy into the program. Yes. It's like, I really want to be a cop. And it's like, okay. I mean, I don't know that that's what I want to see a movie about at the moment. but I thought what I liked about Women in the Yard and it's interesting it's not to disagree but just to develop the idea of Deadweiler there was an interview I think Robert Sweeney did a great critic with the writer of the film and I did not know how invested Deadweiler was in the project like very much a driving kind of creative force within it and I believe that it's her artwork in the film with the character I mean it's not really a movie about vocation it's about a woman in the yard that haunts a family But I mean, her character is a painter and there's a lot of this kind of the art direction of the film or the mise en scene of the movie is dominated by these paintings.

1:26:47And something about that, when I heard about it, it tied to what I felt was something pretty inhabited about Deadweiler's performance. And I loved the way that she interacted with the other actress within the cast, the kind of physical interaction they have towards the end of the movie. This idea of a manifestation of grief or kind of impulses. I don't want to spoil the movie, but I just loved watching the way he choreographed the bodies and the physicality of these actresses in the homestretch. I thought more than scary, it was kind of in a horror register that I respond to, which is kind of like a melancholy horror movie.

1:27:20It's a very sad movie. It is a very sad movie. It is notably shot by Pavel Pogoreski, who shot the last three Ari Aster movies. And you can feel it. There's a sequence in the attic where I'm like, that's part of what I was holding against it. I'm like, this is kind of just hereditary for Blumhouse, you know? Like, I don't know that it was as developed as I wanted it to be, Adam. I think, no, I think that, I mean, it's fair. I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't think, you know, I read your very smart letterbox piece. That's why I brought it up. But when we're talking about form, I mean, I think for me, the form in this one carries, you know?

1:27:55And I think it is true that, you know, in some ways he's kind of an impersonal director, or an assignment-based director, but to me, he connected to something in that character and that performance and that idea maybe of using a very expressive visual form to make a movie about a character who is sort of trying to channel something through their own kind of artwork. I mean, I don't want to make ridiculous claims for it, but with the exception of the Boyle film, of all the studio horror I've watched this year, I think I liked it the most. Although I had a very good time last night at Megan 2.0.

1:28:28Haven't seen it yet. which is basically Terminator 2 for the Megan movies and a lot of fun. The audience I saw with was going bonkers. They thought it was hilarious. That's great to hear. I'm going to see it this weekend so I'm happy about that. That's my report from the trenches. Thank you very much. I'll have you know JCS is next making a remake of Cliffhanger starring Lily James. And in between there too though there's something called Play Dead. I saw Juliet Gariepi from our favorite film Red Rooms. posted that she just made a movie with JCS. So I'm like, that's encouraging as well. That is very exciting.

1:29:04The other thing I like with the guy, he just keeps working. He does. He does. He's working tirelessly to get back to the extraordinary highs of Orphan. And he may never get there, but may he try forever. I love Orphan very much. When I saw Orphan back in 2009, the statute of limitations on spoilers for Orphan, I think is over, right? You can say what happens at the end. So like when Vera Farmiga like kicks her kid into the ice and kills her or whatever, someone in the audience yelled and I will never forget it. This woman yelled, that's fucking right in the middle of the movie theater. And I was just like, yeah.

1:29:40That's cinema, Adam. That's cinema. That's what I want to yell anytime at a movie. Thank you, my friend. Appreciate you chipping in on this one. Absolutely. My pleasure. Good to see you.

1:29:55All right, we're joined by a very special guest. It's my little sister. Grace Fantasy. Grace, what's up? Nothing much. I'm excited to be here. So this isn't your first time on the podcast, but it might be your first YouTube. Oh, yeah. It's my first time on camera. Welcome to hell. How do you feel about it? I liked being in a room with no camera, but this is new and exciting. You are a full 20 some odd years younger than us. Yeah. So you're in slightly better standing visually. Audio, we'll see. Sure. You know, do you have takes? Do you have strong feelings about the year in movies in 2025? I think so.

