The Top Five Performances of 2024. Plus: The Amy Adams Hall of Fame and ‘Nightbitch.’

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Picture – "The Top Five Performances of 2024. Plus: The Amy Adams Hall of Fame and ‘Nightbitch.’"

Release Date: December 16, 2024

In this episode of The Big Picture, hosted by Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins from The Ringer, the panel delves deep into the standout performances of 2024, dedicates a segment to Amy Adams' illustrious career, and discusses her latest film, ‘Nightbitch’.

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1. Introduction to Top Five Performances

The episode kicks off with Sean Fennessey introducing the theme: ranking the top five performances of the year. Joined by regular contributors Rob Mahoney and Joanna Robinson, the panel expresses excitement about dissecting both beloved and underappreciated roles.

Sean Fennessey [02:45]:
"This is a podcast for the every woman. Like to think that's how I feel as well. I'm very excited because, you know, I've been wanting to talk about Amy Adams."

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2. Top Five Performances of 2024

a. Austin Butler in Dune II

Rob Mahoney nominates Austin Butler for his mesmerizing role in Dune II.

Rob Mahoney [05:09]:
"If you lick a knife in a movie, you are on my list. Austin Butler for Dune II honestly stole the show..."

The panel praises Butler's ability to outshine in a film laden with heavyweight performances, highlighting his "absolute freak" persona that captivated audiences.

b. Lupita Nyong'o in A Quiet Place: Day One and The Wild Robot

Sean Fennessey commends Lupita Nyong'o for her dual performances in both A Quiet Place: Day One and The Wild Robot, emphasizing her versatility and depth.

Sean Fennessey [08:21]:
"Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic as a woman in hospice at the end of the world and her performance as a robot in 'The Wild Robot' showcases her incredible range..."

c. Colman Domingo in Sing Sing

Joanna Robinson highlights Colman Domingo's standout performance in Sing Sing, noting his ability to anchor a film alongside non-professional actors.

Joanna Robinson [31:42]:
"Colman Domingo is one of our great actors currently working, and he does this stunningly in Sing Sing..."

d. Denzel Washington in Heretic

Denzel Washington's role in Heretic is lauded for its complexity and his portrayal of a character teetering between charm and menace.

Todd McShay [12:54]:
"Denzel Washington brings a culmination of his 'I'm a piece of shit' era, making his performance in 'Heretic' both chilling and captivating."

e. Josh O'Connor in Challengers

Sean Fennessey elevates Josh O'Connor for his compelling portrayal in Challengers, describing it as an "undeniable performance."

Sean Fennessey [29:58]:
"Josh O'Connor in Challengers has done something remarkable with just a smirk and a sweat, delivering an irrepressible performance."

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3. Honorable Mentions

The hosts acknowledge several other noteworthy performances:

• Joan Chen in a coming-of-age film, praised for her delicate balance between humor and emotional depth.
• Emma Corrin in Deadpool and Wolverine, commended for her physicality and commitment to her roles.
• Marianne Jean Baptiste in Hard Truths, recognized for her fearless portrayal of a bitter and frustrated woman.
• Lupita Nyong'o and Colman Domingo receive additional nods for their roles in supporting films.

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4. The Amy Adams Hall of Fame

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to Amy Adams, exploring her career trajectory, range, and recent performances.

Sean Fennessey [65:53]:
"Amy Adams has some real home run stuff. To talk about her as if she's just strikes and gutters, that's not the reality of the situation."

Joanna Robinson [65:32]:
"Amy Adams is not one of those actors who can do everything. She's always Amy Adams, in fact."

The panel discusses Adams' impressive filmography, her ability to consistently deliver strong performances, and the challenges she faces in Hollywood as she navigates roles beyond her well-known archetypes.

Todd McShay [66:41]:
"She's in a very intense five-year rut now, which I think ‘Nightbitch’ kind of pulls her out of, because I think she's very good in this film."

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5. ‘Nightbitch’ – Amy Adams' Latest Film

The discussion shifts to ‘Nightbitch’, Amy Adams' new project that has garnered mixed feelings among the hosts.

Todd McShay [44:13]:
"This movie stars Amy Adams and Scott MacNairy, and it's about a woman coping with managing her life while living almost entirely with a two-year-old."

Joanna Robinson [45:15]:
"I loved to see this film because it made me think of 'Tully', the Charlize Theron movie, which was similarly educational."

While some praise the film's honest depiction of motherhood and Adams' commitment, others critique its genre elements and narrative choices.

Sean Fennessey [47:49]:
"Amy Adams is going for it, and this movie is almost scared to go for it to the extent that she is."

Joanna Robinson [56:57]:
"The happy ending with fantasy elements doesn't quite land for me, but I appreciate the film's existence."

The hosts explore the film's portrayal of the challenges of early motherhood, the use of metaphorical elements, and Adams' raw performance.

Todd McShay [62:57]:
"The stage of raising a two or three-year-old is so challenging, and this movie captures that with such honesty."

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6. Conclusion and Future Discussions

Wrapping up, the panel touches on upcoming topics, including a conversation with director Pablo Lorraine about his film Maria, the third installment of his trilogy about influential women of the late 20th century.

Todd McShay [137:50]:
"We have an incredible body of work with Amy Adams. Thank you so much. Let's go now to my conversation with Pablo Lorraine..."

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Notable Quotes

• Sean Fennessey [05:09]:
  "If you lick a knife in a movie, you are on my list."

• Joanna Robinson [31:42]:
  "Colman Domingo is one of our great actors currently working, and he does this stunningly in Sing Sing..."

• Todd McShay [66:41]:
  "She's in a very intense five-year rut now, which I think ‘Nightbitch’ kind of pulls her out of, because I think she's very good in this film."

• Sean Fennessey [47:49]:
  "Amy Adams is going for it, and this movie is almost scared to go for it to the extent that she is."

---

Final Thoughts

The episode offers a comprehensive look at the year's standout performances, with a special emphasis on Amy Adams' contributions to cinema. While celebrating her achievements, the hosts also critically assess her recent projects, providing listeners with a balanced perspective on her career trajectory.

Listeners are encouraged to stay tuned for the upcoming discussion with Pablo Lorraine, which promises to delve into the intricacies of portraying iconic women in film.

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Thank you for tuning into The Big Picture. Make sure to subscribe for more insightful conversations about the movies you need to see.

Transcript

[Todd McShay]

What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's a video and audio podcast coming.

[Todd McShay]

To you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement.

[Sean Fennasy]

Plus, I'll be chatting with some of.

[Todd McShay]

My best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts during the week.

[Sean Fennasy]

We'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

[Todd McShay]

That will include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on.

[Sean Fennasy]

Plus, we'll be reacting each week to.

[Todd McShay]

The College Football Playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of.

[Sean Fennasy]

It like me, make sure to like.

[Todd McShay]

Follow, subscribe and get ready for the McShay show on the Ringer, Spotify and.

[Sean Fennasy]

Wherever you watch or listen to podcasts.

[Todd McShay]

This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Walmart. Thoughtfulness matters during the holiday season. Walmart has a huge selection of great gifts at great prices, so you can find the perfect thing for everyone on your list, like a Samsung soundbar for action movie fans, the Lego Sorting Hat for those who queue up a Harry Potter marathon every year, or the Fujifilm Instax camera for the aspiring cinematographers. Give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart. This episode is brought to you by the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas Celebrate the unexpected at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the most unique luxury resort and casino in the heart of the Strip. Discover a one of a kind restaurant collection, a vibrant mix of bars and lounges, three distinct pool experiences from panoramic views on your private terrace, and countless ways to be entertained. Find a scene that suits your every mood and experience. Elevated luxury. Nothing is off the table and temptation is around every corner. Reserve your stay now@cosmopolitanlos vegas.com I'm Sean Fennasy and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about Amy Adams. Later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with Pablo Lorraine. He's the director of Maria, the third installment of his trilogy about influential women in the second half of the 20th century. His previous two movies, Jackie and Spencer, were major showcases for their star actresses, and Maria, which follows the opera legend Maria Callis, is no different. It's a platform for Angelina Jolie. Lorraine is a fascinating filmmaker. It's great to chat with him. Please stick around for our talk. But first, today we're talking about another woman, not quite a diva like Maria Callis.

[Sean Fennasy]

I hope not.

[Joanna Robinson]

Not even a little bit of a.

[Todd McShay]

Diva, seemingly a regular old gal, honestly. I'm here with two other regular old gals. Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson. Hi, guys. How you doing?

[Joanna Robinson]

Hey, Sean.

[Sean Fennasy]

This is a podcast for the every woman.

[Todd McShay]

Like to think that's how I feel as well. I'm very excited because, you know, I've been wanting to talk about Amy Adams. She has a very complicated reputation here at the Ringer. Certainly there are some supporters and some not so supporters. I am a supporter. And she has a big new movie out in December called Night Bitch, one of the great titles of 2024 the movies. And I've been looking forward to this movie quite a bit. And I was thinking about it and I have some mixed feelings about the movie and we'll get into it in our discussion, but I think that her performance in this movie is quite good and it inspired some thoughts about the best performances I've seen at the movies this year. We're recording this a little bit earlier in December, but you guys see a lot of movies and you have a lot of opinions about movies.

[Sean Fennasy]

Too many, perhaps.

[Todd McShay]

Rob, We've been potting up a storm this week.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's just been a week for takes.

[Todd McShay]

Honestly, it's been a lot of fun. And so I thought let's just talk about our favorite performances. And I hit you guys up late last night. You fucking filled in the gaps beautifully. So I'm really excited about this. Any general thoughts? Good movie performance year, bad year? Was it hard to come up with your list?

[Sean Fennasy]

I think good performance year, kind of weird movie year. I found myself liking a lot of things, not loving a lot of things in terms of the overall movies. This isn't gonna be a year that goes down in history for me, but it's gonna be one with a lot of individual moments and performances that stick with me for a long time.

[Joanna Robinson]

I found this exercise very challenging. A lot of these performances are in despite of the movie that they're in. Not a lot, but some, but also mine as well.

[Todd McShay]

Some of mine are like that too.

[Joanna Robinson]

But also narrowing it down to five. Getting this assignment last night and narrowing down a year to five was tough. So for my own purposes, I decided to come up with like five categories.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, love what you're doing.

[Joanna Robinson]

So that's how I went about it.

[Todd McShay]

Let's just do it. Let's just do the list. Rob, why don't you give us number five?

[Sean Fennasy]

My number five. Very simple rule. If you lick a knife in a movie, you are on my list. Austin Butler for Dune 2 honestly stole the show in a movie. That very hard to steal the show in so many heavyweight performances. I think there's lots to recommend about Dune ii. Overall, I was mesmerized by all of the black and white action overall in the middle of this movie. And in particular, Austin Butler just being an absolute freak. Like, let. Not only let him be a freak in more movies, but he needs to embrace being a freak as often as humanly possible.

[Todd McShay]

What'd you think of the voice?

[Sean Fennasy]

I mean, clearly I'm pro. I'm into it. Did you not appreciate his vocal stylings.

[Joanna Robinson]

On the spectrum of Austin Butler fans? It's a ringer. I am on the lower side personally, but I did like this better than the Elvis voice.

[Sean Fennasy]

Well, sure. What if he did the whole press tour in this voice?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think Stellan Skarsard would be like, excuse me, that's my voice. Rob, do you remember your immediate review of Dune 2 when the lights came up?

[Sean Fennasy]

We did see it together. We saw a screening. What did I say?

[Joanna Robinson]

You said that was sick, Jo.

[Sean Fennasy]

Well, guess what? I was right.

[Todd McShay]

I fully agree with that. Fully agree with that.

[Sean Fennasy]

Some people don't stand by their opinions.

[Todd McShay]

Here at the ringer.

[Sean Fennasy]

I maintain the Dune two was fucking sick.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think about that all the time. Rob Mahoney.

[Todd McShay]

That was s. Okay, Joe, why don't you give us your number five? Cause we haven't talked about this movie at all in this show. Really? Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. The category that I invented for myself is sort of newcomer up and comer. So this is Maisie Stella in My Old Ass. A movie title that is fun to say and a movie I loved that I think really flew under the radar. And I think it was. People don't know. I mean, Maisie Stella has been in show business her entire life. People might know her from her musical duo act that she had with her when she was younger. She was on Nashville, but this was just like a real leap in quality and she holds down this entire movie. They kind of mispackaged it as a. As an Aubrey Plaza film or like a two hander, and it's really not. Aubrey Plaza is kind of barely in this movie, and it is Maisie Stella's movie. And I thought it was wonderful. And she was just really engaging and complicated and at times unlikable, but always root for able and up for anything and does A whole Justin Bieber fantasy sequence. And I just thought it was like a really good sort of announcement of her talents.

[Todd McShay]

I love that pick a lot. I'm a little bit lower on the movie than you are, but I like what it's after, you know, it's a. It's kind of similar to Night Bitch where I'm like, good idea, good performances. You almost got there with me, with what you were going for. But I think also being a 40 something year old man, maybe the movie's not like directly targeted.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, is it not?

[Todd McShay]

You know, like my 21 year old sister is like, this is the most important movie that's ever been made. So, you know, it's different strokes.

[Sean Fennasy]

How does it feel to have like literally one movie that isn't programmed to you?

[Todd McShay]

It's the first one actually in the history of film.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're about to talk about another one.

[Todd McShay]

Well, that is true in some respects, but we can come back to that. Okay, my number five is, whenever I make these lists, I always like to find one actor who gives two performances in the same year that I really, really like. In this case, two different kinds of performances. I think I stole this one from Rob too. Or did I steal it from you too as well, Joe? No, you don't care about this person. You hate this person.

[Joanna Robinson]

I love this person.

[Todd McShay]

Lupita Nyong'o, who's an actor who I really love and who had. Has had a relatively muted last few years in Hollywood. She was, of course in Wakanda forever, but has not like exploded as a star in the way that you might have thought After Us and Black Panther and a couple of other films. But she's in two great movies this year. One A Quiet Place, Day One, where she is the lead figure and is, I thought, fantastic as a woman in hospice at the end of the world.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is the cat not the lead figure of A Quiet Place Day One?

[Todd McShay]

If this were the house of R, then you could say that, but that's not what this is.

[Joanna Robinson]

I had to represent.

[Todd McShay]

And then her other performance is in the Wild Robot, which is a movie that I've now seen three times because I have a small child and my daughter loves this movie. And so I hear her performance and you know what? It's not easy to give a robot performance. Robot acting, putting a character to the robot essence is challenging and she gives a great vocal performance. I think it's one of the hidden arts of moviemaking is being able to act in this format. So I just love her. She has much more Color in her performance styles than I would have guessed when I first saw her. And these are two very nice examples of that. Are very different, I think when she hit the scene. 12 Years a Slave, the Marvel films, something very showy about those kinds of movies. Something very loud and kind of brash. Horror movies are also. She's very expressive in us.

[Sean Fennasy]

Definitely.

[Todd McShay]

These are much slave performances, and I really like them a lot.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's one of the most beautiful people that has ever existed. And so the fact that she is so talented as a voice performer because her Maz Canada is also iconic. I'm like, Lupita, I always want to gaze at your face. But also, you're very, very good at this.

[Todd McShay]

She is.

[Sean Fennasy]

Save some for the rest of them a little bit too.

[Joanna Robinson]

Exactly, exactly.

[Sean Fennasy]

A Quiet Place was the one that I really wanted to anoint on this list. That's a franchise that I don't really have that much of a connection to. I like the first one well enough. I was really put off by the second one. Was not planning to see the third movie until the buzz started kind of building that. Oh, it was actually quite good.

[Todd McShay]

You're a Sarnoski head, though. You loved Pig.

[Sean Fennasy]

This is what drew me in. I'm like, okay, wait, you're telling me Sarnoski's involved? You're telling me Lupita's here? You're telling me the cat's here? And I found myself not unlike Pig. So moved by her performance in this movie. Again, acting opposite CGI monsters that don't exist, that are even then barely in the movie, covered.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's a weird way to talk about Joe Quinn.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. He's quite good in this movie, too.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, he's great. He's great.

[Sean Fennasy]

And covered in dust for a lot of the movie. Fighting with the elements, fighting with the urban environment. It is a survival movie in a way that I think leads to impressive performances of a kind, but not the sort that usually get actually awarded.

[Todd McShay]

Exactly what I was thinking when I put them on. You're not gonna see these at the Oscars. So it's fun. Some of these names you'll see that we have here will be at the Oscars. But none of those. Okay. Rob, what about number four?

[Sean Fennasy]

Number four from Read David Johnson from Alien, Romulus. A performance everyone, I think, was raving about the day this movie came out. In particular, another, like, modulating performance. Right. It's not just someone, another person playing a synthetic in an Alien movie, which is great. We love those. But the various degradations, the various Reprogrammings that go on over the course of the movie. It's a lot that he has to play, and really, it's the defining performance of the movie. So the fact that he was able to pull all that together, an actor who I think we've seen in other things be very promising, but never quite have this kind of spotlight in a movie this big. And so I was. I love to see it.

[Todd McShay]

Great pick. I really like him. He jumped out in industry right away. When I first saw him, I think that's the first time I'd seen him. And this is. I mean, it's paired with the Lupita. Wow. Robot performance. You know, like, humanizing a machine is.

