The 10 Wildest Reboots in Movie History and ‘The Bride!’ Plus: A ‘Secret Agent’ Second Look and the Best Doc Contenders.

8:38Sean Fennessey:and you can sense that but I have been reading some of the reactions to the movie and I get why people are like this is a bad Jesse Buckley performance to me it is not to me it is she's doing what she's being asked to do and the movie that this movie reminds me of is Babylon and I love Babylon and Babylon is a little messy and Babylon is all over the place and Babylon's a little like bing, bing, bing on your nose with your metaphors sometimes. Right. And Babylon loves the movies too. And it does. And there's a lot of overt references to movie history and the way that cinema is interconnected and that it's like a series of recreations.

9:12Sean Fennessey:We're going to talk about The Secret Agent later in this episode. It's a movie that's not dissimilar. You know, it's a movie that is using a lot of the hallmarks of older films and trying to recontextualize with political and social intent. Secret Agent's more successful in that respect. but I think I just had more fun than I expected to.

9:32Christian Bale:And I'm thinking about this movie. There's another movie that I thought of a little bit, which is Don't Worry Darling,

9:37Sean Fennessey:which I think is somewhat similarly stuck because its primary idea about feminism and a powerful female consciousness kind of like holds the movie back from like unleashing itself into a real genre of feat.

9:54Christian Bale:yes I think this movie is more successful personally but I think they're going to end up in basically the same place critically socially they both they both have like not a fundamental

10:05Maggie Gyllenhaal:flaw but the the fundamental theory uh behind their existence the like the take the interpretation is quite similar and to my mind does not hold up in either case I mean you know don't worry Like Darling at least has the panache of the reveal being that it's like Harry Styles as Jordan Peterson in a room. That's funny. If silly and undermining of the entire project. You know, The Bride as a feminist retelling and what it is fine. Though I would like to talk about the concept of a feminist retelling and what we're achieving when we do that. But the way that it executes it is so heavy handed. And as you said, sometimes tacked on and so like ultimately unnecessary and and frankly, not doesn't achieve what I think it thinks it's set up.

11:09Maggie Gyllenhaal:it sets out to achieve. That it's just kind of like, I don't know. I don't know how to get on board with the project because it also announces it so clearly. There is a framing device that I understand is a reference to the Bride of Frankenstein, but also feels silly, tacked on, and like a total failure all at once.

11:32Jessie Buckley:Yeah.

11:33Maggie Gyllenhaal:Well, okay. And then it's cooked into the rest of the movie. That's the other thing is that you can't, like the, it's a foundation that is, it does not work.

11:44Sean Fennessey:So we spent a lot of time on our Wuthering Heights discussion talking about like the source material and like what changing the source material sometimes does to a project. And by pulling too much out, you can strip a movie of its thematic strengths and that that makes the movie feel more flimsy. That was my feeling about Wuthering Heights in part. That was part of what I struggled with. This movie, I would say, is sort of working in reverse where it's operating from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where, you know, in the novel, there's an attempt to create a female counterpart for Frankenstein, but that before that corpse is revivified, it's destroyed.

12:22Sean Fennessey:In 1935, there's a sequel to Frankenstein, the James Will film, Bride of Frankenstein, where Elsa Lanchester plays the bride. That character is actually reinvigorated, but she's wordless and screeches and doesn't really have agency to use a contemporary language. This is a movie that attempts to kind of like reposition that, to correct that. Yeah. You know, to give that character more of her own point of view. I wouldn't say it's not dopey. I do think it's wildly overstated at times in the movie. And I'm not sure if there was a subtle way to do this because there's no subtlety in the movie whatsoever.

13:04Sean Fennessey:It's just sort of, as you said, you're like, I'm not on board, so I just can't.

13:07Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yeah, I mean, like, my fundamental question is why? Like, who cares? I mean, like, I get it. I suppose we need to -

13:16Christian Bale:Evening the playing field of the history of monsters in the movies and who gets to be messy.

13:20Sean Fennessey:Like, I think that's really what the movie's about. It's like, who gets to be, like, a messy person who gets to do terrible things? And Frankenstein and the Wolfman and Dracula get to do those things. Why doesn't the bride get to do those things? Sure, but the bride isn't doing terrible things.

13:32Maggie Gyllenhaal:She's, you know, inciting like a revolution against the 1930s Chicago mafia and like literally screams the words me too multiple times at a character. And and then there's a whole interlude where like all the women take to the streets. Like what?

13:49Sean Fennessey:I mean, I think there are some things that she her character gets to do. Jesse Buckley's character. One is to have like a strong sexual desire on screen that is not otherwise communicated in movies like this. that is obviously a very not-so-latent metaphor for women having the ability to just say loud and proud, this is something that I want. Also the idea that she, you know, early in the film, there's a violent encounter after they go to a nightclub where Frankenstein, you know, after someone attempts to sexually assault the bride, Frankenstein has to save her. And he kills the two men who are trying to assault her.

14:25Sean Fennessey:And then later in the movie, she saves him. she's the person responsible for protecting her family, her duo. And, you know, it's very diagrammatic the way that it's attempting to kind of like right those wrongs. I don't think a lot of this, that stuff is really what I caught into in the movie. What I caught into in the movie is when it's like, this is an explosive show. Here's a dance sequence. Here's a dramatic and oftentimes metafictional retelling of Hollywood history. here is, I think the performances are very funny and on point. I do know why they're getting some negative feedback, but these are monster movies.

15:04Sean Fennessey:Like they're supposed to be ridiculous and big and loud. And I don't, I didn't struggle with any of those things, those aspects of the movie.

15:12Maggie Gyllenhaal:I found not Jesse Buckley's performance, but I found the character of The Bride incredibly annoying. But that was because within, like, written in the character. And I would like to talk about this framing device and the Mary Shelley of it all because it starts, there's an extended prologue where Jesse Buckley is in kind of, like, black and

15:35Wagner Moura:white, like, in the void as Mary Shelley.

15:39Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

15:39Maggie Gyllenhaal:Talking direct to camera.

15:41Sean Fennessey:An unboxing girl, if you will. Sure.

15:43Maggie Gyllenhaal:And she's, and then, like, similarly, like, has lost control of reality. She's cackling. and this British accent being like, just wait. And is doing exposition for what has happened and also how she, Mary Shelley, is involved in this reanimation of the bride. Now she gets another chance. But it's intercut with the Ida character,

16:09Wagner Moura:who's also Jesse Buckley, who is the corpse that is reanimated as the bride.

16:17Maggie Gyllenhaal:but the movie makes the choice to have to really literalize that this is mary shelley also has some agency mary shelley can be a creator too and so she inhabits ida's body and so half the time like the ida character or the bride is sometimes taken over by mary shelley's accent so she speaks either in, you know, a Chicago accent or like doing her best American flapper or sometimes as Mary Shelley in a British accent. And it's just this switching back and forth is incredibly irritating. It is.

16:58Jessie Buckley:And that's not her fault.

17:00Maggie Gyllenhaal:That is, I mean, that is written for the character. She is doing, she is giving a performance of what was conceived. So I don't hold it against Jesse Buckley.

17:08Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

17:08Maggie Gyllenhaal:But like, what? And why? And can I leave? Because this is really annoying?

17:15Sean Fennessey:I kind of enjoyed it. I realized that this is, there's an aspect of this whole movie, and I am so comfortable being a hypocrite in this, that is like key jangling fan service for movie bros or movie gals. And it's like, do you like that this person is named this because it's a callback to a name of a famous person? Or do you like that the movie is like an exploration of the split personality and literary creations and how much of the bride is really Mary Shelley and how much of the bride is her own thing. And the movie is trying to kind of tangle with these actual ideas in a way that is like a little bit

17:51Christian Bale:complit 202 class.

17:52Maggie Gyllenhaal:No, it's 101.

17:54Sean Fennessey:Okay, sure.

17:55Maggie Gyllenhaal:I'm sorry, we didn't advance.

17:57Sean Fennessey:You need to have read Frankenstein. I guess so.

17:59Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yeah, you can do that in high school.

18:02Sean Fennessey:Yeah, but probably you don't. Or you could when we were in high school. Yeah, probably you don't at this point. You can listen to the audio book. So I don't pretend to like defend its artistic merits. It just, I found it kind of amusing. I found what she was doing kind of amusing. And I know it's going to be a big turnoff for a lot of people. And it is essential to the way that the character is written. I think like whether or not it's purposefully annoying is an interesting thing to talk about. Because I think, you know, being a messy bitch, right? Like that's like the whole movie. I don't know if Maggie Gyllenhaal has literally said that in an interview, but there's intent here.

18:39And there's a whole 15 plus years of post-vice culture that is defined by that.

18:47Sean Fennessey:That's like a point of view culturally that this movie is trying to subsume into a monster movie.

18:55Christian Bale:I get it.

18:56Maggie Gyllenhaal:I'm okay with it. Sure. But it was always pretty annoying at the time. I mean, I like I understand. I suppose that it has to be like a branch of our feminism or whatever. But that doesn't mean that I want to sit and watch all of it or that I need to be asked to. And also, you know, sometimes the messy bitches are funny. Like Meg Salter forever. You know, that's that.

19:19Christian Bale:We failed to discuss her at the Actor Awards. Because that was a TV award. But that.

19:23Maggie Gyllenhaal:Oh, yeah. There was a TV award, but it was about Hammett. So it can be done well.

19:28Christian Bale:It was about Jesse Buckley. Yeah, that's true. Jesse Buckley, help me out here.

19:32Maggie Gyllenhaal:They didn't cut to Jesse Buckley once. They did not. Well, because I think there's, I mean, there's no sense of humor in this. I mean, and that is a real, it is for its bigness and for its going for it. There is no self-awareness. It is really like we're all in.

19:53Amanda Dobbins:And I can appreciate that. I don't think, Jesse Buckley is not the problem to me. The character is the problem. I get it.

20:01Sean Fennessey:But there's one other aspect of this that I find appealing that I think most normal people don't see the same way. You know, Siskel and Eber talked about this at times. Film critics have talked about this over the years. But when you professionally watch 200 new movies a year, a lot of things start to feel very the same. And when something like this comes along, this is not really like any other movie. It doesn't mean it's successful all the time, but it feels different. and that it activates your mind in a different way. It makes you see something differently. I found the movie to be too long.

20:34Sean Fennessey:I found the plotting and the pacing to be very poor. I found the tacked on kind of detective story to be a huge bungle and a huge waste of Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz who are like Academy Award nominated phenomenal actors who have like very little to do in this movie. But, and I'll tell you this too. This movie also reminded me a lot of Joker and Jokerfolia do. Looks like them. bad parts of Joker fully I do and to me what I found to be the good parts of Joker and part of the reason for that is the movie is shot by Lauren Schur who shot both of the Joker movies and the music is by Hildur Guanadater and she did this music for the Joker movies and it's edited by Dylan Titchener who is PTA's long time editor he hasn't worked with them on the last couple movies but he edited all of Paul Thomas Anderson's classics so I found that there was like a level of craft here while also feeling like it's really chopped up and they're kind of like on this journey through America in the 1930s.

21:30Jessie Buckley:You know, also a huge homage to Bonnie and Clyde. That's intrinsic to this story too. And it starts to just feel like really episodic about an hour in.

21:40Sean Fennessey:And then you feel the weight of it bagging down. But when the movie is kind of like stroking its chin all the way up until the Me Too finale, which I did not enjoy, I kind of enjoyed it.

21:49Christian Bale:I kind of enjoyed it like spinning its wheels about what it thinks it is and trying to like use a$80 million studio movie to be like, how do I really feel about the way that female characters are supposed to be in movies? I don't know. I think that there was something like, the intent is interesting, the execution is interesting, and I didn't have a bad time.

22:09Sean Fennessey:That's kind of where my head is at with the movie.

22:11Wagner Moura:Yeah. The execution is interesting.

22:14Maggie Gyllenhaal:I did also, to keep it in the DC universe,

22:17Wagner Moura:spend a lot of time thinking of Birds of Prey, which, you know, and some of that is

22:23Maggie Gyllenhaal:all of the production decisions and there's like a slight greenness to some of it and even the makeup and whatever the stain is

22:34Amanda Dobbins:that Jessie Buckley has on her.

22:36Sean Fennessey:Yes, the sort of bile stain on her face.

22:38Amanda Dobbins:Sure, but I had forgotten that the subtitle of Birds of Prey was Or the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, which is there's just a little bit of like girl power reimagination here that I'm definitely allergic to.

22:54Christian Bale:It's the yossification of The Bride. It is.

22:56Amanda Dobbins:Yeah. It's, which is just, it's, why do we need that?

23:01Christian Bale:What's the alternative? Would you have enjoyed more of straight up modern remake of The Bride?

23:09Amanda Dobbins:You mean a modern remake of The Bride? Guillermo del Toro's The Bride. Well, what happens in it?

23:15Christian Bale:The same shit that happens in, it's a remake of the James Whale movie.

23:18Amanda Dobbins:So she just doesn't say anything? I don't know.

23:20Maggie Gyllenhaal:I mean, kind of what happens in Guillermo del Toro's the, you know, Frankenstein, but the bride is just Elizabeth.

23:26Sean Fennessey:Right.

23:27Maggie Gyllenhaal:That's true.

23:28Amanda Dobbins:And her death scene is very beautiful.

23:30Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I mean, it's impossible to do that. The one for one thing that I'm suggesting. But I think because this is just so different from what you would expect a studio to do. We're going to get like another version of this. There's this funny thing happening with Warner Brothers where they have a mummy movie coming out in April. Right. And it's a modern set story. Jack Rayner is the star of it. And it's about a little girl who disappears. and clearly makes contact with a mummy. And so they're using the same, you know, Karloff, Universal, 1930s frameworks, but they're trying to set it in a modern time.

24:01Sean Fennessey:And Universal's been trying to do this for years and years. You may recall the Dark Universe didn't go over so well. We saw The Invisible Man. We'll talk about some of these movies when we get to the reboot stuff. But this kind of like old IP, like not new IP, like a hundred year old IP, is stuff that still has enough recognizability that it's powerful.

24:20Amanda Dobbins:I get all of that. I bump on like the feminist retelling of it. I genuinely, and I had some time during this film to think about this, but this is a thing right now, right? And I mean, it's not new, but the book Circe, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it was like a huge book club bestseller, which is re-imagining. It's not even re-imagining the Odyssey. It's just kind of like, what's up with Cersei? She's just a character, you know? And like what she's, what is she up to and how does she feel and what was her experience? And there are like a million of these. There's the Penelope ad, which is the Margaret Atwood version of the Odyssey.

25:02Amanda Dobbins:There's like everything having to do with Lady Macbeth. There are like, there's been a whole like cotton industry after Cersei of books.

25:10Kleber Mendonca Filho:Like there's one about the Julia character from 1984. There's one of like Rosalind from Romeo and Juliet.

25:16Maggie Gyllenhaal:Like you could argue that the Da Vinci Code is about Mary Magdalene. You know, like this is not a thing, which it's not a new thing.

25:23Amanda Dobbins:But what does this character who is like not really explored in this like canonical piece of literature? What's going on with her? And what if we either told it, not even told it from her perspective, but what if we like gave her agency?

