The Meryl Streep Hall of Fame

22:09Sean Fennessey:She's building a massive reputation of respect that is akin to people like Daniel Day-Lewis. And we just talked about his Hall of Fame last year with David Sims. It was sort of like he was not really in any box office hits for 30 consecutive years. And then he picked up a few as he got into this final stage of his life. Her career mirrors that. She's just way more active. She's made 10 times as many movies as Daniel Day-Lewis has. So careers like this are always interesting to watch. And I had a very similar experience watching those 80s films and seeing like, okay, well, this is where she's not just building her reputation but solidifying that reputation as the powerhouse of her time who has incredible flexibility and curiosity but who does still have that twinkle that you need to be a movie star.

22:53Sean Fennessey:a lot. Most of those films, she's at the absolute center of the frame the whole time. And in that way, she is similar to Denzel. She is similar to Tom Cruise. She is similar to Robert Redford. She is similar to Barbara Streisand. She is similar to Jane Fonda. These people who are like generational stars who carry the movie on their shoulders. And it just took her a little bit longer to become like a proper commercial star. I came away having seen these, filled in these gaps and having looked back at a couple of the classic movies pretty much as wowed as ever. I really think it's the rare case.

23:25Sean Fennessey:And I compare her to the ocean because who's not wowed by the ocean, by its magnitude, by its depth, by its power, by its beauty. She just kind of has everything. She's the total toolkit as when it comes to a movie actress. And even if I didn't love every movie that I watched in the last three weeks, I came away impressed by almost everyone. I very rarely looked at a movie that she made and thought, that wasn't really her best. You know, she doesn't really operate in that space. No, I was trying to identify. Like I said, I wanted to work towards a grand theory of Meryl Streep. And I think the ocean is probably the closest you can get to it.

24:03There is because there is no one thing that she does. She has, you know, a lot of trademarks, accents, terrible wigs in the 80s. Also, God bless her. Like that was that I wish Joanna Robinson were here because it's just it was a crime. the hand movements and the gestures and the sort of like the fidgety quality. Yes. Paired with a sort of like a stillness of or like or a control of energy until she lets it go. And even when she lets it go, there is there is precision to what she's doing. But the I want to test this theory out. The best thing I could come up with is, is she the greatest line reader to ever, ever exist, to ever do the work?

24:56Because there's not a moment that you can find, even when she's doing crazy accents and I'm like, Meryl, you know, you sound like Kate Hudson in Song Song Blue right now. it's the accent that sticks out and not the way that she is saying the dialogue. It never feels like dialogue. It feels like everything that Meryl Streep says and does in every single movie just came from her in the moment.

25:20Sean Fennessey:Yes, just occurred to her. 1 ,000 % of the time. Even if it's the most ridiculous stuff in the world. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, that's kind of a second half of the 20th century acting style thing too, though. That sort of naturalism that she is very comfortable with, even though she's a highly performative actress. like you could say well Laurence Olivier is the great line reader of his time but so much of what he's reading is this kind of mannered text in stage like atmospheres which is very different from what you're describing but I know exactly what you mean when you say that maybe line reading isn't the right word like I mean she turns dialogue into it doesn't seem like dialogue what she's saying no I think that's right on the money in a lot of ways and I feel it's why she's very comfortable I think in contemporary stuff as much as historical stuff too because in contemporary stuff, she does just feel like someone's mom or someone's friend.

26:10Sean Fennessey:And in historical stuff, because she has the facility with accents and costume and wigs, it never feels fake or phony or forced or put on. And there are a lot of modern actresses who if you, you know, it's funny, thinking about Daniel Day-Lewis, it's like, Cameron Diaz is an actress I like. If you watch her in Gangs of New York, you're like, this is just all wrong. A woman like this never existed in the time of that story. I've never felt that watching a Meryl Streep movie I don't think she's ever made a movie where she was a cavewoman maybe that would be a time when she could not properly exist but otherwise you could put her in 16th century France you know you could put her in 18th century Alaska and she wouldn't fit in in any place it's a few months ago I don't remember the context in which we were talking about whether Meryl Streep has ever fired a gun in a movie and we were like she can't have and we even off the top of our head went through it and we were like, that's one thing that like Meryl would never do.

27:04River Wild, yes. And I believe also Death Becomes Her, yes. That's right. So, you know, and those are specific contexts. It's not Heat or whatever,

27:15Sean Fennessey:but she could be good in Heat. She would be great. Heat too, you know? I would love to see it. Honestly, not a bad idea. She could play, well, Ashley Judd is still with us, but she could play Ashley Judd's character 30 years into the future. Right. You know, we haven't done this and there's a reason why we haven't done it before. This new movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2, is really her first big movie where she's the lead of the film. Probably since Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again. Now she was in the post, of course, the Steven Spielberg film and we covered that film on the show but not in the way that we do because that was a two-hander with Tom Hanks but also a big ensemble and also a Spielberg film.

27:57Sean Fennessey:You wouldn't have said, oh, did you see the new Meryl Streep movie? You would say, oh, did you see the new movie about the Post and the Pentagon Papers and, you know, that Spielberg made. And then since then, the films that she's made have been Let Them All Talk, The Laundromat, The Prom, and Don't Look Up. All of which are... You didn't say Little Women. And Little Women, that's right. Well, a small part in Little Women. Right. Modest part in Little Women. Or Mary Poppins Returns, which we did cover. Yes, also a modest part. Neither of those of you would say the new Meryl Streep movie. But even in all these other films, probably Let Them All Talk is the closest to being her movie.

28:29Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Which even though it's still an ensemble, but that was a streaming film for Max. The Laundromat was a streaming film for Netflix. The Prom was a streaming film for Netflix. Don't Look Up was a streaming film for Netflix. So I feel like maybe we've lost sight of her might a little bit on the show. And it's taken us a little longer than usual to get to this episode. I think that's being unfair to us. It's just, you know, we follow the work. Yeah. And Don't Look Up is 2021. The next credit is the queen insect in Hoppers. So that's five years. Good performance, though. It was great. Yeah. But she was a butterfly.

29:07She was a butterfly?

29:08Sean Fennessey:Wasn't she? Yeah. She was the queen butterfly, I thought. Oh, I guess so. And then Dave Franco is the caterpillar who becomes, who does the... Yeah, spoiler for Hoppers. Sorry. Right. She also plays a lot of real people. Yeah. She's played at least 10 real people, including Margaret Thatcher, Julia Child, as you mentioned, Karen Silkwood, your girl Florence Foster Jenkins. We'll get to that. And then also some real people who maybe you don't have as much familiarity with, like Lindy Chamberlain in A Cry in the Dark or Emmalyn Parkhurst in Suffragette. So she does tend to heavily research all of her roles.

29:44Sean Fennessey:She does tend to dive deep into understanding how best to replicate them. Do you like her Julia Child? I really do. That half of that movie, that's Julia and Julia, which is Nora Ephron's adaptation of the life of Julia Child and also a blog, is very charming. Are you saying there's something undramatic about blogging? It's also Amy Adams blogging. Indeed. And then making all the recipes. It was a good idea for a blog. Two thousand and what, two or three was a simpler time. But the Julia Child half is wonderful. you know you also cited here something critical to her work which is that she likes to sing yeah sure does she sings in a lot of films more even than i realized yeah that was also another one was filling in the gaps and being like oh another singing performance this here it goes yeah but she can sing yeah unlike so many actors who sing in movies she trained as an opera singer for a while which is you know kind of some meryl lore that um oh you only really see evidence of in that particular style and Florence Foster Jenkins with a sense of humor.

30:52But yeah, likes a performance. Yes.

30:54Sean Fennessey:She said she quit singing opera at a young age because she said, I was singing something that I didn't feel and understand. That was an important lesson not to do that, to find the thing that I could feel through, which is something you really see when you watch her performances, that she is channeling emotion. That's something you recognize immediately. She's one of the great criers. She's one of the great laughers. She's, you know, the like explosive qualities that she has really plays well in movies. She has a lot of partnerships, but not a lot of, she doesn't have a Spike Lee Denzel or De Niro Scorsese relationship with a filmmaker.

31:32Sean Fennessey:She's recurred with many, many directors. These are the ones I wrote down. She's made three films with Mike Nichols, two with Robert Benton, two with Jonathan Demme, two with Fred Schiappese, two with Rob Marshall, two with Felita Lloyd, two with Soderbergh, two with David Frankel, and two with Spielberg. Three with David Frankel upcoming with Devil Wears Prada 2. And that's interesting too, that she doesn't have... Most of these stars, they have, you know, DDL has Jim Sheridan. Like they have their kind of like... They find they have their avatar and their counterpart. Yeah. She's just working at a volume that no director can keep up with.

32:12Sean Fennessey:It's true. She really likes her job. And just will sign up for, like, not for anything. She clearly has interests and there are things that she wants to be able to do with a character. But yeah, she likes being on set. So, you know, I don't think anyone can be making two and three movies a year. She is in, she has multiple movies, multiple years. Yes, we will go through every single one of them in this conversation, which will be fairly intense. Just to put some biographical detail against it, she was born June 22nd, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey. Her mother was an artist. Her father was a pharmaceutical executive.

32:57Sean Fennessey:And she has been at it since her mid-20s, basically. She got started in the, she worked in the theater, of course, like so many actors at that time and transitioned into movies in the late 70s. Right. Do you want to start talking about that first stretch of her? Well, before we do that quickly, you mentioned The River Wild, which strangely was, I think, the first time that both of us ever saw her. But that makes sense for us and for this time, which is 1994. So we're just old enough to see like a PG-13 thriller action adventure. I saw it in theaters. I don't know if I did, but everything I know about white river rafting comes from the River Wild.

33:44And thus is why I've never fully been white river. I mean, I can't say it, but white river rafting. White river rafting. Thank you. So, but it was mainstream enough for us and not scary enough. And so that's when we logged on to movies.

34:03Sean Fennessey:It's interesting because it's just a swerve for her. It's not the kind of movie you would expect her to make. It's a thriller action movie where she has to kind of overwhelm criminals to save her family. And she's such a flinty and tough and believable hero in that movie. And it would make you think that, oh, well, you know, she's like Angelina Jolie or something, you know? And she's not that kind of actor at all. The shorts and just the activeness of it are really giving. Yeah, yeah. She looks great. She's very capable in a movie like that. And she hasn't made a lot of movies like that, to your point, about the gun.

34:32Sean Fennessey:And, you know, maybe I got excited by that as a 12-year-old boy. It's very possible. But I, you know, maybe I'm sure we saw her on television and other movies before that. But a lot of the films that she makes in that period from 77 through, let's say, 97 are for adults. She doesn't make a lot of kids' movies. She doesn't make movies for adolescents. She makes movies with adult themes and with thorny ideas. A lot of morally complex characters who are put in terrible positions to have to make difficult decisions. And she's really great at displaying that anguish and that concern and that confusion.

35:13Sean Fennessey:And I think that's the thing that she is probably best known for. A few of her movies, a few of those moments of anguish in her movies are more famous than the movies themselves. More people understand the phraseology of Sophie's Choice and what that means than have seen Sophie's Choice now. Which is, yes. You know, similar the way that Seinfeld kind of elevated A Cry in the Dark and did the dingo eat your baby. And that like that crisis of that character, we sort of understand. But very few people have seen that movie. And I just thought for the first time two weeks ago. So there's something really interesting about the way that she was kind of memed as an actress ahead of time.

35:50Oh, you mean in the 80s and 90s? Yeah. I mean, thank you, Seinfeld. I guess Seinfeld is the source of all pre-internet memes.

35:58Sean Fennessey:Yes. And a lot of movie related ones. Sure. The emotionless list is a factor there. English patient, obviously. Yes. Well, the sort of like Oliver Stone, JFK analysis of the spit in the Keith Hernandez episode. You know, there's a Bruder film. Yeah. Let's quickly talk awards before we go through her filmography. So I think I've got this right. Is it 21 Oscar nominations? Seems right. 21? Yeah. Jesus Christ. It's a lot. And even more Golden Globes. I mean, anything to get her to show up to a Golden Globe ceremony. So she has won three times. Can you off the top of your head list them? Or do you just look so you know?

