In this mixed-bag episode, Nick interviews Alex about a ton of new movies, including films from Ridley Scott, Todd Haynes, Eli Roth, and Alexander Payne. Later, Alex highlights recent 4K releases, describes seeing “Punch-Drunk Love” in Paris, and reexamines the work of Peter Weir.
Nick makes a drastic update to his Top 10 of 2022, shares his thoughts on “Fair Play,” reviews a brand new movie Alex has not seen, and insults William Friedkin (again).
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
Watch Nick's films at https://www.nicholasdostal.com/
Send us mailbag questions at whatareyouwatchingpodcast@gmail.com
In this mixed-bag episode, Nick interviews Alex about a ton of new movies, including films from Ridley Scott, Todd Haynes, Eli Roth, and Alexander Payne. Later, Alex highlights recent 4K releases, describes seeing “Punch-Drunk Love” in Paris, and reexamines the work of Peter Weir.
Nick makes a drastic update to his Top 10 of 2022, shares his thoughts on “Fair Play,” reviews a brand new movie Alex has not seen, and insults William Friedkin (again).
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
Watch Nick's films at https://www.nicholasdostal.com/
Send us mailbag questions at whatareyouwatchingpodcast@gmail.com
Hey, everyone. Welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex with Darren. I'm joined by my best man, Nick Dostal. How are you doing there? Napoleon Bonaparte. does he have a French accent? No, no, That's one of the things about the movie. Like, everyone just talks in their native accents, like they kind of. Which is exactly, you know, I'll get there. But there is. When I saw Napoleon, I was expecting the Gladiator. I was expecting Gladiator. And I got way more Amadeus. And that is kind of that's a great question to ask, because, no, he just sounds like a queen. Everyone just talks in their normal accents. Why make them all force like these bad French? They're not going to be speaking French, so they're already going to be it's already going to be inaccurate because they're going to be speaking English, which Napoleon Bonaparte was not speaking English when he was ready. So to let them talk, they talk anyway. How's it going? How you feel in the excited to be here. Yeah, that's fair. I did promise at the end of last episode I promised everyone that this episode the next time on What Are You Watching? Was going to be our deep dive on. He got game, so I've been waiting 25 years to talk about that movie in full that we're just going to push it another episode because because we were talking like, All right, what are we doing next? It was going to be he got game. But then we had a little gap and we both realized that at this time last year we did a thing where I reviewed a lot of movies in one episode and you interviewed and you interviewed me doing that. So that's what we're going to do. That's what this is. This is going to be a mixed bag episode. We're going to talk about a lot of a handful of brand new 20, 23 movies. Some of them are still in the theaters. Some of them are available to stream for a price or for free. And then at yeah, I'm going to talk about some older stuff that I've been watching, that we've been watching mixed bag episode, really just trying to give people some recommendations, you know, ahead of the holidays maybe. And this is also not our our final like top ten of the year episode. This is no, no, no. None of the a lot of the movies I'm going to talk about today are like, good to kind of throw on are good. You know, if there's just a few people around you want to put something on. I've split them into genres. So we have erotic thrillers for you today. Do we ever? Yes, we have. We do. We have, you know, epic action movies like Napoleon. We have some, I don't know, like smaller indie movies that are really good and kind of snuck up on me. We have some Oscar hopefuls. We have an out and out horror film from Eli Roth, just a bunch of random stuff. And then yeah, that's what's kind of exciting about it. But no, this is not there might be one or two movies I mentioned today that may end up in my final top ten of 2023 list. But no, that's not that. We usually do that in like the end of January because you usually have to catch up on some movie. So do I. We you know, we both have to catch up on like final stuff. So that's when that will come out and stuff. Usually still like we still have all of December. There's going to be some movies that are still to come that are going to be in the play. Poor Things is not going to be reviewed in this episode. Michael Mann's Ferrari, Those are two movies I'm just dying to see. Yeah, I I'm really dying to see. Like there's yeah, there are still a few coming out. This is like some of these are things I've missed along the way, but most of them are movies that have come out kind of since like September, October and November. So that's it. I was researching this episode right up until we hit record. I just finished a movie that a few people recommended for us on Twitter actually, so that was cool and hopefully there's something for everyone today. I'm very excited. I'm just going to say this before we get into it, okay? That just based off of the movies that I've seen this year and what are still to come, I'm very excited for the acting categories in the awards season. Yeah, it's going to be it's going to be a really interesting mixed bag because if I had to say right now and I have no idea what I'm talking about, I really don't. The frontrunners early for actor. You have Killian Murphy. He's an early frontrunner, but he's going to have competition in Paul Giamatti. And there's going to be something, someone else that maybe I don't even know about. It's going to do Competition for actress. We have Lily Gladstone emerging as the frontrunner for Killers of the Flower Moon, which I saw for a third time, and that she is just she's really quite a beautiful, not supporting actor. Could be. Maybe we got Gosling for Barbie, we got Robert Downey Jr for Oppenheimer. I think Robert Downey Jr is really going to occupy what the role that Jamie Lee Curtis did last year. Like, you know, just kind of, yeah, I want us like, sorry, I do I I've been doing this my whole life and I really want this award like shame on me. And then they get the award and then supporting actress is really breaking away. It's kind of splitting up and people are going, where could this go? And Da'vine Joy Randolph, who was in the holdovers, Alexander Payne's The Holdovers, which I will be reviewing today, she seems to be kind of pulling away. It's like, Hey, pay attention to her. So, yeah, I mean, sorry to like, hijack that, but yeah, you're right. Like, it's going to be it's going to be interesting. Now, will those four win? They're kind of sounds like relatively perfect right now, so I doubt it goes that way. But. Well, you know, we'll see. We'll see. It's just already an interesting array of performances. Like it would be so fun if Gosling did get nominated for Barbie, because I can't remember the frontrunner to win right now. Not he will get nominated. Absolutely. You think so? When that movie's going to do well, nomination wise? When wise? I do not know. But that's the smash movie of the year. They have to nominate it just like they have to. They had to nominate Avatar the way water for Best Picture last year and had no chance of winning. But it was a smash like you have to Babylon should have got David Babylon should have gotten that let's just other Babylon commentary so ready to watch that again. yeah go do this is a complete sidequest right here. But this is something that I know is going to mean a lot to you. Hellboy. I recently rewatched Babylon. is my favorite movie of last year. awesome. What did it come in as it came in is number two a strong number two. But on Wait a big. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, I was waiting for that one that was sent me. Wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, things have changed. What is the. Stop the presses? New shit has come to light. The new shit has come to light. Okay, so. All right, here we go. Podcast Derailed. I'm going to set this up because dedicated listeners will know that last year it was just an ongoing thing of last year that you saw it. You saw everything everywhere in the theaters and March, like most of us did as I did. And that was your favorite movie of the year? You sang its praises multiple times on this podcast. I was always being kind of like quiet about it all year, and then I let it all come out when we did our top ten of 2022 because that movie was not for me at all. And you know, that's you really liked it. So still I have noticed. Yeah, but I have noticed a bit of a cooldown from within you because I had always to urge them, like, go back and see it again and then see it again. Because if you like a movie this much, it should be able to hold up to multiple viewings. And then I never I just let it go because I never understood like the fascination with that. But so I want to know how, how did, how did that get down a peg? Because I genuinely thought everything everywhere was like one of your favorite movies that you'd ever seen, let alone It's 20, 22 and I'm not going to deny that it felt like that. Like that. That first going experience was something that I will never forget. I will always hold that movie very close to my heart because of what I went through during that. Then I saw it a second time and I still liked it. I did, but it was not that experience the first time. And so I had I had a good experience with it, but it wasn't that first one. But I also wondered, well, maybe it's maybe it's impossible. Sometimes you can't get that first experience back, which is always a great question that I loved it like to ask that we always talk about like movies that what do you wish you could like wish you could unsee so you could see it again for that very first time. Because once you've seen it, you can't you can't ever get that back. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind, just as a ten year old example, is the docking scene from Interstellar sitting in the dome, Holly sitting at the dome at Arclight and seeing that. And that scene is still extremely effective to me. Extremely effective. But like that, that there's no replicating that snot that's in that movie's being rereleased rereleased in IMAX theaters right now. And I'm probably going to go check it out. It won't be that same Yeah, it won't be the same boom hit. Yeah. They do this for like one or two nights. Only now it stinks that I wish they'd do like a week or two long runs, but I guess it's expensive. But anyway. Okay, so yeah, that's fine. I get it like that first viewing is really impactful. And the second one, you're like, whatever. Okay, so that's yeah, I mean, I love hearing all this, obviously, but then you rewatch Babylon, which I've been tempted to do like again recently, I was honestly that might be my after Pod movie today. I've been really, really wanting to go back and revisit it because I love elephant shit. So yeah, what happened? So I'm ruining my my end. What are you watching right now? Because we're talking about this now. That's hilarious. So my, my and rewatched my What are you watching? Recommendation was going to be Babylon, so we'll just get that out of the way. But so the reason I did it was because I was like, you know, I'm going on like social media and I would always catch these like reels from it, like random, like just scenes from the movie. And I'm like, God, that was so good. That was so good. And I was like, You know what? I think I just need to rewatch it again and then let's see if it holds up to the way that you and I felt about it in the theater, because you and I had the best experience ever together watching that movie. so you have not seen it at home yet? That's okay. Okay, I did. I've seen it like two or three times total. Okay. Okay, cool, cool. And it held up in a way. yeah. That I wasn't expecting in a way where it was like, solidified. I was like, okay, the first time I loved it, but this time I got to appreciate a little bit more of everything that went into it because you kind of know what happens now. So you can kind of see even more what Chazelle was doing. Yeah, how he was going about it. There's not even a question as to like what will continue to hold up for me. Like, I think I could rewatch Babylon at different stages and still get everything that that movie was going for and still love it. So fucking awesome. It's took it's taken over and you should know how's, how's Bardo doing on that list? Top ten of 2022 for Nic. Total mirror Bardo. I've watched a movie two weeks ago. That movie Fucking rocks, man. I was in tears. I was in fucking tears. No one ever talks about that movie but me. It's Bardo. It's a movie. It exists. It's nominated for a single Academy Award for best cinematography, meaning that every film Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has directed has been nominated for at least one Oscar. I love that movie. No, I really I've been actually interested in buying the Babylon 4k. I wish Chazelle did a commentary for it, but he doesn't. But so I don't even know if there's really many features on it. But it would just that's the best way to see it. Yeah. When it's in, you know, home video is definitely 4K, but that's awesome. I love hearing this. All right, so Babylon takes it. That is very good commentary material too. Like for us to do that, We that would be so that's something. Yeah, that's something to consider because we would just have a blast doing that. That's, you know, I have some commentary