25:41Maggie Gyllenhaal:What if we gave her a personality? What if we gave her whatever?

25:45Amanda Dobbins:What if we gave her a life and her own story? And I genuinely don't know if I think that that is like a useful project or not. I genuinely, because the result is always, not always, but the result doesn't change the framework of in which these characters are created and the world in which they're created or really even their experiences. And so I'm just like, what are we, what do we learn from this? Like, what do I learn from The Bride? Like, that women can be messy too? Like, that's fine. Just make a movie about a messy person. I don't know what rewriting Frankenstein or the parts of The Odyssey.

26:26Maggie Gyllenhaal:By the way, apparently Cersei ends with her marrying Telemachus, which, sorry, spoiler alert. I mean, is that improving things? I don't know.

26:35Christian Bale:I haven't read the book. I haven't read any of those. What are we doing?

26:39Maggie Gyllenhaal:I'm sorry to just, like, bring you into Feminism Corner for a minute, but I just, it's where we are. What are we doing? What do you want Alice watching?

26:46Sean Fennessey:These are all salient questions. I haven't read any of these novels. And I would say I'm somewhat studied on feminism, but certainly not an expert. I think artistic recombination is really fascinating to me. I was obsessed with hip hop for exactly this reason. I think that the history of music being redefined and recombined just moves me. And I feel the same way about movies. I find a lot of movies that do this. Literature, maybe a little bit less so, but I just don't read as many novels as I did when I was, you know, 20 years ago. So I guess, I don't know that it can, like, accomplish anything.

27:24Sean Fennessey:And I don't even know if what's the point of this is something that really occurred to me while watching The Bride. I don't know that, like, I would show this to Alice before showing her the original Bride of Frankenstein and be like, this is the real story of The Bride. I don't know that we need to, like, rewrite those things.

27:40Christian Bale:but I do think that recontextualizing stories has value.

27:44Jessie Buckley:There's a very long history of this in the movies.

27:46Christian Bale:Now, the primary reason that this happens, and the reason I think this movie happened is, Maggie Gyllenhaal just made a movie about a messy woman. Yeah, and it was great. The Lost Daughter is exactly what you're describing, and it's an adaptation, but it is clearly, it's what interests her.

28:03Sean Fennessey:It's like thematic core of the kinds of stories that she wants to tell. And it felt like she wanted to tell a story on a much bigger stage at a much bigger scale. And the only way to do that in Hollywood right now is to find IP,

28:15Christian Bale:is to find a property that you can show to a studio and say like, I'm going to do a crazy story about female identity in the aftermath of Me Too,

28:25Sean Fennessey:but I'm going to do it using these monsters that people are familiar with. And I'm going to justify the budget that I need by doing that.

28:33Christian Bale:I get it. She's kind of playing the game that has been set in front of her. and you can say it's unsuccessful of course but I think whether or not like we need more feminist retellings is so tough because you can't go back 500, 1000 even 70 years and say like well we can't what were the books that should have been written if this woman wasn't forced to be a housewife you know like

28:54Maggie Gyllenhaal:so you're saying because we're all slaves to IP or because we're all trapped in IP world I think it just helps sell everything yeah no I mean I get all of that but that doesn't make it like good or useful

29:05Christian Bale:I agree

29:06Maggie Gyllenhaal:Which is just sort of, and I just, I think it's pretty silly. And, and I think that, I mean, this is the thing. If you have to do IP, just do the next chapter and start a new character. Like I put in here as a joke, just like, but not really as a joke, just Force Awakens it.

29:25Amanda Dobbins:But, which is a bad movie in a lot of ways, but the Rey of it all, they just made a girl a Jedi. And they just made it about her. And you said that your daughter was very excited to get to Rey. I remember seeing Rey in theaters, and I don't care about any of this stuff. But I was like, I understand what it means to see the woman with the lightsaber. Then they saddle her with a bunch of other stuff. But the idea of just making a character that, if you need to keep the world and you keep the IP,

29:54Maggie Gyllenhaal:just create something new.

29:56Sean Fennessey:I really, I think you're right about that. I think it's very insightful. Since I've just been rewatching those movies. Yeah. to J.J. Abrams' credit, that first movie does not go out of its way to say, but she's a girl and girls can do it. In fact, the most memorable and exciting and still like hair raising moment in that movie to me is at the end of the film when the planet is collapsing and it's Kylo Ren versus Finn and Rey. And Kylo Ren is reaching for the lightsaber and trying to use the force to pull it and it whips past him. Yeah, it goes to her. It doesn't go to Finn. it goes to Rey and she catches it and no one says anything they just start fighting and she beats him

30:39Christian Bale:it's magical I remember that moment that was fantastic yeah but this movie doesn't do that there's no lightsabers in this movie

30:48Sean Fennessey:I think I think it's fair to say like we could just do a new story that is in the same world that's a that's a different mission than I think what a lot of filmmakers try to do like I I was trying to think of like what is like the right framework for this episode and I couldn't figure it out for the longest time and then it dawned on me that this actually happens like every year. There's always one of these and you mentioned the feminist retellings in literature but how many of them are there just for Jane Austen novels? Like we have all of these kind of like reimaginings and setting them in contemporary times or different times.

31:19Amanda Dobbins:Right, but those aren't those were movies about women written

31:22Maggie Gyllenhaal:or those were textually about the woman from the beginning and they need updating in like many other ways and I'm not saying that we shouldn't A, either B, examining the ways in which women and people of color and everybody who is not, we're like sidelined or experienced like real shitty lives for a really long time.

31:45Amanda Dobbins:But this thing where we're reclaiming a character that didn't matter and then just like reclaiming from what? It's like, what are we reclaiming? That's all.

31:59Christian Bale:Have you seen Rosaline, the Caitlin Dever movie? It was a Hulu movie like four or five years ago.

32:08Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just sort of like, it's about Romeo's ex, right?

32:11Sean Fennessey:It's about the girl who Romeo doesn't go with.

32:13Maggie Gyllenhaal:Which can be funny. There is one truly great example of this, which is the 2011 McSweeney's article. I don't know if you've read this. It's a classic. I regret to inform you that my wedding to Captain Von Trapp has been canceled.

32:27Jessie Buckley:I haven't read it.

32:28Maggie Gyllenhaal:It's just about, it's like literally imagining the baroness from The Sound of Music writing the letter being like, so this nun who sings and hangs out of trees. It's really genuinely funny, but I think it is telling that like the best example I can come up with of this sort of retelling is the McSweeney's article.

32:46Sean Fennessey:I want to talk more about what movies try to do with this, but this is a Christian Bale movie and he is playing Frankenstein.

32:54Christian Bale:and 99 % of the time

32:57Sean Fennessey:it would be called Frankenstein starring Christian Bale and he is the second lead of the movie he gets to be the primary character at the beginning before we meet our bride but what did you think about what he was doing in the movie?

33:11Maggie Gyllenhaal:I was fine with it it was quieter than what Jesse Buckley is doing

33:15Sean Fennessey:that's certainly true kind of a cucked Frankie

33:17Maggie Gyllenhaal:that's okay and I do like it when very big like male stars are just like, sure, I'll just like show up on the side while you guys do whatever. I am charmed by that. And I appreciate that.

33:34Amanda Dobbins:And I, he wasn't, he's a little weird in a good way. I appreciated this slightly subtler interpretation here.

33:42Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and I think maybe that's one of the reasons why Buckley is so big is that they're playing two different notes. And, you know, frankly, there are a lot of relationships like this where one partner is very loud and the other partner is not so loud. And I thought it was kind of clever. I don't know.

33:54Christian Bale:I have a warm feeling about this movie, mess and all.

33:57Amanda Dobbins:Well, you like monsters.

33:58Christian Bale:I do like monsters.

33:59Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, that's the other thing. I was just kind of like, I don't know. Part of that is also the buy-in. And I did spend some time in the movie thinking about is this really that much worse than del Toro's Frankenstein? And in what ways is it worse? And it is ultimately incoherent, just from a basic plot by plot. See, I think it's coherent.

34:23Christian Bale:it and I just think it's a little eye-rolly. Like, I think what it's doing is like, I think the plot makes sense. I think it's clearly been reshot and reconfigured.

34:32Sean Fennessey:But like, the movie makes sense to me in terms of what's happening. Well, sure.

34:35Amanda Dobbins:They like, and then Benning reanimates them and then they got to run away and then, sure. Yeah, I get that it's Bonnie and Clyde. Like, that's not that hard. But I think everything, all of the political or the ideological stuff that it's added in,

34:54Maggie Gyllenhaal:I'm still not sure where Mary Shelley is in space and time and how she's inhabiting the body. And then when she's kicking in and then the people on that. It's not a literal.

35:07Christian Bale:It's a movie about reviving corpses and turning them into a happy couple. It's a flight of fancy.

35:13Kleber Mendonca Filho:But the flight of fancy was not coherent to me. It seemed pieced together. That's all.

35:22Sean Fennessey:so there's been some speculation that this film could Norbit Jesse Buckley right listeners may recall Eddie Murphy was riding on a train to Oscar glory for the film Dreamgirls in the best supporting actor race he won some precursors and then he released his legendary comedy classic Norbit in the spring before the Academy Awards happened and many believe that it literally tanked his Oscar chances and he lost that Academy Award and he actually talked about it recently in his Netflix film, Eddie, which was kind of interesting. I think maybe it's called Being Eddie. But just the fact that he had an awareness of it and felt a little burned by it I thought was notable.

36:01Sean Fennessey:You know, Oscar voting closes today, Thursday, when we're recording. I don't really think this is going to have any impact on Jesse Buckley.

36:09Wagner Moura:Well, I wanted to ask you, do you think that the bride or the late-breaking campaign

36:15Kleber Mendonca Filho:against Jesse Buckley for her anti-cat stance.

36:19Sean Fennessey:I don't know anything about that.

36:20Maggie Gyllenhaal:So this just absolutely erupted on social media in the last two days. And it's an anecdote about how when Jessie Buckley moved in with her husband, her husband had cats

36:33Kleber Mendonca Filho:and the cats were not welcoming to Jessie Buckley. Okay. And I think even pooping on her pillowcase. And so then she issued an ultimatum that it was the cats for herself.

36:44Christian Bale:I thought this story was about Maggie Gyllenhaal. This story was about Jesse Buckley?

36:48Maggie Gyllenhaal:Yes.

36:49Christian Bale:Okay.

36:49Maggie Gyllenhaal:And so, but now there's just a Jesse Buckley is a monster because the cats had to be rehomed. And this is, you know how the animal internet is, you know? Like, I still think that this is part of, this is a secret part of the Marty Supreme resistance is like, what happened to the dog? And now Jesse Buckley doesn't like cats.

37:09Sean Fennessey:Right. Well, if you had to choose dog or cat, because you're out on birds, we know that. You can't do a bird. Sure, but like,

37:17Kleber Mendonca Filho:what am I choosing? To live with? Yeah. I can't be responsible for anything else. I'm responsible for enough things right now.

37:23Sean Fennessey:2019 Amanda, dog or cat, you gotta take one.

37:27Wagner Moura:I like spending time with dogs more, but again, this is my husband does not respond to dogs.

37:33Kleber Mendonca Filho:Well, as you know. Yes, I do know that. And I would choose to live with my husband, so I guess I'd choose a cat.

37:39Sean Fennessey:I was raised with cats and dogs. I had a German shepherd growing up. Cain.

37:45Wagner Moura:Okay.

37:46Sean Fennessey:Changed my life. Made me care for things beyond myself. Taught me responsibility. I loved him. He was beautiful. I also had three cats growing up. Three different cats. All of whom died. Not on my watch. On my mom's watch, technically. But, um...

38:01Maggie Gyllenhaal:So, yeah. They're teaching you responsibility until they die. And then it's your mom's problem, huh? Yeah.

38:06Sean Fennessey:Well, I've been reflecting on this specifically because our daughter wants a cat. I know.

38:11Christian Bale:And she wants a dog, too.

38:14Sean Fennessey:And we're not ready for that. But I feel like losing three cats as a young person made me feel like they were more disposable. Whereas only losing one dog, I was like, I haven't had a dog in my life since I was 12. And I've been waiting. And I feel like I'm going to wait until I'm like 50. But when I get a dog, that's going to be my dog. That's going to be my homie. Like, that's going to be the person that I spend a lot of time with.

38:41Christian Bale:And I kind of understand where Jesse Buckley is coming from. Because it's like you entered into a new experience and you signed on for the husband, but not the cats.

38:49Sean Fennessey:But I like cats. I'm not anti-cat. I think the cat was not welcoming her. I see.

38:57Maggie Gyllenhaal:You know, they couldn't cohabitate.

38:58Sean Fennessey:Got it. This is the only movie podcast where you can get this discussion. I just want everyone to know that.

39:03Maggie Gyllenhaal:I'm sorry if we're speaking to the entirety of the Oscars experience. Listen.

39:07Sean Fennessey:You're right.

39:07Christian Bale:That's exactly what this is.

39:08Maggie Gyllenhaal:So what do you think is going to be more hurtful? The bride or no cats? I mean, clearly the cats. Yeah, the cats thing is just really. The cat stuff is divisive.

39:14Christian Bale:This is like a big swing and oh, she missed. Whatever. It happens. It's not her fault. Box office. This movie's tracking for somewhere between 14 and 18 million. Okay. It's not great for an$80 million movie.

39:28Maggie Gyllenhaal:I don't know if this is going to go in like the plus column. You know, once Paramount starts looking under the hood. No. You know, I don't think they're going to be like more of these.

39:36Sean Fennessey:Probably not another Maggie Gyllenhaal joint coming from David Ellison anytime soon. I did think this was a good moment to kind of take a breath and look at the Pam Abdi, Mike DeLuca era. Because I think this is the end of phase one. This is the last movie from the initial green light bonanza that they set out where they were just like filmmaker forward, audacious stories. We're making movies that other studios won't make at certain budgets. So, like, let's just quickly go through the lineup. Companion Mickey 17

40:07Christian Bale:The Alto Knights Minecraft movie Sinners Final Destination Bloodlines Technically F1 but not really Technically Superman but not really Weapons The Conjuring Last Rites One Battle After Another Weathering Heights and The Bride

40:24Kleber Mendonca Filho:You heard it here first Mike and Pam are good at their jokes

40:28Sean Fennessey:It's pretty good I mean you know I think The Conjuring Last Rites and Final Destination Bloodlines being like massive successes in addition to a Minecraft movie makes a lot of this feel even better where you're like, you guys did your IP things and you did them in ways that were effective enough that we could like talk about them on the show and move people, you know, a lot of families went to go see those movies, but they don't, they're not like lasting things, but then having the two

40:52Christian Bale:leading contenders for best picture and then, you know, the Alto Knights, which was reportedly a David Zaslav project.

40:59Sean Fennessey:They don't have any stain on them from that one. Superman, you know, was obviously more of a James Gunn, DC Studios thing, but a relative success.

41:09Christian Bale:The weather heights has turned out to be not as big as I expected it to be. I don't think it's a loss by any means. And it's really interesting

41:15Sean Fennessey:that Emerald Fennell made that choice to go with Warner Brothers instead of Netflix, where she could have gotten more money maybe up front.