36:35But I knew them already. Okay.

36:37Sean Fennessey:Well, tell us what they are. Which is Kramer vs. Kramer. Yeah. That's supporting. And then she wins Best Actress for Sophie's Choice. And then she wins Best Actress for The Iron Lady. Okay. Well, let's dig into the filmography. So if this is your first Hall of Fame episode, here's what we do. We run through the entire filmography of a performer. We talk about every single film that they've made. And I think one of us can speak about every single movie here. I think so. And we're going to do our best. Yes. We choose 10 films, in this case, 10 from 65. And we determine that they are green and that they are representative of the greatness of this performer's body of work.

37:15Sean Fennessey:And that they say something meaningful about who they are in the world of movies. And we don't usually talk about television. She did work in television. In fact, one of her very first big parts was in a multi-part miniseries called Holocaust that I did not watch. Nor did I. It's six hours long. Yeah. Many people say it is, it came under some fire when it was released from many Jews and Jewish Americans who felt that it did not accurately portray some of the events. But it was a big deal. And she has said in the past that she did that part to make some money because she was at the outset of a career.

37:51Sean Fennessey:Her first film role, though, is a one-scene role in a movie called Julia. Which you watched for, was it the 77 movie draft? Correct. And I hadn't seen until this week. And this is a really interesting movie. Not a movie I liked. I don't think I loved it. I don't remember if I drafted it, though. I expected to like it quite a bit because it is based on an event that Lillian Hellman claims happened, which some people think did not happen. Sure. about a woman transporting some funds into Nazi Germany to provide aid and it's seen in a kind of flashback structure Jane Fonda plays the Lillian Hellman character Jason Robards is in the movie as a Dashiell Hammett and they were a couple and Streep shows up in a flashback as a friend of Lillian Hellman's and it's funny because like I think I would make the case that this is her least good performance.

38:52Sean Fennessey:The thing that you're talking about where you're like, you can't see her acting. I can see her acting because you can see she's never done this before with a camera in front of her. But it also like sets the path for everything that she does in the future where she's doing an accent. She's in elaborate costume. She's meant to insinuate herself in this world instantaneously. But I was watching her and I was like, that's fake. And I never felt that way ever again watching any of these movies. I mean, she's up against Jane Fonda. She is. Which is, it was a very different type of actor, I think. I love both.

39:26And I think they like each other. You know, I hope so. I hope so. But they, Jane Fonda is not mannered or, Jane Fonda is instinctive, which is slightly different than Meryl's naturalism. And so.

39:44Sean Fennessey:Jane Fonda is like just the facts. Yeah. Just like direct, blunt. Right. Clearly enunciated, doesn't do a lot of accent work. She's different. And she's just a little bit Jane Fontana in every single, whereas Meryl Streep is like I have put on, you know, several layers of costume and also biographical information in order to do this. So Julia. It's just a weird movie also. And Jason Roberts wins his second Oscar for this movie. Listen, enjoyed his work. I don't really get it. I'm a huge fan of his, of course. I just spoke about all the president's men on the press box this week. I know, I was very jealous.

40:20Sean Fennessey:Which was really a great time. And, you know, he's so marvelous as Ben Bradley in that movie. And the second one is kind of a weird one. Don't know. You know, there's something really complicated going on here that we should probably mention briefly, which was that in this period of time from, you know, roughly 1973 through 1978, Streep is dating, partnered with John Cazale. the great actor who only appeared in five films all five of which were nominated for best picture some of the most legendary movies of all time he played Fredo in the Godfather films and they were in love and they were very close and he got very sick with cancer and she helped take care of him and her star starts to rise during this tremendously tumultuous period in her life and so she's taking on this really complex material especially in The Deer Hunter in 1978 her next movie Julia is read by the way.

41:16Right. Yeah, of course.

41:18Sean Fennessey:While this turmoil is going on in her life. And she's, Kazale is also in the deer hunter. And it's not quite that they were like a package deal, but that she's very much involved in caring for him and making sure that he can be a part of the deer hunter. Because it really is towards the end of his life and he's very sick at that point. While also being a pretty revelatory part of the deer hunter even though she doesn't have a ton to do and it's kind of like an underwritten role yeah and she brings a real gravitas and sadness to her character that's such an interesting movie that has really fallen out of fashion I'd like to revisit it at some point I didn't rewatch it for this conversation but um there's a real seriousness in films at this time you know there's not there's no irony there's no fourth wall breaking jokey winky stuff like it's just that movie's just an American tragedy.

42:16Sean Fennessey:And she's very comfortable in stuff that is that serious. So it makes sense that this is kind of the springboard for her towards a much bigger career. Yeah. It's also an interesting display of, you know, that movie is about a group of men and their experiences in Vietnam and their experiences coming back. And there are other women in it, but she is kind of, she's on the side. and so it features like some of the greatest actor male actors of that generation going through it in a lot of different ways and she as you said has like a not very developed character but like is over here kind of making her own path and you do watch the movie despite like all of the like the De Niro and the walk-in and the kazale of it all kind of be like wait who is this person you know like this it's a it's an apt summary of kind of like where her career is and what her star power is in this particular moment in American cinema.

43:20Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and I mean, it's hard not to see this moment, this relationship in her life and Cazale's passing as almost like this transference where he's a part of the most important American films that are happening in that time. And then she becomes a part of that after he passes away. He passes away before the film is released. She's with him closely until the end of his life. He dies in March of 78. The film comes out at the end of 1978, goes on to win Best Picture, legendary American movie. I don't think it is a green for Meryl Streep particularly, but it would qualify as that like the announcement, you know?

43:58I mean, I think that's the only case that you would make for it is that it's kind of like this is where it starts. And also that it's a summary of so much of her film history and like cinema in that moment. You can yellow it, but there's probably like an easier introduction.

44:15Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And again, we have to be like pretty sparing here. We do. The one tricky thing is that she's not in, I don't think she's in any, she's in only one other best picture winner. So I don't know. I don't know if that really matters, but it's really interesting when you look at the scope of her career. Yeah, I believe there's only one, which comes in the 1980s. and so a lot of movies and when I said that thing that's sort of like did you see the new Meryl Streep movie yeah a lot of movies become her movies and not I mean Kramer vs. Kramer won that's right sorry she's in two others that's right that's notable well Kramer vs.

44:55Sean Fennessey:Kramer we'll get there momentarily after the deer hunter she appears in Manhattan yeah she's exceptional in this movie she's so good in this movie she plays the ex-wife and is just blistering and is a totally different register than what she has in the deer hunter she is the ultimate ball breaker. And a perfect foil to whatever the hell is going on with Woody Allen in that movie and to also his relationships with the Diane Keaton character and the Mariel Hemingway. Yeah, Mariel Hemingway character. And the character exists above, which you sort of need to even have any credence in the rest of the movie.

45:36and she does it beautifully. There was some slander on a recent, a lot of slander on a recent Blank Check episode featuring supposed third chair, Tracy Letts.

45:45Sean Fennessey:Of this show. Yeah. Yeah, I heard it. Including that we weren't brave enough to draft Manhattan at the New York movies draft. I stand by that decision and also this is not going in the Hall of Fame, but she's very good in it. She's very good in the film. I love Manhattan. I don't know. I'll draft it if we draft New York movies again. I don't care. Okay. I like it. I think if I were doing a Woody Allen movie set in New York, I would do Annie Hall. I prefer Annie Hall to Manhattan. Yeah. But sure. Yeah. I mean, I like Rhapsody in Blue also, you know, but I can just like listen to that. With the cinematography of Gordon Willis in Manhattan is extraordinary.

46:24Sean Fennessey:So you're just red for Manhattan. She's on the outskirts of the movie. We don't have. We didn't listen. We have 65 movies to go. Okay. 62. Or 62. Okay, but. 1979, The Seduction of Joe Tynan. Yeah. I've not seen this movie before. Nor had I. And what an interesting pop cultural artifact. It is. What is your relationship to Alan Alda? He seems like a swell guy. Totally. But I meant pop culturally. Well, I'm not a MASH person. I didn't watch the show MASH. I like him as a movie actor. I like him in Woody Allen films. He is hysterical to me in Crimes and Misdemeanors as the pompous film director. I, you know, he's a writer.

47:04Sean Fennessey:as well. Yeah. And he wrote this movie, which Jerry Schatzberg directed, which is about a senator who is being tasked with approving a Supreme Court justice. Mm-hmm. And he becomes entrenched in an affair with, is she a lobbyist or a legal expert? Maybe a legal expert played by Meryl Streep. Yeah. And the movie is about the paradox of political integrity versus private desire. Right? Yeah. And there's this guy who is pretending to be, to the public, this moral arbiter. And in his private life, he's cheating on his wife, the wonderful Barbara Harris, and betraying his family. Yeah. But telling the world, here's how things ought to be.

47:49Sean Fennessey:And I love that idea. I don't love the movie. I wish I liked it more, honestly. I think I like the idea as well. I think some of my reluctance, I agree with you, is that Alan Alda is incredibly funny and a gifted actor. but I don't know whether I buy him as, you know, morally confused leading man. And even the, there's a whole subplot about like, does he have a good enough relationship with his daughter or whatever? And I was like, I'm sure Alan Alda has a fine relationship with his daughter. You're not really selling the inner conflict here. I like the girl dad stuff, you know? It's not that I didn't like the girl dad stuff.

48:31I was just kind of like, Alan Alda's a nice guy. like he's just he's a nice guy and and his performance couldn't totally communicate like the hidden darkness that is that is the subject of this film I Meryl Streep's also doing a southern accent in here that listen I guess it sounds like that to other people I'm touchy about southern accents as you know

48:52Sean Fennessey:okay and you don't really flaunt one when I go home and in context it can come out but that's that's the deal can we do an episode with southern Amanda like a Zoom episode when you're in Georgia and you can let it fly? No, because it's who I'm talking to. What if I did like a foghorn leghorn thing and I was like, I say, I say. No, that doesn't work. Welcome to the old big picture. This morning, my husband turned on the masters for my small children and I was explaining what an azalea is to Knox, which is not like specifically Southern, but I do know them in the context of being from the South.

49:32And I felt it like creeping out like a tiny little bit.

49:35Sean Fennessey:Yeah, sure. Trying to explain what pimento cheese is to other people. And you felt Augusta National should not broaden its membership base? Yeah. Is that also true? That's right. Just me and then no other women. Right, right. It's funny how that works. That is the second film that Streep made in 1979. You know, she said she was on, quote, automatic pilot when she made this movie because Cazale just died. Right. This is the job that she took in the immediate aftermath of his death. It's not a bad movie. It's just a bit of an artifact of 1970s emotional curiosity. Like The Candidate is a movie that is sort of about this but is a much better film.

50:11Sean Fennessey:The third film from 1979 that she makes is called Kramer vs. Kramer, which you alluded to, which won Best Picture, which is a bit of a religious text for you and I. Yeah, though I was going to ask you, had you rewatched it since having a kid? You had because... We did the rewatchables. Well, I didn't because it was the month that Knox was born. So I was on leave. Yes. I had had, but my daughter was about six months old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so as a result, I had not seen Kramer versus Kramer since having kids. But I was just absolutely on the floor from this one. Yeah. This is just brutal, amazing.

50:50I spent some time Googling custody law afterwards. Exciting. Well, again, I just don't understand why we can't, like, why joint custody wasn't enough. And the reason is, is because, like, divorce law and custody law was so new in the 70s that, for whatever reason, joint custody wasn't on the table. though apparently some lawyers at the time were like, why wasn't it just joint custody? Anyway, an amazing, brutal movie, incredible performance by Meryl Streep.

51:27Sean Fennessey:Truly one of her best. Because she doesn't ever actually have the giant boiling over moment. She has that amazing speech in the end in the courtroom, which is like full of emotion. and which she apparently fought very hard for because the original version of the script was in keeping with the times, not particularly empathetic to the mother's point of view. But it is very controlled. She doesn't try to win you over. She doesn't try to make the case for... She doesn't try to soften what you, the audience, are thinking or feeling, or you know which is like why would a mom just leave like how can you just leave um she's never she's playing the character not trying to win your approval um so it's amazing this is also she plays a lot of moms in the in the 80s and 90s which is probably not surprising those are the parts that are available um that's a great point she really is the great maternal figure of American movies.

