Top Five World War II Movies, and ‘Blitz’

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Picture – "Top Five World War II Movies, and ‘Blitz’"

Release Date: December 3, 2024

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Big Picture, hosted by Sean Fennessy and featuring insightful contributions from Todd McShay and Chris Ryan, the team dives deep into the realm of World War II cinema. The episode focuses primarily on their top five WWII movie picks and offers a critical analysis of the newly released film "Blitz" by acclaimed director Steve McQueen.

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1. Spotlight on "Blitz"

Sean Fennessy opens the discussion by introducing "Blitz", describing it as a World War II feature told through the eyes of a young boy in 1940s London ([02:32]). The film, available for streaming on Apple TV Plus, has sparked varied reactions among the hosts.

• Initial Impressions:

  • Chris Ryan expresses skepticism, stating, "I found it kind of bland and technically impressive at points, but bland ultimately" ([14:31]).
  • Sean Fennessy shares a personal disconnect, noting, "I just found myself constantly wanting to go back to Saoirse or... I wanted to be in the world of adults" ([15:15]).
  • Todd McShay appreciates certain artistic choices but feels the film doesn't fully realize its potential, mentioning, "there is a gravitas and an artistry that McQueen retains" ([16:11]).

• Critical Analysis:

  • The trio critiques the film's narrative structure and use of CGI, with Chris Ryan highlighting, "Blitz has a really hard time delivering the sort of emotional heft to be the movie it wants to be" ([19:48]).
  • Sean Fennessy delves into the film's attempt to intertwine multiple storylines, saying, "I almost felt like that filmmaker was like, I can't let it go... it's so complicated" ([19:23]).

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2. Evolution and Diversity of WWII Cinema

The conversation shifts to the variety within WWII films, exploring how the genre spans multiple sub-genres and storytelling styles.

• Genres Explored:

  • Chris Ryan marvels at the genre's breadth, noting, "I'm kind of stunned at the variety" ([28:04]).
  • Sean Fennessy discusses how WWII serves as a foundational pillar for various film genres, from romance to action and propaganda ([29:01]).

• Modern Influences:

  • The hosts analyze Disney's streaming strategies, particularly how "Moana 2" impacts movie marketing. Sean Fennessy remarks, "Disney is basically like the world's greatest billboard" ([08:12]).
  • Todd McShay points out the shift in streaming service approaches, stating, "Movies are going to get fucked up if they're, like, we're awarding half of a story that isn't a fan fiction of classical Hollywood" ([74:44]).

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3. Personal Top Five WWII Movie Picks

Each host presents their curated list of top five WWII films, offering personal insights and justifications for their selections.

• Sean Fennessy's Top Five:

  1. "Paisan" (Roberto Rossellini, 1946) – Celebrated for its neorealist approach and epic storytelling ([51:15]).
  2. "The Dirty Dozen" – Praised for its ensemble cast and action-packed missions ([61:15]).
  3. "The Great Escape" – Iconic for its romanticized depiction of POWs and star power ([75:23]).
  4. "The Thin Red Line" – Noted for its philosophical depth and decentralized narrative ([66:01]).
  5. "Bridge on the River Kwai" – Lauded as a masterpiece exploring duty and honor ([70:03]).

• Chris Ryan's Highlights:

  • Emphasizes character-driven stories like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Inglourious Basterds", focusing on their emotional impact and unforgettable performances ([54:02], [72:02]).

• Todd McShay's Selections:

  • Includes a mix of classic and modern films such as "The Train" (John Frankenheimer), "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946), and "Cabaret" (Bob Fosse), showcasing the genre's versatility ([53:11], [70:03]).

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4. Oscar Potential and Industry Trends

The discussion transitions to the Oscars, analyzing the chances of certain films gaining recognition and the impact of streaming services on award nominations.

