76: Top 10 NC-17 Rated Films

Nick interviews Alex about the best NC-17-rated movies ever made. Alex discusses the history of the NC-17 rating, the difference between Unrated and NC-17, appreciating vs. liking tough movies, and films that go too damn far.
Later in the episode, Alex gives mini reviews of his favorite 2022 horror films.
80 minutes of NC-17 movies, 35 minutes of new horror flicks. Have fun!
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram.
Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
Watch Nick's films at https://www.nicholasdostal.com/
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Transcript

0:09

Hey, everyone, welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex with throw in. I'm joined by my best man, Nick Dostal. How are you doing there, Killer Joe? Yes, I had I had a little tiny list of myself, and I. I just gave it away. I am. I'm offended to be here. I am. I am. I am triggered. I am unsure of how to. Feel about the situation is not how I want to. You're just going all in bed. That's not the way. This whole thing is going to go. I promise. You can start that battle. You have your own Twitter handle to service this this aspect. No. Today, you know, when Blond came out and everyone lost their mind for two weeks as happens nowadays, Andrew Dominick's film was, you know, there were a very few of us who liked it. And most people just took those two weeks to talk about how much, as you're alluding to it offended them or how much they hated it. You know, I said on our podcast about it, and I've said in every conversation I've had with people about it, that the movie is rated NC 17, and I have personally never seen an easy NC 17 rated film. I think it exists for a reason. Now, of course, we talked about this on the blog pod like of course I understand that because it's just on Netflix and a click away like the barrier to entry for NC 17 is way, way different than when you and I were kids, when like, I don't know about you, but growing up for me, like some theaters were lax on R-rated movies. Like it kind of got worse as I got older. Honestly, like in the 2000s, it became way harder to get into R-rated stuff in the nineties. Like, I mean, my mom would just buy tickets and like we'd walk off, but NC 17 movies, I mean, there was just no way like that. The guards were up, you couldn't get into them. And I'm going to talk about so I just want to focus on these movies today because there were a lot of lists going around. What are the best NC 17 rated films, you know, in the wake of Blond and I just thought this would be a fun time too, even though Blond is a, you know, a few weeks in the past. Now a good solid top ten NC 17 rated films of all time list will hopefully live on past all the controversy. But how are you feeling about this? Well, I'm actually quite curious about this episode because I don't really know the history of NC 17. And I, I remember as a kid my relationship to NC 17 movies. I never saw one in the theater. So I don't even remember one that came out. But I do remember being in Blockbuster and there was I don't know if you had it too, but there was a giant like like cartoon poster of the rating system. So, gee, it showed like all these cartoon of like kids in like adults. And then as it went on, like it just became like teenagers for PG 13. And then and then ah, it was just adults. And then the NC 17 was like this lonely little category. Delinquents. Yeah. Like they tried to make it seem like it was like the, the most, like, well kept and like up to scale adults imaginable. And it was like, why are there only two people on this end? What is NC. 17? But you know, to that point, Blockbuster did not rent NC 17 rating movies. They usually they wouldn't even sometimes they wouldn't even rent unrated ones. Like did your theater or did your blockbuster have NC 17 rated stuff or did they have unrated discs? Well, we had a porno section right in the back in Blockbuster. No, no. Yeah, yeah. Seen on Blockbuster. Maybe like your smaller local video store. Yeah. But since I mean where I'm going to get into it's not okay. So when all these favorite NC 17 rated lists were coming out in the wake of Blond, I was seeing like a lot of people, you know, there was just a bit of misunderstanding, like the difference between unrated versus NC 17. And I'm going to do my best to give a little history lesson. Hopefully it's interesting to our listeners, but the core list, the top ten NC 17 films is a list I've made myself and worked on very carefully to not include unrated films, to not include movies that were originally rated X. I'm only interested today in the movies that were labeled NC 17 by the MPAA, the Motion Picture Association. We used to call them MPAA, now it's MPAA. They raided a movie, NC 17, and the filmmakers, the studio went, What the hell? We're going to put it in theaters wearing that as a badge of honor. And that's what I'm interested in talking about. But first, yeah, we can get into a little bit of like the history of the rating here. Yeah, I was going to ask like when did the rating system even start? Like the MPAA? Yeah, like, like like went like like we're movie. Like, oh, we're going back that far because. No fair question. Fair question. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, it was like Sunset Boulevard. Was that rated something I can't even think about? Like what? So in the late 1800s, Thomas Edison. No kidding of the short. Okay, give me like my elevator, my 30 seconds on this. So if you go back to like the twenties and thirties, a lot of those movies are like nuts. And I did this one. I binge a lot of my Oscar movies like the stuff you could not Get Away With a few years later. Just a lot of extramarital affair, a lot of quote unquote racy stuff for the time and to where I'm watching it now going. I can't believe they got away with that. A lot of people were watching that and thinking that. So the government takes over the ratings basically from like the thirties, the forties, the fifties into the late sixties. So that's why a lot of movies made in that period. You're not going to see like a ton of cursing. You're certainly not going to see sex, you're not going to see a lot of violence. And the Hays Code, as it was called, they put a lot of restrictions on films like how long two people could kiss, but they have all these sorts of rules. And by the late sixties, a lot of people are like bucking up against these rules and just skirting the line. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a great example. The Graduate is a great example. They're going like, You know what is we don't really fit here. Like times are A A-Changin, so they drop all this government stuff. And then the Motion Picture Association is the Motion Picture Association of America is created as a governing body to rate movies. And it's just you know, there's a lot of there's a lot known about them. It's probably changed over the years. But they're industry folk. They're supposed to be anonymous. It's only like 12 people, I believe 10 to 12 people. And essentially you submit your film to them and they write. So right in the late sixties when they started the MPAA, it was G, PGR and X, and the first movie to win Best Picture when the new rating system was implemented was Midnight Cowboy, which was rated X. So you immediately, immediately start to see a change in what critics are interested audiences are interested in. So that's been around for you know, that's the way ratings went. The ratings as we know it started in the late sixties. But I'm going to get to how the ratings have changed a little bit over time. I really didn't expect that. That was all from memory. I hope that's all factually correct. That's just like the nerd part of me. I didn't. I didn't I. I was just going to talk about R and NC 17 today. But I appreciate you, you know, plucking my sorry picture. I never get to talk about you on the spot. There was no. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I'm not going to go through every rating. You have movies like was the second Indiana Jones and Gremlins interestingly enough that you watch those in your like these I mean gremlins which I rewatched recently should not be rated PG Jaws should not be rated PG. These should be rated as we know it, PG 13. But that rating did not exist back then. So in the mid-to-late eighties is when they invent PG 13, but that's getting that out of the way. Let's get to X and NC 17. So this will be an interesting podcast for a few reasons. I'm going to talk about some controversial figures in film and I'm going to talk about, you know, some really difficult films today. But first up, you're going to hear I mean, you know, the Weinstein's like they were around for a long fucking time and they did a whole lot of damage, as we know. But they got shit done as well in the movie industry and they are largely to thank for getting rid of X and the NC 17 rating being here. But we go back a few years earlier like Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer is 1986. MPAA doesn't know what to do with it because at this time movies rated x, r, it just means pornographic. You know, in the eighties, if your movie's labeled X, no one's going to go see that unless you know they're interested in pornography. That's at least the Scarlet Letter banner that it puts on the movie. You could reject the MPA'S rating and go with unrated, but then the damage of that is you're not being you're not being shown in multiplexes like the big chains, the AMCs, the Eagles. I know there are different chains in the eighties, but so Henry was a first kind of big red flag. Like, what do we do with this movie? They decided to go with the unrated rating and the movie kind of faded to obscurity. Like, no one really talked about that movie until, like, DVD became a thing. So you see how like taking on these ratings early on or hurting movies. So in order for a movie theater then to present a feature, it had to be rated like they could. Correct? Correct. It had to like unrated did not. Yeah, this is still true today. Oh, of of the major chains. Of the major chains. You cannot go into an AMC unless it's like a special event or something. AMC Regal's they still do not show NC 17 rated movies. No movie. I'm going to mention today I saw at a major chain multiplex. I saw a few at Landmark Cinemas, I saw some at. Yeah. Arclight, things like that. So that that still exists today. That's existed from the beginning. That's probably in the ratings somewhere and unrated or NC 17 and it's just not the theaters like Wal-Mart Target they still won't sell NC 17 rated DVDs or Blu rays. Still to this day, they won't like I've never purchased it. I've purchased some I purchased some unrated. Yeah. Movies in target and Walmart as we all have, but I've never purchased an actual NC 17 rated. So this is it's not just a restriction like Oh, your movie's going to get in less theaters berating an NC 17. It's that the availability to market it is going to be way way more difficult. Blockbuster is not a thing anymore, but that's why I was kind of like, Well, wait a minute. I'm sure that like Billboard and Banner was there, but Blockbuster was not really a NC 17 rating movies. They weren't. You would have to go to a smaller store. There were some really, really famous NC 17 rated movies in the nineties when we were kids that have a dimension today. I just don't, you know, kind of skirting around a little bit. But you weren't getting that blockbuster. You were getting that like the independent video store down the street or something that's, you know. Fascinating, because now that I'm thinking about it, it's like when you go to Best Buy and rent or not rent, but buy a DVD. Yeah, there is almost like a marketing for the unrated version of that movie. Yeah. You know, like, yes, I see it like plastered as big as anything and it didn't even necessarily mean that much changed in the movie. It was just it almost seemed like, oh, there's more of whatever. Like, there's, there's, if it's a horror movie, maybe it's more violence. Or if it's a comedy, there's more bad language or something, whatever. That unrated even in comedies all the time. Sure. Well, yeah. So this is why we started to see when DVDs became a thing. The immersion of the unrated movie and unrated and the 17 are very, very different because the idea is if something like like you just said, a comedy, there's any number of comedies, I believe, even like your 40 year old Virgin when it was on DVD, there's like the R-rated version and the unrated. The idea is that people have probably already seen this in the theaters. So like, who cares? We're just going to release it unrated now. But if it was a movie no one had heard about, it would be much harder to find. That's all right. Yeah, I'm still still on the history track here. BECK So, like Henry's happen, this is where Miramax, Harvey Weinstein comes into the fold. 1989 is a big year because you have the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, which Miramax was given the decision you can do X or you can do unrated adults only. Again, X is considered pornographic or two versions are released on VHS in the nineties. So they're even trying this now in home video. And that movie wasn't a hit in theaters, but that movie was a hit on home video. It's one with Helen Mirren. Like, people still talk about that. So now we're seeing, you know, on VHS, there's an R-rated version and an unrated or NC 17 rated version, and it's working. Miramax had the foreign distribution rights to Pedro Almodovar's Take Me Up, Tie Me Down, also in 1989. And they're clashing like hardcore with the MPAA over this going, This is ridiculous. You have to get rid of this X because X is a banner. It's just a fate. It's a fateful rating. Nothing's ever going to happen with it. There's no really, really popular X rated movie nowadays, 1990 hits and we get the first official NC 17 rating movie. It is Henry and Jun, directed by Philip Kaufman. Okay movie. It was released into a few theaters in October 1990. It eventually went to a few more theaters, made a decent amount of money. Interestingly, it was actually nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, but by 1990, it still might have been a rating. It still might have existed for pornographic films. It doesn't they don't even carry that today. But now we officially have NC 17, which is like, you know, what is R it's like restricted for strongly restricted for people under 17 or something or like you have to have to get an x is like adults only period now it exists. Okay 1992 is another banner year because we have able Ferrara's bad lieutenant and Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct. Now both are battling with the MPAA. One is a studio movie, Basic Instinct, and they're just going back and forth and Bad Lieutenant