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The Big Picture
The 10 Wildest Reboots in Movie History and ‘The Bride!’ Plus: A ‘Secret Agent’ Second Look and the Best Doc Contenders.
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A
This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book your favorite hotel site your go to airline and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com autographjourney Terms apply. I'm Sean Fennessy.
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B
I'm Amanda Davins and this is the
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A
Big Picture, a conversation show about brides, secret agents and true stories. Today on the show we are discussing the Bride, Maggie Gyllenhaal's bold new reimagine imagining of the Bride of Frankenstein. And we will run through the history of bold movie reboots. We will also revisit best picture contender the Secret Agent, one of the very best films of 2025. And finally, we will dig into all five contenders for the best documentary prize at the Oscars this year and talk about the state of that category. Programming note, Amanda, we're going live on Netflix twice this month. Twice the first time. What are we doing?
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B
A mailbag?
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A
Yes. What kind of questions do you want to get in your mailbag?
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B
Not ones where I have to recast things or tell you about movies where my opinions have changed. Guess what? They haven't.
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A
Mine have. Sometimes I'm an open minded man. You can email us@bigpickmailbagmail.com what's that email address?
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B
BigPick mailbag. I did it right this time@gmail.com.
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A
yes. Once you've sent that email, you can tune in and watch us on Netflix on Monday, March 9th at noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern where you can watch us answer those questions. We'll also talk about the Pixar movie Hoppers. And then on March 15, after the Academy Awards, we will also go live. We will not be answering your questions. We will be answering our own questions about whatever transpires. I can't stop thinking about what's going to happen on March 15. But I'm not going to talk about it today. We're going to talk now about the
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B
Brian or on Monday.
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A
Or on Monday. Yes, because that mailbag is anything but Oscars. Thank you for reminding me. Okay, we will do it all right after this. This episode of the Big Picture is presented By State Farm. Sure. Being an expert at movie trivia is impressive. You know what's even more impressive? Being smart about saving money. And a great way to do that is by saving. When you choose to bundle home and auto with the State Farm personal price plan bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state. Okay, Amanda, haven't seen you in 24 hours.
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B
Yeah, maybe more.
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A
We've both seen the film the Bride. There's been no relevant movie news since then, so I think we should probably just dive right into this movie. What do you think?
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B
You don't want to talk about Barbra Streisand possibly performing a tribute to Robert Redford at the Oscars. I gasped and then texted you immediately.
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A
Yeah, I think it's nice.
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B
I don't. I feel really overwhelmed by the thought of it. And I don't really usually like the you gotta have an in Memoriam tribute, but I always feel that they're like a little overly sentimental and there's like, when there's an interpretive dance movement, I'm like, I love dance. But also, I don't really think that expressed my grief for all the art and artists that we lost this year. But there's something about the possibility of Barbra Streisand singing like memory from the Way We Were to Hubble or In Memory of Hubble. That to me it was just, I was like, wow, the Way We Were is still powerful. My reaction to it was like, oh, I guess now I'm an old person and I'm in tears.
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A
Well, I did feel like a very old fashioned idea for the Academy Awards, which is not a bad thing. I was thinking we didn't speak about the In Memoriam from the Actor Awards, but I was kind of curious who would get, as Bill Simmons likes to call it, the hammer, the final note. And this was a year where we lost, among many other people, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman and Diane Keaton, in addition to Robert Redford. And Redford went last at the Actor Awards and he will probably be last at the Oscars. And that will probably segue to a Barbra Streisand performance. You know, Sounds good.
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B
You don't think she'll soundtrack the whole thing?
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A
You think she'll sing through the entire In Memoriam?
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B
Well, they've done it before.
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A
I think I'll sing through the Memoriam and then she can come in for memory, I think that would. What would I sing? Limp Bizkit's Nookie. What do you think would be the most appropriate song for me to sing?
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B
That would be funny.
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A
Let's go to the Bride.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So. Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her third feature film, it is based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Sort of. It stars Jesse Buckley and Christian Bale alongside Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal and Penelope Cruz. The story of the movie is as such. In 1930, Chicago, Frankenstein's monster asks Dr. Euphronius to create a companion for him. Together, they give life to a murdered woman known as, quote, the Bride, sparking romance, police interest and radical social change. I ask you now.
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B
Yeah.
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A
What do you make of the Bride?
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B
I would prefer not to. Which is sitting right there. If you've seen the film, which most of you haven't, you. Sue, I think you and I are on different pole on, like, different points of the same spectrum of this, and you're a little more positive and I'm a little more negative. But I can see your point that there are things to, if not like, then admire. It's a big swing, right? This is a very ambitious, like, stuffed and possibly overstuffed tribute to a lot of things that we enjoy, including cinema. Jesse Buckley. Noir, though, even though that's the silliest part of the movie. Like, there's a lot in here. There is a lot. There are a lot of set pieces. There's a lot of dancing. There is a lot. Visually, there's certainly a lot of performance. So everyone's trying a lot of things. And it's good when people try. Right? And it's good when filmmakers try. And once again, you know, an original, esque, not really original, but it's not, you know, it's ip. We can say that at least a writer, director, like, trying to do something interesting, a strong vision, and being given a big budget and, like, using the whole screen is what we root for. So I'm not mad that it happened, but there is something that is so essential to the project and so embedded in the nature of not just the script, but, like, why this movie exists that I think is so stupid that I, like, I ultimately can't give it a pass.
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A
I completely understand what you mean. I respect your point of view. I went into this movie with rock bottom expectations because of a lot of the fact that it has been pushed multiple times. We got our first look at it almost a year ago at Cinemacon. I think it was meant to be a fall release. It got bumped to the spring of 2026, in part because maybe Jesse Buckley was going to be on the gravy train to an Oscar win for Hamnet, but probably more specifically because this is a little bit of a dumping ground ahead of the Academy Awards in terms of the release schedule. There was talk of bad audience test scores. There's talk of reshoots. It's got the vibe of a disaster. And this is a kind of a testimony to the expectation game for me, because I went in expecting a very bad movie, and I think this is a very messy movie, but has a lot of things that I like. And I would much rather have the studios giving audacious filmmakers a lot of money to. To try something, as you said, than 88% of the franchise garbage that we get on a regular basis. And so even though we can talk through specifically what is ineffective or, in some cases, I think, quite dumb about the movie, there's so much that I really enjoy. There's so much style, there's so much fearlessness. There's so much abandon, I would say, in terms of what it's trying to accomplish. There's plenty of stuff that feels tacked on, and you can sense that. But I have been reading some of the reactions to the movie, and I get why people are like, this is a bad Jessie Buckley performance. To me, it is not. To me, it is. She's doing what she's being asked to do. And the movie that this movie reminds me of is Babylon, and I love Babylon. And Babylon is a little messy, and Babylon's a little all over the place, and Babylon's a little like bing, bing, bing on your nose with your metaphor sometimes.
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B
Right.
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A
But.
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B
And Babylon loves the movies, too, and it does.
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A
And there's a lot of overt references to movie history and the way that cinema is interconnected and that it's like a. Of recreations. We're going to talk about the Secret Agent later in this episode. It's a movie that's not dissimilar. It's a movie that is using a lot of the hallmarks of older films and trying to recontextualize with political and social intent. Secret Agent's more successful in that respect, but I think I just had more fun than I expected to. And I'm thinking about this movie. There's another movie that I thought of a little bit, which is Don't Worry, Darling, which I think is somewhat similarly stuck because its primary idea about feminism and a powerful Female consciousness kind of like holds the movie back from unleashing itself into a real genre of feat. Yes, I think this movie is more successful personally, but I think they're gonna end up in basically the same place critically, socially.
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B
They both have not a fundamental flaw, but the fundamental theory behind their existence. The take, the interpretation is quite similar and to my mind does not hold up in either case. I mean, don't worry, Darling at least has the panache of the reveal being that it's like Harry Styles as Jordan Peterson in a room that's funny, if silly and undermining of the entire project. You know, the Bride as a feminist retelling and what it is. Fine. Though I would like to talk about the concept of a feminist retelling and what we're achieving when we do that. But the way that it executes it is so heavy handed and as you said, sometimes tacked on and so like ultimately unnecessary and. And frankly doesn't achieve what I think it thinks it sets out to achieve. That it's just kind of like I don't know how to get on board with the project because it also announces it so clearly. There is a framing device that I understand is a reference to the Bride of Frankenstein, but also feels silly, tacked on and like a total failure all at once.
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A
Yeah, well, okay, so.
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B
And then it's cooked into the rest of the movie. That's the other thing, is that you can't like the. It's the. It's a foundation that is. It does not work.
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A
So we spent a lot of time on our Wuthering Heights discussion talking about like the source material and like what changing the source material sometimes does to a project. And by pulling too much out, you can strip a movie of its thematic strengths and that. That makes the movie feel more flimsy. That was my feeling about Wuthering Heights in part. That was part of what I struggled with. This movie, I would say, is sort of working in reverse. Where it's operating from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where, you know, in the novel there's an attempt to create a female counterpart for Frankenstein, but that before that, that, that that corpse is revivified, it's destroyed. In 1935, there's a sequel to Frankenstein, the James Whale film Bride of Frankenstein, where Elsa Lanchester plays the bride. That character is actually reinvigorated, but she's wordless and screeches and doesn't really have agency to use a contemporary language. This is a movie that attempts to kind of like reposition that to correct that, you know, to give that character more of her own point of view. I wouldn't say it's. It's not dopey. I do think it's wildly overstated at times in the movie, and I don't. I'm not sure if there was a subtle way to do this, because there's no subtlety in the movie whatsoever. It's just sort of, as you said, you're like, I'm not on board, so I just can't.
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B
Yeah. I mean, like, my fundamental question is, is why? Like, I, like, who. Who cares? I mean, I, like. I get it. I. I suppose we need to evening
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A
the playing field of the history of monsters in the movies. And who gets to be messy? Like, I think that's really what the movie's about. It's like, who gets to be, like, a messy person who gets to do terrible things? And Frankenstein and the Wolfman and Dracula get to do those things. Why doesn't the bride Dr. Sure, but
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B
the Bride isn't doing terrible things. She's, you know, inciting, like, a revolution against the 1930s Chicago mafia and, like, literally screams the words me too. Multiple times at a character.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And. And then there's a whole interlude where, like, all the women take to the streets. Like, what? What?
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A
I mean, I think there are some things that she. Her character gets to do, Jessie Buckley's character. One is to have, like, a strong sexual desire on screen that is not otherwise communicated in movies like this. That is obviously a very not so latent metaphor for women having the ability to just say loud and proud. This is something that I want.
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B
Right.
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A
Also, the idea that she, you know, early in the film, there's a violent encounter after they go to a nightclub where Frankenstein, you know, after someone attempts to sexually assault the bride, Frankenstein has to save her, and he kills the two men who are trying to assault her. And then later in the movie, she saves him. She's the person responsible for protecting her family, her duo. And, you know, it's very diagrammatic the way that it's attempting to kind of, like, right those wrongs. I don't think a lot of this. That stuff is really what I. What I caught into in the movie is when it's like, this is an explosive show. Here's a dance sequence, here's a dramatic and oftentimes metafictional retelling of Hollywood history. Here is. I think the performances are very funny and on point. I do know why they're getting some negative feedback, but these are monster movies. Like, they're supposed to be ridiculous and big and loud. And I don't. I didn't struggle with any of those things. Those aspects of the movie.
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B
I found not Jessie Buckley's performance, but I found the character of the Bride incredibly annoying. But that was because within written in the character and I would like to talk about this framing device and the Mary Shelley of it all because it starts there's an extended prologue where Jessie Buckley is in kind of black and white in the void as Mary Shelley talking direct to camera.
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A
An unboxing girl, if you will.
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B
Sure. And she's. And then like similarly like has lost control of reality. She's cackling. And this. In this British accent being like just wait. And is doing exposition for what, you know, what has happened. And also how she. Mary Shelley is involved in this reanimation of the Bride. Now she gets another chance. But it's intercut with the Ida character who's also Jessie Buckley, who is the corpse that is reanimated as the Bride. But the movie makes the choice to have to really literalize that this is. Mary Shelley also has some agency. Mary Shelley can be a creator too. And so she inhabits Ida's body. And so half the time, like the Ida character or the Bride is sometimes taken over by Mary Shelley's accent. So she speaks either in you know, a Chicago accent or like doing her best American flapper or sometimes as Mary Shelley in a British accent. And it just this switching back and forth is incredibly irritating.
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A
It is.
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B
And that's not her fault. That is. I mean that is written for the character she is doing. She is giving a performance of what was conceived. So I don't hold it against Jesse Buckley. Yeah, but like what and why? And can I leave? Because this is really annoying.
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A
I kind of enjoyed it. I realize that this is. There's an aspect of this whole movie and I am so comfortable being a hypocrite in this that is like key jangling fan service for movie bros or movie gals. And it's like, do you like that this person is named this because it's a callback to a name of a famous person. Or do you like that? The movie is like a exploration of the split personality and literary creations and how much. How much of the Bride is really Mary Shelley and how much of the Bride is her own thing. And like the movie is trying to kind of tangle with these actual ideas in a way that is like a little bit complex. 202 class.
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B
No, it's. It's 101.
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A
Okay. Sure.
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B
I'm sorry. We didn't. We didn't.
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A
You need to have read Frankenstein.
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B
I guess so. Yeah. You can do that in high school.
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A
Um, yeah. But probably. Probably you don't.
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B
Well, we could when we were in high school.
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A
Yeah. Probably. You don't. At this point. You can listen to the audiobook. So I don't. I don't. I don't pretend to, like, defend its artistic merits. It just. I found it kind of amusing. I found what she was doing kind of amusing. And I know it's going to be a big turnoff for a lot of people, and it is essential to the way that the character is written. I think, like, whether or not it's purposefully annoying is an interesting thing to talk about because I think, you know, being a messy bitch. Right. Like, that's like the whole movie. Like, I don't. I don't know if Maggie Gyllenhaal has literally said that in an interview, but there's intent here.
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B
Sure.
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A
And there's a. There's a whole. There's a whole 15 plus years of, you know, post vice culture that is defined by that. Right. That's like a point of view culturally.
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B
Right.
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A
That this movie is trying to, you know, subsume into a monster movie. I get it. Like, I'm okay with it, sure.
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B
But it, like, it was. It was always pretty annoying at the time. I mean, I. I, like, I understand, I suppose, that it has to be like a branch of our feminism or whatever that, like. But that doesn't mean that I want to sit and watch all of it or that I need to be asked to. And also, you know, sometimes the messy bitches are funny. Like Meg Salter Forever. You know, that's.
