The Big Picture – Episode Summary

Podcast: The Big Picture
Hosts: Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins Date: November 24, 2025
Episode Title: Best Picture Power Rankings and the Super-Sincerity of ‘Sentimental Value,’ With Joachim Trier! Plus: Regretting ‘Regretting You.’

Episode Overview

This dense, lively episode covers the state of the 2025 movie industry, two major new releases ("Regretting You" and Joachim Trier’s "Sentimental Value" — with an in-depth Trier interview), and a comprehensive update of the hosts’ running Best Picture power rankings. Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins mix high-tier Oscars analysis, signature banter, and revealing industry insight for listeners who want to know what’s actually going to shape this Oscars season.

Industry News: Warner Bros. Discovery Sale (03:01–18:10)

Key Points:

• Major speculation about the imminent sale or merger of Warner Bros. Discovery, discussing three key bids: Paramount/Skydance, Comcast (Universal), and Netflix.
• Sean and Amanda weigh the ramifications on theatrical filmgoing, IP consolidation, and the fate of beloved properties.

Discussion Highlights

• Paramount/Skydance is considered the frontrunner; the merger would bolster Paramount’s weak IP reserves.
• The “split sale” scenario posits Comcast taking HBO, Netflix absorbing the Warner film studio — Amanda and Sean see more risks than upsides.
• Full Netflix absorption is considered most worrisome: it endangers theatrical windows and physical media, threatens the Warner Archive, and could mean enduring changes to film fandom.

Notable Quotes

• Sean [06:13]: “The good outcome is a lone man comes along who has 500 billion dollars and says, I would like to own Warner Brothers and make it the single greatest studio in the universe.”
• Amanda [13:29]: “They’ll condition audiences over time...things will be a little less good and they will spend a little less time caring about theatrical.”
• Sean [15:29]: “The consolidation is really, really alarming...More power being held in the hands of a fewer number of people whose taste I don’t really like.”

Industry Takeaway

• The business shakeup comes just as Warner has had its best year in ages, making the industry’s move toward more algorithmic, less daring content especially bitter.

Review: “Regretting You” (18:10–48:01)

Film Details

• Regretting You: Directed by Josh Boone, adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel. Cast: Allison Williams, McKenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald.

Hosts’ Impressions

• Sean and Amanda see the film as emblematic of a new wedge of melodramatic, hyper-sincere, and somewhat baffling yet successful content aimed at a massive Colleen Hoover fanbase. The film is “bad and insulting” in ways they both find fascinating and fun to deconstruct.

The Hoover phenomenon (20:02–23:41)

• “BookTok” and TikTok are major forces; Hoover’s stories are siloed but powerful with a “hyper-specific style of melodramatic, soapy writing.”
• Amanda [20:54]: “Colleen Hoover was propelled to success through BookTok. This is a real thing. It is just siloed from the world that you and I live in until we go to the movies.”

Plot Dissection (24:37–39:00)

• Breakdown of the film’s jumble of betrayals, reveals, and time jumps.
• Admiration for McKenna Grace’s tense mother-daughter scenes with Allison Williams, but bemusement at Dave Franco and Williams playing teens in flashbacks.
• Repeated focus on the absurd dialogue and stylized, misguided sincerity.

Cultural and Commercial Context (40:00–46:00)

• The film is a hit with moms and daughters, performing well at the box office.
• Amanda draws connections to Nicholas Sparks films, Lifetime movies, and the appetite for melodrama.
• Anticipation for more Colleen Hoover adaptations — the formula “critical car crash” as an emotional inciting incident is cited with both humor and concern.

Memorable Moment

• Sean [33:13]: “There are a series of moments...where characters say things to each other that I’m like, a person wrote this?”
• Amanda [34:33]: “She’s becoming kind of a genre queen...One of the great aspects of Marnie on Girls is that she kind of knows the weird, desperate, I need-to-be-famous thing...”
• Amanda and Sean’s deep dive into the movie’s AMC product placement and “cinephile” teen boy character (39:07–40:18)—including the choice to make his favorite movie Patriot Games—provides comic relief.

Review: “Sentimental Value” by Joachim Trier (48:01–72:07)

Film Details

• Sentimental Value: Norwegian family drama about a filmmaker patriarch and his two adult daughters reconnecting after their mother’s death.
• Cast includes Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdatter Lilleaas, Anders Danielsen Lie.

Critical Discussion

• Sean calls it “one of my favorite movies of the year...completely knocked out emotionally.”
• Amanda: “Aftersun annual I’m Dead Inside award...Structurally and intellectually very sound...I just didn’t connect to it emotionally.”

Key Discussion Points

• The film’s tone: sincere, literary, uses a “montage-driven” approach.
• Central performances: especially Skarsgård (“catnip” for Sean) and a notably restrained Renate Reinsve.
• Family legacy and depression themes—“the cycle of depression through families” and intergenerational similarity.
  • Sean [55:12]: “The way you pass things down to your kids...It can be beautiful to be very similar to a parent; it can also be really challenging—a constant push-pull.”
• Amanda finds the film “durational…very honest representation of depression, but tricky as a movie.”
• They discuss the deliberate lack of catharsis and lack of sentimentality. Reference points include The Royal Tenenbaums, Aftersun, and earlier Trier works.