says, okay, to hell with it. They take the NC 17 rating makes $2 million. Basic Instinct does. This is like one of the first big negotiations with the MPAA that we hear about a lot like, well, if you make these cuts, maybe we'll consider it. You know, if you shave this off, maybe we'll consider it. They do that enough to eventually get the R-rating. A lot of people thought that movie should have been rated NC 17, but it was rated R. So it gets to go everywhere now, gets to play in every theater. Basic Instinct made $352 million worldwide, and it was nominated for best editing and best score Oscars. So you're kind of seeing the difference of like if you're a smaller indie movie and you take the NC 17 rating, like you're just going to, you know, I don't know how many people showed up to bad lt in theaters outside of like new york l.a. Audiences. That was another movie that had to wait until dvd and blu ray to find a new life. I'm almost done here with the history, I promise. No, this is great. It's good shit, man. And I'm skipping over some years because some of the movies on my list came out, you know, in these years. But I'm jumping to the summer of 1999 because by this time we're seeing this, you know, pervasive need to dodge the NC 17 scarlet letter rating. This notion reveals itself in its fullest form when studio heads decide to insert CGI characters into a key sequence in Eyes Wide Shut, which Warner Brothers was only able to do because Stanley Kubrick had died. But as the years have passed, we've seen this like NC 17 rating kind of turn into the X to where people are avoiding it. For all the reasons I mentioned, it will play in some theaters, but it's not going to play in major chains. There will be DVD, Blu ray releases of it, which I know it won't matter as much anymore anyway, but they're not going to sell them in the biggest retail stores. You can buy it on Amazon. You know, a lot of this stuff is changed because as we're now seeing, this is why it made such a big deal about this on the blond pad that for me to see one of these movies, it was so difficult when I was a kid because either like if I if I'm watching in 97 and authentically NC 17 rated film, there's no theater. There was no theater near me that I could see it. There was no streaming service that existed. So like my parents had to rent it or like a friend's parents had to rent it or that's what it was. And it was so difficult. And now with Netflix, again, as I said, anyone with a smartphone likely has that app on their phone and they kind of pulled it up in those two weeks or the one week, however long blond was number one. And just clicked it. The ease of access, that's that's a whole other conversation. We're just talking about movies here. But, you know, people have a lot easier access to everything. So that's just kind of my history lesson on the rating and how it is still. We don't see or hear about a lot of them today because of all the restrictions that come with it. Now every filmmaker has the right to wholesale reject the MPAA rating, but outside of foreign films, we don't really see many unrated movies in the theater, like Lars von Trier movies. He's usually I mean, when I saw the Antichrist, I had to go to a landmark to see that. And that was unrated, because he goes, Why am I going to give this to the MPAA? They're just going to rate it. NC 17 So I'm just going to avoid all that nonsense. Antichrist is never going to play in an AMC chain. It's only going to play it like, you know, the independently owned theaters, the theaters who are willing to take on a little more risk going on. We see more and more of that. The same goes for gas far and away movies. A lot of them are just released here in the States as unrated because they don't want to deal with the MPAA and their rules and restrictions. But the top ten list I'm going with today are again the filmmakers who decided I'm taking on. I'm wearing it as a badge of honor. They could have all rejected the rating. They went, No, we'll go with NC 17. We'll do it. Sure. Andrew Dominik could have released blond as unrated. I'm sure Netflix would not allow him to do that. Or maybe I'm not sure. I don't know. But I. I remember him saying early on in the press that this was likely going to be NC 17. And I just love that Netflix let him do it his way. And one that's what's crazy too is like streaming services it's like they don't care at all with the rating is it seems like. Yeah like Hulu I see a lot of Hulu originals that are unrated or something. Yeah. Or they call it TV-MA and I guess they're classifying that as TV. But I see see a lot of original streaming stuff that this is also what I wanted to bring up on blond like a lot of original streaming content is. Well see you should know that it's way. Worse than anything good blond and I'm like, oh, yeah. God. Like what? Yeah. Like, I even remember like, watching blond and is sort of, you know, I mean, just because we watch what we watch and I'm thinking to myself, I'm just like, none of this is like, I guess we have very extreme like lines that we'll consider for what would be restrictive in our minds. Fair. But, but even that I was sort of like, oh man, I've seen way worse than this. Like the sexual part of things. Yes, you and I may have our, you know, kind of doors open. And that's something we are willing to accept a lot. We're very adventurous in our film, watching my dad is too, but not like as adventurous as us. I'm not going to recommend against Far Away movie. Yeah you know yeah he watch blond we met up we talked about it he's someone who loves that era of film. Monte Clift, James Dean Brando, where I get all this shit from has always, when I was a kid, was telling me, giving me reasons to admire Marilyn Monroe, like beyond the surface, you know, giving me depth to her performances. You watched the movie, you know, my dad's not online. It's not like on Twitter. And I was telling him about the controversy and he was just shaking his head, going that I mean, from what I know about her life, that was a PG version of her life. I know some stuff was hard, but this this was just could have been so much worse. And he also agrees that he has seen much worse, particularly on television, like original streaming shows. I mean, that's yeah, I understand it was difficult, but I that's why we said over and over, like, wait, wait a few months, wait a few years. That's what Andrew Dominik said from the beginning, that he doesn't think it's going to be this, you know, much of a hot topic in five years. I do agree with him. We'll see. We'll see. And obviously, this rating system does not apply to TV shows at all, correct? Correct. So, I mean, when you when you think about it's a really quick little like side tangent here, but like, you know, you get certain shows back in the day where HBO, you could have swearing, you could have nudity, you could have certain things that you couldn't had. Still, to this day, you still can't have that certain like language on network shows. Different rating body. Yeah yeah. So but that has nothing to do with this. And obviously streaming services, if it's a Netflix their own show, they don't need to worry about rating or anything. They can do whatever they want. Yeah. There's another aspect of this that is inherently American and that is that, you know, Americans get accused a lot of time of being prudes. And yeah, every movie I'm going to mention today is rated NC 17 by and large because of sexuality. Yeah. Again, once we get closer to the list, it's you know, I am going to talk about some tough films and some of the reasons they're tough is because it's sexual assault, it's things like that. But some of these movies have only consensual sex and it's still, you know, rated NC 17 and that's movies don't often get rated NC 17, if ever, for violence for language. And that is to me always been a paradox of American content. It was something my mom frankly never understood either, that you can just go like in a PG 13 movie, you watch all this incredibly unrealistic violence that young boys can watch all this incredibly unrealistic violence and go, Oh, wow, I can just next time I'm play fighting with my friends, I can hit them with a two by four because you just bounce right back up. I'm being very general. But, you know, sex, forget it. Forget it. Like we can't. And it's still it's still this way. By and large. I think we saw that, you know, Blond was not rated NC 17 for violence although. Yeah man what is with America with that. Don't ask me where I get to the top ten. I do want to distinguish a little bit of what NC 17 means as opposed as opposed to unrated movies or director's cuts that were later released on DVD, which is kind of the same as unrated. Moreover, I want to mention all these because this is I'm going to mention a lot of really, really big movies here. And this is why you're not going to hear them in my official top ten, because I don't care what IMDB says. None of these movies I'm about to mention right here were released theatrically with an NC 17 rating. They were released, as are or unrated or unrated later on home video. So first, there's a few movies that a lot of people bring up that if we're talking unrated versus NC 17, these movies were rated X, but now they've been retroactively rated NC 17. Things like Last Tango in Paris, you know, NC 17 didn't exist back then. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Evil Dead, the 1981 Evil Dead. If you go on IMDB, it says Evil Dead is NC 17, which by today's standards it is. They probably had it rated again and now it's NC 17. But I'm talking about the ones that went in the theater with the NC 17 rating. Okay. So I get really worked up. Yeah. So here's here are another core group of films that were rated NC 17 by the MPAA. And then the director went, Forget it, I'm just rejecting you and I am going to release this as unrated. So these did play in theaters, but only those small indie houses that we're talking about. This is things like Happiness, The Todd Silence movie. I've reference to you a few times with Philip Seymour Hoffman that if anyone knows, they know that movie is so wild, really big one mysterious scan. Yeah, I saw this pop up on a lot of my favorite NC 17 movies ever. Is is not an NC 17 movie. It's an unrated movie. It's very, very good. Unrated starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Wow. Well, you've seen that one, right? Well, yeah, it's funny because like I made my whole entire list has gone to shit because I realized that a lot of them now are in actually by this category. They're. Yeah. So I had mysterious skin. That movie's fantastic. It's great. Favorite JGL performance. Yeah, he is remarkable in it. Mine is manic from a few years before, which like no one has seen a fantastic. Portrayal. Of a manic depressive. But to keep up his career. Yeah, I got. I love him. He's still. Going. Yes. To keep on this kick of movies that the filmmaker decided to released as unrated Nymphomaniac, which Lars von Trier When I'm not taking your NC 17 and E2 Mama Tambien. So I already mentioned one of these but now you're going to get I'm I'm going to talk about a lot of movies that were rated NC 17 and they appealed to the MPAA to get an R rating. But most all of these, not all of them, but most all of these were released as unrated and later on DVD and Blu ray. So that's where the lines get muddy. That like if you saw these movies in the theater, you saw the R-rated version. But if you've only seen, let's say, American Psycho on Blu ray, you've likely only seen the unrated version. But that movie was never NC 17. Same with Basic Instinct. Like I mentioned, Blue Valentine, Casino Clerks, Eyes Wide Shut. Like I mentioned Natural Born Killers, Requiem for a Dream Scream, Summer of Sam A Lot of people I saw those pop up a lot on my favorite NC 17 rated films and again, those were just released as unrated on home video. So that's it for the for all the setup ready to get into the list here to my authentic. List of NC. 17 rated films you see the distinction that I'm talking about that like yeah I believe me people who cares like I get it but this is a movie part. We're getting dirty a little bit technical. I want people to watch tough movies. I want people to watch challenging movies. So I kept seeing I kept seeing Clerks, Requiem for a Dream, Natural Born Killers appearing on Mysterious Skin on a lot of NC 17 rated lists. And I'm just saying, you know, they're challenging and edgy films, but they didn't go into the cinema waving the NC 17 rated flag saying, Come at me. And that's like a really tough thing to do because I saw a lot of those lists as well and I saw Casino on there. It's not NC 17. Yeah, that's a blog writer not doing the research. Yes, that's all. And you know, upon hearing the history that you just gave, I didn't think that there was a problem with NC 17 movies being shown. I didn't think that that restriction actually meant, okay, we're not going to play your movie. So to think a movie like all the ones you just listed that are on Google, if you put an NC 17 movies that technically aren't, then it actually is a disservice to the movie because it's not being represented correctly. If you're going by well. This is what I'm saying, going on streaming now, it just doesn't matter. Yeah, like it doesn't matter. The lines are so muddy now and again. This is why Blond receives such criticism. Because I said from the beginning, if this was if this was NC 17 and only released in those indie movie houses, and then we're hearing from like the fans who really wanted to go, who really wanted to know. Then we're hearing from them like, okay, folks, this movie's tough. Like when you go seek this out and two months when it's available to stream or available to buy on Blu ray, this is going to be tough. The it would have had like a nice soft landing instead of just crash landed, which Dominic did not care about at all. That's and clearly Netflix doesn't either. They're no strangers to controversy but again it's it's the ease of access that we all have to these now that I think was largely behind the uproar. Based off of everything that you just kind of explained about the importance and the meaning behind the NC 17 rating. And because people probably generally don't know that and don't necessarily probably care. So do you think that when Blond came out, do you think people actually had an appreciation for it being rated NC 17? No, no. Yeah, absolutely not. This is that that's the crux of my entire. Yeah. Not argument but like manifesto here that I don't think people were giving enough credence to what that rating meant and how serious the MPAA does not fuck around. They are, you know, there's whole documentaries made about them like this film is not yet rated is a great documentary. I mean they're very very they've always been viewed and