52:33But they are also moms like faced with real problems and not in like the, you know, Rachel Cusk. Like I'm like, I'm so sad that I had kids and I lost like my center of self. Is that something

52:48Sean Fennessey:Rachel Cusk writes about? I think so. That's what those books are about. Sorry if I slandered Rachel Cusk. But, but you know, that whole genre of mom literature and mom being like, wow, it's hard to be a mom.

53:05they're about the fact that society has like literally never thought about a mom in any other context as like the person at home, like who's cooking. And so all of the different things that she has to do and all the different ways that she fails as a mother throughout like the next two to three decades are pretty interesting.

53:24Sean Fennessey:It's a fascinating component of the movie because that isn't what the movie is. The movie is centered on a father who is ill-prepared for taking care of his son when his wife walks out on him. And there's a totally different version of this movie where you reverse the Kramers and the Kramer in the front is the Streep character. And then it's a woman in crisis movie. It's a woman reaching a stage of her life and realizing she doesn't have what she wants. And that she needs to go find what she wants. And not centered on this, you know, I think very generous portrayal of like a dad who has to step up.

53:54Sean Fennessey:And Hoffman is also amazing in this film. There's some really messy and unfortunate stuff about the production of the movie between the two of them. But, you know, the movie is best remembered, I think, for most of those touching sequences between the son and the father. And even in some of the friendship stuff and Jane Alexander's role in the movie. But Streep is so commanding in every sequence that she's in. She's so emotionally complex and is allowed to be, like you said, fought for it. Like pushed Robert Benton to actually just change the movie. And really, I think the meaning of the movie by letting her have more agency with that character, it's a huge turning point, I think, in characterization in American movies.

54:32Sean Fennessey:You can kind of see like a whole wave. You can make the case that like John Cassavetes kind of kicked the doors down on some of this stuff. But in like a best picture winning movie for a woman who actually was awarded by the Academy for playing a character like this, it's a huge breakthrough. To me, it's automatically agreed. I think it's one of the signal achievements of her career and I think knocks down the doors pretty significantly. for who she's going to become as an actor and a star. She's very pregnant when she was making, when she was shooting that scene in the courtroom, which I find to be such an interesting little tidbit.

55:06Sean Fennessey:She's very covered up because otherwise she's very dominant and visible. She's seated. Yes. It's a trick we all learn. Yes. And then at the very end, which I still, I think like the final scene is kind of bullshit, but whatever. She's wearing like a huge raincoat. Yes. to hide the bump. Like a light reconciliation? Well, when she's just like, no, no, it's okay. You can have custody. Yeah. Because he needs, which he does need his home. That's right. But once again, like, get an apartment nearby. Okay. Work out a visitation schedule. Just final notes from Kramer versus Kramer. I mean, we had to deal with it, you know?

55:43Yeah, sure. We did.

55:44Sean Fennessey:We did. It was very unfortunate. I mean, that's the thing is, you know, COD, two CODs hosting this show, movies like this that show young kids forced to look at a marriage coming apart. Yeah. You know, it just, it hits. It just, it hits. Two years go by before her next film. Another film I had not seen, though, a very, very well-known film. I had not either. This is The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is a very unusual movie, actually, that is based on a novel. Is it William Kennedy? Is that the name? John Fowles. John Fowles, excuse me. John Fowles' novel, which is about a mysterious and enticing woman in England in the 19th century and the man who falls in love with her and becomes enraptured by her.

56:37Sean Fennessey:And there is an outer shell of the movie about two actors who are portraying the characters in an adaptation of this story. Jeremy Irons is the counterpart in the film. And this is some heavy accent work, some real transformation. She's effectively playing two characters, the actress and the character herself. Beautifully directed and kind of mysterious movie to me. She was Academy Award nominated for work in this and Sarah is also a similarly complex character and kind of hard to accept some of the things that she does. And this is something that she returns to over and over again is this kind of questioning the moral core of the character.

57:20Sean Fennessey:here. She does an English accent, I think very well. I don't really know how to judge English accents, but I was impressed with this movie. I was a little underwhelmed. And I think that it's because I haven't read French Lieutenant's Woman, but I have read other John Fowles novels. And so I was excited for the big grand 80s classic literary adaptation featuring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in his Brideshead era. And I think you're right that it's beautifully captured. And the image of her in the black cloak standing at the end of the pier, which became the poster and sort of an iconic image of Meryl Streep.

58:06But I think despite the fact that she has two characters and several accents, it doesn't give her that much to do it is jeremy irons's movie in many ways yeah and she's just sort of haunted and telling a story and and she does that very well but it's one where because i'm seeing it after i've seen all of the other like haunted meryl street performances that come later i was just i don't know i the structure was interesting that apparently the way the novel works is that it has several different endings. So I thought it was cool that they invented something else to communicate the sort of like the postmodern structural experimentation of the novel without trying to directly one-to-one it.

58:55Good adaptation choices. It's not going in.

58:59Sean Fennessey:Okay. Not even a yellow for her fourth Academy Award nomination. She's got 20 more. Is it her fourth or her third? I mean, did you love it? I liked it. Okay. Would you like to yellow it? Yeah. You can if you want. I would, just for the sake of conversation. This is her third Academy Award nomination after the Deer Hunter, her win for Kramer versus Kramer, and then the French Lieutenant's Woman. And it is not immediately followed by another Oscar nomination. It is immediately followed by a long forgotten movie called Still of the Night, which is a reunion with her Kramer versus Kramer director, Robert Benton.

59:37Sean Fennessey:And this is a very curious movie. It is a, did you watch this? I did. A very overt homage to Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah. More of like an assemblage of Easter eggs. Truly. Roy Scheider plays a psychiatrist, one of whose patients is killed. and the person who is the suspect is his girlfriend who is portrayed by Meryl Streep playing a classic Hitchcock blonde in the tippy hedron mold, a mysterious woman, a fragile woman who maybe shouldn't be trusted. And this movie is very slow and boring. I agree. And the exact opposite of what most Alfred Hitchcock thrillers are. And I found it to be quite an odd duck.

1:00:17They just kept talking and talking and talking. And even when they were doing, not recreating shots, but, you know, the dream sequences or the trying to bring in some of the Hitchcockian visual tension did not exist good hair though they got the hair they got her hair right

1:00:34Sean Fennessey:she's quite beautiful in this movie I think that this is her hair and not a wig okay great which is just something to note as we go through the hair journey I continue to have wig blindness I don't I just do not know when people are wearing wigs the still of the night is not going in in the hall of fame Sophie's choice yeah so this is Alan Peculia's adaptation of the William Styron novel. Yes. About a Polish immigrant come to America, keep hiding a secret, falling in love with an American man. And also a Southern novelist. Yes, that's true. Who's just there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, who is he really?

1:01:11Sean Fennessey:Peter McNichol in the movie, but he clearly has some William Styron stuff going on there. And this is a very hallowed and important film. Never one of my favorites. I can I think the the magnitude of the performance is at minimum a yellow for this because the movie is so she also wins her second Oscar in five years of work yes which is it is the it is like clearly the our like the new Catherine Hepburn is here yeah you know like this is this is the American film actress who can do anything an immaculate accent work. Sure. And then she's also acting in, I think, is it German or Polish? In Polish.

1:02:00In Polish, yeah. But then I think people are speaking. No, she has German because that's why she gets to be the secretary for Haas. Oh, you're right. Yeah, so, I mean, it could be both. Anyway, acting in another language in the flashbacks. I rewatched everything up until the scene and I was like, I've seen it. It lives on. and I actually just really don't want to watch it. It's emotionally wrenching. Yeah, and you know what? I found even watching everything up to it pretty emotionally devastating. She's amazing in this movie that I agree. That is a little silly. And when you were talking about how the movie lives on because of the titular Sophie's Choice and the incredible performance, everything that's going on with Kevin Kline and Peter McNichol and like, why are you here writing a novel?

1:02:52the source material is unusual. I don't know whether Sophie's choice would be received in the same way as a novel were it published today.

1:03:05Sean Fennessey:I always felt, I love most of the people involved in this movie, but I've always felt that the film is a little flabby as an adaptation. And it feels like the film is really taking a long time to kind of settle us into this world. And because Streep's performance style is so big and so clear, it's very obvious that there's something she's hiding something there's a wound that is covered by a bandage in the movie you can tell in the first scene it's like oh what's wrong is she gonna be okay what happened and it takes a long time to get to that revelation so the movie itself I've never had a huge love for despite liking all the people but her performance is like undeniable to me it would be hard for this movie to not be in the hall of fame yeah I kind of think it has to be green so that'll be green I make the Katherine Hepburn comment because Catherine Hepburn beat Streep for Best Actress the previous year for On Golden Pond and then that was sort of like that was her denouement as a movie actress the sort of her fourth win and Meryl still only has three but again it feels like a little bit of a baton passing moment.

1:04:09Sean Fennessey:Okay. Moving on the next film is Silkwood just one year later. This is crazy where you're like oh this year she made this and this year she made this and now like within four years you've been a part of the deer hunter Kramer versus Kramer Manhattan gotten Sophie's Choice right into Silkwood, which is a middle period Mike Nichols film based on a real life woman who was working in a, is it a nuclear power plant? And who has been exposed to various levels of radiation and becomes a whistleblower and suffers a very terrible fate. And her co-stars in this movie are Cher and Kurt Russell. I've commented before, this film is not available on Blu-ray.

1:04:52Sean Fennessey:It's so hard to see. Yes. There's a weird thing with a lot of Mike Nichols movies where, for whatever reason, they were not kind of taken care of and taken to the next stage. They weren't handed down in the same way. This is a very serious issues-oriented emotional drama about another tough woman, an uncompromising woman put in a very difficult position. It's an amazing performance. She's nominated again. What are your thoughts on Silkwood? I love Silkwood because it's so hard to see. I wasn't able to revisit it. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, also our Blu-ray player is broken, which is going to come into focus in two entries.

1:05:31Sean Fennessey:Well, it sounds like I know what your birthday present is going to be. It was playing, but it was maybe the HDMI cable. Psy took the remote. I don't know. I would love to have this. If we were only working with 30 films, then I would make the case for Silkwood. Obviously, like I'm a Mike Nichols partisan. but and this is a very classic they don't make them like this anymore great performance I don't think we have room we can yellow it I think we should yellow it this is Shirley MacLaine won the Academy Award this year which is quite something because Debra Winger was also nominated in the same category it's a year where two women were nominated in lead actress does not happen very often for the same movie for the same movie five women are typically nominated in lead actress I know I think that's wrong I think they should change they should put some men in that category if you ask me Silkwood is yellow 1984 Falling in Love have you seen this film?

1:06:22Sean Fennessey:I have did you just see it? yes okay so this is a romantic drama opposite Streep is opposite Robert De Niro they had worked together of course in The Deer Hunter they'd also worked together on stage they worked together in The Cherry Orchard in the 70s which is how she came to be a part of The Deer Hunter as well and Ulu Grossbard a gifted filmmaker who made Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman directed this movie. And it's written by the playwright Michael Christopher. And no one's seen it and it's completely vanished. What'd you think? I would have liked it to be better if it is about Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, two of the greats falling in love.

1:07:11Sean Fennessey:It is what's on the label. It is what's on the label. but and they have a couple dates in the city so they both are like connecticut you know into the city commuters married professionals yeah married professionals um who procrastinate their christmas shopping way too long then they trade christmas gifts by accident and then they run into each other on the train and then there are they have a connection and the connection is communicated right you do they have enough chemistry you believe that like Meryl and Robert De Niro are interested in each other but the movie is then much more interested in in their own marriages and like what happens to the rest of your life when you have this fleeting connection then the two of them and I didn't really care about the rest of their lives I just wanted to watch them you know wander around 80s New York this movie has a very bad reputation.