1:30:26Okay. I've looked at my Letterboxd and I've seen like 12 of the new movies from Pair 25. How do you determine what you want to go see at this stage of your life? You just graduated from college. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. You are a very avid movie watcher. Yes. Which your followers on Letterboxd will know. But going to the movie theater, how do you choose? It's kind of just who will see what with me. Because I will see kind of anything in theaters. So I have an AMC membership. So that's my life. Okay. Got it. Love it. No free ads, but yeah. Yeah. so it's I do too I have to convince people to go but I will see anything I love sitting and watching trailers and getting excited for every movie that's coming out do you find that your friends are mostly not interested in going to the movies at this point like does your boyfriend want to go to the movies like how does it work my boyfriend goes to like any movie I want to see because he's he's good but um yeah those are the rules yeah you kind of have to but certain friends I have to like really pull to go see movies what do they watch um well I got one of my best friends to go see Materialist with me because I was like she would like a romance movie but when I took her to see Mickey 17 she was not about that.

1:31:27Interesting. So it kind of just depends on the genre of each person. Do you have to sell them on the story? Yes. Or is genre enough? I think I have to sell on story too. Or like who's in it? Okay. Who's a draw? I think Pedro is a big draw for some people. Sure. That's Pedro Pascal for those of you watching at home. She's on a first name basis with Pedro. Pedro has a big summer coming up. Best thing that could have happened. Amanda blasphemed his good name. I was very clear, both on the podcast and to Grace last night at dinner, that I respect Pedro Pascal as a person. I just did not think he worked in materialists.

1:32:07He is also going to be in Eddington and Fantastic Four First Steps. And he just concluded his run on The Last of Us Season 2. And next year he'll be in The Mandalorian and Grogu. And he has something else. What am I forgetting? He's freaking everywhere. And he's your fave and he's like a 50-year-old man. What's going on with that? Well, I'm eating it up that he's everywhere. That is the best thing that could have happened. I watched him first in The Last of Us, and I was like, wow, this guy's amazing. That's how you connected with him in the first place. And then after that, I was like, I need to watch everything he's in.

1:32:35So I didn't get to everything. Yeah, I was going to say, does The Mandalorian count when you can't see him? Yes. I did watch that show because I was like, I need to see more of him. But no, it actually wasn't him. But presence, essence. So a Pedro movie is not at the top of your list. Some movies were taken before you could choose your favorite from this year. so like you couldn't take Sinners for example because someone took Sinners Sinners was taken from everyone by Rob Mahoney yeah we've been getting a lot of feedback on that yeah he is a thief I think most people on this episode would have taken Sinners yeah you mentioned Mickey 17 yes that was on your long list you liked it you liked it maybe even more than we did yeah I wasn't I wouldn't say it was my favorite but I did enjoy it I had a good time I left and I was like alright good movie okay what else was on your list um materialists and i feel like that's not a popular but well there's been a lot of discussion about it i think we're coming back around you can lead us there you wanna you wanna speak to the people um yes so one of my problems with seeing like people's reaction to it was everyone was saying it was marketed as a rom-com i didn't think that so like that wasn't a problem for me when i left and they're like it wasn't a rom-com like yeah it was a romance movie yeah so i think that was one of my main problems.

1:33:51Also, broke man propaganda is people who are very angry about that where they're like, why'd she end up with a broke guy? Because she didn't love Pedro Pascal. Right, yeah. Because they had zero chemistry, but that's okay. Is that a feature or a bug in the film? I think it can be both in this case where I think maybe he could have communicated some other things along with the lack of chemistry. I had never heard the phrase poverty propaganda before this film came out And then when you came over the other day and it was one of the first things you said to me during the trip that you were just like, this broke man propaganda thing.

1:34:26I don't get it. I felt relieved because when I saw poverty propaganda, it's like, is that an active line of discourse in online culture right now? I know I'm 100 years old, but are there people who are like, it's very important for you to love a poor person? I get it. It's like justification for being in a relationship. I understand the line of thought. But is that an active discussion point among people when they're choosing their partners? Listen, I just don't think you should go on TikTok, you know? And I didn't. It's like, you know, the girlies are out here making names for themselves, coining.