41:23Kleber Mendonca Filho:Right.

41:24Sean Fennessey:But it's definitely not a loss for them. I think it was generally financially successful. We didn't really like it that much. The Bride will probably be the biggest L that they take.

41:34Wagner Moura:even more than Mickey 17. What was Mickey 17's box office? Because this is in, this is in the Mickey 17 spot.

41:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:And I think we are having the same kind of conversation about this film that we did Mickey 17 last year, which is like, we really, we do like that filmmakers get to do this and some things worked better than others.

41:56Christian Bale:Mickey 17 made$133.5 million globally. Okay.

42:02Sean Fennessey:I don't think The Bride's going to get past that.

42:04Kleber Mendonca Filho:I don't think so either.

42:06Christian Bale:I also think like if you want to put kind of Metacritic scores up against each other.

42:10Kleber Mendonca Filho:I think Mickey 17 is a more successful movie than this is.

42:14Christian Bale:Yeah, they're kind of the same to me. Yes. Well, I mean. I'm like, this is different. And some of it isn't working. And some of it is like too politically on the nose. It has the same issue. Absolutely.

42:24Kleber Mendonca Filho:And I really bumped on that with Mickey 17 as well.

42:27Christian Bale:Yeah. But there's so much invention. and visual dynamism and just the musical sequences alone in The Bride. I'm like, I don't know. This is pretty 1930s movie musicals. Jake Gyllenhaal as Fred Astaire? Yes. Yeah, that was really entertaining. It's half-baked.

42:44Wagner Moura:I think he was singing too. He was doing his own. I think he was.

42:47Sean Fennessey:Yeah, we know from the John Mulaney and the SAC lunch bunch that he's a real performer.

42:53Wagner Moura:Do you remember, he hosted SNL, it was the Dreamgirls year and because he did

43:02Amanda Dobbins:I'm telling you I'm not going in his monologue

43:05Maggie Gyllenhaal:and it was it's incredible it's not online anymore because of music rights but I'll never forget how good he was

43:11Sean Fennessey:we might need him in a musical Mickey's 17 landed at 72 on Metacritic do you want to guess what the bride is on Metacritic right now?

43:17Kleber Mendonca Filho:I mean it's definitely in the 50s

43:19Sean Fennessey:55 yeah okay well I wanted to mention the reimagining thing because I think it's really interesting and I appreciate the framework and the context around the feminist retellings of classic literature because I think it's important to a lot of these stories. You know, it's easy to point to something like Clueless or 10 Things I Hate About You. I think of those more as remakes.

43:36Amanda Dobbins:Those are remakes or up. Yeah, they're remakes. They're modern remakes.

43:40Christian Bale:Yes. There's something different that happens. And I think maybe the most famous version of this is Hook.

43:48Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

43:49Christian Bale:Which is Steven Spielberg's

43:52Jessie Buckley:dramatic kind of fast forward in the story of Peter Pan where a grown-up Peter Pan goes back to Never Never Land to confront Captain Hook and the Lost Boys and rediscover his inner childhood. A movie that I was obsessed with as a kid,

44:08Sean Fennessey:revisited in my 20s and disliked. And I probably need to look at it again. Julia Roberts' Tinkerbell.

44:15Kleber Mendonca Filho:I do remember that.

44:16Sean Fennessey:Very notable. Tinker Hell. Tinker Hell. That was mean. Was that the headline?

44:21Kleber Mendonca Filho:It was definitely a display copy.

44:24Christian Bale:Yeah, exactly. But this happens over and over again, and I think this stuff is kind of fascinating.

44:28Jessie Buckley:like Cronenberg's The Fly is a really good version of a reimagining it's sort of a similar story

44:33Sean Fennessey:to the original movie but and the 1980s in particular there were a lot of horror stories like this like John Carpenter's The Thing is a riff on The Thing from another planet but or The Thing from another world

44:45Christian Bale:but it's not the same specifically Weird Science

44:49Jessie Buckley:is basically

44:50Christian Bale:The Bride of Frankenstein that's brought to life by two horny boys

44:56Jessie Buckley:The Wiz Sure You know, a reinvention, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, your beloved You've Got Mail, which I did not realize is based on a story and is not just the shop around the corner.

45:09Sean Fennessey:Did you know that? No. So I'm going to look this up right now. Please vamp while I do so.

45:15Amanda Dobbins:I mean, I would say that it is, it's as much a shop around the corner update as it is. Like, what are they switching around to tell the story in a new way?

45:30Sean Fennessey:Maybe not from the movie, but I think from Parfumery, which is the... That is the... I want to say it's a... It's not German. I don't know which...

45:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:Parfumery would be French.

45:42Sean Fennessey:I don't think it's a French novel. It's Miklos Laszlo is the author. He's Austrian. Okay. And it's an Austrian story that I think Lubitsch was basing his story on. And so I think just even the sort of like conventions of what's happening in You've Got Mail, the use of technology. Sure. The fact that like something can be based on something and then based on something else and you put it in a blender and it becomes something else. Totally.

46:07Wagner Moura:Yeah.

46:08Sean Fennessey:And it's not a spoof. Like it's not a Mel Brooks movie.

46:11Jessie Buckley:It's actually based on the material but it's changing things in the material. Right. Is an interesting example of that. I'm trying to think of like some,

46:19Sean Fennessey:like what are some more audacious ones? Like Cruella is a little bit of what you're talking about with the feminist literature.

46:25Amanda Dobbins:Right. Well, there is a whole fairytale thing where, and it does have to do with like feminist retellings, but they are more often focused on the villain.

46:38Sean Fennessey:Molescent is this as well.

46:39Amanda Dobbins:Sure. And what's up happening in Snow White and the Huntsman?

46:45Christian Bale:um i think it's focused more on the huntsman character in the disney film is sent to kill

46:52Sean Fennessey:snow white right but then that character is made more heroic in that story okay so that's like a

46:57Kleber Mendonca Filho:that's a not all men uh retelling could be okay that's really says so much but yeah the the fairy tales are doing the the villain so that to me seems more examining i mean definitely is like

47:13Amanda Dobbins:social norms and there's a feminist element to it also. But some of it is that you get away from some of the princessy stuff, which is how we've tried to free ourselves from the, you know, the fairy tale trap over time is interesting and kind of sad. And then also it's a little bit like a storytelling reimagining like story conventions and like, let's think about like the bad person and what is the bad person doing?

47:40Sean Fennessey:There's a really clever and wildly unsuccessful version of this called Dracula Untold. Are you familiar with this movie?

47:47Kleber Mendonca Filho:No.

47:48Jessie Buckley:2014 movie starring Luke Evans. He plays Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Dracula. But he is forced to transform into the evil monster Dracula because his family and his nation is under the threat of the Ottoman Sultan. And so he needs to build up all of his powers and his army so that he may battle the Sultan. Okay.

48:09Amanda Dobbins:How's it work out?

48:11Sean Fennessey:He wins.

48:12Amanda Dobbins:Okay.

48:12Sean Fennessey:And then he lives forever as Dracula.

48:14Christian Bale:Oh, good. Is he unhappy about that? Well, all Draculas are kind of sad. Yeah. You know, they have an internal woe.

48:21Amanda Dobbins:Okay. Much like myself. I mean, Joker's not unlike this, right?

48:26Sean Fennessey:I think it's very, very much in keeping. Yeah.

48:29Amanda Dobbins:Aside from the fact that the same team worked on Joker and The Bride.

48:33Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Yeah.

48:34Amanda Dobbins:I think. But that's about like, But what if we tried to understand this sad man who's an incel? Yeah, Arthur. Yeah.

48:42Christian Bale:You know, he just, he can't strike up a conversation with Zazie Beetz. Yeah. You know, she won't talk to him.

48:47Sean Fennessey:He just wants to find love. You know, he likes to ride the subway. Right. Sometimes there's some stockbrokers on the subway. You hate that. I hate to be bullied as a grown man on the subway. There's a lot of other examples. Like another really mean 80s movie is The Blob, which is a remake of the Steve McQueen movie from the 50s, The Blob. I really like the Elizabeth Moss starring the invisible man Lee Whannell's yeah which is a real I think a real clever reimagining that also has a lot of social import it does but makes it strong enough that the thriller aspects are what is at the front of it you know what I mean it's not like this movie exists because it's this is we're putting it this using this milieu and this time in history where you know ideas about sexual assault and gender control and all these things that are kind of in the culture are sort of like the background, like the set piece for a scary movie about an invisible guy.

49:40Amanda Dobbins:Right, right. It's not, it's implied or like a possible interpretation of the text as opposed to like written in the text. It is also, there aren't also 45 other things going on in the movie.

49:53Sean Fennessey:It's very kind of restrained, like down the middle. Right. This is a 90 minute thriller. Invasion of the Body Snatchers keeps doing this. There have been four versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

50:03Jessie Buckley:the original from the 50s then the Philip Kaufman film in the 70s which is really more about like kind of the paranoia of that era of history and then Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers in the 90s and then the kind of bungled Daniel Craig Nicole Kidman movie The Invasion from the 2000s

50:19Sean Fennessey:and I think just like that inherent feeling of being replaced

50:23Christian Bale:lives on forever and you can reimagine it in a lot of different ways Ponyo did you know Ponyo is a reimagining? Of what?

50:31Amanda Dobbins:Of The Little Mermaid I didn't.

50:33Christian Bale:Yeah.

50:33Amanda Dobbins:Oh, well, see, you know, that's, again, we're trying to fix the fairy tales.

50:36Christian Bale:Yeah. There's a Ponyo exhibit at the Academy Museum right now.

50:39Amanda Dobbins:I've heard it's great.

50:40Christian Bale:Absolutely delightful. Yeah. Would highly recommend all parents take their kids to see it. And honestly, if you don't have kids, you also would probably love it if you like Miyazaki. Big Lebowski? It's kind of like Dashiell Hammett novels, The Long Goodbye. Yeah. Bogart, all those things, but then set amidst the low-level angst of the Gulf War. I don't know. Yeah.

51:01Amanda Dobbins:I mean the long goodbye for that matter but yeah totally

51:03Christian Bale:totally Mirror Mirror

51:06Amanda Dobbins:well yeah so what happens in that one so is that the Julia Roberts one yes okay so Julia Roberts

51:11Christian Bale:and Lily Collins

51:13Amanda Dobbins:okay and Julia Roberts not Lily James

51:15Christian Bale:not Lily James

51:16Amanda Dobbins:Lily James is in the other one the other Cinderella

51:19Christian Bale:Lily James is in the other Cinderella

51:20Amanda Dobbins:okay because they came out around the same time

51:23Sean Fennessey:yes I think Mirror Mirror came first directed by Tarsem Singe director of The Fall and The Cell two of the most beautiful movie as the last 25 years.

51:33Amanda Dobbins:Okay.

51:33Sean Fennessey:And I believe it is really more focused on the queen played by Julia Roberts, the evil queen.

51:38Amanda Dobbins:Yes.

51:39Sean Fennessey:And it is that shift in perspective. That's the other version of it is not just what about this woman who is sidelined in the story, but it's like, you know, I guess it is similar to Cruella in that way. Right, right, right. That villain retelling. I seem to recall that movie being quite poor.

51:54Amanda Dobbins:Mirror, mirror.

51:55Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I was just didn't revisit it for our conversation. I was just happy

51:57Amanda Dobbins:that Julia Roberts was back. Okay. That's great. And now the fall is always in her letterbox four. So that's nice that that happened.

52:04Christian Bale:Is that true? Yeah. Did she say that? Yeah. That's beautiful. And that's why.

52:07Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, it's great. So listen.

52:09Christian Bale:Well, the fall is great. Yeah. You know who the biggest fall fan I know is? Who? Joanna Robinson.

52:14Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

52:14Christian Bale:Checks out. Last Man Standing. Probably haven't seen this one.

52:19Sean Fennessey:Bruce Willis, late 90s, 19th century, Western gangster movie that is a remake of Yojimbo.

52:28Kleber Mendonca Filho:Okay, so not the Tim Allen sitcom.

52:30Sean Fennessey:Nope. Okay. Never seen that.

52:32Kleber Mendonca Filho:Me either.

52:33Christian Bale:Rob Zombie did this with Halloween. First Halloween bad, second Halloween good. That's my take. Don't at me. I don't know. What else? What's the best version of this?

52:43Sean Fennessey:What's the absolute most clever, insightful, essential reimagining we've ever gotten?

52:55Kleber Mendonca Filho:The Da Vinci Code. Okay.

52:58Sean Fennessey:Thank you for taking this so seriously.

53:00Maggie Gyllenhaal:It's in the Louvre.

53:00Sean Fennessey:I appreciate it. You know what I mean? Thank you.

53:02Maggie Gyllenhaal:You think it's still there? Or do you think it was heisted too? Did anyone check?

53:06Christian Bale:Yeah, I've only seen the movie once. Don't really know what you're talking about.

53:09Amanda Dobbins:It's the Holy Grail, which is actually a chalice that I think Christ drank from, but maybe... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's what the original is.

53:25Maggie Gyllenhaal:and then in Da Vinci Code, the chalice is actually the womb. That's what it is because, yeah, it's the feminine sacred. That's, yeah, it's women. That's why it's reimagining. We did it. We fixed Christianity.

53:38Sean Fennessey:You may recall there was a years-long running bit on this show about the Holy Grail.

53:44Amanda Dobbins:I was going to ask if you were going to bring that to Steven Spielberg.

53:47Sean Fennessey:Some questions about

53:48Christian Bale:The Last Crusade?

53:49Maggie Gyllenhaal:No, if you were just going to start with, I don't believe in the Grail. You don't care about it.

53:53Christian Bale:You think I should only make statements to him?

53:55Maggie Gyllenhaal:But do you care about it now that I've told you that in the Da Vinci Code, it's about the womb and women's power?

54:01Christian Bale:Do I care about it?

54:02Maggie Gyllenhaal:Now are you like, sure, the Holy Grail, I'm into it.

54:04Christian Bale:I mean, it's not real. So I don't know what you're asking me.

54:07Maggie Gyllenhaal:You don't know. But so then the implication of that in the Da Vinci Code is that there is like a line of descendants of Christ and Mary Magdalene. And then like the Holy Grail is like all among us. Maybe the Holy Grail is in you.

54:18Sean Fennessey:So when you go to the bookstore and you look for the book, The Da Vinci Code, that book can be found in the fiction section.

54:25Christian Bale:which is means it's not real some guy made it up his name is Dan Brown

54:30Maggie Gyllenhaal:it's a reimagining see yes

54:32Christian Bale:there was somebody had an imagination in the 15th century they came up with the holy grail that's not something that happened during Christ's time

54:39Sean Fennessey:on earth

54:39Maggie Gyllenhaal:don't you think it's earlier than that I thought it was

54:42Sean Fennessey:roughly around that time

54:43Maggie Gyllenhaal:holy grail let's just Wikipedia this real fast okay 1190

54:48Sean Fennessey:wow okay

54:49Amanda Dobbins:there we go

54:50Christian Bale:12th century pretty good

54:52Amanda Dobbins:a mysterious grail appears in Percival, the story of the grail.

