166: High and Low/Highest 2 Lowest (1963/2025)

There are no spoilers in this episode. Alex breaks down the opening segment of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, “High and Low,” before bringing Nick on to review Spike Lee’s remake, “Highest 2 Lowest.” The guys discuss Spike’s post-“Inside Man" career, seeing Denzel Washington in “Othello” on Broadway, other remakes of Kurosawa’s work, Matthew Libatique, Dean Winters, Jules Dassin, and much more.

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My. Hey. Got to got to pay back. They got revenge. A man. Hey, I got to get back, I need some get back! Hey, everyone. Welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex with. And we are going to have a fun mixed bag episode today. I'm going to talk about some Japanese cinema and some spike Lee joints. Nick is going to be here a little later. We are here today to talk about two films, primarily Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, released in 1963, and Spike Lee's remake of that classic film, Highest to Lowest, which is in theaters now. We did like spike Lee's new film quite a lot, and we were actually in person. Nick and I actually got to see the movie in person because he and my wife schemed to surprise me for my birthday last week, so she flew his ass on in surprise the hell out of me. What's the first thing we did? Let's go to movies, Nick and never seen. Nick has never seen High and Low, the original. We we even tried like, should we watch that and then immediately go to Spike's movie? But, you know, we caught up that stuff. So we saw Spike's flick on Spike's Joint rather on Saturday and had a great time with it. So that's what we're going to do. I am going to begin with an extended, review of sorts, but more of just an explanation of why I love High and Low so much Kurosawa's film. And then I'm going to bring Nick on to talk about the new film, and then we'll end with me. I don't know, correcting anything. Nick and I messed up. No spoilers. No spoilers for either film. Because if I, you know, gave away all the details of the original film, it would give away a lot of the details of the new film, even though they are different in ways that I appreciated. But all right, let's begin. Jump right into it. This is actually the first official time we're doing a Kurosawa episode at all. And Akira Kurosawa, just to begin, is one of my favorite directors of all time. I mean, Ingmar Bergman, John Cassavetes, Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, and if I added a fifth, I do Steven Soderbergh. These are my that's my Mount Rushmore. And then my starting five is if you include Soderbergh, these are my all timers. I, Kurosawa made 30 movies across six decades, and he had a great film, if not a masterpiece in each decade. That is wild. It's an astounding career, the films of which have been remade constantly, used as influence, constantly. Still going on today. I'm going to get to that one. I mean, what am I? I mean, I got to get to it. It's highest to lowest. It's the big influence for spike Lee. So yes, as spike Lee can attest. Akira Kurosawa still inspiring filmmakers today. And I've talked about this film in passing on the pod. I just talked about it in our recent deliverance episode as it relates to blocking actors, staging, camera movement, editing, cuts, all that stuff where you're especially the beginning of high and low. You're making that feel like a play, almost. And it's never getting stuffy or never getting claustrophobic. You're not like, get me out of here. I don't want to see people talking anymore. Like, what the hell is going on? You're enthralled. So I'm going to explain a little of why I think that is the technical marvel of High and Low. The cinematic marvel of it, because it is a great movie for many different reasons. The story, how it was shot, edited, all that high and low. It's a great title that fits within the theme of the movie, quite literally, but the actual literal Japanese translation of the title is Heaven and hell, which is also kind of perfect. The movie is based on a 1959 novel, King's Ransom, written by New York born Ed McBain. That was his pen name. His real name was Evan Hunter, and this is the guy that wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's The Birds the same year, 1963. Great writer. Kurosawa loved American noir films. He loved them. The Naked City, directed by Jules Dassin. It's either decent or Dassin I don't know, I'm sorry, but that movie comes out and that movie is great. I just watched it for the first time, actually, because of my rewatch of High and Low, and I watch it with the commentary and the guy like, you got to go check out The Naked City. That was one of Kurosawa's biggest inspirations. So The Naked City is 1948. Curacao will make Stray Dog a great buddy cop police procedural. The next year. It's about a cop who gets his gun stolen, and the cop and his partner trying to track the gun down. Every single bullet in the gun is being accounted for because it's being used, you know, all across the city. So that's how they're tracking the gun is by the bullets that are being fired from it. Kurosawa also loved setting stories against the oppressive bureaucratic bullshit of high industry, of government, high and low mixes these two themes of police procedural and bureaucratic nonsense perfectly to shore on the funny, the great to shore. Oh, Mifune, Akira Kurosawa's guy. They made so many movies together. He plays a rich executive of a shoe company. His board wants to start making cheap shoes for a higher profit. But Myfanwy, whose character's name is Kingo Gondo, refuses. So the backdrop of the movie is this massive business deal weighing on Gondo as he contemplates the deal from his air conditioned mansion that sits high above the city, quietly judging the poorer people who live below it. And then bam! Out of nowhere, Gondo son is kidnaped. The Kidnaper demands a very high ransom of ¥30 million. So now that's going on. So the business deals still going. You know, there's business partners in the house, there's documents, there's briefcases, there's raised voices. Shoes are being ripped now the kid gets kidnaped. So the wife is hysterical. The cops flood in, it's just chaos. And then bam, their son walks into the house. The fuck and we all quickly realize that the Kidnaper accidentally grabbed Kondo's chauffeur's son by mistake. Yet the Kidnaper is still demanding the exact same amount of money. So it's not even Kondo's kid anymore who's missing. So we have business dilemmas. Moral dilemmas, financial dilemmas, family dilemmas. This is the world Kurosawa creates in high and low. And he does it all without leaving Kondo's apartment. Not really. For 55 minutes high and low more or less traps itself in Kondo's apartment and sets up the entire plot of the movie. This is ingeniously done. This is, to be clear, some of the finest filmmaking Kurosawa ever did, or any movie director ever did. Ever. This is true. They blocked this whole 55 minute sequence out meticulously. There were always two cameras running. One was on a track, one was on a crane. Okay, occasionally they would have a third camera going for more coverage. The majority of this part of the film consists of very long takes of men dressed in buttoned down shirts, talking about business and talking about kidnaping, and they're just talking. That's it. But it's thrilling. It's it's astonishing. Kurosawa was so impressed with Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men and how all those guys are trapped in a small jury room for the whole movie, pretty much. So he used that as inspiration for High and Low, and I mean just excelled with that style. They had two sets