ideas coming up. Some of them are for a little more serious movies, but we do like to balance it out with something that's like fun and maybe that would get people to watch it. What I was going to say, that could be like a push to remember this movie that no one saw that everyone got banned critically by. That's actually the best movie of the year. We get trashed for it, too, or we would get so trashed for it. So trashed. People like it. People like it. All right. So that's cool. That's wrapping up 2022. Yep. Very good. 2023. Kind of, you know, catching people up on some recent stuff. But yeah, not a recap of the entire year. Certainly. Now some only a few of the movies I'm going to talk about today, including this first one I actually have already talked about on the podcast. But this first one, I'm so excited that you watch this. It's Fairplay, directed by Chloe Dumont. I recommended this movie on My Killers of the Flower Moon episode because I woke up early. I was in L.A. to see M83, which we also partied about, and I woke up early that day and I just put this on. I had I had no idea what it was about, knew absolutely nothing about it. I'm just sitting there, like, transfixed. And I remember you came over like about 90 minutes later, like when the movie was done. And I went, Dude, if we had time, I would just put this on for us right now. But we don't put you have to see this movie. So you have now seen Fairplay, which is available for everyone to watch on Netflix. And just really quick, it's a contemporary erotic thriller of sorts, that fuze of sorts, the complexities of personal and professional relationships together brilliantly. It's not sex is not the main motivation. It's more of like a relationship thriller with eroticism. But Phoebe Dynevor and Elden Ehrenreich I thought were so good together. So tell tell us what you thought, because I love this movie. You know, it's funny that you had a little trouble, kind of kind of categorizing the genre of it. Yeah. Because it's also political in so many ways. And it lives in that high finance world, too. So it's not you can't really put it in a box the way can't you think you may be able to. Yeah. Which is a good thing. Good thing which is the best thing because the way that the movie just continues to reveal itself is to me the highlight of this film. You start to learn things about the characters in ways where they make choices and decisions that are just. The stakes are so high all the time that when someone does something, it's genuinely shocking. Yeah, the amount of times that I literally stood up from my chair just based off of what someone did or said, just like, yeah, one upping each other professionally, personally shit that comes out of their mouth. I was like, What the fuck? Yeah, yeah. And it's and, and it's not over-the-top. It's honest. It's yes, very. It's, it's just like, raw. It just like cuts. It's like, what's the one thing that has been building up for a, for a character that all of a sudden needs to be said. And they say it in a way that's just like, fuck, who the fuck are you? You're the one catering to an old man every night. Do you think you would ask Paul or Tom to talk until two in the morning? No. He asked you because he knows you can't say no, and that makes you weak. Every time you answer this call, you're letting him walk all over you. The only man I like walk all over me is you. What the fuck are you talking about? I've been nothing but supportive. I've given you advice twice I never fucking asked for. What am I supposed to do? I'm not supposed to act. Okay? I think I'm handling everything I think that's just some of the most interesting dialog you could ever write is just when that boiling point happens and then someone says what they need to say. But the way that they say that, my God, I yeah, I mean, and it's just a nonstop ride. The pacing never lets up. It's not a long movie, so it's not a tough ask. It's like 100 minutes, like an old, like a good old fashioned, just like 100 minutes, hundred and 5 minutes. And you're cruisin your cruise and cruise and cruising. It just reminded me in a time where we don't have movies, do this anymore, like before, we've always talked about this. Like you have these indie movies that come out. Focus features Fox 24 is getting a little too big right now. Yeah. Neon. But yeah, these were all like the movies you would actually go to the theaters to see that. For the most part, probably not many people heard of. And you're like, wow, this is like a really good indie. I feel like we're entering into a space now where all of their streaming platforms are just low key, just putting out movies that there's no marketing for. There's no like there's, there's dump. They just dump them. Yeah. And you just have to you have to basically be you and just see, there's a new movie out here. I guess I'm going to watch it and then just start to plug it because there's no other way to watch these. Like, there's no there's no billboards, there's no there's no websites, There's no anything that's letting you know, hey, here's a really, really good and taut political erotic thriller that you'll never, ever watch unless we say something. Yeah. Yes. Honestly, that you just kind of defined one of the main roles of this podcast, because what are you watching? Ain't about making money. That's not what the folks like. That's why you don't hear ads. Like that's not it's just it's about genuinely encouraging people to watch movies. Yeah, that's what we just want you to watch movies at good stuff and we try to gently guide you and nudge you. And, you know, we don't talk about this a lot on make, but our podcast numbers have been doing increasingly well, and I'm not sure why this is happening, but they are. They're just doing well. It's like each passing episode, and I know why. It's because we're the best there. The best, right there. Right there, Right. No, it's great. It's just we're just I mean, we do our thing, we plug away at it. But when people do reach out, one of the common things I find is that there's no one out here watching. There's likely no one out here watching as many movies as I do, because this is like it's one of the main functions of my life. So I'm so obsessed with movies. But a lot of people want to listen just to hear, you know, okay, I'm going to, when I do eventually have two or three free hours down the line, or maybe I'm only going to have 93 minutes, two days in a row. So that's enough for like one movie. What can I put on? What am I going to like? And, you know, I have personal friends who listen who do that. We have a bunch of strangers who listen who do that. So that's yeah, that's what this is. And you're right. Fairplay was a Sundance movie. It premiered at Sundance in January. And thankfully, Netflix decided to pick it up because it doesn't sound like any of those small, more indie geared studios wanted to. So thankfully Netflix does it and puts it out. But no there's no like I mean how many new movies come out on Netflix like every week that either they produce themselves it's you can't even keep up I'm going to talk about another one that just came out yesterday on Netflix. It's a really, really good movie that I think a lot of our listeners would really, really like. But and it is it's by a major director, Todd Haynes. It stars two Oscar winners, Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and like people to start talking about this shit. It's crazy. It's yeah, it's really, really crazy. So listen to us. We dig through all the shit. I sift through all this shit for you, and I try to to try to recommend stuff because trust me for the, I don't know, ten new movies I'm talking about today. I've seen 30 or 40 that just worked for me in 2023, and that's why we're not talking about them. Well, that being said, let me take over. Please do in the interview, because all the rest of these movies I haven't seen and we should start with another indie. We should start with a low budget and just knock it out of the way. Let's talk about that little movie, Napoleon or Napoleon, the greatest domestic romantic drama of the year. Yet Ridley Scott went out of his way, shot it for 5 million in like ten days. No, I mean, you know, this is a huge movie. This dude's a maniac. He shot this movie in 61 days, and I know you haven't seen it, but if. Yeah, if anyone. He said he's shooting Gladiator two in 51 days. None of us have seen Gladiator two, obviously. But I'm like, you doing this. I don't know. It's. I mean, it's wild. And his budgets are nowhere near what Marvel budgets are. And Napoleon has a lot of CGI, a lot of computer graphics. But it's so much better than the Marvel movies. I'm like, I don't know what he does differently. This is not a guy who makes one movie every four or five years. He makes I mean, he gave us two in 2021, two good ones. I mean, the last duel is like a really good, very well-done drama with a remarkable fight scene at the end of it. Yeah. And then House of Gucci is just like Pulp Trash fun, and those came out months apart. Like, it's crazy. It's so that's a bit of Napoleon as well. I definitely expected Gladiator and and when okay I mean how to even set this up. All right first let's talk about history, right? Because this movie came out and a lot of people are on his ass that it's not historically accurate. He had a few weeks ago, he being Ridley Scott, said, you know, get a life to the critics who said that. And I don't know. It's a fine line, right? Because like, yeah, I personally don't go to a movie called Napoleon in 2023 for a history lesson. I just don't like. I go to see it because Ridley Scott is directing it and I know it's going to have some really, really good battle scenes or it damn well better. And this movie does so in this movie. Also, I should say nowhere on the poster, nowhere in the movie does it say, based on a true story, it kind of feels inherent that it doesn't need to say that. But there are a lot of movies that say based on a true story that are just like full of shit and that stuff didn't happen. And that bothers me. But I guess I'm saying I don't know enough about Napoleon Bonaparte to be able to pick the movie apart. I just don't. I know that Gladiator is full of historical inaccuracies too, and I don't remember anyone being like, That's not how Marcus Aurelius died. Like it says, I don't know, just go along with the movie. So that's that's my pitch of like, who cares a little bit? It's a bit of a shrug. Like Napoleon. The film is not historically accurate. I guess there are hundreds of documentaries you could probably watch and thousands of books you could read. I just wanted to see a cool movie, that's all. But you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's just a fine line because I'm not creative license. I don't think every single movie is allowed to abuse it. Like, I don't want aliens to come down and start fighting on Napoleon's side. That's not what you know, It's not what we're saying. But if that one person maybe didn't make that decision, you know, it's fine. If Einstein and Oppenheimer didn't actually talk by the lake like it's fine, it's fine matter. I guess I genuinely feel that most movies that are done on some type of fictional basis like this, a storytelling situation, it's not a documentary. A documentary. I expect historical accuracy. From a movie. I suppose in this situation like this, you know, it certainly wouldn't bother me. But I wonder if the workaround for this is if you didn't call it Napoleon, but you just based on everything else that you did off of the idea of Napoleon, but made it a fictional thing, then people could kind of be like, this would be a really kind of cool, like off brand Napoleon story. I don't know. But then does it smell like it doesn't? It's part of the selling point. People want to see what Queen It's Napoleon. And yeah, I even think Ridley Scott has tried this. He's tried to do like I'm a little baffled that, like, that's the biggest topic of Napoleon because I do not think the average Joe has a really big grasp on like the French Revolution and able to call the stuff out. I think historians do, but I never watch Napoleon. And I was like, that didn't happen. That's not historically accurate. Where there was another there's another movie in the theater right now that takes place in the year 2006, and I haven't seen this movie, but there's one scene when they're all sitting around in some house watching Superbad on DVD. And I know that Superbad did not come out in the theaters until 2007 and therefore came out on DVD in 2008. That bothers me more than historical inaccuracies in Napoleon, because it's just it's a much shorter period of history that has gone by, I don't know, to each his own, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, that's all. Yeah, we talked about that one. That's just that's just a bit of laziness I think. Yeah, it is a tough question because how much are you going to let something bother you over what you want to see? But I want to see Napoleon so. Well. Well, I guess this is also a different situation, too. I hear he's releasing a four hour director's cut on Apple. This is a main talking point. This is a little concerning because the movie in the theaters right now is 2 hours and 37 minutes. And it is I mean, my God, it opens with a thrilling battle sequence. It has some of the best battle sequences that Ridley Scott has ever put on film. And there's virtually no one who will watch that movie and disagree with me. That's an objective fact. Now, there are other stuff. There is some sexual politics between him and his wife. There is a lot of