seen and labeled as a very conservative group as it relates to art, especially very sexually conservative, as it relates to film art, I should say. So, yeah, I think if people but but again, if you just see it on Netflix on your phone like you're not going to investigate this shit but if people yeah. If people did investigate this stuff a little more, I think they would have had a better idea of what they're getting themselves into. Not every movie on my top ten is like, super, super, well known movie to mass audiences. Some are most, you know, movie buffs will know them. I should also say that a lot of these were made by foreign filmmakers who don't maybe have as clear sense of what NC 17 means or do have a clear sense of it and know that they make challenging films and they don't care. They're wearing it as a badge of honor. The NC 17 rating. But yeah, I do think if like if people look at a list of the ten films I'm about to mention and went, Oh, these are like other examples of NC 17 rating movies. These movies are all challenging as shit. I should probably know what I'm getting into is blond. I also want to say that blond is not on my list intentionally. We've talked about it enough. I just wanted to make room for ten films, that's all. Let's fucking get into it, man. I've heard of all of them, except for your number six. So I'm excited to hear, though, this week when I was doing my research, apparently, you know, the just completely false investigation, this was one movie that kept popping up and I go, Huh, I like the title a lot, so I'm curious to hear what this movie is about. I largely wanted to do this podcast to talk about my number six choice because yeah, all right. For all the reasons you just mentioned, we're going to get there. But yeah, kick us off. All right. So we're going to start with number ten now. This is Alex's top ten. Yes. I'm throwing my list away because apparently it's all wrong. So so so this is just this is all you still want to. Hear, though, when we're done, just go down. Because I still I'm sure they're all good movies, so I still want to hear what they were. Don't like, literally throw it away. All right. Okay. I did a top five in this. This is a movie that like, I remember. How did I see this? Oh, you have seen it. Oh, wow. No, I have seen it. And now I'm trying to think of how because now if this was 2003. I'll tell you what this movie was. This for me was I just got a Netflix account where they sent you the DVD snail mail, and I went, I'm written this one because I got to see what the hell this thing is. It had to be when I was out in L.A. and it had to be on some type of cable situation, like it should be Showtime or something like that. Because yeah, I think it's one of those ones that just came on and I just go, What am I watching here? And then. All got. Lost in it. We're talking about Bernardo Bertolucci's 2003 movie The Dreamers. Oh, boy. Yeah, this movie has a lot of fans. A lot of people rip this movie hard. So if they know, they know. But, yeah. What are we watching, Andy? That was that was my sentiment. Exactly. I'll try to set it up. I'm not going to get I want people to see all these movies, you know, if you dare, of course, if you dare. NC 17. That's what I'm saying. They're NC 17, but I'm not going to reveal any spoilers here in my top ten because I, you know, go out and see these. But if you haven't seen the Dreamers, Michael Pitt is an American, an American student in Paris during the I believe it's a 1968 student riots. And he meets, I'll say, a very odd brother and sister, Louis Garrel and Eva Green, who went on to have a great career and a very unlikely weird love triangle, begins. One of the reasons I like this movie is that they're all obsessed with movies, particularly French New Wave cinema, and the movie is kind of cut like a French New Wave movie, which I appreciated. This is an extremely odd and I'll say cool film. I did not really dig it when I when it did land in my mail, when I was returning it via snail mail back to Netflix, I was like, okay. And I actually watch it for this episode about a month and a half ago because I knew this episode was coming. You know, I'd seen it more than twice, but I appreciate it much more now. But it's a Bertolucci movie. Like if the only if the only Bertolucci movie, you know, is what he won. It's Oscar for The Last Emperor. That's like the least Bertolucci movie ever. You know, We're the Dreamers is akin to Last Tango in Paris. So, yeah, it's a twisted movie, though. That's a that's probably a great analogy. If someone says, yeah. It's a great Bertolucci double feature. Yeah, yeah, yep. If you're trying to understand like what the Dreamers is and you need something to compare it to, even if you've never even seen the last single Piers, I think everyone kind of knows the content of that movie and like what that movie's all about. This is a great that's a great. And now comparison to make. Yeah some of these movies like Last Tango, you know, there's so much ensuing controversy and drama behind that movie and, you know, when this stuff like decides to explode on Twitter for a week or two, it, you know, this is that's one that comes up a lot. I know that so many people haven't actually seen the movie, and I'm not taken away like any of the accounts of what's been. There's some shit that came up about that movie specifically that I didn't know about that I did not like. But yeah, some of these movies. Dare I say, are not as bad as you may have heard. Like bad, like, oh, god, I'll let you know if they are. Trust me. I think that was our argument with Blunt. That Blond isn't. I could you know, I'm not here to play. I'm not like a lawyer trying to cite different cases. But I could name any I could name any number of streaming shows I've seen since COVID hit that have far more nefarious content than blond. Anyway, number nine. Number nine is a movie that I, I, I don't think I'll ever watch it because it looks absolutely terrifying. But I always thought this movie looked really good. I was always sort of like, Man, I bet you that this is a really frickin good movie, and I have no interest in seeing it. Oh, boy, that's from from one of our most recent podcasts of 2007, the movie Descent. You know what I'm realizing my order is that's so funny. My order is a little different. I changed the order on mine than I did on this one. So this was actually Fuck me, man. What am I supposed to do? Nothing. Nothing. I'm going to cut. All this out on the coals. Out. So this. Is funny. This was actually my number six that I was referencing so much like I want people to see by six. Oh, I think it's because I fucked. It up from 9 to 6. I've loved it. I will decide to include this. I don't know if people like this, should it? They're like, you two idiots, get out with it. But this is on me. I like to open. It's on me. Hold on, hold on. I can talk. All right? I can talk about dissent. Now, I will say that I am moving the ranking to six. Don't worry, everyone. I'll sort of all this out when. I do my final ranking for those who are, you know, waiting for the test at the end. But what do you think I'm talking about? I think you're talking about dissent. Yeah. What movie is that to you? Oh, oh, is this not what I'm thinking? Or do you think it's a cave movie? Yeah. See? Okay, a lot of people do. I'm not talking about the cave movie, but it's a fucking amazing horror film story. Yeah. Yeah. You all know about that? Oh, I love it. Like, about 15 minutes in for the rest of the movie. It's basically all women. It's great, great movie. That is not what I'm talking about here on this list. I'm not. No, I'm not, like, shaming you for it. I'm I'm saying that sternly because we're about to go down a a difficult road. But that movie is my number six. That's a little bit of a spoiler. So let's go all the way back up to number nine. I'm just going to keep it all in. I'm keeping it all. Mother of four. I'm sorry you set it up so well. You set it up so well. Abdellatif Kechiche is the director of Blue is the Warmest Color. I hope I said that right. But that is my number nine picture like we talked about. This one recently was the last time you saw this. I saw this. I've seen it twice. I saw it in theaters and then and that was a that that that that's a funny experience. Because a lot of because starred in their seats in that screening. I'll tell. You the. Funniest thing was is like at a certain point because for, you know, spoiler alert for anyone who has seen it, there's like a very, very long sex scene in the movie. Yes, a few a few. Yeah. But the one in particular it like it's over 5 minutes. Like it's, I think it's like 11 or 12. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's like an I. Yes. I mean, when you're talking about this movie, these scenes have to come up. This isn't really like the they're difficult for me to talk about, like as a man, honestly, and how the way that they are shot, I don't really agree with and the the amount of length that they go on for yet still an incredibly audacious film for many, many reasons. But yeah, yeah. Keep going this is what you're referencing when you're sitting at a movie theater. Yeah, when I saw it as well, it was I've only seen it twice as well. It was sold out and it got, it got weird I'll say a few times. Yeah. Yeah. Well and I think that's and I think that's actually like I think to your point, like it was too long and because at a certain point you get it like you just like you like you understand. And it's sort of like, okay, yep, yep, yep, yep. And what happened to me at that point was I started looking around because I was like, I don't know what everyone else thinks, dude. I did the exact same thing. Yeah. And you're just, like, checking in with, like, you know, because no one wants to be looked at in the theater when you're watching something like this. So but now here I am. I'm like, oh, man, what's, what's with these people over here thinking? And And you can also like I saw everyone kind of do the same thing where they all kind of are like, all right, yeah. Like same thing I was, except I was just staring at them and. Right. Yeah. But I think that ultimately is probably not the intention. If you were the director, I would kind of go in there and say you wouldn't want people checking out of your movie. But nevertheless, that's just one part of this movie. I. This movie would be on my list is on my list. I think this movie is absolutely fantastic and I think it's a great, great love story that really feels the weight of time in a way that a movie can make you feel. And I think it's a very, very huge achievement. Well said, Jesus. Yeah, because the the movie is long. It's like pushing 3 hours and a lot of it it's you spend so long on just certain scenes and then you will boom and jump to like months, years later and you feel that like that tightness and then you're just, you're gone and you're off. So you're really following following them on this adventure. I this is not a counter argument for the length of the sex scenes at all. The director just seems, at least in this film, extremely interested in focusing on things for a long period of time. The sex. Yes. But also there's a lot of eating in this, just like. Yeah, of eating the movie argument. The argument that they have at the end in the apartment, which we reference on our, you know, favorite movie Arguments podcast there she has like Adele has like snot and all this gross stuff like falling from her face. And they, you know, normally you'd go cut it like blow your nose or something. And he just he's and it's not far away. Like he's focused right on it and you're like, okay. So he's, for lack of a better phrase, he's really, really concerned with all the intimacies of a young relationship with this movie. And yeah, focus is on certain aspects, obviously much, much more detailed than the other. But I do want to say, you know, this is one of the most realistic relationship movies I've ever seen. Did win the Palme d'Or it con. I have also only seen it twice, once in the theater, and then once when it was just released on DVD because I knew I was going to include it in my top ten of 2013 and I did. So it's been a while. But yeah, this movie is a lot to take. You know, Léa Seydoux was already somewhat well-known to American audiences, but her career took off after this. And then Adele, whose last name I just cannot pronounce. And I'm so sorry, because your performance in this movie is beautiful. I really thought she stole the movie. Yeah. So she has been in. Yeah, she's been in stuff, but not many American movies. And maybe that's intentional by her. Maybe she doesn't want all the bullshit that comes with the Hollywood system. I get it. I would just love to see her and more. And then lastly, we've already kind of touched on it, but this was a very troubled production, very controversial movie. What a vision. You know, I honestly think once all the controversy of this movie like broke and once they started really examining criticism of it, that's probably why I have stayed away from the movie a little bit, but I have gone back to watch certain scenes like that argument. And God, it's just I mean, the way they meet, like on the street and I looks at her like that. That's the shit I love. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like that's the stuff I can't get out of my head. And they apparently film that, like, 100 times, I don't know. But yeah, tough, tough movie. The reason why I wanted to do this podcast episode is because I wanted to talk about these movies just a little bit outside of whatever they are known for, which is usually sex scenes, you know, these NC 17 rating movies. So I'm glad to give a little voice to some of these movies. I'm going to set this one up briefly. This next one's really interesting because this also contains a lot of sex. But where I would argue the sex doesn't change. It doesn't change too much. And blue is the warmest color. Does early on because the adult characters like experimenting with, you know, a boy in her school. But it doesn't I don't know to me like it doesn't change a lot. Every sex scene in Ang Lee's lust caution, like it really means something different than the one before. And well, I don't know if you've ever actually seen this movie. We talked. About this. Yeah. You said you heard of the controversy of it in the 27 part, but you didn't say you had actually seen. No, I. Did see it. Okay. I didn't. Know. Oh, oh, I'm saying you never. Told you thinking of a different movie? Never mind. Fuck Christ. I mean, what movie could you. Possibly. Be confusing? I was thinking. Lust, caution. I was thinking. I was thinking of the handmaiden. Okay, okay. That's fair to get confused, but I mean, the handmaiden doesn't exist. No, no, no, no. The handmaiden is a way more like a freaky deaky type. Of like this is a way to put it. It's a lot. There's a lot more. I'll say, like perverse. That's a that's a good movie too. Like, don't get me wrong, I like that movie a lot. But this. Yes, the sex and just the what the whole. Tone of lust, caution is very like sinister. Some of handmaiden is sinister. I was going to call it Handmaid's Tale, but it's not that. It's yeah, it's not. That is. I mean, that's a good movie that made my top ten of that year as well. I remember that. Yeah. Lust caution. We did mention on the 2007 podcast, but we didn't really like talk about it that much. So I want to know kind of what you think about it because, you know, we were moving fast for mentioning a lot of movies. I didn't really do a good job of explaining what the movie was about, and I don't want to do it a disservice because this movie actually is very well done. It's Lust Caution is about a group of students at the University of Hong Kong who, in the late thirties and early forties attempt to assassinate a high ranking agent in the corrupt government played by Tony Leung. And the best way they can think to do this is by having the most innocent one among the bunch played perfectly by Tang Wei lure this agent in it's sex. But when this movie begins, her character is a virgin. So there's, you know, there's quite a journey in this film. It is a long film. It is beautifully shot. And all the actors really go for it in any number of ways. And Tang Wei, actually, by total coincidence, is the star of Park Chan Woakes new movie decision to leave. I don't know if you've heard of that one right now, but yeah, I'm interested in seeing that. But yeah, give me your lust, caution thoughts. This is it's a challenging movie. I've only seen it twice. I saw it in the theater and was like, whoa. I mean, they of salt once. I don't know, it must have been on some channel because I don't own this or anything, but I definitely watch it all the way through. I think I wrote about Ang Lee, so I watched all of his work. But yeah. Well, I just remember all of the controversy over the sex because it was nominated for an Academy Award, was it not? It wasn't. And a largely was of the NC 17 rating because this this is why I don't think blond wool I I'll put it this way I won't be surprised if it picks up any nominations. I mean I mentioned like Henry and June, there are movies that have been rated NC 17 that have gotten nominated for Oscars, usually not major ones. You don't get in the top eight Oscars. So, no, this wasn't and it really should have been. I mean, at least for like the cinematography is gorgeous. But, you know, as we've established 27 tough year, but Marion Cotillard and Tang Wei in this movie are my favorite two, my favorite performances of that year, male or female, I don't care. It sucks because I remember. I remember thinking like that this movie is being whatever the movie's content is being overshadowed by this idea that it's just a movie about sex. Yeah. Which is exactly what happened to the movie made two years earlier. Brokeback Mountain. Yeah. Which was rated R in which people I mean, if you weren't around for that uproar, I was in college, I was alert. I was seeing every movie, I was doing everything. I was on the Internet as much as you could be. Like I was reading and everything, watching everything. And people, I mean, God, you thought the hysteria for blond was bad. People were losing their minds over Brokeback Mountain, losing their minds, boycotting it. Theaters in Utah, I think like the entire state just weren't going to show it. This is weeks before the movies come out and what happens? We watch it and it. Like. I mean, Jesus Christ, people, come on. I mean, the sex and Brokeback Mountain is consensual and it's it clothed in barely less any amount of time. So I took him as being like, Hey, you all lost your minds over that? Yeah. Fuck you. I'm doubling down with less cause that's what I sorry for that long rant, but I just. I always defended Brokeback Mountain, like, a lot. It was not cool to be a 20 year old dude who liked that movie, I'll put it that way. It just wasn't. And I always fought for it. You know, it's one of those things where if you go into a movie where it has these four guys and not conclusions, but these judgments made of it, you're going to go into that movie and then like it's so if it's a sexuality scene. So the movie is being plagued by its its use of sexuality. You're going to go into that movie even with an open mind, but you're going to get to that sex scene. You going to be like, Oh, here it comes. This is this scene that everyone's talking about. And and that sucks because like, that's not the way that the story wants you in the movie to get to that scene. Like that scene, if done tastefully, is done for a reason. So it sounds like to me like in your description of like this movie, you know, these are sex scenes that are telling a story, like there is a purpose, there's a reason. Oh yeah. If that's getting lost on you because you're like, Oh, is this the scene that's causing all the controversy? What happens here? Like you're looking at the movie in a such a macro way that's not at all what the movie is trying to do for you as the audience. It just it sucks. It's disservice to the storytelling. Yeah. And this is clearly what we're seeing with you. Everything you just said, we could apply to blond to blue. It's been 15 years since Lust Caution came out. And the only thing I just tell people is, I mean. Do a little. Research like you can investigate why it's rated NC 17 or why it has the rating. But that is the only discourse around Blond. I mean, still, even especially when it was all crazy for those few weeks, it's all about sexuality and the nudity and all this. And I'm going, okay, that stuff is in lust. Caution. It is in blond. It is. I'm not denying that. But there is more to the movie. Yeah, let's caution is a beautifully shot movie, beautifully staged the end. It doesn't end where I expected it to. And yeah, I mean it's a challenging piece. This isn't he's made very inglese made incredibly rewatchable movies that are fun. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is awesome. Like, you can watch it any time. All right. Let me set this one up a little bit for you, because at the top of the pod, which I'm absolutely I include when we started this list, you were referencing number six, like you've heard about it so much so this is the one you were talking about. I do still really want to talk about this movie. Six and seven are ones that I really, really want to mention. But yeah, you can lead off with. You know, I want to know what you know about number seven and what you've heard about it. I've never I've never heard anything. I just like the title. Oh, you never heard of this one? No, I have no idea. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was just like, oh, great. It's a it's like an old school criterion pool. So this is 1992 man bites dog. I cannot say the last names of these wonderful men who made this movie. So I'm going to say Remy, Andre and Benoit. But this is well, again, if you know for this movie, then, you know, I mean, it's a Belgian film. It's in French, shot in black and white on very grainy 16 millimeter by four college kids. The movie, like when I put this movie on, I saw this in college. It was presented as a very gritty documentary about a few young college filmmakers who befriend a serial killer named Ben and follow them around as he does like heinous shit. Serial killer shit. It's gruesome. It is very I emphasize very oddly funny. It's a very unique film. And as the documentarians keep filming, Ben, they become consumed by his ways and they start to join him in his crime. So it is a type of movie that feels so real. It actually feels like you're watching Real Crimes. This is like the Blair Witch thing before Blair Witch. This movie is not a documentary. It's like it's one of the first kind of mockumentaries like Spinal Tap was a few years earlier. But this is taking it in an extremely disturbing and perverse way. But again, everyone in the movie is an actor, but I just can't imagine what audiences what it done with this in 1992 this was I've been watching and listening to a lot of Tarantino stuff lately, and he has some great stories of hitting the festival circuit in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs. And yeah, these are the guys he was palling around with, like the makers of this film, and they were just some kooky kids running around. And what a crowd that would have been. But it is interesting to me that Remy and Andre have never made another narrative film, and the guy who plays Ben has acted a bunch. But if you've seen like this Criterion cover or I just I really urge people to put it on. But for my knowledge, this is this could be one of the few movies mentioned today that is rated NC 17 because of just like terrifying consistent violence on screen. It's very, very unsettling. Like, very unsettling, but a really trippy experiment. It's a very, very cool idea. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a it's it's not they don't. Presented as found footage. It's like mockumentary but it's a really really early example of that that never gets mentioned on those lists like best mockumentary films. Best Yeah. You know, fake documentaries, whatever. And when I say cool, I don't mean cool. And being a serial killer, I just mean like that's just a very, very far out and it's just a compelling way to go into a story like that. Like, I love the yeah, it's a. Really radical concept. Yeah. Like I hadn't seen, I mean, I didn't see this in 1992. This was like a when again, like the Netflix thing, like get renting these NC 17 movies like on DVD, having it show up and putting it in and going, what is this going to be? And I knew about man bites dog from Tarantino and from other filmmakers. But yeah, it's a it's a radical movie. Well, let's get into. This number six movie now with all the controversy that we've had. A lot of controversy. Yes. Let's talk about this cave movie. Okay. Descent 27 is not a cave movie. That is a that is called The Descent. And it is an incredibly good and effective horror movie. Descent Mean 27 by Taylor Lucchese, as you mentioned is um, so this one this is difficult to talk about. Like, no kidding aside, Maya, played by Rosario Dawson, is a college student. She meets a nice young fella at a frat party. They go on a date, they go back to his place to talk. And it is bad. Maya is sexually assaulted by this guy, and it is bad. It's it shares a lot with irreversible but then not it has its own style to it because it's all in one shot. But I mean, the camera is like right on her face the whole time when Rosario Dawson is face like just her face only and it's bad on purpose. I actually own this movie. I listen to the director's commentary for it in which Rosario Dawson is also on. It's a very rough scene, but it has purpose. I'm not even getting into like the language that's used in the scene, and then there's still a fucking hour left in the movie and oh, well, Rosario Dawson is flawless in this film. It's this is an extremely important movie to me. Thematically, it has an ending that I have never forgotten. It will leave you. And just watching her arc of like, okay, this, this horrific thing happens. And then, you know, we still got all this time left in this movie. And she, you know, changes. And what what this attack does to her is something that I could have never expected. And I don't think many people have seen this movie. And it's not popular movie, but I don't think many people have seen it has seen it twice. So, you know, wow, it's a tough one, but it's very good. It's very good. It's just a tough like new York indie movie, you know, not a cave movie. Yeah, I was I was I was trying to find something in Woody to bring it back to a cave thing. But then I was like, Now I can't, I can't. I can't ruin with the the impact of what you just said to with something funny. It's just so authentic. Like, it's so the end is. Yeah, that's, that's like a. That's a movie that lives. In the, in the shadow of Irreversible and going. I got what that movie was doing and the fact that it was written and directed by a woman like it, everything in the movie purpose you are no one. No one watching descent is going to enjoy everything in that movie. You're just not. That's the design of it. But, you know, tough, tough, tough movie, tough movie. So in my genius outlining here in which I totally botched the order, but hopefully it made for some good bonding. I have left the last five obscure to you because I want to hear, you know, your authentic reactions and not see them. You say you are, you know, too, that will be on it. So we'll see if that is revealed because you're going to know all these movies. Number five, okay. Kind of crazy to go from something like The Descent to Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls to releasing. I Knew 85, but I knew it. But you know. Showgirls is not a better made movie than the ones I've already listed. And it is certainly not as important. But Showgirls is the NC 17 movie to end all NC 17 movies. It's it's the reason why people know about this rating. I mean, if I'm doing a list like this I have to include showgirls in the top five keeps balance in the world this movie's ridiculous. It's these are two is absolutely ridiculous. It's so much fun it's so insane. Everyone is acting at 11 like the camera operator is at 11. The person responsible for however much neon needed to be on set is at 11. There's no chill in regard to this movie. And dare I say Verhoeven do this. Dare I say that this was all his intention? I mean, to fuck around with $40 million of United Artists money. I don't know. It's a bad movie. And I'm not saying that if someone intentionally makes a bad movie, that necessarily makes it, you know, a good, bad movie. I'm not saying that. But Showgirls is the best bad movie ever made. I think it's so damn cheesy and that that ends the positive selling point for me. So I want to hear your thoughts on it. Well, I mean, dude, like there is a reason that like I mean, at least in L.A. but I'm sure in all the major like movie cities like this is a movie that is shown in theaters to this day. Yes, it has cult status that you know there's a reason why certain movies do this there. It has a following. It has a fan base. People have fun with it. They go to midnight showings of it. They laugh with and awe at it. I remember the first time I saw this. It took me a while to learn that some movies were being made intentionally for other reasons than to be taken seriously. Like subversive reasons. Yes. Yes. I mean, folks, Mel Brooks was doing this in the. Sixties and seventies like he was doing it to not at this perverse of a level, but. Yes, yes. Like I were like, it's my American psycho thing. Like the first time I saw that, I took it so seriously that I was like, this movie is, like, the most offensive thing I've ever seen, and look what happened. Now it's in my top, top ten. But this was one where I had the same thing. I go, What is this like? This is not good. Like, none of this is like, this is not OC of showgirls. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, it wasn't until this sex scene in the pool, which is like coming towards the end of the movie where I just go, maybe this is supposed to be ridiculous. Because is that toward the end where. She where she's like, flailing in in. I'm I'm aware of the scene, my friend. Yes, I believe me. Yes. I don't. Wherever it is in the movie, I. Get your point. That's when you go, you're either in or you're out. And if you're out, you were you were out in minute ten of the movie. But if you're in, you go, okay, we've crossed a huge line here. Yeah. I was like, I okay, I think I just surrendered to it. I was sort of like, all right, I have I have no idea what I'm watching right now. I don't care. So I'm just going to I'm just going to see this through. And where are you, like at home when you saw it for the first time? Yeah. Yeah. I saw this young like I saw like too young, but like I definitely think it had to be the early 2000s teases. So yeah, I mean I've seen it a few times as well. And like you said, it's it is definitely one of the things in our mailbag episode I said this was my favorite cult classic of all time, or at least in the top five, you know, but, but one thing, yeah, I'm going to call it like I see it, this movie does feature one scene that to me earns its NC 17 rating. And that's that horrible just gang rape that did not need to go that far. Like toward the end, like we get it. Like you did not need to take it there. I can not justify that scene. I've only watched that scene once. That's what fast forward is for. But it's like I don't. Yeah, something like that kind of maybe keeps me out of a midnight screening. Yeah, I think that's just so uncomfortable to, like, watch with other people. And even like Elizabeth Berkley introduces the movie at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery screening, which is great, but that scene is just I don't know. That's got to be one where the crowd just gets kind of quiet, you know, it's tough. Yeah. I imagine it's one of those situations where it's like there's so much more about the movie that people have. Like, it's why has that call says, and that's the scene where you're like, You just got to get through this. Yeah. And this next film also has a finale scene that some people thought went way, way too far. And that is William Friedkin's Killer Joe, a truly great and savage movie. Holy shit. Yeah. I mean, this is one, you know, he makes Bug and releases that in 2007, as we said, based on a Tracy Letts play that gets an R-rating and they come around, this is William Friedkin, you know, French Connection, The Exorcist. It's no sorcerer like no stranger to pushing boundaries. Cruising, which I watched now and still can't believe is rated R like that's crazy. But he sees this as an opportunity to go, you know what, I don't care. Like we're just doing it. I'm going to do it the way Tracy Letts wrote it and we're going to put it out there with the NC 17 Badge of Honor. And God, this thing is just so grimy and sweaty and gross. It's maybe features my favorite Matthew McConaughey, at least my favorite starring role for him. Certainly. And it's. The mechanisms. Oh, yeah, this is right in the thick of it. And I think speaking of that, I think he smiling is in a way better in this than he is in something like Dallas Buyers Club. But, you know, that's just me. MCCONAUGHEY What's cool about this movie is that McConaughey is so super cool in it, but everyone else is insane. Yeah, like Emile Hirsch, Thomas AME Church, Gina Gershon, Juno Temple, they're all insane. Maybe as a great use of stroking by Clarence Carter. What do you think of this, though? I love this movie. I remember well, I knew I knew all about it because of Tracy Letts in the play. So I was like, oh, wow, they're doing they're doing a they're doing a movie of this. And I was just so thrilled with the movie. I was like, this is I don't know if we talked about this. I'm sure it came up during our way back when on our are our adaptations from place to film podcast. This is this is a great example this is a very, very good example of a movie doing a very good job from coming from the source material. So you had read the play. Yeah. Did anything in like the movie shock you because you had already read the play or were you like were you thinking going into the movie like, how the hell are they going to do that? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a part of it. I think that's what I thought the movie did so well with this because it didn't shy away from it. I can't imagine doing that night after night on stage. I've never seen a production of Killer Joe, so I'd have to see how that went. But I loved that the way that they did it on film because I was like, I think this is being the most effective way to handle this scene. Yeah, I totally I totally get it. I mean, one thing about the movie is that it does have like great cinematography by Caleb Deschanel, who has two daughters, Emily and Zoe. And this poor guy's been nominated for six Oscars and never won. So it looks great. It sounds great. It's just when you see a master adopt this rating and do it in a way that, you know, he's using the rating to his advantage, there's a lot of perverse sexual content in this movie. And to see him just, you know, go for it as an older man, it's like, okay, wow. And and as we've, you know, been eluding all the frenzy surrounding the fellatio finale of Blond, I certainly hope no critic of Blond has ever seen Killer Joe Jesus, you know. Oh, my God. Number three is a movie I've referenced a few times in the past year. On this pod, we're going record with Crash, directed by David Cronenberg. Again, another master director, really adopting what you can do with the NC 17 rating. And I actually rewatched every Cronenberg movie when Crimes of the Future was released this year, did a full solo part on that one. Episode 62 They're All By My Lonesome Crash was Martin Scorsese's eight favorite film of the nineties. Bernardo Bertolucci called it a religious masterpiece. Just trying to sell it here for people. Who. You know, have never dared to try it. But have you ever seen this? I've never seen it. But my favorite thing that you say about this is I'm going to butcher it. But it's it's where you're like when you're comparing the two crash movies and. Yes. How did you say that? Like one is like a is it like a religious like masterpiece or whatever? Bernardo Bertolucci said. And then he had the one won an Oscar. Yeah, the other one. One just happened to win Best Picture. Yeah, yeah. One can be like a religious experience for some people, apparently. But okay, the movie is I'm I also like him trying to describe what these movies are about to be like. You know, it's not maybe it's not as scary as you've heard every movie on this list has like scary scenes. But Crash is a movie about people in cars meeting at the intersection of sex and thrill. It's about a very sexually active group of people whose sexual identities are tied to cars and car crashes. Some people, like Elias Cortez, oh, my favorite actors, and Holly Hunter, they're already in this world. While a couple in a very open relationship, James Spader and Deborah Kara Unger, they're just now discovering this vehicular fetish. So Roger Ebert was a big fan of the movie. He said kind of famously that I admired it, although I can't say I liked it. I think you and I talk about a lot of movies on this podcast, and there is a difference between liking something and admiring what it's saying and how it's saying it. And I did read Crash the book by J.G. Ballard. And well, if you've you've never seen Crash, but you are curious, I would urge you to check it out, because there's a lot of gossip online about this movie that just isn't true, involving a scar. Anyway, I'll leave it there. It's a this is like a short one. This is like an hour, 40 minutes, and it just cruises. But yeah, you're going to see some some crazy shit. I do think you'd like it, though. I think you would appreciate the go for broke tone of it because he is setting this tone. I'm talking for a minute too and going, this is where I am. If You're here with me. We could have a weird but fun time. If you're not with me, then just get out of the damn car, right? Yeah. That's fair. Number two is a movie. I actually already referenced extensively in the history portion, but that's for good reason because it is important to the history of the NC 17 rating. And it's number two because Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara is not only one of my favorite films of the nineties, it was Scorsese's fifth favorite film of the nineties and nobody's ever seen a movie like this. Not even Werner Herzog's loose remake, not really a remake starring Nicolas Cage that I love, by the way. That I love. But this is not that you've and no one has certainly ever seen Harvey Keitel like this, even if you think you have this movie, Bad Lieutenant, 1992, this movie is like an assault. Keitel plays the lieutenant in question, and it's just right up there with the most realistic depiction of a corrupt cop that I have seen. I mean, this guy snorts Coke before. He walks into a crime scene, he smokes crack with criminals, does heroin on the street. He sexually demeans people. He owes a ton of money to bookies. I should also say that he's married and he has kids is just an absolute mess, like the plot of the movie. Most of the plot of this movie is just following this guy around, watching him be bad, bad, bad. But there is like a B plot. There is a narrative kind of motion that isn't fun. Describe. But after a nun is sexually assaulted, they put this lunatic lieutenant on the case. Because this is an able for our movie. He just goes for it. Religious imagery is a huge part of it. This movie is just pure nineties. Pure nineties. New York. Victor Argo, Paul Calderon. Zoe Lund, Great and savage. New York movie and Keitel's best performance, no question. Wow. Harvey Keitel. We got to see this one, man. I can't believe you have it. Yeah, I've never seen this one. I mean, this is like, God, you just got to do it. Another short one, too. It just moves, moves, moves. And especially because like, obviously I am a fan of the Nicolas Cage one, but I think the only reason that's that's because it's not it's not the movie. It's Nicolas Cage. Yeah. I mean, that just has there you have a marriage of an extremely odd movie star, Nicolas Cage, and an extremely odd film director, Werner Herzog, who are meeting and going, let's do this. I mean, that movie has like I laughed really hard, that movie. I don't laugh during it. Well, 4 hours bad is not designed that way at all. It's not an absurd movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's it's a really good I mean, I own this one. I've seen it. I've seen it quite a few times. It's a tough movie, but yeah. Keitel God, he's just so good in it. I would definitely rated as his best. To him right now. What a hell of a year. 1982 for him. Yeah, I mean, Reservoir Dogs. This. Yeah, for sure. Hell of a year. Elvis season. What's my number one, Nick? Oh, yeah. Well, I've scoured my brain, have crossed many tracks and have come to the conclusion that there can only be one movie that could pass gas. Moe by Trey Parker. Oh, my God. How do you know this one? I was good. You were going to say that? I was going to say that goddamn jell o. Oh, oh, shit. I stole the bad. Sorry. God damn it. That was the whole thing. I saw the sincere. I saw this God damn forsaken outline and. I was like, because of grace for all of the all of the people listening here on Alex's botched outline, his number one, he's got five through one, five through two rather hour all question marks. And then number one, it says, take one goddamn guess. So I'm like, all right, I'll I'll find some fun, some witty thing to come up with. So I'm researching all these NC 17 movies and I see orgasmic pop up and I was like, Oh, that's got to get in here somewhere like it. We have to get that movie mentioned somewhere and oh, you take the jasmine and I don't it. I love it, though. I love it. I don't like jelly donuts. That's gross. I it though I loved it. You just know I do. I do. It's something I go to, though, that's hilarious because I was waiting to try to like sneak that with it. So we both had it, but No, of course, I'm talking about Steve McQueen's shame from 2011 did an entire episode on this movie, episode 45, This is my column, fourth favorite film of all time. I've seen it as much as any other movie. It was a no brainer that it was going to be ranked here, but that is for good. No notes on this one. People have heard me talk about it enough. Say say something new. Say something you've never said about it. I am starting to my next thing and you know it's all good. We're not talking about something. It's going to get me like a month from now. I'm just working on something. And I have when I tell you I have studied the opening montage of this and the downfall montage to where I have actually pulled it off right here, written out every different sequence that is being displayed here. So like, okay, he's waking up, okay, he's on the subway, okay, he's waking up again. And then at the end, you know, it's like, okay, we start in the subway now. He's in the bar, basically done some shame mass and picked all of that apart, put it in chronological order, decipher it how much has passed in each cutaway, try to understand why he cut when he cut and back to which point he cut to. And I'm using that not like not using it as a formula, but I'm using that kind of as a template for something I'm working on. So it's not like any trivia about the movie, but that's the level of obsession I have with it, because I think the way Michael Fassbinder's character is introduced and then later when he has his downfall, his binge are just two of the most magnificently edited sequences I have ever seen, and I needed to understand why I needed to break down the actual like, engineering mechanics of it, you know? How many times does he cut back to that Subway in the Downfall montage, which we talked about? You know, it starts there. So you see a little scar on his face and like, when did you decide to come back? Where are we in the storyline? I just I don't know. I will never, ever stop trying to figure this movie out. It's been out for 11 years. And I usually tell people when people are like, What's your favorite movie? That someone asked like, What's your favorite movie that can open up? It depends