[Joanna Robinson]

A challenge, and it's tough. I mean, following the footsteps of Michael Fassbunder, doing it in two Alien movies and doing it so well.

[Sean Fennasy]

Not as many pan flutes this time, but to each their own.

[Joanna Robinson]

And that's a note I have.

[Sean Fennasy]

We're trying to get more flutes involved, but, yeah, like. And ultimately, to be a robot, to be a synthetic, and to be the beating heart of a movie like that is just a really impressive feat.

[Todd McShay]

Like, that pick. Really like your next pick, too. This is good for you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Thank you.

[Todd McShay]

What's your number four?

[Joanna Robinson]

The category is. You really didn't need to go that hard. And it's for Emma Corrin in Deadpool and Wolverine. She plays the villain of this film, and this film is a film I think that you and I agree that we had, like, a great time watching, but we don't think is very good. And. But I had a great time watching it. And she's one of the main reasons why, because she just really went for it in her physicality. She does this, like, really creepy thing where she puts her hand inside people's heads. But there's just, like, she's having so much fun. And especially. I know you guys just talked about NOS4A2, a film that she's, like, pretty wasted in. She has a lot that she can do, and she just gave it all to Deadpool and Wolverine for some reason. And I loved it. I thought she was amazing.

[Todd McShay]

It's kind of fascinating. I think part of it is because Emma Corin's one of the only people whose face we've not seen before in one of, like, that. We didn't know that character going into that movie. And so it feels new and fresh, but brings something really great to it. So great pick. My number four is Hugh Grant in Heretic.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is the one you stole from me.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, Did I?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, good. Well, I haven't really had much of a chance to talk about the movie too much on the show, so maybe we can do it a little bit here. But a movie that I think is like 2/3 perfect and then one third, I wish it got there. But he is the primal focus of the first 2/3. And it is, I think, the culmination of Hugh Grant leaning into his I'm a piece of shit era. You know, this thing that we all kind of felt right underneath the surface of every Hugh Grant performance that he has in the Paddington time, in the Guy Ritchie collaborations, In Wonka. In Wonka, certainly. Like, he's now like, I'm just a little motherfucker. Like I'm just a bastard. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Ain't I a scamp?

[Todd McShay]

Exactly. And in this one in particular, he's a cool, quite evil scam and quite. He's a podcaster, you know, like he is really. His character is. He's not actually a podcast, but you know, that sort of like the self regard, the overwhelming unnecessary amount of information to explain simple things, the certainty about impossible to understand ideas. This is what we do, guys. This is who we are. That's fair. Do I see a little bit of.

[Joanna Robinson]

Self reflection in the inheritance?

[Todd McShay]

But he is just having an absolute blast with this script and it's really fun. And it's really fun to see him bouncing off of two actors who I think could be really big stars in Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. I really like both of them a lot and the energy that they bring. You know, the setup of the film is very, very much like chamber drama. Feels like a stage play in many ways, really. Only two locations for a long stretch of time, but he makes the absolute most of it. So what did you think of Heretic?

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, I really, I mean, I agree with you. It's not a perfect movie, but I think what's really interesting. I don't know if you saw the bit he did. I think it was on Seth Meyers where, or maybe Fallon where they asked him to read a line in his rom com guys, his like fumbling rom com guys, and then make the same line menacing. And it was really fun and he had a great time with it. And I love in this movie when he's sort of luring the girls into his home in the first place. He is doing the aw shucks, bumbling Hugh Grant thing. And it's so. And knowing where this is going, it's so fun to see him do this thing that we watched him start his career with and then transition into the absolute chilling new Persona.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's a very thin line between the stalking in a horror movie and the stalking in a rom com.

[Todd McShay]

But it's almost like an active commentary on how transparently kind of full of shit he was in like nine months, you know what I mean? Where you're like, are you really happy to be in this movie? Like you're not happy to be in this movie. We know who you are. Truly.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm going to preserve my innocence around Four Weddings and the Funeral.

[Todd McShay]

Absolutely.

[Joanna Robinson]

But the rest we can toss on the fire. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

You haven't seen Heretic yet.

[Sean Fennasy]

Not yet.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. I think you will enjoy it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, you will.

[Todd McShay]

All right, Rob, what's your number three?

[Sean Fennasy]

My number three is Joan Chen and Dee Dee. Yes. Playing the mom in a coming of age story is maybe the most thankless job in Hollywood unless you win an Oscar in boyhood, which does happen from time to time. Granted. I think Jon Chen is unbelievable in this movie and the degree to which they let her be the mom who's trying to wrest control of her family in basically a situation in which she's kind of left alone by her husband to do this by herself or with her mother in law in this case, but also be incredibly funny. Also, like undercutting her kid in the process while trying to prop him up. It's such a delicate dance. And this movie hit me very directly in a lot of specific, like, time oriented ways. This is like a movie of my generation. But this performance, I just think of that particular genre and form. It's hard to ask for much better than what Joan Chen's delivering.

[Todd McShay]

Great pick. The scene in particular where, you know, Dee Dee and his new crew of skater friends are all hanging out around his computer and his mom enters the room and sort of demythologizes Dee Dee's world that he has created for these cool older kids is like punishingly real.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's why I haven't seen Heretic. I've seen enough horror movies in the.

[Todd McShay]

Middle of Dee Dee.

[Joanna Robinson]

It was Didi. It's so good. Yeah. And I think similar to like Patricia Arquette, who you just like referenced. Joan Chen is someone who we haven't seen for a little while and it was really nice to see her do what she can do.

[Todd McShay]

She's great. Number three for you, Joanna.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm calling this a scene stealer. And it's Yura Borisov from Honora, which we've talked. You and I have talked about, but.

[Todd McShay]

Which scene all of I Told you.

[Joanna Robinson]

I did an entire past this movie where I was basically just watching him and we were talking about this. We were talking about the way in which Shawn Baker did this really generous cut of this movie where the camera's just constantly lingering on this character.

[Todd McShay]

Him watching her, him watching her.

[Joanna Robinson]

And so we're watching the movie through his eyes in a lot of ways. But he has, I mean, he's significantly in the movie, but he doesn't have like a ton of dialogue. And so what he can do magnetically with just the camera on him and the way that Sean Baker knows that this is what this actor, who is a very popular actor in Russia can do was I think, a revelation. And I would love to see him in everything.

[Todd McShay]

Awesome performance. Would love to see this. Nominated. I feel like that would be a fitting thing. I think Karen Kerguelen, as well as the sort of pastor figure is also really, really fun and funny in this movie and is in a lot of Shawn Baker's films as well.

[Sean Fennasy]

They're like antic comedy that spins off in the middle of this movie, I think just kind of takes the whole thing away. And obviously a new and exciting directions for the plot. But yeah, having semi qualified muscle be a point of view character is a new one for me, but one that I really loved.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, it's a great twist. Okay, my number three is Marianne Jean Baptiste. Have either of you seen Hartreets yet? You haven't seen it?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes, the other one you stole from me.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, really? You're just a thief. Another performance I'm rooting for during awards season.

[Joanna Robinson]

Hugely.

[Todd McShay]

This is her reunion with Mike Lee. I believe they last worked together in Secrets and lies, which is 20 years ago at this point. And she plays a bitter and sad and frustrated woman in her, I guess, late 50s in living in a kind of middle class, lower middle class England. And it's a very tightly focused character study of this small family of kind of Caribbean English heritage. And it's very rare to see an actor be so fearlessly angry and unkind and utterly like emotionally destroyed for the entirety of a film. There's like a sustained quality to it that is so powerful.

[Joanna Robinson]

You're watching that movie, waiting for the turn and then the turn doesn't come.

[Todd McShay]

It doesn't give it to you.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's like, oh, but at the same time she's so horrible and at the same time I feel for her so much and that comes down to the filmmaking. But the performance is, you know, it's.

[Todd McShay]

A real high wire of how do you keep us engaged in this story while watching. You know, there's particularly a sequence in the movie where she goes shopping for a couch. She's wandering around a furniture store and she's just absolutely heinous to the woman who's working in the store. And as you're watching the movie, you're like, what the fuck is this woman's problem? And yet she manages to kind of pull you back 20 minutes later and giving you like, creating empathy for a person who otherwise seems incapable of receiving.

[Joanna Robinson]

It without redeeming her.

[Todd McShay]

Right? Yeah, very deep movie, very interesting portrait. Like, this movie famously was rejected from Cannes and Venice. And I think some of the suspicion is that this is the first time Mike Lee's worked with an all black cast. I don't know if that's the reason why, but it's a movie that more people should see when it comes out. So it's a shout out to hard truths.

[Sean Fennasy]

Okay, Rob, number two, I mean, if Yura Borisov is watching Honora the entire movie, it's because we are watching Honora the entire movie. I don't want to get too cute about this. Like, Mikey Madison is one of the performances of the year. It's incredible, it's transformative. It's the kind of performance that probably in the hands of a lesser actor would get very tiring over the runtime of an entire movie. Like, granted that character's circumstances are interesting, but it's a character that can be kind of difficult or could be kind of grating if pitched like a slightly different way. And I think the combination of how absolutely relentless she is, how defiant she is, like the way she fights back over the course of this movie, and of course the kind of first act swept up like high arching feeling of the beginning of this movie works because she works and works because you are along for the ride with her and believing in the things that she wants to believe in or at least has talked herself into believing in. So I did not have a lot of exposure to Mikey Madison before this movie. I am now. I am fully signed up. Like take. Take me along for the ride, whatever she wants to do.

[Joanna Robinson]

Do you watch, do you watch the Scream movies?

[Sean Fennasy]

I'm not a big Scream guy, so.

[Todd McShay]

I've seen most of what she has done in her career. I watched better things. She's really seen the Scream movie, seen lots of fun time in Hollywood. I probably have another movie or two in there that I've seen as well. And it's fair to say that I never would have guessed that she could do this particular kind of a performance because I think I just wasn't thinking of her as the person who would lead a Shawn Baker movie or really any movie. She seemed like a very amusing and at times electrifying supporting figure. So now when I think about this movie, I'm like, what is she gonna do next? There's obviously this Pretty Woman esque narrativizing. I think there's a very, very good chance that she wins best Actress this year at the Oscars. So now it's like, is she in rom coms? Is she in dark autorous features? Will she ever be given a chance quite like this again? It's an interesting turning point. We've seen this a lot of times where ingenues kind of arrive seemingly out of nowhere. This happened to Jennifer Lawrence, it happened to Brie Larson. And then what they do next is so picked over. And then they get sort of like, I'm sure I'm guilty of this as well. Just overly criticized for the decisions that they make or take a paycheck for $10 million to go make a franchise movie. I have heard her in interviews say, like, I'm just going to take a minute and figure out what I want to do and I'm not going to rush to the next thing. Which you never hear from people who are in the middle of an awards race. So I'm very, very curious to see what kind of actor she becomes.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think part of the reason that conversation is interesting is because, I mean, she's giving a physical performance as a dancer in this movie. There's clear, like, an athleticism there that could probably translate to a lot of different physical roles. She also has the bantery dialogue style where, again, not to prop one ingenue up while tearing down another, but, like, if you put her in the Sydney Sweeney part in anyone but you, I would think that's probably a movie that, like, clicks a little bit better, that, like, has. Has the pacing that you need because she can deliver, like, comedy in a different way.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, that's blasphemyattheringer.com from Rob Mahoney.

[Todd McShay]

That's not my favorite Sydney Sweeney movie, for the record.

[Sean Fennasy]

Immaculate.

[Joanna Robinson]

What is your favorite Sydney Sweeney movie?

[Todd McShay]

What was Michael Mohan's movie before Immaculate? The erotic thriller. That one worked pretty well. What was that movie called? The Voyeurs. Sure, it was called. That was pretty good. Take your word for it. Okay. For no reason to fire it up on Amazon Prime. Yeah. I mean, the thing is that. And that's relevant to what I'm saying about Mikey Madison too. Is anyone but you with Mikey Madison and Glenn Powell would not have made three.

[Sean Fennasy]

No.

[Todd McShay]

So how does she retain her Mikey Madison ness? And I think if she wants to be become a bigger star, I think.

[Joanna Robinson]

Speaking of Glenn Powell, like a good comp as Daisy Edgar Jones who is having a really hard time I think channeling what she the lightning in a bottle that was normal people into what she does next or similarly tough year.

[Todd McShay]

For the normal people.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I think that with Mikey, it's so interesting that she's saying that because I was just watching an interview with Jenna Ortega where she was talking about like regretting not going to college. But she didn't go to college because she was told like, you're hot right now. You're a teen. Who knows when this is gonna go away. It's not too late. Jenna Ortega, you can go to college.

[Todd McShay]

Is she like 21?

[Sean Fennasy]

She's not Kwame Brown out.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think she said deepest regret ever. But she was just sort of like, I wanna go. This industry moves so fast. It can go away at any moment. And so the fact that Mikey Madison is like, I'll wait and see, you.

[Todd McShay]

Know, it is very cool. I'd like to go back to college. That would be nice. Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

What do you want to study?

[Joanna Robinson]

Voyeuristic movies.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I think a major neurotic thrillers with a minor in Sydney Sweeney is what I'm thinking.

[Sean Fennasy]

It sounds like every college student in America right now.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, where do we go next? Joanna? Yeah. You're up.

[Joanna Robinson]

My number two is good old fashioned movie star Denzel Washington and Gladiator 2. And again, like it's, you know, maybe an obvious pick. Everyone has praised this performance, but in the vein of despite everything that's happening around him, he sometimes somehow holds the center of Gladiator 2. I did not have a great time at that movie. I had a great time with every single thing that he did. And having over on the Trial by content podcast that I did, we spent several weeks watching Denzel Washington movie. So I've been sort of studying him for weeks and all the different modes that he has. This is some like very different from anything he's ever.

[Todd McShay]

I couldn't think of anything as like studying.

[Joanna Robinson]

Like I think you have to see him do Shakespeare on stage, which he's done many times to maybe find something similar to this.

[Sean Fennasy]

Also on panel shows, like, he'll go on Graham Norton and just like rip through monologues just to show that he can it's amazing.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. But just that, like, really, that combination of that Shakespearean kind of stentorian affectation that he has in the film, but also this, like, wiliness and sort of, like, the. Obviously, the sort of sexual fluidity that is sort of right underneath the surface of the movie, too. Like, he. There's. I couldn't think of anything that he had done.

[Joanna Robinson]

You have to put a bunch of things in the blender. Like, you'd have to put some Training Day in the blender with, like, some glory, actually, with some.

[Todd McShay]

With Much Ado about. It's like some of the goofier stuff he did early in his career.

[Sean Fennasy]

I feel like we don't see actors this late in their career do that sort of synthesis. It's like, once you get to a certain point, it's like, I'm playing the hits, but I'm playing this hit and then that hit and then that hit.

[Todd McShay]

And he did. I mean, he's done plenty of that.

[Sean Fennasy]

He does that a lot, for sure. But to be able to pull things together and create something new out of all of the elements that make a Denzel performance, that's art to me.

[Joanna Robinson]

I just thought he was incredible in this movie.

[Todd McShay]

It's so fun. I mean, it completely saves the movie. He's. He's phenomenal. Great pick. My number two is a real discovery for me, an actor that I don't remember ever seeing before. I didn't watch Servant, and she is one of the stars of the television series Servant.

[Joanna Robinson]

She was on Game of Thrones.

[Todd McShay]

Was she in Game of Thrones?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Todd McShay]

You'll have to tell me who she was. I'm talking about Nell Tiger Free, who is the star of the First Omen. Who was she on Game of Thrones?

[Joanna Robinson]

She was the original Princess Myrcella before they replaced you.

[Todd McShay]

You're gonna have to tell me who that is. Who is Princess Myrcella?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think she's the original. Unless she's the replacement. Don't fire me, Mallory. But she's one of the princesses. Marcella.

[Todd McShay]

She's like, what land did she live in?

[Joanna Robinson]

She's one of Cersei. She's Cersei's daughter?

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah. One of the Lannister blondes.

[Joanna Robinson]

The royal children. Wow. And she gets poisoned and dies. Gruesomely. But I do think that you're referring.

[Todd McShay]

To something that I experienced several lifetimes ago.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's insane how far I have to reach back to find that poisoning.

[Todd McShay]

Wow. That was Nell Tiger Free.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

Well, at least one of them.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah. Shout out to one of the lives she led.

[Joanna Robinson]

One of the princesses, Marcella.

[Todd McShay]

In this film, she plays a nun, a nun who has been selected for a very important job by some powerful forces. And, you know, a lot of it is a. This movie is a testimony to a director with an incredibly strong vision. A vision I've not seen before, specifically, especially in a horror movie quite like this. And an actor being on the exact same page and willing to go the lengths that the film needs to sell it. This film actually very similar to Heretic to me, where the first two thirds I'm like, is this my favorite movie of the year? Is this my favorite movie of the decade?

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

I was so taken with what Arkasha Stevenson was up to in this movie, which is ostensibly a prequel to a 70s horror classic. And honestly a horror classic that I don't really care about that much. I'm not a big omen person. It doesn't really mean a whole lot to me. So I wasn't entering it with really any expectations.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's not in your toddler canon that we're going to talk about later?