talking about battle strategy. The movie at 2 hours and 37 minutes is not constant fighting. But when Ridley Scott hits, when it's Gladiator and there's a chariot battle or there's tigers jumping out of the fucking ground, he hits like, you know, you're in a Ridley Scott movie. And, you know, this is the only person alive who can do this there. I really, really want to see Napoleon again. Just for those battle scenes. But I am obsessed with movies. I think there are a lot of people who are going, well, if there's a four hour cut that's going to come out on Apple TV, plus maybe by the end of the year, doubtful, but maybe by the end of the year, maybe by spring 2024. Why do I need to fork out dough to go to see this in the theater? And that is true. That's a that's a thing a lot of people have like kind of battling around. And I don't know, I, I could see some parts that could be fleshed out a little bit more. And this is the type of movie that honestly could be better at 4 hours. He could just have more space to include more because Napoleon had, you know, quite a big life and 2 hours and 37 minutes to tell that life story is not that much time. So we'll see how that does, too. I'll be the first to watch it. Can't wait to watch it. Maybe it'll be a little bit more historically accurate. Accurate, perhaps. Maybe because they're not cutting. Yeah. Cutting around things that could be, you know. So we'll see how all that goes. But if you want to go to the theaters, if you haven't yet, I definitely recommend going to see it. And you know what you're getting yourself into. It's Napoleon directed by Ridley Scott. But like I mentioned, I did not expect it to be so horny. It's really funny in a very, very funny way. And like my dad sort weird hysterical on the phone after talking about the movie, I'm like, It's a lot like Amadeus. Just how they portrayed him is so goofy and flighty and horny and just like that's how watching plays Napoleon and while also being a miraculous battle strategic, it's like it just is remarkable. The first battle that he's involved with in the movie. It's so cool because he's visibly scared and he puts himself on the front lines and he's in charge and he's like almost about to hyperventilate and he's like, scared. He's like, fucking you're just with him. And he's going up this ladder and you see him like, build the courage. Because even though he's scared, he's almost excited. Like, I live for this shit. Here we go. And then we're just with him. And it's it's really, really thrilling to see that. Like most, I've never been in a battle, but I bet that's real. Like that. That genuine fear can't stop that fear of it's coming like I might die in the next 3 seconds, but also like I'm fighting for my country. Like, let's go. It was it was really cool. And then there's a battle. The battle of Austerlitz is I mean, it's that is worth the price of admission alone. Noble shit. No bullshit. All right? I told you on the phone I put up my arms at one point because there wasn't anyone, like, sitting directly next to you. I side and I just put my arms up. But I was shaking my head, thinking like, How the fuck is he doing this? Like, how do you do this? It's ah, it's so impressive. But again, not not an A-plus masterpiece. It's not what if you've heard thing You know, there's a reason why it's not being hailed as an Oscar frontrunner. It's not going to be. I don't think so. You know, that's a that's okay. That's fine. Well, you sold me You sold me on the non Oscar front running historically inaccurate movie of Napoleon. I know you sold it so well, so horny. Don't forget horny. Yeah. You don't bring your kids to this one. Well, I'm moving on. This is a movie that just dropped yesterday. This has been on my radar, so I'm very excited to see this one. And now that you have seen it, what is your opinion on Todd Haynes, his new movie, May-December? Yeah, great setup. This just came out on Netflix yesterday, as you said. I knew I was going to start my morning with it before work, so I woke up early. Now, I do not know a damn thing about this movie. I saw the poster which looks like them kind of looking into a mirror. It's like Natalie Portman kind of standing behind Julianne Moore in there, looking into a mirror. So they're looking at us and I'm like, okay. And I thought it was going to be a May-December lesbian drama with them. That's just what I assumed. Because, you know, May-December romance, one's old, one's young. so, like, im7 to 10 minutes in and I'm going things. This movie's weird. Things are, like, weird. I'm not sure what's going on, And I'm. I'm trying to, like, piece things together. I'm like, All right, what's let me try to keep up with it. And I gather that Natalie Portman is a famous actress playing a famous actress, and she's in Savannah, Georgia, to research her role in this role. It turns out she's going to be playing a real person. So she's going to basically spend the week with this real person and her family. And this real person is played by Julianne Moore. And when Moore's character was much younger, she was married to a man with kids doing that whole thing. She began having an affair with a seventh grade boy. They got caught, she got pregnant. She went to jail. Now it's 20 years, 25 years later, and Julianne Moore and that seventh grader are married. There's obviously a huge. you're saying too much. It's already it's already taken. I want to see it. Yeah. This I'm not saying this is all this is like literally in the first 10 minutes. And I'm like, so that's that's what the movie's going to be about. Like they're making a movie about these this, you know, true story. True story. What's in the movie? Of course, it sounds like Todd Haynes and the writer based this on some true stories in real life. You know, we hear about this stuff, the teacher who you know, we hear about this stuff, very, very interesting film that went in directions I did not expect in all the best ways. Todd Haynes is what an interesting career. Do you remember that his last movie was Dark Waters, which is like an environmental kind of like disaster thriller with Mark Ruffalo. Yeah. Mark Russell. Yeah. Nothing like his other work. Like this guy is that far from heaven. With Julianne Moore safe with Julianne Moore. my God, I'm not there. The Bob Dylan biopic of sorts. David Goldman Yeah. Velvet Goldmine. Mildred Pierce. He did with Kate Winslet. I love Todd Haynes. Carol is a movie that kind of really catapulted him. That was a movie that just hit every generation. Everyone liked it. They're like, Yeah, we got this. We liked it. This is much more of his, like clouds of Sils Maria. There's definitely some persona in here. I'm not saying it's necessarily as good as those movies, but I did not expect this. And this has a candidate of the movies I'm talking about today to be in my top ten of the year probably. It definitely could be Napoleon. Maybe Napoleon would be like a stretch, but yeah, May-December. Annette I actually really want to watch it again. Yeah, it just goes directions was like, All right, all right. I was calling it shots and going, I think it's going to be this and this. And then they were calling me out like 30 minutes later and being like, Yeah, I fucking got you. I got your number. Julianne Moore has done five movies with Todd Haynes and This Is Safe has always been my favorite collaboration of theirs. This is right up there. She's really good. Natalie Portman is just, you know, it's just great when these these people come back in and they're like, yeah, I won an Oscar for a reason. And I've you've known me for 20 plus years. I've been in movies for 20 plus years for a reason. Like and maybe not everything I do is like, you know, the movie, the best movie of all time. But here I am and I know what I'm doing and they're so good. And then this guy, Charles Melton, who I know he plays the you know, the seventh grader, turned into a very young husband. I know him because my wife occasionally watches Riverdale on TV. So I recognized his face. I was like, wait, I know that guy. And I looked him up and he's getting a lot of early supporting actor buzz as well, supporting actor is going to be stacked this year, so that would be Oscar chances for this. I have no idea. I don't know. It's it's hard to say what the Netflix movie is. It's just hard to say. But everyone watch this. It's not like overtly sexual. You know, sexuality is brought up, but it's not. It's a good one to put on a good weekend movie. It's good. It's very good. I mean, good mystery. This was always going to be one that was going to seek is Natalie. Natalie Portman is my number one. She is my favorite actress. Yeah, I will always see anything she ever does. So when I heard she was working with Todd Haynes, I was like, this is going to be so good. So I'm so glad to hear that it got you in a good way because it's this is going to probably be my weekend movie. Yeah, great weekend movie. I just put it on. It was it's a breeze, you know, 2 hours, just like a traditionally made movie. Clearly shot on location in Savannah. Again, I just want to reiterate and I'm going to say this a few times, this episode, I really this one I really did not expect to like and shame on me and I really liked it. And I am always going to call myself out in that regard on this podcast if I'm like just judging it without knowing a damn thing about it and then watching it and being like, Yeah, you deserve to call yourself out because that was a good movie and it's well-made and it's good. Well, anytime that you can admit that you're wrong is always a win on this podcast. Moving on, though. No, I got it. I got to go back one one area. I just want to open this up. Give me like 5 minutes on on this. It circles back to into Poland a little bit because I've just barely touched on it. Okay. I wanted to do Ridley Scott a service and his arguably I mean his most Academy Award successful film of all time Gladiator, which won best Picture 2000. You and I have talked. We don't talk a lot of shit on it, but we're we both acknowledge we were a bit cool on it. It doesn't get brought up from us a lot in terms of Ridley Scott's best work, I did that film justice. I put my son in another room and I put that thing on. Never press pause and paid attention the day before I saw Napoleon. And that movie's just not for me. It's not. I was extremely bored. But those battle scenes in Gladiator are unassailable. They're so well done. All the fight scenes are so well done, everything in between. I just wasn't feeling it again. So I think it's good to kind of circle back to movies. There's another one going to circle back to toward the end of this episode that I like a lot more now. So yeah, it just wasn't for me. I like Napoleon better than Gladiator in that regard, like I did. I thought Napoleon was much more had a lot more to say and was a lot more entertaining in its quieter moments. well, so that's that. I've always found it very interesting that a lot of people who are casual moviegoers, whenever you ask them, like what their favorite movie is, Gladiator always comes up. It's a big one. Yeah, it's a bad 1998. Like people that you're defining, they'll be like Saving Private Ryan and then Fight Club 99 Gladiator 2000. Like all those three, they could be like, Yeah, it's the best movie ever made. But yeah, like they say that, they're like, Obviously I love Gladiator. I mean, that's like, I mean, how can you deny it? And I'm always so curious because like, I don't dislike Gladiator at all. I don't think it's not a dislike. No, it's not a dislike, but it is one of those ones where I was like, there's some there's some giant like, you know, flaws in the movie there's, there's a lot of talking in rooms and like a lot of, you know, incest adjacent stuff and you know, like all that stuff. And I'm like, all right, I get it. I get like, okay, okay. But there's 20 minutes or so of like great, amazing battle scenes, but they're still 2 hours and 10 minutes in the movie. That's that's all I'm saying. I'll take back the word flaws because I don't think that's the right word. I think there's just some there's some drops, I suppose, in the thread of the whole entire story. But that's all to say that I always think it's funny that Gladiator is a movie that people revere in a way of, well, this is obviously one of the greatest movies ever made. Yeah, and I've just never thought that. I've always liked it for what it was. And it sounds like Napoleon is something kind of similar because also Gladiator is incredibly historically inaccurate. That's what I mean. Marcus Aurelius did not die that way. He wasn't like, smothered from a hug. That's not how he died like so. But also, you know, does it matter for that movie? Like, does that matter? I don't think it matters. It's fine. All right. We'll keep on we'll keep truckin here with the erotic package of films here, Fairplay, May December. And while this next one. Let me tell you. Yeah, because I don't know anything about this one. So this is. This is the one where I looked at it and I go, All right, what is Passages? Passages is the new film directed by Iris Sachs. He's done a number of really good indie movies. Here's the selling point for this. This movie was rated NC 17 by the Motion Picture Association, and Sachs rejected it. He thought it was censorship. He thought it was rated NC 17 because there is a gay sex scene and that was the only reason. So he released it as unrated and I've heard a lot about this. It was out this summer and I paid like 599 to watch it on Amazon yesterday. It's about a married gay couple. Friends Rogowski Sorry, I'm not saying that