1:35:04You know, the discourse has gone all sorts of ways. So sure, there are people like posting about anything that under the sun at this point. Do you think about the wealth of your partner? I mean, I feel like the problem with everyone's reaction with it is I wouldn't want to date Chris Evans in that movie where he really has nothing, like has no zero money. So I understand that. Yeah, nobody wants to go to that apartment. Yeah, that's my nightmare personally. But what about as a proud, independent woman, you could also help evolve his circumstances? Yeah, I think that's like, right. That seems reasonable.

1:35:43Yes, but she's only making$80 ,000 a year. Well, we know that doesn't make sense. That was one of my primary issues with the film is that she's got a lovely apartment in New York and she makes$80 ,000 a year as a matchmaker. And the fashion does not also align with that. She's very well-dressed. Okay, so Materialist is not your pick. It's not my pick, no. Though you liked it. I did like it, but I wouldn't say like top of 2025. When you first started coming on the show, you were deep, deep, deep in the MCU. Yes. That was your favorite thing, I think, in the world. That was peak time. And I felt like it has slipped away from you a little bit as it has slipped in culture.

1:36:18However, what movie did you pick? I chose Thunderbolts because I think Thunderbolts is a return to form for Marvel. Okay. So what does that mean? So I've been kind of out on Marvel since like Spider-Man No Way Home. Okay. But Amanda's favorite. Is that, that's the three of them? Yes. And you didn't like that? No, I did love that. Okay. But after that, after that is kind of when it started. Every once in a while you get like one movie where I was like, hey, that's pretty good. This I think is hopeful. because I think it picked up on mistakes that they made in the past of introducing characters and then never seeing them again.

1:36:52Yeah. But these characters, they were like, okay, let's bring back the ones people like, the ones people didn't like and put them together. And I think it made a good team, if that makes sense. What was your favorite part? Favorite part, I think, was the dynamic. If you follow me on Letterboxd, you know I'm a big fan of Found Family. And that was like the whole trope of the movie. So that really did it for me. Interesting. So when you say if you follow me on Letterboxd, you mean you have like lists of like my favorite found family movies? You don't follow her on Letterboxd? No, I do. But I've never seen you publish a list.

1:37:24I've only seen you log movies. No, but if a movie is a found family, that's probably in my reviews. Like, it's a found family movie. Got it. Oh, yeah. You're not doing the work, Sean. You're not reading my reviews. I'm doing the work by having you here right now to communicate about your love for found family movies. I had a very similar reaction to Thunderbolts, And you were more positive on it than I think even you expected to be. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, Marvel maybe never had me. So then they lost me a very long time ago. But I thought it was far and away just technically, it was competent and enjoyable in a way that most of the recent movies have just kind of been impenetrable to me.

1:38:04As a movie fan, do you follow the fact that the movie was considered somewhat of a disappointment at the box office? And then the kind of like ramifications of things like that? Or do you just not care about those things? No, see, that actually did make me disappointed. Because I was like, it should have done better, but people are already out on it. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, ah, Marvel movie, don't care. But I'm like, no, this was a good one. Like, it deserved better. Did you see that with Friends? I saw it with my boyfriend. Okay. Yes. What did you think? He loved it. We walked out and we're like, that was so great.

1:38:30We just talked about it, the entire car ride home. Would he go on his own? Yes, for sure. He would have seen it on his own. I had to tell him to wait for me. Oh, interesting. Because I was still at school and I was coming back. I was like, wait, wait until I come home. You have to. Okay, so on the drive here to the office today, we were going through the checklist of young, hot male actors. And like, who are you in on? Who are you out on? Great, okay. So we were talking about, you know, out on a lordy, right? Oh, interesting. Why? My introduction to him was the Kissing Booth movies. Sure, okay.

1:39:00I get this with a lot of people slightly older than you and Austin Butler where they're like yeah yeah we saw Disney so we don't need it anymore. So now I'm not like you're a heartthrob. Yeah. And you feel the same way about Austin Butler. Yeah. Not one of your guys. No. You love Timmy. Love Timmy. Sure. Yeah who doesn't? I love Timmy. Yeah. Who else did I mention? You mentioned Joseph Quinn. You were kind of on Joseph Quinn. I feel like he just keeps appearing. Yeah. And I'm not like oh I hate that guy but I he just keeps appearing. He doesn't have found like a stickiness. Yeah. Yeah I agree.