going. One is a real set with the actual city down below and cars going outside, and the other, when the curtains are drawn, were for the night scenes so they could keep filming. There are many close ups of Mifune in this section. I mean, you just you have to see this to believe it. Like the way the camera will move on the track or on a crane. Characters will be talking and will be in this three shot of, I don't know, the police captain, the funny and a business guy talking. And then the camera moves in, the conversation still going, but now we'll have six people in the frame and they're all equally important. It's. And then out of nowhere, boom, you'll just hard cut into funny like sitting there contemplating. And I remember this recent rewatch just a few days ago. It's as close up on Mifune's face, and he's just sitting there, you know, thinking, and we can see cars in the street way down below, outside, like way down. And I was thinking, wow, that's I mean, you know, they got lucky with the cars going by. I guess it's a busy intersection. So they got lucky that the lights are kind of like they're so far away in the background, but they're almost piercing through Mifune's face just the way the staging is set up. I watched the special features Kurosawa had control those cars. He had people down like, okay, go start driving, start driving that big floodlights on, you know, where the headlights were. So they would show on camera better. All controlled. It was all controlled. The continuity of it is perfect. That's why it flows so well. Because you have two cameras going if someone does get up and then we cut to the different coverage, we're still in the same take. So you just you cruise with it. And what makes this so fun to watch is that as someone who does not speak Japanese, repeat viewings are blessed because the first time I watch it or, you know, if I haven't seen in a while, I really have to read the subtitles because I have to follow along with the plot. I want to catch all the nuances, all that stuff. But then in subsequent viewings, you can pay attention to the craft, the camera, staging, blocking, editing. They teach high and low in film schools for a reason. Most of my favorite directors, including the ones I referenced earlier, cite Kurosawa as a main influence for a reason. Yet high and low is not an academic exercise. It is not. It's thrilling and entertaining. Talking about those editing cuts I always have to bring up, Kurosawa edited his own movies, most of them. The editing is brilliant. This guy. They finished filming High and Low in January 1963, and that movie was in theaters by March. I don't even know how you do that. He had to have been editing as they were filming, but I don't know how you have something unless it's all just perfectly blocked. Everything's perfectly blocked. Everything's storyboarded out. I mean, that's crazy. That's like a month or less done movie masterpiece in the theaters, cheeses, and obviously the whole movie does not take place in the apartment. That's the high and low. It's about 2.5 hours, little less. Spike Lee's movie's not as long. And the first 55 minutes of Kurosawa's film, yeah, you're in the apartment. But then immediately we go to this train sequence, it turns into a police procedural, all heavily influenced by The Naked City. They use nine cameras at once for the train sequence, and almost all of it is handheld. So think of that. You go from this controlled, long extended sequence where we're stuck in one apartment and then boom, we're outside this thrilling train sequence handheld. It's all crazy photography and cinematography, literally like eight millimeter cinematography becomes very important to this sequence. I don't want to keep going because that would take it would take some of the impact out of the original film. And Spike Lee's film. So instead of this being a deep dive where we're where I'm comparing and contrasting both films, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go into any more plot details. Just know we've had this damn thing, this damn pod going for five years high and low receives my highest recommendation in all of film. This is a singular movie from a singular director. 30 movies. Some of them are some of the most famous and inspirational movies ever made or influential. Inspirational, whatever the hell you want to say ever made in High and Low is definitely in my top three. It it might even be my favorite, I don't know, I'm going to do a full Kurosawa episode at some point. I've seen all the movies, I've done all 30. I'm done. I am seeing Ron in the theater in early September, so I'm going to wait until after that to do any, you know, official part on Kurosawa. But I've spent two years going through all of his movies and I'm just dumbfounded. Yeah, you to sit there and pay attention because you have to read. But the craft of the filmmaking is impeccable, and I really need to say they're all funny. And in parts he always slides in humor. Kurosawa does. He was. He had an evil, devilish sense of humor. Not everything is a laugh riot. Believe me, but I always appreciate that as well. He was an entertainer. He was. He genuinely was. So brief. Intro of High and Low. This is not a hard movie to find. It's on the criterion Channel, it's on HBO. So if you have HBO, you can watch it, and I highly recommend it. If for some reason you own it on criterion like I do, that's great. The commentary on it is a must. I know they do the commentaries on the Criterion Channel as well. So if you're into this sort of thing, wow, that just the whole disc is great. I was talking about those special features, how they were explaining, you know, like the headlights outside. It's crazy. So here's a good question. Why in the hell remake this? If I am singing its praises and saying it's one of the best movies ever made, which it is, it's one of the most influential movies ever made, which it is. Why would anyone attempt to remake this? And I've been saying on the podcast since and on letterbox one, I've been logging all my Kurosawa reviews that I was cautiously optimistic might be, a little too kind and help in my thinking towards Spike Lee's film Highest to Lowest. I was just going, you'll hear Nick and I like. Well, you'll hear us explain it. There was a push and pull of. I'm thinking, well, I've never seen a bad spike Lee movie starring Denzel Washington. I love all of those, so. Okay. But, I mean, remaking this classic movie, that's really dangerous. I have not been the biggest fan of Spike's work in the past about 20 years, so I was a little nervous for that too, but I thought it was all handled very well. And before we get into our highest to lowest review, I want to go over a few other remakes of curious how it was work. Some of these are official, some of them are not. They're just heavily influenced. But some of these are very big films, so high and low. Yes, Spike's film is an official remake, but I would also argue that damn near every kidnaping movie made since high and Low owes a huge debt to High and Low Ron Howard's ransom, with Mel Gibson chief among them. The whole they got the business stuff going on, you know, there's like a guy that he put away, like in jail. Isn't that Dan Padilla? Isn't that him? I don't remember anyway, the fact that a movie like Ransom does not have to give credit to High and Low is kind of a mystery. Steven Soderbergh said that his HBO mini series may just a few years ago, Full Circle, was his high and low. It's a kidnaping mini series on HBO. I really, really liked it, but he was open about it, saying, you can't do high and low, so this is my version of it. But, you know, spike Lee has done high and low. The police procedural element of