[Todd McShay]

Well, perhaps, you know, Damien is not quite a toddler. You know, he's more. He's more of a seven year old, so he's kind of exited that era. But we'll get there. But Nel Tiger Free is just jaw droppingly mesmerizing in this movie as a nun who is slowly becoming possessed, I guess, for lack of a better word, by the church and by a higher calling. So I really, really, really like this movie. I'm very excited to see what Stevenson does next and to see what Nel Tiger Free does next. And I'll have to, you know, my wife is a big Game of Thrones fan, so I'm going to have to be like, we should watch this again because Princess Myrcella is in it. Before she was poisoned.

[Sean Fennasy]

No, no, no, the first one.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, the first and.

[Joanna Robinson]

Or second one? One of them.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, let's do number ones.

[Joanna Robinson]

Rob.

[Sean Fennasy]

This was pretty easy for me, to be honest with you. My favorite performance in one of my favorite movies of the year, Josh O'Connor in Challengers. Has an actor ever done so much with a smirk and. Or a thigh and.

[Joanna Robinson]

Or a sweat, whichever one you prefer.

[Sean Fennasy]

Like whatever your mode is, he's delivering in this movie. Just like a perfect cadence, a perfect shitheel, a perfect, like dirtbag guy. You kind of know you have known someone like this, if not half this charming and half this. It's like, it really is like an undeniable performance, just completely irrepressible. No matter what room, no matter how far you try to put him from Zendaya, it doesn't matter. Like, it just. It clicks.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think loving Josh O'Connor in God's Own country and then in the Crown and then seeing him do this very different mode cements for me that he can do anything.

[Todd McShay]

So versatile. I know this is an amazing performance. The scene in the alleyway in which he confronts her is like one of my favorite scenes of the year.

[Sean Fennasy]

The gall of him asking her to be his coach is like. It's an amazing writing. I could watch that movie over and over and over again. I tried to watch it on a flight and they cut out. It's not like, honestly, I mean, mild spoilers for Challengers, I guess if you haven't seen it, it's not like overt sexuality in Challengers. It's like suggestion and buildup. On this flight, for example, the famous threesome scene that's in the trailer, Zendaya sits down on the bed and then immediately stands up and leaves.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really?

[Todd McShay]

What?

[Sean Fennasy]

I don't know. I'm like, what did you need to cut?

[Todd McShay]

Were you flying, like Russia or something? Where were you going?

[Sean Fennasy]

I don't even want to get into it.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. All right. That's very unfortunate. Perhaps we should present our number ones together. What do you think?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it sounds right.

[Todd McShay]

So what did you choose?

[Joanna Robinson]

Colman Domingo, the lead of Sing Sing?

[Todd McShay]

I chose Clarence Macklin, who is technically the supporting character, though I would say the co lead of Sing Sing. Yeah, I guess we talked about a little bit on an Oscar episode, but not too much. Which is a wonderful movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

I loved this movie.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

You're in the hive.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in my top five for the year.

[Todd McShay]

Is it?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely.

[Todd McShay]

Well, then talk about Coleman.

[Joanna Robinson]

So Sing Sing, you'll talk about Clarence in terms of the fact that in Sing Sing they used a lot of non professional actors. So Colman Domingo is surrounded by a lot of non professional actors. So he is holding down the center of this movie as a man who is in prison, as a man who is sort of the leader of a community and then has a crisis of faith and becomes. You watch him inside of a prison film where you're so used to watching people break. This is one of the hardest breaks I've ever like, had to watch. There's also a lot of business done with a small glimpse of the outside, a small window to the outside. That is something that he reflects on at a number of different stages in this movie that I think about over and over and over again. Colman Domingo is, like, I think one of our great actors currently working, and I think it's amazing that he did this project given, like, the way that his star has been rising. You know, he's has. He could do anything, and he did this, and I think he's just stunning in it. I loved him.

[Todd McShay]

I agree the movie doesn't work without him, but it also doesn't work without Macklin and the other actors who, many of whom were actually incarcerated and participated in the Rehabilitation through the Arts program. Macklin's story is really centered because Colman Domingo's character essentially conscripts Macklin's character divine eye to participate in RTA and to become a performer and to find a new pathway through his life by doing this work. You know, Macklin is not a professional actor, but he's a fucking good actor.

[Joanna Robinson]

He's great.

[Todd McShay]

And he. The two of them. And the sort of. The mannered stiffness of Domingo and the sort of actorliness of Domingo up against what feels like it's kind of stupid to use words like authentic, but there is a kind of realness, like a texture to the sense of his own life and his own personality which evolves, and they become like this double helix in the movie where they sort of, like, are swapping places and swapping feelings about the world and swapping futures. That is like, such a great piece of storytelling. And the sequences between them at the end of the movie are so powerful. It's a very, very, very good movie. It is a, like, Sundance, weepy and, you know, like, inspiring in some ways, and a story about the resilience of the human spirit. But, like, in the best way possible.

[Joanna Robinson]

I was ready. I was braced for this to be incredibly like saccharin or clapping itself on the back for having made itself or any of that. And I just found it incredibly authentic and genuine. Like, earnest, but not too earnest.

[Todd McShay]

Agreed. You want to do some supporting? I loved making my honorable mentions here. Yeah, what do you got?

[Sean Fennasy]

Stanley Tucci and Conclave. Yeah, I loved both of the leads in Hitman. Glen Powell and Audrey Arjona. Josh Hutcherson in the Beekeeper.

[Todd McShay]

Incredible poll. Love this.

[Sean Fennasy]

Oh, gosh.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really good one.

[Sean Fennasy]

Just the worst possible son you could have.

[Todd McShay]

It's literally Hunter Biden and Don Jr together legit.

[Joanna Robinson]

You've brought up the Beekeeper a number of times. Is this, like, a big movie for you this year?

[Todd McShay]

It's a fun movie, Amanda. Just Put it on her best movies of the year list.

[Joanna Robinson]

I love it.

[Sean Fennasy]

Rightly so.

[Joanna Robinson]

Love it.

[Todd McShay]

It was very, very fun.

[Sean Fennasy]

Willem Dafoe, Nosferatu, who, honestly, we didn't talk about enough on the forthcoming Nosferatu Pod.

[Todd McShay]

He kind of is just doing Willem Dafoe at this point in these movies where he's like, there is a beast.

[Sean Fennasy]

But that's exactly what I want.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's kind of what he does Saturday night as well.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's very true.

[Todd McShay]

He's kind of the Saturday night. But yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

Hunter Schaefer and Cuckoo, who I was really impressed by, like, a more restrained kind of scream queenie, like, anxious performance that I really liked. Dennis Quaid in the Substance, who was eating shrimp. Like, nobody's fucking disgusting. Absolutely gross. Kirsten Dunst in Civil War and the Megalon in Megalopolis. Tell me it's not important. Tell me it didn't change your life.

[Todd McShay]

Either of you guys like Megalopolis? What is like? What is like? Tell me.

[Sean Fennasy]

I had a great time watching it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Thank you.

[Sean Fennasy]

I would recommend that people see it and I will never be watching it again.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. Okay.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's how I feel.

[Joanna Robinson]

It was quite the experience. I'm glad we saw it. Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah. Absolutely.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Got it. What are your also rans, your honorable mentions?

[Joanna Robinson]

I've got Boyd Holbrook in a Complete unknown as Johnny Cash.

[Todd McShay]

So technically, this movie will not be out yet when we're doing when this episode is coming out. But I texted Chris after I saw the movie. Chris, the largest holder shareholder of Boyd Holbrooke. Stuck. No, that's you.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, we share.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. You share.

[Sean Fennasy]

Okay.

[Todd McShay]

And I just said, huge winners of a Complete unknown colon, Boyd Holbrook. And then I stopped sending messages. But that's not actually how I feel. But for his purposes, he was like.

[Joanna Robinson]

I saw this movie. I saw this movie. It was me. And then it was Mallory Rubin, and then it was Chris Ryan and his lovely wife Phoebe. And every time Boyd Holbrook came on screen, Malorie elbowed both of us with, like, extreme enthusiasm. He's great. And especially, like, since we. Joaquin Phoenix so famously played Johnny Cash for James Mangold. It's, like, a lot to have to live up to. I thought he was wonderful.

[Todd McShay]

It's a very different Cash.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah. Carole Cain in between Two Temples, which is getting Oscar buzz now all of a sudden.

[Todd McShay]

New York Film Critics Circle supporting actress winner.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's starting, and I feel like it could go.

[Todd McShay]

That would be cool. I love this movie. Yeah. I talked to the filmmaker and Jason Schwartzman on the pod.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. To be more in the substance again, sometimes you just have to state the obvious. Fred Heckinger in Heckinger. I always mispronounce his name in both Gladiator 2 and Thelma. I love this kid. I love him.

[Todd McShay]

He's also a scamp. I watched him in a Q and a after Gladiator 2 with it was Connie Nielsen and Paul Mescal being very restrained and professional. Denzel Washington trying to say as few words as possible. And Fred Hechinger just being like, this was fucking crazy, dude. I was out there with Ridley Scott and Denzel Washington. We were hanging out. I got a monkey on my shoulder. He was great.

[Joanna Robinson]

I really liked him in Thelma too. Nick Holt in Nosferatu, despite Sean's feelings about that.

[Todd McShay]

What do you mean?

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't know.

[Todd McShay]

I like him. He's good.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Todd McShay]

He's a cock. He's the Earl.

[Sean Fennasy]

He is what he is.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's okay.

[Sean Fennasy]

We all have roles to play in life.

[Todd McShay]

We do.

[Joanna Robinson]

Gabriel LaBelle in Saturday Night. Saturday Night. Not a film that I loved, but I really loved his performance as Lorne Michaels. At the center of it, Ali Carvalho from Mean Girls. Famously Moana. But Renee Rapp is really the person who walked out of Mean Girls with. But Ali was fantastic in that film, and her song, I thought, was, like, the best part of that film.

[Todd McShay]

Did you see Moana 2?

[Joanna Robinson]

I have not seen Moana 2. Did it change your life?

[Sean Fennasy]

I mean, it will once. Once it hits Disney. It'll be changing your life, I'm sure.

[Todd McShay]

Well, it changed the way I spend my time. Yeah. The soundtrack is going super hard in the house. Alice was on board.

[Joanna Robinson]

So Ali's is the star of the show.

[Todd McShay]

Hearing her voice a lot.

[Joanna Robinson]

Got it. Dev Patel. Monkey Man.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's our guy.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dev Patel.

[Todd McShay]

I like that he tried.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think it's a good movie. I think his. His performance is good in it. He is good, and I like that. He nearly broke his whole entire body trying to make that movie.

[Todd McShay]

You know, what he's given me is Warren Beatty right now where he's like, I can do it myself. Yeah. And I'm not sure if that is how it will continue to go, but, you know, classically handsome guy, has tried, has accomplished a lot at a young age, is often around good projects. And then at a certain point early in his career is like, let me take control. So we'll see how it works out. Monkey Man.

[Joanna Robinson]

Not great.

[Todd McShay]

Wasn't quite what I wanted it to Be.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. A lot of promise. And then it was sort of whelming. And then Aaron Taylor Johnson, I came.

[Sean Fennasy]

A hair from putting it on the Fall Guy. This is such a good part.

[Joanna Robinson]

What's funny is we're gonna talk about Amy Adams. I literally watched. I was literally watched Nocturnal Animals this morning.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's a vibe.

[Joanna Robinson]

And it was a bad idea. But in watching it, I was reminded because he's kind of doing McConaughey in that, too. I was reminded of how good he is in his McConaughey impression in fall Guy. He was wonderful in that movie.

[Todd McShay]

We were admiring his arch hamminess on the Nosferatu conversation. Hamminess?

[Sean Fennasy]

His mutton chops.

[Joanna Robinson]

I mean, the mutton chops are great. Do you feel like they used him the way they should have in Nosferatu?

[Sean Fennasy]

I mean, I feel like he's selectively deployed. He's really the ultimate wife guy in that movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

I guess I just like Aaron Taylor Johnson can do so much in a way that, again, to repeat with Lupita, someone that handsome should not be able to do.

[Sean Fennasy]

Someone with that many abs should not also have.

[Todd McShay]

You know what was a big revelation to me about him in Nosferatu is that he's a short guy.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Well, Nicolt is also.

[Todd McShay]

Is he quite tall?

[Joanna Robinson]

Extremely tall.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, so maybe that's what it was. Maybe he's just average height. But Nicolt is towering over him, and there are a lot of shots of them in the framework. We've got an entire Holt head over Aaron Taylor Johnson. I like him quite a bit. And, like, I found Bullet Train almost unwatchable, but I loved him in it. So good.

[Joanna Robinson]

He's so good in that movie.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. So, okay, those are good picks. I'll give you some supporting picks that I enjoyed as well. I think my idea here was only supporting characters, maybe with one exception. Sergio Castellito in Conclave, who is the Italian cardinal. Who? Vapes.

[Joanna Robinson]

He's great.

[Todd McShay]

That's my guy. I love that guy. That's when we. When I remake conclave in 20 years, CR will be playing that role. Jesse Plemons in Civil War. One of the most electrifying movie scenes of the year. Further confirmation he can do anything and be quite scary. Landry being scary is just so fascinating. That's where we are in our culture.

[Joanna Robinson]

We were just talking about him on Breaking Bad.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah, perfect. Psycho. In that show, Todd was terrifying, but.

[Todd McShay]

In a different psycho in this moment.

[Sean Fennasy]

The glasses game isn't as strong.

[Todd McShay]

For sure. No, no. I should have worn those Red ones for this conversation. Dan Stevens times three.

[Sean Fennasy]

Let's fucking go.

[Todd McShay]

Dan Stevens, Godzilla X Kong, the New Empire. He's playing, I think, an Australian monster dentist. I believe that's what his role is.

[Joanna Robinson]

You would have to tell me because despite my love for Dan Stevens, I did not see Godzilla.

[Sean Fennasy]

This is a bridge you couldn't follow.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I couldn't.

[Todd McShay]

Ridiculous film. He is introduced in the movie, swinging on a giant crane, removing a tooth from King Kong's mouth.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yep.

[Todd McShay]

So super cool there.

[Joanna Robinson]

Did you see Godzilla?

[Todd McShay]

I did not.

[Sean Fennasy]

I've only seen the original or I guess the pre.

[Todd McShay]

He's having a ball. He's having an absolute ball. He's also having a ball in Abigail where he's basically like in a Michael Mann movie that happens to have vampires in it.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Did you see Abigail?

[Sean Fennasy]

There's a perfect world where it is the Michael Mann movie and we think it's the Michael Mann movie and we show up and it's the vampire.

[Todd McShay]

That would have been so amazing. We didn't get that. I enjoyed him. And Cuckoo, you mentioned Hunter Schaeffer. He's also having so much fun as an evil German doctor in Cuckoo. Like an absolute riot.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is what Dan Stevens should be doing at all times. And it often makes the choice to do that and then sometimes makes the Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, but he should be doing this.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, yeah. He's mostly a nasty little freak and I respect it.

[Sean Fennasy]

We Stan, our nasty little freaks.

[Joanna Robinson]

Little freaks is correct for Dan Stevens. Cuck is incorrect for Nicholas Holmes.

[Sean Fennasy]

Well, we'll see the casting directors of America think differently.

[Todd McShay]

Speaking of nasty little freaks, I also have Jeremy Strong from the Apprentice, a movie that I'm kind of mixed on, even though the two performances in the middle of it, I think. Awesome. Jeremy Strong in particular as Roy Cohn, one of the singular freaks of the 20th century. Vicki crepes and the Dead Don't Hurt, which is a movie that I like quite a bit. That was a little bit underplayed. She's technically the star, but she doesn't quite get the same billing that her co star gets. I just wanted to give that movie a shout out. I have another Aubrey Plaza movie that I want to give some love to. Megalopolis. Wow, Platinum.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's amazing.

[Todd McShay]

Movie's kind of a car crash, but she's so fun.

[Sean Fennasy]

You simply have to say, wow, Platinum, as much as humanly possible.

[Todd McShay]

And then my last one is another both physical and vocal performance, though we never see this actor's face. It's Kevin Durand. Who's also an Abigail in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. He plays Proximus Caesar, who is the big bad of this movie. Another movie that I was very mixed on. I had high hopes for and didn't love, but I love what he did. And as we know as anti circus fans, if you can elevate the mocap performance style, it's something to give a shout to. That's a lot of performances. I'm sure we left some stuff out. I don't know. I don't really care at this point.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I think we got it. I think we did it all.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think there's anyone yelling at this podcast right now about anything. We missed the big picture.

[Todd McShay]

No, people would never yell at that. Let's talk about Night Pitch. So I, you know, we're. This episode's coming out a couple weeks after the movie is released. I don't think this movie is going to burn up the box office.

[Joanna Robinson]

Nope.

[Sean Fennasy]

What makes you think that?