54:56Christian Bale:Intriguing. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day-to-day, but our favorite films with stories that make us change the way we think, they weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the world pass by.

55:11Sean Fennessey:This is your sign that you shouldn't either. From us, from VW, and the other drivers out there, grab the wheel. Do what you love, even if it means taking the road less traveled. Learn more at VW.com. let's go to The Secret Agent. Okay. I've done yeoman's work so far.

55:27Maggie Gyllenhaal:I thought that was productive.

55:28Sean Fennessey:Yes. Well, The Secret Agent is a movie that we did talk about very briefly back in November when Claiborne Mendoza-Filio was on the show. And that was a wonderful conversation and I would encourage people to go back and listen to that after listening to this conversation that we're going to have in part because the movie is now available on Hulu. It only opened in a very select few theaters in the fall. It was hard to see. We waited a long time to get through it

55:51Christian Bale:on the show in any depth. I'm excited to just do so with you now. I've now seen the movie three times. This film stars Wagner Mora, Carlos Francisco, Tanya Maria, Rubario Dionis. It is essentially, though I don't think we can contain its multitudes in this very brief summary.

56:08Jessie Buckley:In 1977, Marcelo, a technology teacher, moves from Sao Paulo to Recife during Carnival to escape his violent past and start over. He finds the city full of chaos

56:19Sean Fennessey:and his neighbors begin to spy on him. So

56:23Christian Bale:You rewatched it?

56:24Sean Fennessey:Oh, yeah. What was your takeaway on a second watch?

56:29Wagner Moura:I think the first time that you watch it, you're trying to figure out what is happening. And not in The Bride in a coherent sort of way, but just in a, this is a film that is structured untraditionally and doesn't have a lot of capital E exposition. You know, it's not saying to you, so we are here in 1970-something Brazil, and here is the political structure in Brazil, or lack thereof, and here is where these people are, and here's what they do for a living and where they're going.

57:01Maggie Gyllenhaal:You're thrust into this world.

57:04Wagner Moura:And to me, what is most memorable and exciting about this movie is how vividly it creates that world and how the exposition it gives you is about like a place and time and people. And so you don't you can infer what you need to know about a military dictatorship or even like what the character's job is or what the character's name is.

57:32Amanda Dobbins:You know, the actual facts and characters and plot, as you mentioned, are not, you know, immediately obvious, but also beside the point.

57:45Wagner Moura:And so once I understood the arc of the story and kind of understood where everything was going for my first watch, the second watch, I could just really revel in like these amazing set pieces and this creation of a world that I know very little about, but really feel

58:01Maggie Gyllenhaal:completely immersed in.

58:02Amanda Dobbins:And so obviously the opening sequence at the gas station is, you know, a short film all its own and like chilling and memorable and and its own form of exposition. In some ways, like, you know, everything that you need to know in those first 15 minutes.

58:17Sean Fennessey:This is the way this world. Yes. Yeah.

58:19Amanda Dobbins:But, you know, like the carnival scene and all the scenes at the movie theater and this recreation of life and thus these like very fully realized, wonderful people.

58:35Wagner Moura:Like there's a reason that we gave Tanya Maria, who plays Donia Sebastiana, the big pick, the alternative Oscar.

58:43Amanda Dobbins:And that she has just, you know, been such a reference point because it is a small performance that is instantly someone you not only remember but want to spend time with. And like, so I don't know that much about these people at the end of it, but I feel like I really understand everything that is created. So it's a magical movie.

59:04Christian Bale:It is really magical. It's very complex because it is a lot of different kinds of movies happening all at the same time.

59:12Sean Fennessey:And I compared it to The Bride because I do think that film student brains, and I think both Maggie Gyllenhaal and Mendoza have film student brains, tend to do that recombinant thing where they're kind of pulling a lot of influences very much, sometimes

59:27Jessie Buckley:on the surface, sometimes more deeply ingrained in the stories that they're telling. this is a very deeply ingrained version of that where that opening sequence that you talked about set at the gas station is like pure Alan Pakula. Like it is a 70s conspiracy thriller where you're like, it's very tense. No one is explaining what is going on. There's a dead body in sight and we're worried for our character. We're like, this is, he has to, it is Warren Beatty in the Parallax View. Something is not right here and he has to get free. And that's an incredible sense of mood and atmosphere that he shows you right off the bat in the movie.

1:00:01Jessie Buckley:But then as the movie

1:00:02Sean Fennessey:begins to unfold and we start to learn a little bit more about Marcelo, it becomes very clear that it's a movie about a man trying to get back to his son, which is a different kind of dramatic story.

1:00:11Jessie Buckley:And then it's also a movie about this kind of found family of dissidents and exiles who have found themselves in Recife, in Dona Sebastiana's home, and they're in safe harbor and they're trying to figure out how they can stay free and stay safe for the rest of their lives. And then it becomes a different kind of political thriller, almost like a gangster movie with the hitmen and this ornate plot around trying to capture a man. And we don't really know why they want to capture him until very far into the film. I mean, almost two hours and 10 minutes when we start to learn really who Marcelo actually is and how he became ensnared in this plot.

1:00:47So the movie is extraordinarily complex,

1:00:51Christian Bale:but it's not a breakneck thriller. It's a very... Languid. Languid, yes. Slow-paced. and it really, it's not just that it doesn't reveal anything to you. It like really lets you sit in the world.

1:01:04Sean Fennessey:Now, sometimes that doesn't work for me in films. And this is the rare case because I think what you're describing, which is like the idea of holding back on information,

1:01:15Jessie Buckley:it kind of like gets you leaning forward and forward and forward. And I think it's like a pretty magical act of synthesis.

1:01:22Wagner Moura:I think also just the way it communicates, the way it embraces that pace.

1:01:30Kleber Mendonca Filho:And it uses that time and the downtime really well. I had forgotten that right after the gas station, the Marcello character is just driving to Chicago.

1:01:43Amanda Dobbins:Baby, please don't go. And you kind of get some carnival scenes. You get some hallucinations along the road, or are they? And you don't totally know what you're seeing. And it is moving slowly. Like he's just driving and I think they're showing some of the credits, but you're also completely wrapped and it's not telling you what is happening, but it is telling you a lot about the world that you're in. And so I don't know. I think there is something about it knows exactly what it wants to create and how you want to feel, how it wants you to feel in a way that I like caught instantly, even though I honestly couldn't tell you still like Marcelo or Armando's like total political history and employment history.

1:02:31Amanda Dobbins:I have most of it, I think, but I couldn't diagram it for you. I don't think it matters.

1:02:35Jessie Buckley:We can talk through some of it and kind of where, what they reveal to us and what we think he is, why he is in, he's being pursued. But I agree with what you just said about hearing that Chicago song. And then honestly, there's such interesting choices of Brazilian music throughout the film, this kind of Brazilian pop, Brazilian folk throughout that does the same thing in the movie. I think that the use of Hollywood movies does for the movie, which is that it shows you the ways in which popular culture and popular art can suffuse people's lives, can change their feelings about things, can create a sense of dread.

1:03:11this idea of Jaws and to a lesser extent the omen as these hovering gods over the movie and

1:03:18Jessie Buckley:this idea of like you're being pursued by something that is bigger and more dangerous than you is just such a sexy you know film essay idea that that Mendoza has put his arms around and the Chicago song is sort of the opposite right which is like in that time in popular music you could like seek escape with a pop song like that yeah but there is something kind of lurking around the corner beyond that escape. That is really interesting when that sort of masked face comes up when he's driving early on and you're like, oh my gosh, what is going to happen to this man? So I found that part of it really fascinating.

1:03:48Christian Bale:It's also like all of Mendoza's movies or at least all of his scripted films. It's got this phantasmagoric genre thing going on that is way

1:03:59Sean Fennessey:outside of the real world construct of the rest of the movie. In this case, it's this leg. There's a leg that has been discovered in the body of a shark at the beginning of the film. And that leg kind of takes on a life of its own.

1:04:12Christian Bale:And it goes on kind of a spree at a certain point in the movie. And it takes us into these, it's one of a series of side quests that the movie goes on to, which is one of the reasons why it's so long and languid, where we're just like,

1:04:22Jessie Buckley:okay, so we're just following a leg in this park, which is sort of like a gay cruising meetup space and kind of like a space for where people can really live and be themselves while living under the fascist thumb of this regime that is happening in Brazil in 1977.

1:04:38Christian Bale:That is just another thing where, like, no other director is doing this. This is singular. You know, there's not... And when we talked about Baccarat in 2020,

1:04:45Jessie Buckley:it was the same thing. There are aspects of that movie that feel like

1:04:47Christian Bale:it just turns into a horror movie for 10 minutes and then stops being a horror movie for a while. That is a really bold stroke that I really like.

1:04:55Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, but it's also... It's still grounded, and it's still, like, it's a very realistic leg. and even the way it's filmed, you know, it's like hopping around like a leg would and you see all of the wounds or you get it like an over-the-head shot of how the muscles are moving and it's like very gross and a little funny still and just like moving as if that is really happening and then it's reported in the papers and then the other characters, the dissidents, in a very lovely emotional scene And the scene starts off with them reading it as it's not fantastical in the world of the story. Or it's no more fantastical than anything else that is going on in this time of mischief.

1:05:45Amanda Dobbins:As the film introduces it, and also I hadn't realized, as Jonia Spastiana says, she gives a toast. And she says, and may this child grow up in a Brazil with less mischief.

1:05:57Christian Bale:Right. Right.

1:05:58Jessie Buckley:It's a really interesting choice, too, because it's based on a true thing that happened in the 1970s in Recife. The Pernambuco Daily was writing about this leg as a way to kind of like disguise censored news about police violence, corruption, homophobia, that they would use these like an active metaphor to communicate to the reading public.

1:06:20Christian Bale:Right. Here's what's really going on in your city right now. And here are the ways in which you're being controlled by the nation state, which is so interesting to literal to literalize that. You know what I mean?

1:06:31Sean Fennessey:The movie making that to manifesting that idea that is only meant to be read, you know?

1:06:37Amanda Dobbins:Yes. But it is also it is then also literalizing like that violence and but not actually showing the actual it would be a very different movie if you saw in that cruising park people being arrested or people being beaten or like the state actually you know coming through right that was kind of getting kicked by a straight leg yeah and and when they discuss it later like we it's communicated that like we all know what it means yes and we all like understand what it's meant to represent but the the film really does recreate these like great terrors and violence and people being kidnapped and murdered

1:07:14Wagner Moura:and in a not like mythical,

1:07:20Kleber Mendonca Filho:but a mythical sort of way. I think so, yeah.

1:07:21Christian Bale:I think so. I think, you know, I feel like we've compared every single movie this season to one battle after another, but this is a very similar movie to one battle after another, right? It's about kind of like two secret societies, one operating in pursuit of revolution, one operating in pursuit of like

1:07:36Jessie Buckley:taking full control over the people and the lengths that one will go to and the lengths that the other will go to and then the long-term ramifications of that kind of internecine battle in a community. And it's really fascinating.

1:07:50Christian Bale:Mendoza's previous film is called Pictures of Ghosts. It's a documentary that is sort of like a memory doc about him thinking about Recife and being in Recife in the 70s. And it's a really interesting kind of like, I think it's probably better seen after seeing The Secret Agent actually. But the fact that so much of this is just true and also comes one year after I'm Still Here, which is also exploring a similar time,

1:08:14Jessie Buckley:you know, the same time in Brazilian history. And that movie had a very, very ground level impact on a single family and a single woman. And this movie is very much about the person who we're going to talk about momentarily and his character, but it also is about this wide community and the people in Dona Sebastiana's home and the people who work where Marcelo goes to work and the ways in which they live with the police force and the community that is affected by these crimes that start happening around his existence in the city. It's just a very, it's very big. It's unusual for a movie to be able to contain this many ideas and things and strands and kind of make them feel coherent.

1:08:56Jessie Buckley:And I think the number one reason why they feel so coherent is because Wagner Mora, the whole movie is on his shoulders.

1:09:02Christian Bale:Yeah.

1:09:03Jessie Buckley:And he's not in every scene, but if you don't have him,

1:09:06Sean Fennessey:you can't flow through all this other stuff.

1:09:08Amanda Dobbins:And he is carrying it and carrying so much of the emotion and fear and narrative thrust, while also gliding and observing and appreciating everyone else that he sees.

1:09:31Wagner Moura:And he is really the audience's vehicle and entrance into everything else that we learn. But I was really struck by the Carnaval scene on rewatch and when Wagner Mora enters it. And it's just like a recreation of a street and like a joyful parade moment. And Udo Kier, the late Udo Kier is kind of in the background dancing as well. It's a real slice of life. And you watch Wagner Mora behold it and appreciate it. And then he gets in the mix and he starts dancing too. And, you know, and it's an appreciation and an involvement that like comes from experience. It's lovely. So he definitely, his character threads everything together.

1:10:14Wagner Moura:And the appreciation for everything around him that he gives the character, like I think extends to the audience.

1:10:24Kleber Mendonca Filho:I think so too.

1:10:25Christian Bale:He's a very warm actor. He's very easy to connect to.

1:10:28Jessie Buckley:He's giving a handful of different kinds of performances in the movie, though, because there are plenty of times I feel similarly about his kind of introduction to Doña Sebastiana's world, where he feels very warm and he's kind of like excited to be welcomed into a space and to meet all these new people. He finds a girl that he's interested in. You know, he makes friends very quickly.

1:10:46Christian Bale:He gets kind of acclimated to this little mini utopia that she has going on. But then for a lot long stretches of the movie, he's anxious. He's nervous.

1:10:56Jessie Buckley:He feels under threat. he is giving like a parallax view or clute kind of performance where he has to be very watchful, very quiet, be very careful not to make a mistake

1:11:08Christian Bale:so that he can survive in these circumstances. And then also he's carrying with him this burden of just not being able to be with his son. And he sneaks off early in the film to go have a moment with him.

1:11:19Jessie Buckley:And then the movie eventually brings that thread back around in, I think, a very beautiful way. And so what it ultimately leads to is an actor. We've been talking about Michael B.

1:11:29Sean Fennessey:Jordan playing two roles. He plays Smoke and Stack in Sinners. This is kind of

1:11:33Jessie Buckley:three roles. It's two men, but two iterations of Armando, who is the original version of Marcelo before he has to change his identity. And then later, Fernando, his son, at the end of the film. And he looks different in all three. He's got a different haircut. Even his complexion looks different. He feels like a different person. And the same way that when we were talking with Wesley about what MBJ does to kind of shift intonation and posture and communicate that these are two men. Moore does the same thing here in a really, really impressive way. And that's part of why four months ago we were like, this is one of the best, best actor

1:12:11Christian Bale:races of all time because you've got multiple examples of this throughout this race. But, you know, I've always liked him as an actor. I interviewed him at Sundance in like 20, when did we go, 2020?

1:12:21Kleber Mendonca Filho:Yes. Right before the pandemic. Yes.

1:12:23Sean Fennessey:And I forget what movie it was that he was in that I spoke to him for.

1:12:28Christian Bale:But you can see why he's so well-liked and why there is still a contingent of people who think he's going to win the Oscar.

1:12:36Kleber Mendonca Filho:Yeah.