- [19:19]
A
That we failed to discuss her at the Actor Awards. She was the funniest thing there.
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B
But that. Yeah, there was a TV award, but it was about Hammett, so it can be done.
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A
Well, it was about Jessie Buckley. She was like, jesse Buckley helped me out here.
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B
They didn't cut to Jesse Buckley once.
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A
They did not.
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B
Well, because I think there's. I mean, there's no sense of humor in this. I mean, and that is a real. It is for its bigness and for its going for it ness. There's no self awareness. It is really like, we're all in. And I can appreciate that. I don't think Jesse Buckley is not the problem. To me, the character is the problem.
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A
I get it. There's one other aspect of this that I find appealing that I think most normal people don't see the same way. You know, Siskel and Ebert talked about this at times. Film critics have talked about this over the years. But when you professionally watch 200 new movies a year, a lot of things start to feel very the same. And when something like this comes along, this is not really like any other movie. It doesn't mean it's successful all the time, but it feels different and that. That it activates your mind in a different way. It makes you see something differently. I found the movie to be too long. I found the plotting and the pacing to be very poor. I found the tacked on kind of detective story to be a huge bungle and a huge waste of Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz, who are like Academy Award nominated, phenomenal actors who have, like, very little to do in this movie. But, and I'll tell you this, too, this movie also reminded me a lot of Joker and Joker Folia do. It looks like that the bad parts of Joker Folio do. And to me, what I found to be the good parts of Joker. And part of the reason for that is the movie is shot by Lawrence Sher, who shot both of the Joker movies. And the music is by Hilda Guanadottur, and she did this music for the Joker movies. And it's edited by Dylan titchener, who is PTA's longtime editor. He hasn't worked with him on the last couple movies, but he edited all of Paul Thomas Anderson's classics. So I found that there was, like, a level of craft here, while also feeling like it's really chopped up and they're kind of like on this journey through America in the 1930s, you know, also a huge homage to Bonnie and Clyde. That's intrinsic to this story, too. And it starts to just feel, like, really episodic about an hour in, and then you feel the weight of it bagging down. But when the movie is kind of like stroking its chin all the way up until the MeToo finale, which I did not enjoy, I kind of enjoyed it. I kind of enjoyed it, like, spinning its wheels about what it thinks it is and trying to use a $80 million studio movie to be like, how do I really feel about the way that female characters are supposed to be in movies? I don't know. I think that there was something. The intent is interesting, the execution is interesting, and I didn't have a bad time. That's kind of where my head is at with the movie.
- [22:11]
B
Yeah, the execution is interesting. I did also, to keep it in the DC universe, spend a lot of time thinking of Birds of Prey, which, you know. And some of that is all of the production decisions. And there's like a slight greenness to some of it. And even the makeup and whatever the stain is that Jessie Buckley has on her face.
- [22:36]
A
Yes, the sort of bile stain on her face.
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B
Sure. But I had forgotten that the subtitle of Birds of Prey was or the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, which is. There's just a little bit of, like, girl power reorganation, you know, reimagination here that I'm definitely allergic to.
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A
It's the yassification of the Bride. It is, yeah.
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B
It's. Which is just. It's. Why do we need that?
- [23:02]
A
Like, what's the alternative? Would you have enjoyed more a straight up modern remake of the Bride?
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B
You mean the modern Guillermo del Toro's the Bride? Well, what happens in it?
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A
The same shit that happens in. It's a remake of the James Whale movie.
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B
So she just doesn't say anything. I mean. I mean, kind of what happens in Guillermo del Toro's the, you know, Frankenstein. But the Bride is just Elizabeth, Right? That's true. And her death scene is very beautiful.
- [23:30]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's impossible to do that. The one, for one thing that I'm suggesting, but I think because this is just so different from what you would expect a studio to do, we're going to get, like, another version of this. There's this funny thing happening with Warner Brothers where they have a mummy movie coming out in April, Right. And it's a modern set story. Jack Rayner is the star of it, and it's about a little girl who disappears and clearly makes contact with a mummy. So they're using the Same Karloff, Universal, 1930s frameworks, but they're trying to set it in a modern time. And Universal's been trying to do this for years and years. You may recall the Dark Universe didn't go over so well. We saw the Invisible Man. We'll talk about some of these movies when we get to the reboot stuff. But this kind of old IP, not new IP, like 100-year-old IP, is stuff that still has enough recognizability that it's powerful.
- [24:21]
B
I get all of that. I bump on, like, the feminist retelling of it. I genuinely. And I had some time during this film to think about this. But this is a thing right now, right? And I mean, it's not new, but the book, Circe, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it was like A huge book club bestseller, which is reimagining. It's not even reimagining the Odyssey. It's just kind of like, what's up with Cersei? She's just a character, you know? And, like, what she's. What is she up to and how does she feel? And what was her experience? And there are, like, a million of these. There's the Penelope ad, which is the Margaret Atwood version of the Odyssey. There's, like, everything having to do with Lady Macbeth. There are, like. There's been a whole, like, cotton industry after Cersei of books. Like, there's one about the Julia character from 1984. There's one of, like, Rosalind from Romeo and Juliet. Like, you could argue that the Da Vinci Code is about Mary Magdalene. You know, like, this is not a thing. Which. It's not a new thing. But what does this character, who is, like, not really explored in this, like, canonical piece of literature, what's going on with her? And what if we either told it. Not even told it from her perspective, but what if we, like, gave her agency? What if we gave her a personality? What if we gave her. Whatever. What if we gave her a life and her own story? And I genuinely don't know if I think that that is, like, a useful project or not. I genuinely. Because the result is always. Not always, but the result doesn't change the framework in which these characters are created and the world in which they're created or really even their experiences. And so I'm just like, what are we. What do we learn from this? Like, what do I learn from the bride? Like, that women can be messy, too. Like, that's fine. Just make a movie about a messy person. I don't know what. Rewriting Frankenstein or the parts of the Odyssey, by the way, apparently Circe ends with her marrying Telemachus, which. Sorry, spoiler alert. I mean, is that improving things?
- [26:35]
A
I don't know. I haven't read the book. Yeah, I haven't read any of that.
- [26:39]
B
I'm sorry to just, like, bring you into Feminism Corner for a minute, but I just. That's where we are. What are we doing? What do you want Alice watching?
- [26:47]
A
These are all salient questions. I haven't read any of these novels, and I would say I'm somewhat studied on feminism, but certainly not an expert. I think artistic recombination is really fascinating to me. I was obsessed with hip hop for exactly this reason. I think that the history of music being redefined and recombined just moves me And I feel the same way about movies. And I find a lot of movies that do this literature may be a little bit less so, but I just don't read as many novels as I did when I was 20 years ago. So I guess I don't know that it can accomplish anything. And I don't even know if what's the point of this is something that really occurred to me while watching the Bride. I don't know that I would show this to Alice before showing her the original Bride of Frankenstein and be like, this is the real story of the Bride. I don't know that we need to rewrite those things, but I do think that recontextualizing stories has value. There's a very long history of this in the movies. Now, the primary reason that this happens and the reason I think this movie happened is Maggie Gyllenhaal just made a movie about a messy woman. Yeah.
- [27:57]
B
And it was great.
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A
The Lost Daughter is exactly what you're describing. And it's an adaptation, but it is, clearly, it's what interests her. It's like, thematic core of the kinds of stories that she wants to tell. And it felt like she wanted to tell a story on a much bigger stage at much bigger scale. And the only way to do that in Hollywood right now is to find IP is to find a property that you can show to a studio and say, like, I'm going to do a crazy story about female identity in the aftermath of me too. But I'm going to do it using these monsters that everybody that people are familiar with. And you're going to. I'm going to justify the budget that I need by doing that. I get it. Like, she's kind of playing the game that has been set in front of her. And you can say it's unsuccessful, of course, but I think whether or not, like, we need more feminist retellings is so tough, because you can't go back 500, a thousand, even 70 years and say, like, well, we can't. What were the books that should have been written if this woman wasn't forced to be a housewife?
- [28:54]
B
You know, like, so you're saying because we're all slaves to IP or because we're all trapped in IP world, I think it just helps sell everything. Yeah, no, I mean, I get all of that, but that doesn't make it, like, good or useful.
- [29:06]
A
I agree.
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B
Which is just sort of. And I just. I. I think it's pretty silly.
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A
And.
- [29:12]
B
And I think that. I mean, this is the thing. If you have to do ip, just do the next chapter and start a new character. Like I put in here as a joke, just like. But not really as a joke, just Force Awakens it. But. Which is a bad movie in a lot of ways. But the Rey of it all, they just made a girl a Jedi, and they just made it about her. And you said that your daughter was very excited to, like, get to Rey. I remember seeing Rey in theaters and I don't care about any of this stuff, but I was like, I understand what it means to see with the woman with the lightsaber. Then they saddle her with a bunch of other stuff. But the idea of just making a character that if you need to keep the world and you keep the ip, just create something new.
- [29:57]
A
I really. I think you're right about that. I think that's very insightful since I've just been rewatching those movies.
- [30:03]
B
Yeah.
- [30:05]
A
To J.J. abrams credit, that first movie does not go out of its way to say, but she's a girl and girls can do it. In fact, the most memorable and exciting and still like hair raising moment in that movie to me is at the end of the film when the planet is collapsing and it's Kylo Ren versus Finn and Rey, and Kylo Ren is reaching for the lightsaber and trying to use the force to pull it, and it whips past him.
- [30:32]
B
And yeah, it goes to her.
- [30:33]
A
It doesn't go to Finn, it goes to Rey and she catches it and no one says anything. They just start fighting and she beats him. That was great. That was fantastic. Yes, but this movie doesn't do that. There's no lightsabers in this movie. I think it's fair to say, like, we could just do a new story that is in the same world. That's a different mission than I think, what a lot of filmmakers try to do. Like, I was trying to think of, like, what is, like, the right framework for this episode. And I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. And then it dawned on me that this actually happens, like every year. There's always one of these. And you mentioned, you know, the feminist retellings in literature, but how many of them are there just for Jane Austen novels? Like, we have all of these kind of like reimaginings and setting them in contemporary times or different times.
- [31:20]
B
Right, but those aren't. Those were movies about women written or those, you know, those were textually about the woman from the beginning. And they need updating in, like, many other ways. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't a either be examining the ways in which women and people of color and everybody who is not were, like, sidelined or experienced, like, real shitty lives for a really long time. But this thing where we're reclaiming a character that didn't matter and then just like, reclaiming from what is, like, what, what are we reclaiming? That's all.
- [32:00]
A
Have you seen Rosaline? The Caitlyn Deaver movie? It was a Hulu movie like, four or five years ago.
- [32:08]
B
Yeah.
- [32:09]
A
Just sort of like, which is like, it's about Romeo's ex. Right. It's about the girl who Romeo doesn't
- [32:14]
B
go with, which can be funny. There is one truly great example of this, which is the 2011 McSweeney's article. I don't know if you've read this. It's a classic. I regret to inform you that my wedding to Captain Von Trapp has been canceled.
- [32:28]
A
I haven't, I haven't.
- [32:29]
B
And it's just about, it's like literally an imagine the baroness from the Sound of Music writing the letter being like, so this nun who sings and hangs out of ch. It's really genuinely funny. But I, I think it is telling that, like, the best example I can come up with of this sort of retelling is the McSweeney's article.
- [32:47]
A
I want to, I want to talk more about what movies try to do with this, but this is a Christian Bale movie, and he is playing Frankenstein. And on 99% of the time, it would be called Frankenstein starring Christian Bale. And he is the second lead of the movie. He gets to be the primary character at the beginning before we meet our bride. But what did you think about what he was doing in the movie?
- [33:12]
B
I was fine with it. It was quieter than what Jesse Buckley was. Is doing.
- [33:15]
A
Certainly true. Kind of a cucked Frankie.
- [33:18]
B
That's okay. And I do like it when very big, like, male stars are just like, sure, I'll just, like, show up on the side while you guys do whatever. I'm, I am charmed by that. And, and I appreciate that. And I, he wasn't. He's a little weird. In a good way. I, I, I appreciated this slightly subtler interpretation here.
- [33:42]
A
Yeah. And I think maybe that's one of the reasons why Buckley is so big, is that they're playing two different notes. And, you know, frankly, there are a lot of relationships like this where one partner is very loud and the other partner is not so loud. And I thought it was kind of clever. I don't know I have a warm feeling about this movie mess and all.
- [33:57]
B
Well, you like monsters.
- [33:58]
A
I do like monsters, yeah.
- [34:00]
B
That's the other thing. I was just kind of like, I don't know. Part of that is also the buy in. And I did spend some time in the movie thinking about, like, is this really that much worse than Del Toro's Frankenstein? And like, in what ways is it worse? And it is ultimately incoherent. Like, just from a basic.
- [34:23]
A
See, I think it's coherent. I just think it's a little eye rolly. Like, I think what it's doing is, like, I think the plot makes sense. I think it's clearly been reshot and reconfigured. But, like, it does. The movie makes sense to me in terms of what's happening.
- [34:36]
B
They, like reanimates them and then they gotta run away and then. Sure, it's. Yeah, I get that it's Bonnie and Clyde. Like, that's not that hard. But I think everything, all of, all of the. The political or the ideological stuff that it's added in. Like, I'm still not sure where Mary Shelley is in space and time and how she's inhabiting the body and then when she's kicking in. And then this is not people on that.
- [35:07]
A
Not a literal. It's a movie about reviving corpses and turning them into a happy couple. Yeah, but like, you got. It's a flight of fancy.
- [35:13]
B
But the fight. Flight of Fancy was not coherent. Like, it just. It was not. It seemed pieced together, that's all.
- [35:23]
A
So there's been some speculation that this film could. Norbit Jesse Buckley.
- [35:27]
B
Right.
- [35:28]
A
Listeners may recall Eddie Murphy was riding on a train to Oscar glory for the film Dreamgirls in the best supporting actor race. He won some precursors. And then he released his legendary comedy classic Norbit in the spring before the Academy Awards happened. And many believe that it literally tanked his Oscar chances and he lost that Academy Award. And he actually talked about it recently in his Netflix film Eddie, which was kind of interesting. I think maybe it's called Being Eddie, but just the fact that he had an awareness of it and felt a little burned by it, I thought was notable. Oscar voting closes today, Thursday, when we're recording. I don't really think this is going to have any impact on Jesse.
- [36:09]
B
Well, I wanted to ask you, do you think that the Bride or the late breaking campaign against Jesse Buckley for her anti cat stance.
- [36:20]
A
I don't know anything about that.
- [36:21]
B
Is gonna be. So this just absolutely erupted on social media in the last two days. And it's an anecdote about how when Jesse Buckley moved in with her husband, her husband had cats, and the cats were not welcoming to Jesse Buckley.