[Todd McShay]

Well, two reasons. One, it's about a middle aged woman.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Two, it's being presented as a kind of genre movie and it is ultimately not really that. It is a bit of a bait and switch, wrong footing. And I think it has been that for a long period of time. When we first heard about the movie, I hadn't read the Rachel Yoder novel, but I thought it was going to be like a Universal Classics monster movie with a mom.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And that's not at all what this movie is. It stars Amy Adams, Scoot McNary, and it's a movie essentially about a woman coping and managing her life in the face of living almost entirely with a two year old. And it's complicated because, as I said, I really love Amy Adams and I'm in the exact same phase of my life that this character is in. Obviously, I'm not a woman. My wife did watch this movie and I can share her thoughts about it as we go through it. I want to hear them. But I'll start with you, Joanna. What'd you think of Night Bitch?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think I'm a lot higher on it than you guys are, and that is okay. I love Marielle Heller in general, as a filmmaker. I don't think she's. Her Mr. Rogers movie was okay, but everything else she's made has been, I think, a masterpiece. I don't have kids. You have kids. I'm glad you're here to represent the parents on this podcast, but some of the people that I feel closest to in my life, I Have watched them go through. Go through motherhood is like, a weird way to put it, but, like, especially early motherhood and the alienation of it and the loneliness of it and the way in which you feel like your entire life is been taken from you in a way, even though there's so much joy and all the other things that come with it. So I really recognize this as something I have tried my best to understand happening for women I feel very close to in my life. And I loved to see this. A film that it made me think of immediately was Tully, the Charlize Theron movie. And that's a similar. Like, both of these movies were really educational for me in terms of, like, as much as I can try to understand someone explaining it to me. Having the experience of sitting in a dark theater and being put immediately in this pov. That's what film can do. That's what fiction can do. And I just. I love that this film exists. I do agree that, like, some of the, you know, either marketing or, you know, similar to what you said with my old ass, like, I don't think you necessarily need some of the genre stuff that's in here to sell the story that you're selling, but I. I.

[Todd McShay]

Might argue you don't need them at all.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And that ultimately is, like, the. The signature flaw of the movie for me.

[Joanna Robinson]

I just think that the idea of. I feel like a literal monster is something that's interesting and worth exploring.

[Todd McShay]

Well, what did you think, Rob? Cause I think we should dig into that concept.

[Sean Fennasy]

Right. I do think it has an interesting perspective and thing to say about motherhood. I just think it has the one thing to say, and it wants to say it over and over and over in a way that felt because of all those weird genre trimmings, like a little ham fist. In the end, based on the total concoction of what it was, I felt like Amy Adams is going for it, and this movie is, like, almost scared to go for it to the extent that she is. It felt like, really pulled back. Where I want more of the titular Night Bitch or none of the titular Night Bitch. I want this movie to be, like, a little smarter or much, much dumber. And I feel like we ended up in a weird middle ground with it.

[Todd McShay]

So I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a director, and we both have children that are three years old, and I think we were both having maybe a particularly challenging week with our kid, and we often talk about movies, and I was like, what are the There are no movies about this. There are no movies about the. Certainly this movie is tightly focused on motherhood, but just the experience of parenting through what is typically a fairly traumatic era of a young person's life. Because invariably, especially with kids in certain kind of households, this is an artistic household. In this movie, there's an encouragement of expression and being open with your feelings, and also a level of intelligence that is bred because of the way that the child is fortunate enough to be raised in, where they can communicate really well and they're sophisticated in some ways, but they have no ability to modulate their feelings. And I think me and my friend were both going through this period where it's like, this is really, really hard. And I was like, how is. Why is. Why are there no movies about this? Like, it's for millions of people. They go through this and people will. There are a billion movies about falling in love and fewer, but still a lot of movies about falling out of love and breaking up. And there are movies about being parents. There are lots of movies about being parents, or lots of movies about other people's parents and people dying. All of these, like, essential life experiences. I've not seen a lot of movies about what it's like to have a two or three year old in your house all day long. And like, a week later I saw Nightbitch and I was like, this is the movie. This is exactly. And so the thing that I've been kind of toggling with through this is with the understanding that, like, I can't really relate to the motherhood aspect. And some of that alienation that you're describing, it gets at so much of this, so right, the profound repetition, the.

[Sean Fennasy]

Monotony montage at the beginning, like, that stuff always.

[Todd McShay]

And it's so right that just like you're hitting the same prepackaged breakfast in the pan every morning. Like, she just nails that stuff. Mariel Heller has two young kids. Like, she is clearly pulling from some personal experience to kind of visualize and literalize these ideas. And as I'm watching the movie and I'm kind of toggling as a huge genre fan with, like, her inability, I think, to really execute on the genre ideas. But the stunning way that she accurately represents some of the things I saw my wife go through, some friends go through over the years, but wondering whether or not that makes for a good movie. And maybe that's one of the reasons why there are just not a lot of movies about this. I think some of it is because people try to Memory. Hold this period, because then Your kid turns 4 and 5 and 6 and you're like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me because everything is fun. But this tight corridor of two to three and a half, where everything is so challenging all the time, I think people are like, get me out of here a little bit.

[Joanna Robinson]

On the one hand, yeah. But on the other hand, I think because for decades, this was considered a woman's struggle, that people were uninterested in it.

[Todd McShay]

It's a great point.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I think, you know, increasingly, hopefully, parenting feels like a joint group project. And there's, I think, this movie. I mean, were you telling me that you thought the. The characterization of Scoot's character was, like, cartoonish to you?

[Sean Fennasy]

He's got one thing to do, and it's like, talk down to Amy Adams at every single turn of this movie and be passive aggressive until he's finally confronted with the. It felt like a character that was being preached at the entire movie to me.

[Joanna Robinson]

What's so funny to me, Rob, is that when I watched this, I was like, I actually think this movie is being very nice to this archetype.

[Sean Fennasy]

Really.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think I have seen in my life way worse versions of this. And so I was like, I actually think she's being kind of gentle.

[D]

Oh, no.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think the character is being gentle.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, no, no.

[Sean Fennasy]

Do you think the overall treatment of the movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, because, like. And I like that about you, that you're like, this is the worst. And I'm like, this is actually kind of medium. And that's like, kind of. What's the worst about it is that he's like, he's not a villain. He's just clueless or can't possibly quite understand, or they've made decisions about who gets to leave the house and make money along a gender line that it's usually drawn in our particular culture. And I don't know. I thought that was really interesting. I was like. I feel like Mari Heller was like, let's tone it down a little around Scoot's character.

[Todd McShay]

I think that might be because she is a working mother and so is her partner, Jorma Tacon, who's also in the arts. I think you're both right. I think that there are some aspects of the way that that character is characterized, and you can imagine the level of self identification, guilt, pain, trauma, sadness that I felt watching that character. Some of it, I think, is a little bit broad. Some of it, I think, is, frankly, more generous than maybe I have even Been in my own life. So it was like a challenging movie to talk to my wife about because I am a person that like has the job where I go into work every day and I'm out many nights and I travel for work. And she doesn't do that. She still has her career. She hasn't given up her career the way that the Amy Adams character has. But there's a very vitriolic fight that they have that leads to a real fissure in their relationship kind of in the second half of the movie. We haven't had that fight, but I think it was close enough to fights that we've had where she was just like, this is tough, man. This is tough to be in this experience with these people. And I think the movie lets that intensity off the hook a little bit at the end and it gives it a little bit of like a rounded edge.

[Sean Fennasy]

The big speech that he delivers at the end of this movie is like cringey. I think it's genuinely undercut so much, that big conflict in the kitchen. To me, there's some truth in there, in the gray area in the like, why didn't you convince me to fight for my own life? Kind of mess that any family, any couple, any pairing of people can get into where we get by the end of it for. Not a lot of discernible nudge beyond that point. How spoilery are we being with this discussion?

[Todd McShay]

I guess if you don't want to hear any of the plot details of Nightmare, which is not the plottiest movie of all time. No, mostly a woman and a two year old hanging out for long stretches. But go ahead, fire on.

[Sean Fennasy]

There's this big speech he gives about like, I am in awe of you. That I understand why there are women and mothers in the world who want that character to say that thing in that moment. I get it. But seeing it on screen after this movie, I was just like, why are we doing that? Like, why is that the end point for this?

[Todd McShay]

I think it's because I. And I'm curious what you think, but I think because it's so relentlessly straightforward about the challenges of the experience at certain times when you're raising a kid that it felt like an odd. It's like she spit the bit at the end of the. At the end of the fight a little bit.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, that. Yeah. I think you guys are saying slightly different things and I think I more agree with you. That Amy Adams character is selling me right out. Love you, Rob. I love you, Rob.

[Todd McShay]

It's good to disagree about something like this, though.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I also think there's something more complicated going on here than. Because she's an artist as well. And so I think we watch so many movies about men and their art and, you know, we can talk about.

[Todd McShay]

What do you mean? What's wrong with that?

[Joanna Robinson]

Should we talk about the Brutalists for like, three hours?

[Todd McShay]

Why not?

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, and often in those movies, those artists are praised for being massive geniuses and like.

[Todd McShay]

Can I tell you something? Rob gave me an amazing idea on the last recording we did, which is that I should make the Brutalist episode of this show the same length as.

[Joanna Robinson]

The film, with a blessed 15 minute intermission.

[Todd McShay]

Well, perhaps I think it will just be me singing the score in that 15 minutes. But you're right that we bend over backwards to praise these great men.

[Joanna Robinson]

There are so many stories about men feeling disconnected from their art and reconnecting with their art. And these are like award winning, the most important movies of the year, blah, blah. And this is about a woman who is a mother and also an artist, and it's about her reconnecting with her art. And I also love the way that her struggle is triangulated via these two groups. She's got these, the moms at the library who she initially sneers at and then finds common cause with. They are her pack, in a sense, and she finds things to connect with them about. Whereas before she was like, sort of sneeringly their intellectual superior, she believed. And then she's got her friends at what I will call the kale salad dinner scene. And that was hard for me to watch because as much as I've tried to understand friends who have gone through this, I am sure I have been the shitty person at the kale salad dinner.

[Todd McShay]

I doubt it.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, and like, I doubt you.

[Todd McShay]

Are even close to any of those people in that sequence.

[Joanna Robinson]

But, like, unintentionally, it's so easy to just sort of like not know what you're bumbling into. And so, yes, at the end of this movie where people literally turn into dogs, there is some fantasy elements of I can have it all. I can be an artist, I can be a mom. I can have my husband come and be a dog, tell me he's in awe of me. I can have my old friends come and see that I'm amazing. I can have my new mom friends feel seen by my art. There's a lot of like, you know, fantasy at the end of, like.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, it tightens the bow quite a bit on top of the Present.

[Sean Fennasy]

She grabbed a piece of meat off of another person's table and gnawed it on her way out of the kale salad dinner. Or maybe didn't, I don't know. But then all of those people showed up at her art gallery in which there are a bunch of bones from animals that she, the human woman, may have just murdered.

[Todd McShay]

Well, you're getting into the genre aspect of it, which is the stuff that just doesn't work for me as a metaphor. It's an amazing device.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's a good metaphor in the movie about the Brutalist. The Brutalist ends with, this is way too soon.

[Todd McShay]

Way too soon.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have not seen this cut. This cut this, cut that, cut that. Way too soon for that. I'll say it more vaguely. Okay, I will say we're talking about the Brutalist. The Brutalist has a very similar end point.

[Todd McShay]

I would say there is a big metaphorical device in that film as well.

[Joanna Robinson]

And a laurel giving laurels to the artist in that as well.

[Todd McShay]

Without question.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm not saying this is.

[Todd McShay]

We could argue which is more clever or more effective.

[Joanna Robinson]

The Brutalist is better at it. I'm not saying this is as elevated as the Brutalist is. I'm not trying to put them on the exact same level. But I think we often dismiss women's versions of stories, that we celebrate men's versions of stories.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's fair.

[Todd McShay]

I think, that that ultimate point is 100% right. I just think that there's simultaneously too much and not enough going on in this movie, that there is, like, a tight psychological focus that is carried by, I would genuinely say, a brave performance by Amy Adams, who is willing to be, frankly, haggard by the standards of a movie star. And not in the, like, Nicole Kidman wears a prosthetic nose way. We're just like, Amy Adams just gained, like, some weight and wore no makeup and let her hair get a little bit stringy and unbrushed, the way that you might be if you are raising a toddler and stuck in the house all day. She hasn't showered. You know, you can tell because you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Literally don't have time.

[Todd McShay]

It's like one of those things where if you don't have kids, you don't realize that you're like. Like you can't go anywhere. You can't go to the bathroom. Like, you just can't go to the bathroom because you can't leave them alone because they're two and they could walk into the street. It's a very obvious, simple thing. And every parent is like, that's listening. Is like, absolutely. And everybody who doesn't have kids is like, I didn't really think that I will never be free for three years. But it is true. And so I think that all of that stuff is so genuinely deep and honest. And the other stuff is movie making device work. Like, I feel like that scene at the end happens in part because they're like, we gotta end this movie. This can't be an ongoing portrait of a woman experiencing this phase of her life. If this were 1986, you might have, like, a series of films that would be tracking a woman at the stage. You could imagine Chantal Ackerman doing a series of films about a woman at various stages of motherhood. But this is like a Fox Searchlight movie with a big movie star. And so they're like, how are we gonna wrap this thing up? How about an art show? So I don't know. I didn't love that. And I didn't love the animal murdering dog aspect to it, but I don't know.

[Joanna Robinson]

Pretty. Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

I will say the actual footage of the Night Bitch, or night bitches, if you prefer, depending on what you think of the other moms at book. Babies running through the streets. Majestic. Absolutely majestic dog footage in this movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

How much of your discomfort with this movie is because you're a dog guy?

[Sean Fennasy]

I mean, I wish there were more dog.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. But there's like some tough dog stuff.

[Sean Fennasy]

There's some tough dog stuff. But look, there's also a lot of. There's a cat who has a tough time. There's a lot of rodents and perhaps possums who meet unfortunate ends. There's also, like. It is a Fox movie with a movie star. It's also like a movie with like a bunch of big pussing wounds in it.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

You're not a puss guy.

[Sean Fennasy]

Only in the substance. Like once a year, one pussing back wound a year.

[Todd McShay]

What about Non Nosferatu's Exposed Spaces?

[Sean Fennasy]

That's just who he is, though.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, that's true.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's not a state thing.

[Todd McShay]

This is who Amy Adams is. State of mind. Yeah. What else can we say?

[Joanna Robinson]

I mean, I don't. I will. I will say, as a genre, body horror is not my favorite. So there are. I'm not gonna lie to you. There are moments of this film that I was having. Struggling through, but I just. I don't know, I just, like, I love that Amy Adams exec produced this. I saw it at the Mill Valley Film Festival where she came and talked about it beforehand and talked about how much it meant for her to be able to tell this story as a mom and Mari Heller as a mom to be able to tell this story, a story that they feel is really underrepresented. And I really agree with it. Is it 100% successful in every regard? No. I'm not gonna lie to you. I think that there are things that are feel shaggy. Not to put an unintentional. I really regret. I regret it needs a good reaction coming out. I regretted it, but I'm just really glad it exists.

[Todd McShay]

I think the response we needed there was woof, woof.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

One other thing I'd just like to cite very quickly about this movie is that this child is too nice. That this is a fairly well behaved two year old boy. And that's just not how it is.

[Sean Fennasy]

That kid wants two things. To sleep in his parents bed and to eat hash browns every morning. That's it. That's really it.

[Joanna Robinson]

I mean. And paint on the walls.

[Todd McShay]

He does a few things that you're like, this would be very stressful. Sure, parents have been there before. But his demeanor is very kind.

[Joanna Robinson]

Wait, can I.

[Todd McShay]

And that's not. That's just not how it is all the time. It's just not.

[Sean Fennasy]

If you were in a parallel situation, Sean, would you encourage your daughter to sleep in a dog bed?

[Todd McShay]

No, my daughter sleeps in a real bed and it's wonderful and I don't want anything to change about that. So. But like that's a real. Obviously sleep is a real struggle in general for all parents. And the movie goes out of its way to be like, this is hard. The fight that she has with him about their sleep. Like I was like, this is journalism. Like what they're doing here is so sincere and accurate.

[Sean Fennasy]

The shot of him on the couch playing PlayStation talking about Nitro boosters. I'm like, oh no.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. You knew that wasn't gonna go in a good direction.

[Joanna Robinson]

What is a dog bed if not just a beanbag with a rim? You know what I mean?

[Sean Fennasy]

It's pretty comfortable.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think that's fine. I think it's fine to let your kids sleep in a dog bed. In case you were curious about our tips, I wanna go back to your. So your wife said it was tough to watch some of the fight stuff, but how did she feel sort of overall in terms of the depiction of motherhood?

[Todd McShay]

So she watched it on Monday. Monday night. What did I go do? I'm sure I was out seeing a film. She has access to the PGA screener portal. So she's been powering through awards season as well.

[Sean Fennasy]

So you were trying to give her the most authentic experience by being out of the house while she has to watch.

[Joanna Robinson]

She said, don't worry, later in the week I will babysit my own child.

[Todd McShay]

What did I do? I mean I did that plenty over the last few days. I had a dinner, I had a dinner with a friend actually, a rare non screening night for me. So she fired up. It was her choice actually. When I saw the film I was like, caution, this might not be the best experience. You might not have a lot of fun. Perhaps you should try Sing Sing, she said. We talked about it afterwards but she texted me when she started watching and she said, I started Night Bitch and I'm depressed about how sweet this kid is. And then she wrote, this movie is so rough. Lol. I'm turning it off. She did eventually finish it and I think she found some merit and meaning in the movie. It's hard not to. It's a well made movie even if you don't necessarily love where it goes. But I think it's hard and I think for some parents will watch the movie and feel that swell of identification and power and some will watch it and be like, I got enough of this at home. I'm good. I got enough of that alienation and that evacuation of my own humanity at home that I don't really want to spend more time in the off hours engaging in it. But I bet it's like if you have a 10 year old, it's probably a good movie because you're like, I remember that. And then we're out of it.