1:12:36Christian Bale:Because he's just a very magnetic person. And he seems very decent.

1:12:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:Absolutely.

1:12:41Christian Bale:You know, a lot of famous people kind of tell they're not so nice.

1:12:44Kleber Mendonca Filho:There was a story at one of the Oscar events where he went up to my former colleague, J.D. Wan, who was recently laid off at the Washington Post. And he like it was a day later and he knew about this and was like he can afford, you know, Bezos can afford this and not that. Like very engaged with like the world around him. Yeah. And remembering that of her.

1:13:05Jessie Buckley:Well, the story even of him and Mendoza getting together is so cool because, you know, Mendoza was a film critic for years. He talked about it when he was on the pod. and he met Mora as a critic and they kind of just clicked. They struck up a friendship, not when he was, you know, an exciting Brazilian filmmaker, but just a guy who was kind of covering festivals where they interacted with each other and they kept up a relative correspondence. And I think it was Mora who was like, I'm ready for us to do something together. And so, you know, the film is clearly written with him in mind and he's just absolutely phenomenal in this movie.

1:13:40Sean Fennessey:I do think this is one of the craziest best picture nominees of all time.

1:13:45Wagner Moura:The sense that there's just a lot of going on and it's an international feature, not

1:13:50Sean Fennessey:from Europe, all kinds of different genre styles, a movie that I wouldn't say has a

1:13:59Christian Bale:satisfying feel good aspect to it. It is a historical drama in a way, but to your point, it doesn't, it never really situates us comfortably.

1:14:07Kleber Mendonca Filho:Yeah, though I feel that I know a lot more about this time period from this film than I did from I'm Still Here.

1:14:15Sean Fennessey:I totally agree. I was a little more resistant to I'm Still Here because I felt like it was a little bit more traditional.

1:14:22Wagner Moura:Yes. And tightly focused in a way that I found more similar to more Oscar movies in the past.

1:14:29Sean Fennessey:And this movie having all of these tributaries of story and ideas and kind of manifestation of metaphorical ideas inside of the movie makes it a very odd product.

1:14:40Jessie Buckley:And, you know, I think it's also a movie that definitely plays better on a big screen.

1:14:45Kleber Mendonca Filho:I'm sure that's true, though. I have watched it at home and was wrapped. Okay.

1:14:51Christian Bale:I really, really, really liked it on the big screen. And I think it's that languid pace is a little more challenging.

1:14:56Wagner Moura:There is a projectionist who is a major character. many important scenes happen at the local movie theater. That's right. So a movie theater is a part of the last scene of the movie in its way.

1:15:07Amanda Dobbins:So I like, I get it.

1:15:09Wagner Moura:It is, it's a, it is a movie nerd movie. And I do think we have an increasing number of movie nerds voting for Oscars.

1:15:17Christian Bale:It's a very good point.

1:15:18Sean Fennessey:Just in the run up to the movie, Mendoza cited Robert Altman, Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah, Scorsese and Spielberg as big influences. Sure. It's nice for me. Yeah, it's very wonderful to hear.

1:15:30Jessie Buckley:But he also, he's been programming some films related to it, including John Borman's Point Blank, which has a similarly kind of like fractured editing style and is also a memory movie. So I think that's a really cool one. Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, which totally kind of like pursuit, the sense of mystery and paranoia. You can feel Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

1:15:52Christian Bale:I've never seen Hector Babenco's Lucio Flavio, but this makes me want to go see a movie like that. so it's very cool stylistically it's a pretty it's actually not as complex as I thought it was gonna be

1:16:03Jessie Buckley:when I rewatched it like it's a lot of singles a lot of close ups a lot of two shots there's some some slick camera movement with some of the action sequences especially like the big pursuit and shoot out near the end of the film but it's not athletic as you used to describe it like it doesn't even though it has these flights of fancy structurally

1:16:21Sean Fennessey:I didn't find it to be kind of zany in terms of its craft

1:16:25Amanda Dobbins:well the No, no, no, no. It is recognizable and it it's production design and costume design are excellent. And but still like very realistic, you know, they are trying to recreate this area of this time and place in Brazil and like teach us about it.

1:16:45Kleber Mendonca Filho:The costumes are unbelievable.

1:16:47Wagner Moura:Yeah.

1:16:48Amanda Dobbins:And I think, you know, they are based on real pieces of clothing. But I was like, I clocking like random shirts in one of the like the ID office scenes and being like, I wonder how I would find something like that. And what am I going to Google there is, but you can, you know, see the textures, you can see all of the places, the office, the apartments, the just the it feels very, very lived in. And again, like not fantastical. Yeah.

1:17:15Jessie Buckley:I think the movie also does a nice job of not over explaining, but showing us the kind of class and regional differentiations in that country at that time in history, which I think still persists to this day, which is sort of like the North versus the South. Right. The idea of communist influence versus capitalist influence and how those two things are colliding. And then let's like use that to talk a little bit about maybe actually what's going on with Marcelo, a.k.a. Armando, and then getting us to the end of the movie. So it's revealed late in the film that the man who has hired the hitmen to go after Marcelo is in fact an industrialist business owner in Brazil who, as he describes, has Italian origins but wants to control the ways and means of making transportation effectively.

1:18:07Jessie Buckley:He's trying to control technology that would then influence their ability to build cars in a certain way and build other machines in a certain way. And that Marcelo, a.k.a. Armando, is a professor, is an intellectual. He's a scientist. He's a person who develops things. He's developed a patent. Yes. It could be very, very powerful for this man to get control of. This man visits the university, which is a public university, and comes in and kind of bullies his way into a form of control. and he's trying to eliminate people who will be standing in his company's way and their ability to make profit off of the work that's being done at this publicly funded university.

1:18:41Jessie Buckley:So it's this real like head-on collision of like social civic service versus capitalism.

1:18:48Sean Fennessey:And that sends eventually Marcelo into exile where he becomes a Marcelo. And the movie makes a really interesting choice, which is that he's pursued and we see him be pursued by this hitman who's terrifying in the movie, who's sort of hired by the hitmen. But Marcello doesn't die in the face of that. He dies later. Right. And we don't see him die.

1:19:11Kleber Mendonca Filho:And do we know if it's days or weeks or months later?

1:19:15Christian Bale:It's unclear.

1:19:16Kleber Mendonca Filho:Yeah.

1:19:16Wagner Moura:We don't really know what happens with his son. We don't know. Do we know where he's killed?

1:19:23Sean Fennessey:I don't think so. Yeah. All we really know is that the movie has a framing device, not unlike Mary Shelley in The Bride, where two young women working at a university

1:19:32Jessie Buckley:are reviewing historical information about Brazil at that time. And they come upon the story of Armando and a lot of the materials, the recordings that he made while working with agencies in an attempt to basically be in witness protection. And they review all that material and that allows them to learn more about him and to learn more about his family. And eventually, one of the women who takes a real interest in this case takes what she's discovered to a blood transfusion center. And she has blood taken and arranges a meeting with Armando's son, also played by Wagner Mora. And they have a conversation.

1:20:13Jessie Buckley:She just said, here's what I found. Take it or leave it. And in the course of that conversation, they talk about his family history and how he sees and understands his family and his parents.

1:20:22Kleber Mendonca Filho:And memory. Yep.

1:20:25Sean Fennessey:and we learn that he died, his father,

1:20:29Christian Bale:but I don't think any specifics, right?

1:20:31Wagner Moura:No, we see a newspaper clipping. That's how we learn. And we do see it in a marked difference

1:20:39Kleber Mendonca Filho:to most of the other dead bodies that we see. I guess we do see some very grotesque shootout and flesh melting off. But I'm thinking about the recurring image of a body lying somewhere with a piece of cardboard or a piece of newspaper over it. And in this one, you see Armando. That's right. And like you see his face and you see him. But is it a newspaper photograph? And I think there's a caption that's like it's believed to be some sort of hit job.

1:21:06Jessie Buckley:Right. Which is a really good point about the cardboard and the newspaper. Yeah. And the idea of this kind of collision of that purpose, especially that moment where the younger hitman is murdered by the other hitman late in the film and then in the barbershop. And then the barbershop owner comes in and puts a newspaper over his face in a kind of like spiritual act of like kind of covering him and protecting him in the aftermath of his death. And that collision of like faith, Christianity inside of a country that is maybe leveraging some of that faith against the people.

1:21:36Kleber Mendonca Filho:Well, and also the headline that is on that newspaper is like the carnival death toll is 92. Yes. And rising or whatever. So all of this is happening, you know, of the backdrop of many other deaths

1:21:49Wagner Moura:and many other much other corruption and many other like people having problems. There's a whole sub plot that I found like very moving and very upsetting that happens at the ID office when there's a deposition that's scheduled for very early in the morning. So that the rich woman giving the deposition about the death of the daughter of someone who worked for her so that she doesn't have to deal with press and she doesn't have to deal. She's getting special treatment. Yeah. And you see her and you see all the other people at the ID office responding to this in their own way. And it says everything about how this country is being run.

1:22:34Wagner Moura:And also like all of the other tragedies that are happening just off screen, run of the

1:22:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:mill every single day.

1:22:41Jessie Buckley:Yeah. And it does feel like it is a daily series of tragedies at this time in history. and then at the very end in that moment with his son Fernando as he's escorting this woman out he tells her as you mentioned that this blood center where he works as a doctor is where the movie theater is where he got to see Jaws and we learned earlier in the movie that he has been obsessed with trying to see the movie Jaws

1:23:04Wagner Moura:right

1:23:05Jessie Buckley:that Jaws I think to this day is the ultimate test of when is your child ready to see a certain kind of movie it is the movie that young kids say

1:23:14Sean Fennessey:I want to see this. I want to see this, even though they know they're going to be terrified. And no doubt was the case for Mendoza.

1:23:21Jessie Buckley:And he's kind of filtering that idea and that, you know, being able to see that movie. And in the movie, Fernando says, I've been scared of this movie all the way up until the moment that I saw it. And then after I saw it, all the fear went away. And first of all, who can relate more? Just absolutely. He must be a great movie goer.

1:23:39Sean Fennessey:But just like a really deeply felt

1:23:43Jessie Buckley:and considerate and emotional and complex series of emotions about the way that we reckon with terrible things that have happened in our lives. And for somebody like me, the way that they're often interwoven with my consumption of art

1:23:56Sean Fennessey:and how much I think about it.

1:23:58Wagner Moura:Yeah, and what you remember and how you remember and what stays as the construct of your actual life. and it's also introduced in this idea of coincidence because the woman who goes to visit him has family there and you know and that's part of the reason she's wanted to come and he says here's the real coincidence where I saw that movie theater where the fear ended is this place where he's working now and you know he says that he didn't really want to speak with her and he says really I think of my grandfather as my actual father I mean which is sad and heartbreaking. And so it's beautiful. And nothing is like handed to you on a platter, right?

1:24:47Wagner Moura:Even that, you know, he says the thing about the movie theater and that just holds on the blood bank for a while. And the last, you just watch him walk back through the fluorescent lighting and you're just sitting there thinking about what's there and what's not there.

1:25:03Christian Bale:His performance when he's talking to her

1:25:05Jessie Buckley:is so interesting because it's restrained but shattered at the same time. Like you can tell he's really trying to hold back from losing it because he has been able to kind of put this away. Like this story, this aspect of his life is something that he doesn't want to deal with because it's so painful to him. And he has made peace with the fact that, is it Alexander? Is his real father? And that that's how he just sees his life. But that she has dredged something up that is very painful, but she's also done this extraordinary thing for him at the same time, which is she's given him access to his father's voice.

1:25:39Jessie Buckley:And his story and how he felt and why some of these things happened in the way that they did in a way he could never understand before. And the movie is very, very similar, almost in direct connection to I'm Still Here in that way. Where the ending of I'm Still Here with the flash forward and the older woman thinking back on her experiences and then her family being gathered in this. You know, we can be flip about generational trauma. But this is actually when it's okay to use that, where it's like it's real world circumstances, but creating like an imagined story and using those real world circumstances to kind of infuse a story with more weight, with more heft.

1:26:14Jessie Buckley:You know, it's the kind of movie that talking about it just makes you admire it more. I think it's a real achievement. I really look forward to seeing what Mendoza does. He's sort of a really interesting movie thinker.

1:26:26Kleber Mendonca Filho:I hope more people will actually. It still does feel like it's the least seen of the Best Picture documentaries, which is just a matter of logistics.

1:26:34Christian Bale:Yeah, I'm hopeful. I think both It and Did Sentimental Value also go live at the same time on Hulu? I feel like they both went up around the same time. And so, you know, that's kind of the consequence of the Cannes conversation that we had where Neon scooped up these four movies or five movies. And there was only so much that they could do to get attention around them. do you think that the secret agent is I guess we don't want to spoil our Oscar picks I don't really know what to do in international I think I do revisiting the movie I'm like this is fucking good

1:27:09Kleber Mendonca Filho:it's wonderful

1:27:10Christian Bale:this and sentimental value are like they're so close for me I agree

1:27:13Wagner Moura:I do think we as an Oscar community

1:27:18Kleber Mendonca Filho:have overlooked the fact that sentimental value has four acting noms screenplay international director and best picture casting was it was not nominated in casting despite having

1:27:32Wagner Moura:four acting noms I think I don't remember and so it's quite strong and I do think also that in terms of the nominations the nominating process is that it is a it's a smaller body of voters

1:27:48Christian Bale:The secret agent is nominating casting.

1:27:50Wagner Moura:Well, yeah, as it should be. But it's a smaller group of voters who are doing the nominating just because of who signs up and who agrees to watch all the international features. So you do wonder if it goes wide to the to the entire voting body, whether more people will.

1:28:10Kleber Mendonca Filho:Whether sentimental value, though, apparently it's still renting. It's not on Hulu until March 23rd, according to the Googling. Oh, interesting. OK. That's notable. But that doesn't, I mean, that doesn't matter for the Oscar vote. No, for the Academy.

1:28:21Jessie Buckley:We didn't even mention the whole, you know, the update about how you do have to watch the films to vote.

1:28:26Kleber Mendonca Filho:Or you would at least have to click that you have. Yeah. But you have to click through each one. So there's like an added element of guilt. Steps. Physical steps. Yes. Yes.

1:28:35Christian Bale:You think that's going to work? No. You think people will just vote? Yeah.

1:28:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:I think so. I think they'll probably vote later. So that's kind of interesting. Like maybe the cat story really will affect Jesse Buckley because it came out later in the window. But perhaps it's funny.

1:28:51Christian Bale:I've got one more movie to watch that is Oscar nominated that I have not seen.

1:28:56Jessie Buckley:I've seen all the shorts. I've seen all the animated features. I've seen, as we mentioned, all the documentaries we'll get right into momentarily. And I haven't seen Kokuho.

1:29:09Kleber Mendonca Filho:Oh, just nominated for best makeup and hairstyling. But you have seen the Matthew McConaughey Fire movie.

1:29:15Jessie Buckley:I have. The Lost Bus.

1:29:16Kleber Mendonca Filho:Yeah, that's on my list. Okay.

1:29:18Jessie Buckley:You're really getting into the makeup, the effects category.