1:08:07Sean Fennessey:It's considered a huge failure, both critically and commercially. I only watched it for the first time last year because Fun City put out a Blu-ray of it and I picked it up out of curiosity and completism, even not knowing we were going to do this. And I was kind of charmed by it. I think it's really inert for sure. Like, it kind of has no momentum. But I think I just liked sitting inside of the psychology of these two people in relative middle age. I think they're probably in their mid-30s at this point. But it feels like they're like in their mid 50s by the because of the time period um and i don't know there was something about it i'm not mad that i watched it i don't think it's a masterpiece or anything but i think it's it has a very bad reputation it's like how could this possibly have happened and i don't i don't quite feel that way about it um but it's not going in it's red it's red okay falling in love is for sure red plenty you lent me the blu-ray and i was not able to watch it Okay.

1:09:02Sean Fennessey:Easily the most interesting discovery for me because I wasn't expecting much out of this movie. It's directed by Fred Shapishi, the Australian filmmaker. I thought this was the second time they'd worked together, but it was actually the first. And this is a very strange movie. it's a movie about a British woman who becomes involved in aiding British soldiers during World War II and has a thrilling affair with Sam Neill in the opening stages of the movie and this sets her up for a life of excitement and after the war is over she finds herself in a world of diplomacy and high manners and she's a real free spirit.

1:09:48Sean Fennessey:And there's also an indication that maybe she's bipolar or schizophrenic. She has a lot of emotional struggles and she's always constantly trying to break free from the world that she's trapped in. The movie is, it's not good, right? Like it is a little slow. I was with you until possibly bipolar. Well, to me, that's the most interesting stuff in the movie because she's so willing to be unlikable. She's so willing to be like the tough woman, you know? Her fearlessness as an actor with this stuff, I think, is so cool, so commendable. Not because of the performance and not that I think that Meryl can't do it, but you've hung one too many ornaments on the Christmas tree at that point.

1:10:25Sean Fennessey:I hear you. There are several scenes in the movie where a man is just like, why does she keep doing this to me? And, you know, that's ungenerous, but it is how the movie keeps playing out. A lot of really interesting actors across the movie. I really like seeing Charles dance at this time in his career. He plays her husband, and he's terrific. there's an incredible scene between Meryl Streep and Ian McKellen incredible and then later between McKellen and Dance that is some of the best acting I've ever seen McKellen do again the movie is flawed okay so it's not going in it's definitely not going in but it was interesting I liked seeing it and I would recommend it to people who are interested specifically in Meryl taking on tough parts okay 85 out of Africa red not going in so so interesting I mean I will agree with you I really don't like this movie It is a Best Picture winner.

1:11:12Sean Fennessey:It is one of the biggest movies of 1985. She was acclaimed for her work in the movie. I mean, she does a very memorable accent. Yes, she is Oscar nominated. She was not the director's first choice. Pollock wanted Audrey Hepburn for this part. And I think that tells you a little bit something about this, you know, another woman of high manners encountering a big game hunter and falling in love with him. Is it Isaac Denison? Is that the, who the story is based on? Yes. That novel? And. But that's apparently the pseudonym of Danish author Karen Blixen. Yes. Who is the. The main character. So, and it is based on her experiences.

1:11:59Yes.

1:12:01Sean Fennessey:Weird and very boring movie. That's also, you wouldn't think that you need anyone like any skill to communicate like lust and longing for Robert Redford. But you kind of, Meryl doesn't have enough or she's a little too closed off in this. It's not steamy in any way. There's no real longing. Yeah, it's like eating a rice cake with no water. You know, it's like, this is crunchy. I don't get this movie at all. It's nice that other people liked it, I guess. Okay. I'm happy to auto-read it, honestly, because it wouldn't be in my Hall of Fame by any means. The next year, she stars in another Mike Nichols movie, Heartburn.

1:12:43Sean Fennessey:A lot of these movies are not really in the culture. Heartburn having a little bit of a comeback. Okay. Still not available on Blu-ray. Well, that's between you and the Blu-ray makers and their internalized... And the millions and millions of listeners at home screaming for their Heartburn Blu-rays. Right. No, I know. Bring it to me. it's how many of these are not available on Blu-ray? Quite a few. Yeah. Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that there's a woman starring in most of them? I mean, there's a Jack Nicholson movie. What are we talking about? I know. Made by a man. Made by one of the men.

1:13:19The men. Mike Nichols. But the men who was great with women actors. Screenplay by Nora Ephron adapted from her novel was not a success at the time. People were pretty mean about it.

1:13:31Sean Fennessey:I'm quite fond of this movie. I am as well. I think it's the Nicholson and Streep of it all, you understand, it's pretty sexy and you understand their appeal and which then also, or their appeal to each other, which then does set up the betrayal. It's a, like it's a good hang movie. You know, I think of like all of the moments of Nicholson, when Nicholson just shows up singing in the, it's, you know, it's so great and such a great communication of why this character is so irresistible and why you would put up with all this shit and then why you would also then write a really mean book about it afterwards.

1:14:09Sean Fennessey:This movie is actually the blueprint for what you like. Yeah. I know. This is the late period Nancy Meyers stuff that you love so much. There's so much of that in this. And obviously it's so personal and confessional for Efron and her relationship with Carl Bernstein. And I really like it. I don't know if it's in the Hall of Fame. No, it doesn't have to be. It can be yellow. Yeah, but I think it's worth, I think if people have not seen Harper and they should seek it out because it's a good time. And they eat the pasta in bed together. It's great. It's great stuff. It's very sexy. And it leads to this next movie.

1:14:40They're renovating a house. All, you know, all my dreams. All your stuff. Yeah.

1:14:44Sean Fennessey:All your stuff. Well, hopefully not the affairs. And then he has an affair with Thelma Rice. Yeah. You don't want that. Yeah. In 1987, they reunite to make Iron Weed. Another movie I had not seen before. Nor had I. I know that you have some unkind feelings towards this movie. This is Hector Babenco's follow-up to Kiss of the Spider Woman, the Argentine Brazilian filmmaker. And I'll let you go first, and then I'll share my feelings. This was the most excruciating watch of this entire exercise for me. I just found this brutal and long. And it is bleak and boring. It's set in the Great Depression.

1:15:28Sean Fennessey:Yes, right at the tail end of the Great Depression. And Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep both played drunks. And they are united by their drunkenness. And they're sort of, they live on the fringes of society. They're hobo drifters, yeah, during the Depression. And then it's just relentlessly dark. They just keep being drunk. An extraordinarily bleak movie. I'd never seen it. I definitely liked it more than you. I think it is, you really have to be in the right mind state to get on board with it. it is more Nicholson's movie than it is Streep's I think both of their performances are excellent honestly they were both nominated for Academy Awards for their work in this movie but the movie got no other Academy Awards which would tell you a little something about the movie this is the William Kennedy novel that I was thinking of this is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel it is a very realistic depiction of you know upstate New York in the in the late 1930s in the aftermath of the carnage of the depression and what it did to middle class America there's something really really interesting to me about these two people both of whom were if not high class had a lot of privilege and opportunity and everything they withered they withered everything away like they lost everything in this story it's just that the whole story is about them over a course of a couple of days kind of falling apart completely and getting to the end of something there is a scene in this movie that I think is one of the best Meryl Streep scenes of all time which is when she sings That's Me Pal yeah and And it is simultaneously a kind of dream sequence and also a crashing nightmare of her life and what she has become because she was a singer in a previous life.

1:17:09Sean Fennessey:And she goes on stage to sing in a local bar. And she looks terrible. Her teeth are yellowed. Her voice is falling apart. She looks awful, pale, sickly. And she sings this beautiful song. And she has captivated Jack Nicholson's character. and they share looks between each other. And it's like, it's amazing stuff. But the movie is just like so sad and so going nowhere. Except to the inevitable conclusion that it reaches. To the badness. Yeah. It is impressive that they play like the yuppiest of yuppies in 86 in Heartburn and then swing to this. And they are both very good. And it's back to back, at least release wise.

1:17:52So they're great actors, but no it's not going in.

1:17:55Sean Fennessey:Okay. So Red for Ironweed. Yeah. Which does have a Blu-ray. Congratulations. From Olive. Thank you Olive for doing that. 1988 the next film is A Cry in the Dark. Yeah. Which is also called what? Something Angel. Evil Angels. Evil Angels. It was released as such I think in Europe and in Australia. Reunion with Fred Schiappese. And one of the most famous Meryl Streep performances because she plays an Australian woman. Right. whose child is taken. Is it one of the most famous Meryl Streep performances or is it the most famous line of dialogue? Well, are we splitting hairs? Well, not a lot of people have seen this movie and yet everyone knows about it.

1:18:35Sean Fennessey:I had not either until, and you said, you know, I bought A Cry in the Dark and I was like, oh, a dingo ate my baby, which is not even accurate. It is the dingo's got my baby. And which happens within the first 15 minutes of the film, which I was also surprised by. I really dug this. And I really, I really liked this performance because this is a true story of a woman, Lindy Chamberlain, whose infant daughter was, disappears in the Australian Outback. And during a camping trip taken from the tent. And she is accused of murdering her daughter. And there's a, I mean, she goes to trial and is convicted.

1:19:20convicted sorry I was gonna spoil it yeah it's a true story and then um there I mean there's like very intense press attention in Australia and so that is covered as well and ultimately the so Lindy Chamberlain the Meryl Streep character maintains her innocence throughout and even after release and but the the movie and the performance even I think the performance the performance is amazing because it does believe in the innocence but again it's does not care about likability at all and it is a really really confusing it's like prickly uh just they are they're very religious as well so there is like a there is a deep religious element but not in the like a like american evangelical way that we think of um that There's like a coldness and a hardness to what she's doing as her like infant daughter is found dead basically.

1:20:27And it's, I was amazed by it. And I like also really just is not what I was expecting from the ding away my baby.

1:20:35Sean Fennessey:Same. The movie makes this really interesting choice, which is that the movie believes her the whole way through. Because it shows you what happened from its perspective. And it's like, well, this is what happened. Right. So we know she's innocent. But the person that we meet in the movie does not seem innocent. And the way that she reacts, the way she engages with lawyers, with the media, with her own husband, the way that she demonstrates or doesn't demonstrate the effects of tragedy is really, really interesting. And the way that Sam Neill, as her husband, deals with her. Yes. The way the media covers it, the way.

1:21:12Sean Fennessey:Well, there's like a feeding frenzy around her where they want her to be guilty, which I find to be a very astute movie about the media and about what the public wants in the way that the media presents it to us. Well, this was – there was a scene when the verdict is read and they show listening parties on the radio, which, you know, took me to back when the OJ verdict was released. And we were all crowded around the TV. But this is well before the OJ verdict. It's a huge story in Australia. So I was going to make a bid for this to go in too. I think we should. I thought it was really cool. I think we can put it in the Hall of Fame.

1:21:44She's also, she just has like the worst bowl cut in the world. I do think that's a wig just to kind of bring you in on that.

1:21:49Sean Fennessey:Apparently accurate to Lindy Chamberlain. And, you know, an Australian accent, which I'm not as familiar with. So very credible to me. And very 80s clothes. And it does kind of disappear. This, I want, Cry in the Dark is green. And I think it's also a turning point in her career. because she starts looking for something bigger and different after this. And that period in the 80s and all of these movies that we've caught up on, you see as this extremely serious body of work. Like really, really specific, unflinching material, all this morally complex gray area that she's interested in getting into.

1:22:31Sean Fennessey:And you can feel her in 1989 with She-Devil making a choice to be a commercial actor. She wants to get into comedy. she wants to get into movies that a lot of people are going to see she doesn't want to just keep making awards fair I ultimately didn't think She Devil was successful I also had not seen this movie I hadn't either Susan Seidelman I think it's her third feature opposite Roseanne Barr she plays a very successful romantic novelist which is basically Jackie Collins who lures Roseanne Barr's husband away a lawyer played by Ed Beckley Jr. and the movie has a kind of like camp comedy quality to it.

1:23:07Sean Fennessey:Right. Not a bad Meryl Streep performance. She's very funny. My issues with the film are more about, so Roseanne Barr is the star and so they are trying to introduce some sort of social commentary on the 80s and women's aesthetics

1:23:31and family life versus working life. And it kind of pits Roseanne versus Meryl in ways that are a bummer and insulting to everyone involved. I agree.