right. He's an actor. I've seen in a few different movies. He's really, really good. And Ben Whishaw, who is, you know. Q And the latest James Bond is very, very he's great actor. Yeah, they're great. They're married Friends begins an Affair with Adele EXARCHOPOULOS from Blue is the Warmest Color. yeah. And a love triangle of sorts ensues. This is all taking place in Paris. This is a very real, very frank movie. There were two notable sex scenes. There is one between Friends and Adele and then and then another between friends and Ben, which. Wow. Wow. Well, there we've come a long way since Brokeback Mountain, when people lost their fucking minds over a clothes. You know what? Eight second long sex scene in the dark and a ten. Hey. you can't. You can't take back the spit, though. Spit in the hand. So what? Yeah, I know. That's what I mean. Everyone lost their mind. Jesus, we've. We've called. This is my favorite part. it's great. It's great. he's. He's busy every day. Thank you for your contribution to film Jesus in this new Year. I go, yeah, Well, you might have thought that with passages, too. I was like, Wow. Well, but I mean, aside from that, that's not the sole intention of the movie. I we've all seen movies where the sole intention is getting freaky and just showing it just for that. This actually had, you know, a lot of heart to it and it was very, very real. And Adele, I think, is an amazing actor who does who is not in a lot of American movies, but still does a lot of movies abroad. And yeah, if you want something a little steamier this was that where passages where Cana is this streaming for anywhere for free or is this a pay for. Yeah I do pay 599 on Amazon. I said that like three and a half minutes ago, but that's okay We have but this is when you know, maybe it's actually available I will let you know everyone know if you can watch these movies, you know, for free like fair play. Netflix made December Netflix, I say for free. But you all know what I mean. Obviously, you have to pay for a Netflix account or you're stealing your parent's password or something. But yeah, All right. Now, this is one that moving on here that I'm very excited to hear you talk about because I actually put this movie on for 10 minutes. Okay. And I had to leave. And it's a terrible I don't know why I started it when I knew I had to leave because. No, I don't. yeah. If you know you have to leave, I will do this a thing sometimes where I know I only have half hour and there are movies I start that I don't like to, but that that I may bail on. I may bail on it for a month because I always have to finish every movie. But I may be like, Yeah, the first half hour wasn't for me. This is a great example I put on this movie and I had a half hour before my gym opened, so I knew I was going to go to the gym and come back and finish it. But if I didn't like the first half hour, I probably wouldn't be reviewing it on this pod, So I probably wouldn't have finished it. I would not have wasted my time with that. I would have switched to something else for this episode. Thankfully, I'm talking about the movie, what movie you're talking about. And we are talking about the movie Sanctuary. Yes. Starring our boy, one of our favorite. What are you watching? Acting reps. Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley. And it's directed by Zachary Weigand. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Who knows? Yes. So so in 10 minutes into that movie, I got that first turn of I don't even want to say what it is, but it is something changed the first 10 minutes and I go, all right. Well, that's that's kind of cool. And then so I've been waiting to get back to this movie. I'm just getting started again. Yeah, but what was the experience? I really liked it. I liked the movie we've been hearing a lot of. Really? Yeah, we've been hearing a lot about it. I maybe even John Klein mentioned it on Twitter. A few people on Twitter were like, Hey, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I did not get to see it in the theater. This is also one where if you go on Wikipedia, you go on IMDB, it'll tell you that the movie came out 2022, but it didn't. Just premiered at some festivals, became available to the public in 2023. It should be 2023 movie. Yeah, it's fun. It's, you know, the whole thing. Abbott is the heir to a hotel empire and Margaret Qualley is a dominatrix hired to keep him in line. Occasionally the entire thing is set in one hotel room slash hotel hallway. It definitely unfolds like a play. We've talked about this a lot. That can be a huge challenge for movies because I'm watching it and I go, All right, I get that What you're doing right now is a bit of a it's a bit of a game. Like, you know, I get it. It's wordplay. But at some point, something is going to have to turn, as you just said. And then can you maintain that for an hour, 45 minutes? And this does because when I thought it was going to slow down or get stale, they kicked it into a new gear or the dynamic changed and it was good. A bit of this is not going to be a selling point for a lot of people. So I say very cautiously, but a bit of a malcolm and Marie thing. But these two people are not in a relationship thing, but it's a pass off back and forth at the time. But I you just I liked it. There's a magic word. Yeah, I know. That's a selling point for you, which is great. But for anyone else listening to this. But yeah, definitely thought of that. Definitely it's but not as the language is not nearly as harsh as it is Malcolm Marie. There's way more on the line and that movie. But you know we Chris Robin is definitely one of the best actors of his generation. We like to call that out on this podcast. We can and it just you watch it, you're like, Yeah, he's great. She's great too. Great chemistry, you know, it's on Hulu right now for free. That's how I watch it today, this morning. So definitely, you know, check that out. Not as despite the subject material, not nearly as steamy as you may think it's going to be. It's not it's not really the vibe. Not nearly as steamy as, you know, passages or fair play or even made to some may December. But yeah, good, good movies. I'm talking to every movie I'm talking about today. I recommend. But you know, just know what genre you're stepping into. Sanctuary. It's not like they're not like tying it. Well, there is a there's a tie up scene I like, which there's no, you know, chains. It's it's not that kind of S&M thing. It's much more verbal than I. I don't care. I'd even if I'm talking to people, I'm talking to the people. They wanted to know everyone. This is what's the S&M. She will shrug off. It's like fucking not everyone does. I promise it. Don't you do? Can we talk about how great Malcolm Marie was? Yeah. I mean, you know, and fucking talks about her. Gave a shit about like, it's one of my favorite and always be one of my favorite covered movies. What I mean, what I mean by covert movies is when, like, a director, like, five people went to an Airbnb and made a movie, and a few very famous people did that, and that's probably my favorite example of it. I love that movie. I love her, I love her, and I do think it helps me love him. Yes. Let's keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. We can't get we can't get stuck in these past movies from 2021 in 2022. But my God, Sanctuary, I'm so glad to hear this because I am so excited to once again dive into this and I'm so excited to see Abbott. God damn, he's so good. sorry. Moving on. This is a movie that I know nothing about, so I'm excited to hear what you have to say about this. This is a full time buy directed by Eric Gravel. What's up with this one? Yeah, Eric, Probably because it's a French movie. I've just heard this one on a podcast. I heard it recommended on a podcast. Here was the selling point like for those of you who like talked about Boiling Point a few years ago, like this movie, that's all one shot full time. It's not all one shot, but it's so tense. And we're in like this kitchen and we're in this restaurant, you know, like, run, Lola, run something where the energy is up, up, up, up for 88 minutes. This movie is 88 minutes long. Extremely realistic, intense drama about a single mother of two trying to make it through each day. That's about it. She has an ungodly long commute from the kind of the sticks like out in the suburbs because that's where she can afford like a nice house with a yard that can have a trampoline. But she commutes a very long commute into Paris, where she's the housekeeping manager at a five star hotel. Fuck hotels, fuck hotels. Yeah. In addition, the movie is set during a massive public transportation strike in Paris, so she cannot rely on subway trains, busses, taxis, and she doesn't have a car. So that would make commuting for a very long commute very difficult. She has to find daily long term care for her two kids.
I'm talking like 4:30 a.m.
to 7:08 p.m., which includes having this person take them to school. The kids are like eight and nine, a boy and a girl she has to get to and from work she has to work, including gaining a new employee who's wildly underqualified. She's also in the middle of interviewing for a new corporate job, and she has to go just to find excuses to bail out of work and go town for these interviews. There are no taxis. She has to get home. It's raining. The babysitter can't watch the kids past seven. How will she get home? And she's got to do it all again tomorrow. And that's the movie that's full time. It's about yeah, it's definitely like anxiety movie, but the lead actress in it handles it so and it's not like flipping out in some spastic way. It's like I got to keep my head on and I got to do it. Like, my ex-husband won't answer the phone. Like everything I listed. Those are just a few things. And it's like movement. It's moving, it's moving it very good. You know, it is in French, but just of extremely tense and well-done. Realistic movie, fantastic ending. Also on prime right now for free. I really, really liked it. I just watched this last night. I was trying to fit in some movies to talk about. And again, I had never heard of this movie. Apparently it came out playing festivals in 2021, premiered in France 2022, and it premiered here this year, 2023. I don't even know if this is an Oscar contender for like best International film, but you want it, you know, a lean, mean, 88 minute long movie. No one's getting fucking stabbed, no sex and like that. You know, here you are, full time. You know, I got to say, I'm out of breath over here because are you I am so excited that there are every single movie that you have talked about is something that I want to see immediately. That you're never going to watch it. Well, I'm going to try real hard. I'm going to try real hard. But I have not felt this excited, this invigorated in a very long time. It is partially because I didn't think there were actually movies out that were actually doing the shit that we like anymore. That's what this episode is for. Yes. Yes. You. I am. I've got the vapors. I've got. I am. I am. I'm having a moment. Take your shirt off. It's okay. I'll pop it off a pop it off right now. All right, now, now we're going into one where I watched the trailer for this. Okay? The Netflix trailer that, you know, they always give you that little that little thing. And I looked at it and I was like, this could either be cool or this could be lame. And but the fact that it's on this list leads me to believe that the lame might not be what I think. Now, I also don't know the pronunciation of the word, so I don't want to butcher it like I butchered our poor director from full times name before, so I will let you do it. But we're talking about not yet. Netflix would have been wrong. Well, okay, y'all set it up. So night is on Netflix right now. This is directed by talking about hard names, Jimmy Chin and I am sorry. I just have to say Elizabeth Chai, it's like Valda Losh. Elizabeth Chai. They've already won an Oscar for Best Documentary feature. They made a movie free solo in 2018, which is a fucking crazy documentary about a dude who climbed the El Capitan in Yosemite National. It's 3000 feet high, and he did it without a rope and they got it. my God. Film? Yeah. my God, Dude, it's nuts. When you go watch it. You're like, obviously, you're. It's building up the whole time. Like, he's training. He slips at one point, like he's got this woman in his life. I mean, he slips like training, and it's like, how? What? And then they set it up and they're like, going to do it. And then he just gets like, the shakes and he's like, I'm not doing it today. And he's basically like, I'll do it when I want to do it. Have your fucking camera setup and I'll do it. And then one morning he just like starts and you see the whole thing. They got drones, follow them the whole way. It's a that you make in movie. No he dies. That's what. No I know. right. Yeah. Cause it fucking makes you stage six at the Oscars. my God. If I die, there'd be like, a fucking. I don't think you could release that movie. Made it just to the top and slipped and fell. but his name's Alex. Yeah, We just killed Alex. Fucking. What do we do now? No, he makes. That's not even a spoiler. Like. Yes, but what's cool about that movie is it takes a very specific person to be able to do that stuff. This is not a guy who like laughs. Certainly isn't a guy who cries. He doesn't show a lot of emotion. It's a very still even balance. A lot of astronauts are like this, too. They have I don't know, there's something either missing or they have something we don't have. But there is like a bit of