1:29:21Kleber Mendonca Filho:Well, listen, I'm trying to do it all as well.

1:29:23Jessie Buckley:Yeah.

1:29:23Kleber Mendonca Filho:I have four documentary shorts left.

1:29:25Wagner Moura:Okay.

1:29:26Kleber Mendonca Filho:I have two animated features because I forgot that I hadn't seen all of those because I thought I was so ahead by having seen three of them before, you know, on nominations. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun.

1:29:35Sean Fennessey:Little Amelie and Arco. It's fine. That's, you know. That's like three hours of movie. It's okay.

1:29:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:I also, I'll just turn them on with my children. You know, we'll consume them together.

1:29:44Wagner Moura:And then...

1:29:44Sean Fennessey:Knox might like Arco. I have seen all the documentaries,

1:29:49Wagner Moura:seen all the international features. So I have Kokuho and the Lost Bus.

1:29:56Christian Bale:This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when

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1:30:26Sean Fennessey:Terms apply.

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1:30:56Christian Bale:Let's talk about Best Documentary. Okay. We have not covered any of these movies on this show at all, except for a handful of quick mentions in the January 2025 Sundance episode. That's notable because literally all five of these movies premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Yeah. and that's something that's been talked about quite a bit in recent years that sundance is

1:31:24Jessie Buckley:the true launchpad the true power of sundance in the 2020s has been as a space for documentary and we mentioned how can is the new birthplace of big oscar campaigns and the way that venice and berlin and telluride and all these other festivals toronto new york have to respond to that primacy sundance has obviously come down in some respects as a launchpad for scripted films and it's not quite the thing that it was in the 90s. But for documentaries, it's still extremely powerful and predictive. I find that interesting when I think about the documentaries I saw this year.

1:31:56Christian Bale:I didn't see everything, obviously, because I only watched virtually, so I missed a lot of stuff. I don't know that I see five, but I don't know that I would have predicted these five a few months ago for this category.

1:32:06Kleber Mendonca Filho:I don't think we did when we made predictions. No. Did we get two out of five, maybe? Maybe three, but the third one differed between us. Yeah.

1:32:15Christian Bale:It's going to be hard for us to have extended conversations about all five of these movies, and I don't think that's what we'll do here.

1:32:20Sean Fennessey:I am kind of curious when you look at the nominees. I would like to.

1:32:23Kleber Mendonca Filho:I'm ready. I've seen all of it. I've got opinions.

1:32:24Sean Fennessey:I do, too. And I just mean like we're not going to have a 40-minute conversation about each movie. Okay. But based on what's nominated here, how do you feel about the state of the best documentary category in the branch?

1:32:36Kleber Mendonca Filho:Not good, bud. This is a real—this is a sort of a disaster, I think. And I don't—so the five films. as is the documentary branches want are about like very important and deserving topics. And I don't want to diminish the topics themselves, the subjects of the documentaries and or the fact that documentaries should be about important things. Like, you know, I like a fun, you know, romp through Martin Scorsese's life as much as the next person. And I thought that was really well made

1:33:12Wagner Moura:and fascinating, But it's not that they're not fun. That's not the problem.

1:33:18Amanda Dobbins:It's that I have sort of serious ethical and or filmmaking concerns with almost all of them.

1:33:26Christian Bale:Yeah.

1:33:28Jessie Buckley:My concern is more around the idea of the branch only being interested in these kinds of stories. that in a way, in an attempt to kind of confirm an identity around what makes for a great documentary, there's no room for anything that has some of that experimentation,

1:33:48Christian Bale:a different tonality, something that I think you're finding more and more in Best Picture, which is just a lot of different kinds of movies getting nominated for Best Picture now.

1:33:57Jessie Buckley:And I've really enjoyed that. And I think we've generally just been a little bit higher on what Best Picture has been in the last three or four years because it seems like there's variation.

1:34:05Christian Bale:And this feels like the third or fourth year in a row where it's five very serious, I think mostly well-made movies about very serious issues in the world, but that there is a kind of drabness and darkness and we are all screwedness to these films and that that kind of communicates

1:34:28Jessie Buckley:to the world at large at this award show that the best you can do in documentary

1:34:32Sean Fennessey:is take the most severe story possible. For example, the awful nature of the prison system in some states and for the most case nationwide.

1:34:44Jessie Buckley:And that that is the only kind of thing that merits the highest prize. There was a period of time when this was not true at the Academy Awards. There was a period of time when folks like Morgan Neville were being awarded for their films. 20 Feet from Stardom is a memorable one. Searching for Sugar Man is another example of this. Amy is another example of this. That was a wave. That was an era. And then maybe they over-indexed that era in the kind of like musical or biopic kind of thing.

1:35:10Christian Bale:And then there's been this dramatic overcorrection that kind of starts with American Factory, which is a terrific movie. Amazing.

1:35:19Jessie Buckley:But I think kind of sets the tone. And with the exception of My Octopus Teacher, most of the movies that win here are movies of great social import.

1:35:29Kleber Mendonca Filho:You're in trouble with Animal's Internet again. I'm still they didn't thank the octopus

1:35:34Christian Bale:yeah I hear you they won the Oscar so I'm out okay let me let me just give the nominees here one more thing I would

1:35:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:say though about that is that I do find at least and I wonder if you're the same way you spend more time consuming documentaries across the board I watch a lot of documentaries

1:35:48Wagner Moura:but because these are serious subjects and these are things that I take really seriously and that they are important I do find I'm watching them more as journalism than I am as film and I definitely have notes on some of like the filmmaking choices in these but

1:36:06Christian Bale:well four of these five movies effectively are journalism

1:36:09Amanda Dobbins:yeah and I have some issues with their journalistic standards yeah so that that's a that's a real problem but I do find that

1:36:17Christian Bale:that isn't what doc is you know you can't you can't I know what you're saying but you can't conflate the two like it can they can do acts of journalism in documentary but that's not ultimately the purpose of documentary

1:36:25Kleber Mendonca Filho:yeah but I sort of like these are so important like you can't do accidental journalism in my opinion. Like I...

1:36:32Christian Bale:I think it's intentional but that's not the totality of the film experience. And that to me is what's lacking in the movies.

1:36:37Kleber Mendonca Filho:But I'm holding against them their accidental and not exactly rigorous journalism as a result. I hear you.

1:36:42Jessie Buckley:I think there are definitely some instances in this slate where I fully agree with you. So let's go through them one by one. The Alabama Solution which is directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman. Very small side note. One, Andrew Jarecki, a very acclaimed documentarian. Probably best known for The Jinx. The HBO miniseries, which is at a minimum wildly entertaining and also had real world results.

1:37:07Kleber Mendonca Filho:We'll never forget watching that finale live.

1:37:10Jessie Buckley:Yeah. Charlotte Kaufman is the daughter of Lloyd Kaufman, the longtime impresario behind Troma Entertainment, a kind of like B-movie independent machine that I have admired for many, many years. And it's fascinating that this is what she's doing with her career. So the movie is about incarcerated men in Alabama who, you know, by acts of protest, expose the awful conditions within the prison system in the state of Alabama. And it's a six-year investigation. It utilizes a lot of footage filmed by the incarcerated individuals. It shows the inhumane conditions, rat-infested cells, no air conditioning, drug use, violent deaths.

1:37:53Jessie Buckley:Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray are the two men who are sort of at the center of the story. There's one significant death that kind of animates this movement. And the family members who were affected by that death kind of pushing for change within the system. The film spends a lot of time speaking to the incarcerated figures, but then also gives you some of the political context of Alabama at that time and the leadership and the reason why things are the way that they are. I will say I think this is a very sturdy classical very well intentioned very well made unfussy, unflashy but I would say a little technology forward version of an American issues documentary it's not a bad movie

1:38:37Wagner Moura:no, not at all and I would say it's an effective platform but this is platforming a very worthy issue and the work of a lot of people both inside the system and outside

1:38:51Kleber Mendonca Filho:in order to raise greater awareness of not just Alabama's prison system, but as you said, the United States system in general

1:39:00Wagner Moura:gives the appropriate Alabama context. But it's, you know, and it does have, I thought the way that they used the mostly FaceTime footage was effective. I agree. Added something new to it, but other people are doing the work for this. And the work has been being done for a while. And so they're just trying to give a voice to it. And I think they give like an effective voice. I agree. It's not the most innovative. Though, again, I liked the way that they used the footage. And it's very clear. And I didn't have any of the ethical concerns that I had with some other footage because the activists, the incarcerated men who are working on this are like they're leading the project.

1:39:42Jessie Buckley:Yes.

1:39:42Wagner Moura:So, you know, it's really tough to watch.

1:39:45Kleber Mendonca Filho:It's horrible. I'm glad that, I'm not glad about anything, but I think it's important that I saw it.

1:39:51Christian Bale:I agree. I think it is very standard. Yes, a thousand percent.

1:39:57Jessie Buckley:As somebody who has produced documentaries for HBO, there is a certain strand of HBO issues-oriented documentary. There's a long history of it. This feels also very much in keeping, I think, with a lot of frontline style documentaries that you would find that often find their way into the Academy Awards where not only are its intentions good, but its issue is urgent. And you can feel the humanity of the people that are affected by the story. I don't think it's as kind of like structurally or even intellectually as riveting as I would like for something like this to be. That's really more of just a subjective point of view where a film like this matters, but is this a question of like,

1:40:38Christian Bale:what is the purpose of this award? a movie like this raises to me, I found that it had like a lot less deftness relative to something like American Factory. It's kind of operating in the same vein.

1:40:49Kleber Mendonca Filho:It's like an information dump rather than a narrative thrust. And I mean, there is narrative within it because they're telling you what has happened over time, but it is very expository and very much like,

1:41:01Wagner Moura:and then this, and then this, as opposed to you not knowing what's going to happen.

1:41:08Christian Bale:It's a good documentary.

1:41:11Jessie Buckley:and is the one that I think makes sense as a nominee. I can't remember if you and I both picked this to be nominated. I think just because I felt like the on paper of it, I was like, this just makes sense for what they've been going for recently. I'm curious to hear what you think of Come See Me in the Good Light, which is directed by Ryan White, full disclosure, filmmaker I've met with many times, somebody I really know personally and like very much. The movie is about two folks trying to contextualize and come to terms with a terminal cancer diagnosis, the Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson and their partner Megan Fowley and the way in which they're sort of working through this period in their lives where they're coping with this very very painful illness I wasn't crazy about this movie when I saw it at Sundance and I'm not crazy about it now same

1:41:57Kleber Mendonca Filho:I think some of that

1:41:59Wagner Moura:is kind of personal preference with how you deal with emotions relationships and and cancer for sure. I will say, I thought I hadn't seen the moment where you're logging onto a medical portal to get your results captured on film in this way. And that is like a -

1:42:22Jessie Buckley:Happens multiple times in this film.

1:42:24Wagner Moura:And it is used. They understand the import. I mean, of course they understand the import of the moment. They're there, but it is a very modern phenomenon that is so strange. change and I think the experience of it and even the conversation they have after one bad

1:42:43Kleber Mendonca Filho:portal results where Andrea Gibson is like I feel better now because it was the anticipation and then their partner is like no no no no I feel way worse because I prefer the hope

1:42:54Wagner Moura:so I thought that was cool and I think you know there are moments of not cool I mean it was devastating but I was like huh I've lived that and I know a lot of people have and I haven't seen it before and it illuminates something about our modern life that that like I respond to. But I think everything else, I just I don't my relationship doesn't look like their relationship like in many ways, but just the way that they are so emotionally open. I'm not an emotionally open person.

1:43:24Maggie Gyllenhaal:We know that. So that I didn't respond to that.

1:43:29Kleber Mendonca Filho:And then or it's not that I didn't respond to that. It's very sad. And they look like they had a loving relationship. But But I think also...

1:43:38Jessie Buckley:The movie is very brave. I think Andrea in particular is very brave to say that they want to put this stage of their life on camera. It's interesting because this movie premiered at the same Sundance where a movie called Andre is an Idiot premiered, which is a movie about a man who also was given a colon cancer diagnosis and captured it. And the last days of his life, the last weeks, months, years with his life and his family are also in it. That movie has a completely different tone. It is more the story of like a madcap kind of marketing and commercials expert who is kind of like unwinding intellectually what it means to be at the end of his life.

1:44:15Jessie Buckley:And this is very much about the single crisis of knowing you're going to die and then the paired crisis of being in a relationship and having that be something that these two people were looking for for their entire lives. and they found each other. And some of their love over time is captured in archival and then some of it is captured in extraordinarily intimate detail in this contemporaneous footage. It's a tragic set of circumstances. I've lost many people to cancer. It is the worst thing you can ever go through. I didn't really like spending time going through it.

1:44:50Kleber Mendonca Filho:I remember what I was going to say, which is I don't know whether you've experienced in any of your many cancer experiences of loved ones, but sometimes people like to start a cancer blog.

1:45:00Wagner Moura:Do you know about this or a medical treatment blog where if it's sort of a prolonged process in the theory is instead of having to like update every single person, well, this is how it's going. And we got this and we got that, which like is exhausting and in, you know, and nobody wants to do that. So instead you just write, there's like a central place where you can go and kind of keep an update of it. And that way everyone can know and everyone can like support you on the journey, which I think is a really like lovely idea. And I've never had cancer. I've had other medical things and I just,

1:45:35Kleber Mendonca Filho:it's not what I relate. I don't, the, the, the sharing and the openness of it all just is not how I would process it.

1:45:46Christian Bale:Yeah. I think I'm, let's make them as a surprise, a little more open than you are at times, but not this open. Yeah. And I think there's also just, frankly, something about being a spoken word poet

1:45:57Jessie Buckley:that is very performative and sort of like both metaphorical and straightforward about who you are and how you define yourself. And a lot of their work, both of these poets, is interwoven in the story in a way that is meant to communicate, that is meant to define them. Yeah. And, I think for some people, this will be the most devastating movie that they see all year.

1:46:18Kleber Mendonca Filho:It is devastating. Let's not be real about that.

1:46:20Jessie Buckley:I know, but it's sort of ordained to. I think Ryan White captures moments of intimacy that are mind-blowing, especially at the end of the movie where you're like, he's there with them.

1:46:30Christian Bale:Yes.

1:46:31Jessie Buckley:At the worst possible time. And they're not saying turn the camera off, which is itself like, I think that is essentially what's being celebrated here is the subject's willingness.

1:46:41Christian Bale:Totally. And their braveness to do this.

1:46:44Kleber Mendonca Filho:And I think those scenes, the observed scenes of those two people in these incredibly impossible moments of their life and of their relationship are by far the best part of the movie. It does also use like a lot of direct to camera stuff. Don't love a lot of that stuff. It uses a lot of Gibson's performances.

1:47:04Wagner Moura:And all of like the framework feels conventional.

1:47:08Kleber Mendonca Filho:But when they are just living, what it does capture is very, very raw and memorable.

1:47:16Jessie Buckley:I think sometimes it's okay to just say, like, subjectively, I just didn't really like watching the movie. And I found myself feeling that through a bunch of these where I was just like, this isn't really giving me what I want. And it's not I can give you 20 other docs that I like this year that I think some of which are about meaningful issues, some of which were more intellectually explorational. explorational, but let's go to Cutting Through Rock. So this is directed by Sarah Kaki and Mohamed Drezra Enyi. This is a movie that follows the first woman elected to council in a conservative Iranian village.