1:39:28So the person I want to ask about then relates to Thunderbolts is Sentry himself, Lewis Pullman. See, I actually, I don't think I knew him before that movie. Okay. Hearing the name, I thought I did, but whatever. But I thought he was a great introduction. I'm going back to the team itself where it was so many different characters where you have Bucky Barnes. Well-loved people were going to see that movie just for him. then you have other characters like Yelena newer character but has developed a fan base and Florence Pio also so of course of course but then you're introducing new characters and like characters that maybe you didn't like and I think that worked really well so even the Bob character who's just a sweet little guy compared to all these assholes like I think that was a great addition Bob is his like human character he's also Bob in Top Gun Mavericks so that's confusing for me he is and I do think that that was semi-purposeful even though that character was originally supposed to be played by Stephen Yeun.

1:40:26Oh. And then he came out of the movie and Louis Pullman went in and then Louis Pullman also started dating Kaia Gerber. Which I think what we're learning from Grace. That's me learning from Amanda. Yeah, but do you know that Kaia Gerber also dated Jacob Lorty and Austin Butler? So what we're learning is that Grace and Kaia Gerber do not have the same taste in men. And that's okay. Wow. You know, there are many fish in the sea. putting up numbers. Damn. Yeah, well. She's like Will Chamberlain. She's Kyat Gerber. That's great. That's good for her. It's like if that can't work out, then, you know, things are screwed for all of us.

1:40:57So you're excited about Fantastic Four first episode. I was just talking to somebody about this the other day. I didn't realize this, but after that movie comes out in about three weeks, there's not another Marvel movie for 18 months. Doomsday, right? Doomsday, the next Avengers movie, which is the big event. Which they're filming right now in Romania? In Europe somewhere. Okay. And Robert Downey Jr. is coming back as Doctor Doom. We'll see. I have been peddling the like, it's kind of over and we're getting all the signs that it's over. Obviously, a lot is riding on an Avengers movie. All the Avengers movies make a billion dollars.

1:41:33Robert Downey Jr. has been at the center of the MCU for 15, 20, almost 20 years. Are you still excited? Like, I can't wait to see what they do with these stories. I am very excited. I wouldn't compare it to that like high school excitement of Avengers Endgame and Infinity War. But it's still like, I think it's a hopeful excited. Okay. Where the other was like, this will be amazing. And I like, can't wait. This is, I really hope this works out because I want it to. And Thunderbolt gave me that hope and Fantastic Four. I will be there day of. Can't wait. But if that's not good, that'll be a little tough.

1:42:06And where's your hat out with Doomsday? Just trying to remember who's who, you know? Cool. Great. And looking for my empty director's chair.

1:42:18With my name on it. I wanted to ask you one last question before we go. So Amanda and I have been doing this 25 for 25 gimmick all year. Yeah. 25 movies across the century. Sure. One film per director. Oh. Oh, I didn't realize. Okay. So that's been a restriction that we have. So Amanda wanted to put 14 Nancy Meyers movies. I was like, how about just one? We got one on there. your number one movie of the century, if you had to choose one? I would choose Knives Out. Okay. That would be my choice. So why? That movie, okay, one Chris Evans is in it. I'm going to leave that there. I'm going to just put that right there.