1:23:43Sean Fennessey:I think it's just really overstated Roseanne Barr's kind of homeliness versus Meryl Streep's glamour. And it's a very unsubtle movie. I think it's okay, but it's definitely not going in. No. This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. Spring is starting, so it's time to wake up your yard. And at the Home Depot, they've got everything you need to do it with low prices guaranteed. Mowing your lawn is a dream with top brand outdoor power tools like the Ryobi 40-volt mower with up to 50 minutes of runtime. You can add a pop of color with spring blooms and fresh plants and refresh your garden beds with earth grow mulch, five bags for just$10.

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1:25:07Sean Fennessey:In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pibb. Sweet cherry, bold outbursts, the kind of flavor that gets attention. Bold kick of cherry. And you're Mr. Pibb. Okay, 1990, Postcards from the Edge. Her third film with Mike Nichols. Yeah. she is portraying a very thinly veiled version of Carrie Fisher and her relationship to her mother Debbie Reynolds opposite Shirley MacLaine in this movie and this is a great movie yeah I love it I've been trying to think about how this fits in here I don't fun movie for fans of Hollywood fun movie for you know portraits of artists and vulnerable actresses and right and and behind the scenes the making of movies lore and great actresses yelling at each other and mom stuff.

1:26:03And there aren't as many, you know, my mom is a thing. My mom is a problem.

1:26:09Sean Fennessey:She doesn't play a lot of daughters too. True. You know, that's another thing. So, I mean, I love this movie. I didn't expect it to go in just from a room standpoint. She's also, she doesn't play someone that contemporaneous that often. She's playing a normal person. someone who does a fair amount of drugs. But still, the closest you can get to what I imagine Meryl Streep's real voice sounds like. And again, I don't think it's a wig. I think it's her hair. Yeah, she said one of the reasons I took this part was because I'm so afraid of singing in front of people and this role was a way to explore my own insecurities about myself.

1:26:44Sean Fennessey:And she does sing in this movie in a very memorable and uncomfortable sequence. I'll see yellow. Yeah, yellow for sure. I like this movie a lot. I haven't seen it in a while. Also not available on Blu-ray. what the fuck 1991 Defending Your Life she perpetrays Julia in Albert Brooks' fantasia about what happens after you die and how it's determined where you get to go Albert Brooks object of fascination for me Meryl Streep is luminous in this movie as sort of the perfect person that you've been waiting your entire life and afterlife for I think her character is not the most like finely drawn there's definitely a little bit of Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Julia.

1:27:24Yeah, she's the girl. She's the afterlife girl. She's the afterlife girl.

1:27:28Sean Fennessey:I love the movie. I don't know if it's great, so great because of Meryl Streep. You can tell Everbrooks at the time of his life doing this with her. They're great together. I feel about this the way I feel about Postcards from the Edge, which is I really like watching it. And it's similar projects where it's like you, Meryl, you can tell that Meryl wanted to do it and that everyone was having a great time. Yes. And that she's not so corseted up and not, you know, so many degrees removed from herself. She's just a regular dead person. Yeah, and still like, and very charismatic. And you want to spend time around her, especially in defending your life.

1:28:05Yeah. But I don't think it has to, we can yellow it.

1:28:07Sean Fennessey:Well, the other thing too is I find in a lot, in all of these early films, she's so tightly wound. And she's very free in this movie. She's very loose. She's very unbothered by whatever is in front of her. And that plays as a great counter to Brooks, who's so neurotic. Okay, yellow. 1992 Death Becomes Her. Interesting movie. A big spectacle Robert Zemeckis satire on beauty and aging. Right. A sharper version of She-Devil in some ways. Yes. Feels like she kind of closes the loop with this movie. She did not like making it. There were a lot of visual effects involved. It is, for 1992, a staggering achievement, as are most of these 90s Zemeckis movies where it's just like, how the fuck did he do that?

1:28:49Sean Fennessey:like he's inventing film technology in real time. I've always found the movie a bit shrill. Yeah. It's very inventive and very fun, but also like its absurdity sometimes I think goes a little over the edge into annoyance. It's campy. And it has become sort of a cult classic. And I think if River Wild was the first time I saw Meryl Streep, then I've definitely seen this film several times in the late 90s because it was kind of, it was my type of body horror. Yes. And, you know, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn going face to face and then Isabella Rossellini doing whatever she's doing that's extremely powerful.

1:29:27Sean Fennessey:She's like an Egyptian goddess of some kind. Yeah, she's old and she has the secret to, if not everlasting life, then prolonging it. Good physical comedy from Meryl. Yeah, she's funny. Yeah, Bruce Willis is miscast as the husband that they're fighting over, though, you know, maybe that's the point. I like this movie. I don't think it has to go in, but I want to honor everyone's childhood, including my own. Okay. Death Becomes Her will be yellow. Okay. The House of the Spirits. Yeah. Did you watch this? I forgot to watch this one. Okay. I did watch this. I bought this on DVD. It came on a three-pack.

1:30:07Sean Fennessey:Okay. The three-pack DVD, which was also featured Music of the Heart, which we'll get to momentarily, and featured Marvin's Room, which I previously owned on Blu-ray. But in order to get my hands on this movie, that's what I did. House of the Spirits is an adaptation of the Isabel Allende novel. And this is a funky movie, man, because it's about a Chilean family in the 1920s. And there are no South American or Latin actors in this movie here, as I can tell. It's got a stellar cast. The cast includes Streep, Jeremy Irons, a reunion from the French Lieutenant's Woman, Glenn Close Winona Ryder Antonio Banderas Armand Mueller-Stahl Vanessa Redgrave I guess Maria Conchita Alonso is in the film she's a Latin actress but this movie is a mess and kind of kind of a fiasco actually like Billy August directed it who made Peli the Conqueror and I think it's very well meaning about this kind of elevated family kind of like almost like a plantation owner family in Santiago and And he plays what becomes Meryl Streep's – Meryl Streep plays his daughter, which is strange considering that they played lovers in a film 15 years previous.

1:31:26Sean Fennessey:Right, yeah.

1:31:30Sean Fennessey:And the dynamics of the family and what role this family plays in this community and the way that the father kind of marauds his way through the town and is very unforgiving. there's like a lot of dubbing in the movie like Armin Mueller Stahl I'm just looking at the plot summary of the novel on Wikipedia and there's a lot going on here it's a big expansive historical dramatic novel and everyone is miscast and it's very slow and boring okay that's tough so it's a real like how'd this happen kind of a thing you know everybody has like the right intentions but the movie doesn't work at all so I will just say auto-read okay she has a few more of these coming up yeah but not the next one the next one's The River Wild which is obviously core text for us something that we really enjoy with her but definitely a left turn Curtis Hansen one of the great shape-shifting thriller directors of his time we just did LA Confidential and The Rewatchables last month I don't know if it's in the Hall of Fame personal Hall of Fames we also forgot that during these we give a blue out at some point to something that you should check out.

1:32:40You're right about that. I don't think that this needs to be our blue either because I think most people have seen it. I wonder if we've already done my blue, but that's okay.

1:32:49Sean Fennessey:We can come back to that. Yeah. We can yellow it for personal significance. It's just, it's also, it's really cool that she does this and she's so good at it. It is, she doesn't do all of her stunts and apparently she almost drowned while doing one of the stunts late in the day just because of exhaustion. The river team saved her. And there is like a whole river crew but she's in that boat a lot like she is she's very very physical and it's you know not tom cruise running around in mission impossible level action but i i can't think of how many times she's been outdoors as much as she is in this movie which is primarily filmed on location on a river almost entirely.

1:33:32So she's very convincing and it's just to the shape-shifting quality. It's not what you would think of when you're thinking about the woman who won for Sophie's Choice.

1:33:43Sean Fennessey:Yeah, it's interesting. So we've only got three greens so far, even though we've gone through a very big historical period for her where she's making some of her best movies. 1995, we get The Bridges of Madison County, which I revisited for the first time in probably 20 years yesterday. and I just find it be terribly moving and it's a weird movie because the framework of the movie is that this woman Francesca Johnson has died and her children are discovering things letters and photographs and information that they've that she's left for her family to discover after her death to explain where she wants her ashes scattered and that takes her son and her daughter back to the past to this romantic affair that she has.

1:34:30Sean Fennessey:Streep plays this Italian war bride. Clint Eastwood, very memorably, plays a National Geographic photographer who comes to their home. Is it, which state is it? Wisconsin? Iowa. Iowa, thank you. And I just want to say that the framework of it and the performances around it is terrible. Terrible. Some of the worst shit I've ever seen in a movie. I can't believe it's the same movie because inside of the movie is this such a sweet and emotionally deep portrayal of two middle-aged people finding each other at this time in their lives. And Eastwood and Streep, like, honestly, never better. Like, they're just so great together.

1:35:11Sean Fennessey:It's very schmaltzy, but in a good way, a way that I enjoy. And I was blown away revisiting and being like watching these actors at the beginning and end of the movie kind of fuck the movie up a little bit. in addition to the level of performances which is not on Streep and Eastwood's level there's just a very basic why do you need to be revealing this to your children aspect of it but I had a different reaction I was like why do you care it's so nice that your mother had this they're so offended I agree with that and I guess it's because funeral preparations and everything is very intense I guess Iowa family at that time in history I don't know.

1:35:53I was just kind of like, do they need this much detail? And then I guess part of it is because it was like the only part of her life where she really felt truly alive. And so she needs to communicate that to someone even after the fact. And that's kind of what's driving the novel. And I get that. Yeah. So I understand. I mean, she and Eastwood just in that kitchen is electric. I know it's so so good I will say the Italian accent

1:36:22Sean Fennessey:I thought it was good she's doing Anna Magnani she's kind of imitating other actresses she's a little bit thicker in that movie she's transformed a bit but I think she's so beautiful and so funny and that is really one because I rewatched it as well and the asides and the observations and the way that she reveals that that character is not just the traditional Iowa housewife and feels very cut off from another part of herself and cut off from the world at large. It's in small observations or jokes or things that she almost mutters under her breath to herself and that he catches. I love the way she answers his questions about like how she's supposed to feel about her life in Iowa.

1:37:13Sean Fennessey:And, you know, that stuff is so great. This is a really weird movie. I mean, it's an Amblin film and it was developed by Steven Spielberg and Spielberg and Eastwood, I think this is their only major collaboration. And they have kind of, this is like Americana, this movie. And it's very much an interesting movie about an immigrant and the way that you kind of assimilate or don't assimilate and how lost you can feel inside your own family, inside your own life. And also Eastwood, you know, who's always so restrained, but it's so appropriate for this character, for the Robert character. And that look on his face when he sees her in the car at the end and the rain is falling on him.

1:37:49Sean Fennessey:It's some of the best stuff they've ever done together. I really like this movie. And then the way that it stays with her in the car for so much longer than you expect it to. And that's when you really get the Meryl moment. But even there, just all of the emotion bubbling up, but it can't totally because she's in the car with her. Yes, with her husband. It's really, really good stuff. Green. It's great. Great. I'm with you. 1996, Before and After. Did you watch this? I did. Pretty bad. Yeah. Barbé Schroeder story about a family whose son may or may not have committed a grisly crime and how the parents react to it.

1:38:25Sean Fennessey:You know, I did think of this new movie, Josephine, that's coming out later this year. And the kind of like dynamic between two people who are like worried about their children. And there is something that they have some things in common. But this is just like very clunky. The story is bad. The story is very silly. And it's Liam Neeson, right? It is Liam Neeson. Yeah, Liam Neeson is going for it in ways that I don't really think are matched with the rest of the movie. I agree. His performance is not good. And so she's playing a doctor. And again, she's a mom, and she's a mom reckoning with, like, what is the right thing to do?

1:38:58And how am I supposed to raise my kid? How am I supposed to be fit in this world? What's socially acceptable? What's expected of me? But her decision is sort of out of left field. And then Alfred Molina just, like, yells at her.

1:39:11Sean Fennessey:Yes. I do love the scene where they first meet Alfred Molina, and he kind of explains how things are in these cases. That's very entertaining. He's really chewing the scenery but the movie itself is very forgettable. Yeah. Okay, so that's Red. 1996 Marvin's Room. Perhaps best known now as the name of a Drake song. But it was originally a drama, a reunion between Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep and featuring a very young Leonardo DiCaprio. Yes. This is a movie about two sisters getting back together after the death of their father. Um, and one of them needs to have a transplant. I haven't seen this movie in a long time.