• Film Contenders:

  • Todd McShay expresses uncertainty about "Blitz" gaining Oscar traction, comparing it to more traditionally acclaimed films like "Saving Private Ryan" ([94:52]).
  • Sean Fennessy and Chris Ryan debate the positioning of streaming service films versus theatrical releases in award circuits ([94:54], [95:37]).

• Streaming Influence:

  • The hosts reflect on how streaming platforms like Disney alter traditional marketing and distribution models, potentially affecting a film's award prospects ([08:12], [74:44]).

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5. Concluding Insights

Wrapping up, the hosts acknowledge the enduring fascination with WWII in cinema, noting its role as a fertile ground for diverse storytelling. They emphasize the genre's ability to adapt and resonate with contemporary audiences through various narrative lenses.

• Future Perspectives:
  • Sean Fennessy suggests a potential revisit of "Blitz" in the future, indicating an openness to changing perceptions over time ([86:15], [88:00]).
  • Todd McShay hints at upcoming discussions on the top five favorite movies of the year, promising continued exploration of cinematic trends ([106:01]).

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Notable Quotes:

• "Disney is basically like the world's greatest billboard." — Sean Fennessy ([08:12])
• "I found it kind of bland and technically impressive at points, but bland ultimately." — Chris Ryan ([14:31])
• "Blitz has a really hard time delivering the sort of emotional heft to be the movie it wants to be." — Chris Ryan ([19:48])
• "It's the most romantic version of this kind of story I think you can have." — Sean Fennessy discussing "The Great Escape" ([75:23])
• "Movies are going to get fucked up if they're, like, we're awarding half of a story that isn't a fan fiction of classical Hollywood." — Todd McShay ([74:44])

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Big Picture offers a nuanced exploration of World War II films, blending personal anecdotes, critical analysis, and industry insights. The hosts provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of both classic and contemporary WWII cinema, encouraging a deeper appreciation for the genre's complexity and enduring relevance.

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Transcript

[Sean Fennessy]

What's happening?

[Todd McShay]

It's Todd McShay, and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement.

[Chris Ryan]

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. We'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays 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. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to 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.

[Chris Ryan]

It like me, make sure to like.

[Todd McShay]

Follow, subscribe and get ready for the McShay show on the Ringer, Spotify and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. 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 ebay. We've all got a thing. For me, it's Blu Rays, and that is just the sort of thing ebay is perfect for. Like, even at 2am when you can't get that disc off your mind, you can be on ebay scrolling your favorite seller's storefront, setting search alerts, and building the watch list of your literal dreams. And if Blu Rays aren't really your thing, the best part about ebay is it doesn't matter what you're into. Fashion, car parts, trading cards. It's all there. So go find the thing that keeps you up at night. Ebay Things People Love I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about WW2. I'm not talking about the little son of the former president George W. Bush. I'm talking about the World War. On today's episode, we are also talking about Steve McQueen's new film Blitz. It's a World War II feature told through the eyes of young boy in 1940s London.

[Sean Fennessy]

Thanks for gesturing 23 when you said that.

[Todd McShay]

My youngest boy from London, he's back here in the home country. This movie is available to stream right now on Apple TV Plus. You're a subscriber to Apple TV plus, right, Rob?

[Chris Ryan]

Of course. I'm a patron.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. See? Are you as well.

[Sean Fennessy]

Lifetime.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. So you can watch that movie right now. We're also going to talk about our favorite World War II films, which is also fertile territory. Rob Mahoney is here in person. Nice to see you in the flesh.

[Chris Ryan]

Thank you. Likewise.

[Todd McShay]

Chris Ryan. Hi.

[Sean Fennessy]

Kind of like the Marshall and Montgomery of this podcast, right? Really?

[Todd McShay]

Does that make you the Rommel? Who are you in this?

[Sean Fennessy]

Me and Rob.

[Todd McShay]

You're a Churchill. I thought we were the Martin. No, you're the patent.

[Chris Ryan]

You're the Churchill. I think this is getting convoluted already.