- [36:37]
A
Okay.
- [36:37]
B
And I think even pooping on her pillowcase.
- [36:40]
A
And.
- [36:41]
B
And so then it. She issued an ultimatum that it was the cats or herself.
- [36:46]
A
This story was about Maggie Gyllenhaal. This story was about Jesse Buckley.
- [36:49]
B
Yes.
- [36:49]
A
Okay.
- [36:50]
B
And so. But now there's just a. Jesse Buckley is a monster because the cats had to be rehomed. And this is, you know, how the animal Internet is. You know, Like, I still think that this is part of. This is a. A secret part of the Marty supreme resistance is, like, what happened to the dog? And now Jesse Buckley doesn't like cats.
- [37:10]
A
Right. Well, if you had to choose.
- [37:12]
B
Yes.
- [37:12]
A
Dog or cat, because you're out on birds, we know that you can't.
- [37:17]
B
Sure. But, like, what am I choosing to live with, to be? I can't be responsible for anything else. I'm responsible for enough things right now.
- [37:23]
A
2019. Amanda, dog or cat? You got to take one.
- [37:28]
B
I like spending time with dogs more, but again, this is. My husband does not respond to dogs well, as you know.
- [37:34]
A
Yes, I do know that.
- [37:35]
B
And I would choose to live with my husband, so I guess I choose a cat.
- [37:40]
A
I was raised with cats and dogs. I had a German shepherd growing up. Cain changed my life, made me care for things beyond myself, taught me responsibility. I loved him. He was beautiful. I also had three cats growing up. Three different cats, all of whom died. Not on my watch. On my mom's watch, technically.
- [38:01]
B
But, yeah, they're teaching your responsibility until they die, and then it's your mom's problem, huh?
- [38:07]
A
Yeah. Well, I've been reflecting on this specifically because our daughter wants a cat.
- [38:11]
B
I know.
- [38:12]
A
And she wants a dog, too, and we're not ready for that. But I feel like losing three cats as a young person made me feel like they were more disposable, whereas only losing one dog, I was like, I haven't had a dog in my life since I was 12, and I've been waiting, and I feel like I'm gonna wait till I'm, like, 50. But when I get a dog, that's gonna be my dog. That's gonna be my homie. Like, that's gonna be the person that I spend a lot of time with. And I kind of understand where Jesse Buckley's coming from, because it's like you entered into a new experience, and you signed on for the husband, but not the cats. But I like cats. I'M not an anti cat.
- [38:51]
B
The cat was not. The cat wasn't allowing. The cat was not welcoming her.
- [38:57]
A
I see.
- [38:57]
B
You know, they couldn't cohabitate.
- [38:59]
A
Got it. This is the only movie podcast where you can get this discussion. I just want everyone to know that.
- [39:03]
B
I'm sorry. If we're speaking to the entirety of the Oscar.
- [39:07]
A
That's. Listen, you're right. That's exactly what she says.
- [39:09]
B
So what do you think is going to be more hurtful? The bride.
- [39:11]
A
I mean, clearly the cats.
- [39:13]
B
Yeah, the cats thing is really.
- [39:14]
A
Cat stuff is divisive. This is like a big swing and. Oh, she missed. Whatever it happens, it's not her fault. Box office smoothie's tracking for somewhere between 14 and 18 million.
- [39:24]
B
Okay.
- [39:25]
A
It's not great for an $80 million movie.
- [39:29]
B
I don't know if this is going to go in, like, the plus column, you know, once.
- [39:32]
A
I don't think so.
- [39:33]
B
Paramount starts looking under the hood. You know, I don't think they're going to be like more of these.
- [39:37]
A
Probably not another Maggie Gyllenhaal joint coming from David Ellison anytime soon. I did think this would was a good moment to kind of take a. Take a breath and look at the Pam Abdy Mike deluca era, because I think this is the end of phase one. This is the last movie from the initial green light bonanza that they set out where they were just like filmmaker forward, audacious stories. We're making movies that other studios won't make at certain budgets. So let's just quickly go through the lineup. Companion Mickey, 17, the Alto Knights, Minecraft movie Sinners, Final Destination, Bloodlines. Technically F1, but not really. Technically Superman, but not really Weapons. The Conjuring, Last Rites, one battle after another. Weathering Heights and the Bride.
- [40:25]
B
You heard it here first. Mike and Pam are good at their jobs.
- [40:29]
A
It's pretty good. I mean, you know, I think the Conjuring, Last Rites and Final Destination, Bloodlines being like massive successes in addition to a Minecraft movie makes a lot of this feel even better where you're like, you guys did your IP things and you did them in ways that were effective enough that we could talk about them on the show. And a lot of families went to go see those movies, but they're not lasting things. But then having the two leading contenders for best picture and then the Alto Knights, which was reportedly a David Zaslav project, they don't have any stain on them from that one. Superman was obviously more of a James Gunn DC Studios thing, but a relative success. The Weather Heights has turned out to be not as big as I expected it to be. I don't think it's a loss by any means. And it's really interesting that Emerald Fennell made that choice to go with Warner Bros. Instead of Netflix, where she could have gotten more money, maybe up front. But it's definitely not a loss for them. I think it was generally financially successful. We didn't really like it that much. The Bride will probably be the biggest
- [41:33]
B
L that they take even more than Mickey 17. What was Mickey 17's box office? Because this is in. This is in the Mickey 17 spot. And I think we are having the same kind of conversation about this film that we did, Mickey 17 last year, which is like, we really. We do like that filmmakers get to do this. And some things worked better than others.
- [41:57]
A
Mickey 17 made $133.5 million globally.
- [42:01]
B
Okay.
- [42:02]
A
I don't think the Bride's going to get past that.
- [42:05]
B
I don't think so either.
- [42:07]
A
I also think, like, if you want to put kind of Metacritic scores up
- [42:10]
B
against each other, I think Mickey 17 is a more successful movie than this is.
- [42:15]
A
Yeah, they're kind of the same to me.
- [42:16]
B
Yes.
- [42:17]
A
Well, I mean, like, I'm like, this is. This is different. And. And some of it isn't working and some of it is, like, too politically on the nose. It has the same issue.
- [42:24]
B
Absolutely. And I really bumped that with Mickey 17 as well.
- [42:27]
A
Yeah. But there's so much invention and visual dynamism and just the musical sequences alone in the broad. I'm like, I don't know. This is pretty 1930s movie musicals.
- [42:39]
B
Jake Gyllenhaal as Fred Aserre. Yes.
- [42:41]
A
Yeah. That was really entertaining. It's half baked.
- [42:45]
B
I think he was singing too. He was doing his own.
- [42:47]
A
I think he was. Well, yeah, we know from the John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch bunch that he's a real performer.
- [42:53]
B
Do you remember he hosted snl. It was the Dream Girls year. And because he did. I am telling you, I'm not going. And his monologue, and it was. It's incredible. It's not online anymore because of music rights, but I'll never forget how good he was.
- [43:12]
A
We might need him in a musical. Mickey 17 landed at 72 on Metacritic. Do you want to guess what the Bride is on Metacritic right now?
- [43:18]
B
I mean, it's definitely in the 50s.
- [43:20]
A
55.
- [43:20]
B
Yeah.
- [43:22]
A
Okay. Well, I wanted to mention the reimagining thing because I think it's really interesting and I appreciate the framework and the context around the feminist retellings of classic literature because I think it's important to a lot of these stories. You know, it's easy to point to something like clueless or 10 things I hate about yout. I think of those more as remakes.
- [43:37]
B
Those are remakes or Up. Yeah, they're remakes. They're modern remakes. Yes.
- [43:42]
A
There's something different that happens. And I think maybe the most famous version of this is Hook.
- [43:48]
B
Yeah.
- [43:50]
A
Which is Steven Spielberg's dramatic kind of fast forward in the story of Peter Pan, where a grown up Peter Pan goes back to Never Neverland to confront Captain Hook and the Lost Boys and rediscover his inner childhood. A movie that I was obsessed with as a kid, revisited in my 20s and disliked. And I probably need to look at it again. Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. I do remember that very notable Tinker Hell. Tinker Hell.
- [44:19]
B
That was mean.
- [44:20]
A
Was that the headline?
- [44:21]
B
It was definitely the blurb in Entertainment Weekly.
- [44:24]
A
Yeah, exactly. But this happens over and over again, and I think this stuff is kind of fascinating. Like Cronenberg's the Fly is a really good version of a reimagining. It's sort of a similar story to the original movie, but in the 1980s in particular, there were a lot of horror stories like this. Like John Carpenter's the Thing is a riff on the thing from another planet or the thing from another world, but it's not the same. Specifically. Weird Science is basically the bride of Frankenstein that's brought to life by two horny boys. The Wiz. A reinvention, a reimagining of the wizard of Oz, your beloved, you've Got Mail, which I did not realize is based on a story and is not just the Shop around the Corner. Did you know that the.
- [45:11]
B
No.
- [45:12]
A
So it. I'm gonna look this up right now, please. Vamp. While I do.
- [45:16]
B
So, I mean, I would say that it is. It's as much a Shop around the Corner update as it is like, what are they. What are they switching around to, like, tell the story in a new way?
- [45:31]
A
Maybe not from the movie, but I think from Parfumery, which is the. That is the. I want to say it's a. It's not German. I don't know which parfumer would be French. I don't think it's a French novel. It's Miklos Laszlo is the author. He's Austrian.
- [45:48]
B
Okay.
- [45:50]
A
And it's an Austrian story that I think Lubitsch was basing his story on. And so I think just even the Sort of like conventions of what's happening in youn've Got Mail, the use of technology.
- [46:02]
B
Sure.
- [46:02]
A
But the fact that something can be based on something and then based on something else, and you put it in a blender and it becomes something else.
- [46:07]
B
Totally. Yeah.
- [46:08]
A
And it's not a spoof. Like, it's not a Mel Brooks movie. It's actually based on the material, but is changing things in the material is an interesting example of that. I'm trying to think of some. What are some more audacious ones, like Cruella is a little bit of what you're talking about with the feminist literature, right?
- [46:26]
B
Well, there is a whole fairy tale thing where. And it does have to do with, like, feminist retellings, but they are more often focused on the villain.
- [46:38]
A
And Maleficent is this as well.
- [46:40]
B
Sure. And what's up happening in Snow White and the Huntsman?
- [46:47]
A
I think it's focused more on the Huntsman character in the Disney film is sent to kill Snow White.
- [46:53]
B
Right.
- [46:54]
A
But then that character is made more heroic in that story.
- [46:56]
B
And it's kind of a very point because that's like a. That's a not all men retelling.
- [47:01]
A
Could be. Okay. Could be.
- [47:02]
B
That's really says so much. But yeah, the fairy tales are doing the villain. So that to me seems more examining. I mean, definitely, like social. Social norms. And there's a feminist element to it also. But some of it is that you get away from some of the princessy stuff, which is how we've tried to free ourselves from the, you know, the fairy tale trap over time is interesting and kind of sad. And then also it's a little bit like a storytelling reimagining, like story conventions. And like, let's think about, like, the bad person. And what is the bad person doing?
- [47:41]
A
There's a really clever and wildly unsuccessful version of this called Dracula Untold. Are you familiar with this movie?
- [47:47]
B
No.
- [47:48]
A
2014 movie starring Luke Evans. He plays Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula. But he is forced to transform into the evil monster Dracula because his family and his nation is under the threat of the Ottoman Sultan. And so he needs to build up all of his powers and his army so that he may battle the Sultan.
- [48:10]
B
Okay, how's it work out?
- [48:11]
A
He wins, and then he lives forever as Dracula.
- [48:14]
B
Oh, good. Is he unhappy about that?
- [48:17]
A
Well, all Draculas are kind of sad.
- [48:19]
B
Yeah.
- [48:19]
A
You know, they have. They have an internal woe.
- [48:22]
B
Okay.
- [48:22]
A
Much like myself.
- [48:24]
B
I mean, Joker's not unlike this. Right.
- [48:27]
A
I think it's very, very much in keeping. Yeah.
- [48:30]
B
Aside from the fact that the same team worked on Joker and the Bride. Yeah, yeah, I think, but that's about like. But what if we tried to understand this. This sad man who's an inside Arthur. Yeah.
- [48:42]
A
You know, he just. He can't strike up a conversation with Zazzie Beets. You know, she won't talk to him. He just wants to find love. You know, he likes to ride the subway.
- [48:51]
B
Right.
- [48:52]
A
Sometimes there's some stockbrokers on the subway. You hate that. Hate to be bullied as a grown man on the subway. There's a lot of other examples. Like another really mean 80s movie is the Blob, which is a remake of the Steve McQueen movie from the 50s, the Blob. I really like the Elizabeth Moss starring the Invisible Man, Leigh Whannels.
- [49:09]
B
Yeah.
- [49:10]
A
Which is a real. I think a real clever reimagining that also has a lot of social importance. It does, but it makes it strong enough that the thriller aspects are what is at the front of it. You know what I mean? It's not like this movie exists because it's. This is. We're putting it this. Using this milieu and this time in history where, you know, ideas about sexual assault and gender control and all these things that are kind of in the culture are sort of like the background, like the set piece for a scary movie about an invisible guy.
- [49:41]
B
Right. It's not, it's. It's implied or like a possible interpretation of the text as opposed to like written in the text. It is also. There aren't also 45 other things going on in the movie.
- [49:54]
A
It's very kind of restrained, like down the middle. Right. This is a 90 minute thriller. Invasion of the Body Snatchers keeps doing this. There have been four versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original from the 50s, then the Philip Kaufman film in the 70s, which is really more about the paranoia of that era of history. And then Abel Ferrar's Body snatchers in the 90s. And then the kind of bungled Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman movie, the invasion from the 2000s. And I think just that inherent feeling of being replaced lives on forever. And you can reimagine it in a lot of different ways. Ponyo. Did you know Ponyo is a reimagining?
- [50:31]
B
Of what?
- [50:32]
A
Of the Little Mermaid?
- [50:33]
B
I didn't.
- [50:34]
A
Yeah.
- [50:34]
B
Oh, well, see, again, we're trying to fix the fairy tales.
- [50:37]
A
Yeah. There's a Ponyo exhibit at the Academy Museum right now. Absolutely delightful. Would highly recommend all parents take their kids to see it and Honestly, if you don't have kids, you also would probably love it if you like Miyazaki, Big Lebowski, kind of like Dashiell Hammett novels. The Long Goodbye, Bogart, all those things. But then set amidst the low level angst of the Gulf War. I don't know.
- [51:02]
B
I mean, the Long Goodbye, for that matter, but yeah, totally.