a displacement of, you know, it takes a different kind of person to be like, I could fucking die climbing this rock. Most most of us aren't going to do that. And he does it. So you're following him? Not even talking about. Not yet, anyway. That's the movie they won an Oscar for. They also did not too. They've also done other great documentaries, Meru in 2015, The Rescue in 2021. That was about those kids in Thailand who got trapped in a cave. And divers have to go and get them out. Those kids, the guy either Nick, they all lived. No one makes documentaries about people. No, that's not true. That's not true. Nyad is their first scripted film, and it's about a real life woman named Diana and Diana Nyad, who had a dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida, had it her whole life when she was in her twenties, too, when she's in her sixties. And she wants to do this without the aid of a shark cage, Nothing like that. The movies on Netflix now and it stars Annette Bening as Nyad. I would expect to see her and Jodie Foster, who plays Nyad's friend and trainer, both of them to be nominated for Oscars without the chance of winning, just, you know, have a glass of wine. You're going to be there on the big night. I think they're both really great. Really, They're really great. RICE Ivens You know, the British actor like Notting Hill, the replacement. Yeah, he's fucking greatness. Really heartwarming. Like really, really good. He's kind of the guy who's, like, scouting out all like the wind patterns or the sorry, the, the tide patterns of the water and yeah, like the wind and stuff and just really good. Like I cried in this movie. It doesn't a movie doesn't have to be like an A-plus masterpiece to cry. You can also cry in a bad movie. This is neither it's not bad and it's not a masterpiece. But, you know, it's a bit of a standard biopic. But they also infused traumatic flashes from her life, and they brought those in in a really kind of unique way. And it was a movie that was clearly made by documentarians because they didn't give a shit. They would just cut to like montages of the real Diana Nyad, like swimming and stuff. They didn't care about blurring that line necessarily. They knew you were watching a movie and that Bening, she reminds us once every few years that she still has it. And you know, she's swimming. She trained like by swimming ten miles a day. It's not wearing makeup in that water. I just I loved her in it. I've always really, really liked Annette Bening. I've always had a soft spot for and have always wanted her to win an Oscar. And I don't know if she ever will. I've always liked Annette Bening, too. I completely agree. And that's I like that idea of splicing that real footage. I never I actually think that that actually makes it a little bit more. Well, yeah, full departure from it. Well, especially someone like me who I've never heard of Diana Nyad. I don't I don't like, follow swimming like I didn't I didn't know about any of this. So when they started doing that, I was like, okay, this is clearly based on a real person. Like, okay, I dig this. I get what they're doing. And it was just, yeah, it's a fun I can't say it's for the whole family because some of the stuff she has gone through in her past is it's tough. The way they handle it is, you know, they handle it in a good way. But this is more of like an inspiring movie, let's say. This is not something that's, you know, some erotic thriller. This isn't violent. It's not that's a lot of swimming. But I'm recommending it because if you want, like an inspiring movie to watch around the holidays, this will fulfill that, I believe. And hey, there's nothing wrong with crying during the movie. There isn't close. No, I cried three times watching Taylor Swift's ears movie. All right. And I don't regret either one of those weeps. Were you drunk when you saw that movie? Well, I don't see what that has to do with anything. I get it. It's your emotions. It's a little bit. I don't know. I would have cried either way. Either way, yes, I was drunk, but that's neither here nor there anyway. Yeah, okay, keep going. Speaking of a movie that I could only watch it. I was drunk nights. I didn't know if you were going to lead that. That was good. Nice. Nice. I land every shot that I make. boy. We're talking about a movie that I will probably never see again. That's okay. But I do have a question as to its relation to a certain movie reference from that back. That's what it is. That's what it is. That's all right. yeah. So we're talking about Thanksgiving. Yes. Eli Roth. Yes. Back in Grindhouse in 2007, there was between movies of Planet Terror and Death Proof. There was a trailer for a movie that truly did have one of my favorite cameos from Michael Biehn. my God. It's it's so it's a complete be like horror movie trailer for a movie called Thanksgiving. And Michael Biehn has this one line where he looks down and he goes, It's blood captain. And he's like, Son of a bitch. Let's put this bitch Thanksgiving. You'll come home for the holidays, you know. Bodyguard Great. Son of a bitch. One of his all timer son of a bitch is. Yeah, it's a great son of a bitch. Anyways, my biggest question is, is not. Is this movie good? I don't care. Is Michael being in the movie now? Now. So good team is back. What an missed opportunity. He's young. I think he's getting up there in age a little. I don't know if he acts a lot anymore, but. No. I didn't even know. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. No, no. All right, well, go on. Talk of. All right. The movie. Well, Thanksgiving. Yes. Directed by Eli Roth. This is for the horror fans. This is for someone who wants to see a good kind of comedy slasher. That's what this movie is. This is the third film from those fake trailers to be adapted into a feature. The first were Rodriguez's machete and then Jason Eisner's hobo with a shotgun, which I have never seen. So but yeah, You like it? okay. Of course. The Thanksgiving trailer, the original one, had just an all time or kill with the knife coming up through the trampoline and the cheerleader coming down bouncing down on top of it. Thanksgiving. This feature film is exactly what you think it's going to be. It's a bit like, honestly, like January if January six. That insurrection took place in a Walmart on Black Friday mixed with I know what you did last summer like it genuinely there's like there's this Black Friday chaotic attack of sorts at a big box retailer like Wal-Mart. A few people die and the following year someone wants revenge for the people who died at the Wal Mart. Really flood Cass, you got Patrick Dempsey, Gina Gershon, Rick Hoffman. It was you know, it's just a fun like Eli Roth slasher movie, like a genuine old school slash slasher movie. If you like Eli Roth. You know, my favorite from him. I really like hostile, too. I really like the Green. And I like knock, knock. Again, This is no masterpiece, but I definitely had a fun time watching it the night it came out at Alamo Drafthouse and so did everyone else in my theater. We were hooting and hollering and cheering, and it was just it's that type of movie y. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but he sold me. I didn't think it was possible. You sold me with the with the I know what you did last summer and the cross between the the and the insurrection. The insurrection. I think I saw all that. Well, I watch it. I go, All right, this is not like a normal Black Friday. And most of it most of us have seen those videos online about how, like Black Fridays have gotten insane. And people are like literally busting the doors down and running over people. And sometimes there have been reports that people have been, like, trampled or like, that's like a black site. Yeah. So this is that the way he, like, stages this attack? I was like, my God, They're like, try to break into the Capitol. Like, they're just rabid. They're insane. Fucking nuts. my God. Yeah. It's like a year later, so kind of. I do what you did last summer. How? It's a year later and someone's picking them off one by one. Just silly and fun. And, you know, I was a fan of Knock, Knock. I was a very big. Yeah, that movie. Yeah. Okay, now, now we're getting into a couple of movies that I'm very excited to hear your opinions on for very different reasons, because I know you're not necessarily not not a fan of these directors, but they're ones that really aren't your speed. Yeah. So and one of them is very much my speed. So I really want to hear about what you had to say about Alexander Payne's brand new movie, The Holdovers. Yeah, I don't. I had no interest in seeing this movie. I did not want to say no. I thought that I thought and still think the trailer is very bad and predictable. And I don't know if I told the story on the podcast, but when Dan was visiting me and we went to see Oppenheimer in IMAX, this was in July when this trailer came on. We each every 10 seconds would call out the next beat of the trailer, and it was the first time we had both seen the trailer. Like I went, The kid's going to yell and reveal something personal about himself. And then the guy went, My dad's dead, and then, you know, dance like dance like Paul Giamatti is going to be an asshole and in turn, nice. And that happened. And then I was like, an inspiring song is going to start. And that happened. Then it was so it's just so predictable. And I thought that would carry over to the movie I'm giving. I am endorsing the movie. This is not like the best movie of the year to me where it sounds like some people have absolutely loved it. But I when I sat down for it, I was giving myself the talk, going, You judge this movie a lot. You have no interest in seeing it. Now it's time to clean the slate. And here we go. And I did enjoy myself. I laughed a few times. I certainly didn't cry like I've heard other people have, but it only took me a few minutes to be like, this is Alexander Payne's Hal Ashby movie. He's going for like the last detail or Harold and Maude. I didn't even know the movie took place in 1970. I had no clue. I didn't get that. If that's in the trailer, I missed that. So I'm like, okay, you know, it's kind of refreshing to see, like people of authority, just like boozing and like taking a sip of Jim Beam, like sneaking a little pop here and there. And that never comes back around, not like, this person's going to need help. It's just it's like 1970, you know, the stuff, you know, someone sent kids off to Vietnam. Yeah. And they don't come back. And what you do get from the trailer is that this is some kids have to stay over at a boarding school, at a boy's boarding school. And Paul Giamatti is the sad sack teacher who has to stay with him. This is like a long time for winter break. And so it just kind of sucks and everyone's in a sucky situation and they try to make the best of it. Even though Giamatti is an asshole and he kind of he starts to understand what are the kids a little better? So it's all you know, I did mention that I think this will do well in the acting nomination categories. I could see this being a contender for screenplay, original screenplay, perhaps. We'll see. This is going to get like a picture nomination. It's going to be the quieter indie. I think It's not like an indie movie, but the indie sentiment movie. So yeah, if you're an Alexander Payne fan, you'll really like it. You just weird. But I'm not saying I'm not saying the holdovers is Hal Ashby, and I'm not saying I'm going to be buying the holdovers on 4K. That's, you know, I don't know how many times I'll ever watch it again. But you are a fan of his films, and if you're a fan of his work, you'll like it. I yeah, we'll start there and then I can talk about what have what's happened with me and Alexander Payne, because it wasn't like a defining event. I don't really know what happened of cooled off on it. Well, I know what happened. What He came over to your house, took off his shoe, took off his sock and smacked you across the face. Where then you've had beef you ever seen with this guy? Looks like I would fucking lay him out. I'd better. You fucking kidding me? That didn't happen. That was a weird thing to say, but be a reference I'm not understanding of. it's just the ultimate. I challenge you to a duel. A challenge to do a duel. A lasted for his first three movies I really love. I've always loved Citizen Ruth. I adore Election and I have always liked about Schmidt. I like Jack's work in that. I think it's a very different register for Jack that we really never saw before or since. And then all of his other stuff is just kind of I can take it as as it comes. I think the best thing he's ever done is his final installment in Perry's term. I when I was in Paris, I went to that specific bench that Margo Martindale sits on, and I had like a little moment. And in that park it was just it was great like I did that I love I do like his work. He does have a specific sort of vision. He's just not someone who's ever going for like the big cathartic screaming moment, and you get that big release that somebody is he's a much more like muted director, which I can appreciate. What I see missing from a lot of his work to me is his very sarcastic humor and almost satirical humor, like the humor in Election to me is just that was fucking hysterical. And I think that's kind of been missing from his later work. But he's also getting older, and I could say this of a lot of other directors, not just him. And I don't hate his movies. I don't hate the guy. It's it's not like that. I don't know. Whatever You do. Well, it's I don't want to go down this road and be