[Sean Fennasy]

But in a distant way.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff.

[Joanna Robinson]

When things go wrong, but these are.

[Todd McShay]

The words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you, you can talk.

[Joanna Robinson]

To your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect.

[Sean Fennasy]

The things you value most, file a.

[Todd McShay]

Claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Let's talk about Amy Adams. So you know what? We just have not done very many halls of fame for actresses on the show and so I'm endeavoring to change that as much as possible.

[Joanna Robinson]

And you brought Rob, the speaker for the every woman.

[Sean Fennasy]

This is what I'm here for, to tell you about motherhood, to speak for.

[Todd McShay]

The Every woman, as I said, my two. Well, I want, what I wanted was a prestige TV kind of semi reunion on this pod. But we're also, we're representing femininity. You know, it's just also, Amanda does not like Mariel Heller's movies. So this is probably a relief for her to not have to participate in this.

[Joanna Robinson]

I love to help Amanda out.

[Todd McShay]

Amy Adams, Is she good? And if so, why?

[Sean Fennasy]

Come on, come on.

[Todd McShay]

I'm a big fan.

[Sean Fennasy]

The way she is talked about, disrespectful, incredibly disrespectful.

[Todd McShay]

I agree. I have tried to defend her over.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think her. Some of the projects she's been in more recently have not always been as successful. I've not always hit for me, I think Night Bitch among them. But overall, in terms of the body of work, incredible supporting work. I think some of the, for me, like one of the defining lead performances of the last 20 or 25 years or so. Like, I think she has some real home run stuff. And to talk about her as if she's just like strikes and gutters, that's just not the reality of the situation. She's often, if she's in a bad movie or one that doesn't quite work for you, still one of the best parts of it. So I'm, I, I'm here for Amy Adams. I think she has pretty incredible range. I know we're going to talk through the entirety of it, but I love the variety of what she can put on screen.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's interesting. So I agree in terms of variety, but I think I was really considering this because I do love Amy Adams. I do not want to knock her in any way. I will say I don't think she can do everything. No, she's not one of those actors who can do everything. But the wide swing between the two things that she does really well is so stark that you can kind of convince yourself she can do any. So that sort of like wide eyed, innocent, bubbly thing that she does so well and she did a lot more early in her career and then the hardened grief or trauma that she's done in a number of projects and then somewhere in the middle there is this sort of like sex kitten through the lens of the bubbly, innocent thing. And so that's just like, it's really only like three notes that I can triangulate on her performances, but they are so, again, so different. And she modulates the timbre of her voice when she does that. She lowers the register of her voice for certain performances or pitches it higher for certain performances in a way that is just like. She's not a chameleon at all. She's always Amy Adams, in fact. And this is one of my. This is one of the most. I don't know, it's very interesting to me. She dyed her hair red early in her career. She says it changed her career because it changed the kind of roles that she was being born.

[Todd McShay]

She was blonde.

[Joanna Robinson]

She was like a strawberry blonde. And so she's famous for being this red, like this redhead. And it's just not who she is. It's a performance in and of itself and I just love that. And she's not a celebrity. She's someone that does not like to put her business out there. And so, so all of her is. What we're getting is just this manufactured Amy Adams thing. And I think that's fascinating.

[Todd McShay]

It is really interesting. I think one of the reasons why she's come under fire here, so to speak, though not by me, is because she had a very like an incredibly successful 15 year window in a window when a lot of actresses do, which is roughly 25 to 45. And. And she was in franchise films. She was in lots and lots of prestige films. She's worked with some of the most celebrated directors of her time. She basically was one of those performers who you were like, she's never bad, you know, she was like John C. Reilly, where you're like, thank God they're there, you know, and that. And she. Six Oscar nominations in like a 12 year window. She's just a very reliable performer until she wasn't. And she's in this very intense five year rut now, which I think Nightbitch kind of pulls her out of, to be honest, because I think she's very good in this film. And even though I know you like it more, I still, I'm still ultimately pro the movie, but she's made some tough choices and she got caught up in some really bad franchise stuff on the D.C. side that like sucked out a couple of years of her career. And she's 50 now, which is crazy to think of because she has always seemed like, you say the girl from Junebug, you know, the upbeat, innocent seeming young woman. And she's not. And she's now entered the phase of a career that Hollywood is often very hard because they have really nothing for you to do between 50 and 65 until your grandma. And so it'll be interesting to see how she navigates it because she does have this reputation as Like, God, we got to get this person an Oscar. Like, we keep, like, dangling it in front of her face, and we're not giving it to her. And so she's taken on parts that it seems like she's going for it for some reason, even though the projects are bad. And then, you know, she's like, she's in the J.D. vance movie, you know, and that's, like, for some people, unrecoverable. And it puts a real.

[Joanna Robinson]

We can't.

[Todd McShay]

Casts a pallor on this conversation.

[Joanna Robinson]

We can't. We can't. I mean, we have to throw Glenn Close on the fire if we're gonna do that. Are we doing that to Glenn Close?

[Todd McShay]

I mean, I've been doing it for years as somebody who's been making jokes about the wife. Yeah. Speaking of. And I think Glenn Close is weirdly, like, an echo of what could happen to Amy Adams. Glenn Close is still a great actress and occasionally is in movies I like, but not often. So, anyway, that's a kind of unkind way to present it, because a lot of times, if you're Bradley COOPER and you're 50, you're like, you're just getting started, buddy. Good luck to you. You're gonna win 10 Oscars. And now with someone like Amy Adams, we don't see her in the same Collectively.

[Sean Fennasy]

Right.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's sort of why I wanted to bring up the fact that she produced Night Bitch. Cause she was, you know, if you look at some of the films she's done in the last couple years, Dear Evan Hansen or the Woman in the Window hillbilly elegy you mentioned, a lot of them genuinely do make sense on the page of, like, this is a very popular bestseller, or this is a huge smash musical, or this, that. And the other thing, it's not like, I don't get why she said yes to some of these things. Who says no to playing Lois Lane, even if you're playing it Zack Snyder?

[Todd McShay]

Well, when she was cast, I was like, that's genius.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I think her moving into sort of her producer era, which seems to be true for a lot of her upcoming projects as well, is an attempt similar to the way that, like, you know, the women in the Big Little Lies universe, like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, are trying to sort of, like, carve out a path for themselves that Hollywood says doesn't exist. One of my favorite Amy Adams performances in the last decade is Sharp Objects, a TV show that not enough people talk about. But I think it's maybe my. We're not gonna talk about it when.

[Todd McShay]

We read movies, I mean, it's a question of should we be including things like that. Because. Cause frankly, it will be an interesting challenge to get to 10 here.

[Sean Fennasy]

It might.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Sean Fennasy]

I will make a strong case for the episode of Buffy she appears in, if that's what you would like me to do.

[Todd McShay]

I have not seen that, so I can't wait.

[Sean Fennasy]

She's a witch bigot.

[Todd McShay]

Basically.

[Joanna Robinson]

A witch bigot.

[Sean Fennasy]

Anti witch bigot.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, my goodness.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true. It's unforgivable. But I mean, like, Sharp Objects is, I think, a really good example of something that was 2018. It was a few years ago, but a role you can find for yourself. If you're Amy Adams and you have the pull and the ability to create projects that are of interest to you, Nightbitch being one of them, I think that's potentially very exciting.

[Todd McShay]

Nicole Kidman is a very good model. Obviously, Amy Adams isn't as glamorous as Nicole Kidman, but Nicole Kidman has had this fascinating balance between super commercial, kind of almost schlocky stuff and working with serious filmmakers and making this serious bid to work with more female filmmakers. And, you know, like, you could see a similar arc over the next ten years for her. But you gotta pick good stuff. And you gotta work all the time, too. That's the other thing is you gotta, like, make the projects happen. So we'll see what she does. Let's talk about her films. Let's start picking our 10. Okay. She's got a long filmography. Took her quite a while to really establish herself as something beyond a supporting actor. Yeah. Drop Dead Gorgeous, I believe, is the first part she's ever been. She's in a fairly small role in that movie, which is a pretty fun movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's great in it.

[Todd McShay]

I don't know if that feels quite like.

[Sean Fennasy]

Probably not meaty enough apart.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I'm usually interested in the breakout, but the breakout takes a long time for her.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is the question. And I know I just always have this question when you do this segment, is it the best movie or is it the best Amy Adams performance inside of a movie?

[Todd McShay]

The answer is yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, great. I think we should consider.

[Sean Fennasy]

And also the most important and also the highest grossing and also the awards bid.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think we should consider Drop Dead Gordon, but not firmly put it on.

[Todd McShay]

That sounds like a yellow to me. 2000 Psycho Beach Party. Funny movie. Haven't seen this in a long time. It's kind of a satire of Beach Blanket Bingo. Style thing.

[Sean Fennasy]

That's literally the name I have written down.

[Todd McShay]

Psycho.

[Sean Fennasy]

Bingo.

[Joanna Robinson]

Did you watch all of these movies, Rob?

[Sean Fennasy]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Joanna Robinson]

How many Amy Adams movies do you think?

[Sean Fennasy]

Not at liberty to say. But I did watch Hillbilly Elegy for Science.

[Todd McShay]

Thank you. I watched it on the day of the election when it was was released. Okay. Not four years ago. Not this year. I don't think Psycho Beach Party is in. Even though this is blonde era Amy Adams. Many of these movies are blonde era Amy Adams. Cruel Intentions two from two.

[Sean Fennasy]

I'm shocked to learn that this is actually a prequel and that Amy Adams is playing Catherine, the Sarah Michelle Geller. She's playing Sarah Michelle Geller.

[Todd McShay]

I haven't seen this. Okay. Did you watch it?

[Sean Fennasy]

I watch clips. Let's just say it doesn't work.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. So Cruel Intentions 2 is red as well.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

The Slaughter Rule. Haven't seen it. Don't know what.

[Sean Fennasy]

This is also another very small part.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. Red 2002 pumpkin. I remember this Christina Ricci vehicle quite well.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think there's enough for her here.

[Todd McShay]

No, I agree with you. I would say the same is true for Serving Sarah, which is a real time capsule comedy of my college years.

[Sean Fennasy]

It does introduce a certain Amy Adams archetype that she tried, which is Hot mess Amy Adams for a while.

[Todd McShay]

Yes.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yes. Again, doesn't really work. Pretty small part. Don't see it for this.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

There's a group of actresses at this time, what I'll call the American Pie class. Tara Reid, Mina Suvari, Shannon Elizabeth, Alison Hannigan. There's a whole. Rebecca Gayheart is in this conversation. There's a whole bunch of actresses. And they all kind of had to choose. They had to say, I'm a bombshell or I'm the girl next door. And it was very bifurcated at that time. And she kind of doesn't choose.

[Joanna Robinson]

She says why not? Both.

[Todd McShay]

Yes. And I think that's one of the reasons why she has persisted. She's also just the better at. I mean, Tara Reid does not. Is no. Amy Adams. No.

[Joanna Robinson]

Well, Rebecca Gayheart catching strays.

[Todd McShay]

I like her work to this day.

[Joanna Robinson]

No rest for the Noxzema girls.

[Todd McShay]

Only one of Amy Adams and Rebecca Gayheart are in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'll have you know that's true. 2002, Catch Me if youf Can.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is a yes or no.

[Todd McShay]

I think this is green as well. Now this is a very, very small. But she is unmistakable in this movie. Yes. Brenda, who Pops off the screen.

[Sean Fennasy]

Show me a better performance in braces, Honestly.

[Todd McShay]

Is this the only time she and Leo have worked together?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think so.

[Todd McShay]

Because they got something cooking between them. I would like to see them again.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's phenomenal in this movie. A movie that I love. And she's wonderful in it.

[Todd McShay]

I do too. I think this is our first green. 2004, the last run. Can't say I've seen it.

[Sean Fennasy]

No.

[Todd McShay]

2005, the wedding date. Haven't seen it.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have. She plays a shitty sister. A like, thoughtless hot girl.

[Todd McShay]

She's done that many times before. She's trying to pull herself out of Supporting Bitch, basically. Like, that's a part she keeps getting cast and I guess because of her presentation. 2005, the wedding date. Haven't seen Standing Still. Haven't seen. I assume these are red. Yes. And then we get Junebug in 2005.

[Sean Fennasy]

As Otto Green is a Otto Green.

[Todd McShay]

Major breakthrough is Ashley, the sweet, innocent. And I guess is she the sister in law of Embeth David's character who comes to stay with her husband's family in the south in Tennessee. I can't recall which state they're in.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's married to Ryan from the oc.

[Todd McShay]

Good pull in the film. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Pregnant.

[Todd McShay]

She's amazing in the film.

[Joanna Robinson]

Charming.

[Todd McShay]

Yes. Interesting that she's so known for being. I think she waited a little later in life to actually have children, but portrayed a expecting mother. This is kind of Night Bitch closes the loop on the Amy Adams arc. I hadn't thought about that. I really like this movie quite a bit. And I think she's magnificent in it. Very funny and very sweet. 2006, Talladega Nights, the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I've just completely forgotten she was in this movie. It's a classic comedy. I'm not sure if it really represents her at her best.

[Sean Fennasy]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

Here's the thing. Sometimes I kind of disagree that Amy Adams is great and everything. Because sometimes she's just there. And I'll get to like one of those films that I rewatched. And I was like, she's just aggressively there.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

And they had nothing for her.

[Todd McShay]

This sounds like a Bill Simmons critique. This is kind of one of his takes. He's like, what does she do?

[Joanna Robinson]

No, she does things, but not in every movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

She's not always given things to do.

[Todd McShay]

That was also a Bill Simmonsism. She does things.

[Sean Fennasy]

She does things. She did the things.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. Talladega Nights, we'll say, is red. She plays the character of gorgeous woman In Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. Fun movie. Not going in the hall of fame. Of course, 2006 is the X. Remind me which movie this is.

[Sean Fennasy]

I cannot.

[Todd McShay]

What is this? Because after this movie business really picks up. Yeah, the Amy Adams. Oh, of course I remember this now. This is the Zach Braff, Amanda Peete, Jason Bateman comedy.

[Joanna Robinson]

Of course you remember it.

[Todd McShay]

I saw this movie in movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

That movie doesn't exist, I am afraid to tell you.

[Todd McShay]

When his lawyer wife Sophia becomes pregnant, chronic underachiever Tom must take a job at his father in law's advertising firm. Tom has to adjust to the demands of a very high power job. And he finds himself in an increasingly hostile office rivalry with Chip, Sophia's paraplegic former lover.

[Sean Fennasy]

Those are words.

[Todd McShay]

Okay? The X is not going in.

[Joanna Robinson]

So you say things pop off after this. Which is true. It's because she gets nominated for June. But like this is all within the same year. Talladega. Nice. And the X is all. And she's nominated for June Bugs, you know, for the 2006 Oscars. Loses to Rachel Weisz and the Constant Gardener.

[Todd McShay]

And reasonable loss.

[Joanna Robinson]

It is a reasonable loss. But like that, that was like her major. Because she wanted to wear at Sundance when it premiered at Sundance. And then she got the Oscar nom. And people are like, who is this girl?

[Todd McShay]

So was this. Did these, do you think these jobs? She got these jobs after the nom. She probably got it all before.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think she did these before and then Enchanted is what she did after.

[Todd McShay]

So let's talk about Enchanted. I'd never seen it until a couple of weeks ago, even though it was a hugely successful movie. You know, I was 25 years old when this movie was released.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, not going to see Disney princess movies.

[Todd McShay]

Didn't go to see Enchanted. I did watch it with my daughter who was utterly mesmerized. Yes. And now is in a canon of her own. I like this movie. It is indisputably in the hall of fame.

[Sean Fennasy]

No question.

[Todd McShay]

Yes. It's one of her biggest hits. It is entirely built on her charm. Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

And you can see how they saw her in Junebug and built this for her.

[Sean Fennasy]

The naivety engine of Amy Adams is like in full effect. But also Marsden almost steals it.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's Marsden. It's kind of Marsden's movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

He's really, really good.

[Joanna Robinson]

Marsden's so good in this movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

The question is, as we're zooming out on like the ripple effects of these things, if we look at the state of live action Disney movies And I'm like, kind of bummed that this is the way it went. Like, she's the first live action Disney princess in a lot of ways. Not from Harnessed ip, but like, if you look at the reason a live action Beauty and the Beast movie exists, you could probably trace it back.

[Todd McShay]

It's an interesting point. I think that obviously it's quite depressing that this was an original movie that is almost like an active satire of all of the Disney movies that came before it. And you know, the sort of like, what if a Disney princess was made manifest in our world? Is the whole concept of the movie. But they don't do original live action movies like this anymore over there. So that's a real shame.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think the original sin for live action Disney is Alice. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, that's where it all went. Real, real bad for everything.

[Todd McShay]

We're on the precipice of Mufasa, Cole and the Lion King, which is your.

[Joanna Robinson]

Most anticipated movie of the year.