what kind of conversation you want to have. So if we're talking like all timer, am I going to have to do that? So I'll say, Well, I could tell you the best movie like I've seen since it was, and I'll go with this one. I'll say Shame 2011. Most a lot of people haven't heard of it. If people have heard of it, they look at me like I'm crazy. That's okay. But yeah, I mean, movies. Important to me. It changed how I looked at the art form completely. Oh, my God. And it's still on Hulu go. Yeah, it's on Hulu. Do I fucking love that. I love that. That was. That was. That was a great, great little side tangent to something that I didn't expect and something I didn't need to talk about. Shame is very cool. Yeah, I like a color coordinated. It like it's subways. Agreed when he goes to the bar to say to go the woman that's like in red that I'm trying to see where I wanted to see where these met. I just do this all on paper. It's not like I took them into my editing software, which I have considered to put them in order. But then I put it in order chronologically, like all my computer and I went, okay, that's it. Would not be as interesting if it was like that. And to actually see how they did this. Like when you writing a montage can be kind of hard, like how you want it to go. But then if you do, you do like a separate file and you go, okay, what do I want to say in this montage? Like, how many different scenes am I trying to show? Like, Okay, I'm showing cross-cutting between four different things here. What I found is I'm going to put those four events in order on my outline. And then now that I know the order, they go in chronological CLI, I can play with them in the script now. I can play with them over here and play with the form. And yeah, this is why this movie is so continues to inspire me beyond really all others since its release, I should say. All others since its release, yes. So that's it. There's your top ten, NC 17 rated films from what are you watching? What are you watching? Approved official NC 17 rated. I'm going to go through my top ten since we kind of botched the orders we were going through them. Yeah. Go to again. Never said the dreamers. Number nine blue is the warmest color. Number eight, lust caution. Number seven, man bites dog. Number six, descent. Not to be confused with the descent. Number five showgirls, of course. Number four, Killer Joe. Number three, crash number two, Bad Lieutenant, the Abel Ferrara movie and number one, Orgasmic All by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I do want to mention some honorable mentions here. Bad Education by Pedro Almodovar. No Stranger to this rating. I love him for that blond, of course, by Andrew Dominic. Which if I'm doing this list, I don't know, next year would definitely make my top ten somewhere. I just again didn't want to include it because I wanted to talk about as many movies as possible. Which one would you kick out for? Blond. Which one? Interestingly, interestingly, based on our conversation solely, I'm probably going to take out blue is the warmest color. I don't know how that is aged for me. I would need to examine it. I feel okay with it. I feel fine where it is now and it's even number nine like it. Why? I'm saying interestingly that I wouldn't just instinctually kick out number ten, the dreamers, but I like the Dreamers being on the top ten NC 17 list. You're crazy, man. You're crazy. Thanks. I know. Honorable mention. So go to John Waters. Certainly no stranger to controversy did a dirty shame which is okay. He'll never forget it if you see it. Johnny Knoxville is in that one, bud. Ooh, the documentary Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the making of the porno. Deep Throat, that's rated NC 17 because of all the footage they show from Deep Throat. Well, two girls and a guy by James Toback, starring Robert Downey Jr, young Robert Downey Junior, pretty sober Robert Downey Jr. And this is rated NC 17 because of a scene that the title suggests. So yeah, those are some honorable mentions there. Any from you? Oh, give me your top five list. Give me your or give me your list that you had of all the options you had. I want to see what you went with. So I had Blue is the warmest color. I had Killer Joe. Okay. Mysterious skin. And I had shame at number one. And then I did have showgirls at the very bottom because I for the same reason as you, I was like, I should probably include this one. It's got include it, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like because it is sort of like, well, yeah, this is sort of like the quintessential NC 17 movie. But yeah, so that was my list. Here's the mysterious Skins. You're only unrated well on there. So that's a good list, too. That's a strong list. Yes, it's not it's not too bad. All right. So that closes out the NC 17 discussion. But, you know, I figured we're just going to keep this going a little bit, will have some nice little bonus material here that has nothing really to do with NC 17 rated films. But it is we're releasing this at tail end of the Halloween season, the 2022 Halloween season. And I love the horror genre. We, you know, we did it episode last year the scariest movies we've ever seed it it is not a genre you particularly enjoy. You did a lot when you were younger, but stuff scares you very easily now, and I like it for any number of reasons. I like new and young filmmakers, which is something the genre has always been useful for. I like seeing the way people are stretching a budget in 2022 cinema because a lot of these weren't made for that much money. But I've seen like pretty much every horror slash, scary slash psychological thriller movie that's come out so far this year. I'm not going to talk about all of them. I'm going to talk about all the ones that I would recommend people watch. This didn't mean that I like I was a die hard lover of all of them, but I enjoyed myself when I watched all of these movies and I just want to give my thoughts in case, you know, sometimes I have a bit of a hangover from spooky movie season and I find myself like, not cutting that off at October 31st and I'll be like in the first week of November, honestly, because of lists like these, like I read lists or listen to podcasts and people are going, No, no, no, you missed you missed one. You got to check this out. So so you probably will not have seen any of the movies. I want to talk about these 20, 22 movies. And it's not like, you know, damn, whatever. I doubt any of these even end up on my top ten of the year. So this is it's just, you know, we got a podcast. I didn't want to do it as its own separate episode because it's not going to be that long. So here it some fun recent horror movies Scream five already talked about it talked about it in our Scream episode Way Back. That's making your top ten of the year. I guarantee it scream five. Yeah might have a chance to crack to crack it there we talked about this when we did scream one in Scream two podcast. I really, really liked it. It was written by Vanderbilt, written and produced. Who is the writer producer of Zodiac? He's also writing Scream six for Scream five. It was so great to bring back Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, and then adding Jennie Ortega, Mikey Madison, who we love, Jack Quaid. I'm worried about part, but I was worried about part five. Not bringing Nev back for part six is a bad, bad, bad move. Unless unless it's a troll and that would be a major troll. But if she ends up actually being in Scream six, like one scene, like, I don't know, could she be the killer? You know, I think that's giving them a little too much credit, but so I doubt that'll be the case. But like to not include her was just silly to me. I still love the movie though. If a Scream fan, a lot of us die hard scream one Scream two fans liked Scream five, and I think that's for good reason. So she doesn't die in Scream five, is what you're saying? Hey, they back old Skeet Ulrich for Scream five and he's dead. Skeet Skeet is in Scream five. Scream. There's no there's no rules, man. It's all in. The dude is still dead. Billy is dead, trust me. So I'm not. I'm not saying how scream five ends. Maybe she did bite it. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe not. And then Skeets and then maybe I. Got to see. Oh, it's great. Next. So I'm going to mention this is actually a 2021 movie. Sorry, I just watched it on Netflix. I'm mentioning it right after Scream five because I thought, you know, last Friday, I'm sitting by myself and I go, I want to watch a Netflix horror movie like a Netflix original, because full disclosure, I often find that they get it wrong a lot of the time. And I'm like, Oh, and I won't even make it to the end. But I was just, you know, I'm just looking, just browsing, doing the doing something I hardly see. Doing your thing, doing my thing. I never do that. I usually have like what I'm going to watch mapped out came across something called There's Someone Inside Your House. And this was made by Patrick Brice who made creep creep to the overnight. I don't know if you saw that overnight. Not a scary movie. Good movie takes place over the course of one evening. There's someone inside your house. Actually felt like a modern update. The original scream like scream circa 2022, which is exactly what Scream five was doing. But this and Scream five would actually make a cool double feature for this reason. I just I love the way the young characters spoke in this movie. I don't get to see too many, like, authentic high school movies or TV shows anymore. Like Euphoria is not trying to be authentic. And I know it was the kind of thing where everyone is aware of the world they live in, where you got to be careful about what you say. There's woke culture. PC Culture. But when the characters decided to intentionally buck against that, it was I don't know, it was a lot of fun. This usually happens in dialog and you know, it wasn't a perfect movie, but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really good for Netflix. Original horror movie two people I want to call out that I had never heard of, but Sydney Park is incredible. She actually reminded me a lot of Mickey in this like a lot. And I was I was so into it because remind me of our friend and someone we've worked with and then Aja Cooper was great as well. They really stole the film. It was a very satisfying teen slasher movie. And you know, the two actors I just mentioned are not white. And everyone in Scream 1996 is white. This is why it's cool for me to watch these movies. I like seeing these different perspectives, these different cultures. I don't mind that at all. There's a lot of people that complain about this stuff, but like straight up, when I was 11 years old scream, it never occurred to me that like, Oh, all those people look like me. That never occurred to me one way or another. I was just used to it. There are a lot of people who don't look like me, who weren't to that stuff, and I just love the different representation because sometimes they bring it into their character, sometimes they don't. But you know, this is the way high schools look nowadays. It's not just all white everywhere. And that was one aspect I really enjoyed of the movie. There's someone inside your house. Yeah, I'm getting these early ones out of the way because I've kind of talked about them already, including this is actually the best horror double feature of 2022, and that is Ty West's ex and Pearl filmed them both at the same time in COVID induced ex is a really good seventies horror bad porno movie vibe, meaning it's about a group of people who are just setting out to make a cheap porno and make some money. They go to a remote cabin. Things don't go well, kid. Cut his hair. Jenny Ortega from Scream five is their MIA plays two wildly different roles in ex and not even kidding I'm just going to say it I would nominate her for the Oscar for this. I'm not even kidding. Why not? It would never, never happen. But I was so impressed by the dual roles she did in Ex. I was like, I mean, who cares? Like inject a little fund into stuff I, I don't know. I thought she was great. Pearl is a prequel to EX and it's also really damn fun and kind of gross on purpose. I loved both equally and yeah, best double feature horror double feature of 2022 ex and Pearl Mia Goth is just really great. I really, really like her. That's cool. You know, she was great in Suspiria. I just. I've always been a fan. Yeah. You know, the next one, Pray by Dan Trachtenberg. This is a prequel to the Predator franchise. You heard of this one on Hulu? I heard good things about this. Yeah, this is why I wanted to mention it, because it's set in the northern Great Plains of America in 1719, and it's a far cry from the jungles of. 1987 Predator. I thought it was really smart to make this the lead of this movie. A strong, young female protagonist in Amber Midthunder. I'm if I'm not saying that right as Naru and I just loved her in this, I thought she really carried the movie and I thought she did an amazing job. And if you like the Predator films and can spare 100 minutes for this Hulu original, I don't think you're going to do wrong. I think you'd like this one, too. Actually, I haven't. Heard a bad thing about it. Yeah, it was. If you're a fan of the franchise, here it is. And how many franchise movies do we see? We're like, okay, whatever. I'm not I don't like that one. And this one, it just it was good. It fit in really well, especially given the challenging, you know, kind of time period. Like we're not in any contemporary setting. That the title is very good. Yeah, I like it considering like. Yeah, like that. Like that's, that's, that's, that's a, that's a nice way to do that. Yeah. Good play on words there. This next one is non fun if you will. This next one is not a conventional horror movie, not certainly not a slasher. Think you'd actually get a lot out of this one? It's called Resurrection, directed by Andrew Simmons. Now, Rebecca Hall, the great Rebecca Hall, is living her best life in Albany, New York. There, her daughter is going off to college. Things are all good. And she spots man from her past, played by Tim Roth. Oh, this is not good. I do not want to say why this is not good, but the very sight of him unsettles her to the point that what unfolds is a very unsettling psychological thriller with an ending that is a lot of fun to unpack. This is a thinker, but not like in a challenging way. Like what did it all mean? It's just a smart thriller, disturbing ending. But this is one where I wish I could have watched like people and not just by myself at home, like running it on YouTube for 699, watching it because when it's done, you know, you want to go, oh, my God, what you like? What's what was it? What was it about? What did it. I don't know. It was good resurrection. I highly