like, grumbly. There's no there's no movie of his with the exception of election, maybe that I would probably given a or an A-plus to everything else just is in the B or down area. And that's okay. He's just not an all timer director for me. That's okay. I get it. I get it. I get it. You hate him on the He can be a little sentimental for me. That's true. He can dive a little into sentiment in a way that can kind of annoy me, but also, like, what's wrong with a little sentiment, buddy? That's the speech I gave myself before the holdovers. I went, I think it's going to be more of like a sentimental vibe, and it hit all of its beats in that, and that's okay. So if you want it, the sentimental holiday movie, this all takes place at Christmas. Here you go. The holdovers, you know. Well, I think you just nailed it on the head. If there's one thing that I know about you is that you are not a fan of sentiment. For the most part. For the most part. For the most part. And he is he is a director that likes to kind of like tackle sentiment and different. He kind of comes at it from different angles. I think that's why I like his work a lot. We kind of get these downtrodden characters and life is kind of just they've either remove themselves from it a bit or they it just hasn't gone their way. And now they're dealing with it and then it kind of wraps back around. Yeah, but all that is to say I'm excited to see it, but I'm actually very excited to talk about this next movie because this was one. There's so much to unpack. I'm going to try to do a little by little the biggest thing within one month, the return to acting of Michael Fassbender. so we we've talked about the killer. We have a whole entire episode on it. It is one of those things where it's like the man is back and we're excited to see what he does next. I had no idea that this movie I know I haven't said the title yet. I will. I had no idea that this movie even existed, let alone come to my surprise. I'm watching TV and I see a trailer for this and it's fast. Bender is the lead. I go, What the fuck is this? It's all it. And then it's directed by a director that I know you have a little bit less of a fandom for, and that's I can't ever pronounce his name, so I'll let you do it. Taika Waititi Right. I'm doing as best as I can. Yes, yes. And so the movie I'm referring to is Next Goal Wins. It's on your list, which is crazy to me for so many reasons. So that means that you must have something to say about it. And I am all ears. This was my tricky double feature day because I did the holdovers at like 505 or like 530. And then next goal wins at eight min. The AMC. I believe I'm the only one in next goal, which is like the theater was practically shut down. So I been there and I'm like, All right, I'm going to you know, that's a rare experience. I'm going to enjoy it. And I folks, I really do not want to see this movie. I thought I, I don't like why is he someone I have a lot of trouble with? Because the original movie of what we do in the shadows is fucking hysterical. And that TV show is funny too. But like, the Marvel stuff is not for me. And yeah, I'll say it like we started this podcast after this movie came out, but on Jojo Rabbit, it's not a film that's for me. And I tried twice And you really like that. And my dad loves that movie and hey, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, which to me was a choice. I done that one, and that year I knew it was going to happen. We all I kind of saw it, but I was like, maybe one adapted. I don't remember. That's it. One one of them, I don't know. And I was like, okay, wow. And next goal wins. They've made this movie in 2019. This movie has been. Yes. And that is not a selling point. So this movie was filmed like before Fassbinder kind of. No, He was already in like his racing's acting retirement thing. I Only went to see it for him. I love the car. Every single person I've recommended the killer to. I'm like 11 for 11 men, women, old, young, multiple races doesn't matter. Everyone digs the killer. Fuck yeah. The killers are so good in the killer. He's the only reason I went to see this. And I will admit that not only did I laugh, but I laughed my ass off allowed a few times in the movie, and I went, Yeah, okay, you did it. That's fine. I'm recommending this on the podcast. Now, I don't know if I'll ever see it again, but like his energy, which is so, like, you know, just tight and like, tightly wound in the killer things like shame or even things like Haywire. But this dude can be funny. I've also always I've always found humor in some of his deliveries. Talked about that a lot with the killer while him not being like overtly funny in this gave me a chance to be overtly funny. It's this is a true story. I had never heard of it, but, you know, it's it's kind of like Cool Runnings. It's a 2023. Yeah, it's going. Yeah, yeah. It's like this white coach hired to take over the worst kind of soccer team in all of the World Cup League, the American Samoa and. Chaos ensues, and it kind of becomes the thing where these people don't even want to win. They just want to be able to score a goal. And it just one goal. They don't want to win like a championship. We want to win a game. Just want to be able to score a goal because they never have or they have it like ten years. So you know, that's Fassbinder's character. Yeah, Fassbinder's character is a bit of a boozer that like again, just never came up. He's just like boozing the whole time. It's like, maybe coach needs help. Like, yeah, assistant coach in the team has or he gets a bunch of something drawn on him. And you know, whenever we see that in a movie, the next time we see that character, all the stuff is going to be like gone. But he goes, You assholes did this like it, permanent marker. And then every time I see him throughout the movie, it's just faded a little bit. So it was always there. And I'm like, This is the most childish humor, but I'm here by myself and I'm laughing. And I did. I laughed in the movie channel like it made me laugh out loud in a way that was kind of refreshing. It has some annoying stuff to it. I the movie's an hour and 44 minutes long and I don't know why. Some movies nowadays this is not a spoiler, but this movie opens with the director as some anonymous character who we never see again doing some funny voice, looking straight into the camera and saying something to the effect of this is an amusing that took place a few years ago. And I'm and I'm thinking, do we need this device to set this movie up? Is this movie going to be that complicated they'd like? We don't know. But again, I don't know. It does. It does it in the end to the final you know, it's a sports movie, so it ends with like a big final game. And the first half of the match is just told straight, like we're watching the movie and then it cuts. And the second half of the match is all told in flashback from it as someone narrates it. So there's weird shit like that where I'm like, Why do you why are you doing this? Just tell the movie straight, you know, whatever. What's Anderson does a lot of that stuff, too. Asteroid cities like a hat on a hat on a hat. It's like a play being turned into a TV movie based on a book. It's very strange. But anyway, weird shit like that aside, when the movie just calm down, it was like telling jokes. I found it amusing, but if you know where my head was at going into it in the end, that the only reason I saw this is because the timing worked out. Very pleasantly surprised, like very pleasantly surprised from that when I genuinely thought I was just not going to like it at all. It's just funny, you know, parts of it were funny in the way that he would be like, The hell are you doing? This doesn't even make sense. Like at what point, like a farce was in that guy's office and he looks at his desk and he's like, Look at this shit. You have a keyboard and a belt, but you don't have a computer screen. None of this makes any fucking sense. I like the way you guys do things, the way he said. So it just riling himself up. Yeah, I clearly I enjoyed myself with it. All right. You've sold me on every single movie that that we've talked about here. I'm Doing my job, making that money, All that advertising money is just coming in force, folks. And now this is one, too, that I can't believe that I don't know anything about this one. And it's by a director who I don't really know too much about him. I hear he's good. I've heard of him. He's done like a couple, a couple movies. I don't want to talk about it. You know, he's dead right? Why? Just died. Just died. I did a fucking. my God. That's right. He did? Yes. That's like we talked about this son of a bitch. Set it up. He it all. well, put some respect on William Friedkin's. Name William Friedkin Recipes. And The Exorcist was an amazing, amazing movie. And some of us have even seen it more than once. Maybe even a couple of times. So I am referring to that. Then I'm referring to the Caine Mutiny Court martial. Yeah, it's not I mean, don't be down on yourself for not having heard of this. This is one that they film. This is like a covert movie. It all takes place in the courtroom, and they just have gently it did not get a theatrical release. They've gently just of dumped it out on Paramount. Plus, no one watching this would ever say it's William Friedkin's best movie. That's okay. More like has a made for TV movie vibe. He did this with 12 Angry Men. He remade it for TV. The Caine Mutiny court martial is, well, basically on episode four of What Are You Watching The Remembering William Friedkin podcast. I said that I would watch this movie and report back. And The Caine Mutiny was a novel that won the Pulitzer in 1951 that was turned into a popular Broadway play in 53, starring Charles Laughton and Henry Fonda. Humphrey Bogart. It made a movie about it in 1954. So it's one of the it's this material, you know, that just kind of like circles around, like lonely hearts, like that type of stuff. This movie, this version stars Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Clarke, Jake Lacy, Lance Reddick, Also rest in peace. It's you know, it's a bit uneven both in the way it's shot and the performances. Like I said, the entire thing takes place in a courtroom. It really feels like a filmed play. And that's it. It's this is not Borg. This is not Killer Joe. This is not The Exorcist, which is a great film. Great film. So great film really is for the Friedkin Complete estate like me, that's all. But I wanted dementia. Not not a ringing endorsement, I know, but I did want to just give it a little attention because it was his last film, because the man did pass away. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. And I remember us having this conversation because we we, we it is revealed that I basically have lived my entire life in a William Friedkin list universe. Never seen the French Connection. Right? We didn't have that combo on the pod. But I asked you if you wanted to be a part of that episode where I was remembering him and I mean, yeah, it didn't. It wasn't just The Exorcist when you were like, I haven't seen the French Connection. I was like, wow. But because that's one. I mean, some when when you love movies, you can like, save some like save the French Connection and save the ten hour and 40 minutes long. Save it for when you're like, I want a perfect and 40 minute thriller and then you're going to put it on and be like, that's why that's one of the best movies like ever made. That's why it's remembered that way. So, yeah, save it. I love the French Connection. I wanted David, because one of the only movies that I know that I've seen before, The Exorcist was cruising. You're the only one alive that saw cruising before The Exorcist. I guarantee it says a lot about you. Got a lot of foul fucking handkerchiefs. Jesus. my God. But that's was for my new. Yeah, my new releases for this episode. That's it. I got a few more movies to talk about, but they are things that have been out for decades, for a few years, if not decades. But. But I wanted to end this section I hope are ending it with something from you that's right. So, yeah. So you interview me now. Do it right. Do it right. Do do, do me like I do. You. You said that we're recording this. Don't do me like I did. You. You're really going to enjoy passages like today's December 2nd. That's what we recorded this on Saturday. You said yesterday in first that you were going to go see a movie and then it sounded like some of your coworkers got roped into it. So you're like, We have to go see a movie. And I honestly thought you were going to report on this podcast that you just didn't end up seeing a movie so well. Hopefully you did. And if you did, you're going to give us a review of it. But if you didn't, then we're just going to keep on. Nope, I, I went and I saw and I went and saw a movie that I was very excited to see because I was such a fan of his first movie. I saw Maestro last night. Whoa. Yeah, right in L.A.. in L.A. It's in theaters right now. this is a big deal because I am not going to be able to see this for, I don't know, like three more weeks out in D.C. for three more weeks. And I definitely want to go to the theater. Not seen on Netflix. So, everyone, this is Bradley Cooper's next movie as a writer director playing Leonard Bernstein. It's called Maestro. It's going to be a Netflix movie. Don't give us any spoilers, but wow. Yeah, give it to him. It's Holy shit. Yeah, it's great. This is huge. Yeah, I'm. I'm very curious to see what you think about it, because there's a lot of throwback to the look of old Hollywood. I love that. And