- [51:04]
A
Totally. Mirror, Mirror.
- [51:07]
B
Well, yeah. So what happens in that one? So is that the Julia Roberts one?
- [51:10]
A
Yes. Okay, so Julia Roberts and Lily Collins.
- [51:14]
B
Okay.
- [51:14]
A
And Julia Roberts. Not Lily James.
- [51:17]
B
Lily James is in the other one. The other Cinderella.
- [51:19]
A
Lily James is in the other Cinderella. Yes.
- [51:22]
B
Because they came out around the same time.
- [51:24]
A
Yes. I think Mirror Mirror came first. Directed by Tarsem Singe, director of the Fall and the Cell, two of the most beautiful movies of the last 25 years.
- [51:33]
B
Okay.
- [51:34]
A
And I believe it is really more focused on the queen played by Julia Roberts. The Evil Queen.
- [51:39]
B
Yes.
- [51:39]
A
And it is that shift in perspective that's the other version of it is not just, what about this woman who is sidelined in the story? But it's like, you know, I guess it is similar to Cruella in that way, that villain retelling. I seem to recall that movie being quite poor.
- [51:55]
B
Mirror, Mirror.
- [51:56]
A
Yeah, I didn't revisit it for our conversation.
- [51:57]
B
I was just happy that Julia Roberts was back.
- [51:59]
A
Okay, that's great.
- [52:00]
B
And now the fall is always in her letterbox four. So that's nice that that happen.
- [52:05]
A
Is that true?
- [52:05]
B
Yeah.
- [52:05]
A
Did she say that?
- [52:06]
B
Yeah, that's why. Yeah, it's great.
- [52:08]
A
So listen, well, the fall is great.
- [52:10]
B
Yeah.
- [52:11]
A
You know who the biggest fall fan I know is? Joanna Robinson. Yeah, checks out Last Man Standing. Probably haven't seen this one. Bruce Willis, late 90s, 19th century Western gangster movie that is a remake of Yojimbo.
- [52:29]
B
Okay, so not the Tim Allen sitcom.
- [52:31]
A
Nope.
- [52:31]
B
Okay.
- [52:32]
A
Never seen that.
- [52:32]
B
Me either.
- [52:34]
A
Rob Zombie did this with Halloween. First Halloween bad. Second Halloween good. That's my take. Don't me, I don't know what else. What's the best version of this? What's the absolute most clever, insightful, essential reimagining we've ever gotten?
- [52:56]
B
The Da Vinci Code.
- [52:57]
A
Okay. Thank you for taking this so seriously.
- [53:00]
B
It's in the Louvre.
- [53:01]
A
I appreciate it.
- [53:02]
B
You know what I mean?
- [53:02]
A
Thank you.
- [53:03]
B
You think it's still there or do you think it was heisted too? Did anyone check?
- [53:06]
A
Yeah, I've only seen the movie once. Don't really know what you're talking about.
- [53:10]
B
It's the Holy Grail, which is actually a chalice that I think Christ drank from, but may maybe. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's what the. That's what the original is. And then in Da Vinci Code, the chalice is actually the womb. That's what it is because. Yeah, it's the feminine sacred.
- [53:33]
A
That's.
- [53:34]
B
Yeah, it's women. That's why it's reimagining. We did it. We fixed Christianity.
- [53:39]
A
You may recall there was a years long running bit on this show about the Holy Grail.
- [53:45]
B
I was going to ask if you were going to bring that to Steven
- [53:47]
A
Spielberg, some questions about the Last Crusade.
- [53:50]
B
No, I was just. No, if you were just going to start with I don't believe in the Grail. You don't care about it.
- [53:53]
A
You think I should only make statements to him and not just you care about it.
- [53:56]
B
Now that I've told you that in the Da Vinci Code it's about the womb and women's power.
- [54:01]
A
Do I care about it? Yeah.
- [54:02]
B
Does it now? Are you like. Sure. The Holy Grail. I'm into it.
- [54:05]
A
I mean, it's not real. So I don't know what you're asking me. You don't know.
- [54:08]
B
But. So then the implication of that in the Da Vinci Code is that there is like a line of descendants of Christ and Mary Magdalene and like the Holy Grail is like all among us. Maybe the Holy Grail is in you.
- [54:19]
A
So you. When you go to the bookstore and you look for the book, the Da Vinci Code, that book can be found in the fiction section, which is means it's not real. Some guy made it up. His name is Dan Brown.
- [54:31]
B
Reimagining.
- [54:32]
A
See, yes, it was some. There was somebody had an imagination in the 15th century. They came up with the Holy Grail. That's not something that happened during Christ's time on earth.
- [54:40]
B
Don't you think it's earlier than that?
- [54:42]
A
I thought it was roughly around that time.
- [54:43]
B
Holy Grail. Let's just Wikipedia this real fast. Okay. 1190.
- [54:49]
A
Wow. Okay, there we go. 12th century. Pretty good.
- [54:52]
B
A mysterious grail appears in the story of the Grail.
- [54:57]
A
Intriguing. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day to day. But our favorite films with stories that make us change the way we think, they weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the world pass by. This is your sign that you shouldn't either. From us, from VW and the other drivers out there. Grab the wheel, do what you love. Even if it means taking the road less Traveled. Learn more@vw.com let's go to the Secret Agent. Okay. We've done Yeoman's work so far.
- [55:28]
B
I thought that was productive.
- [55:29]
A
Yes. Well, the Secret Agent is a movie that we did talk about very briefly back in November when Claybourne Mendoza Filho was on the show. And that was a wonderful conversation, and I would encourage people to go back and listen to that after listening to this conversation that we're gonna have, in part because the movie is now available on Hulu. It only opened in a very select few theaters in the fall. It was hard to see. We waited a long time to get through it on the show in any depth. I'm excited to just do so with you now. I've now seen the movie three times. This film stars Wagner Mora, Carlos Francisco, Tania Maria Ribario Diones. It is essentially, though I don't think we can contain its multitudes in this very brief summary. In 1977, Marcelo, a technology teacher, moves from Sao Paulo to Recife during Carnival to escape his violent past and start over. He finds the city full of chaos and his neighbors begin to spy on him. You rewatched it?
- [56:25]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [56:27]
A
What was your takeaway on the second watch?
- [56:30]
B
I think the first time that you watch it, you are trying to figure out what is happening. And not in the bride incoherent sort of way, but just in a. This is a film that is structured untraditionally and doesn't have a lot of, like, capital E exposition. You know, it's not saying to you, so we are here in 1970 something Brazil, and here's the political structure in Brazil, or lack thereof, and here is where these people are, and here's what they do for a living and where they're going. You are thrust into this world. And to me, what is most memorable and exciting about this movie is how vividly it creates that world and how the exposition it gives you is about, like, a place and time and people. And so you don't. You can infer what you need to know about a military dictatorship or even, like, what the character's job is or what the character's name is. You know, the actual facts and characters and plot, as you mentioned, are not, you know, immediately obvious, but also beside the point. And so once I understood the arc of the story and kind of understood where everything was going for my first watch, the second watch, I could just really revel in, like, these amazing set pieces and this creation of a world that I know very little about, but really feel completely immersed in and so, obviously, the opening sequence at the gas station is, you know, a short film all its own and, like, chilling and memorable and its own form of exposition in some ways, like, you know, everything that you need to know in those first 15 minutes.
- [58:18]
A
This is the way this world works. Yes. Yeah.
- [58:21]
B
But, you know, like, the. The carnival scene and all the scenes at the movie theater and this recreation of life and thus these, like, very fully realized, wonderful people. Like, there's a reason that we gave Tania Maria, who plays Dona Sebastiana, the big pick, the alternative Oscar, and that she has just, you know, been such a reference point, because it is a. It's a small performance that is instantly someone you not only remember, but want to spend time with and, like. So I don't know that much about these people at the end of it, but I feel like I really understand everything that is created. So it. It's a magical movie.
- [59:05]
A
It is really magical. It's very complex because it is a lot of different kinds of movies happening all at the same time. And I compared it to the Bride because I do think that film student brains, and I think both Maggie Gyllenhaal and Mendoza have film student brains, tend to do that recombinant thing where they're kind of pulling a lot of influences very much, sometimes on the surface, sometimes more deeply ingrained in the stories that they're telling. This is a very deeply ingrained version of that, where that opening sequence that you talked about set at the gas station is like pure Alan Pakula. Like, it is a 70s conspiracy thriller where you're like, it's very tense. No one is explaining what is going on. There's a dead body in sight, and we're worried for our character. We're like, this is. He has to. It is Warren Beatty in the Parallax view. Something is not right here, and he has to get free. And that's an incredible sense of mood and atmosphere that he shows you right off the bat in the movie. But then as the movie begins to unfold and we start to learn a little bit more about Marcello, it becomes very clear that it's a movie about a man trying to get back to his son, which is a different kind of dramatic story. And then it's also a movie about this kind of found family of dissidents and exiles who have found themselves in Recife in Dona Sebastiana's home. And they're in safe harbor, and they're trying to figure out how they can stay free and stay safe for the rest of their Lives. And then it becomes a different kind of political thriller, almost like a gangster movie with the hitmen and this ornate plot around trying to capture a man. And we don't really know why they want to capture him until very far into the film. I mean, almost 2 hours and 10 minutes. When we start to learn really who Marcelo actually is and how he became ensnared in this. In this plot. So the movie is extraordinarily complex, but it's not a breakneck thriller. It's a very languid. Languid, yes. Slow paced. And it really. It's not just that it doesn't reveal anything to you. It like really lets you sit in the world. Now, sometimes that doesn't work for me in films. And this is the rare case because I think what you're describing, which is the idea of holding back on information, it kind of gets you leaning forward and forward and forward. And I think it's a pretty magical act of synthesis.
- [61:23]
B
I think also just the way it communicates, the way it embraces that pace and it uses that time and the downtime really well. I had forgotten that right after the gas station, the Marcelo character is just driving to Chicago, Baby, please don't go. And you're just. And you kind of get some. You get some carnival scenes, you get some like some hallucinations like along the road or are they. And you don't totally know what you're seeing. And it is moving slowly, like he's just driving. And I think they're showing some of the credits, but you're also completely wrapped. And it's not telling you what is happening, but it is telling you a lot about the world that you're in. So I don't know. I think there is something about. It knows exactly what it wants to create and how you want to feel, how it wants you to feel in a way that I like, caught instantly, even though I honestly couldn't tell. You still like Marcelo or Armando's like, total political history and employment history. I have most of it, I think, but I couldn't diagram it for you. I don't think it matters.
- [62:36]
A
We can talk through some of it and kind of what they reveal to us and what we think he is, why he is in. He's being pursued. But I agree with what you just said about hearing that Chicago song. And then honestly, there's such interesting choices of Brazilian music throughout the film. This kind of Brazilian pop, Brazilian folk throughout the. That does the same thing in the movie. I think that the use of Hollywood movies does for the movie, which is that it shows you the ways in which popular culture and popular art can suffuse people's lives, can change their feelings about things, can create a sense of dread. This idea of Jaws and to a lesser extent, the Omen, as these hovering gods over the movie and this idea of you're being pursued by something that is bigger and more dangerous than you is just such a sexy film essay idea that Mendoza has put his arms around. And the Chicago song is sort of the opposite. Right. Which is like, in that time in popular music, you could seek escape with a pop song like that. But there is something kind of lurking around the corner beyond that escape that is really interesting when that sort of masked face comes up when he's driving early on and you're like, oh, my gosh, what is gonna happen to this man? So I found that part of it really fascinating. It's also like all of Mendoza's movies, or at least all of his scripted films, it's got this phantasmagoric genre thing going on that is way outside of the real world construct of the rest of the movie. In this case, it's this leg. There's a leg that has been discovered in the body of a shark at the beginning of the film. And that leg kind of takes on a life of its own, and it goes on kind of a spree at a certain point in the movie. And it takes us into these. It's one of a series of side quests that the movie goes on, too, which is one of the reasons why it's so long and languid, where we're just like, okay, so we're just following a leg in this park, which is sort of like a gay cruising meetup space, and kind of like a space for. Where people can really live and be themselves while living under the fascist thumb of this regime that is happening in Brazil in 1977. That is just another thing where no other director is doing this. This is singular. There's nothing. And when we talked About Baccarau in 2020, it was the same thing. There are aspects of that movie that feel like it just turns into a horror movie for 10 minutes and then stops being a horror movie for a while. That is a really bold stroke that I really like.
- [64:55]
B
Yeah. But it's also. It's still grounded, and it's still like. It's a very realistic leg. And even the way it's filmed, you know, it's like hopping around like a leg would, and you see all of the wounds or that you like, you get it like an over the head shot of. It's of how the muscles are moving and it's like very gross and a little funny still and just like moving as if that is really happening. And then it's reported in the papers and then the. So the other characters, the dissidents in a like very lovely emotional scene. The scene starts off with them reading it as it's. It's not like fantastical in the world of the story or it's no more fantastical than anything else that is going on in this time of mischief as the film introduces it. And also, I hadn't realized, as Jonia Sebastiana says, she gives a toast and she says, and may this child grow up in a Brazil with less mischief.
- [65:57]
A
Right. It's a really interesting choice too because it's based on a true thing that happened in the 1970s in Recife. The Pernambuco daily was writing about this leg as a way to kind of like disguise censored news about police violence, corruption, homophobia, that they would use these, like an active metaphor to communicate to the reading public, like, here's what's really going on in your city right now and here are the ways in which you're being controlled by the nation state, which is so interesting to literalize that. You know what I mean? The movie making that to manifesting that idea that is only meant to be read, you know.
- [66:37]
B
Yes. But it is also. It is then also literalizing like that violence, but not actually showing the actual. It would be a very different movie if you saw in that cruising park people being arrested or people being beaten or like the state actually, you know, coming through, they said they're just kind
- [66:55]
A
of getting kicked by a straight leg.
- [66:58]
B
Yeah. And when they discuss it later, it's communicated that we all know what it means and we all understand what it's meant to represent. But the film really does recreate these great terrors and violence and people being kidnapped and murdered in a not mythical, but a mythical sort of way.