Notable Quotes

• Sean [54:23]: “It is very much the cycle of depression through families.”
• Amanda [65:28]: “You are dead inside. Well, I said that I was. That's the name of the award, you know, it's a good award.”

Reception & Oscar Prognosis (72:07–78:10)

• Strong Cannes response, in contention for Best Picture, acting, director, and international categories.
• Skarsgård is a likely Best Supporting Actor candidate.
• The film is dividing critics and audiences: some find it deeply moving, others respect but feel detached.

Interview: Joachim Trier (96:10–126:30)

Highlights

Creative Genesis

• On the anxiety of following Worst Person in the World: “You try to accept that there's an anxiety for failure in the room.”
• Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt drew on new experiences as fathers and sons of living parents: “How can we make it interesting and cool and specific to talk about family dynamics?”

On Depicting Family Artists

• Trier, a product of an artistic Norwegian family, was interested in the interplay between creativity, intergenerational trauma, and emotional incapacity.
  • Trier [104:28]: “Being human is doing stuff like [creative expression].”
  • Trier [105:16]: “Inside that father is a wounded child…That’s the only way to reach some sense of reconciliation—see the honesty about your parents’ struggles.”

Process and Casting

• Wrote specifically for Renate Reinsve; long casting process led to Inga Ibsdatter Lilleaas as the sister.
• Deep dive into the “house” as a physical and emotional anchor for generations.

Meta Moment

• Trier describes delight at screening in Cannes where the movie shows DVDs previously shown in that same theater—“complete meta.”

Artistic Ethos

• On moving from punk autonomy to “a more emotionally open and tender place” as he ages: “There’s kind of a strength, even a masculine strength, to being emotionally available…to have sensitivity to things I value more and more.”

Soundtrack & Titling

• The soundtrack crosses genres to match the film’s emotional register—Terry Callier and Labi Siffre are touchstones.
• “Sentimental Value” is meant to evoke a subjective, personal, lived value—“It’s not just about a coffee cup from your grandmother.”

Hollywood Prospects?

• Trier finds U.S. movies inspiring, but relishes Norwegian freedom: “Shoot on 35mm, work with my friends, cast who I want, and have final cut…That's a pretty sweet deal.”

Film Recommendation

• Trier shouts out Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” as the “masterpiece” and highlights the “personal score” that unites Anderson’s work.

The 2025 Best Picture Power Rankings (78:10–95:51)

Top 10 (as of this episode):

1. One Battle After Another
2. Hamnet
3. Sinners
4. Marty Supreme
5. Frankenstein
6. Sentimental Value
7. It Was Just an Accident
8. Avatar: Fire and Ash
9. Train Dreams
10. The Secret Agent

Other contenders debated: Wicked for Good, Begonia, J. Kelly, Rental Family, No Other Choice.

Amanda and Sean walk through each position, discuss studio dynamics, box office, Oscar voting blocs, and their evolving rationales—e.g., “Marty Supreme” benefiting from strong marketing, “the big box office movie slot,” and the weakness of the international field this year.

Notable Banter

• The infamous “jacket” bit with Amanda angling for a Marty Supreme film promo jacket, and the “ping pong ball head” gag for Sean.
• Amanda’s ongoing campaign to attend Timothée Chalamet’s 30th birthday.
• Sean [84:38]: “There definitely is...like, a dob mob—3,000 dob mob girlies at home quietly masturbating every time you’re like, ‘I just want to drink tequila and dance to Nelly.’”

Memorable Quotes

• Amanda [20:03]: “It’s bad and insulting…to moms who like wine, but maybe even inspiration boards.”
• Sean [44:45]: On Colleen Hoover films: “Her core audience is single divorced moms...There’s plenty of people who would love to read stories where they feel seen in those stories.”
• Sean [67:40]: “He’s trying to do something super sincere…That sincerity can sometimes really bump up against people, too.”

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 03:01 — Warner Bros. Discovery sale analysis
• 18:10 — “Regretting You” (plot breakdown, cultural/industry analysis)
• 48:01 — “Sentimental Value” review (structure, theme, Oscar position)
• 96:10 — Joachim Trier interview (creative process, family, meta-cinema)
• 78:10–95:51 — Oscars Power Rankings and back-and-forth banter

Final Thoughts

This episode embodies The Big Picture’s strengths: trenchant industry knowledge, passionate (sometimes divided) film analysis, high-spirited banter, and a timely, thoughtful filmmaker interview. If you’re following the 2025 Oscar race, you won’t find a more comprehensive, funny, or insight-packed episode. Even the films’ flaws and industry anxieties are grist for a rewarding conversation steeped in a love of movies—sentimental value, after all.

[This summary focuses on content, not commercial reads or episode intro/outro sections.]