the. But I. But I'm wondering because there's a lot of CGI. Okay yeah I figured in so yeah, so that was something that was there and I even question it was in my head. I go, I wonder what Alex is going to think about this. Interesting. The acting in this movie is out of control, thank God. I can't imagine Bradley Cooper not being nominated. Same thing with Carey Mulligan. That's what we said about Wait, no, he was nominated for Actor for a Star is Born. But he was the director. Yeah, that's right. He didn't get the director. Yeah. And and this while I still I mean, it's going to be very hard for anything to be. The star is born for me. It's like that movie just holds such a special place in my heart. This feels like a Bradley Cooper movie. And you can't really say that until he's done more than one. This has, like it. I can't even put my finger on what it is that he brings to something as a director. There. Just a I think it's just an actor's director. He he, he he really kind of knows how to nail moments in certain ways that when this movie has certain moments, Mann does it. It delivers in a way where it's like, well, that that's got to be like one of the best scenes of the year who I don't know enough about. Leonard Bernstein. Same here. To me, this movie doesn't necessarily feel like a biopic. Okay? So if people are kind of going into it, looking for that type of life story, I don't know if this gets it, but that was okay for me because I didn't really care to know. It's kind of the same question we had about the documentary. Like, do we really want to watch a movie that's beat for be this person's Life and all of the historical accuracy? Or do we kind of just want to see this? And, you know, honestly, this one thing that I'm sure the movie that I know, the trailers given crap for is the make up for Bradley Cooper's knows well that yeah, that was like a frankly a fucking ridiculous like ticktock Twitter thing that went around for a few days and then it's all I hear you had to come out. Yeah, the family had to come out and be like, we agreed to this. Like, this is what our dad look like. Like up and go away. But did that bother you on film at all? Was it like, not it? Of course not. But I can understand that in the trailer, when you're not settled in to looking at someone's face for the next 2 hours, and you know what Bradley Cooper looks like, it is distracting in that way. But from the second the movie starts and you just see that that's what it is, it never once becomes distracting at all. You are just but that's also a credit to his acting. Of course, like this really is like a performance where it's, you know, the whole thing got the makeup. He's got the age, you know, he goes through all different areas of the life. Not once did I feel taken out of where it was going because of that. man. I just want to say that up front. Yeah, this is really exciting. So what a lot of directors, especially actor directors, when they do their second movie, you know, you can call it you call this with any director but a sophomore slump and you notice a very serious plummet kind of in quality and performance and all this stuff. You do not get any of that. It's a strong film. I don't feel it's as strong as the first effort, but that's okay. Yeah, He wants this to be an Oscar movie. If it feels like that, it's very safe. It doesn't it doesn't go into some of the details. His life that I'm sure moviegoers like you and I would be like, come on, let's let's go. I get it. I get it. Yeah, Yeah. It's safe in that way. But it's okay because he kind of he doesn't set it up in a way where you think that we're going to go there and then takes it away. He he keeps it a very of it seems like he's really knows what he's doing with it. And Kerry is good because, I mean, I love her. You're going to love it. I love it for her. It's a it's a it's a it's a true to form for her. Well, I liked it. He credited her first, like on the posters in the trailer, like it says Carey Mulligan, and then Bradley Cooper, because, you know, he's writer director. He did the same thing with Lady Gaga. He gave her first billing in A Star is Born, which is which is cool. that's a great review. I'm so excited to see this movie. So that's when I said earlier, like Ferrari, poor things. This is probably the third those those are the three big ones I think for me that are left. So I'm really excited. My, my dad is a huge just Bradley Cooper fan stars. Yeah. And he also really, really loved that movie. So I'll try to see that with him. We want to see poor things together. The most sexually explicit film of 2023 we are trying to see together. It's really that's my God. Have you seen what it's rated R for? Like the trailer? It's like perverse sexuality. Perverse like all its Emma Stone is already done. Like before the trailer. She's like, Yeah, I want people to know that this is a very specific character. I picked it like specifically. Yeah, I think it. I think poor things like, goes there. okay. Yeah. Okay. that's. And I'm going to see it with my dad, I think, because he loves Yorgos. Who? That's great, Maestro. We're going to talk about it a lot more like later. I don't know if we'll do a full review maybe, or like, a little bonus episode, but I'm glad. Glad it did disappoint you. I'm glad it, like, holds up. I hear you about the CG. I'll be very curious to check that out because you had Netflix money to work with. So also another thing to keep in mind, that movie was originally slated to come out last year, and rumors, these are rumors were reported that he did not want to release it and compete against Tor, which that is not about a real life composer, but it is about a composer. And he thought, I don't think the world needs to composer movies. Like in the same month. Maybe he's right. I don't know. I don't know even know if it's the same audience. But obviously a movie like Maestro, by virtue of the fact that it's being released on Netflix, is going to that's where its sole audience is going to be, not at Soul Like Me will go see it in theaters or people like you, but whereas horror was in theaters only. So I don't I don't know. I'm I'm very, very curious to see it. I've been dying to see it. I haven't watched the trailer, so the cinematography is great in it. It's definitely liberty. Yes. Yeah. He's a guy who did, you know, Star Born to Dream Mother. Yes. That was it for the new reviews. That's great. I love hearing that. I love hearing that. So now we're going to go into a section of this episode where. As we all know, Alex collects movies. I know you are a collector of sorts, would you say? And. Yes, yes, yes. And specifically, we are now getting into the 4K format, which I, for 1 a.m. extremely excited about, and we're going to burn through a lot of these recs that you have right here. But there is one the top of the list that is really is the one that I want to really talk about the most, because I think we can all agree back when we talked about our Heat podcast, we all can agree that Michael Mann's best movie he's ever made is undeniably Black Hat. Yeah, yeah. So? So until now, because the director's cut of Black Hat is even better than Black Hat. So we now have to do best. Michael Meyers, Tell me about that. It's all right. This is yeah, this is the hardcore movie nerd section, because in addition to talking about a few movies, I am going to talk about the 4K discs because I am a collector, but my collection is not about quantity, which sounds ridiculous because I have so many. But what what I'm doing routinely now is if I have it on like DVD and there's no special features and then someone releases a 4K, I'm doing a lot of upgrades and donating my DVDs, yadda yadda. This Black hat 4K has been a white whale of sorts for physical media lovers because Arrow, a great company not unlike Criterion they're like a, you know, really good company. A physical media announced this 4K and everyone is flipping out about it because the director's cut of Black Hat premiered like on Effects like in 2016 and then it was gone. And so I've never seen it like it was just gone. And so everyone's like, Cool black hat, 4K going have director's cut, right? Arrows like, no. Yes. So they kept delaying it. So I was going to get an email like every week saying we probably were still working on it. We decided to add the director's cut to a second Blu ray disc. So we have to, like, remanufacture everything. So finally arrive now. Blackhat joking aside, it's not a very good movie. Like it's just it's there. Have you seen it like the original? No, I think so. It's it's confusing it's about like hackers and Chris Hemsworth and it just you know, the stock market gets involved. But Michael Mann is no stranger to recutting his films and I've always heard that this is like the director's cut. It's so much different even though it's not that any time. I just thought he rearranged a lot and put like the the beginning of the film in the middle and all this stuff. So I've only seen black out once and I'm not going to lie. It's been nine years, like eight, nine years. I don't have the best working memory of it. I remember all the action scenes because no one does action like Michael Mann, you know, all the gunplay. But I put this on a director's cut, put the Sony in the other room like the minute the Blu ray arrived. And I really liked it. I was like, This is a good movie. It's still like his performance. I'm never going to understand when an actor just doesn't have a command of an American accent. And Chris Hemsworth, I'm not even talking smack about him. He just doesn't. He's an Australian guy. Let him be an like, who cares? Yeah, it doesn't matter to that movie that he's American. It's so. But that's just me. That's like stupid stuff about me. I also acknowledged that the only way to watch this is if you do buy this 4K, which very few people are going to do. But I'm just reporting that as an experiment of editing this is a really, really cool experiment. We've talked about doing an episode where we specifically call out our director's cuts better because just because it's a director's cut does not mean it's going to be better. Longer is usually what director's cuts mean, and sometimes they get buried by not having a good editor. It's like you didn't need to include all of this. This insofar as I can remember, I have not had time to go back and watch the theatrical cut, which I that's another thing I might do after this part. But the director's cut was just good. It was a good movie. It's a good Michael Mann movie. I liked it. It made way more sense. I was not confused by any of the stories, so I just wanted to call that out. Yeah, for, you know, movie lovers, it was a lot of fun. That's cool. That's very cool. Next up, this is not a 4K Blu ray. For the first time in physical media history, Ernest Dickerson's 1994 masterpiece, Surviving Game, starring Ice-T Watts and Gary Busey, is available on Blu ray. If you are a kid of the nineties like I was, this was on cable constantly. It is an update of the most dangerous game in which a bunch of rich white dudes said, no, this is a bunch of rich dudes. Bring Ice-T out to the woods and hunt him and you know, he's got to survive to live. Great film. Gary Busey has one of the best monologues in motion picture history about his dog in this movie. And if you know, you know, you just you'll never forget it when you see it. You're like, what is this good of a monologue doing in this like, quote unquote cheesy nineties action thriller? I love this movie. So yeah, again if you know, you know, but as soon as my Blu ray arrived, I put it on and I was like, Fuck yeah. On my eighth birthday, my father brought me a bulldog, a fat little bulldog. I named Prince Henry Stout. He was strong. He would chase my pet turkey, he would chase squirrels up the tree. I trained him, I raised him, I fed him, I groomed him. I took care of him. I love that dog. I love that dog more. Everything the world I live in. My father gave me a handful of cherry bombs and they made us and said, You're going to train this dog to be a protector. So every Saturday afternoon I got behind a little dummy my dad built and I've tosses cherry bombs and made. Is it the dog? Had dog was scared at first, but after a while he got angry and he would come at the dummy like, well, he'd get the dummy rip it apart. Head was off, shirt was gone. Great film. You've never seen it. I've never seen it. man, it's so good. It's so good. Nineties, classic. Yeah. Rutger Hauer is, like, the main fucking bad guy. Charles That's Dutton. Yeah. Murray Abraham. Like, great cast. Like, that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Akira Kurosawa's dreams. I'm slowly my way through all of his work. I bought that 4K from Criterion. You're just not going to find many movies that look better than that. This is a movie, a vignette, each based on one of his dreams. It's also includes one dream, in which Martin Scorsese plays Vincent Van Gogh. A lot of fun, good movies, crazy. You would love this movie. The final vignette is like made for Nicole. Still, you would love it. Big deal. In the 4K world, The Fugitive, directed by Andrew Davis just was just released in 4K. Put it on immediately and boy, does it look great. It just looks so good. And I'm, you know, watching it, I finished it. And then I was looking at the special features and I was like, come in, Terry, by Andrew Davis and Tommy Lee Jones, Are you Mike, by the time you like the cranky is guy ever. So I put that out and I'm like halfway through the movie. He's great. He's just great. On the commentary. He's not saying a lot, but he's he's a lot of