1:42:59Yeah, good. Lay it on the table. This podcast has been really disrespectful to him, and I think, you know, you're making amends for your brother's misdeeds. He's very good in that movie. Yeah. Great sweater. Yep. Great sweater. anyways no I love that movie because I don't know I really enjoy like a murder mystery type type beat but like the lighting it feels lighter which I don't know how to make that make sense but I don't know the characters are just so eccentric where you're like I kind of hate you but you're also very entertaining I think that's also a great cast oh what else do I love about that movie I don't know I just think it's fun like it's fun the string instruments like the music in the background is very I love it I just I don't know did you like two Glass Onion so you're excited for three can't wait wake up dead man just coming out this winter I wish I could think of movies that are similar to it but there's a certain like vibe in my head of that of those movies that not much else matches so when Rian Johnson was on this podcast talking about Knives Out which was 2017 2017 he recommended a movie called The Last of Sheila which is a movie I'll recommend to you right now to check out which is clearly a big inspiration point and it has that same feeling of everyone on this boat sucks everyone who worked on this movie likes Agatha Christie right there's a murder mystery okay and it's kind of funny and light even though people get killed yes so check that out good jokes yeah murder mystery beautiful people yeah fantastic nice sweaters and it's on location as well so nice places maybe even nicer than the house um knives out we haven't talked about it too much recently yeah i think that we didn't we weren't as enthusiastic about glass onion as you were and so that sort of and it is it has like a pre-pandemic feeling to all of it and also the original does and also a pre like 300 million dollar netflix deal yes so we're living in a knives out two world now and we haven't you know But she's right.

1:45:05It's Chris Evans, like very early on in De Armas. Who else is in that? Daniel Curtis, Daniel Craig. Christopher Plummer. LaKeith Stanfield. Yeah, no, it's like a great cast. And it's very... Michael Shannon. Tony Collette. It's a crazy cast. Yeah, and it's fun. It's like, it knows what it wants to do and is having a lot of fun doing it, which, you know, it's like a machine, you know, just like an Agatha Christie mystery, which I enjoy. Also, I'm not giving credit to Daniel Craig here. He is like the central point of those movies where he's that traditional, I feel like, 1950s movie detective, but modernized.

1:45:41And I'm like, he's just an old man. He's so cute. Like, I love... He's in his old man phase. How do you feel about that? Listen, you know, we have different seasons for different people. That's okay. Okay. I think that he's very handsome. So, but that's fine. I also am a fan of Jacob Elordi and Austin Butler. So, you know? Women can't really have it all. Yeah. From 25-year-olds to 55-year-olds. Grace, where can we find you? Promote yourself. Oh, goodness. You want the letterbox public? If you don't, you don't have to. My letterbox is very public. Grace Fantasy. I think that's just it. Okay. And then this is really it.

1:46:16Thank you, Grace. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is so fun.

1:46:24Okay, we're here with producer par excellence, Jack Sanders. You look nervous. Under your arms. Are you nervous? I wasn't nervous at all. I'm going to cut this, by the way. It's all body language. It's all body language. If you were in a race car, you wouldn't have your arms crossed. That's true. You'd have your hands on the steering wheel ready to drive through your take. So your favorite movie of the year so far? F1. Okay, why? I want to engage in something that might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but I think it will make sense. Okay. Does this movie have one of the least impressive Brad Pitt performances of his career?

1:46:58I would say yes. Yes. I would as well. is this a$350 million F1 commercial? I would say yes. I mean, the only question there is if that number is accurate or low. Sure. And then I would say, is this a formulaic, predictable story filled with cliche? I would also say yes. Pretty much. And yet, I'm here on this podcast to tell you it's one of the best movies of the year because the good in this movie is so damn good. I don't give a fuck about the rest of the flaws. I generally agree. I also agree. We spent some time this morning before recording watching a meme of the, so it's one of the, it's the fight between Javier Bardem's character.

1:47:42Yeah, Stilgar and Chani. And Zendaya's character in Dune 2. But the subtitles are replaced with the F1 discourse. And it's very, whoever did that meme, congratulations to you. You've got a bright future. And it does seem like a lot of people are nitpicking, but then there are also a lot of people who are like, well, this is really loud and fun. And when they get it right, as Jack said, they get it really right. I think it's because there is a sacred understanding in the art of the summer blockbuster that summer blockbusters do not need to be, it would be nice if they were, but they do not need to be innovative in terms of story.

1:48:17They do not need to wow you with performance. What they need to do is thrill and satisfy you in the experience of blockbustering. The big set piece, the thrilling chase, the desire to watch two characters have chemistry together. That's really all that we need. This movie has a secret sauce, which is just sick racing. Yeah. And that kind of is all that matters. Yeah. And then one emotional beat that I do think they nail. Which is? So Brad Pitt, like in the balcony scene, you know, after he has sex with his co-worker, which, you know, there's a note on that, but that's fine. When he's like, I'm just trying to find that moment.