1:39:50Diane Keaton, um, has leukemia and, which is also what killed their mother.

1:39:56Sean Fennessey:Right. And so she needs a match, like a donor match, I think, for a bone marrow transplant. Some type of transplant. And so Meryl Streep is hoping that one of her sons or she, you know, that some of them are a donor. And so they all are brought back together to care, to try to help the Diane Keaton character. Yes. And there's something really interesting about the premise of this, which is, you know, it's written by this playwright, Scott McPherson, who used his experience of caring for his partner who died for AIDS. But he's kind of transformed it into this family drama, which I think makes it a little bit more bland.

1:40:36Sean Fennessey:And if perhaps the adaptation had more closely reflected his own personal experience, it might have been a little bit more interesting. This is kind of like the soft middle of Meryl Streep's career. Yeah. Where she's making some kind of sincere and thoughtful movies, but they all feel a little mushy to me. And it did not leave a big impact. I purposefully didn't revisit this because I don't remember loving it. Were you into it? I didn't really. It was fine. I mean, it was fun to see Meryl Streep and Leo. And I hadn't seen young Leo in a long time for whatever reason. so to to revisit that and their moments he plays also like his character's got a lot of problems and I think burned their house down and so he has to be removed from an institution of sorts I don't know it wasn't that good it doesn't need to go in Marvin's Room Red yeah 1998 One True Thing yeah another family drama this time about Meryl Streep's character is the one who has cancer and is very sick Renee Zellweger needs to come home to be with her family.

1:41:41Sean Fennessey:She's a daughter. She's a hardworking young woman. What does she do? She works at New York Magazine. Yeah. Amazing. And they, I mean, they even have like the, the logo in the lobby. William Hurt is her husband, is Troop's husband. And he's got a past. Yeah. William Hurt, once again, fucking stuff up. Yeah. But also just in the corner looking confused. You know, they're an interesting, they're an interesting match. And I think as actors, they actually have a lot in common. They pursue similar kind of roles. They both project a kind of intelligence. I don't remember really liking this movie very much, though, when I saw it.

1:42:13No, so Meryl Streep is sick and gets sicker throughout the film. And, you know, she's very affecting and very good at that. And when she is really sick and kind of has that one moment of, this is what I want to, you know, say before it all goes, it's upsetting. She's really good at what she does, but the movie itself, it doesn't need to go in.

1:42:38Sean Fennessey:1998 Dancing at Lunasa this is an Irish film directed by Pat O 'Connor based on the Brian Friel play love Brian Friel's work this is a movie about five sisters living in a house in Ireland together and they're getting older and they're looking for happiness in different ways they're looking to be seen as real people that's more than just these gals stuck together small fine movie like you know no great shakes her part is fairly modest given the ensemble approach to the movie definitely not going in the Hall of Fame 1999 Music of the Heart did you see this? I sure did okay this is best known as in addition to a Academy Award nomination vehicle for Meryl Streep as Wes Craven's only non-horror movie this was it was his life's biggest dream to direct the story of Roberta Guaspari who was a Harlem music teacher and it is fascinating that an that an artist who who gave us so much and evolved horror filmmaking yeah you know helped launch and and oversee the scream franchise and nightmare on elm street and all the incredible work that he did that this is the movie he really wanted to make which is a completely bland miramax-y character drama from the late 90s Right.

1:44:01Sean Fennessey:What'd you think? I was happy when all of the famous violinists showed up at the concert at the end of Carnegie Hall. I was like, wow, it's Zach Perlman, Joshua Bell. Like, you know, that's cool. That was like for you when Captain America caught the hammer. Yeah. I was like, hey, I remember those people from the late 90s classical music scene. They're invoked in the film, you know. She's like, and let me tell you this about Itzhak Perlman, you know. Yeah, I mean, that was nice. I believe in the goals of this program to share music with children. Tough scene, though, where she woman-splains to a black mother about why it's okay to only be performing the music of old dead white men.

1:44:46I agree.

1:44:47Sean Fennessey:That was a scene you wouldn't see in a movie in 2026. That's true. And I'm sure that they've rethought the program somewhat in terms of the limitation that it's only violence. Recently, I told my mother about my son's drum lessons. She said, what about the violin? And I like the violin. I'd like to learn how to play the violin. I wish that I had done the violin for whatever reason. I did every other instrument. But I, you know, I think music heals the soul. And otherwise, we don't ever have to talk about this movie again. Music of the Heart is Red. 2001, she has a very small role as Blue Mecca in AI, Artificial Intelligence, which is a film that is a masterpiece.

1:45:25Sean Fennessey:Okay. But it is not going in the Meryl Streep Hall of Fame. All right. 2002 adaptation. Interesting one. I love this movie. Yeah, this movie is amazing. Probably found us at the right time, right? Yeah. Very bold and exciting performance from Meryl Streep, who plays sort of Susan Orlean. Right. The journalist and the author of The Orchid Thief, around which this movie is sort of based, but not really. And Charlie Kaufman's screenplay and Spike Jonze's direction make this, I think, one of the more kinetic and exciting and unpredictable movies of its time. And she does stuff in this movie. Yeah.

1:46:03Sean Fennessey:And also lets us think that Susan Orlean did stuff in this movie. It's very unusual. She has this amazing affair with this Chris Cooper character. And she seems just batty. But also, the funny part of it is that she's playing a real person. And again, this is contemporaneous Meryl. She shows up. She's playing a New Yorker writer. She's talking in a fairly normal voice, dressed normally, gets into the car with Chris Cooper and starts interviewing him. And I even thought just the cadence of her interview questions and how she asked follow-ups was perfect. Accurate, yeah. Yeah, and natural, but also she knew that she had a job to do.

1:46:43So she starts off kind of normal Meryl and then the genius and the fun of the movie and the performance is that she's just doing all kinds of stuff. And you're like, what? I think it's really fun that she did this. This is my favorite of the Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman collaborations and probably my favorite Charlie Kaufman. So I will yellow it for sure.

1:47:08Sean Fennessey:I mean, if it were just up to me, it would go in because I think she's so wonderful in it. Wonderful, let's do it. All right. 2 ,002 The Hours. As I told you, I would not be revisiting it. I didn't revisit because you told me to. Not to. I don't care about this movie. I don't think it's very good. Yeah. So it's read for me. I didn't like it either. And I think I even read the novel, like The Hours, in addition to... Michael Cunningham? Yeah, in addition to Mrs. Dalloway at some point. Nothing has stayed with me. Okay. The Hours is out. 2004, The Manchurian Candidate. Yeah. Now, I don't think this is going in, but I do think it's a very good villain performance from Meryl Streep, which she has not done a lot of till this point.

1:47:45Sean Fennessey:Right. They are coming for more and more. So you're identifying this as the turn. A little bit of a, Yeah, a little bit of a linchpin moment for her. This is a remake, of course, of the Frankenheimer movie from the 60s. I think a very underrated movie. I wrote about it at length on Letterboxd some years ago during the pandemic when I wrote about it. And I was like kind of blown away by it. And then Brian Raftery covered it, I thought, quite well on his series around movies around the sort of Bush era. Right. I rewatched it for that, and so I did not rewatch it for this. Really interesting movie.

1:48:15Sean Fennessey:I think a movie that kind of sees the future. It's got a real like uncomfortable energy inside of it. And Denzel's character is very uncomfortable throughout the entirety of the movie. But I think it's worth checking out, just not going in her Hall of Fame. Fair? Yeah, I agree. Though it does linger in my mind as when I think of late period mean elder Meryl. That's the image that I see. Yes. So it does introduce a new Meryl archetype. Yes. She's like a hard-bitten senator. I think so. 2004, also, a series of unfortunate events, the Lemony Snicket adaptation, which I guess is a book that her children liked and so she made it.

1:48:51Sean Fennessey:I saw this when it came out and I can't remember a thing about it, but it's obviously not going into her Hall of Fame. I did see it. She plays the aunt who is very nervous and goes along on the ride with them for a while. I didn't really get what this movie was about. Is this a thing for you guys in the booth? For me, no. Lucas just said to me that he does enjoy this stuff, but not really personal. You read the books? no he did not read the books just the movie alright well it's not going in sorry 2005 uh prime yeah Meryl Streep plays a mother um who discovers that one of her she's a psychotherapist and one of her patients is dating her younger son it's played by Brian Greenberg yes um the woman the patient is played by Uma Thurman uh this is fine this is okay you have a thing for Brian Greenberg so this introduced Brian Greenberg to a lot of us.

1:49:48This was in 2005. I was 21. This is sort of like a cortex. Like Juliette Lipman also loves Prime. All you gals love Brian Greenberg. We were just kind of like, oh, what's going on here? I like Brian Greenberg. And he is like very young and very handsome and Uma Thurman's very funny in it. It's not going in. Another very unfortunate wig. That I remember.

1:50:08Sean Fennessey:She's like our glasses, the brown hair. Kind of like a road test for the Big Little Lies. Yes. Styling. Yeah. she's fine in it yeah it's okay it's a it's a it's a perfectly fine movie yeah but definitely not a hall of fame movie no uh 2006 a prairie home companion yeah she is a part of the big ensemble Robert Altman's final film um it's sort of like Garrison Keillor roadshow adaptation of the radio performances she's very good in the movie um singing yeah a lot yep did you have a prairie home companion face not really I don't really have a lot of experience with that I did oh for whatever reason just listening to the show yeah Yeah, I think it was because it was pre-Spotify and pre-streaming services.

1:50:51So I listened to a lot of books on tape and then it had sort of like a produced radio quality, sort of like pre-podcast podcast. Yeah, yeah. Folksy. And then I also, I went to a summer camp where Garrison Keillor came and performed a lot. So I don't know. I listened to all of it. Then I think he got canceled. I think he did get canceled. Yeah, yeah.

1:51:09Sean Fennessey:This film also famously just kind of shadow directed, co-directed by Paul Thomas Anderson because Altman was near the end of his life. was very sick. And also famously features Lindsay Lohan as Meryl Streep's daughter but at a not productive time in Lindsay Lohan's life. But not a bad performance by her. No. No, no, no. But I think it was just tumultuous. Things are going downhill. Prairie Home Companion not going in. 2006, The Devil Wears Prada. Yes. Green. Yes. Do you feel the need to speak about it or should we just hold it until we do our episode? Did you revisit it for this? I will. I have not yet.

1:51:42But you did.

1:51:42Sean Fennessey:I want to see it close to scene number two. But will you see it before or after? I'll see it before. Okay. I see two. She was nominated this year. Yes. And I believe she lost to Helen Mirren for The Queen, which is a performance that I like. Mm-hmm. But, and a movie that I like. And shout out Peter Morgan for making five good seasons of The Crown. But The Devil Wears Prada is, I would pick Meryl to win. It's transformative in her career. and I also think in like pop culture, pop culture understanding of her. Weird that she's nominated for lead actress though, isn't it? She is the lead. It is. More than Anne Hathaway?

1:52:22It's a two-hander. And she's really, ultimately she's like the anti-hero of the movie. Once you, once you grow up and understand.

1:52:28Sean Fennessey:I haven't seen it in a while. I trust you, but I always felt like it was very clearly Anne Hathaway. We went home with Anne Hathaway, you know? Yeah, but you go home with Meryl too, and you hear, she has that scene in the, Yeah, with Miranda. She has that scene when they're in Paris and she's telling the Anne Hathaway character that she's getting a divorce. And Rupert Murdoch should cut a check for all of the papers he's sold off of me. You know, you learn about Miranda's inner life. So I think lead actress is fine. But if Manchurian Candidate is sort of, now she's become a villain, she's not really the villain in Devil Wears Prada, but she is, it's a larger than life character.

1:53:10And like it's I guess it is IP and that it's based on a novel by Lauren Weisberger. But it's a character that exists outside of just the merilness. Miranda Priestly is her own person. And I think just obviously this movie makes a ton of money, puts her back in the, you know, center of the box office, introduces her to a new generation of people, really starts like her whole now I make movies that people see. Yeah. For mainstream audiences.