[Todd McShay]

You actually have the. Who was the naval commander again? Come on. Gregory Peck played him in a film. This is how I know about history is just from watching movies.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, I don't know. Who's the naval commander.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Come on. Jesus Christ.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't really rock with the Navy that much.

[Chris Ryan]

But you're the sea guy.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

So ironic. But you're not into the pilots either.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, I'm into the pilots. Especially in Dunkirk. You know, my guys. I'm on him.

[Todd McShay]

I really appreciate you being here. You served in World War II, right? I did, yeah. And what was that experience like for you?

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, it was like I thought like I was over it. You know, I'd left it in the past, but this podcast is digging it up. But this is good.

[Chris Ryan]

I appreciate everything your generation did for us. I just want you to know, keep it going.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm already mad about the chair.

[Todd McShay]

Speaking of great generations, we have a great generation of moviegoers active in the world right now. A little bit of news. We had an extraordinary box office weekend because of three films. And I know that there are three films that you've all seen multiple times. So I'm very excited to share this news with you guys. $420 million in the domestic box office over the holiday weekend. Thanks. In Part two, Gladiator two, Wicked and Moana two.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I think in part doing a lot of heavy lifting there for the first two of those movies.

[Todd McShay]

Well, almost entirely those three films. But, you know, I'll say I did my part. I saw the film Moana 2 not once, but twice in movie theaters this weekend. Once for this podcast and once for my daughter's future.

[Sean Fennessy]

Wait a second. So you saw it independent of your daughter?

[Todd McShay]

I did.

[Sean Fennessy]

And then saw it with your. Did you screen it to make sure it didn't have any troubling imagery or something like that?

[Todd McShay]

No, no. I recorded a podcast about it with Y. Yossi Salik and Rob Harvilla. You can find that on the feed.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I was thinking that might have been some of the reason for the box up. Like the Yossi bump is such a real thing.

[Todd McShay]

Huge. Just tremendous. Yossi literally bought 10,000 tickets and she just sat in several theaters alone. No, I saw it because I needed to record and it was during school time. So I went again, brought Alice over the weekend. Both screenings packed house. You and I were in an AMC over the weekend seeing an early screening of a forthcoming film.

[Sean Fennessy]

Can't you say what it is?

[Todd McShay]

It's called the Brutalist.

[Sean Fennessy]

We're brutalist boys.

[Todd McShay]

We are brutalist boys once more. And that theater, also, there was a buzz, There was a hum. Were you at the cinema this weekend?

[Chris Ryan]

No.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, shit.

[Chris Ryan]

But apparently I was the only one. Who was it? I do think, as I'm trying to understand what happened here, I mean, Moana happened here. As literally any parent, they will tell you it is an unavoidable force in their lives. So that I understand. But why this Thanksgiving? Why this period of time? Why the Gladiator 2 part of this? I don't really understand. Like, theater nerds and parents, I get. What is the strong second wave weekend crowd for Gladiator 2?

[Sean Fennessy]

Like, it's not me, unfortunately. I don't know.

[Todd McShay]

Well, I mean, I think that the reason that happened. It's a good question. Cause obviously Gladiator 2 has not been terribly well received, hasn't been that well reviewed. Seems like it's been considered a bit of a letdown. It was for us. You haven't seen it yet?

[Chris Ryan]

Not yet.

[Todd McShay]

It's just. Cause there were no movies for grown men in the movie theater, you know, like, that's ultimately what it is. Like, it was really the only option.

[Sean Fennessy]

No one watching Yellowstone.

[Chris Ryan]

But with all due respect, who is the grown man rolling up solo or with a couple of other grown men on like Thanksgiving Friday? Is that a robust audience?

[Sean Fennessy]

You never know. Because, like, I actually did. This hasn't happened in a while, but I actually did have a moment a couple weeks ago where my wife and I wanted to see different things. And I was like, well, why don't we just go to the movie, do the same thing and split, you know, which is not.

[Todd McShay]

You guys did do that.