- [67:21]
A
I think so. Yeah, I think so. You know, I feel like we've compared every single movie this season to one battle after another. But this is a very similar movie to one battle after another. Right. It's about kind of like two secret societies, one operating in pursuit of revolution, one operating in pursuit of like taking control over the people and the lengths that one will go to and the lengths that the other will go to, and then the long term ramifications of that kind of internescent battle in a community. And it's really fascinating. Mendoza's previous film is called Pictures of Ghosts. It's a documentary that is sort of like a memory doc about him thinking about Recife and being in recife in the 70s. And it's a really interesting kind of like, I think it's probably better seen after seeing the Secret Agent, actually. But the fact that so much of this is just true and also comes one year after I'm Still Here, which is also exploring a similar time, you know, the same time in Brazilian history. And that movie had a very, very ground level impact on a single family and a single woman. And this movie is very much about the person who we're going to talk about momentarily and his character. But it also is about this wide community and the people in Dona Sebastiana's home and the people who work where Marcello goes to work and the ways in which they live with the police force and the community that is affected by these crimes that start happening around his existence in the city. It's just a very. It's very big. Yeah. It's unusual for a movie to be able to contain this many ideas and things and strands and kind of make them feel coherent. And I think the number one reason why they feel so coherent is because Wagner Mora, the whole movie's on his shoulders and he's not in every scene. But if you don't have him, you can't flow through all this other stuff.
- [69:09]
B
And he is carrying it and carrying so much of the emotion and fear and narrative thrust, while also gliding and observing and appreciating everyone else that he sees. And he is really the audience's vehicle and entrance into everything else that we learn. But I was really struck by the Carnaval scene on Rewatch and Wagner Mora enters in and it's just like a recreation of a street and a joyful parade moment and, you know, and UTO Kir, the late Uto Kir is kind of in the, in the background dancing as well. It's a real slice of life. And you watch Wagner Mora, like behold it and appreciate it. And then he gets in the mix and he starts dancing too. And you know, and it's. And it's an appreciation and an involvement that like comes from experience. It's lovely. So, but he definitely, his character threads everything together and the, the, the appreciation for everything around him that the. He gives the character, like, I think extends to the audience.
- [70:25]
A
I think so too. He's a very warm actor. He's very easy to connect to. He's giving a handful of different kinds of performances in the movie, though, because there are plenty of times I feel similarly about his kind of introduction to Dona Sebastiana's world, where he feels very warm and he's kind of, like, excited to be welcomed into a space and to meet all these new people. He finds a girl that he's interested in. You know, he makes friends very quickly. He gets kind of acclimated to this little mini utopia that she has going on. But then for a lot, long stretches of the movie, he's anxious, he's nervous, he feels under threat. He is giving, like, a parallax view or clute kind of performance where he has to be very watchful, very quiet, be very careful not to make a mistake so that he can survive in these circumstances. And then also, he's carrying with him this burden of just not being able to be with his son. And he sneaks off early in the film to go have a moment with him. And then the movie eventually brings that thread back around in, I think, a very beautiful way. And so what it ultimately leads to is an actor. We've been talking about Michael B. Jordan playing two roles. He plays Smoke and Stack in Sinners. This is kind of three roles. It's two men, but two iterations of Armando, who is the original version of Marcello before he has to change his identity. And then later, Fernando, his son at the end of the film. And he looks different in all three. He's got a different haircut. Even his complexion looks different. He feels like a different person. And the same way that when we were talking with Wesley about what MBJ does to kind of shift intonation and posture and communicate that these are two men. Maura does the same thing here in a really, really impressive way. And that's part of why four months ago, we were like, this is one of the best, best actor races of all time, because you got multiple examples of this throughout this race. But, you know, I've always liked him as an actor. I interviewed him at Sundance in, like, 20. When did we go? 20. 20?
- [72:21]
B
Yes. Right before the pandemic.
- [72:23]
A
Yes. And I forget what movie it was that he was in that I spoke to him for, but you can see why he's so well liked and why there is still a contingent of people who think he's gonna win the Oscar because he's just a very magnetic person, and he seems very decent. Absolutely. You know, a lot of famous people can't tell. They're not so nice.
- [72:45]
B
There was a story at one of the Oscar events where he Went up to my former colleague JD Wan, who was recently laid off at the Washington Post. And he, like, it was a day later and he knew about this and was like, he can afford, you know, Bezos can afford this and not that. Like, very engaged with, like, the world around him.
- [73:04]
A
Yeah.
- [73:04]
B
And remembering that of her so.
- [73:06]
A
Well, the story even of him and Mendoza getting together is so cool because, you know, Mendoza was a film critic for years. He talked about it when he was on the pod and he met Maura as a critic and they kind of just clicked. They struck up a friendship. Not when he was an exciting Brazilian filmmaker, but just a guy who was kind of covering festivals where they interacted with each other and they kept up a relative correspondence. And I think it was Mora who was like, I'm ready for us to do something together. And so the film is clearly written with him in mind. And he's just absolutely phenomenal in this movie. I do think this is one of the craziest best picture nominees of all time.
- [73:46]
B
The sense that there's just a lot
- [73:47]
A
of going on and it's international feature, not from Europe. All kinds of different genre styles. A movie that I wouldn't say has a satisfying feel good aspect to it. It is a historical drama in a way. But to your point, it doesn't. It never really situates us comfortably.
- [74:08]
B
Yeah. Though I feel that I know a lot more about this time period from this film than I did from I'm Still Here.
- [74:16]
A
I totally agree. And one of the, you know, I was a little more resistant to I'm Still Here because I felt like it was a little bit more traditional.
- [74:23]
B
Yes.
- [74:24]
A
And tightly focused in a way that I found more similar to more Oscar movies in the past. And this movie having all of these tributaries of story and ideas and kind of manifestation of metaphorical ideas inside of the movie makes it a very odd product. And, you know, I think it's also a movie that definitely plays better on a big screen.
- [74:46]
B
I'm sure that's true, though. I have watched it at home.
- [74:49]
A
You have?
- [74:49]
B
You know, and was wrapped.
- [74:51]
A
I really, really, really liked it on the big screen. And I think it's that language pace is a little more challenging.
- [74:56]
B
There is a projectionist who is a major character. Many important scenes happen at the local movie theater.
- [75:02]
A
That's right.
- [75:03]
B
So a movie theater is a part of the last scene of the movie in its way. So I get is a movie nerd movie. And I do think we have an increasing number of movie nerds voting for Oscars.
- [75:17]
A
It's a very good point. Just in the run up to the movie, Mendoza cited Robert Altman, Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah, Scorsese and Spielberg as big influences.
- [75:28]
B
Sure, it's nice for me, same.
- [75:29]
A
Yeah, it's very wonderful to hear. But he also. He's been programming some films related to it, including John Boorman's Point Blank, which a similarly kind of fractured editing style and is also a memory movie. So I think that's a really cool one. Iliopetri's investigation of a citizen Above Suspicion, which tonally, the kind of like pursuit, the sense of mystery and paranoia you can feel. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I've never seen Hector Babenko's Lucio Flavio, but this makes me want to go see a movie like that. So that's very cool. Stylistically, it's actually not as complex as I thought it was going to be when I rewatched it. It's a lot of singles, a lot of close ups, a lot of 2sh. There's some slick camera movement with some of the action sequences, especially like the big pursuit and shootout near the end of the film. But it's not athletic as you used to describe it. Even though it has these flights of fancy structurally, I didn't find it to be kind of zany in terms of its craft.
- [76:26]
B
Well, no, no, no, no. It is recognizable and its production design and costume design are excellent and. But still like very realistic. You know, they are trying to recreate this area of this time and place in Brazil and like teach us about it. The costumes are unbelievable.
- [76:48]
A
Yeah.
- [76:49]
B
And I think, you know, they are based on real pieces of clothing. But I was like, I clocking like random shirts in one of the like at the ID office scenes and being like, I wonder how I would find something like that. And what am I gonna Google? There is. But you can, you know, see the textures. You can see all of the places, the office, the apartments, the. Just the. It feels very, very lived in. And again, like not fantastical.
- [77:15]
A
Yeah. I think the movie also does a nice job of not over explaining, but showing us the kind of class and regional differentiations in that country at that time in history, which I think still persists to this day, which is sort of like the north versus the South. The idea of communist influence versus capitalist influence and how those two things are colliding. And then let's use that to talk a little bit about maybe actually what's going on with Marcelo, AKA Armando, and then getting us to the end of the movie. So it's revealed late in the film that the man who has hired the hitmen to go after Marcelo is in fact an industrialist, a business owner in Brazil who, as he describes, has Italian origins, but wants to control the ways and means of making transportation effectively. He's trying to control technology that would then influence their ability to build cars in a certain way and build other machines in a certain way. And that Marcelo, AKA Armando plays, is a professor, as an intellectual, he's a scientist, he's a person who develops things. He's developed a patent that could be very, very powerful for this man to get control of. This man visits the university, which is a public university, and comes in and kind of bullies his way into a form of control. And he's trying to eliminate people who will be standing in his company's way and their ability to make profit off of the work that's being done at this publicly funded university. So it's this real head on collision of social, civic service versus capitalism. And that sends eventually Marcelo into exile, where he becomes a Marcello. And the movie makes a really interesting choice, which is that he's pursued, and we see him be pursued by this hitman who's terrifying in the movie, who's sort of hired by the hitman. But Marcello doesn't die in the face of that. He dies later.
- [79:10]
B
Right.
- [79:10]
A
And we don't see him die.
- [79:12]
B
And we do we know if it's days or weeks or months later.
- [79:15]
A
It's unclear.
- [79:16]
B
Yeah. We don't really know what happens with his son. We don't know. Do we know where he's killed?
- [79:24]
A
I don't think so.
- [79:25]
B
Yeah.
- [79:25]
A
All we really know is that the movie has a framing device not unlike Mary Shelley and the Bride, where two young women working at a university are reviewing historical information about Brazil at that time. And they come upon the story of Armando and a lot of the materials, the recordings that he made while working with agencies in an attempt to basically be in witness protection. And they review all that material and that allows them to learn more about him and to learn more about his family. And eventually one of the women who takes a real interest in this case takes what she's discovered to a blood transfusion center and she has blood taken and arranges a meeting with Armando's son, also played by Wagner Mora. And they have a conversation and she just said, here's what I found, take it or leave it. And in the course of that conversation, they talk about his family history and how he sees and understands his family
- [80:21]
B
and his parents and memory
- [80:25]
A
and we learn that he died, his father, But I don't think any specifics. Right.
- [80:32]
B
No. We see a newspaper clipping. That's how we learn. And we do see in a marked difference to most of the other dead bodies that we see. I guess we do see some, like, very grotesque shootout and flesh melting off. But, you know, I'm thinking about the recurring image of a body lying somewhere with a piece of cardboard or a piece of newspaper over it. And in this one, you see Armando and, like, you see his face and you see him. But is it a newspaper photograph? And I think there's a caption that's like. It's believed to be some sort of hit job.
- [81:06]
A
Right. Which is. That's a really good point about the cardboard in the newspaper and the idea of this kind of collision of that purpose, especially that moment where the younger hitman is murdered by the other hitman late in the film in the barbershop. And then the barbershop owner comes in and puts a newspaper over his face in a kind of, like, spiritual act of, like, kind of covering him and protecting him in the aftermath of his death. And that collision of, like, faith, Christianity inside of a country that is maybe leveraging some of that faith against the people.
- [81:36]
B
Well, and also the headline that is on that newspaper is like, the carnival Death toll is 92 and rising or whatever. So all of this is happening of the backdrop of many other deaths and many other. Much other corruption and many other people having problems. There's a. There's a whole sub plot that I found, like, very moving and very upsetting that happens at the ID office when there's a deposition that's scheduled for very early in the morning so that the. The rich woman giving the deposition about the death of the daughter of someone who worked for her so that she doesn't have to deal with press and she doesn't have to deal. She's getting special treatment. Yep. And you see her and you see all the other people at the ID office responding to this in their own way. And it says everything about how this country is being run. And also, like all of the other tragedies that are happening just off screen, run of the mill, every single day.
- [82:42]
A
Yeah. And it does feel like it is a daily series of tragedies at this time in history. And then at the very end, in that moment with his son Fernando, as he's escorting this woman out, he tells her, as you mentioned, that this blood center where he works as a doctor is where the movie theater is, where he got to see Jaws. And we learned earlier in the movie that he has been obsessed with trying to see the movie Jaws.
- [83:05]
B
Right.
- [83:06]
A
That Jaws, I think to this day is the ultimate test of when is your child ready to see a certain kind of movie. It is the movie that young kids say, I want to see this and I want to see this, even though they know they're going to be terrified. And no doubt was the case for Mendoza. And he's kind of filtering that idea and being able to see that movie. And in the movie. Fernando says, I'd been scared of this movie all the way up until the moment that I saw it. And then after I saw it, all the fear went away. And first of all, who can relate more just. Absolutely. He must be a great moviegoer, but just a really deeply felt and considerate and emotional and complex series of emotions about the way that we reckon with terrible things that have happened in our lives. And for somebody like me, the way that they're often interwoven with my consumption of art and how much I think about it.
- [83:58]
B
Yeah. And what you remember and how you remember and what stays as the construct of your actual life. And it's also introduced in this idea of coincidence because the woman who goes to visit him has family there, and that's part of the reason she's wanted to come. And he says, here's the real coincidence where I saw that movie theater where the fear ended is this place where he's working now. And he says that he didn't really wanna speak with her. And he says, really? I think of my grandfather as my actual father, which is sad and heartbreaking. And so it's beautiful. And nothing is handed to you on platter. Right. Even that. He says the thing about the movie theater and that just holds on the blood bank for a while. And the last. You just watch him walk back through the fluorescent lighting and you're just sitting there thinking about what's there and what's not there.
- [85:03]
A
His performance when he's talking to her is so interesting because it's restrained but shattered at the same time. Like, you can tell he's really trying to hold back from losing it because he has been able to kind of put this away. Like this story, this aspect of his life is something that he doesn't want to deal with because it's so painful to him. And he has made peace with the fact that is it Alexander is his real father and that that's how he just sees his life. But that she has dredged something up that is very painful. But she's also done this extraordinary thing for him at the same time, which is she's given him access to his father's voice and his story and how he felt and why some of these things happened in the way that they did in a way he could never understand before. And the movie is very, very similar almost in direct connection to I'm Still Here in that way where the ending of I'm Still Here with the flash forward and the older woman thinking back on her experiences and then her family being gathered in this. You know, we can be flip about generational trauma, but this is actually when it's okay to use that, where it's like it's real world circumstances, but creating like an imagined story and using those real world circumstances to kind of infuse a story with more weight, with more heft, you know, some kind of movie that talking about it just makes you admire it more. I think it's a real achievement. I really look forward to seeing what Mendoza does. He's a really interesting movie thinker.
- [86:27]
B
I hope more people will actually. It still does feel like it's the least seen of the best picture documentaries, which is just a matter of logistics.