1:47:50Her name is Sarah Shah Verdi, and it's a character study.

1:47:54Jessie Buckley:And over eight years, the film documents her fight against patriarchy, challenging child marriage, and promoting education for girls by teaching them to ride motorcycles and often facing backlash. what did you think of this one

1:48:05Kleber Mendonca Filho:I'm rooting for Sarah Sarah Sarah I think Sarah Sarah an amazing character and I did think that this is pretty much all observed there is there's no talking heads there's a tremendous amount of access yes pure verite and like what is communicated is not just like this one person's character but the nature of the village. And I thought, you know, we live in a time where I don't, I really, really feel like I don't know a lot about what's going on in Iran, you know? And there's not a lot of, yeah. I mean, I know some of it. Now more than ever. Now more than ever. I know that I think that the U.S.

1:48:48Kleber Mendonca Filho:shouldn't be bombing it, but that's applicable across the world. On that we agree.

1:48:57So I, and again, much like Secret Agent,

1:49:00Wagner Moura:There's not like someone there being like, so here is how this council works. And here are like the rules and here. And I did feel like I was learned. I did feel like it like put me in this place and mostly without condescension observed what was going on and really grounded it through this character who's like a one on one.

1:49:25Kleber Mendonca Filho:So I was like, I didn't dislike it.

1:49:29Christian Bale:I just thought it was

1:49:31Jessie Buckley:it felt very similar to a lot of other films like this that I've seen before to me I was it is another very important story and I think the rights of women in that country in particular have been the subject there's been dramatic protests in that nation for years over this issue and it's an extremely relevant story but it's not one that and she is an interesting person I did think yeah but it's not one that like really shed light on anything for me in any way And I also felt that from a structural or craft perspective, you know, it's an important slice of life in a way. You know, it's about an important person.

1:50:11Jessie Buckley:But I didn't come away from the film feeling like changed in any way or informed in a new way. I felt, I guess, somewhat connected to her. It's just that I didn't think that the film was extraordinary in any way.

1:50:23Kleber Mendonca Filho:I think they found like you do have to find the right person, right? even though there are billions of people on this earth like not they found like a not a singular character but the right character it's like very representative and I'm like really rooting for her and even her face and the way that she responds to her brothers and to there's a great scene where

1:50:43Wagner Moura:I believe as someone in her family I believe it's her mother but comes in and she's she's having trouble. None of the men in the village will listen to, will take any of her advice. And she's told again and again by everyone, like, you just have to compromise. Like, you just have to listen to all these people, which is, you know, sort of depressing.

1:51:03Kleber Mendonca Filho:But the older woman says to her, I mean, just think about how many people over time, how many men over time have lost power and how they've lost power and how, so maybe you need to like try a different way so you aren't like them and I was like this is an interesting I don't know I thought that the specifics were right in this one but I agree that it's you know it's not like earth shattering it's not American Factory but what is I think

1:51:32Christian Bale:all five of these movies I'll say four of these movies lack kind of

1:51:37Jessie Buckley:dynamism that I'm looking for in the form at this stage of my life again this is a subjective point of view this is how I feel as somebody who has watched hundreds and hundreds of documentaries over the years. I often respond to kind of issues-oriented ideas. Errol Morris is my hero because he often takes a very unusual approach to unpacking complex incidents. And this is similar to his work in that it is focused on an individual who helps explain something, but it lacks maybe some of the interrogation that I think is very valuable in some of these situations. and the movie doesn't really give us it kind of just assumes you're like well of course this woman wants this and here's why but we're only going to show you this period of her life and she's never going to look into the camera and tell you why she thinks something and that's just

1:52:25Sean Fennessey:not what I would have that's not how I would have made a movie about her but that's you know

1:52:29Christian Bale:this is personal preference. Mr.

1:52:31Sean Fennessey:Nobody Against Putin.

1:52:33Jessie Buckley:This is a real bugaboo for you so I'm excited to hear you talk about it. This is directed by David Bornstein and Pavel Talekin A Russian teacher secretly documents his school becoming a war recruitment center during the Ukraine invasion, revealing the ethical dilemmas educators face with propaganda and militarization. Follows Pasha Talikin, a beloved lighthearted teacher in a small industrial town near the Ural Mountains.

1:53:00Wagner Moura:Yes.

1:53:01Sean Fennessey:Thoughts on this one?

1:53:02Wagner Moura:Okay. So the film begins with Pasha.

1:53:10Christian Bale:Mm-hmm.

1:53:10Wagner Moura:leaving Russia.

1:53:13Kleber Mendonca Filho:And he is receiving instructions on how best to smuggle these tapes out of Russia in a safe way from the documentarians who he's working with. And so we are set up with the understanding that what he is doing and what we are about to watch would be of objection to the Russian regime, government, whatever we're calling it. And that by doing this, Pasha has been in enough danger that he needs to leave Russia in order to make this footage available. And then we watch a film in which he has secretly recorded many of his young students talking to camera by name, everyone in his village. And they're all still in Russia and identified.

1:54:07Kleber Mendonca Filho:but he's left Russia so that he can show us these tapes how is this not endangering

1:54:13Wagner Moura:every single person in the

1:54:15Christian Bale:okay so you mentioned this to me before we were recording and do you think that the children are endangered by the fact that they are featured in the film

1:54:24Wagner Moura:I mean this is a this is a movie about this is a film about propaganda and the Russian government wanting to tell exactly one story and to indoctrinate every single person in its country and every single student to its view of its attacks on Ukraine and the world at

1:54:44Kleber Mendonca Filho:large.

1:54:44Amanda Dobbins:So at one point, he films the classroom, which he's filming secretly. And he has a, I think, I don't know whether it's a Russian Democratic flag or some sort of subversive Russian flag up in the classroom.

1:54:57Kleber Mendonca Filho:And all the kids are hanging out in there. And he's talking about how it's just like Ben, you know, Hank, which rock on.

1:55:04Amanda Dobbins:Like I'm with the kids, but how does it not, if they're associated and this, it's so dangerous for this to be, you know, shown in Russia that he has to like leave and smuggle it out. Like, I just, we aren't thinking about anybody else. I don't understand. And no one's even talked about it. Like I was Googling for any sort of, I hope they're okay. They probably are. But like, did we not, we didn't think about this for a second?

1:55:30Jessie Buckley:I'm not sure if there is actually any real-world consequences for anyone who was filmed by him. I'm not sure if that specifically concerned me while watching it. I do think that part of my hang-up with the movie is that Pasha is kind of an odd bird, and it does feel like he has imagined a little bit of a hero's journey for himself

1:55:51Christian Bale:in a way that I found a little bit off-putting because he's exposing something.

1:55:56Jessie Buckley:But it's what's being exposed here, I would say, is not shocking if you have read about the way that Putin operates in Russia and the way that that regime has been managed for decades.

1:56:08Christian Bale:And so he is showing us something, but he's showing us something in like what I find to be a slightly vainglorious way. Like, look at what I'm doing. One thousand percent. And then I'm leaving.

1:56:18Wagner Moura:And then I'm leaving. And I think that we're responding in the same way to this is a person and this is a project that's undertaken by one person who has made himself the hero of the own story.

1:56:31Kleber Mendonca Filho:And seems to think that he's like really, he doesn't think he's the only person suffering, but it is constructed around his experience. And I'm a little concerned for everybody else. Yeah.

1:56:44Wagner Moura:I at least wanted to ask the question.

1:56:46Jessie Buckley:Well, it's somewhat similar to Icarus, the documentary that won Best Doc seven or eight years ago, which was about the whistleblower who had worked on providing steroids and enhancements for Russian athletes in the Olympics. And the way that he kind of came forward and revealed the ways in which a lot of that worked. And that man was very valorized in that film in a similar fashion. He didn't make that movie. Someone else made that movie.

1:57:12Christian Bale:Someone else told that story. Pasha, I think there's something very strange about some of his into camera interviews.

1:57:19Kleber Mendonca Filho:Sure, which he's doing after he's like answered a random documentary email. Inquiry. Yeah, inquiry.

1:57:27Wagner Moura:And so he starts the project while still living in Russia.

1:57:35Kleber Mendonca Filho:And is already conceptualizing what he's going to do in the context of I'm the narrator of this story. Right. Quite literally, because he's into camera.

1:57:44Christian Bale:Yeah, I mean, I...

1:57:44Amanda Dobbins:His mother is the librarian.

1:57:46Maggie Gyllenhaal:His mother is there in a lot of the footage.

1:57:49Christian Bale:Yeah, I know. Okay, that's fine. I don't know that those people are in danger, per se. I don't know if they're in danger, but like... It's impossible to know. But to me, it was more just that there is a kind of solipsism in this movie

1:58:02Jessie Buckley:that thinks it is kind of an issues expose and ultimately becomes a character study of a guy who I think has a little bit of a hero complex. But then his heroism is to show us something that is no doubt bad, that the propaganda machine and the way in which this school that has been historically this very healthy, comfortable, safe space for education has been transformed into like a militarized zone. It's a way to teach children to become more excited about serving their country and joining the military and fighting the good fight against their evil counterparts in Ukraine. all of that is valuable and interesting in some ways but the person who is at the center of the story I felt a little self-serving

1:58:48Kleber Mendonca Filho:1000 %

1:58:49Sean Fennessey:so yeah I mean I did not enjoy the film yeah

1:58:54Kleber Mendonca Filho:and that this is nominated instead of 2000 meters to Androvka Not ideal. Not what you want.

1:59:04Sean Fennessey:No, it's not ideal.

1:59:07Jessie Buckley:The fifth nominee is the thorniest, I'll say. Sure. The fifth nominee is The Perfect Neighbor, which is directed by Gita Ganbir. It is about a seemingly minor neighborhood dispute in Florida that escalates into deadly violence. Police body cam footage and investigative interviews expose the consequences of Florida's stand-your-ground laws. This is the story of a woman named Susan Lorenz who shot another woman named Ajike Owens and kind of the lead up to that murder that is captured primarily through police body cam footage. Not entirely, but primarily. And this movie, which I did see at Sundance and was very moved by.

1:59:51Jessie Buckley:I was struck by it. I found it to be quite shattering. I've seen the film a second time. I've read a lot about it and listened to podcasts about it, including our friend Wesley Morris' episode. And I have a very queasy feeling about it without detracting from its power. And I think similarly what it's attempting to expose. But the way in which it does so makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I'm curious how you feel about it.

2:00:21Wagner Moura:I agree. I think that, you know, it is formally very inventive and fascinating and also emotionally and civically devastating. Like a really, really, really difficult watch. and when I feel queasy, which I do, it's hard for me. I haven't teased out how much of that queasiness is just because of what I watch, which is, I didn't, you don't actually see a woman be shot, but you hear a 911 call or you see ring camera footage of her child calling. You see her children be told that she is not coming back and that's captured on body cam footage.

2:01:12Kleber Mendonca Filho:So that, I mean, that is just absolutely shattering to watch.

2:01:15Jessie Buckley:The latter scene you described is like it's the most pained I've been watching a movie in the last year.

2:01:20Wagner Moura:It's absolutely awful. And it's, there is also something just awful if necessary, but isn't necessary about like that this footage exists. It exists number one because a terrible thing happened, but also because we now just have surveillance footage. Everything's on camera. Everything is on camera and not just on camera, but on police body camera footage. So you're watching this through the perspective of the cops who have done nothing and shown up too late.

2:01:57Kleber Mendonca Filho:And that's not true because you've seen other footage,

2:02:00Jessie Buckley:but it's the role of the police officer. And this is really interesting. For me, when I sat down to watch the movie, I thought it was going to be a different kind of thing. I thought it was going to be a police brutality movie. I thought it was going to be a movie about acquiring this footage and then showing us the ways in which the police disrespect and abuse their power. And it's sort of the opposite. It's about the lack of intervention in these circumstances and the way in which that ultimately led to someone's murder. And the fact that there have been these series of 911 calls made in both directions about, you know, this conflict that this older white woman has with the children of her neighbors and the way in which she feels that she is being menaced and that they're kind of running roughshod over her property, whereas the perspective of the community is that this is kids being kids.

2:02:46Jessie Buckley:And we can see throughout the telling of this story that this woman, Susan Lawrence, is unwell, not racist and prone to violence and aggression, like, you know, abusing private property and kind of breaking a gate, for example, which is one of those like a clue that something is not right here. I think that the police in this movie are simultaneously like let off the hook,

2:03:14Christian Bale:but also not really, it's not really examined like what the procedures should have been or could have

2:03:20Jessie Buckley:been because we're only get it.

2:03:22Christian Bale:The film is edited.

2:03:23Jessie Buckley:It's not a 1900 hour collection of body cam footage around these events. it's there's a very manipulated series of footages that are showing us what how they're responding to these complaints and they don't do enough that's very clear my real sense of

2:03:42Christian Bale:unease around the movie is just this like compliance with the aftermath of this and then

2:03:48Jessie Buckley:this is something that will live forever for these families for the people who are affected by this the levels of consent around this for young children and whether or not this should be not just the document, but the most watched documentary of 2025, which I think it's got to be, you know, give or take your true crime serial killer stuff. Like it's right up there because it's on Netflix. And because it's so shattering, it makes me feel worse about it, you know, because it's so real and so raw. And then I think also when we spoke to Wesley about it earlier this week, too, the kind

2:04:22Christian Bale:of like yada yada-ing, the speeding up of the conclusion of the story around Susan's fate, which felt kind of tacked on and that he's described it as like it felt like there was like a deadline or something to reach. Yeah. And then the movie, which is so kind of patient through the execution of this eventual crime and then speeding through the conclusion of it.

2:04:43Wagner Moura:Well, it's patient through everything that leads up to the murder, to the night itself. And then it spends a while on her interrogation, which, again, you're just watching that security cam footage or, you know, investigator, not security cam, but investigator room footage. um but so again you're watching from the perspective of the detectives who are both like slow to act and you know some of it and then and then like so polite to her throughout the whole thing um and so it's both invasive and also uh and and strange and like unmediated and also the way that it's mediated is both through this system that the film thinks that it's indicting, but is maybe not effectively.

2:05:44Wagner Moura:Well, I feel like it's.

2:05:46Amanda Dobbins:Well, also it's maybe. It's almost like boosting it. But also, yeah.

2:05:49Christian Bale:It's like, look what we can do with this new level of technology unintentionally in a way.

2:05:54Jessie Buckley:It's like, well, I will use these powers to show us the real truth of these incidents. Right.

2:05:58Christian Bale:But by doing so, you kind of effectively rubber stamp them in a way that feels like a little unexamined on the filmmaker's part. The movie is a real pickle because there is something undeniably powerful about what she has done.

2:06:14Jessie Buckley:The way that the film is cut, the way that it makes you feel. I can't change how it made me feel the first time I watched it. It ruined my week. I felt so bad about it. I don't remember what I said on the pod, but I think it really is a very, it effectively communicates what it wants to, but the ways in which it does it, I have some concerns about. And it's the kind of thing that like, there will be a lot of copycats of this approach to filmmaking too. And this is considered like a sort of more elevated version of this kind of a story. I can only imagine what will happen with this kind of a story in even less skilled hands.