recommend it. I think you'd like it. I like both those. About both those actors. They're great. They're great. And it's always fun to see Tim Roth, just like he's Oh, I'm still here. Like I'm here. And you go. Oh, yeah, you are like, he's just great. He's great. I rewatched. He's never left. Yeah, no, but that's what I mean. He's never left and he pops back in like he's great. Yeah. The Hateful Eight, which I just rewatched last night. I was like, Oh, yeah, you are. You are really good. This I love him and he's great in resurrection. Holy shit. The next one I've already mentioned on the pilot a few episodes ago, it was Bodies, Bodies, bodies directed by Helena Ryan. And you know, a lot of these movies, these like contemporary horror movies, actually, just every horror movie, the genre is kind of about the journey. It's as perverse as that journey may be. You're watching this movie, wondering like, who's going to die? How are they going to die? In what order are they going to die? Yeah. Who's killing everyone? That's part of the allure of this genre, even if we don't want to admit it. And a lot of these movies, historically horror movies or certainly more contemporary ones, they just kind of shit the bed on the ending. It happens. It's always been that way. So I like when a movie like this nails its ending in a very satisfying way. And which bodies, bodies, bodies dead and Rachel's in. It again was the highlight here. But everyone is good. Lee Pace is in another movie in the best possible way. He just, you know, well, Beast, starring Idris Elba is a movie that I just keep seeing, like, kind of popping up. It did like, decent in theaters. I went to the theaters to see it and now it's already on streaming for free. It's about a widowed doctor. He takes his daughters on a sort of game reserve vacation in South Africa. Certainly not my idea of a good time and a lion starts to haunt them. And as your movie, you know, if you're. If you like these realistic type of. Creature films like realistic animal films, think like The Edge, The Ghost in the Darkness Crawl from a few years ago. That fits in well to this. It's not like as sophisticated as the edge, but if you're willing to go into that genre, this won't disappoint. I just I really enjoyed it for that reason. Was the CGI. It was good. It was good there. I mean, CGI. Outside of the big superhero movies are like, it's getting better. It's getting really good when you're just focusing on like, we just need to do a lion and you know, some like, Yeah, we got to make it look dark and stuff like that. I'm much more impressed with that than creating this whole entire world of CGI that just looks so, I don't know, washed out. And I know I give these superhero movies a lot of crap for this about the CGI. CGI of these movies, this is often not the fault of the people rendering these graphics, it's not. They're so pressed for time. Marvel is bankrupting all these, you know, special effects outlets because they put these crazy deadlines them and then they do subpar work. That's how I understand it. But I mean, we talk about this. It's like, why is why are Martin Scorsese movies getting CG, right? Like Wolf of Wall Street, where you're completely painting canvases that look absolutely real, like we're actually in Italy. When we weren't, we were just like on some dock somewhere. Why is that look more realistic than the latest Marvel movies? And this is why, because if you have less effects to do and you can put more time and focus on that, then it works out well. So I liked it. It wasn't you know, it's not real iron. I mean, you know. It should be. I don't think it should be. Lions have heart next one. I've definitely talked about this. This was my what are you watching pick on episode four, the Andrea Arnold Pod This is Barbarian, directed by Zack Krieger. I'm mentioning it again because it was just released on HBO, Max and not trying to call myself out here, but I did say this movie is going to be a smash when it releases on streaming. And it is. People are loving it. I'm glad people are being on timeline. Pretty cool about where the movie goes and which is by way of saying not revealing it. And people are just like, Wow, this movie is nuts. Go watch it. This movie's crazy. And what I've been urging people to do for a few weeks now, it's really good. I do think you would like it. You would definitely get I'm. Going to watch it. I'm going you would. Absolutely get enjoyment out of the strong decisions it makes. You will be impressed by it. And it's like, okay. I just need I just need somebody to watch it with me. It's all I need. It's not. That bad. Like gore horror wise. It's like, well, I mean, I say that. It's the best thing. It's so weird because, like, I trust what I say, but I try to. Give it to you straight. No, no. But I have a hard time, like recognizing exactly what it is about horror that I don't like. Cause it's not the violence. It's not the gore. I like all that stuff. Yeah. If you're able to pinpoint that, then you can figure out what is, like, upsetting to you about this. And it's not slasher movies either. It's just I suppose there's just an element of like all of a sudden it's time to be scared. Am I cool with it right now? It's like, am I, am I in a place where I want to be scared? Which is never. If I find there sometimes it's it's fine. And then sometimes I'm like, Oh, God damn it, why am I watching this right now? So you can never really know. Yeah, it's different for us. Like, one thing, I love watching scary movies, but it's still like that scary sensation. Like, I'm cool with certain aspects of it. I'm not cool with other aspects. That's all I'm saying. This is what I like investigating. Like, if something does scare me, it's it's why? Because we've talked about this, like, the violence, the gore. It doesn't really scare me that much either. The next movie I'm going to reference is the scariest movie to me that I'm talking about today. It's called Speak No Evil, the Danish movie, but most of it's in English. I watch this on Shudder. It's a shudder original. If you like scary movies, the shudder app is like it is just the best. They have so much good original movies. Two couples meet on vacation, hit it off. One couple invites the other couple to their rural home a few weeks later. Remember nocturnal animals in that extended roadside kidnaping? But I still can't watch it and watch it once. Still can't watch again. Speak No Evil is like a 98 minute version of that. Oh so so so unsettling. Everything that happens in this movie could happen in real life. There's no supernatural thing. There's no man in a mask. It premiered at Sundance. I watched it on Shudder. I don't want to say any more than that, but I didn't know any actor in this movie, did know anyone involved with it. So I went in fully blind and it was an extremely disturbing experience. But I went, Wow, that's probably the most terrifying movie. I'll see just for me. Yes. Yea speak no evil Christian Toff Drop. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that he's a director. You heard about this next one? I got to talk about smile. Yeah, it's been getting a lot. Yeah, yeah. A lot of attention. Yes. This is directed by Parker Finn. Really popular movie right now. I'd I'd probably say it's right up there with Barbarian as the most popular 2022 horror film and smile's a hit and it had $17 million budget It's already made 170 million and it's still going. And you got a therapist again, no spoilers because I know again, this one is in theaters, so no spoilers. A therapist played by Soucy Bakan who looks exactly like her parents, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, like. Exactly. I never seen her in a movie before. She's a therapist. She witnesses the suicide of one of her patients and she starts to believe that what that patient was being haunted by is the thing that is now haunting her. And there's trust me, that's very simplistic. There's a lot more going on, great thrills, some, you know. Solid kills, which is. Kind of why we watch these are really good ending. And when you watch this, it will be easy to identify why it is so popular right now. I dug it. That's cool. It wasn't it wasn't as good as barbarians to me. A lot of people have been asking. I thought Barbarian was just so smart to me for a number of different reasons. But Smile is. Good, you know, listening to you talk about all these movies and it's making me think about the way that people talk about horror movies. It is not how people talk about any other type of movie because. Yeah, for sure there's. Criteria that everyone has to like is like the things that you're referencing and just like that, like where it's got good kills, it's, you know, it was them at the end. Like I would hear the people that I work with, like one guy in particular, he's, he loves horror movies, so he's to see all these things and he goes back, he goes, Man, it just wasn't, you know, they missed the mark here or like this or that. Yeah. And it's very, very much like what you're seeing. And I just it just kind of dawned on me and like, we never talk about dramas this way or even comedies we like we. Yeah. Will talk about, like, what we think worked about the movie, but we don't talk about, Oh, it hit this, it nailed that, it had this to it. Like it's just very fascinating that horror movies, they really are their own thing in this way. They really are. And like we can a lot of us can agree on like I mean we talk about this all the time on the podcast. Like our senses of humor, everyone's senses of humor are different. But when you all find like a comedy to rally around and everyone's like, Yeah, this is really funny. Or when there's a horror movie going around like, This is really scary, or This is really entertaining. One of the reasons I see a lot of these movies is that I like, even if I don't think the movie is going to be for me and I don't go to every horror movie, there's some there's a really bad one that's released this week and it had like a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's called Pray for the Devil. It's like, okay, I'm not going to go do that. I get what that thing is. But like barbarian smile. I saw all those x pearl, I saw all those opening weekend Scream five in the theater. I want to be in there with the other lunatics being scared. Yeah, it's just part of that whole communal experience that makes these films fun. But yeah, we talk about them like we all find different things funny. We all have different expectations from a horror movie, like what scares us. A lot of people are like, Well, no, I don't want to be scared. But then they go to these movies anyway. They're scared it's like, yeah, there's I don't know. All right. Next up is Goodnight Mommy. This was directed by Matt Sobel. This is a remake of a terrifying Austrian film from 2014 that I've referenced on the podcast. Those the directors of that original film later went on to make The Lodge with Riley Keough. I remember that and I didn't like that movie was great. We love that one. Yeah. Naomi Watts is the star of this remake. And because she's the star and because it premiered very easily on Amazon Prime, I just decided to check it out. You know, I love Watts. I always have. I love her anything. She's and I never finish it. And I go, oh, that wasn't worth it because, you know, got to hang out with her for a little bit. But if you're debating putting this one on, I would just really strongly urge you to go watch the original. It's better. That's my push for it. That's all. Fair enough. Yeah. Next one is. Tough. Never heard of. This. This is also not a traditional horror movie. This is called Nitrogen, directed by Justin Cruz. All. He is the director of Macbeth with Fassbinder, Marion Cotillard oh Snowtown from 2011. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie that Snowtown I've seen it once. It contains scenes of violence that I still cannot get out of my head. Wow. That's a movie you only need to see once. Jesus Christ. Mitchum is also incredibly tough. It's a it's about it's about a disturbed young man played by Caleb Landry Jones, who could be his best role yet. Why? No, it's right there. It's right. Here. Dude. He's never he's never, ever played someone this disturbed. Never. Few actors have. This dude is so good. He's so fucking good. I want to see you just because of him. This is a true story about a man named Martin Bryant. And if you don't know who that is, as I didn't don't google or wiki him but wow Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia, an actor I've always loved play his parents wow yeah proper ending that's what I'll say proper. They withhold things in a way that I very much appreciated. But this is just like a grisly journey. The hell of a mad young man. Wow. It's. It's. Yeah, it's a rough movie. More emotionally rough than anything. Yeah, more. Yeah, yeah. But if you're a fan of Caleb Landry Jones, don't know if he's been better than this. And I mean, he's in almost every scene and he's just completely out of his mind. She's better than the last scene in the outpost. I thought a lot about that, actually, because he's astounding in the outpost and he acts that final scene so well. But like that movie doesn't rest on his. No, no. Movie like neutral yet is on his shoulders. Like that's all him and that's Martin backwards, by the way. I didn't put that together until after, but it's his name backwards. The title. Is so. Yeah. Tough, tough movie. But but it's out there. It's out there. Yeah. It's easy. It's easy to find right now. But yeah, I hadn't heard of this until it was released on streaming. I don't know if it was in theaters. I don't know. And it's just it's a tough one. If you've seen Snowtown and it's in that vibe, I'll put it that way. Halloween ends. David Gordon Green finished his Halloween trilogy, yet Halloween in 2018. Halloween kills 2021 and now Halloween ends Halloween. Halloween kills take place back to back. And this one, Halloween ends. It's a few years later, this movie, it definitely went places I didn't expect. And I think that's throwing some people off, but I actually kind of enjoyed that about it. And I don't know, what can I say if you liked it? You've liked Green's series so far. I think you'll enjoy this. I thought if you thought Halloween kills was exploitative and ridiculous and repulsive, then I doubt you want to check this one out. So that's that. You're you are the like. It has been pretty unanimous since Gordon Green started this whole trilogy. I have never heard anyone say a good thing about it except you. And that's not to knock them because I haven't seen them. And I love I like David Gordon Green a lot. I like his work. But it's very, very clear that he went for something his own way. Yeah, and I think that's just not vibing with a lot of people. But I think you see it as like, Oh, this