- [86:35]
A
Yeah, I'm hopeful. I think both it and did Sentimental Value also go live at the same time on Hulu? I feel like they both went up around the same time. And so, you know, that's kind of the consequence of the Cannes conversation that we had where Neon scooped up these four movies or five movies, and there was only so much that they could do to get attention around them. Do you think that the Secret Agent is. I guess we don't want to spoil our Oscar picks. I don't really know what to do in international. I think I do. Revisiting the movie. I'm like, this is fucking good.
- [87:10]
B
It's wonderful.
- [87:10]
A
This sentimental valuer. Like, they're so close for me.
- [87:13]
B
I agree. I do think we as an Oscar community have overlooked the fact that Sentimental Value has four acting noms. Screenplay, international director, and best picture casting was. It was not nominated in casting despite having four acting noms. I think.
- [87:35]
A
I don't remember.
- [87:37]
B
And so it's quite strong. And I do think also that in terms of the nominations, the nominating process is that it's a smaller body of voters.
- [87:49]
A
The Secret Agent is nominating casting?
- [87:51]
B
Well, yeah. As it should be.
- [87:52]
A
Yeah.
- [87:54]
B
But it's a smaller group of voters who are doing the nominating just because of who signs up and who agrees to watch all the international features. So you do Wonder if it goes wide to the. To the entire voting body, whether more people will. Whether sentimental value, though apparently it's still renting. It's not on Hulu until March 23, according to the Google that I just did.
- [88:17]
A
Oh, interesting. Okay, that's notable.
- [88:19]
B
But that doesn't. I mean, that doesn't matter for the.
- [88:21]
A
No, for the Academy. We didn't even mention the whole, you know, the update about how you. You do have to watch the films
- [88:26]
B
to vote, or you would at least have to click that. You have. But you have to click through each one. So there's like a added steps element.
- [88:34]
A
Physical steps. Yes, yes. You think that's gonna work?
- [88:37]
B
No.
- [88:38]
A
You think people will just vote?
- [88:40]
B
Yeah, I think so. I think they'll probably vote later. So that's kind of interesting. Like, maybe the cat story really will affect Jesse Buckley because it came out later in the window, but perhaps it's funny.
- [88:52]
A
I've got one more movie to watch that is Oscar nominated that I have not seen. I've seen all the shorts, I've seen all the animated features. I've seen, as we mentioned, all the documentaries. We'll get right into momentarily. And I haven't seen Kokuho, which is nominated for best makeup and hairstyling, but
- [89:13]
B
you have seen the Matthew McConaughey fire movie.
- [89:15]
A
I have the Lost Bus.
- [89:17]
B
Yeah, that's on my list.
- [89:19]
A
You're really getting into the makeup, though, the effects category.
- [89:22]
B
Well, listen, I'm trying to do it all as well. I have four documentary shorts left. I have two animated features because I forgot that I hadn't seen all of those because I thought I was so ahead by having seen three of them before, you know, a nomination.
- [89:36]
A
Little Amelie and Arco.
- [89:37]
B
It's fine.
- [89:38]
A
That's like three hours of movie. It's okay.
- [89:41]
B
I'll just turn them on with my children. You know, we'll consume them together. And then Knox might like Arco. I have. I've seen all the documentaries, seen all the international features, so I have Kokuho and the Lost Bus.
- [89:58]
A
Let's talk about best documentary.
- [89:59]
B
Okay.
- [89:59]
A
Best. We have not covered any of these movies on this show at all, except for a handful of quick mentions in the January 2025 Sundance episode. That's notable because literally all five of these movies premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Yeah. And that's something that's been talked about quite a bit in recent years. That Sundance is the true launchpad. The true power of Sundance in the 2000 and twenties has been as a space for documentary and We've mentioned how Cannes is the new birthplace of big Oscar campaigns and the way that Venice and Berlin and Telluride and all of these other festivals, Toronto, New York, have to respond to that primacy. Sundance has obviously come down in some respects as a launchpad for scripted films and it's not quite the thing that it was in the 90s, but for documentaries, it's still extremely powerful and predictive. I find that interesting when I think about the documentaries I saw this year. I didn't see everything, obviously, because I only watched virtually. So I missed a lot of stuff. I don't know that I see five, but I don't know that I would have predicted these five a few months ago for this category.
- [91:08]
B
I don't think we did when we made predictions.
- [91:11]
A
No, we made two out of five.
- [91:11]
B
Maybe, maybe three. But the third one differed between us.
- [91:17]
A
It's gonna be hard for us to have extended conversations about all five of these movies and I don't think that's what we'll do here. I am kind of curious. When you look at the nominations, I would like to.
- [91:24]
B
I'm ready. I've seen all of. I've got opinions.
- [91:26]
A
I do too. And we can. I just mean like we're not going to have a 40 minute conversation about each movie. Okay. But based on what's nominated here.
- [91:33]
B
Yeah.
- [91:33]
A
How do you feel about the state of the best documentary category in the branch?
- [91:37]
B
Not good. But this is a real. This is a sort of a disaster, I think, and I don't. So the, the five films, as is the documentary brand documentary branches want, are about like very important and deserving topics. And I don't want to diminish the topics themselves. The subjects of the documentaries and. Or the fact that documentaries should be about important things. Like, you know, I like a fun, you know, romp through Martin Scorsese's life as much as the next person. And I thought that was really well made and fascinating. But I. It's not that they're not fun. That's not the problem. It's that I have sort of serious ethical and. Or filmmaking concerns with almost all of them.
- [92:27]
A
Yeah. My concern is more around the idea of the branch only being interested in these kinds of stories that in a way, in an attempt to kind of confirm an identity around what makes for a great documentary. There's no room for anything that has some of that experimentation, a different tonality. Something that I think you're finding more and more in Best Picture, which is just a lot of different kinds of movies getting Nominated for best Picture now and I've really enjoyed that. And I think we've generally just been a little bit higher on what best picture has been in the last three or four years because it seems like there's variation and this feels like the third or fourth year in a row where it's five very serious. I think mostly well made movies about very serious issues in the world. But that there is a kind of drabness and darkness and we are all screwedness to these films and that that kind of communicates to the world at large at this award show that the best you can do in documentary is take the most severe story possible. For example, the awful nature of the prison system in some states and for the most case nationwide and that that is the only kind of thing that merits the highest prize. There was a period of time when this was not true at the Academy Awards. There was a period of time when folks like Morgan Neville were being awarded for their films. 20ft from stardom is a memorable one. Searching for Sugar man is another example of this. Amy is another example of this. That was a wave, that was an era. And then maybe they over indexed that era in the kind of like musical or biopic kind of thing. And then there's been this dramatic overcorrection to that kind of starts with American Factory, which is a terrific movie but amazing. But I think kind of sets the tone. And with the exception of my octopus teacher, most of the movies that win here are movies of great social import. And so I.
- [94:30]
B
You're in trouble with the animals Internet again. I'm so they didn't thank the octopus.
- [94:36]
A
Yeah.
- [94:36]
B
And they, they won the Oscar and they. So I know.
- [94:38]
A
I hear you.
- [94:39]
B
I'm out.
- [94:39]
A
Okay, let me, let me just give the nominees here and then we can.
- [94:42]
B
I would say though about that is that I do find at least. And I wonder if you're the same way you spend more time consuming documentaries
- [94:48]
A
across a lot of documentaries.
- [94:49]
B
A lot of documentaries. But because these are serious subjects and these are things that I take really seriously and that they are important. I do find I, I'm watching them more as journalism than I am as, as film. And I like, I definitely have notes on some of like the filmmaking choices in these but.
- [95:08]
A
Well, four of these five movies effectively are journalism.
- [95:11]
B
Yeah. And I have some issues with their journalistic standards.
- [95:14]
A
Yeah.
- [95:15]
B
So that, that's a, that's a real problem. But I do find that I.
- [95:18]
A
That isn't what doc is. You know, you can't, you can't, you can't I know what you're saying, but you can't conflate the two like it can. They can do acts of journalism in documentary, but that's not ultimately the purpose of documentary.
- [95:27]
B
Yeah, but I sort of like these are so important. Like you can't do accidental journalism, in my opinion.
- [95:32]
A
Like I. I think it's intentional, but that's not the totality of the film experience. And that's what's lacking in the movie.
- [95:39]
B
But I'm holding against them. They're accidental and not exactly rigorous journalism,
- [95:43]
A
as I hear you. I think there are definitely some instances in this slate that where I fully agree with you. So. So let's go through them one by one. The Alabama Solution, which is directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman. Very small side note one, Andrew Jarecki, a very acclaimed documentarian, probably best known for the Jinx, the HBO miniseries, which is at a minimum wildly entertaining and also had real world results.
- [96:09]
B
We'll never forget watching that finale live.
- [96:11]
A
Yeah. Charlotte Kaufman is the daughter of Lloyd Kaufman, the longtime impresario behind Troma Entertainment. A kind of like B movie independent machine that I have admired for many, many years. And it's fascinating that she. This is what she's doing with her career. So the movie is about incarcerated men in Alabama who, you know, by acts of protest, expose the awful conditions within the prison system in the state of Alabama. And it's a six year investigation. It utilizes a lot of footage filmed by the incarcerated individuals. It shows the inhumane conditions. Rat infested cells, no air conditioning, drug use, violent deaths. Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray are the two men who are sort of at the center of the story. There's one significant death that kind of animates this movement and the family members who were affected by that death, kind of pushing for change within the system. The film spends a lot of time speaking to the incarcerated figures, but then also gives you some of the political context of Alabama at that time and the leadership and the reason why things are the way that they are. I will say I think this is a very sturdy classical. Yes, very well intentioned, very well made, unfussy, unflashy. But I would say a little technology forward version of an American documentary. Issues documentary.
- [97:37]
B
Yeah.
- [97:37]
A
Not a bad movie.
- [97:38]
B
No, not at all. And I would say this is. It's an. It's an effective platform. And this, but this is, this is platforming a very worthy issue and the work of a lot of people both inside the system and outside, in order to raise greater awareness of not just Alabama's prison system, but as you said, the United States system in general gives the appropriate Alabama context. But it's, you know, and it does have. I thought the way that they used the mostly FaceTime footage was effective.
- [98:10]
A
I agree.
- [98:11]
B
Added something new to it. But it. Other people are doing the work for this and. And the work has been being done for a while. And so they are just trying to give a voice to it. And I think they give like an effective voice. I agree. It's not the most innovative though. Again, I liked the way that they used the footage and it's very clear. And I didn't have any of the ethical concerns that I had with some other footage because the activists, the incarcerated men who are working on this are like they're leading the project.
- [98:43]
A
Yes.
- [98:44]
B
So, you know, it's really tough to watch. It's horrible. I'm glad that I'm not glad about anything, but I think it's important that I saw it.
- [98:53]
A
I agree. I think it is. It is very standard. Yes.
- [98:58]
B
A thousand percent.
- [98:58]
A
As somebody who has produced documentaries for hbo, there is a certain strand of HBO issues oriented documentary. There's a long history of it. This feels also very much in keeping, I think, with a lot of like Frontline style documentaries that you would find that often find their way into the Academy Awards where not only are its intentions good, but its issue is urgent. And you can feel the humanity of the people that are affected by the story. I don't think it's as kind of like structurally or even intellectually as riveting as I would like for something like this to be. That's really more of just a subjective point of view where a film like this matters. But is this a question of like, what is the purpose of this award? A movie like this raises to me, I found that it had like a lot less deftness relative to something like American Factory. It's kind of operating in the same vein.
- [99:50]
B
It's. It's like an information dump rather than a narrative thrust. And I mean, there is narrative within it because they're telling you what has happened over time. But it is very expository and very much like. And then this and then this. As opposed to you not knowing what's gonna happen.
- [100:08]
A
Yeah, it's a good documentary and is the one that I think makes sense as a nominee. I can't remember if you and I both picked this to be nominated. I think just because I felt like the. On paper of it. I was like, this just makes sense for what they've been going for recently. I'm curious to hear what you think of Come See Me in the Good Light, which is directed by Ryan White. Full disclosure, Filmmaker I've met with many times, somebody I really know personally and like very much. The movie is about two folks trying to contextualize and come to terms with a terminal cancer diagnosis. The Colorado Poet laureate Andrea Gibson and their partner, Megan Fowley. And the way in which they're sort of working through this period in their lives where they're coping with this very, very painful illness. I wasn't crazy about this movie when I saw it at Sundance, and I'm not crazy about it now.
- [100:58]
B
Same. I think some of that is kind of personal preference with how you deal with emotions, relationships, and. And cancer, for sure. I will say I thought I hadn't seen the moment where you're logging onto a medical portal to get your results captured on film in this way. And that is like a.
- [101:24]
A
Happens multiple times in this film, and it's.
- [101:25]
B
And it is used. They understand the import. I mean, of course they understand the import of the moment they're there, but it is a very modern phenomenon that is so strange. And I think the experience of it and even the conversation they have after one bad portal result where Andrea Gibson is like, I feel better now because it was the anticipation. And then their partner is like, no, no, no, no. I feel way worse because I prefer the hope. So I thought that was cool. And I think, you know, there are moments of not cool. I mean, it was devastating, but I was like, huh? I've lived that. And I know a lot of people have, and I haven't seen it before, and it illuminate something about our modern life that. That, like, I respond to, but I think everything else, I just. I don't. My relationship doesn't look like their relationship, like, in many ways, but just the way that they are so emotionally open. I'm not an emotionally open person. We know that. So that I didn't respond to that. And then. Or it's not that I didn't respond to that. It's very sad. And they looked like they had a loving relationship. But I think also
- [102:39]
A
the movie is very brave. I think Andrea in particular is very brave to say that they want to put this stage of their life on camera. It's interesting because this movie premiered at the same Sundance where a movie called Andre is an Idiot premiered, which is a movie about a man who also was given a colon cancer diagnosis and captured it and the last days of his life. The Last weeks, months, years with his life and his family are also in it. That movie has a completely different tone. It is more the story of a madcap kind of marketing and commercials expert who is kind of, like, unwinding intellectually what it means to be at the end of his life. And this is very much about the single crisis of knowing you're going to die and then the paired crisis of being in a relationship and having that be. And that's something that these two people were looking for for their entire lives. And they found each other. And some of their love over time is captured in archival. And then some of it is captured in extraordinarily intimate detail in this, you know, contemporaneous footage. It's a. It's a tragic set of circumstances. I've lost many people to cancer. It is the worst thing you can ever go through. I didn't really like spending time going through it. Yeah.