high and Low has been huge for David Fincher. Even. I don't even know if this is a reach, but I was doing research and people were like, parasite Bong Joon Ho's parasite is high and low. It's about rich people living in the nice house, kind of up on the hill, and the poor people living in the flooded underground streets below. Seven Samurai another Kurosawa classic, it was remade as The Magnificent Seven both in 1960 and 2016. The latter starring Denzel Yojimbo. This is Sergio Leone. He just straight up stole Yojimbo and turned it into A Fistful of Dollars. There was a long lawsuit. He ended up Leone. He had to end up paying Kurosawa something like Carrie Solow wrote him a note and said, you've made a great film, but it is my film. And then, you know, lawsuits, all that stuff. Django by Sergio Carducci, which itself was the main source of inspiration for Django Unchained by Tarantino. See, all this stuff is connected, but Django is a remake of Yojimbo Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis late 90s. That's Yojimbo, Rashomon, maybe The Cure saw a classic. I mean, there's a lot, but a lot of people talk about Rashomon. There's the outrage. Not very successful, but that was directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman. Right after they made HUD together. Akira. Oh my God, I want Nick to see Akira so bad. It is such his kind of movie. This was remade very recently as living starring Bill Nighy. He got nominated for that. I forgot the movie. Also got a screenplay nomination in the list. I could go on and on and on. George Lucas said Star Wars borrows heavily from The Hidden Fortress, which it absolutely does. Ingmar Bergman said that his own movie, The Virgin Spring, which is a masterpiece, was, quote, nothing more than a lousy imitation of Kurosawa and quote, Got Fellini, Spielberg, Spielberg. Okay, there is a flash of color and high and low, Kurosawa's first flash of color ever, and you just have to think that when Spielberg used his flash of color in Schindler's List, he's calling back to Kurosawa. If you see high and low and you've seen Schindler's List, you'll see what I mean. But Fellini, Spielberg, Polanski, Orson Welles, Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, Robert Altman, Stanley Kubrick these are a handful, the best directors who ever lived. And they openly and often said how they borrowed from Kurosawa. So the influence of Kurosawa is not new. We haven't had an outing out like this highly publicized of a remake of his movies in a while, though. I mean, living did just come out. I know not a lot of people saw it, but Bill Nye, he was great. He got nominated. So yeah, that's a remake. But they weren't, I don't know, I didn't see on the poster, like based on Kurosawa, Kurosawa's A Kuru. I wish they would have said that. This is what it made me see it faster. All right, let's see how spike Lee did with his latest joint. Highest to lowest. I'm going to bring Nick on and we're going to get after it. Here we go. A bit I'm mad you get down with my girlfriend. I get it right. Go for all of us. You go to fight. All right. Nick's here to talk about his lowest I. The lowest latest film which we saw together in the cinema. The theater. Yesterday. As mentioned, I was a little. My expectations were not high. I don't think yours were either. I'm a huge fan of the original. You have not seen the original, but we. I have not teased what I think of Spike Lee's new film. So what did you think of his clothes? I really liked it. So did I really, really liked it. Stunned. Honestly. Stunned. I mean, we both talked about how going into it, you know, we we hadn't really felt like spike Lee had made a a really great movie in a long time. Yeah. I didn't expect anything from this. That's fair. And not knowing anything about the original. I didn't know anything about the plot. I knew nothing about it. But from the opening credits, the music choice. Yeah, the cinematography that was being used, I was like, okay, this feels like a spike Lee joint. And then what we ended up getting was just that, yeah, it really was a gritty, honest New York thriller. It's entertaining, I don't think. Yeah, they might go for some Oscar noms from some for some people, but it wasn't. It's just an entertaining spike Lee joint. And yeah, you know, I think my opinion would be that the last truly great spike Lee film was 25th hour from 2002, but that's s tier. Yeah. Noting that love inside man like, no, no it's about inside man. Oh yeah. It's great for what it is. That is the last Denzel Spike collaboration. Mo Better Blues. Malcolm X he got game inside man now highest to lowest. That's a huge gap. But that also I'm like so part of me goes I haven't seen like a legit spike Lee joint in 20 years since instance. Insane man. And I believe me, we're aware of what we're leaving out from that, including the movie you won his Oscar for, which is we can. You know, we're not here to talk about that, but we're not really fans of that movie and, you know, whatever. So I was nervous about that. I'm like, does he still have, I don't know, this. Great. But then the other side of me goes, he's never made a bad movie with Denzel. So, you know, let's see. And almost right away I went, oh my God, we're being taken care of. I didn't know who shot it. And with the original, the cinematography, there's two cinematographers in the original because the cinematography so important. So we see Matty Lip in the credits and I went, oh my God, thank God I even saw you give a little like nod of like, okay, okay. And right away. I still don't know if it was shot on film. It looked like it to me, but it just looked it looked great. The cinematography is very intentional, literally pointing up, going down. Yeah. So I just I knew pretty quickly, we're in good spike Lee hands. Yep. And just the, the zoom in. And when we're meeting Denzel and that from the credits to the start of the movie. Yeah. Getting the phone call, the, you know, I've never seen, they shot Denzel was thinking about this. You see his shoes all the time. Oh, good. You do you? Because he's, like, got the tennis shoes on with the suit. Yeah. You're right, like you're right. It's. You see his full body in a lot of this movie. Yeah. Even like that opening shot. Like where they end up staying to watch him walk around the balcony. Yeah. You're seeing him in full grape call. Yeah. And, and, I mean, everyone was like that, but there's definitely a choice when you start to, like, take in. It's a weird thing to think about, but most films you never see the actors full bodies and frame. They're way more focus on the closeups because, like, that's what we have in. There are close ups in the movie, but it's so funny you're pointing this out. I'm actually getting chills with you talking because I noticed the shoe things too, because, hey, you know, we stayed for the whole credits. Jordan was given a huge credit. You know, his symbol, the Michael Jordan. So the shoes and stuff. And that's very important to the culture and to him and the swag. And I noticed that, but also brings out his physicality because Denzel was such a physical actor, the movements, the he's got, he's developed this like looseness. It's always been there like he's still Denzel. But I mean, there's even a scene when he's like, I don't know, has his his hands behind his ears, and it's like pulling his ears up. He's just I don't know, he's got this looseness to him that I love in this constantly, shadowboxing. Like, I just loved it. I loved him in it. He's just he's just so in tune with his body that it's just sort of like he's. It almost feels like he's listening to whatever it wants to do. Yeah. And just letting it. Yeah. Like sometimes like you make these choices as an actor where you want to include a certain physical thing, but then sometimes you just let your body just do whatever it wants to do. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like that was a lot of what this is. But he had his own walk. It was definitely some thought put into it. Yeah. And but I mean he was just that this was prime Denzel right here. Yeah I mean I, I don't even know if I've talked about on the part maybe briefly, but I did see him in Othello earlier this year on Broadway. He does Broadway every once in a while. So Jake Gyllenhaal's in it, Denzel's in it. And it was I mean, it was as thrilling, exciting, jaw dropping as you think it would be. Like Denzel Washington, the man rattled my eardrum, like actually rattled it. I went, oh my God, his actual voice just did that. Jake Gyllenhaal's incredible, too, but when I saw him in Otello and he was doing a little bit of this flamboyant stuff in Gladiator two, taking it very, very far, it was more restrained in Othello and more restrained in this movie, but it's still loose. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, they shot this in New York. They were probably rehearsing Otello when they shot this, because it's on now, and I there's definitely a link that I can see between all of these. And he, yeah. From the physicality down to, I mean, God, even the way he hugged his son at that one boy just gave you that big wide hug and walked away. It was like out, oh man. He's like, he's a really successful business mogul guy. But you can tell we don't get into too much backstory of like if he's from the streets, but he definitely has some street in him that he's comfortable flexing. Yeah, absolutely. I mean and that was also him like about to go and do something that, was very dangerous. Yeah. And and he was just in a certain mode. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh my god. Like there wasn't, there was not like that. That was not a time for a loving goodbye that could have possibly been the last goodbye. Yeah. But there was that was not what it was. No, no. Like nope. Let's go do it. All right. Because I really wanted to know who the lead captain was. Like, I was like, I've seen that guy. You know? The dude was like a calling presence. Do you remember? Like, I just looked it up on IMDb. I've seen him a lot, but he's the doctor and let him all talk. He's Meryl Streep's doctor. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I was it was bugging John Douglas Thompson, big stage guy who was bugging me so much. He has that like calming presence. But yeah. So back to high slow as spike Lee. We were giving it our endorsement, which I really can't believe. I know that spike loves Kurosawa, so I knew this was going to come from a place of love. Who knows? Like what that means? But I knew it was not coming from a place of, I can do better than this. I can do because you cannot do better than high and low. You can't and it doesn't. And I mean, I have not seen, Kurosawa's High to Low, but I don't know, I guess knowing that it is coming from a remake point of view, there was nothing in the movie that felt like it was trying to do something other than be a spike Lee movie. Yeah, yeah, that's what it really felt like. So I was so like that was very curious, talking, having a conversation afterwards about those differences. And, and you were even very much like, they are two different movies. They're different. They're very different. My yeah, my biggest thing was this it's not giving anything away. But the first 55 minutes of Kurosawa's film are in the apartment. So you don't leave the apartment from the kids leaving, like to them getting to one of them, getting kidnaped to the ransom or like you don't leave until they are doing the cash drop like that's when you leave. So that was my biggest curiosity. And the staging, which I've talked about on this part a lot, is so ingenious. Maybe the best staging ever in a film. Those first 55 minutes, I'm like, are they going to do that? And as soon as they left, you know, like ten minutes in and they went somewhere in the car went, okay, okay, we're deviating. Another thing again, not a spoiler, but to show them the funny star of High and Low that is just gone for like 45 minutes in the middle of the movie because the movie takes a different course. And I went, they're not going to do that to Denzel. And they didn't. They did. He's in it the whole time. So I was fine with the changes. I was totally fine. It paid homage. And one thing I withheld from telling you is that High and Low is 1963, and that was heavily based on American noir movies of the 40s, including this movie The Naked City by Jules Dassin. That song who a great director. And there were a lot of things in High St Lois that went back to the naked city, like they even said, oh, Detective McGillicuddy, which is like a thing in that movie. And I never seen that until two days ago, because I watched high load commentary on. And that guy is a Curacao scholar and he's like, he was really drawing from the naked city. So if you haven't seen that. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to go back to that, which is widely considered like one of the first police procedurals, no sets. They just shot in New York like stations on the street. So anyway, it spike Lee loves movies. He has his own esthetic, and this is the first time I've really seen it come through. Maybe since Inside Man he did. He does the double dolly thing. Yeah, but he did it in a different way. Like I've never seen him do that. At one point it switches to a profile. They were looking right in the camera and I'm like, yes, it. Where the fuck is this guy Ben? Yeah, like. And you. Oh well yeah. I'll stop. You go. I've got to go to God. I was also going to say this is the, a color palette that he's never used. Yes, but yes, this is all his. This is his Nyx. Yeah. Like this movie is royal blues. Yeah. That were there. I mean, he doesn't really pepper with too much orange, but you can absolutely tell like, I mean, you know that he's the biggest Nyx fan like ever. And I love that he just flooded this movie with that blue. Yeah. He's like that's like even Denzel's phone. Yeah. Was that color like it was his suit. Yeah. You're right. The suit everything. The walls and some. Yeah some shots it. And I made me think to I'm like, you know here's a guy that's you know, he's older now. I don't really know how many more movies one is going to make. I think he he's even he's been saying that since the Gladiator two press tour. Like, I'm not going to be doing this forever. Like, I'm not. I'm not. I have a few more left in me. Yeah. And exactly. And then it gets to a certain point where it's sort of like, man, I've never put in like my next Blu. Yeah. Into my movies. Not not to the level of like, I don't know how many more of these are going to make. Oh, sorry, I went, I was talking to Denzel, but yes, you're right. Oh, yeah. Who knows, who knows, who knows. Yes. But like you get to the point where I think when you're younger you've got these ideas and you're like, oh, that's not for this. It's not for that. Like, this is I, I'll save that color I want to use for something else. Yeah. But then you get to a certain point where, like, if I haven't done it now, then when I'm like, like I going to do it. Yeah. And I don't know if that was his thought process, but that was something that I got. And and that was my take on that blue. I was like, oh you he got that next blue in here all over the place that that's just it's a really good that's one very specific example. But the movie's full of stuff like that. Like, yes, we know how big of a New York sports guy. Like, there's all these little