[Todd McShay]

We're talking about it soon. We'll talk about it on the pod. Yeah, I invited Van to that pod. Are you okay with that?

[Joanna Robinson]

That's perfect.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. 2008, Charlie Wilson's war.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is the one that I rewatched. I like Charlie Wilson's War. I rewatched it and I was like, Amy Adams sure is in here. In this movie. They don't do anything with her.

[Sean Fennasy]

What.

[Todd McShay]

What is her part? I've seen this movie like 10 times.

[Joanna Robinson]

She plays his assistant.

[Todd McShay]

Right?

[Joanna Robinson]

Charlie Wilson. So he's got a bunch of hot girls in his office, and she is the hot girl who is played by an Oscar nominated actress.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. I remember Emily Blunt being very alluring in this film.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, she sure is.

[Sean Fennasy]

Salute to her.

[Todd McShay]

There's a sequence on a veranda of some kind that I recall. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Correct.

[Todd McShay]

Quality, quality work, Nichols. Thank you, sir.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is great. A great Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle. But Amy Adams.

[Sean Fennasy]

Never sick at sea, I've heard.

[Joanna Robinson]

But like Amy Adams, there's a part where they, you know, are visiting a war zone, essentially, and she has this, you know, a moment with some. And I was like, oh, is this. Is this why you put Amy Adams in this role? Turns out, no. There's no reason for them to have swung up with that particular.

[Sean Fennasy]

Not so much.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, thank you for reminding me. So that's going to be a. On Charlie Wilson's War, though. It's just fine movie. Speaking of Emily Blunt, I believe she's in this film as well, is she not? Sunshine Cleaning, which was A Sundance breakout and was very well reviewed at the time and I think was one of those movies that had like a $10 million acquisition price and then nobody went and saw.

[Sean Fennasy]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, I saw it.

[Todd McShay]

What'd you think?

[Joanna Robinson]

I love it.

[Todd McShay]

Is this. Is this. This is yellow.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's a yellow. Are you arguing green or do you think yellow?

[Joanna Robinson]

No, yellow is fine.

[Sean Fennasy]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I love this movie.

[Todd McShay]

This is a movie about two women. Do they own or work at a cleaning company? The Star One.

[Joanna Robinson]

Star One, Their sisters. Yeah. And Emily Blunt's like, the Fuck up sister. Right, Right.

[Todd McShay]

This is so archetypal of Sundance, but I remember liking it at the time, too. I've definitely not revisited it in 15 years. We'll yellow. That Ms. Pettigrew lives for a day.

[Sean Fennasy]

Green. Green, Green.

[Todd McShay]

Wow.

[Joanna Robinson]

So green.

[Todd McShay]

Wow.

[Joanna Robinson]

So green.

[Todd McShay]

Go to bed. Go for it. Dig in.

[Sean Fennasy]

Maybe as charming as she's ever been in a movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Had you seen this movie before?

[Sean Fennasy]

I hadn't. This was a new one for me. I almost pitched it the other day for our World War II pod because it's like, low key, a Nazis in the background kind of movie. This, for one, may have been the moment, the singular moment in time that Lee Pace imprinted on a generation of interested parties.

[Joanna Robinson]

Correct.

[Sean Fennasy]

But Amy Adams is so good and just like a bolt of energy through this entire movie. It's mostly a two hander with her and Frances McDormand. They're both great in their own ways, but. But she's asked to be the Live Wire and she's asked to be the sort of, like, incorrigible flirt throughout this entire movie. And she's so, so good at it.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's so good. She plays. Her character's name is Delicia Lafosse and she is a film ingenue.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yes. A wannabe film ingenue.

[Joanna Robinson]

A wannabe film ingenue and a nightclub singer and has sort of betrayed her true love and her true self for fame. And so she's just coming across as this, like, bubbly confection of a girl. And Frances McDormand is here to teach you the true meaning of curses. And by trinity of Christmas, I mean.

[Todd McShay]

Sort of the anti.

[Sean Fennasy]

Which of the three boys you should choose.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, but just sort of. She's just. Yeah. Bubbly and. But she's so good in this.

[Todd McShay]

I gotta say, we're further along in the hall of fame than I would have thought at this stage of her career. So that's encouraging. 2008 doubt.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Is it, though?

[Joanna Robinson]

Really? Well, I'M not sure.

[Todd McShay]

Wow. To Joanna's point about what does she do? I'm not sure that she's really given enough to do. I mean, Viola Davis has one scene.

[Joanna Robinson]

And Violet is Meryl and Phil Schofield.

[Todd McShay]

Hoffman and then Amy Adams. In that order.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

I don't disagree. I think her role in that movie structurally is really important. Right. Like, if it is just the point counterpoint of investigating Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl, I think that works. You need someone to be like, looking to sweep shit under the rug at first opportunity. And this is her playing, like, naivety mode yet again. But as a nun, I think she just fills a role that the movie needs really well and pitches it at a really, really high level relative to what that role can be.

[Todd McShay]

I think that's generous. I'm gonna yellow it. I have the same reservations that Joanna.

[Joanna Robinson]

Has where I have such doubts.

[Todd McShay]

Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian, which I think is the second of the Night at the Museum movies. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm not gonna agree on this, but I just need to tell you, she's actually great at this movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

She's good.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, she's really good.

[Todd McShay]

I haven't seen this.

[Joanna Robinson]

She plays Emilio Earhart with a lot of moxie.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

And it's just quite fun. But full disclosure, I watched all of the Night at the Museum movies on a plane. On a really long plane ride. Had a great time.

[Sean Fennasy]

Did they make the Ringer's Plane movie list? I didn't even see.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think they did, but I put it on my long list. Good for you.

[Todd McShay]

I'm gonna Reddit with no disrespect to you or Amelia Earhart.

[Joanna Robinson]

I just want wanted to mark that she did more with this than she needed to.

[Todd McShay]

So this movie just came up in a conversation we were having the other day on the pod. Julie and Julia, which is a. I would say complicatedly remembered Nora Ephron film that is one part historical drama and one part coming of age dramedy smashed together. I believe you were referring to the Julia Child aspect as being the good half.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think that's universally accepted.

[Joanna Robinson]

There is literally online a cut of this movie that is just the Julia part.

[Sean Fennasy]

The child cut.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Because Julie Powell, with love and respect to her, is an intolerable character. And I hate that part of the movie.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. So that means red.

[Joanna Robinson]

I would read this.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

Her part doesn't work.

[Joanna Robinson]

Doesn't work at all.

[Todd McShay]

Is it Adrian Jack Black?

[Joanna Robinson]

It's Messina, isn't it?

[Todd McShay]

Is it Messina? It's the partner. Messina. What movie am I thinking of? The intern.

[Joanna Robinson]

Devil Wears Prada.

[Todd McShay]

Devil Wears Prada. Thank you. Yeah, I tend to get those confused.

[Joanna Robinson]

Your Meryls.

[Todd McShay]

My meryl movies? Yeah. 2009. Moonlight Serenade. What is this movie? Are we sure it exists?

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm not sure it exists.

[Todd McShay]

I'm going to look up the description. I love to read the description. Well, that's the Glenn Miller song. Moonlight Serenade. That's not what we're referring to. Moonlight Serenade is a 2009 musical romance film directed by Giancarlo Tallarco that stars Amy Adams as Chloe. A piano player discovers that the girl with a coat check of a jazz club is a talented singer. She persuades him to form a musical act together. What is this movie?

[Joanna Robinson]

Who's the him?

[Todd McShay]

Alec Newman.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, no.

[Todd McShay]

What hap. What was this movie made in like 1999 and then released 10 years later?

[Joanna Robinson]

I have no idea.

[Todd McShay]

Terribly confusing. Released by Magnolia. That's red. That's not going in no 2010. Leap year.

[Sean Fennasy]

It was all there on the page. Like Amy Adams. Matthew Good.

[Todd McShay]

Matthew Good. Attempting to go to that Hugh Grant place.

[Sean Fennasy]

Attempting.

[Joanna Robinson]

And yet my friend calls this movie Amy Adams is gonna fuck a stranger. We have for years called this movie that. Yeah, it's a no go.

[Todd McShay]

Leap year is definitively red. I know there are some people who really like it as a piece of cheese, but that's all that it is. As a piece of cheese. Another one of these very weird movies that I've never seen. This is a direct to video movie from 2010 called Love and Trust that stars love and distrust. Excuse me? Love and distrust.

[Joanna Robinson]

Get it right.

[Todd McShay]

That stars. Listen to this cast. Are you ready? Robert Pattinson after Twilight. Amy Adams. Sam Worthington after avatar. Robert Downey Jr. And James Franco in the peak of his Franco Rogan ness.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, and a post Iron Man Downey.

[Sean Fennasy]

Now I feel bad for not watching this movie.

[Todd McShay]

This is an anthological movie with directed segments by six different filmmakers including Lorraine Bracco.

[Sean Fennasy]

This is that era. A lot of anthologies going on.

[Todd McShay]

What the fuck is this movie?

[Joanna Robinson]

Which is her segment and what happens in it?

[Todd McShay]

Let's find out. Amy Adams plays Charlotte Brown in Pennies. Charlotte Brown is a waitress and young single mother who will do anything for her daughter Jenny. And when it comes and push comes to show, she does with a menacing figure on the other end of the phone and a time limit of two hours. She must raise enough money to ensure that she sees the smiling face of her child again. We have that movie it's called Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is this in the Parisia tem era?

[Sean Fennasy]

That's what I'm thinking, yes.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, so that movie is out loving distrust 2010, the fighter.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's gotta be green, right?

[Todd McShay]

I think it's gotta go in now. She's Oscar nominated for this portrayal. I think this was like a big eye opener for people because she'd never done anything like this.

[Joanna Robinson]

Scrappy.

[Todd McShay]

When you go back and look at it, do you think this is a great performance? It's a little cartoonish to me.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think it's a good performance.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's an accent performance.

[Sean Fennasy]

It is performance.

[Joanna Robinson]

But in terms of. I was trying to analyze the case of why Amy Adams doesn't have an Oscar. And I'm not agreeing with Bill that she doesn't do anything.

[Todd McShay]

No, she does things.

[Joanna Robinson]

We know that she does do things.

[Sean Fennasy]

I mean, she wails on the Sisters.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's what I'm saying. This is the one. I think this is the closest she got. But Melissa Leo, unfortunately staged a tremendous campaign that year. But an infamous campaign that year. But this is the closest she got to having a reel that you could play at the Oscars where you're like, I get it. Because usually her performances, even, like the bubbly, flirty ones, but those are the ones that are not usually getting nominated, are pretty understated. That's sort of her vibe. And so you don't have something for the real. Whereas in this one, when she punches the shit out of a woman for calling her a skank on her porch, Play it on the real sequence.

[Todd McShay]

Isn't it Conan O'Brien's sister who she punches? I think. Yeah. Conan Obriens sister, famously one of the sisters in this movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

Wow.

[Todd McShay]

I think she and Wahlberg have genuine heat too, between them. I think they're very good together. I think the movie is okay. It's very, very traditional sports movie in a way that I find kind of bland. But anyway, it's also more of a.

[Sean Fennasy]

Bale movie than an Amy Adam.

[Todd McShay]

Totally. Totally.

[Sean Fennasy]

Sure. Totally. It worries me. This is a pretty good era for her overall, but it is a bit of a wives and girlfriends era of roles.

[Todd McShay]

We're going through some of those right now. The Muppets, which is complicated. James Bobin directed. Jason Siegel authored Muppets Reimagining in which she plays a girlfriend named Mary.

[Joanna Robinson]

And you get why. Because, like, why not get Amy Adams from Enchanted to do the Muppets movie? We're bringing the Muppets back.

[Todd McShay]

Good idea.

[D]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're bringing it back. This movie doesn't matter in the grand scheme of Muppets.

[Sean Fennasy]

Anything with a Muppet in it.

[Joanna Robinson]

I mean, it has an awesome Muppet. Muppets matter so much, this movie.

[Todd McShay]

It might be outside the top 10 all time muppets movies, though, which is like, maybe an episode should be doing.

[Sean Fennasy]

Honestly, One Christmas Carol. We know it.

[Joanna Robinson]

It does.

[Sean Fennasy]

The people are saying it.

[Todd McShay]

I. I'm with you. No, I like my original Muppet Movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Muppet Take Manhattan. The great Muppet Caper.

[Todd McShay]

Those three are, for me are all, above all, better than.

[Sean Fennasy]

I didn't even hear Muppet Treasure Island. So this is okay.

[Todd McShay]

This is like really the very narrow space of. Of age difference between us is like.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sean and I are the same age and so I feel betrayed in this moment.

[Todd McShay]

I think Muppet Christmas Carol and Treasure island and in space and all those movies are all fun and good.

[Joanna Robinson]

Fine.

[Todd McShay]

This movie is okay. And I really love Siegel and Siegel. After forgetting Sarah Marshall and the Dracula musical, I was like, this will be the best film ever made. This guy who gets puppets like this.

[Joanna Robinson]

Guy and he, he's gonna bring him back. And then he didn't. But Burt McKenzie did win an Oscar, so there's always that.

[Todd McShay]

That's true. That's a good thing.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's also tough from an A.B. adams perspective. Like her literal role in the movie is that she gets forgotten. So how could we possibly put it in there?

[Todd McShay]

Okay, we're writing them up. What about on the Road? Have you seen this?

[Joanna Robinson]

I have.

[Todd McShay]

This is the Walter Salas adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel, which I remember being a lot better than I was told it was going to be. Am I crazy?

[Joanna Robinson]

It is. It just doesn't have anything for Amy Adams.

[Todd McShay]

It doesn't? No.

[Joanna Robinson]

But it is better than.

[Todd McShay]

I just googled on the Road like a fucking idiot. Like, of course I'm not going to.

[Joanna Robinson]

Get the movie on the Road. Moonlight Serenade is a song.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. I remember there being like some like amazing sequences with Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart in this movie. That's all like, that's what my memory is.

[Joanna Robinson]

But there's nothing for Amy Adams.

[Todd McShay]

There's nothing for Amy Adams. Okay, so that's read for Amy Adams. On the Road 2012. The Master. Have you guys heard of the Master?

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah, briefly. Have you heard the good word banishingly?

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. If you're interested in the brutalist, I would watch the Master first. Think about the Master and how maybe these things are correlated to each other. She plays Peggy Dodd. It Is a wife part. Sure. But I would say she's doing significantly more with it and is showing us a version of Amy Adams that I like to see.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yes.

[Todd McShay]

A woman in control at times, overwhelmingly in control, and a woman with a defined point of view about how the world should work next to men.

[Sean Fennasy]

Would you like to expand on this at all?

[Joanna Robinson]

Are you gonna minor in this?

[Todd McShay]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

A woman who can just sit in the side of a frame and, like, control a sequel, have ownership of it. Because I do like to play what if on the Oscars. Right. We talked about Doubt, which she gets nominated for. Penelope Cruz wins for Vicky. Christina Barcelona. We talked about, of course, Melissa Leo winning for the Fighter, the master year. She lost to Annie Hathaway in Les Miserables.

[Todd McShay]

I will not be taking an Academy Award away from my beloved Anne Hathaway.

[Joanna Robinson]

I also will not take.

[Sean Fennasy]

Also, she's cooking in that movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's wonderful in Les Miserables. I would never. This is tough. I didn't find, other than Melissa Leo, which I'm just.

[Todd McShay]

Right. Does she deserve to win anywhere else?

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. That's an interesting question that maybe we can get into. I mean, the thing is that she's not nominated for a movie that's coming very soon that she should have won for, in my opinion. But we'll get to that. Oh, spoiler.

[Joanna Robinson]

Were we misled by Chris Ryan? Chris prepared us to have to fight for that movie.

[Todd McShay]

Definitely not. No. That's just an order of magnitude in terms of importance to those folks. The Master is Green. Trouble with the Curse, straight up.

[Joanna Robinson]

A terrible movie that I watched for the first time for this podcast, directed.

[Todd McShay]

By Robert Lorenz, who is Clint Eastwood's longtime producing partner, stepping behind the camera in Clint stead, more or less, to make a baseball movie. Is it Ryan Phillippi, who's the male lead?

[Joanna Robinson]

Justin Timberlake.

[Sean Fennasy]

He rolls up in a convertible listening to the Walkman.

[Joanna Robinson]

That is so bad.

[Todd McShay]

That's right. Man of Steel, I think, is an absolute fucking abomination. And I'm sorry to say I hate that movie. I will not allow it in the hall of Fame.

[Sean Fennasy]

I was gonna maybe argue yellow just based off of, like, career importance in.

[Todd McShay]

That it helped to torpedo her career. You know, I mean, if you're telling.

[Sean Fennasy]

The story of Amy Adams career, the DC project is part of it.

[Todd McShay]

It is.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think we should yellow it and come back to it.

[Todd McShay]

I will yellow it and come back to it, but I will not be letting it in, I'm sorry to say.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. That's great.

[Todd McShay]

2013. Her kind of a weird nothing part.

[Joanna Robinson]

Again, this is. There are a number of great films that have nothing for Amy Adams in it. Bill's not right. But.

[Todd McShay]

But not wrong.

[Joanna Robinson]

But not wrong.

[Sean Fennasy]

Hear me out. Like, Joaquin Phoenix interacts with very few actual humans in this movie. One of them is.