- [103:52]
B
I remembered what I was gonna say, which is, I don't know whether you've experienced in any of your many cancer experiences of loved ones, but sometimes people like to start a cancer blog. Do you know about this? Where. A medical treatment blog, where if it's sort of a prolonged process, the theory is instead of having to, like, update every single person, well, this is how it's going. And we got this, we got that. Which, like, is exhausting and in. You know, and nobody wants to do that. So instead you just write. There's, like, a central place where you can go and kind of keep an update of it. And that way everyone can know and everyone can, like, support you on the journey. Which I think is a really, like, lovely idea. And I've never had cancer. I've had other medical things. And I just. It's not what I really. I don't. The sharing and the openness of it all just is not how I would process it.
- [104:47]
A
Yeah. I think I'm. This may come as a surprise, a little more open than you are at times, but not this open. Yeah. And I think there's also just frankly, something about being a spoken word poetry that is very performative and sort of, like, both metaphorical and straightforward about who you are and how you define yourself. And a lot of their work, both of these poets, is interwoven in the story in a way that is meant to communicate, that is meant to define them. And I think for some people, this will be the most devastating movie that they see all year.
- [105:19]
B
It is devastating. Let's not be real about it.
- [105:22]
A
I know, but it's sort of ordained too. I think Ryan White captures moments of intimacy that are mind blowing, especially at the end of the movie where you're like, he's there with them.
- [105:31]
B
Yes.
- [105:32]
A
At the worst possible time. And they're not saying, turn the camera off, which is itself like. I think that is essentially what's being celebrated here is the subject's willingness totally. And their braveness to do this.
- [105:46]
B
And I think those scenes, the observed scenes of those two people in these incredibly impossible moments of their life and of their relationship are by far the best part of the movie. It does also use, like a lot of direct to camera.
- [106:00]
A
Don't love a lot of that stuff.
- [106:01]
B
It uses a lot of Gibson's performances and all of like, the framework feels conventional, but, but, but when they are just living. What it does capture is very, very raw and memorable.
- [106:18]
A
I think sometimes it's okay to just say subjectively. I just didn't really like watching the movie. And I found myself feeling that through a bunch of these where I was just like, this isn't really giving me what I want. And it's not. I can give you 20 other docs that I like this year that I think, some of which were about meaningful issues, some of which were more intellectually explorational. But let's go to cutting through rocks. So this is directed by Sarah Cockey and Mohammad Drezra Enyi. This is a movie that follows the first woman elected to council in a conservative Iranian village. Her name is Sarah Shah Verdi, and it's a character study. And over eight years, the film documents her fight against patriarchy, challenging child marriage and promoting education for girls by teaching them to ride motorcycles and often facing backlash. What did you think of this one?
- [107:07]
B
I'm rooting for Sara. Sara. Sarah. I think Sara, Sarah, an amazing character. And I did think that this is pretty much all observed. There's no talking heads. There's a tremendous amount of access.
- [107:24]
A
Yes, pure verite.
- [107:27]
B
And what is communicated is not just this one person's character, but the nature of the village. And I thought, you know, we live in a time where I don't. I really, really feel like I don't know a lot about what's going on in Iran. You know, like. And there's not a lot of. Yeah, I mean, I know. I know some of you now more than now, more than ever. I know that. I think that the US shouldn't be bombing it, but that's a. That's. That that's applicable across the world.
- [107:54]
A
On that we agree.
- [107:57]
B
So I. And. And again, much like Secret agent. There's not like someone there being like, so here is how this council works and here are like the rules and here. And I did feel like I was learn. I did feel like it, like put me in this place and mostly without condescension, observed what was going on and really grounded it through this character who's like a one on one. So I was like. I didn't dislike it.
- [108:31]
A
I just thought it felt very similar to a lot of other films like this that I've seen before. To me, it is another very important story. And I think the rights of women in that country in particular have been the subject. There's been dramatic protests in that nation for years over this issue. And it's an extremely relevant story, but it's not one that. And she is an interesting person.
- [108:55]
B
I did.
- [108:55]
A
But it's not one that really shed light on anything for me in any way. And I also felt that from a structural or craft perspective, you know, it's an important slice of life in a way. You know, it's about an important person. But I didn't come away from the film feeling like changed in any way or informed in a new way. I felt, I guess, somewhat connected to her. It's just that I didn't think that the film was extraordinary in any.
- [109:25]
B
I think they found like a. You do have to find the right person. Right. Even though there are billions of people on this earth, like, not. They found like a. Not a singular character, but the right character, like very representative. And I'm like really rooting for her. And even her face and the way that she responds to her brothers and to. There's a great scene where I believe someone in her family, I believe it's her mother, but comes in and she's having trouble. None of the men in the village will listen to. Will take any of her advice. And she's told again and again by everyone, like, you just have to compromise. You just have to listen to all these people, which is sort of depressing. But the older woman says to her, I mean, just think about how many people over time. How many men over time have lost power and how they've lost power and how. So maybe you need to try a different way so you aren't like them. And I was like, this is. This is an interesting. I don't know, I thought that the specifics were right in this one. But I agree that it's, you know, it's not like earth shattering. Yeah, it's not American factory. But what is.
- [110:32]
A
I think all five of these movies, I'll say four of these movies lack kind of dynamism that I'm looking for in the form at this stage of my life. Again, this is a subjective point of view. This is how I feel as somebody who has watched hundreds and hundreds of documentaries over the years. I often respond to kind of issues oriented ideas with, you know, Errol Morris is my hero because he often takes a very unusual approach to unpacking complex incidents. And this is similar to his work in that it is focused on an individual who helps explain something, but it lacks maybe some of the interrogation that I think is very valuable in some of these situations. And the movie doesn't really give us. It kind of just assumes you're like, well, of course this woman wants this and here's why. But we're only going to show you this period of her life and she's never going to look into the camera and tell you why she thinks something. And that's just not what I would have. That's not how I would have made a movie about her. But that's, you know, this is personal preference. Mr. Nobody against Putin. This is a real bugaboo for you. So I'm excited to hear you talk about it. This is directed by David Bornstein and Pavel Tolikin. A Russian teacher secretly documents his school becoming a war recruitment center during the Ukraine invasion, revealing the ethical dilemmas educators face with propaganda and militarization. Follows Pasha Tolikin, a beloved, lighthearted teacher in a small industrial town near the Ural Mountains. Yes, thoughts on this one?
- [112:03]
B
Okay, so the film begins with Pasha leaving Russia. And he is receiving instructions on how best to smuggle these tapes out of Russia in a safe way from the documentarians who he's working with. And so we are set up with the understanding that what he is doing and what we are about to watch would be of objection to the Russian regime, government, what are we, whatever we're calling it. And that by doing this, Pasha has been in enough danger that he needs to leave Russia in order to make these, this footage available. And then we watch a film in which he has secretly recorded many of his young students talking to camera by name, everyone in his village. And they're all still in Russia and identified. But he's left Russia so that he can show us these tapes. How is this not endangering every single person in the.
- [113:17]
A
Okay, so you mentioned this to me before we were recording. And do you think that the children are endangered by the fact that they are featured in the film?
- [113:26]
B
I mean, this is a. This is a movie about. This is a film about propaganda and the Russian government wanting to tell exactly one story and to indoctrinate every single person in its country and every single student to its view of its attacks on Ukraine and the world at large. So at one point, he films the classroom, which he's filming secretly, and he has a. I think, I don't know whether it's a Russian democratic flag or some sort of subversive Russian flag up in the classroom. And all the kids are hanging out in there and he's talking about how it's just like, Ben, you know, hang, which rock on. Like, I'm. I'm with the kids, but how does it not. If they're associated. And this. It's so dangerous for this to be, you know, shown in Russia that he has to, like, leave and smuggle it out. Like, I just. We aren't thinking about anybody else. I don't understand. And no one's even talked about it. Like, I was Googling for any sort of. Yeah, I hope they're okay. They probably are. But, like, did we not. We didn't think about this for a second.
- [114:31]
A
I don't. I'm not sure if there is actually any real world consequences for anyone who was filmed by him. So I'm not sure if that specifically concerned me while watching it. I do think that part of my hang up with the movie is that Pasha is kind of an odd bird. And it does feel like he has imagined, like a little bit of a hero's journey for himself in a way that I found a little bit off putting because he's exposing something, but it's what's being exposed here, I would say, is not shocking. If you have read about the way that Putin operates in Russia and the way that that regime has been managed for decades. And so he is showing us something, but he's showing us something in, like, what I found to be a slightly vainglorious way. Like, look at what I'm doing 1,000%. And then I'm leaving.
- [115:19]
B
And then I'm leaving. And I like. And I think that we're responding in the same way to, this is a person, and this is a project that's undertaken by one person who has made himself the hero of the own story and seems to think that he's like, really. He doesn't think he's the only person suffering, but it is constructed around his experience. And I'm a little concerned for everybody else. Yeah, I at least wanted to ask the question.
- [115:48]
A
Well, it's somewhat similar to Icarus, the documentary that won best doc seven or eight years ago, which was about the whistleblower who had worked on providing steroids and enhancements for Russian athletes in the Olympics. And the way that he kind of came forward and revealed the ways in which a lot of that worked. And that man was very valorized in that film. In a similar fashion, he didn't make that movie. Someone else made that movie. Someone else told that story. Pasha. I think there's something very strange about some of his into camera interviews he's
- [116:22]
B
doing after he's answered a random documentary email inquiry. Yeah, inquiry. And so he starts the project while still living in Russia and. And is already conceptualizing what he's gonna do in the context of. I'm the narrator of this story, quite literally. Cause he's into camera.
- [116:45]
A
Yeah. I mean, I.
- [116:46]
B
His mother is the librarian. His mother is there in a lot of the footage.
- [116:51]
A
Yeah, I know.
- [116:54]
B
Okay, that's fine.
- [116:55]
A
I don't know that those people are in danger per se.
- [116:57]
B
I don't know if they're in danger,
- [116:58]
A
but it's impossible to know. But to me, it was more just that there is a kind of solipsism in this movie that thinks it is kind of an issues expose and ultimately becomes a character study of a guy who I think has a little bit of a hero complex, but then his heroism is to show us something that is no doubt bad. That the propaganda machine and the way in which this school that has been historically this very healthy, comfortable, safe space for education has been transformed into a militarized zone. It's a way to teach children to become more excited about serving their country and joining the military and fighting the good fight against their evil counterparts in Ukraine. All of that is valuable and interesting in some ways, but the person who is at the center of the story.
- [117:47]
B
I felt a little self serving, 1,000%.
- [117:51]
A
So, yeah, I mean, I did not enjoy the film. Yeah.
- [117:56]
B
And that this is nominated instead of 2000 meters to Andreevka.
- [118:04]
A
Not ideal.
- [118:05]
B
No, not what you want.
- [118:06]
A
No, it's not ideal. The fifth nominee is the thorniest. I'll say.
- [118:12]
B
Sure.
- [118:13]
A
The fifth nominee is the Perfect Neighbor, which is directed by Geeta Ganbir. It is about a seemingly minor neighborhood dispute in Florida that escalates into deadly violence. Police body cam footage and investigative interviews expose the consequences of Florida's stand your ground laws. This is a the story of a woman named Susan Lorenz who shot another woman named Ajike Owens. And kind of the lead up to that that murder that is captured primarily through police body cam footage. Not entirely, but primarily. And this movie, which I did see at Sundance and was very moved by, I was struck by it. I found it to be quite shattering. I've seen the film a second time. I've read a lot about it and listened to podcasts about it, including our friend Wesley Morris's episode, and I have a very queasy feeling about it without detracting from its power. And I think similarly, what it's attempting to expose, but the way in which it does so makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I'm curious how you feel about it.
- [119:22]
B
I agree. I think that, you know, it is formally very inventive or. And fascinating and also emotionally and civically, like, devastating. Like a really, really, really difficult watch. And when I feel queasy, which I do, it's hard for me. I haven't teased out how much of that queasiness is just because of what I watch, which is. I didn't. You don't actually see a woman be shot, but you hear a 911 call and. Or you see ring camera footage of her child calling. You see her children be told that she is not coming back. And that's captured on body cam footage. So that. I mean, that is just absolutely shattering to watch.
- [120:17]
A
The latter scene you described as, like, is the most pained I've been watching a movie in the last year.
- [120:21]
B
It's absolutely awful. And it's. There is also something awful if. If necessary. But isn't necessary about, like, that this footage exists. Exists, number one, because a terrible, terrible thing happened, but also because we now just have surveillance footage.
- [120:43]
A
Everything's on camera.
- [120:44]
B
Everything. Everything is on camera. And not just on camera, but on police body camera footage. So you're watching this through the perspective of the cops who have done nothing and shown up, you know, and shown up too late. Well, but. And that's not. That's not true because you've seen other
- [121:01]
A
footage, but it's the role of the police officer. And this is really interesting for me, when I sat down to watch the movie, I thought it was gonna be a different kind of thing. I thought it was gonna be a police brutality movie. I thought it was gonna be a movie about acquiring this footage and then showing us the ways in which the community, the police, disrespect and abuse their power. And it's sort of the opposite. It's about the lack of intervention in these circumstances and the way in which that ultimately led to someone's murder and the fact that there had been these series of 911 calls made in both directions about, you know, this conflict that this older white woman has with her, the children of her neighbors and the way in which she feels that she is being menaced and that they're kind of running roughshod over her property. Whereas the perspective of the community is that this is kids being kids. And we can see throughout the telling of this story that this woman, Susan Lawrence, is unwell, not racist and prone to violence and aggression, like, you know, abusing private property and kind of breaking a gate, for example, which is one of those like, clue that something is not right here. I think that the police in this movie are simultaneously let off the hook, but also not really. It's not really examined like what the procedures should have been or could have been because we're only getting. The film is edited. It's not a 1900 hour collection of body cam footage around these events. There's a very manipulated series of footages that are showing us how they're responding to these complaints and they don't do enough. That's very clear. My real sense of unease around the movie is just this compliance with the aftermath of this. And then this is something that will live forever for these families, for the people who are affected by this, the levels of consent around this for young children, and whether or not this should be not just the document, but the most watched documentary of 2025, which I think it's gotta be, you know, give or take your few true crime, serial killer stuff. It's right up there because it's on Netflix and because it's so shattering, it makes me feel worse about it, you know, because it's so real and so raw. And then I think also when we spoke to Wesley about it earlier this week too, the kind of like yada yada, ing the speeding up of the conclusion of the story around Susan's fate, which felt kind of tacked on and that he described it as like. It felt like there was like a deadline or something to reach. And then the movie, which is so kind of patient through the execution of this eventual crime and then speeding through the conclusion of it.
- [123:44]
B
Well, it, it's patient through everything that leads up to the murder, to the night itself. And then it spends a while on her interrogation, which again, you're just watching that security cam footage or, you know, investigator. Not security cam, but investigator room footage. But so again, you're watching from the perspective of the detectives who are both like, like slow to act and, you know, some of it and then. And Then like, so polite to her throughout the whole thing. And so it's both invasive and also. And. And strange and like unmediated. And also the way that it's mediated is both through this system that the film thinks that it's indicting but is maybe not effectively.