New York isms in the movie. Like when they say the wonderful, you'll take the train to the wonderful Whatever of Manhattan. Yeah, yeah, there's all these little. And he always says, like the Republic of Brooklyn, like, so, you know, he's a New Yorker. But then even I mean, there's a guy I don't know his name off the top of my head. He's been in a few spike Lee movies. It's Latino guy. And at one point they're like, just on the subway trying to go somewhere, and there's they're on their way to a Yankees game. Most of the subway is everyone start cheering, you know, fuck you, Boston. Something you'll hear in New York City subway on the way to a Yankees Boston game. But that at one point the guy just looks at the camera. He's like, Fuck Boston. Yeah Boston where he is. Yeah. It's so funny. And that's the spike I've been missing. Yeah. And I've been telling you on this pod kind of in real time over five years. If, if the only movies you've seen from spike Lee are ones he's directed in the past, I don't, let's say 20 years. Yeah. Then you are you you have no idea what the grittiness of He got Game has or the genius and the artistic bravery of Do the Right Thing. You just have no idea. And this was. Yeah, I really saw flashes of that for, like, the first time in so long and that just as a movie fan, it felt great. It just felt so great. Yeah. Who knows how many he has left notes and is in. This was not as artistic as like those. That's very true. You know, those types of things. But we have not seen these these colors from spike Lee in 20 years. Yeah. Like these just these like just artistic flexes. That like whereas if you watch one of those movies that we were talking about like do the Right Thing where the whole entire movie is this just explosion of artistic vision and all of it, like it's just what it is. He got game, you know, all these breaking, all these rules. And so this is like a really great kind of combo of here is me with my spike Lee isms coming out, but I'm also going to keep it a little bit like I'm I'm also going to make a solidly entertaining. It is entertaining. And it's something that I want to see again. Our crowd, which I noticed as they were filling in, were mostly, kind of older black people, like a lot of older black women, older black men. They loved it. Love to hear them like they loved it. They loved it. And that this is not like like he I game can be a tough sell for a lot of people like get it emotionally intense. This is not that. This is a very entertaining movie that I hope makes a good amount of money. I mean, it does. I didn't know it was an Apple film, though. I didn't know that at all. I mean, I didn't know that either. I knew it was an 824. Yeah. And I have to say this here's a win for a 24. Big win I was very impressed with. Yeah, it reminded me of, like 2014, 824, something like original shit. Yeah. And this is the type of movie where it's sort of like, I don't know how this is going to play out in the box office, but you know, we're talking about these 2025 movies, and we're just in a weird time right now where you just don't know what movies are necessarily going to pop off. And when you're talking about like, you know, like with Superman, that's going to do well, you know, with, you know, certain that built in money. Yeah. IP stuff. Yeah. But this is a movie I'm curious about. Oh well as high as Too Low is going to do. No previous. Well, this does have IP, which is really funny. It's technically does Curacao. Yeah. Yeah, technically, but, but you know what I mean. Like it is. So I, I'd be very curious to see how this is going to measure up in the next coming weeks in terms of a summer movie, in terms of the overall 2025 landscape of movies. Yeah, I think this deserves to be talked about. It's it's that good. Yeah. I wonder what they're going to do with F1 because I don't think that's available, available on like the streaming platform yet on Apple. But I did look up before we started and it said, hi, Lois is going to come in early September on to Apple. So just drop there. And that always makes me wonder, are people going to wait to watch it there or you know, I don't know. So I know it's it could be so much harder to gauge how popular movie is because it's not just about box office. A lot of people do wait to watch it, and on their home on streaming, so I don't know, but I hope it's well received. I don't know, I well, it premiered at con and I heard positive things. I people going, you know, it works. It's a success. But yeah, I hope it makes money and I do. I hope it's well received. Well. And also I would absolutely recommend everyone to go see it in theaters. Yeah. Because the, the cinematography, the this is a movie theater movie. Yeah, absolutely. There's so much fun stuff that's going on with the music, with like, these artistic cinematography choices that him and, Maddie have made together, which is like which is also amazing to think that, you know, I don't know if they've ever worked together before. I don't know who did. Black Klansman, I think they have. He may have even done Oldboy, man. And that was that was what you and I were most nervous about. Because if you go watch Oldboy, that's one of the few movies I'm almost positive I'm right. That does not say a spike Lee joint. It says a film by spike Lee, so it doesn't. If so, I think, yeah, we'll we'll do some, Oh. He also did card stealing. Mandy did. Oh, well. Oh. So they're back because they, they have falling outs back and forth. Him and Aronofsky, they go one movie all in like one movie off. He did inside, man. He did insane, man. That's what I was thinking of. He did Chirac, which is kind of a little known spike Lee movie from 2015, but not, you know, not bad miracle of Saint Anna. Don't like that one. So okay. They. Yes. Inside man. She hate me. Everyone's crazy. So. Okay. They have worked together before. Okay. Him and Matty. So that's, you know that's good to know and I. Yeah I thought it looked really great. Just it did absolutely stunning. Oh Matty also did shoot. The whale. Okay. So they worked him and Aronofsky worked on the last two movies. I mean, he shot we did The Fountain Media, Black Swan. No, that in Requiem, like, they started out together, but then they took a movie off her to be, like, he didn't do The Wrestler, because I think they were having, I don't know, some mom and dad were fighting type thing. The music was not by his, guy got him and I kept Terence. It was not by Terence Blanchard, which was interesting as back by Howard Rosen. So that must be something. But the music was really good. There was just some great spike set pieces in it. Yeah. Puerto Rican Day Parade or Puerto Rican Parade, which was great. I mean, yeah, all of it not. I can't wait to see it again. I would definitely urge people to see it in the theater and we'll see how it plays out with, I don't know, potential awards talk. Maybe Jeffrey Wright was kind of going for it. I could see him going for a supporting actor now. Maybe he was great. And let's throw out, oh my God, what's his name? I love him, we love him. From the, Dean Winter scene. Winton Winters is great when you've been made like a mayhem insurance reference. It was it was hysterical. But yeah, he's great. It's he I, I, I just I always want that guy to be getting more work. I think he's such a force. Like he just delivers something that no one, no other actor I can really think of. Yeah, like he's just got this sort of, like, presence about him. It's so new York. Oh, God. Yeah. And and even like the first line that he says in here like, oh, he says he goes, I can know you somewhere. Yeah. He's like that ain't it? That ain't it. Like, it's like you're starting to piss me off. Let me