1:53:36Sean Fennessey:Totally. This is a watershed moment in her career as a movie star. And it's also, you know, as a performance, amazing. She doesn't raise her voice once in the movie. She's this terrifying figure and everything is done at a whisper. And no, no, it wasn't a question. And like every choice that I or anyone else would make to try to communicate power and strength and fear by going big. She goes really, really small, which is just a great Meryl Streep choice. She says that she based some of it on Clint Eastwood, which is wonderful. And you can see it as soon as she says it. Same hair color, too. And, you know, in terms of line readings and memes, florals for spring, groundbreaking.

1:54:26You know, like it's please bore someone else with your questions. By all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me. Like, you know, I know all of them. It's very, it's a one of a kind performance. So, agreed.

1:54:41Sean Fennessey:Going right in. We're going to do these next four really quickly. Okay. The Ant Bully voice performance, Red. 2007's Dark Matter. Yeah. Quite possibly the least seen of all of her films. Right. I did look at some of it. Okay. Completely unnecessary. She's not in all of the film. Right. Red. 2007's Evening. I have seen this. I didn't revisit it. it feels as though it is lost to time yes uh red remarkable cast but who else is in it I think Vanessa Redgrave definitely Hugh Dancy and Claire Naines um because there are two timelines and they play the younger one this is the I saw this uh when I was in Brazil and it was I think it was subtitled and not dubbed but you you couldn't I couldn't guarantee it anyway okay um but adapted from a novel and totally forgotten um Her next film is also somewhat forgotten.

1:55:35Sean Fennessey:It's called Rendition. It's about the practice of extraordinary rendition. I rewatched this. By the CIA. Did you really? Yeah, because I couldn't remember what was in Manchurian Candidate and what was in this. She's playing kind of the head of the CIA or someone who oversees the CIA. She keeps taking these parts in these kind of political films that have a very, that are clearly very critical of the way that these organizations work. but the films themselves are not always successful. This one I think is very unsuccessful. Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon are the stars of the movie. Did you like it, watching it again?

1:56:10No. I didn't think it was very good. To me, this is most notable because this is where Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon met and then started dating, which was a very late aughts moment, for those of you who know.

1:56:21Sean Fennessey:So rendition's out. Yeah. 2007 Lions for Lambs. Yeah, didn't revisit this one. On paper should be one of the best movies of the year. It also comes in one of the best movie years in recent history. Robert Redford directs Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and also Robert Redford and a number of other people in a kind of political thriller slash allegory about the relationship between government, the media, the military, and the intellectual class and the way that we all understand those things. Meryl Streep plays a kind of thinly veiled stand-in for Judith Miller, I believe, the New York Times journalist.

1:57:02Sean Fennessey:I think I've got that right. And Tom Cruise plays a very unctuous senator, young senator. And the movies are very bad. And it pains me to say that it's very bad, but it is very bad. So it is not going in. 2008 Mamma Mia. Yeah. So we have six greens right now because we're about to go on a little run here. Yeah. So we need to kind of know how much space we have and what we're working with. and I think no matter what Mamma Mia has to go in I fully agree because just because of how much money it made it is a box office smash yes I'm with you centered around I wouldn't have known this two months ago but now I do and all leading up to Meryl Streep singing the winner takes it all at Pierce Brosnan below a beautiful hilltop church nothing funnier in my life then when my daughter stops, looks at me and says, money, money must be funny in the rich man's world.

1:58:06Sean Fennessey:She does that all the time now. Mamma Mia's green. Yeah. We spent a lot of time on it on our movie swap episode. She's very likable in this. Yeah, she's great. She's definitely not the problem. Weird movie. Okay. 2008 Doubt. Yeah. You're not a doubt person, right? I rewatched it. Okay. You got into it. And I was like, yeah, this is pretty good. I think it's pretty darn good. It is pretty good. And it's on paper, it should be sort of just a like a like a filler you know well but also just kind of oh they you know made another one with some of the generation's greatest actors where we're talking about morality it's John Patrick Shanley I know but listen but what was the bees movie uh the one with Jamie Dornan yeah and Emily Blunt yeah what was that one called Wild Mountain Time yes Wild Mountain Time T-H-Y-M-E I've I've rarely been so surprised by a film.

1:59:00Anyway, I think that I I don't know. I hadn't revisited it. I wasn't giving it the time of day. It's really good.

1:59:09Sean Fennessey:I mean, is Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viola Davis doing some of their best work? Yeah. It's not a movie I want to rewatch. It's a tough movie. It really is. It's a painful movie. I'm going through in my 40s this clash with spirituality and this movie would not make me feel good about that. I think it's yellow yes I think you could make a case for green well we'll come back to it that's it we have to have this conversation 2009 Julie and Julia

1:59:41I love this performance. And this is, she's having so much fun with it. You can't have it all here. No, I know. You're going to try to have it all. I'm not going to, well, I'm not going to have it all in the same way. But, you know, this is a character. Well, this is a real person, Julia Child, who was also turned into an SNL character before this movie. And so you are dealing with like a real person with a very distinctive style of speech and a lot of visual references in the TV show, which is how we all got to know her. And then also already a parody of it.

2:00:16Sean Fennessey:Okay. So that's that's a tough assignment. Right. And she brings such like like a joy and like a carefree kind of very open quality as as we were discussing in Defending Your Life. but like honestly even more so because Julia Child was like very over the top, you know? Bon appétit! And there is, she finds both like the over the topness and also like the regret and the sadness. It's a very romantic half of the movie. Her marriage was, Stanley Chuchi plays her husband and you really like, you feel all the ways that she feels let down by the world but is just kind of like barreling through them. I honestly think it's amazing.

2:01:06My take here is that she should have won for this and not the Iron Lady and that you got to take away the Iron Lady and give it, because it's the same type of performance, but this one is good and Iron Lady is just like a ridiculous Harvey Weinstein Oscar that she got. Anyway, we don't have to put it in, but I really, it should be yellow at least. It's quite good.

2:01:28Sean Fennessey:Let's yellow it. We do have some decisions to make here in this back half of her career. Well, so here's the thing is that I think she's great in Fantastic Mr. Fox also. You can't go in, but I know what you're saying. I mean, the thing is, did we put it in the Clooney Hall of Fame? Did we do a Clooney Hall of Fame? We did do a Clooney Hall of Fame. It has to be in the Clooney Hall of Fame. I don't remember. I don't remember if we did that. He's so, he's so good. I do think we probably put Toy Story in Tom Hanks' Hall of Fame. Fantastic Mr. Fox did make the Clooney Hall of Fame. Okay, good. Okay, that's correct.

2:01:53So you feel fine about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he's obviously like the star of it. Yeah, she doesn't have a ton of to do it, but she's great.

2:02:00Sean Fennessey:All the voice performances in that movie are A+. Yeah, okay. But we'll just say Red. Yeah. 2009 is complicated. I'm not going to throw a tantrum for this one. Interesting. I don't think that... I like it. I really like it. And I think it's kind of the most under-celebrated of the Nancy Meyers movies. I think Meryl Streep gives a great performance as a woman in a Nancy Meyers movie in it. She brings exactly what you want.

2:02:34Sean Fennessey:Remind me, she's married to Alec Baldwin. Well, she's divorced from Alec Baldwin. They're divorced. He's remarried to the wonderful Lake Bell. Yes. She falls for an architect played by Steve Martin who's remodeling their home. Remodeling her home. Her home. Renovating. well she's rebuilding the kitchen that she's building the kitchen that she always wanted which is a metaphor for how she didn't wasn't really living her full life but then she's going to oh my god you can do that in a movie she and Steve Martin make chocolate croissants while high at her bakery because she owns I like that part yeah she owns she owns on third but also but she has an affair with her ex-husband so that's what it is I recall the look on Alec Baldwin's face after they have consummated yeah good stuff And then she has that scene where she tells all her friends, she was like, I'm having an affair with Agnes Adler's husband.

2:03:28She seems like a really fun hang in this movie. And I would love to be able to shop at her store and eat there all of the time, though it seems cost prohibitive.

2:03:37Sean Fennessey:Alec Baldwin in 2026 comes to you and says, I want to throw it all away. I'm going to leave my wife, Albarino, or whatever her name is. Yeah. Agnes Adler. No, no, no. His real life. Hilaria Baldwin. And I want to be with you. I've been listening to the big picture. I want to be with you. Would you go? Would you join him? Never been an Alec Baldwin person. How interesting. It's not even a question. I'm like honestly a little grossed out by him and it's complicated. Meryl's very good and it's complicated. A film that I like primarily because of the exteriors that's set in Santa Barbara. I think that you could recast both guys and make a more interesting movie, in my opinion.

2:04:20Sean Fennessey:Noted. Yellow for it's complicated. We have 18 films in 18 minutes. We're going to make this happen. 2011, The Iron Lady. She plays Margaret Thatcher. Felita Lloyd, who directed Mamma Mia, directs this film. She could not direct Mamma Mia, and she cannot direct The Iron Lady. She did win an Academy Award for this performance, a portrayal of a real person, and people tend to win awards like this all the time. We would see five years later that Gary Oldman would also win an Oscar for portraying the British Prime Minister. Iron Lady is not going in. Yeah. I mean, he won for portraying Winston Churchill, who won the war.

2:04:54And Margaret Thatcher's legacy in the UK, it's, you know.

2:04:58Sean Fennessey:You know, Anthony Hopkins won for playing Hannibal the Cannibal. You know, it takes all kinds. It's not going in. I mean, she does a good impression, you know? 2012 Hope Springs. Didn't rewatch this, but I have seen it. I've not seen it. I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to watch it. I'm going to watch it. And then I just didn't get a chance to watch it. So I know what it is. It's a movie. It's directed by David Frankel, who directed The Devil Wears Prada. And it's about a couple in their 60s or even their 70s who are trying to patch it up, who are trying to understand themselves better.

2:05:27Sean Fennessey:In the latter half of their life, Steve Carell plays their therapist. Yeah. Is it good? No. Okay. Red. And she's also doing a little, it's like folksy barrel. Got it. Okay. 2013, August, Osage County. How to speak about this movie. So complicated, of course, based on the Titanic. Yeah. award-winning play by our friend Tracy Letts, which is really one of the great works of stage writing in the last 25 years in America and 30 years in America. And the movie has a complicated reputation because it's not very well directed. And it's John Wells who directed it. And it feels as though he was not the right person for this.

2:06:08Sean Fennessey:But it is such a platform, such a stage for great performances. She gives an Academy Award nominated performance as Violet Weston, the matriarch of this family that is coping with the aftermath of the death of the patriarch of this family, played by your beloved Sam Shepard. It's a very big and showy performance, but it's a very big and showy character. It's a person who commands whenever she speaks. Did you rewatch this? I did. Okay. And I also remembered the reputation. And I, so I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah, it's very watchable. Yeah, and especially that dinner scene, which is when you can kind of dispense with, you just get Tracy's writing and you get all of these amazing actors acting towards each other.

2:06:58And I was into it. And I think it's supposed to be a big performance. so she's obviously horrible but then in that Meryl way like infuses a little bit of humanity or dials it down just you know 10 % as the character is supposed to but that's very hard to pull off so she you know she handles it well

2:07:22Sean Fennessey:she does she shows incredible vulnerability in very quiet small moments when you least expect it from her I would just love to see a slightly less conventional direction of the movie. It's sort of like it's either shooting singles on people's faces or it's shooting landscapes in Oklahoma. Yeah. And then there's very little else that the movie seems interested in visually, but the writing is so strong and so powerful and so memorable. There's so many great lines in the movie that it is highly watchable. I don't know where you think it stands in her career. Oh, I don't think it's going in. Okay.

2:07:58Sean Fennessey:We'll read August Osage County. 2014's The Giver. didn't revisit this. She plays the big leader in this dystopian sci-fi epic. The big leader. Dear leader. Did you read The Giver? No. Yeah. It was very big for me. Was it? As a book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lois Lowry, I believe. Okay, cool. Oh, no. Huge. It's not going on. She's fine. 2014's The Homesman. Didn't see it. I didn't either. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones. She has a small part. She does not have a big role in the movie. It's Tommy Lee and Hilary Swank, homesteaders. it's got to be red because we haven't seen it it's probably the one movie we both haven't seen on this whole list 2014's Into the Woods Into the Woods Into the Woods she plays the witch yeah very important part this is Sondheim it is but it's it's not it's not my flavor of Sondheim what is your flavor?