is what this guy decided to do. Him and Danny McBride who helped him, right? Yeah. All the screenplays like it was their idea together. They clearly had a vision for it. It's like, okay, I get it. I don't think they're perfect films. I think the ending of Halloween Kills is like, it's so ridiculous. And at some point these, you know, my wife Allie loves horror movies, so I've been watching a lot of these with her and she has like the series, but she goes like, I feel like in all these different franchises, you show me like at some point it turns from this is a man to this is like a spiritual entity that you literally can't kill even if you shoot him six times in the chest with a high caliber pistol, like so I kind of lose sight of that as well. I always want to keep it like just a man, not like this being. And that's what makes the first Halloween 1978 so damn cool. It's just a guy and you know, he's the boogeyman. So that's where I have to let that go in order to enjoy these movies and Halloween Kills. I think a lot of people had trouble with just some of the directions it took, and I get it. But Halloween ends is it's still tough scenes, but it wasn't as gruesome as kills. But I appreciate that. And again, these movies aren't like on my top ten of the year or anything. Yeah, I don't know. I just get what they're doing. I get and when I watch them in the 2 hours, it takes me to watch one of them. I enjoy my time with it. You know, whenever there's one that people may have that's blond in terms of 2022 controversy, Dahmer Netflix's Dahmer created by Ryan Murphy. I have not seen every Ryan Murphy show has anyone. But this was right up there with the best I've seen from him right up there with the assassination of Gianni Versace, which I thought was an incredible miniseries on X, but now the dude's on Netflix and now he's showing violence and his characters can curse and he can get as deplorable as he wants. Jeffrey Dahmer was a deplorable human being, and the criticism this show has faced has been swift and fierce. Yeah. For two weeks when that died down, Netflix revealed that Dahmer is their second most streamed original show ever. You have Squid Game, which Netflix acquired. Then you have Stranger Things and then you have Dahmer, which Netflix created. Yeah. If you are the type of person who does not understand this cultural obsession with serial killers, I hear you. I really do. But sadly, you are in the minority like this is I mean, right before we went live on this, I pulled up my podcast app and podcasts like Dateline Crime Junkies Morbid. These are always in the top ten most popular podcasts. Any given week now most popular true crime podcasts. Just all of them. Who can count how many popular true crime shows are currently on the air? Dateline again snapped Unsolved Mysteries, making a murderer. People in Mass are fascinated by this shit. Yes. I don't know why, but all this content is here to stay. Dahmer is You know, it was a very well-made, incredibly acted show. Evan Peters may give the gist the best performance I've seen so far this year and anything. And I know that's not fair to say, because this is like 10 hours of content versus like a two hour movie. But take any two episodes of his acting from the show and I'll stack them against most any other movie performance I've seen this year. And I'm not kidding. Richard Jenkins. Molly Ringwald. Niecy Nash. Michael Learned. Penelope Ann Miller just a great cast. Tough show. Good show. I loved episode six The Best, but you know, this stuff's here to stay. That's all. That's all I can say. I'm not I'm not defending it. But there are I have an interest in that stuff. I'm not. I also watch a lot of other shit. I'm not like diehard obsessed with this stuff. So that's all. It's all. So we're almost done here, folks. Speaking. Of Netflix and Ryan Murphy and True Crime, and there's a case that's been circling the true crime podcast circuit for years. It's one of my favorite cases. People refer to the cases six, five, seven Boulevard. Others, like Netflix, are calling it the watcher. Here's the case. So there's a well-to-do family in New Jersey. They move into a new neighborhood. Their new house is gorgeous. People seem nice all as well. Shortly after moving in, the family starts receiving ominous letters in the mail, snail mail from someone calling themselves the watcher. The first letter freaks the family out. It's clear that the person writing the letters is watching the house constantly. They may even be able to hear what's going on inside. The watcher is not just peeking through the windows. They have details and it's freaky as hell. Couple goes to the police. The police say not to be worried. The letters continue and it drives the family mad. Wow. So that's the real case that it goes farther than that in this seven episode series. It begins there. Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts, as the parents are moving into the house. And then it's a show. So it obviously exploits some real details and a way of making their show more dramatic. I get it. It gets a little crazy, but as a fan, the original story, I enjoyed my time with the show, that's all. And and the lead detective on the case is played by Christopher fucking McDonald and he's having a blast. And I love him. I had no idea he was going to. Be in this. When they cut to the first scene of his first episode, I just screamed aloud in joy in my house to no one, as I often do when he appears on my screen. Dude, he is. Killing it this year. Yes, he's doing great. He's doing great. Emmy nominations for hacks. I love it. I love to see it. Come on, the pot. Any time, Chris Mac, talk about anything you want. One more. And the only reason I wanted to bring this up is because it's called watcher, and I don't want people to get it confused with the watcher. This is a movie made by Chloe Akuno, and I wanted to bring this up just to distinguish it from the Netflix. This stars Mike Monroe, great actor from the guest. It follows Honeyboy and Carl Glassman from Love. They're a couple who moved to Bucharest for his job. Monroe is left at home a lot. She starts to get the feeling that the man across the street and the apartment complex across the street is watching her constantly. Bitter rear window hear lot of repulsion tattoo, Rosemary's Baby. And I'll be honest. Well, I was in it while I was watching it. I did not expect them to land the ending, but to me it did. I checked it out on Shudder, which again, if you love indie horror films, Shudder is remarkable. Like I just search for There's Someone Inside Your House for the Netflix original horror movie Shudder. It's just there. You just click on it. You're like, Okay, there it is, great. I'll watch it. Just great. So that's it. That's my 20, 22 horror film. Many reviews. I don't know if we're getting scary movies for the rest of the year. If we do, I'll bring up, but I don't know. So we'll see. What which one was your favorite out of all of these? I absolutely had the most fun watching Scream five. I can't even lie seeing that and seeing them nail that in the theater. But that was like December. I saw that. Ah, January. Yeah, a while ago. So I enjoyed, I really, really loved the ambition of X and Pearl. Watching those together is a lot of fun. Barbarian is the one that maybe impresses me the most with its actual filmmaking. And yet that's and then speak no evil is the most disturbing of the bunch to me. But the best. Like I had the best time watching Scream five. I love scream and scream to it, you know, it was just great. But again, there's a while ago this year specifically, like recently, Barbarian was just fun. I saw Barbarian twice, you know, when I recommended it, I was getting ready to go it again and it was so much better the second time for reasons that will be clear when everyone watches it the first time. But yeah, I'm really excited to see where Zack Kruger's career goes because he's someone not afraid to take chances, just in editing and cinematography. Those are the chances I'm talking about. That's it. Well done. Well, I. Mean, do you have any. What are you watching? Recommendation. I was going to double down on one that we that we've already talked about a lot on here. Okay cool I am too. I'm going to do something a little different. Just I like to sneak this stuff in these little Easter eggs for the hardcore fans because if you haven't made it this far, you're not going to know what our next episode is going to be. But I just want to tease it. Our next episode is our next commentary. I talked a lot about, thought a lot about, worked very hard on should we reveal what the title is or should I just give some hints? Here's one hint Longest pot ever because of the runtime of the movie. It's a movie almost everyone has seen. One more, one more, one more. Controversial Oscar wins. Four wins and losses. Four wins and losses. Yeah, Saving Private Ryan, folks, we're going to. See right there. I mean, I ended up saying. I was going to reveal it as this Easter exactly the same Private Ryan. It's going to come out soon. And that's our next our next episode. And I mentioning it usually we usually don't, you know, preview upcoming episodes. But I'm just trying to get people excited for because we had a fun time with it. But yeah, let's get into What are you watching. I want to hear you double down on my was double down too because I've talked when I do like this recommendation I mentioned so many movies I'm just going to just going to double down and hammer one home. I'm doing it from the NC 17 list. The horror movie stuff is like kind of a bonus, but. Go ahead and I'm doing mine the unrated because. Oh yeah, that's fair. What is unrated? But The Mysterious Skin, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie. Oh, good call. Good call that that movie. I think I saw that movie like shortly after it came out. And I just remember I remember thinking of the the bullshit that Brokeback Mountain was getting and then seeing and then thinking about this movie. And I was like, Come on, like, yeah, but like, it's. Because it's unrated and. It's unrated and all that, but it's such a good movie and it really is a, it's a great performance by just Gordon-Levitt I ever since I rewatched The Lookout. Yeah, I love him in that. I was like, look back at his entire career and like he's just done some crazy cool stuff like it. Really? Yeah. Yeah. He's been all over the place. He's been in movies like Inception, which is sort of like, you know, some of the biggest movies ever made down to movies like this. He's in shows like TV sitcoms. I mean, that guy has really done the gamut of Hollywood and what it is. Yeah, I've always respected him. And like everything he does, hitRECord, Joe, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really I've always loved his vibe, but his like early 2000 work, that was the the sweet spot for me. Like the manic. Yeah. Look out. Serious skin. Serious skin, I'll say is, um hmm. I can't say this without revealing the ending where that movie goes. That's actually not an uncommon thing. It's very common for I'm speaking very generally, but where that movie ends and when you find things out, what has happened all in the rest of the movie's a very common thing to do. Yeah, and I didn't realize that until I saw that movie and started studying it. And that's I'm trying to be general on purpose, but go check it out. Not an easy movie. Not an easy movie. Now go check it out. Mind isn't easy there. I'm not going to be a nut job and double down on something like descent because that would just that's you know, that's a tough time. I am going to double down on the lunacy that is man bites dog because. That's what I was hoping to do it. Yeah, it's easy to find. It's a Criterion movie. It's out there. It's not one I hear a lot about. I watched this for the first time on a plane ago, like on literally like all my laptop that had like a fucking DVD port in it, put it on. And I think I by the end of it, I had like the, you know, the food menu and like the safety card like up. So I could, I was blocking. The view of my. Laptop for the poor people sitting next to be or close to me because I would oh my God, this thing is crazy. I mean, it's not, you know, it's all fake. It's not real. It's not an actual documentary. But yeah, I want to hear a people think of man bites dog. I want to I. Want there to be. I wish for the time that you have flown. I wish that there was always like a version of a passenger next to because you had some insane stories about the movies that you watch out of place. Oh, yeah. And anyone just, like, looks over and it's like, Jesus Christ, like, who am I sitting next to? This is the thing about this. Like, I'm actually really sensitive to this stuff because I, I don't want to put my crazy shit. You. Yeah, there's a kid. There's a ten year old sitting two rows back that I can't see. But he or she can see my for I never use my laptop on planes anymore. But now it'll be my phone. Your phone is easy to conceal. And I can tell you if I'm watching some crazy shit, I'll conceal it. This shit, these screens they put in the damn headrests. Now some of the movies you can choose from. I'm oh my God, holy shit. Like, and some people put it on now what did I just fly? I guess United. And I was going to put on some stuff. I didn't feel concerned about the people around. Me It was fine. But sometimes I mean you'll look up and there's like a kid who's sitting next to someone watching, like, something grotesque and really violent. Yeah, I'm just surprised that they have those movies up there fully unedited when if I'm sitting in the middle seat, like, there's a lot of people around me who could see my screen. Yeah, I mean, other people are like, Hey, I don't care. They offer it, so I'm going to put it on. I don't know, it's just. One of those. But yeah, we can't we can't put sexuality in movies, but we can show them on planes, you know. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I've definitely have some interesting plane stories from people. What are you watching? But it talked about a. Lot of movies today, a lot of challenging movies of good movies. A lot of movies to admire, some scary ones. Do you have any thoughts on any of them or all of them? Do you have. Thoughts on all of them? Let us know at W. AIW or underscore podcasts on Twitter or Instagram. But as always, thanks so much for listening and happy watching. Spooky. Scary. Scary. Hey everyone, thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog at 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 at gmail.com. Com or find us on Twitter at W AIW Underscore podcast next time we're going to watch right along with Saving Private Ryan long episode. Sure, but this is a fun one. Nick gets mad in me in this like honestly bad for 5 seconds, but it's hilarious. Stay tuned.