do my fucking job. Yes, yes. Like you're bothering me. You're bother me. Let me do my fucking job. He plays one of the cops, and he was clearly given license to just like, yeah, be that asshole. Like, be that asshole cop who, like, you're trying to help, but you're just speaking. Speaking your mind. I wonder if people I don't know if people know Dean winters by name, but, if I say Mr. Mayhem, everyone knows everyone is. I mean, he's in John Wick. He's like the. Yeah, the council yeti to the main guys. And, I mean, I saw them first and us and then brother and rescue me. Yeah, yeah. He's been I've loved Dean winters every time he shows up. You just fucking hilarious. But he really every moment he had, he really seats. He was really great in it. I just don't think you you ever get a better combo of, like, assholes than Denis Leary and Dean winters being brothers? Oh my God. And then their fight when the Denis Leary beat. Oh my God, it's such a powerful I mean that's show. I love that show man. Fucking love. Rescue me I did two very New York as well. That's. Yeah that's his New York as it gets through and through. Just like highs the lowest. Yeah, yeah. So I'll wrap up with maybe some other stuff but. Oh a ringing 2025 new movie endorsement from Wawa I w highest the lowest. This is going to be one of our next episodes. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll put this before 96. I said 96 was next, but it's in the theater and I want people to go see this. So yeah. Yeah, maybe I'll put this next. Yeah. Awesome. Anything else? Did we forget anything? Talking about so much, I can't. Well, I mean, I suppose we should mention ASAP Rocky. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. So, I mean, in the original, there are four main roles. There's the dad slash. Yeah, but also the dad, the businessman to shore on the funny. There's the police captain, the main guy taking on. There's the chauffeur. And then there is the criminal who becomes a character. And when I saw ASAP Rocky, he got the and credit. So it is. And ASAP Rocky. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, okay. They said for that he's got to be playing the villain and I don't I know his music. I know that he's Rihanna's baby daddy three times over. That's what I know about him. I don't know if I've seen him act. He was great. Like he was great. Really good. He was very great. Yeah. Like he he brought it. Yeah. And it's tough to kind of, you know, if some actors talk about how it's easy to kind of tap into rage or hate, but like, that was all, like, emotion just born right out. And, I was impressed because, like, he, I was, I was didn't know I was scared. I was also like, man, this guy's got his priorities all wrong. Absolutely. And he did in the in the original, he's just like an obsessed psychopath basically. Yeah. That's and in this they gave him, I thought a little bit more direct reasoning to the Denzel character, which was cool. But yeah, they have like two big standoff scenes and there's probably no harder actor to go up against. And Denzel and whether or not ASAP has had some movie credits or TV that I'm just not being able to recall nothing at the level of Denzel. And yeah, holding his own in there, that's yeah, it's not easy to do. And he told the character, told this line of this, insanely heightened overconfidence, like, I'm the best there is. You never found me. And this obsession like, no, you named your son after me, I know that. Oh, damn it. So it's this, like. Oh, so believable. The whole movie is believable that your the geography. You know, where he worked, you knew where he lived. It was great. Yeah. Never seen the wife before. I'm originally that was supposed to be Halle Berry when they originally mentioned the movie. So that's what I was. And I guess that that just got changed at some point. But she was good. Noting that one of my my third biggest curiosity from the original, it was, you know, the 55 minute opening, the main character leaving for a long time, and then the wife does not have much to do in the original. She doesn't much at all. And when we were leaving, you kind of said that about this character. And I went, yeah, that tracks like it does. She had she had more to do. She had more bikes movie for sure. But yeah, I just never seen her. And again, it's nice to give, you know, it wasn't a familiar face. It's nice to give these young or new performers these chances I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. The kids were great. I never seen them before. The two boys, they were great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there wasn't really anything about the movie that was off. It was. No, it was all. It all cooked. Yeah. It moved, it moved. Spike I think it's to his three biggest genre influences are film noir, which we've seen and, him do a lot. This is a direct 1 to 1 two that he loves old movie Hollywood musicals. He loves them. So you see these big productions in like Malcolm X, big dance scenes, and we had, you know, some musical scenes in this. And then he loves black blaxploitation cinema of the 60s and 70s in that it all really came together very well here. He didn't write the script. That's fine. He did a great job with it, knowing that, like, I don't know if listeners like this is as big or not a bigger deal remake than Gus Van Zandt remaking psycho like Hinds. Yeah, such an important movie to a lot of people. And he made it New York. He made it. Spike. Yeah, Denzel. And all the best ways. Yeah, great. Highly recommend. High, highest to lowest recommend. That's right. Or original translation. Heaven to hell. Which is you know, America did high low. But I love that. I love that good title. Now you punk, you gotta get ready for the big payback. The payback. That's where I land. Oh, the big payback, the big payback. I just do I got to tell you, we recorded that little segment a few days ago, and I'm still really in love with the movie. It's not perfect. Like, don't don't let us, you know, it's not high. Low. Like, it's not, it's not, it's not carousel. It's classic. But it's very entertaining. It's fun. It's a movie that is paying a lot of respect to Curacao. Jules Dassin I, I just really enjoyed it. I did forget a few things in our little segment there. You know, we were kind of going fast and I've seen a few things kind of pop up here and there on Reddit or elsewhere, some criticisms, which are fine, it's fine. But when I said this feels like the first, honestly, first authentic spike Lee joint since Inside Man. Like the double hug. You know how he cuts with the double hug? If two people embrace? This is really obvious. In 20 minutes, our people embrace and they'll show it once and then boom, show it again. He's doing that a lot and highest to lowest. And I'm not saying he hasn't done that in 20 years, but it's just good to see it again. So deliberately okay, score. I'm seeing the score be talked about a lot as a negative. How it's constantly playing in conversations. It never stops. It's too loud. Those are all just facts. But that's what spike Lee does. My favorite spike Lee movie, He Got Game has extended arguments with music just blaring away 25th hour, Malcolm X they all do again. Blanchard did not do the music for highest to lowest, but this style of constantly playing music over conversations, that's just spike Lee. I guess you can bang highest to lowest for that, but you're denying the director because that's just what he does. There's a really funny thing that Denzel says, and he got game that I always wanted to know if it was improvised. It's when the cops are leaving his room for the first time and they're like, you get it? And he goes, I understand it, I overstayed it, you know, I