- [124:46]
A
Well, I feel like it's.
- [124:48]
B
Well, also it's. Maybe it's protecting the system, but also,
- [124:50]
A
yeah, it's like, look what we can do with this new level of technology. Unintentionally, in a way, it's like, well, I will use these powers to show us the real truth of these incidents, but by doing so, you kind of effectively rubber stamp them in a way that feels like a little unexamined on the filmmaker's part. The movie has a real. It's a real pickle because, like, there's some. There is something undeniably powerful about what she has done. The way that the film is cut, the way that it makes you feel. I can't change how it made me feel the first time I watched it. I was. It ruined my week. Like, I was felt so bad about it. I don't remember what I said on the pod, but I think it really is a very. It effectively communicates what it wants to, but the ways in which it does it I have some concerns about. And it's the kind of thing that, like, there will be a lot of copycats of this approach to filmmaking too. And this is considered like a sort of more elevated version of this kind of a story. I can only imagine what will happen with this kind of a story in even less skilled hands.
- [125:55]
B
Right.
- [125:56]
A
I don't know. I mean, this won the directing award at the Sundance Film Festival and it was a big sensation, I think it was over the summer when it was released. And, you know, drawing attention to the stand your ground laws, I think has great value because they're insane. Just the murder itself in this movie, which threw a door.
- [126:17]
B
Yeah. Though again, I don't really think that doesn't even. It. It doesn't really serve the stand your ground stuff. It explores unintentionally or not, like, the failures of like, policing and how. How we manage a community in this or we don't in. In this country. And you know, and then it also explores, like, what it means to have body cam footage and surveillance footage and how. How we should or shouldn't use it. Like, those are interesting questions, but it does, to Wesley's point, yada yada, the stand your ground stuff, they're like, oh, hey, did you Google that she's like, I guess so. And then we don't even see the. The trial. We don't. It's sort of an afterthought.
- [127:01]
A
Yeah. I don't know. This is a very odd collection of movies to me.
- [127:05]
B
Yeah.
- [127:07]
A
Maybe more unusually than I typically feel. The race is also kind of a. Kind of in a weird spot. Every single precursor for this award has gone to a different film. I don't know if I can remember a time where that was the case. The PGA went to My mom Jane, which is not nominated. Marisa Hargitay's documentary about her mom, Jane Mansfield, which is pretty good. The DGA went to 2000 meters to Andrivka, which you mentioned. The Bafta went to Mr. Nobody against Putin.
- [127:35]
B
The Cinema Eye honors really striking out this year.
- [127:37]
A
Tough one for bafta.
- [127:38]
B
Yeah.
- [127:39]
A
Cinema Eye honors went to Come See Me in the Good Light. The CCA went to the Perfect Neighbor and the Ida went to the Tale of Silion which was not nominated. That was from the filmmakers who made Honeyland, which was nominated some years ago. You know, it didn't take me very long to come up with 10 movies I would have nominated over these movies. Now some of them fall under that category of sort of celebrity documentary that we know has been discounted amongst the doc branch. And I understand why that is. That there is a kind of fluffiness to that filmmaking. I agree with you about Mr. Scorsese. I found that that was a very compelling and deep character portrait of a person who we care about a lot. But its skill was part of the reason why I don't even know if it was eligible in this category because it was more of a miniseries. But it's conceived fully as a film and it was originally supposed to be a two hour film. The same is true also for Peewees himself. I don't know if you saw that the Paul Rubens doc series, it was a four hour documentary that Matt Wolf made that I thought was like, if it were considered as a film, would have been a great rejoinder to the celebrity concern. Because you can sense Paul Rubens discomfort and at times anger with the process of being profiled in a documentary. And in that film he does not reveal that he has cancer while the film is being made and he dies in the middle of the movie. They don't get all the footage and they have to finish the movie effectively without him. It's a really interesting exploration of his life and what an interesting artist he was. And somebody who loved Pee Wee as a kid very Cool. What were some other favorites that you saw this year that you thought should have been here?
- [129:16]
B
The Laura Poitras documentary about Syr Seymour Hersh cover up was the big I guess it was the snub in this category and I don't really understand why this didn't make it. I guess it is more traditional in that it's about a person who has then experienced and reported on the great breadth of human tragedy in his lifetime. But he really has and I think it gets enough out of him as a subject. Plus brings his work to life in pretty upsetting if standard ways that you'd think it would check the.
- [130:06]
A
This is a. I'll tell you why I think it's not nominated.
- [130:09]
B
Yeah.
- [130:12]
A
Hirsch is portrayed as a murky individual in the movie who has done incredible things, has exposed the worst corruption in America and the way the government works and has also made mistakes. And the movie does spend some time on his mistakes. The things he got wrong, the ways in which his career has kind of had this very strange winding path. He's a substacker now. He's not at the height of his powers of the New York Times. And part of the reason why I love the movie is the movie shows all that. And Laura Poitras, who has been documenting the Documenters for the last 20 years as a documentarian, is showing the real challenge of this work in addition to the real ornery nature of Seymour Hersh. I think it's an amazing movie.
- [130:55]
B
Same.
- [130:56]
A
I'm not stunned it's not here. As opposed to something like the Perfect Neighbor, which really makes you feel something, you know. And if you had to choose.
- [131:04]
B
Yes.
- [131:04]
A
If you had to choose one Netflix movie, the one that makes you feel is the one that they're probably going to go with. You know, I had we saw My Undesirable Friends win precursors and at the Critics Awards and thought that was going to get. But I think that just the epic size of that movie, which is five hours in length and it's just a part one which is going to be on Mubi actually. I'm glad it's actually Getting distribution on April 3rd. People should check that out. That movie is very similar to Cutting Through Rocks, but I think much deeper in terms of conveying what it's like to trying to make change within your country. And also just a better movie about being in Russia than Mr. Nobody. Again, more complex. Did you see Mistress Dispeller?
- [131:53]
B
I did.
- [131:54]
A
Okay.
- [131:54]
B
I want to talk about it forever. And I know that like no one's Seen it. It's available to stream on Criterion.
- [132:00]
A
Fascinating movie about a thing I've never heard of.
- [132:03]
B
Same. And a fascinating movie about psychology. So it's set in China, where there is apparently a custom of hiring what is translated as a mistress dispeller to break up an extramarital affair. The movie starts by saying, everyone, everything that you were seeing is real and unscripted. Everyone involved, particip, agreed to participate at the beginning and the end of the film as they came to understand, you know, the role of the mistress dispeller and the film itself. Fascinating. I start. I was an amazing way to start a documentary, especially after all the conversations we've just had about all the other documentaries. And I was really leaned in, and then I found myself. I don't believe any of this.
- [132:51]
A
Oh, you think it's fake?
- [132:52]
B
No, it's not that I don't think it's fake, but I. Because I believe them. But then it leads to what is like, a very interesting. It's a married couple, and the woman learns that her husband is having an affair, and she hires a marriage dispeller who's just like, you know, Dr. Becky for marriage in China. And. And. But that's a. That's a parenting Instagram guru.
- [133:20]
A
It's very like, here's how we do this.
- [133:22]
B
Yeah. And here's what we're gonna do. And she's even talking about, like, if you present this idea psychologically this way, then this person will respond this way. And we were gonna manipulate all of these people into no longer having an affair and being happy in your marriage. And then it shows just, like a lot of incredibly long, open psychological conversations that are had between all three parties and this marriage dispeller. And I was just like, who is agreeing to talk to someone else like this, this openly about their life?
- [133:57]
A
You can feel it in the first conversation between the husband when the woman is introduced as a friend. Early on in the film, the openness the man has with this relative stranger is so surprising.
- [134:10]
B
Right.
- [134:10]
A
And they're being captured on camera.
- [134:12]
B
Right. But so.
- [134:13]
A
And what is this?
- [134:14]
B
But then they also said everyone involved agreed at the beginning. So I'm like, so does he know? And he's agree, like, what's going on here? It's still fascinating.
- [134:23]
A
It's kind of a whatsit of a movie. But it's so interesting.
- [134:25]
B
Totally.
- [134:26]
A
Yeah.
- [134:27]
B
I definitely want to know more. And I liked talking about it.
- [134:30]
A
I don't know that I'd be like, this movie is vital, and everyone must see it in the same way that the doc branch kind of feels about their nominees, but I never saw anything like this before. This is really kind of. It's kind of the bride of this group of movies that we're talking about here. I'm glad you watched it. I'm glad I watched it too. I think it's really interesting. Another movie that I came out of Sundance loving and feeling like was super important was Predators, which was about how to catch a predator. And the ways, you know, the ways in which the TV industry and this apparatus of this show show kind of ensnares these potential sex criminals by using actors to bring them into these traps and then the kind of like the knockdown effect that that has on what we perceive as entertainment in our culture. That movie is really, really well done, and I don't think really ever got over the hump in terms of audiences. Also, Zodiac Killer Project is another movie that I liked a little bit. I may have talked about it after Sundance. It's a movie about a guy who was gonna make a true crime documentary about a serial killer, and he's gonna adapt a book that was covering these murders, and he lost the rights to the book at the last minute, and so he improvised and said, I'm gonna make a movie that is sort of like a parody or a commentary on what a true crime documentary is actually like. And so what he does is he's like, he'll go to a place and be like, if I were making this movie, I would go to this place and you would hear voiceover in which I would say this. And then I would show you archival footage that shows this person at this point in time. And then there would be newspaper covers, and he's kind of like dissecting and deconstructing what we get in true crime docs. It's very clever. There's no chance a movie like this would ever be nominated in the category, but stuff like this should be on the radar. More of the branch, I think. Couple of other ones. I mean, Megadoc.
- [136:18]
B
My beloved Megadoc.
- [136:19]
A
Also on the Criterion Channel.
- [136:20]
B
Back in the news.
- [136:21]
A
You know, I don't think has a making of movie documentary ever won best doc. I don't think so. Even though there might be.
- [136:29]
B
I mean, this is an incredible one because it's a making of documentary, but it's also about the. The mystery of Francis Ford Coppola.
- [136:36]
A
Yes.
- [136:37]
B
And the. And the legacy of Hollywood and what we do after the fact. And also, like, you know, we are living in the era of all of the 80 something directors, no doubt, you know, trying to make one last or two last or however many last works.
- [136:56]
A
It's funny, if this were nominated, people would be like, Hollywood is up its own ass. But if it's not nominated, you're like, what the hell? What about Hollywood? Raoul Peck's Orwell 2 +2/5 is a movie that I thought was not great, but was at least interesting, which is sort of like using George Orwell's writing to explore the myriad ways in which he was extremely prescient about where the world was going. And Damian Lewis is literally reading his words and you're seeing images from around the world of the ways in which they've been manifest and that he had this incredible vision. Kahlil Joseph's Black Terms and Conditions, which is a movie that you can't watch now, apparently is not on vod, not on a streaming service, not in theaters, but was also a 2025 Sundance movie that is this kind of wild interpretation of black figures throughout the 1800s, redefining the way in which they should be seen told in this really dramatic, unusual documentary style that also kind of smacked me during Sundance. But then I think maybe because it doesn't have proper distribution, didn't go through in the same way very quickly. Just for anybody listening, Cover ups on Netflix. Mistress the Spiller is on Criterion. My Undesirable Friends will be on MUBI. Mr. Scorsese is on Apple, Predators is on Paramount, Zodiac Killer projects is on VOD. Pee Wee is himself is on HBO. Orwell 225 is on VOD and Megadoc is on Criterion as well. Almost all these are accessible. What do you think is going to win in this category? Don't tell me.
- [138:30]
B
I haven't decided yet. Do you. Do you feel like or how many of your picks are locked in right now? It is March 5th.
- [138:37]
A
I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do.
- [138:38]
B
Can I just say also, less than. Less than 15, because along with the cat discourse, we had a My friend Daniel Daddario from Variety wrote a why are the Oscars so late in the year piece again? So we once again had the why have the Oscars not happened yet?
- [138:54]
A
10 days.
- [138:55]
B
Why have the Oscars not happened yet?
- [138:57]
A
I don't know. You know my take on this. It's the week between.
- [139:00]
B
I completely agree.
- [139:01]
A
Championships and the Super Bowl. I agree between Nobody cares about the Pro Bowl. There's nothing going on in sports at that time otherwise.
- [139:08]
B
Isn't that usually when the Grammys are.
- [139:10]
A
Fuck them.
- [139:11]
B
I Agree. Kick the Grammys out.
- [139:14]
A
This is way too late.
- [139:15]
B
I. I'm losing my mind. But. So your picks are not locked in?
- [139:20]
A
Not even close. What about you?
- [139:21]
B
No, not at all.
- [139:23]
A
And there's. There's major categories where I don't know what I'm gonna do. I've never felt this way before.
- [139:28]
B
Do you feel excited or stressed right now? Cause we're getting to the point where it's. It's entertaining, but also that the prospect of being wrong enters the chat.
- [139:37]
A
I don't. I don't care about being wrong as much this year. Um, I think. I think it's been really fun. I think the last few weeks have been fun. Yeah. And I think that's rare for us. I do think it's been going on for too long, and I wish this were a little bit more compressed like you said. But. But going to dga, seeing PGA play out, watching BAFTA be a fucking fiasco. And then the actor awards being really interesting. It's been a good season. It's been cool. I want it to be over with, but it's been cool. So I'm kind of excited. We were just talking about April. It's like, we got some fun episodes planned for April. There's a couple of big movies coming out that I'm excited to talk to you about, but not done yet, so. Remember, Live no More Oscars on Monday
- [140:21]
B
on Netflix, 12pm PT, 3pm Eastern Standard.
- [140:27]
A
That's right. You can email us@bigpickmailbagmail.com we will be here answering your questions. We'll talk about Hoppers. You haven't seen Hoppers yet?
- [140:35]
B
No. I have to figure out when I'm gonna take Knox.
- [140:37]
A
Okay. Is he excited? Is he aware of this?
- [140:39]
B
He is. Lots of billboards and so he wants to know what Hoppers is about. And I don't really know. So I know they. It's animals, and it's actually quite complicated. Oh, great. I love it.
- [140:50]
A
Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for production support. Don't forget to send questions to the mailbag. We'll see you on Monday. Foreign. Monster Energy. Everybody knows White Monster Zero Ultra. That's the OG it kicked off this whole zero sugar energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian Sunrise, and Vice Versa Guava. And they all bring the Monster Energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can branch out.
- [141:40]
B
Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe,
- [141:42]
A
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