fun. He's like, yeah, I like that movie. It starts it's like, Well, no, we're talking about today. And Andrew is like, we're talking about The Fugitive. He's yeah, I like that movie. Like, yeah, when you do an Academy Award, of course you like it. He's just. He's great. He's great. God damn. Never, ever, ever, ever was cold. Air's colder and he'll just suffocate. It's a little sick. It's so funny. Ingmar Bergman's the seventh SEAL on 4K, My last two. I have not watched it. I haven't seen this in 4K yet. It's still sealed. I cannot wait. And then, of course, no. The movie of 2023, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer was released in 4K recently. That is also sealed. And I just need like, a day with that thing. I need the day with all the special features, a day with the 4K movie itself, and might have to do a special part just on that 4K release when I open it up. But that was that was great for it to arrive. God, it's great. Oppenheimer What a film. Motion pictures, what a film, what a picture. What if they're able only take you so far? Yeah. Great. Great. Shoot so many times. Fucking love. It's this. Will it be a picture? Director frontrunner. Is that in play. Is it in play for Oppenheimer to actually win awards? Not just be another like, decent Christopher Nolan movie that maybe pick something technical once? I don't know. I'm like you last year where I kept telling you everything. Everywhere is not only going to get nominated for everything, it's going to win everything. And you're like, Nah, nah, I don't know. I'm telling you that this is going to do that. It's going to clean house. Yeah, this is this. No, no, there's no I mean, I'll give you maybe picture. I'm not just going to give you a picture. Director. We'll see. We'll see. It's going to be a very interesting award season. And my best actress round up when I mention, you know, Lily Gladstone, there is Carey Mulligan. You know, there there are there is Emma Stone in Port Things. There are other things. So we'll we'll see. Will Emily Blunt make a showing in supporting actress? I don't know. Killing mercy for actor? I don't know. Buckle up, buckaroo. It's going to be an Oppenheimer sweep. We'll see. We'll see. It's going to be a Winnipeg flip. But when a big flip, first cousin. So sometimes I just fall into. So that's it for physical media. Now I'm going to move into a few just older movies. I'm either watch for the first time or rewatched and then we're going to get out of here and that's it. Goodbye. So sometimes I go on these just like weird director binges and I want to fill in gaps and I realize, you know, Peter Weir is a director. I've seen a lot of his mainstream movies, The Truman Show, of course. Witness of course, things like that. I've been on Criterion watching his first few. The Cars that Ate Paris Picnic at Hanging Rock is like a fucking masterpiece, so clearly influenced by cries and whispers, but then also so clearly influenced things like The Virgin Suicides or Marie Antoinette that that's like that's a huge endorsement for me. Picnic at Hanging like this night It's the year real quick. I wasn't planning on doing this the year 1900. And these schoolgirls go to a picnic just at a rock with a few teachers and that's it. And then some go off on a hike. And for the girls and a teacher wind up missing, where do they go? And they're not found. And it's like they have to go back into town and they're like, we can't find them. That whole town goes and looks for them, can't find them where they go. That's the movie. It's really, really, really cool. Very effective like eerie thriller that I liked. The Last Wave, which was made in 1977. So I'm doing this Peter Weir thing and there's a huge hole in Peter Weir's filmography To Me, Cold Master and Commander The Far Side of the World. Yeah, starring Russell Crowe that I saw once in the theater 20 years ago when it was released in 2003. It's got nominated for a shitload of Oscars, only one two because like everything else that year they got steamrolled by Lord of the Rings Return of the King. Interestingly, Master Commander won cinematography and I was like, How did it do that? Over Return of the King? Return of the King wasn't even nominated for Best cinematography. I'm like, What? You okay, Anyway, this movie has a huge following on the internet because I've always been like Master Commander Meth like didn't remember it well, didn't do much for me. It's another one. It's on Amazon Prime, but my son in another room and I said, You're going to sit here for 2 hours and 20 minutes and pay attention. And this is a really good movie. This is actually a very, very well done movie. Russell Crowe is drunk and funny and light in it. I liked him so much more in this than Gladiator, for example. And it opens and ends a thrilling battle scene and there's other stuff in the middle, but I really, really liked it and I was like, Holy shit. Like, sometimes you just got to go back and give another movie a shot. But I was thinking, what would happen to this movie? Like what? What's going on to where? Like, it wasn't remembered that fondly. And then it just dawned on me. 2003 Pirates of the Caribbean that came out in the summer. People didn't want to go back on a ship for some serious ass drama few months later. That end, if you're going to go back for a big epic, they probably want to return to the king. So between Pirates of the Caribbean and Return of the King, it just kind of got lost in there. But it's insane. yeah, very good. Like, I actually really liked it. And what a lot of people mentioned online was that it's one of the best sound mixed movies ever made. And as I get older, I'm more into sound mixing and I'm like, That was my final selling point. I went, All right, your little comment there about sound mixing, and it won an Oscar for I remember it was mixing or editing one of the others, and it was mixed. Like, really, really well, like, really well, I watched part of it was my Bluetooth, you know, fancy headphones on it. Yeah. Shit. This is like they weren't lying in for 2003. The special effects were like, Good, good. So if you know, if you already like the movie, then good on you. If you're like me and Salt once or you never wanted to see it, I promise it's worth it. It was a good movie. Not overly long either. Like 2 hours, 15 minutes. Fine. Shorter than most movies today. Yeah, absolutely. That's why I brought that up. I've mentioned my trip to Paris. To Paris? I've mentioned it a few times. It's like good passing. I did get to see two movies in the theater while I was there, and it was a lot of fun. The first was Shadows, and just what did the to see Cassavetes first movie? It was only like five of us in there. And these Paris theaters are so like, small. Like in one of them, the bathroom was like at the front of the theater and it's just one tiny little bathroom for men and women. So like, if you got to go to the bathroom, you could like, walk like to where the screen is and like, open it. It was just out of no, so cool, so trippy. My second movie was Punch-Drunk Love, and I was really curious to see how audiences would take this. And both the movies are in English with French subtitles. So all's I want to say about this is how amusing it is to me, how humor does and does not translate over to different cultures. And not This theater was almost sold. I was the only person in the theater laughing at all the stuff involving the sisters. That's my favorite thing about it. Like arguing with decisions on the phone, going to the house, kicking in the door they this audience just didn't get it. They didn't get I don't know. I don't know what it is about it. But there was no laughing and I think some of them were like unnerved by it. I went, that's interesting. Now, remember the scene where Adam Sandler and Emily Watson are like, laying in bed together and he's like, You're just so beautiful. I'm going to smash your face. And you're just so pretty. Like, Yeah, it's kind of funny. These fucking French people were dying laughing like, falling out to where I'm looking around going, What the fuck? I mean, they thought that was like, the funniest thing they had ever seen. Just that really quick interaction. I want to bite your face. You're so beautiful. You're so pretty. And so I was just. I was. God. wow. I've never seen an audience laugh like this at that exchange. And then, of course, everyone, any country doesn't matter who you are, you laugh your ass off. Philip Seymour Hoffman at that movie, we were all just shut. Should shut. Everyone's, like, hysterical. So that's all. I just. I like that shit, you know, different cultures, that stuff. But I know that's what translate and what doesn't. It's just fascinating to me. Fascinating. That's so fascinating. No, it really is, because mean that is that's we're like we we I can't explain it, but we find different things funny, I'm sure. I mean, that's what most of America gets made fun of is because we just like the raunchy lowbrow and I admit that is what I like. But that's when you do see something that you would just never really think would be funny. And then a whole entire, like, crowd of people all think that that's really funny. It like it just tunes you in. You're like, you guys have a whole different like thing over here as to why that might be funny. Yeah, and it's always kind of cool to think about what That might be like, what is it about? About that that's humorous. Exactly. Exactly. So that's that's it. That's our roundup episode. You know, these are fun. These are fun to do. And just like, talk about a bunch of different movies, talk about a bunch of new stuff, some of it and go to the theater, check some of this out. You can watch them for free or you can rent them some new stuff at home. If you're a nerd. Want to buy some for KS? Talk about that. I'm so glad you got to review, Maestro. It is pretty rare that you get to see like a big movie like that for me, so I love it. Yeah. Excited to circle back to it and talk about it. You did spoil your What are you watching? So I did go first. Babylon. I did best move that too. Well. Yep. My buddy watching Hellboy, they would go, Yeah, we got Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer 4K. You live in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles has a movie theater called New Beverly Cinema. And what they do, it's owned by Tarantino. What they do is often movie pairings. So you go for a double feature and there have just been very few times in my life where I because I always look at their calendar, I listen to their podcast, and in December like 28th or 29th, they are doing a double feature of gremlins two and a movie called Freaked from 1993. And I almost like was tempted to fly out for it, but it's just it's all Christmas and New Year's and I can't do it now. Gremlins two I've talked about on this podcast with Friend of the Pod, Dan, we dedicate an entire episode to it. That's for a very specific type of moviegoer. That film, as is freaked. Now I understand that most people listen to this, have not heard of 1993 is Freaked, which is about some kids who stumble into like a house of horrors where everyone is a different freak and it's run by Randy Quaid. And instead of watching the show, he puts some slime on you and you become a freak. And that's kind of just what it's about. It's really over-the-top and zany. Never been available anywhere. VHS DVD. I sold out a few times as a kid, some kind soul uploaded to YouTube, and I just cannot recommend this highly enough. Like it is so ridiculous. It is directed by Tom Stern and Alex Winter from Bill and Ted, directed by it stars Alex Winter, Randy Quaid, William Sadler. This is made two years after Bill Ted's bogus, in which William Sadler played death. Mr. T, Brooke Shields, Bobcat GOLDTHWAIT, Keanu Reeves, John Hawkes. It's so ridiculous. So this is like hardcore, ridiculous. If you like Gremlins two and if you like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, then freaks would be a natural movie next to that. So not a highbrow movie, not an Oscar movie, just an out and out ridiculous movie type of thing. We're like, they landed in the airport and, you know, established shots. You always show like the plane landing and then we overhear them talking. So we just assume that they're like talking like, you know, as as they're waiting for their luggage. And we're watching the plan plane. The plane just explodes and that hit their dialog. They're like, wow, I'm really glad we weren't on that plane. So it's like that kind of movie. And then the camera pans over the, like, waiting for a taxi. It is ridiculous. It is absolutely ridiculous in the most absurd way. And I appreciate that from time to time. Freaked. You've once again sold me. Yeah. Can't it? This was the selling dick episode we built. This is we both. You sold me on Maestro. So, yeah, it's all good. This has been a lot of fun. I like these episodes. This is awesome. I love these so much. We gave everyone a lot to watch, so let us know as always what you're watching. I want to know on Twitter, on Instagram, letterboxd anywhere at WW underscore podcast. But as always, thanks for listening and happy watching. Hey everyone. Thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog. Alex Withrow dot com Nicholas Dose Tor.com is where you can find all of Nick's film work. Send us mailbag questions at What Are You Watching Podcast gmail.com or find us on Twitter, Instagram and letterboxd at w aiw underscore podcast Next time is all about Spike Lee's He Got Game. I've been wanting to talk about this movie in detail for years. So excited to dive in. Stay tuned.