understand it, I overstepped it, he said that a few times and highest, lowest. I just love that, you know, calling back to those scenes, little spike Lee Denzel isms, transitions. I've seen that two high slow uses some very fun, deliberate wipes as transitions to cut from one scene to the next. The original does that too. They're not. They don't have graphic elements, and they're not necessarily like fun, but they are these wipes. So that's what spike was calling back to. And I forgot to mention that. And I liked all those things. Again, that's paying homage to movies of the 40s, 50s, 60s, all that stuff. Okay. And the other thing, Spike's career post 25th hour or post inside man, I, I don't like to use this podcast to talk shit about someone, a filmmaker who's meant so much to me and whose work I don't care what spike Lee does for the rest of his career. I'm always going to love him. I'm always going to love his early work. I'm always going to love pretty much every movie from she's got to have it up through 25th hour. They've been so important to me. He did a commentary for almost all of those. They taught me so much about films and filmmaking. I love spike Lee, but I have noticed a trend in the past few decades that I didn't. It just didn't seem like as tough or as hard, or didn't even seem like he had as much to say. And maybe that was my choice. Maybe he didn't want to be as gritty or as intense or as controversial, even though I don't. I mean, his films like Malcolm X, very controversial movie, when it was released, Do the Right thing, like, there's going to be rioting in the streets. Then the movies come out and there is no rioting in the streets. And it's just a classic piece of cinema. But none of his films have really, like, had that recently. I don't know, they just seem to carry a little less weight, that's all. And that's fine if that's what he wanted to do. I mean, a lot of our favorite directors of this generation, they're getting older, so if they want to kind of chill out and not, I don't know, I don't know whatever the reasoning is, but I thought it would be fair. Instead, the way we kind of like breezed by his career and we were talking, you know, a little disparagingly about it. I'm going to give each film a little bit right, right here, a little bit of time and talk about what I liked, what I didn't, because I don't out, out hate any of these movies. Not hate and hate. Dislike. Yes. Not hate, but okay, 25th hour. We've talked about that one a lot. It made our both of our top 25 the Century so far lists. We've done a commentary on it. We love this film. This is a great film. I'm looking at all the movies after that. 2004 She Hate Me. It's a huge bomb. I remember critics panning it. I mean, critics giving it great FS when some of those same critics had given his previous film 25th hour in a that's wild going from, you know, this is one of the best movies of the year, this is the post 911 movie and then going to straight up FS. That's wild. I think She Hate Me has some fun stuff in it. It is a go for broke sex comedy that includes a, well, graphic suicide, Watergate, the Mafia animated sperm vigorously swimming toward an egg, and lots and lots and lots of sex scenes. It's a bit uneven, but it's still a spike Lee joint. It is absolutely inside man 2006. His biggest hit makes 185 million worldwide. That's massive for spike Denzel's great in it. Clive Owen, Jodie Foster This is a great rewatchable film. I'm not saying it's like everything about it is a great movie, although maybe. But this is something this thing is hilarious. It's thrilling. You can just put this damn thing on. Great to have on if you have a few people over having on the background, I don't know. I love Inside Man. A lot of people love Inside Man. Goddamn that music. I fucking love that music. I was such a fan of that music with the movie came out. Oh my God, I love it. And you know, the twisty ending and then the flash forwards to the interrogations, it look all gritty, like, that's the shit I love. That's what I love. So she hate me. Yeah. Not my not probably anyone's favorite spike movie, but Inside Man is a hit. And with that hit, he gets a blank check, as some people call it, to kind of make whatever movie he wants. And he had a few of these passion projects he had been wanting to get to. He always wanted to make a Jackie Robinson biopic. My God, I would have loved to have seen that. I mean, can he still do it? Like, it would be great. It would. I would be great. But he makes Miracle at Saint Anna in 2008, and I was really excited for this movie. It's set primarily in Italy during World War two WW2. It's about four Buffalo Soldiers, so four black soldiers who seek refuge in a small village where they bond with the residents. The preview looks good. I was excited for it. Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Omar Benson Miller, John Turturro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kerry Washington it's heart's in the right place. It's an epic. It's 160 minutes. I'm like, okay, here we go. I really want to like this. And it's just a slog and it bombs. It bomb bad. I saw it in the theater and then when I did a, I did a spike Lee right up on my blog, you know, several years ago at this point. And I rewatch it to go, all right, you know, did I was I judging too harshly, expecting too much and it's just it's just kind of dull. I mean, not even kind of. It just is. And then there's some really shocking war violence in it that by the time we get to that, I just didn't I was out, you know, both times. So, it's hard is in the right place though. It, it absolutely is. Four years later, Red hook Summer. This is another one that I want to like. It's a spiritual sequel to do the right thing. Spike cameos as Mookie from that movie. They intentionally wanted to make it on a small budget, shoot it guerilla style. It's just too long to me, though. Clarke Peters and Colman Domingo are great. I don't, I again salt once in the theater and I go, like, okay, okay, that was fine. There are some good moments and there are, there are. Colman Domingo has a moment and he seizes it. There are some good moments, but I don't know, just sitting there like, okay, cool that, that was that the next year. Yikes. Old boy 2013 huge bomb. It's a remake of a beloved modern classic. Spike got 30 million to make it and had a $5 million return. It, you know, I don't know what happened here. You heard me talk about it in the segment with Nick. Like, this is one of the few movies, if not the only movie, I have to go through every single one where it does not say a spike Lee joint. It says in the beginning of spike Lee film that, I believe, is because Spike's cut was 140 minutes. So, you know, that's a that's a beefy movie that's longer than the original. And the studio cut it to 105. The original is 120 minutes. So I don't know if they thought spike had too much fat, but they chopped the hell out of this thing. Spike even said they did that famous fight scene in one take, and for the studio to cut into that, I mean, you can see that's why he took his name, not necessarily his name off it, but his signature credit spike Lee joint and turned it into a much more impersonal, ordinary, a spike Lee film. Cool thing about Oldboy. Samuel Jackson and Spike Lee seem to have a falling out in the 90s. I have my theories as to why they did great work together, and their last movie was Jungle Fever with Samuel L Jackson is perfect in If I'm All Right, if I'm just speculating, if I'm just speculating. Spike Lee was very, very public and adamantly against the language used in Quentin Tarantino's movies. And, you know, the racial language in particular. Samuel Jackson. Samuel L Jackson