[Joanna Robinson]

How dare you.

[Todd McShay]

Well, the movie, you know, the movie's. One of the points of the movie is obviously, like, simultaneously open to the idea of falling in love with something that is not human form, but also, like, hey, have you noticed that there's, like, a really cool, normal woman who lives next door to you who's interested in you, and she represents that? And I think that that's often. Her role in a lot of movies is like, Amy Adams is quite beautiful and striking, but she's regular.

[Joanna Robinson]

Achievable.

[Todd McShay]

Yes, yes. I wasn't gonna say it, but you said.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'll say it for you. Yeah, A woman said it.

[Todd McShay]

The. I can lock that down. Of famous female actresses. Not that I can, but that's what I think the movie is trying to show you. Sure. So her, I think, is red, even. Even though it is an excellent movie, in my opinion. Now, American Hustle is a movie I really don't like, but I would say it's automatically green for her.

[Sean Fennasy]

Automatically.

[Todd McShay]

Wow. You're upset about the her.

[Joanna Robinson]

You don't like American Hustle.

[Sean Fennasy]

This movie barely exists. Like, if you ask someone on the street who had seen this movie when it came out to try to recount literally any details of the plot of.

[Todd McShay]

American Hustle, it kind of doesn't matter. She's cooking in this movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

She's fine.

[Joanna Robinson]

I will say. I will say that I'm sorry we didn't record it. Rob and I had a really fun time trying to remember the plot of American Hustle.

[Sean Fennasy]

Anything at all.

[Joanna Robinson]

I was like, jennifer Lawrence definitely starts a fire in an electric oven. This was the year that Cate Blanchett won for Blue Jasmine.

[Todd McShay]

So that's a pointless win.

[Joanna Robinson]

She already had.

[Todd McShay]

She already had an Oscar. Blue Jasmine is fine.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is where I would put it. I would definitely put it for that film you alluded to that she should have been nominated for and won. But I would definitely say Kate does not need her Blue Jasmine Oscar. And I would give it.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, look at this roster of people that year. And in 14, it's Cate Blanchett wins Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock and Gravity, which is fine, but she's in the spacesuit the whole time. Judi Dench and Philomena, which is a complete Harvey Weinstein concoction. And Meryl Streep in August, Osage county, which is like it's again, okay. And kind of ruined source material in my opinion. So I don't know. It's very silly.

[Joanna Robinson]

I agree.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think you might have to be right because this is also one of the most financially successful, like non franchise movies she's ever been in. Like, it was a smash hit.

[Joanna Robinson]

David O. Russell really was running a con on everyone for a while, I have to say.

[Todd McShay]

It was the most nominated movie of that year. It had 10 Oscar nominations won each in all four acting categories.

[Sean Fennasy]

And she is doing like the part within a part within a part thing. Layering lots of accents in like. I respect the overall bit of that character. I just. I really am not fond of this movie.

[Todd McShay]

Well.

[Sean Fennasy]

But I think it has to at.

[Todd McShay]

Least get out of respect for man of Steel. We'll yellow this as well. But I'm almost certain we're gonna come back to. I think also if you're nominated for an Academy Award for a movie, it's kind. In most cases it has to be a green 2014. Lullaby. Don't know what this is.

[Joanna Robinson]

Nor do I.

[Todd McShay]

How can that be? What is. What. What is Lullaby? This is the most I've ever had to Google.

[Sean Fennasy]

It's like a tiny little indie, I think.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. I guess that's fascinating that she's been doing that in that time. Yeah. She's got a very small part in this movie directed by Andrew Levitas, which I think it's saying it's like a TV movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

It feels like a favor.

[Todd McShay]

Does feel like a favor. So the Lullaby is out. Let's talk about Big Eyes briefly.

[Joanna Robinson]

Guys, you're out. I watched it for the first time for this. I don't understand the appeal of this film or her performance in it.

[Todd McShay]

It was there a lot of.

[Sean Fennasy]

Absolutely. Like, is this a movie that's super highly regarded?

[Joanna Robinson]

She was nominated for Golden Globe. At the very least. She was.

[Todd McShay]

It was relatively well reviewed.

[Joanna Robinson]

It was. It was a thing.

[Todd McShay]

It was a. It was. Thank God Tim Burton has put the toys away to make a real person's movie again. And it is a movie about an artist and it's a movie about someone who's been alienated from an artistic community that is very much in keeping with like the Edward Scissorhands style film that Burton was quite famous for. I don't know. Let me.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's not even a good 72% on.

[Todd McShay]

Rotten, to be honest.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's not even a good Christoph Waltz performance.

[Todd McShay]

It's just A little cartoony at times. I think we have to yellow it out of respect for its awards affectations.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah, that's tough.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, you can yellow it, but I refuse to let Big Eyes into this.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, we're running out of titles, guys, and we don't have a ton of locks left. So let's keep going through it. 2016, Batman versus Dawn of Justice. That is a red.

[Joanna Robinson]

If man of Steel is not getting in, that is a deep red. Nothing else can.

[Todd McShay]

That is the reddest red you can be. I fucking hate those movies. 2016 arrival. Let's look at the 2017 Academy Awards. Do you have that pulled up already?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Who was nominated in best Actress that year?

[Joanna Robinson]

It was so Emma Stone won for La La Land.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, good win.

[Joanna Robinson]

Isabel Huppert in Elle. Yeah. Ruth Negga in Loving. Nali Portman in Jackie. And here's the kicker.

[Sean Fennasy]

Oh, no.

[Joanna Robinson]

Meryl Streep and Florence Foster Jenkins.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. An absolute.

[Joanna Robinson]

An absolute calamity.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

How did this happen?

[Todd McShay]

I honestly don't know.

[Joanna Robinson]

Again, I wouldn't take an Oscar for Emma Stone, though. If I had to take her Oscar and she could get it, you know, a little later on, which she does, then I'd give it to Amy Adams. Should have been nominated and won for a rival. End of story. Why did CR tell us we were gonna have to fight you for a rival?

[Todd McShay]

Because Amanda and Chris are obsessed with Arrival and think it is like a five star all time classic in the conversation with like 2001 or whatever. And I'm like, it isn't that. It's very, very, very good movie that I like a lot, and I liked a lot when it came out, but I just don't have the same level of adoration for it. But in the context of Amy Adams career, it might be the best movie she's made. It's the number one.

[Joanna Robinson]

So clearly the number one.

[Todd McShay]

So I have no issue whatsoever with automatically green greening it. That's a pretty competitive Oscars best Actress group of performances.

[Sean Fennasy]

But still, she should have gotten in there. She's acting opposite a fucking window.

[Todd McShay]

I know, but like she's great in that movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Again, a weird way to talk about Jeremy Renner, but okay. But I think that Meryl nomination is just so embarrassing.

[Todd McShay]

The joke.

[Joanna Robinson]

I hope Meryl's embarrassed.

[Todd McShay]

I think part of it is not her fault. But this would have been six nominations in nine years for her and I think people were a little like her again.

[Joanna Robinson]

Well, it was also the genre bias.

[Todd McShay]

You're right for sure. Science Fiction movie. Absolutely. But now we look back, we're going to look back on that movie and be like, this is kind of where it starts for denis because of the direction he's taking his career. Like, sicario is the breakthrough, but this is really the one that shows us who he wants to be.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

So I think you're gonna look back on that movie in 15 years and be like, you know what? Maybe it was 2001.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I mean, if 2001 is a 5, then I would put this as like, a 4.8 or 4.9. Like, it is.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think it's, like, quite. I don't think. But maybe in 10 years, I'll make it a five. And I would say, not right now. I wouldn't make it a five.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think it's one of the best movies of the last decade. I think this is one of the best performances of the last decade. And it is 80% her and an octopus behind a piece of glass. Like, that's crazy.

[Todd McShay]

But how good was that octopus?

[Sean Fennasy]

The octopus was great. If you want to do octopus hall of fame, I'm here for it. But, like, it is a hugely, emotionally powerful movie because of her inkblot hall.

[Joanna Robinson]

Of fame, I'd show up.

[Todd McShay]

We have seven greens and one, two, three, four, five yellows right now.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're gonna make it.

[D]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

I'm not worried about it.

[Todd McShay]

We're definitely gonna make it. 2016, nocturnal animals.

[Sean Fennasy]

I would love to hear the joe take about this movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, well, the problem is this. I love tom ford.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yep.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I love jake gyllenhaal in sicko mode. This movie is bad.

[Sean Fennasy]

What?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, this movie is bad.

[Todd McShay]

I think it's pretty. I think it's pretty bad. Too bad. Yeah, I think it's very entertaining because you're like, look at all of these incredibly skilled actors Debasing themselves in this trash. And it's a kind of knowing trash.

[Joanna Robinson]

Shannon got nominated for this movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

Sometimes justice won a golden.

[Todd McShay]

Golden. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

So it was a big deal at the time. It was ford, you know, famous clothing designer coming off of a single man, which is a very good movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

I love a single man.

[Todd McShay]

And he's like, I'm gonna dig my teeth into, like, basically a daniel steele novel on steroids. And she's. Okay. She's basically miscast.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's basically just reading the whole movie. She's reading and taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

[Sean Fennasy]

I don't wanna run through her importance in this entire movie, but like, her reading is pretty critical to the whole.

[Todd McShay]

Exercise of what we're doing here. That's true.

[Sean Fennasy]

That is fair. I really respect how fucking mean this movie is.

[Joanna Robinson]

And if I talk about Jake, I might say yes.

[Sean Fennasy]

I think Jake's great in it. And, like, I just really. I really respect that it sinks its teeth in, that it doesn't pull punches, that I. It terrifies me. I think about this movie all the time. I cannot drive down a dark county road without thinking about Texas.

[Todd McShay]

Is this a Texas. This is a thing.

[Sean Fennasy]

Y'all have been on enough. Farm. Farm to market roads with a. Y'all, come on.

[Joanna Robinson]

We did. We did. It's a Texas thing. Okay. This is also. And I just want to represent my pal Mallory Rubin here. Just a critical debut for the Aaron Taylor Johnson six pack in this film.

[Todd McShay]

I believe there's a long sequence in which he's taking a shit in this movie. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

He's just naked on. He doesn't have a shirt on. He's just naked on a toilet.

[Sean Fennasy]

So green.

[Todd McShay]

Very cool. It's a yellow. That's going to be a red.

[Joanna Robinson]

Correct.

[Todd McShay]

2017. Justice League should be in jail. That's red. 2018 vice.

[Joanna Robinson]

Are you gonna go back on what you just said about Oscar nomination should automatically.

[Todd McShay]

I am going to break my rule and say that this movie is not going in her hall.

[Sean Fennasy]

Get it out of here.

[Todd McShay]

She plays Dick Cheney's wife, and honestly, not even that well.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Todd McShay]

So I don't know Lynn Cheney. Like, I. The fact that she was kind of an odd nomination.

[Joanna Robinson]

I feel like she was nominated because they were like, sorry, we fucked up with the rival.

[Todd McShay]

It does. It is a bit of a makeup call.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Yeah. By the way, just in case you care, Regina King won for if Beale Street Could Talk that year. So even if she were great in that movie, I would not take Regina King's Oscar for.

[Todd McShay]

I am a fan of Adam McKay's movies, and I spoke to him on the show for this movie. I think this movie is an interesting experiment and ultimately only half successful. I didn't have the same, like, political confusion where I was like, why are we creating empathy for Dick Cheney? That wasn't really my concern. It's just like. It's a movie that kind of can't decide on the tone that it wants to take. And I think it's an interesting representation of the way that McKay has kind of twisted himself in knots as an artist to try to figure out, like, how serious he wants to be versus how much fun he wants to have. And like, Sam Rockwell is just having, like, way too much fun in this movie about something that isn't that funny to me. So it's just kind of a mess.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's a really tough, like, here are some things that happened movie, you know what I mean? And that's just like. It didn't happen. I guess Clarity is what I thought. It didn't have anything to say. You're saying it was maybe trying to say too many things at once, I suppose. But, like, either way, it doesn't work. I watched this movie resentfully because I knew it was going to be in the awards conversation and I had a bad time with it.

[Sean Fennasy]

We haven't really talked about her Bale thing. She's opposite him in a bunch of different movies. I mean, not usually as a charged couple, necessarily.

[Todd McShay]

She's also opposite Batman a few times.

[Sean Fennasy]

Also opposite Batman a few times. Mostly just yelling at Christian Bale across various. And I think she does that well, but this is.

[Joanna Robinson]

She does really well in the Fighter.

[Sean Fennasy]

She's best, very well in the fight.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's best to her greatest possible effect in the Fighter.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. And in American Hustle. She's a great. They're great together.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

There are things that happen in that movie, that's for sure.

[Todd McShay]

It's so funny. I really don't like David O. Russell, so it feels odd to be defending that movie. But you know what? Sometimes these are the positions we put ourselves in. I'm going to deliver to you guys a quintet of films that are coming in the immediate aftermath of her Academy Award nomination for Vice that are, I would argue, catastrophic.

[Joanna Robinson]

And again, 2018, vice and sharp Objects. I just needed to put it in.

[Todd McShay]

Maybe that's what she got her Oscar nomination for, was her performance in Sharp Objects. Hillbilly elegy in 2020. Zack Snyder's Justice League, which was released during COVID and we recorded a four hour podcast, Watch along the Woman in the Window, a adaptation of a bestseller that was like, relentlessly worked over and reshot. And Manga, Dear Evan Hansen, which is just nightmare fuel for me as a movie. And 2022's Disenchanted, which is a sequel to the beloved classic Enchanted, that, like, is a perfectly fine sequel, but nobody's.

[Sean Fennasy]

I don't even know.

[Joanna Robinson]

So bad.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, so bad.

[Joanna Robinson]

Disenchanted was so bad that I could not even bring myself to consider the Hocus Pocus sequel. Cause I was just like, they did that with Disenchanted. I'm uninterested in what they did with Hocus Pocus.

[Sean Fennasy]

They did do one thing, which is they rectified the fact that in the original, they cast Idina Menzel and then didn't let her sing in a musical, which is a choice that you as a filmmaker.

[Joanna Robinson]

One could do that.

[Sean Fennasy]

One could do that. They rectified that. But it doesn't work at all.

[Joanna Robinson]

Would you put Night Bitch in?

[Todd McShay]

Well, that's what I wanted to say. So I think all five of those movies are automatically read without conversation. The movies are not good. And I would argue that her. The performance, particularly in the Woman in the Window, which is a movie that on paper, Chris described a movie yesterday as Fincher Methadone, which I loved. What movie was he referring to? I can't even remember. Maybe it was Red Rooms. Red Rooms. Thanks, Jack. Which was just an awesome cr. Turn of phrase. And this movie could have been that as well and is just so deeply not that. And part of it is because she's not able to give you the performance that you need in the movie. Among many other problems.

[Joanna Robinson]

That movie was. That book was so popular and for why. So. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And it was at the same, roughly the same period as the Girl on the Train, which is another mangled literary adaptation.

[Joanna Robinson]

Correct.

[Todd McShay]

Starring an Academy Award nominated actress who I almost always like that. Like the movies didn't work at all anyhow. They're all Red Night Bitch. I just think it's one of her best performances. So it should be in the Conversation, the movie. You know, we may end up having a bunch of movies that maybe we don't even like that much, but they go into her hall of fame. So to answer your question earlier about what is this exercise? It's kind of everything, you know.

[Joanna Robinson]

How many greens do we have?

[Todd McShay]

Let's do the math. We're going to Yellow Night Bitch for the sake of conversation, Jack. And then that's going to mean that we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 yellows and 2, 4, 6, 7 greens. So what we need to do is green three of the yellows, and we're.

[Joanna Robinson]

Going to Green American Hustle.

[Todd McShay]

Well, I'll read the yellows. I'll read the greens. Catch me if you can, June bug. Enchanted, Ms. Pettigrew lives for a day. The fighter, the master, and arrival. As you know, I love to rattle off the names of films on this podcast. The yellows are drop dead gorgeous, which is not going in. So we can red that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Todd McShay]

You think it should be.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[D]

No.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. 2008. Doubt. I'm not sold on doubt. No, I'm not 2013. Man of steel. I'm not sold on man of Steel.

[Sean Fennasy]

I mean, I can't even put my heart in it.

[Todd McShay]

American Hustle is definitely going to be green. Out of respect for you, Rob, we yell at it, but if it were just Joanna and I sitting here, it would have been an autograph.

[Sean Fennasy]

Well, then you better green nocturnal. That's all I have to say about that.

[Todd McShay]

I would be willing to give you that.

[Joanna Robinson]

I agree.

[Todd McShay]

So that takes us. That takes us to now for you.

[Joanna Robinson]

And the state of Texas.

[Sean Fennasy]

I'm so moved. Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

Thank you.

[Todd McShay]

Now we have one more to go. And I kind of sort of think it's Night Bitch.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's Night Bitch.

[Sean Fennasy]

We're going Night Bitch over Doubt.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes. She's just.

[Sean Fennasy]

I really thought you both were gonna come crawling back to me on Doubt.

[Todd McShay]

There is no movie without her in Nightbitch. Doubt. It's like that could have been Anne Hathaway. It would have been fine.