[Sean Fennessy]

We didn't. We wound up not being able to get into real pain that time. But, like, it was.

[Chris Ryan]

It was very progressive of you to think about it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I thought, I want to bring that back into my life.

[Todd McShay]

I've done it before. I think it's a nice thing to do.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Sometimes you got. I've also seen everything all the time. So my wife is like, can't go to the movies.

[Sean Fennessy]

Were you leaning over to Alice and spoiling Moana 2 constant, like, throughout the movie?

[Todd McShay]

No, no, I was. There were scenes that were. That are traumatic. I'll just say Moana is in significant peril at one point in the film, and I was locked in on watching her reaction, and she was. She was cool. She was chilling. She was like, moana's gonna be good. Moana is. She's got demigod in her future. Wow. So she fel good about the whole thing. But it's interesting because obviously it's been a huge down year coming off of the strikes. Most of the movies that have been successful, though, look a lot like these movies. Moana 2 was not meant to be a movie. It was a TV series commissioned by Disney. One thing I wanted to float to you guys and Chris, you talk about this all the time on the watch, too. You talk about it on Prestige as well. I think that the Moana 2 success could potentially signal or even confirm that the whole D TV strategy was a mistake and that the entire purpose of Disney, and maybe only Disney, but it could be other streaming services, too. We could talk about what Apple could do with this sort of thing in the future is basically as strong marketing for active library. If you're a parent, you need Disney, and you're probably watching Moana a lot. And Moana's a movie that's probably gonna be handed down across streaming for 10, 20, 30 years. And then when you open Disney now for the last two weeks, the first thing you see is the trailer to Moana 2.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

So kids become aware of it instantaneously, so they don't even need to promote the movie on billboards or on commercials, because that primary viewing space that you already have for your kids is pushing the movie out. So there was so much. It changed the paradigm, I think, of how people got excited about a movie because it seemed like the marketing was relatively modest for Moana 2, and yet it still is breaking records.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

So it's an interesting, like, positioning where it felt like they started out by making all of these TV shows that were meant to support and continue the storytelling of other franchises. But now maybe it should just be a place that pushes out future theatrical movies and then houses them once they come to streaming.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I, you know, I think it's different for each one of their sort of verticals. Like, I think Marvel has had an up and down experience on Disney as far as, like, how much do we want to push our chips in and move story forward in these kind of niche shows about smaller characters. Star wars has frankly just been kind of like a car accident, you know, where it's like we are doing these legacy characters, but we don't really know how to move the story forward past Skywalker. But with Disney, you're right. I think it's basically like the world's greatest billboard. And if that's going to be the primary thing that people have on in their house all day long, it's just great advertising, frankly. Also, we saw this earlier in the year. I feel like Shogun got an extraordinary boost from being advertised on D. And also because they needed stuff to advertise before Disney movies, they were doing commercials for it in theaters. So I think it's become a really effective, a really effective marketing space.

[Chris Ryan]

But this is where Disney is different from, I think Apple or any other platform. Like the gateway drug element of having your kids in front of a TV locked in on Disney movies ready to click. The next thing that comes up is so different from like, I'm watching Blitz on Apple TV and it wants me to watch Silo. It's like, I mean, respectfully, I'm gonna. If I wanna watch it. Not now. There isn't that propulsive, like onto the next thing quality that I think kids naturally get sucked into.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I think it does explain one reason why Netflix has spent so aggressively over the last 10 years to build a library so that they can always be kind of cycling new content in front of people. Like with Apple tv you see all the time now, like, they've only produced what, 40 shows? They've only produced 40 movies. They license some movies, but not very many. So when you go there, it's very easy to reach the bottom. And what I think a lot of these streaming services want you to do is to never reach the bottom, to always be served something new, even more so if they're able to basically maximize the theatrical experience financially and then let you have more and more of it on the streaming. It's just an interesting observation, especially because the Wicked phenomenon is obviously not slowing down. That movie's doing really, really well. That's also a movie that has been bifurcated and will be part of an extended universe of stories. You've got like, you've got the wizard of Oz. You've got Return to Oz. You've got Oz the Great and Powerful. There's like many movies like this.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you think wizard of Oz.