2:06:54Jessie Buckley:Right. Um, I don't know. I mean, this won the directing award, um, at the Sundance Film Festival and it was a big sensation. I think it was over the summer when it was released and, you know, it drawing attention to the stand your ground laws, I think has great value. Um, cause they're insane.

2:07:12Sean Fennessey:Uh, just the murder itself in this movie, which is through a door.

2:07:16Wagner Moura:Yeah. Though, again, I don't really think that it, it doesn't even, it, it doesn't really serve the stand your ground stuff. It explores, unintentionally or not, like the failures of like policing and how how we manage a community in this or we don't in this country. And, you know, and then it also explores like what it means to have body cam footage and surveillance footage and how how we should or shouldn't use it. Like those are interesting questions. But it does, to Wesley's point, yada, yada, the stand your ground stuff. They're like, oh, hey, did you Google that? she's like I guess so and then we don't even see the trial we don't it's sort of an afterthought

2:07:59Jessie Buckley:yeah I don't know this is a very odd collection of movies to me yeah

2:08:05Christian Bale:maybe more usually than I typically feel the race is also kind of in a weird spot every single precursor for this award has gone to a different film

2:08:17Jessie Buckley:I don't know if I can remember a time where that was the case the PGA went to My Mom Jane which is not nominated Mariska Hargitay's documentary about her mom Jane Mansfield which is pretty good. The DJ went to 2000 Meters to Endrivka which you mentioned. The BAFTA went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The cinema eye honors. They're just really striking out this year. Tough one for BAFTA. Cinema eye honors went to Come See Me in the Good Light. The CCA went to The Perfect Neighbor and the IDA went to The Tale of Cilion which was not nominated. That was from the filmmakers who made Honeyland which was nominated some years ago.

2:08:49Jessie Buckley:You know it didn't take me very long to come up with 10 movies I would have nominated over these movies. Now, some of them fall under that category of sort of celebrity documentary that we know has been discounted amongst the doc branch. And I understand why that is, that there is a kind of fluffiness to that filmmaking. I agree with you about Mr. Scorsese. I found that that was a very compelling and deep character portrait of a person who we care about a lot, but its skill was part of the reason why. I don't even know if it was eligible in this category because it was more of a miniseries. But it's conceived fully as a film and it was originally supposed to be a two-hour film.

2:09:28Jessie Buckley:The same is true also for Pee-wee as himself. I don't know if you saw that. The Paul Rubens doc series. It was a four-hour documentary that Matt Wolfe made that I thought was like, if it were considered as a film, would have been like a great rejoinder to the celebrity concern because you can sense Paul Rubens' discomfort

2:09:45Christian Bale:and at times anger with the process of being profiled in a documentary. And in that film, he does not reveal that he has cancer while the film is being made

2:09:55Jessie Buckley:and he dies in the middle of the movie. Like they don't get all the footage and they have to finish the movie effectively without him. It's a really interesting exploration of his life and what an interesting artist he was and somebody who loved Pee Wee as a kid. Yeah. Very cool. What were some other favorites that you saw this year that you thought should have been here?

2:10:15Wagner Moura:The Laura Poitras documentary about Cy Hirsch, Seymour Hirsch, cover-up, was the big, I guess it was the snub in this category? I think so, yeah. And I don't really understand why this didn't make it. I guess it is more traditional in that it's about a person who has then experienced and reported

2:10:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:on the great breadth of human tragedy in his lifetime.

2:10:46Wagner Moura:but he really has and I think it gets enough out of him as a subject plus um brings his work to life in pretty like upsetting if standard ways that you'd think it would check the this is a

2:11:06Jessie Buckley:I'll tell you why I think it's not nominated yeah Hirsch is portrayed as a murky individual in the movie who has done incredible things has exposed the worst corruption in America Yeah and the way the government works and has also made mistakes and the movie does spend some time on his mistakes the things he got wrong Yeah the ways in which his career has kind of had this very strange winding path he's a sub-stacker now Yeah he's not at the height of his powers of the New York Times and part of the reason why I love the movie is the movie shows all that and Laura Poitras who has been

2:11:39Christian Bale:documenting the documenters for the last 20 years as a documentarian is showing like the real challenge

2:11:47Jessie Buckley:of this work in addition to the real ornery nature of Seymour Hersh.

2:11:52Sean Fennessey:I think it's an amazing movie. Same.

2:11:55Christian Bale:I'm not stunned it's not here as opposed to something like The Perfect Neighbor which really makes you feel something. You know? And if you had to choose if you had to choose one Netflix movie

2:12:04Jessie Buckley:the one that makes you feel is the one that they're probably going to go with. You know, we saw my undesirable friends win precursors at the Critics Awards and thought that was going to get, but I think that just the epic size of that movie, which is five hours in length and it's just a part one, which is going to be on Mubi, actually. I'm glad it's actually getting a distribution on April 3rd. People should check that out. That movie is

2:12:32Christian Bale:very similar to Cutting Through Rocks.

2:12:37Jessie Buckley:but I think much deeper in terms of conveying what it's like to trying to make change within your country and also just a better movie about being in Russia than Mr. Nobody. Again, more complex. Did you see Mistress Dispeler? I did.

2:12:53Kleber Mendonca Filho:I want to talk about it forever. And I know that no one's seen it. It's available to stream on Criterion.

2:12:59Jessie Buckley:Fascinating movie about a thing I've never heard of. Same.

2:13:02Kleber Mendonca Filho:And a fascinating movie about psychology.

2:13:05Wagner Moura:So it's set in China where there is apparently a custom of hiring what is translated as a mistress dispeller to break up an extramarital affair. the movie starts by saying everyone everything that you are seeing is real and unscripted everyone involved parties agreed to participate at the beginning and the end of the film as they

2:13:34Kleber Mendonca Filho:came to understand you know the role of the mistress dispeller and the film itself fascinating i start i was an amazing way to start a documentary especially after all the conversations we've just had about all the other documentaries. And I was really leaned in. And then I found myself, I don't believe any of this.

2:13:50Christian Bale:Oh, you think it's fake?

2:13:51Amanda Dobbins:No, it's not that I don't think it's fake, but I, because I believe them.

2:13:55Wagner Moura:But then it leads to what is like a very interesting, it's a married couple and the woman learns that her husband is having an affair and she hires a marriage dispeller who's just

2:14:10Amanda Dobbins:like, you know, Dr.

2:14:12Kleber Mendonca Filho:Becky for marriage in China. Yeah.

2:14:14Maggie Gyllenhaal:And and but that's a that's a parenting Instagram guru.

2:14:19Christian Bale:It's very like, yeah, how we do this. Yeah. And here's what we're going to do.

2:14:21Amanda Dobbins:And she's even talking about like, if you present this idea psychologically this way, then this person will respond this way. And we are going to manipulate all of these people into no longer having an affair and being happy in your marriage.

2:14:37Wagner Moura:and then it shows just like a lot of incredibly long,

2:14:42Amanda Dobbins:open psychological conversations that are had between all three parties and this marriage dispeller. And I was just like,

2:14:51Maggie Gyllenhaal:who is agreeing to talk to someone else like this, this openly about their life?

2:14:55Christian Bale:You can feel it in the first conversation

2:14:58Jessie Buckley:between the husband when the woman is introduced as a friend early on in the film. The openness the man has with this relative stranger

2:15:07Christian Bale:is so surprising. Right. And they're being captured on camera. And you're like, what is this?

2:15:13Amanda Dobbins:But then they also said everyone involved agreed at the beginning. So I'm like, so does he know? And he's agreeing. Like, what's going on here? It's still fascinating.

2:15:21Christian Bale:It's kind of a what's it of a movie. But it's so interesting.

2:15:24Maggie Gyllenhaal:Totally.

2:15:25Christian Bale:Yeah.

2:15:25Maggie Gyllenhaal:I definitely want to know more. And I liked talking about it.

2:15:28Jessie Buckley:I don't know that I'd be like, this movie is vital and everyone must see it in the same way that the doc branch kind of feels about their nominees. But I never saw anything like this before. This is really kind of, it's kind of the bride of this group of movies that we're talking about here. I'm glad you watched it. I'm glad I watched it too. I think it's really interesting. Another movie that I came out of Sundance loving and feeling like was super important was Predators, which was about how to catch a predator and the ways, you know, the ways in which the TV, you know, industry and this apparatus of this show kind of ensnares these potential sex criminals by using actors to bring them into these traps.

2:16:08Jessie Buckley:And then the kind of like the knockdown effect that that has on what we perceive as entertainment in our culture. That movie is really, really well done. And I don't think really ever got over the hump in terms of audiences. Also, Zodiac Killer Project

2:16:22Christian Bale:is another movie that I liked a little bit. I may have talked about it after Sundance. It's a movie about a guy who was gonna make a true crime documentary about a serial killer. and he was going to adapt a book that was covering these murders.

2:16:36Jessie Buckley:And he lost the rights to the book at the last minute. And so he improvised and said, I'm going to make a movie that is sort of like a parody or commentary on what a true crime documentary is actually like. And so what he does is he's like, he'll go to a place and be like, if I were making this movie, I would go to this place. And you would hear voiceover in which I would say this. And then I would show you archival footage that shows this person at this point in time. and then there would be newspaper covers and he's kind of like dissecting and deconstructing what we get in true crime docs. It's very clever.

2:17:07Jessie Buckley:There's no chance a movie like this would ever be nominated in the category. But stuff like this should be on the radar

2:17:12Christian Bale:more of the branch, I think. A couple of other ones. I mean, Megadoc. My beloved Megadoc. Also on the Criterion channel. Back in the news. You know, I don't think has a making of movie documentary ever won best doc? I don't think so.

2:17:26Jessie Buckley:Even though they're my favorite thing.

2:17:28Kleber Mendonca Filho:I mean, this is an incredible one because it's a making of documentary, but it's also about the mystery of Francis Ford Coppola.

2:17:35Christian Bale:Yes.

2:17:36Kleber Mendonca Filho:And the legacy of Hollywood and what we do after the fact. And also, like, you know, we are living in the era of all of the 80-something directors.

2:17:49Jessie Buckley:No doubt.

2:17:49Kleber Mendonca Filho:You know, trying to make one last or two last or however many last works. It's funny.

2:17:55Sean Fennessey:If this were nominated, people would be like, Hollywood is up its own ass. But if it's not nominated, you're like, what the hell? What about Hollywood?

2:18:02Jessie Buckley:Raoul Peck's Orwell 2 plus 2 equals 5 is a movie that I thought was not great, but was at least interesting, which is sort of like using George Orwell's writing to explore the myriad ways in which he was extremely prescient about where the world was going. And Damien Lewis is literally reading his words, and you're seeing images from around the world of the ways in which they've been manifest and that he had this incredible vision. Khalil Joseph's Black News Terms and Conditions which is a movie that you can't watch now apparently is not on VOD not on the streaming service not in theaters but it was also a 2025 Sundance movie that is this kind of wild interpretation of black figures throughout the 1800s redefining the way in which they should be seen told in this really dramatic unusual documentary style that also kind of smacked me during Sundance, but then I think maybe because it doesn't have proper distribution, didn't go through in the same way.

2:19:02Jessie Buckley:Very quickly, just for anybody listening, cover-ups on Netflix, Mistress Dispiller is on Criterion, My Undesirable Friends will be on Mubi, Mr. Scorsese is on Apple, Predators is on Paramount +, Zodiac Killer Projects is on VOD, Peewee as himself is on HBO, Orwell 2 plus 2 equals 5 is on VOD, and Megadoc is on Criterion as well. Almost all these are accessible.

2:19:24Wagner Moura:Mm-hmm.

2:19:26Sean Fennessey:What do you think is going to win in this category? Don't tell me.

2:19:29Kleber Mendonca Filho:I haven't decided yet. Do you feel like, how many of your picks are locked in right now? It is March 5th.

2:19:35Jessie Buckley:I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do.

2:19:37Kleber Mendonca Filho:Can I just say also...

2:19:38Jessie Buckley:Well, less than 15 for sure.

2:19:40Kleber Mendonca Filho:Because along with the cat discourse, we had my friend Daniel Daddario from Variety wrote a why are the Oscars so late in the year piece. And so we once again had the why have the Oscars not happened yet? 10 days. Why have the Oscars not happened yet?

2:19:55Jessie Buckley:I don't know. You know my take on this. It's the week between.

2:19:58Wagner Moura:I completely agree.

2:20:00Jessie Buckley:The conference championships and the Super Bowl. I agree.

2:20:02Christian Bale:The week between. Nobody cares about the Pro Bowl. There's nothing going on in sports at that time otherwise.

2:20:07Kleber Mendonca Filho:Isn't that usually when the Grammys are?

2:20:09Christian Bale:Fuck them.

2:20:09Kleber Mendonca Filho:I agree. Kick the Grammys out.

2:20:12Sean Fennessey:This is way too late.

2:20:14Kleber Mendonca Filho:I'm losing my mind. But so your picks are not locked in.

2:20:19Jessie Buckley:Not even close. What about you?

2:20:20Kleber Mendonca Filho:No, not at all.

2:20:22Jessie Buckley:there's major categories where I don't know what I'm gonna do I've never felt this way before

2:20:26Kleber Mendonca Filho:do you feel excited or stressed right now because we're getting to the point where it's entertaining but also then the prospect of being wrong enters the chat

2:20:35Christian Bale:I don't care about being wrong as much this year I think I think it's been really fun

2:20:41Jessie Buckley:I think the last few weeks have been fun and I think that's rare for us I do think it's been going on for too long and I wish this were a little bit more compressed like you said but you know going to DGA seeing PGA play out watching BAFTA be a fucking fiasco and then the actor awards being really interesting

2:20:59Christian Bale:it's been a good season it's been cool yeah I want it to be over with but it's been cool yeah

2:21:03Jessie Buckley:so I'm kind of excited we were just talking about April it's like we got some fun episodes planned for April there's a couple of big movies coming out that I'm excited to talk to you about but not done yet so remember live no more Oscars on Monday on Netflix

2:21:21Kleber Mendonca Filho:12 p.m. PT, 3 p.m. Eastern Standard.

2:21:26Jessie Buckley:That's right. You can email us at bigpicmailbag at gmail.com. We will be here answering your questions. We'll talk about hoppers. You haven't seen hoppers yet?

2:21:33Kleber Mendonca Filho:No, I have to figure out when I'm going to take knocks.

2:21:35Jessie Buckley:Okay.

2:21:36Kleber Mendonca Filho:Is he excited?

2:21:36Jessie Buckley:Is he aware of this?

2:21:37Maggie Gyllenhaal:He is. Lots of billboards. And so he wants to know what hoppers is about. And I don't really know. So I know it's animals.

2:21:45Christian Bale:It's actually quite complicated.

2:21:47Maggie Gyllenhaal:Oh, great. I love it.

2:21:49Christian Bale:thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode thanks to Lucas Cavanaugh for production support don't forget to send questions to the mailbag we'll see you on Monday