[Sean Fennasy]

She does go absolutely feral on a meatloaf. And like, again, she's. The commitment of the performance is unquestionable. It does all hang on her. She's looking straight down the barrel of the lens, delivering a lot of Night Bitch.

[Joanna Robinson]

And again, in the sort of representative of her career, this idea of the producer era. I'm gonna. Fine, I'll do it myself. Amy Adams, her thanos. Yeah, her Thanos era. She's in her Thanos era. Where does that bring us back to her? Back to Night Bitch.

[Todd McShay]

So right now, on Variety's prediction of best actresses.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Where do you think Amy Adams sits for her performance in Night Bitch out of the top 20?

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh. Based on the response to the screening I went to, I would say. And this is Clayton Davis putting this together. Right, Clayton. Where would Clayton put her? In the tens.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennasy]

I was thinking teens. I'm going to say 14.

[Todd McShay]

She does not appear in the movie.

[Sean Fennasy]

Not appear. That's tough.

[Joanna Robinson]

Well, is that because the movie's not out yet?

[Todd McShay]

I don't think so. Because there's plenty of movies like Baby Girl that are not out yet in the room next door. I mean, this is just a look at the top 10 right now. Cynthia Erivo is in the first position, which is not accurate. Angelina Jolie is number two. Mikey Madison is number three. Marianne Jean Baptiste is four. Carlos Sofia Gascon is five. And. And then the next five are Nicole Kidman and Baby Girl Fernanda Torres. And I'm still here, which I just saw. I'll talk about that later on the show. Tilda Swinton, the Room Next Door, Saoirse Ronan for the Outrun, and Demi Moore for the Substance.

[Joanna Robinson]

Now, with love and respect to Variety and Clayton, sometimes those lists are a little wonky. A little wonky.

[Todd McShay]

I don't think she's getting nominated, but I wouldn't be shocked if she got nominated.

[Joanna Robinson]

I would certainly not be shocked if she got nominated for the Globes.

[Sean Fennasy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Would this go into comedy?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, this would go into comedy and she would get nominated for the Globes.

[Todd McShay]

We're going to be talking about that very soon.

[Joanna Robinson]

We are, but. And if that Globes nomination starts a different conversation, that's the thing that the Globes can do because of your double actor nominations. Someone starts being in the conversation who wasn't in the conversation before.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, well, this is turning into an epic episode of this show and it's because I put on your plates than I needed to. I think. I think I'm. So it's between Doubt, Big Eyes and Night Bitch.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's not Big Eyes.

[Todd McShay]

No, I think it's Night Bitch.

[Sean Fennasy]

Look, you were both so charitable with nocturnal animals that I'm willing to. I'm willing to play ball here.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, then here is the Amy Adams hall of Fame. It's Catch Me if youf Can, June bug. Enchanted Ms. Pettigrew lives for a Day.

[Sean Fennasy]

Oh, yes.

[Todd McShay]

The fighter, the master. American Hustle. A rival Nocturnal animal and Night Bitch.

[Joanna Robinson]

I would ask you to show that to Bill and ask him. Would you not say that Amy Adams has done something?

[Sean Fennasy]

That's a body of work right there.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's an incredible body of work.

[Todd McShay]

There's no doubt about it. She does things.

[Joanna Robinson]

She does do things.

[Todd McShay]

You guys have done great things on this podcast. Thank you so much. Really enjoy potting with you as always. Let's go now to my conversation with Pablo Lorraine, this is the sound of your ride home with dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes brought to you by the FDA. Deck your home with blinds.com.

[Sean Fennasy]

DIY or.

[Joanna Robinson]

Let us install.

[Sean Fennasy]

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[D]

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[Todd McShay]

Free samples and free shipping.

[D]

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[Joanna Robinson]

Rules and restrictions may apply.

[Todd McShay]

Very happy to have Pablo Lorraine here to talk about Maria and his work. Pablo, you've obviously been working on this accidental trilogy of films, but I'm curious about your relationship to Maria Callas. Is this someone that you have been interested in for a Very long time. How did she become the final piece of the trilogy puzzle?

[D]

Oh, well, I think it's. I'm an opera fan. I grew up going to the opera with my mom mostly as I grew up. And there was always this kind of mystical figure, Maria Callas, and her voice and her life, her work, her impact in culture, her impact in society, her impact in music. He probably changed the history of opera forever. And for some odd reason that I don't completely understand, there are very few movies about opera, given that there's so much in common. So I thought to try to do it, try to. To find an angle where we could almost make an opera and shoot it and make a movie that feels operatic, not in the dramatic way, but in the real operatic meaning, and bring those two elements together and try to understand a little bit more about her figure and how and why it became so. So relevant for the history of music and particularly for the second half of the last century.

[Todd McShay]

Can you talk about what that meant to you, to make a film feel operatic? You know, like what decisions you make to render that.

[D]

Yeah, I say that there's a distinction because it's often that people that, you know, people could describe, or a critic, a review could describe a movie as being operatic, meaning that it has a lot of ideas and it's baroque in its intentions. I'm using that term because I. I think that what we're doing here is a movie that is an opera, but in movement, in motion. It's a moving proscenium, it's a moving stage that we are capturing with our camera, capturing with our point of view. And it's a movie about. About a singer that has become the sum of the tragedies that she played on stage for so many years. And all those characters are somehow inhabiting her simultaneously up to the point that this is also a tragedy, but at the same time, it's a celebration of her life and work. So it's all combined, and I think we want to be in her perception of reality. And that's how we can let the music get in and the opera getting to a story.

[Todd McShay]

So unlike Jackie and Princess Diana, Callis is an artist. And so capturing an artist at work is complicated. And obviously, you've got an actor who's got to portray someone who's extremely. One of the most famous people of the 20th century and who is an incredible performer. So what do you do? How do you make that feel viable, real, accessible, textural role with the actor and with the sort of moving proscenium that you're describing?

[D]

Well, I don't think I have a very clear answer to that. It's a good question. I think that probably obviously the actress, the actor is very, very important. Obviously it defines, they carry the movie on her shoulders. But I, but I'm fascinated by them, but each of them. And as you well said, this is the story of an artist. And I think that I was very lucky because I am very into music. I really love music and I think I likely probably know more about music than cinema, I think. And so there was an opportunity to express myself with something that I truly, truly love and to film the life of someone that I admire for many, many years. So it was a little bit less of a research, you know, and like in the case of Jack here and Spencer with Prince Diana, it was more a movie that I have in my bloodstream since many, many years. So it was a little bit easier for me to recreate it. But I guess the biggest challenge is to, to understand or try to understand her ghosts, you know, what's going inside of her, why is she so mysterious, why there's nothing that you could really do to completely understand her and why music can really explain something or express something about her that is completely indescribable with words. You can use music and moving images, I think. And that is just a very interesting advice. You know, it's a good thing to have that. It's just wonderful materials to work with.

[Todd McShay]

Angelina Jolie of course is also world famous, incredibly glamorous person, like the person she's portraying. And so I like that self reflexive quality. Is that something that you had all talked about when you talked about doing the part with her, that she could connect to this character in any particular way given her experiences?

[D]

Well, I don't think you need to talk to her about it. So yeah, it's. But again look, we're just talking about. I think there's something incredible that I've read a lot of biographies about, about her, you know, seen documentaries, all of her interviews, their Internet and, and read and study a number of, number of things over the years and, and made this movie and I'm not entirely sure who she was and I think that's something that also happened with Angelina. I think maybe because she's so well known, has been the spotlight for so many years, a lot of people might assume that they really know her and I don't think that's real. Once you really wonder what people might think about Angelina, that it's likely to be very Far from who she is. And not that I do know, by the way, but I think that is sort of the enigma that they carry. That combination of enigma and magnetism that could find in someone like Angelina. You could also find her in Maria. So I thought it was a good match. It was something that Angelina could do to carry that weight of something that at some points you get to understand and know and feel because she's somehow sharing with you. But then when she doesn't want it, you could be completely disconnected. And that is a beautiful exercise where the audience becomes very active.

[Todd McShay]

I think you make this bold choice to very early on in the film show a performance of Ave Maria and to show Angelina in close up. I was wondering if you could talk about why you wanted to just start there.

[D]

Yeah, it was something that I've been thinking for years, even before we had a script and I mentioned to Angelina, to Steve Knight, everyone involved, this is how we're starting. I wanted to defeat not just for the audience, but also for us, the ghost. This idea of, oh, it's Angelina so well known, she's not an opera singer, she's going to play an opera singer. She's going to sing, when she's going to sing, how she's going to sing, what is she going to sing, why is she singing? And all that is going to be successful. It will be feel believable. This is going to be what, like a karaoke session Question, what is this? So I was like, okay, let's just, you know, train really hard, especially her and, and do an excellent and magnificent job. And let's just let me shoot film you in a close up. You will be looking at the camera on a tight shot. Your face going to be on a very large screen and we will see you singing and people will, yeah, we'll look at your lips, we look at your face, we'll look at your eyes and see how it's going. And we're going to defeat the problem in the first minute of the movie. And I think we do. I think she succeeds on that and I think she becomes callous and I think we drop quickly Angelina out of the equation. And she's the actor, so she's the character that she's representing. It was bold, but I felt it was necessary. And also, also I think it's very important for the movie because. And this is probably the most important thing of everything is that it's an analogy. You know, it's like a prayer. It's like it's. She's singing Ave Maria that come from Otello, from Opera's Verdict Otello. And she's praying and asking for help, for protection, for some sort of spiritual connection to something that is bigger than her. At the beginning of the film with such a beautiful melody. It's a very moving melody. And as we singing, we go and kind of see fragments of her life to introduce the character to everybody. So I think it works in multiple layers, but I really love that we did it and I love how it works in the film.

[Todd McShay]

I wanted to ask you about the structure in relationship to Jackie and Spencer as well. None of the three films are standard biopics in any way. And they all are these kind of. These memorable figures captured at a very important critical stage of their life. But this one is the most expansive in terms of how much of the figure's life that you show, whether through flashback or them talking to this character that Cody Smith McPhee played. You know, I'm curious, like, what the conversations were like with you and Stephen Knight and why the decision to kind of capture so much of her life, but also not do your kind of standard cradle to grave approach to that story.

[D]

Well, first of. First of all, I think biopics are a cultural fantasy. I don't think you could actually call a movie or anything a biopic. I don't think you can actually capture anyone up to the point that you go out to the world and say, look, this is who this person was with responsibility. And the only way to do that, it's probably with the person itself, you know, herself. And. But however, I think this. Yeah, it's true. This movie, it's. This movie shows the very last week of her life and it's the moment where she decides to conduct her life by herself and for herself. And in that exercise, we thought it was important to look back at how did she get there, why, why and how. And so the fragments. I think it's. This is a movie about perception. And we try to inhabit her reality with, with perception and with her own memory and, and kind of, you know, in a. In a. In an angle, in a perspective that I. I would. Would like to call it a poetic memory. We could travel with her through the music to different moments and different fragments of certain ideas that can be more abstract, some of them, some of them are more concrete and more specific, but they're all building a character that is celebrating her own tragedy. And I think that's where, where we try to lay our energy, especially when having such a beautiful and, you know, out of this World music that she sang for us.

[Todd McShay]

I love this intersection of Onassis and Kennedy. And the fact that you have this sort of expanded Pablo Lorraine cinematic universe happening now too, and the fact that these tendrils of history are all starting to touch each other in a way. Like. Is that something that is appealing to you about telling these kinds of stories? Stories?

[D]

Well, I'm really into the multiverse of these people, but. But I will say that it's a generation, you know, and I think there's more people involved that if you, if you keep digging, you will get to a number of people of that generation that happen to be in certain cities like, you know, or certain countries, and mostly in Europe, England, I would say New York, where people related to certain families, royal families, powerful families, wealthy people, obviously artists, they all got together and sort of somehow reorganized culture and society to certain elements of certain socialite, you know. And that happened in between the 50s and the 90s, I would say, where all these people knew each other, where they interact with each other in a world that, that, you know, that wasn't very responsible. You know, they were just living the life, taking care of the family, of their business and interacting with each other. And there's, you know, a number of people who were close to each other. And this is just one of the other cases, one of them. And that's something very interesting, I think. Think.

[Todd McShay]

Do you feel like that's impossible now because of the way that famous people, well known people are expected to live?

[D]

I think it's very different. I think. I think. I think that world is over. I think that idea of style, fashion, certain cultural connections to art, cinema, theater, literature, with an idea of a grandiose kind of glamour, and it's gone. I don't think that. And if it ever comes back, it'll come back in a different form. But that combination of people, art, culture, money, politics, I don't think it'll ever be back again. And I think it's just interesting because we look back at them towards mostly fashion and culture in many, you know, in many ways nowadays. And I was interested in these three women that somehow were able to be who they were, no matter in, you know, to which family they were related to which man, which fortune, with whatever, and they were. They were able to stand by themselves and leave a huge footprint in culture throughout their own identity and inner strength, which is just beautiful and fascinating.

[Todd McShay]

I like that. You also show in this film the sort of almost like touchability of kallus, just dining at a cafe and being Someone you could just see in the world and walk up to and speak to. And even though she has this kind of defiant presence, that she still was a person living in the world, not somebody who is just locked away all the time, too. That also feels like out of time in some ways.

[D]

It's an era where certain people like to be connected with their fans in a physical connection. Nowadays, everything happens through a screen. You know, Carlos was singing. They were. They were on the street, they were on theaters. There are a number of things that are happening, you know, very. Where there's a lot of human interaction nowadays. Our, you know, the people that has, you know, the people listens to Sporty Ca podcast and they go to Instagram and see the people that they admire and the interactions. And we have influencers and whatever's going on today. But I think it's a more abstract kind of communication. It's different. And I think back then, everything happened more face to face. But at the same time, there was media. They were paparazzis. There were probably Maria Callas and also Jackie Kennedy and for sure, Diana Spencer Prince. Diana was likely to be the most photographed woman on the 22nd. So there were also media icons, but they were more tangible. And I think that's a big difference.

[Todd McShay]

I really love what you and Ed Lackman have been up to on the last two films. I so admired Elkonde as well, and was wondering if you could just talk to me about how you guys came together and maybe like, what was the same and what was different about working on that film and this film, of.

[D]

Course, Eli Samaster, I wanted to work with him for many, many years. Years. And we had the opportunity to work first in El Conde, and then now they're very different movies. El Condes a black and white, kind of gothic, expressionist kind of photography and cinema. And this is more like a movie that we wanted to look. Make it look like it was shot in the 70s. Eddie is someone that works throughout color is very unusual. I think most photographers work throughout lighting, texture and lighting, color, temperature. I think Ed is someone that is very determined to work throughout color and to light in a movie like this, to light in the way that they used to light the film sets in the period. It's someone that is fascinating, has an incredible amount of good stories to tell, and has a gorgeous sense of the aesthetics and how to truly look for the characters and their emotions. She's trying to capture that emotion and the truth of the soul that we are picturing with her lighting. So he's part of the overall process, as it should be. I think that is very important on a movie set. Some people could be surprised that maybe it's not that they should be like that, but I don't think you should take that for granted. It happens often. There's people that are just caring about their own duty, their own craft, and they're not necessarily connecting with everyone else doing. And I think it's in the center of that idea and I really appreciate that.

[Todd McShay]

When you say he works through color, does that mean the costumes and the production design or is there something else?

[D]

It's. I don't want to bore anyone, but. But it's. We shot on film. So when you shoot on film, you could probably combine certain colors that would have a very like live colors that as you're lighting, that would. Since because of that combination, it would create a different color result once it's shot and film because the film would react differently to those color combinations. So it's really beautiful and weird because you're on a set, you're seeing something that is leading in a way. You see through the camera and then when you. When after you shot, it is processed and you go and see it and looks different. He's messing, you know, with the negative. He's seeing the reality through what a negative can do. Been doing it for 50 years, so he knows what he's doing. But it's just very interesting how he can create a world where the colors are only created through a film, a cinematic process. And that's what I mean by it, if it makes any sense.

[Todd McShay]

It does. It's incredible results. Pablo we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Have you seen anything that you've liked recently?

[D]

Well, I haven't seen much because I am doing what I'm doing. I'm traveling a lot and. But from this year, I really, really love Anora. I think Sean's movie, it's beautiful. I thought it was very moving. I think Mickey, that's a beautiful work. I've been, I know Sean for many, many years and I love when someone is just like, stays on the track of what. Of what. What they do and then eventually gets. They get a lot of recognition. But I'm sure Sean is going to keep doing what he does, you know, and he's been doing this for. For many years in many movies. And now he made a movie that is not only very beautiful, but it's also getting a lot of recognition by a lot of people who want to palm Dorian can and and I think he's going to got to have a beautiful award season and I am very happy for him. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful movie. If you guys have not seen it, please go on and see that movie. Hopefully you could find on a big screen because it's very beautiful and it's a cool, interesting, funny, crazy funny film. Very moving and very well made. So Those are my 2 cents.

[Todd McShay]

It's a great recommendation. Pablo, thank you so much. I'm such an admirer. Thanks for doing the show.

[D]

Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. Have a good one.

[Todd McShay]

You too. Thanks to Joanna and Rob. Thanks to Pablo, Lorraine, thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner as well. Later this week we're digging into the most underseen and underappreciated movies of 2024. We'll see you then.