2:08:52with company okay yeah

2:08:56Sean Fennessey:directed by Rob Marshall who is a terrible filmmaker and I don't mind saying so because I don't like his movies. I didn't think this was very successful. I didn't go back to look at it for this episode. I didn't either because I knew we would not be putting it in. It's red. 2015, Ricky and the Flash. This is the final feature film from Jonathan Demme and she plays Ricky Randazzo, a kind of one part Chrissy Hynde, one part Bruce Springsteen style rock star who is good at the rocking and not so good at the family stuff. I actually have not seen this movie since I saw it in 2015, but when I saw it in 2015, I loved it.

2:09:36Yeah, who doesn't love it? Nobody saw it. Well, that's true. And it is also, it has that passion project-y feel of Meryl just like really wanted to do this and to work with Demi. And so I don't, we can yellow it.

2:09:54Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I don't think it's going in. I don't either. Maybe this is my blue. Oh, that's a nice one. This will be my blue. Ricky and the Flash, a movie I really, really enjoy. 2015 Suffragette, a supporting part for Meryl. This is a film about how you got the vote. Congrats to you. Thank you, Sean, for giving me the vote. And thank you, Meryl. It was my forefathers who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to ensure women's rights. And how does it feel to have those rights? And now we're doing so great, so thank you. You feel you have them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. It's all leveled out.

2:10:26Sean Fennessey:Suffragette is not going in. Florence Foster Jenkins, she earned an Academy Award nomination for this film about a rich old lady who wants to sing and thinks she can sing and can't sing. Right. Movie stinks. Hugh Grant is also in this movie. Yeah. It's really quite bad and it involves a lot of her singing poorly. Yes, which is kind of funny at first and then you're like, okay. Well, then it's a whole movie of this. Yeah. Huge miscalculation. I mean, it is an SNL sketch stretched to an entire film. 100%. It's tough. 2017 is The Post. I mentioned I did this All the President's Men episode and Brian was like, the post is that good it's not very good i liked it it's i did too he was like we all agree that the post isn't good i'm like did we did we agree on that um i do feel that the um the journalists feel particularly the journalists at the new york times feel that the post presents sort of a outsized impression of the washington post's role in the publishing of the pentagon papers um the similar situation with all the president's men seymour hirsch will happily tell you that he also participated in the Watergate uncovering.

2:11:31Sean Fennessey:I don't think the Post is going in, though she is very good as Catherine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post in that film. We can make that read. 2018's Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again. Haven't seen it. She's good, but she doesn't have as much to do. It's not as much focused on her because Lily James is playing Donna in Flashback. Right, of course. Maybe she's also, I don't want to spoil things for you. You think Lily James is Meryl Streep's essence? in the films of Mamma Mia, in terms of being able to play someone who sings and dances to a lot of ABBA in the 70s wearing bell bottoms, which is what happens in the film, I think it's fine.

2:12:12I didn't revisit it. I remember several plot points that I don't want to spoil for you, but I also don't remember what ultimately happens in the end. So we'll just read it and keep moving. This movie also made a lot of money.

2:12:25Sean Fennessey:Sure did. 2018 Mary Poppins Returns. We saw it. A reunion with Rob Marshall. Not a film I like. Yeah. A reunion with Emily Blunt. That's right. Who plays Mary Poppins. She's just a like... This is kind of wicked before wicked to me, where I'm like, we have Mary Poppins. We're good. Like, we did it. We did it. She has a... She plays like an old lady, an old magical lady that they go... Topsy. Yeah, what's Topsy do? She's kind of in the same race as Thanos. Mary Poppins returns not going in. 2019's The Laundromat. a not very liked movie that you and I like. We did. And we defended pretty hard on this show in 2019 and I stand by that and I stand by her performance as Ellen Martin and Elena and also Meryl Streep.

2:13:06Sean Fennessey:She plays three different people. We should point out that the Elena character takes on some, you know, there's some racial difficulties. So some cultural appropriations are you indicating? Yeah. Yeah, not ideal. So it's not the best. No, it's not the best. I think the movie's just got a really pugnacious attitude. I liked it as well. Attitude towards how the world works that I found to be amusing. It's not going in her Hall of Fame. She plays Aunt March in Little Women. She's very funny. It's a small role. You know, She's a big woman, not a little woman. Handing it on to the next generation, but she's very funny in it.

2:13:45Sean Fennessey:Yes. Not in her Hall of Fame. Though, you know, another one of those things where, I mean, she's now in this stage of her career where, you know, her and her supporting part kind of affirms the film as having a level of importance. 2020 Let Them All Talk, the aforementioned Steven Soderbergh film reunion very quickly thereafter. She plays a woman on a cruise with two close friends and they just talk and talk and talk. They just got so much to say. Lucas Hedges is there. Yeah, is the son or the grandson helping them? They're on the QE2. Okay. Or the Queen Mary 2. I think the QE2 is maybe not sailing anymore.

2:14:23I don't know.

2:14:23Sean Fennessey:Okay. Have you ever sailed down a transatlantic crossing? No. And I won't. Okay. I have airplanes. I like this movie. Okay. And it's probably too small to go on. Maybe it'll be my blue. But I don't know. I have some other points. Intriguing. 2020 is The Prom. Written and directed by Ryan Murphy. Have seen this. Red. Very angry. Very bad movie. Not good. Really, really angry. 2021 Don't Look Up. Bit of a defender of Don't Look Up. Yeah, it was fine. I think it has now like a weird reputation this is the last movie Adam McKay's made it's been five years since this movie came out one of the most watched movies in Netflix history of course Leo Jennifer Lawrence Timothee Chalamet yeah Cate Blanchett Ariana Grande Cate Blanchett Tyler Perry yeah unbelievable cast in this movie it's another one it's ensemble and she's just playing the well she plays the president of the United States of America yeah and kind of evil but kind of evil but kind of funny yeah being glorious asshole.

2:15:22It's good. It doesn't need a green.

2:15:23Sean Fennessey:It's red. 2026, she plays, as you mentioned, the insect queen in Hoppers. Is that going in? No, but it's good. Okay. She, for a vanishing moment, voices Rocky in Project Hail Mary, which I thought was a good bit. But I don't think it should go into her Hall of Fame. I agree. We have yet to see The Devil Wears Protted 2. Correct. And a real scuttlebutt, and maybe we'll have to redo this episode, is that she may be playing Joni Mitchell in Cameron Crowe's story of Joni Mitchell's life. She'd be playing Joni Mitchell closer to the current stage of Joni Mitchell's life. Are there going to be several Jonis?

2:15:58Sean Fennessey:I think just two. Who's the other? The rumor is Anya Taylor-Joy is the other one. What about Amanda Seyfried? I guess she didn't get the part. I think that sucks. I think it should be Meryl and Amanda Seyfried. I mean, Amanda Seyfried's a little older. Mamma Mia! Reunion. I think because Amanda Seyfried is in her mid-30s and Anya Taylor-Joy is in her mid-20s, it's about sort of when Joni became very famous in her mid-20s. That's my understanding. Okay. Also Amanda Seyfried's 40. God bless you. I know. Listen. Giving hope to us all. Exactly. This is what I'm saying. We've got to claim the over 40s.

2:16:29Sean Fennessey:Okay. So let's do some accounting here. We've got yellows and greens. Okay. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven greens. Those greens are Kramer versus Kramer, Sophie's Choice, A Cry in the Dark, The Bridges of Madison County, Adaptation, The Devil Wears Prada, and Mamma Mia. Feel good about all of those. Yes. The yellows are the deer hunter, the French lieutenant's woman, Silkwood, Heartburn, Postcards from the Edge, Defending Your Life, Death Becomes Her, the River Wild, Doubt, and Julie and Julia. So maybe I'll make Heartburn my blue. Okay. I like it. Which, you know, it has its core audience, but other people should check it out.

2:17:05Really underrated.

2:17:06Sean Fennessey:I'm going to throw an idea at you. Okay.

2:17:12Sean Fennessey:Silkwood. Postcards from the edge. Okay.

2:17:21Sean Fennessey:And Julian Julia.

2:17:26I'll take it. You think that's good? Yeah. I think Silkwood is the right choice. And I think in terms of like...

2:17:35Sean Fennessey:This work in the 80s is like, this is her best shit in my opinion she's very entertaining in a lot of movies in the future she's always good but this stuff in the 80s I feel like you really have to acknowledge so we've got and it is the lore of Meryl yes and I agree that she's great in The Deer Hunter but Kramer vs. Kramer is like is a good opener yep French Lieutenant's Woman is fine um if you had more enthusiasm for it I would push for that but but I think we have it covered with Sophie's Choice okay which she won an Oscar for and which is like really amazing whatever you think of the film or the source material.

2:18:10So if you have Sophie's Choice, Silkwood, and A Cry in the Dark, that's three 80s movies, and those are three great performances, and kind of the breadth of Meryl characters also, where Silkwood is a more normal, you know, just an American woman. Yeah, straight-head docudrama. Right, Sophie's Choice is, like, a high accent, you know, and then, A Cry in the Dark is just like, wait, who is that person in the wig in the Australian? And also kind of unlikable Meryl.

2:18:43Sean Fennessey:I think Postcards from the Edge also gets us comedy. Okay. I mean, she's very funny in that. And you've got a great romance. You've got kind of a... I think her participating in the Jones-Kaufman thing, too, is like a nod to her willingness to take chances even in the second half of her career. I mean, I think Adaptation and then Devil Wears Prada are kind of like, that's when it turns around. And those are the two types of things that she does. She gets really weird and she does something really broad. And she is like surprising and excellent in both of them. I agree. I think this is good. I think it's actually not as hard as I thought it was going to be.

2:19:18Okay.

2:19:19Sean Fennessey:Great. So that means the list in full for greens is Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice, Silkwood, A Cry in the Dark, Postcards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madison County, Adaptation, The Devil Wears Prada. Devil Wears Prada, Mamma Mia, and Julie and Julia. The blues for you is Heartburn and for me is Ricky and The Flash. I feel like we did it. Amazing. Did we do it? I feel good about it. I have no issues. Is there anything like hugely controversial? I guess some people will defend doubt. Some people will defend... Doubt's really good. I think there are many people who would put Death Becomes Her on here.

2:19:57Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I really like that movie. I think there's a case for River Wilde as like a step in her career, but not essential. Sure. And the Bridges of Madison County was like broadly seen enough that you can get to that. I don't know if there's like a beloved movie that we really overlooked here. I mean, maybe Out of Africa has its defenders. Okay. But I'm not one of them. So no worries there. For your own podcast, you know? Yeah. All right. We fucking did it. That's great with two minutes to spare. If we get, if the Joni Mitchell film is great and is like a capstone on her career, then you get greatness in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s.

2:20:35Sean Fennessey:And Bill actually posed this question recently of how many people can cross that many decades. Right. Not many. Though we don't have anything in the Hall of Fame from 2010s. But I have my love for Ricky and the Flash. Okay. And I think The Post and Little Women are good. So there we go. We did it. I feel good. This was a lot of work. We got more Hall of Fames coming up later this year. It's really intense. There's a lot to do. I want to give a special shout out to the estimable Seth Woodhouse, who has done research for this episode and supplied a lot of materials for us. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his production work.

2:21:13Sean Fennessey:Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his support. Next week, we are headed to Las Vegas for CinemaCon, which will be really fun. Before we do that, before we see any of the information that the studios are going to share with us, we're going to play the summer movie preview game. I'm going to refine it. I'm going to make it more coherent. I'm going to make it more legible to you and the audience. Okay. And fix the scoring system. I don't know when I'm going to do that because I don't have a lot of time, but I'm going to do it. And then we're going to play that and then we're going to go to Las Vegas.

2:21:42Sean Fennessey:Sound good? Awesome. Thanks for listening. See you then.

2:21:57Thank you.