1:48:58Like, he nails that speech, I think. You don't agree? I think it's okay. I don't think it's egregious by any stretch, but I wasn't locked in emotionally. Right, it's not as bad as some of the other stuff. Yes, yes. But then they pay that off. I agree. I would just say, to your point, I think I told you this earlier, the word I would use to describe it is it's hypnotic. When Kaczynski is building the action set pieces in this film, it's legitimately mesmerizing, and you're not remembering that you need to do laundry when you get home or you need to order takeout. It's just you and the screen. And Kaczynski is entering a really rarefied air, I would say, up there with Peel, Villeneuve, Nolan.

1:49:37He's on a short list of names when it comes to building mesmerizing action set pieces that are really genuinely impressive. It's exciting. It's nice to have another person that we're like, okay, when we see a date on the calendar for one of their movies, you know you're at least going to get one certain aspect that's going to be really satisfying. I'm very curious to see how well this movie does like across the summer. Whether or not it hit the hardcore fans and it will trickle off or if it has staying power because the word of mouth has been good. It's a rare like here's what's not good about this movie and I don't care kind of a movie.

1:50:08Whereas I think for the most part in our movie culture especially with serious fans who go to see everything they can kind of like nitpick something to death at the outset and it kind of deflates the balloon for a movie. This seems to be somewhat immune to that so far, which has been a fascinating thing to watch. Did you have anything else on your list? Like was is if you had first pick, would it still be F1 or? I mean, no, it would be Sinners. OK, so Rob Mahoney comes for us all. I think it was Sinners, Black Bag and Friendship were ahead of this for me. OK, oh, that's a nice list. Yeah. Good job.

1:50:39You saw seen you felt seen as a 20 something in Friendship? Oh, my God. Absolutely. So that also applies to the 20 somethings, not just the 30s and 40s. 100%. Okay. I mean, like, I was 19 years old when COVID struck, and I feel like that just did a lot of, you know, social damage to not just my own psyche, but I would say my peers in terms of socializing. I've never heard that before. I'm just kidding.

1:51:04Yeah, I thought friendship was amazing. But F1 is amazing, too. It is. Great pick, Jack. Thank you.

1:51:13Okay, man, it's just you and me now. The way that the show is always designed to be. The last two survivors on movie island. Right. What's your pick? Phoenicians game, which I feel good about. I think I said already on this episode that left to my own devices, I would have picked Black Bag. But I think I would have been doing myself and movie culture a disservice, just as I think the movie world and people at large do every Wes Anderson movie a disservice. We just are not appreciating enough what's going on with Wes Anderson. This is one of our favorite working filmmakers. I think one of the great working filmmakers who is just like really, really in his zone.

1:51:56And he is in his own zone and has created like an entire world and a visual and an emotional language that he is just doing variations on makes it sounds reductive. And I think some of the quote unquote complaints about this, which I don't really recognize, or that it's just like another Wes Anderson diorama movie. That is rude to the art of cinematography, production design and Wes Anderson's brain. Yeah. The writing, the music, the performance. The acting style, the humor, the ideas. I still regret how we treated Asteroid City. which I think is like his, I don't think it's late career, but it's his like.

1:52:46His mid-career masterpiece. The latest career masterpiece or masterwork. And this is doing something a little different and maybe a little less adventurous or a little less interested in playing with form and chronology, but still rich with ideas, still rich with illusions, still very rewarding to people who have been with him on the ride, which we have. And that's another thing where there aren't as many filmmakers where you and I like kind of came of age as like film watchers at the same time. And I definitely did with Wes Anderson. So I'm like thinking like a Rushmore and a Royal Tenenbaums fan when I'm watching Asteroid City and Phoenician Scheme.