[Todd McShay]

There was some speculation about this online over the weekend. I wouldn't rule anything.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do they have the rights to that specific story?

[Todd McShay]

I think that's a MGM Warner's project and not a Universal project.

[Chris Ryan]

Plus Tim Burton owns it now.

[Sean Fennessy]

My guy's on it tomorrow. Go full Rohirrim with it. Just make an animated preservat.

[Todd McShay]

It's really. I guess it's a question of who has the rights to the L. Frank Baum novel rather than the original film. So I guess whoever can get their hands around that. I don't actively. I don't know. Bob, do you know who owns L. Frank Baum's estate right now? I have no idea.

[Sean Fennessy]

Get on that, Bob.

[Todd McShay]

I'll spend the next 10 minutes looking that up diligently and make sure that I'm legally correct so I don't slander anymore. Thanks for your service, Bob. Happy to be back. Movies. We're back. Movies are back.

[Chris Ryan]

Moana's back. I guess Moana's back.

[Sean Fennessy]

Does it feel good for this to be. What Movies are back for Moana 2.

[Chris Ryan]

Setting the biggest five day opening in movie history.

[Sean Fennessy]

For the movie theater to be pandemonium playground of children screaming and singing throughout movies. That's what you want?

[Todd McShay]

I'll say. I think the bigger problem is grown ass people singing along to Wicked and not children. There was no singing in Moana 2 for me. Actually the kids in both screenings were very well behaved. It's the weirdo 32 year olds who are singing along to popular and you know, nobody mourns the Wicked.

[Sean Fennessy]

You mocked that. But I thought you carried a beautiful tune during the brutalization.

[Todd McShay]

Thank you. Appreciate that. I mean if you want me to do the Daniel Blumberg score like Da na na na, I'll be doing that on this show probably for the next 12 years.

[Sean Fennessy]

Every time you win a draft, I.

[Todd McShay]

Hope that's the needle drop. Yeah, there we go. It's the new Thanos. And by the way, if you would like to make your own wizard of Oz film at home, you can because they entered public domain.

[Chris Ryan]

How about that? Of course, coming soon from Ringer Film. The wizard of Oz.

[Sean Fennessy]

Wizard of Oz.

[Todd McShay]

Taylor Sheridan's wizard of Oz.

[Chris Ryan]

Wow.

[Todd McShay]

That's amazing. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

How the Wizard Fights Back against the Woke Ma.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, Dorothy was the original lioness. When you think about it, she really was.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, shall we pivot to Blitz, please? So Steve McQueen, one of my favorite active filmmakers. He's been on the show a couple times. I think the last time he was on was for Small Acts, his five film series he made for Amazon, which came out during COVID And new movie is a period piece set during World War II. Clearly a very personal story. It's written by Russell Hanlon, but you can tell that there's a lot of McQueen's personal experiences and a lot of stories of his heritage and a lot of remembrances from people who were alive at this time. It's about a nine year old boy named George who's sent away during the evacuation while the blitz is ongoing in London, and jumps the train when he's being sent away to return to his mother. So you've got this kind of classic Dickensian tale, very Oliver Twist. Saoirse Ronan plays his mother in the film. Elliot Heffernan is the young actor who plays George. A very un. McQueen, like, McQueen movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And we'd spent like a lot of time in the three or four months in the lead up to it speculating about what this movie was actually going to be. It premiered at the London Film Festival and not one of the signature fall festivals. Venice, Telluride, Toronto, et cetera.

[Chris Ryan]

Curious.