at the time was Tarantino's guy. You know, he got him nominated for an Oscar for pulp Fiction, should have won, should have been nominated for Jackie Brown. So I have always wondered if there was a like, Samuel Jackson going, why are you hating on this guy who's given me all these great roles? Or maybe spike Lee is like, why are you working with this dude who writes all this racial language? Whatever. Just my theory. Oldboy brings him back together, and I love that. I love seeing them work together. Same Samuel L Jackson, at the very least in the movies. Having fun. I guess it's all at once in the theater. No need to revisit the next year. Not a lot of people have seen this one. The sweet blood of Jesus use Kickstarter. Very controversial when he did that. So maybe my controversial statement earlier isn't exactly true because he got mad. People were pissed at him, and an Oscar nominated director using Kickstarter to fund his project. And he's making the movie with his film school students. Like, you know, I thought it was a cool idea. He doesn't. And it kind of made clear that, yeah, I'm Spike Lee. Like, I'm a, you know, an A-list director. People people know spike Lee, you may not be able to list every movie, but you may know that name. And he still couldn't scrounge together the funds to make a weird little vampire movie and update of Ganja and Hess from 1973. Written and directed by Bill Gunn. A huge influence on spike Lee. Rami Malek is in the sweet blood of Jesus, but it's just, it's forgettable. We're in the string of, like, he's doing one year here. He's got Red hook Summer and 2012 Oldboy. 2013 The Sweet Blood of Jesus 2014. Although I think I got to see that in 2015, but still, the next year, 2015, we have Chirac. I thought, this is a cool idea. It's based on a Greek comedy, but it's set in modern day gang torn Chicago, while two rival gangs war in the streets, all of their wives and girlfriends and Lady friends band together and declare that they will no longer have sex with their men unless they stop fighting. It's kind of funny. It's part comedy, drama, musical, very spirited cast. Some of them work, some of them don't work as well. You got Nick cannon, Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Hudson, Angela Bassett, Samuel again. John Cusack as Priest. Teyonah Parris plays the main female lead. She's great. The movie just doesn't work for me. Again, a one time watch. I wonder if I need to. It's like, do I go back and revisit these? But I don't know. There's just so much other stuff to watch. Never had the need to, I guess I'll put it that way, but I will say, right before his solo was started, we saw it in Alamo and they were showing a lot of spike clips from movies that he's made. And when Nic saw John Cusack, like screaming has a priest, he goes, what the hell is that? And I went, oh, that's Chirac. So, you know, Nic loves the six pack acoustic, so maybe he'll check it out. I don't know if you'd like it or maybe would. Who the hell even knows? Okay, here we go. 2018 Black Klansman a big hit. It's hard, is in the right place, and it won. Spike Lee is only Oscar. Good. Fine. It's just not for me. I do not think it works as well as it thinks it does. I. I do think it has some good set pieces and some strong performances, but I do not think it contains a fraction of that intensity, that grit that spike showed in his earlier career. And moreover, this is not just for this movie. This is for any movie that is saying it's based on a true story. That's the lead of their marketing, based on a true story. This happened. This is real. You I mean, I got home from Black Klansman, did like five minutes of Wikipedia research and the whole movie's bullshit. Like, it just didn't go down that way, that that's fine. Like, make a fun movie about it. I don't know, some. I really like some variation of. Yes, some of this is true. A lot of it is embellished, but it sure is a hell of a story. Just say something like that. Give yourself a little distance from the facts. So then crybabies like me don't have to complain. But God, I remember doing all the research on it and going, oh, this okay, it takes out a lot of the punch of the movie when you're like, no, this is narrative fiction. Like they're making this up. I don't know, I did a lot of movies for that, a lot, not just this one. The final five minutes are great. Yes. They're great. They give me chills. Spike Lee is a fantastic documentarian. Make a documentary about those last five minutes. He made a Fantastic 911 documentary. I would love to see you make a documentary about the subject material that is in the last five minutes of Black Klansman. That's all. Day five Bloods 2020. Another war epic from spike. Not a bad film, unfortunately. This just got dumped by Netflix in June 2020. Peak early Covid a lot of stuff got like, what the hell is that? Tiger King? Everyone saw that. Things. We were all trapped at home and it was on Netflix. The five Bloods, I don't think, had that same stroke of luck. It just kind of came out and went away. It's still there, you know? It's still on the service. The standout here is Delroy Lindo. My God, he is sensational in the film. It may be the crowning achievement of his career and I love Delroy Lindo. I don't know the Oscars. Didn't know what to do with it if they even noticed it. Was it a lead performance? Was it supporting? The Oscars were very weird that year anyway, so it's a bummer if if he got nominated, it might have, you know, more people might have seen the film and he should have been nominated because he's really, really good in it. It's long 156 minutes. Again, salt once. It's not a bad film, none of these are out. No bad movies. None of them are bad. None of them are terrible. They're just not necessarily for me when I'm comparing these movies to the earlier part of his career, we've been. That's kind of what I've been trying to do with Nick throughout the duration of this podcast, is that he had only seen some of the earlier stuff, and I'm like, no, you have to go back. You have to see how this is one of the geniuses of American film. Spike Lee. So while we have given some pod time to things like Malcolm X, 25th hour and we're not going to be done with that, I mean, Nick loves she's got to have it. I would love to do an episode on that, love to do an episode on Do the Right Thing. It's it's endless where we could go with his career. I love I love his documentaries When the Levees Broke for Little Girls, oh My God, for Little Girls. She's both of those documentaries, so well-made. He's a great documentarian. He's a great filmmaker. What are you watching? Go see. Highest to Lowest. I'm putting it here before the 1996 episode, which was supposed to be next, because I want people to go see it, you know, go see in the theater. It will be on Apple, but don't wait. Go see it. It's worth seeing it. Music's great. Just fun. I can't get, Denzel shadow boxing to pay the payback. But James Brown out of my, like, ears in mind. It's just. It's got you throw these perfect shadow boxing punches. Made me think of the hurricane. I love the hurricane. Next time. Yes, I know everyone was greatly anticipating the 1996 episode, but that's going to be next. And then we're going to do some new Hollywood film project movies. We have a lot of fun stuff for that plan, so stay tuned for that. But as always, thanks for listening and happy watching. Don't want me to see, but do it to me. Hey everyone, thanks again for listening. Send us mailbag questions at What Are You Watching podcast at gmail.com or find us on Twitter, Instagram and Letterboxd at Y w underscore podcast. Next time is our top ten films of 1996. I promise no more delays. Stay tuned. Let me go back.