1:53:36But yeah, it's like beautiful, both visually and emotionally. Smart, funny. Benicio del Toro, sort of like the undersung performance of the year, in my opinion. He's wonderful. And as is the rest of the supporting cast. I'm a little surprised that this movie has not had a little bit more of a rallying cry about it as just a good movie for a moment. and I think that it's a little bit hard for people to separate the aesthetics of the Wes Anderson movie style with what the films are about. But obviously there's been like a pretty persistent anti-fascist theme of his movies since Grand Budapest Hotel.

1:54:15That's a big part of that story. It's a big part of this story. The relationship between power and wealth and that being a primary concern of this movie, given what has been transpiring, at least in the United States of America in the last month or so. I think a lot of it is just down to people seeing a trailer and saying like, I'm sick of this and not giving it a chance or not being willing to engage. I don't think this is quite on the level of Asteroid City, but I do think it's on the level of French Dispatch. Totally. And I wonder if more people will now start discovering it once it gets into the VOD cycle.

1:54:47Just like all, I mean, the last three or four movies are all, it's been the same arc where it's like it comes out, the diehards really yell out about it. Some casuals get interested and then it needs a second wave when it comes home. And I don't, whether that's good or bad, That, I guess, is debatable. But this one in particular, the response was more muted than usual. So I'm glad that you chose it. There's nothing muted about my pick. My pick is Warfare. Yeah. Which, especially in the cold light of 28 years later, I find to be a fascinating appetizer for that movie. Because it is a movie that I think is actually quite free of a lot of Alex Garland's obsessions.

1:55:2828 years later is kind of the absolute pinnacle of, you know, the erosion of humanity colliding with the nation state, you know, and these like technology tearing us apart, all these ideas. Right. Warfare, he just picked one, which is the military industrial complex. Yes, but done in this unique way where he's collaborating with Ray Mendoza, his co-director on the movie, who is a veteran, someone who served in the Middle East and who is bringing all of his very specific memories to this movie and the making of it. And to me, it's an amazing showcase for what a great filmmaker Garland has become.

1:56:02Like as an image maker, his use of sound, his use of the way the performance style he gets out of people, the staging he has. And my favorite thing about it and my favorite thing about talking to both Mendoza and Garland about the movie was, even though they're clearly friends and they like working together, they see the world differently. And they decided to do something together. That just doesn't happen. it's very rare to find two people who are you know simpatico creatively but not necessarily I don't know about politically or the way that they see the military or the way that they see and I'm not trying to ascribe specific political thought to either of those guys because they were both a little circumspect and we talked about it but I asked them both about whether or not this is an anti-war movie and they had a different point of view and I find that and I could feel it in the movie you can really feel in the movie that there are some profound misgivings about the nature of conflict and the nature of violent conflict.

1:56:57And then there is also this begrudging sense of necessity when you find yourself in certain circumstances. And it's just a really amazing friction in the story and on top of the fact that it is just a punishing movie. A movie that just hurts to watch and accomplishes what it wants to accomplish. And I'm quite curious to see where Garland goes as a director from here. Because he's been more focused on the like, let me violate your senses while watching this movie. more than anything else. Both Garland examples this year are made in collaboration with someone else, you know? And I think that, I would apply that to most people that that, and we have been talking about this in great deal.

1:57:38Take this very podcast. Yeah, but that if you can find someone who you can at least work with creatively, that has historically yielded like a lot of great work. And sometimes, I do feel like recently we've been getting, with the exception of the Wes Anderson's of the world. Some like very like closed off auteurist examples where you can feel that it's like only one person and there hasn't been anyone pushing back or anyone saying, what about this? Or what if we tried it this way? Or imagine what we could do. So, you know, it's great that people like working together and that it makes the work better sometimes.

1:58:15I wanted to shout out a couple of other movies before we wrap up. Adam Naiman mentioned The Shrouds. He didn't want to pick it because he didn't want to be accused of Canadian bias. but David Cronenberg's real late style I don't know if it's a masterpiece but it is also kind of violating in a way in its ideas about death and what we want to see all the time so I love that movie one movie I haven't had a chance to talk about on the show I don't think I don't think you've had a chance to see it just came out it's called Familiar Touch I haven't it is directed by a woman named Sarah Friedland it's her first feature it stars Kathleen Chalfant as a woman I believe in her 80s who's struggling with dementia and her son puts her into a facility where she can live out the rest of her days.

1:59:01The movie is amazing for two reasons. One, Chalfant is like, gives an incredible performance as this woman who is very elegant and educated and to watch her like lose some of that. And we've seen this in movies before. You know, Sarah Polly made a movie about this some years ago. But then the flip side of it is the movie has this very like outside abstract portrait of the caregivers and the people who work in the facility and how they interact with people who are struggling with these things. And the fact that these people are not just servants to the final days of someone's life. They're people with feelings.

1:59:34And they also can be disturbed and frustrated and also inspire people and make them feel better. So very quiet, simple.

2:00:12you know, and virtuosically violent in different ways, maybe it would be on the table. I think it's a good point. It's currently in my top 10 and I feel good about that. Great. I wanted to give some love to One of Them Days. This is a great pick. Yeah, I'm like, oh, should I have picked this one instead? This is really good. I revisited it on Netflix the other day. I was like, this is just a good hang. Like this is like a good dorm room movie. You know, you can just like kind of put it on at any hour of the day and it's just really fun. I thought SZA was really, really funny in this. I'm watching it the second time.

2:00:39She was really great. And then I did want to quickly shout out in a movie called A Desert, which I also really liked, which starts out as a movie about a photographer who is like a successfully commercial photographer who's trying to kind of rediscover his mojo by going out to the desert and shoot whatever he stumbles upon. And he's particularly interested in abandoned drive-in movie theaters. Okay. And then, and so it seems like it's kind of a neo-noir, kind of a thriller. and then it takes a hard pivot into something much more sinister and violent and scary. I thought it was really good. It's a debut from Joshua Erkman as the director and I think it's going to be on Shudder soon.

2:01:25It was quite striking and quite good. So that's some bonus. Who are you most mad at for taking a movie from you? I don't really, I don't feel anger at anyone on this one. I think that the anger is sort of directed between our guests. And I like to, you know, foster healthy discussion while also like not having to want to kill Rob Mahoney for once in my life. Okay. But, you know, that was a theme that emerged, right? Was Rob Mahoney once again comes and takes away something from everybody. Do you think we should have an episode where everybody gets to pick on Rob for two hours? It's hard. Yeah, I know.

2:02:06Where would the... I know. Yeah, like I don't know where the weaknesses are. Tall, square jawed, strong intellect. I would like to understand how to defeat him in a draft, but I don't yet have my arms around that strategy. Can I pitch a theory as to his rise? Sure. He's secretly just like the right amount younger than us that he is actually in his prime and we're not. No offense, you know what I mean. No, no, no, I get it. He's like in his early mid-30s. Yeah. And the rest of us are all desiccated corpses. Was it, I think in 1999 draft, he took Notting Hill from me, I would say. What about from me?

2:02:45And then I don't want to slander him, you know, because I know what happens when you piss Rob Mahoney off. But I, and I, so I'm not 100 % sure, but like I got the feeling that he had only recently seen Notting Hill before that draft. Oh, wow. And that upset me. Wow. On many levels. That's a strong accusation. Well, you know, he was only born like four years after Naughty Kill, so you have to play catch up sometime. Crazy. Rob Mahoney just turned 19. Yeah. So impressive. Happy birthday. He's so smart. Okay, that'll do it for this episode. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his contributions both on mic and off in this episode.

2:03:23Later this week, we are going to an 8 a.m. screening of Jurassic World Rebirth. Me and Amanda and CR, we are going to watch the movie, but before that, we're going to watch the Odyssey teaser. If it is available. If it is attached to the film. But I am showing up like for all of the teasers at 8 a.m. We need to talk. We got to talk about like a coffee and pastry strategy beforehand. Well, we're going to the Americana. There should be something open, right? I don't. I actually don't know. Egg slut? What do you think? At 8 a.m.? Is it not open? Is it not open? I don't know what's going on there.

2:03:54Okay. Well, we'll get into it then. We'll see you on Wednesday.

2:04:07Thank you.