[Todd McShay]

Like if that was. If that was signaling something to us. Obviously London is a huge part of this film and it's history. And in fact, I think the theater where they premiered the film was previously a site that had been bombed and they rebuilt a theater on top of that space. And so, you know, there's like a kind of commemoration when they screened the movie. But the response to this movie has been remarkably muted. It had a short run in theaters and it is available to stream already. Rob, I'll start with you. What did you think of Blitz?

[Chris Ryan]

I think part of the reason for that is I found it kind of bland and technically impressive at points, but bland ultimately, and I think structurally pretty misguided. I, as a viewer, am not super compelled by the George runs away from stuff framework of driving an entire movie. And that's tough because, like, I get the personal connection, you get what he's going for in structuring the movie that way. It's just every time he goes through a little world of like a criminal conspiracy or a bunch of firefighters, I just want to stay with the firefighters and not follow the kid who's making kid decisions. So it's kind of a tough hang in that way.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. We should probably just be straight up where it's like casting a kid actor to carry your film is like a 1 in 100.

[Todd McShay]

It's very hard.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, he's not bad. No. But he's not Christian Bale, and that's just tough, you know what I mean? Like, and I'm not trying to be hard on him at all because, like, he has to carry a bunch of different emotions and do a lot of really intense physical acting for some such a small child. But to your point, Rob, I just found myself constantly wanting to go back to Saoirse or. Or. Or Harris Dickinson's character or Paul Weller's character. Like, I wanted to kind of be in the world of adults. And I think that ultimately that was something that just felt much more unique to film. Like where I was like, oh, this is such an amazing portrait of London trying to get by at this moment of extraordinary terror. Whereas the Child's Odyssey felt like something I had seen before and didn't. Just didn't emotionally connect to it. That being said, I've thought a lot about this movie since seeing it. I think it's got a lot going on as far as ideas go. I think it's almost a more interesting film to talk about than it is to watch.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

But it left me a little cold, even if I really appreciated some of the stuff that happened in it.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I think I'm mostly with you guys. I found it to be. I've seen the word anonymous thrown around to describe it, which I think is not really fair because there are a handful of flourishes, like artistic choices that are made in the movie that you don't see in your run of the mill period piece that comes to you from Focus Features or Searchlight or whatever. There is a gravitas and an artistry that McQueen retains. I think the movie actually is, like, ultimately a little lower in my estimation, because he kind of teases out what the movie could have been. In the first five minutes of the film, the first five minutes of the movie, you get this incredible sequence which captures these firefighters who are, you know, we later see in the film who are attempting to put out the fires during the blitz. And you're immediately thrust into the drama of the moment. And the way that it's shot and the way that he captures it is like, among the most riveting firefighting sequences I've ever seen in a movie. The way that the hose kind of Loses control and the people are being blasted around and in the attempt to kind of like, you know, they're being engulfed in flame and trying to fight through it. And then he hard cuts out of that. Once we see another bombing coming into this kind of, like, snowy digitized imagery which transforms into daisies, which is this, you know, sort of avant garde imagery that's sort of like a remembrance of the time before the Blitz. And the movie is all about, you know, Elliot Heffernan's character and Saoirse Ronan trying to come back together and also recapture that feeling that they had before World War II. Just like all the people of London are trying to feel that way, too. And in that five minutes, I was like, we are in a Steve McQueen movie. This is really cool that he is going to project some of his moves, some of his ideas and concepts onto this historical structure. And like you said, Chris, you referenced Empire of the sun with Christian Bale, the John Borman movie, hope and glory, Mrs. Miniver. There are a lot of movies that are about civilians and young people during wartime, especially World War II. It's something we've seen before, and I was hoping it was going to be a twist, and it's not really that much of a twist.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's a matter of perspective. I'm not comparing this movie to Empire out of the sun, of the sun, one to one, because they're just completely different stories. But one of the things that Empire of the sun does is really strictly stick to the POV of Christian Bale's character, so that everything is being viewed with this kind of childlike wonder and then a loss of innocence as the film goes on. And this movie is kind of all over the place. It's worth noting that McQueen also last year made a documentary called Occupied City, which is about the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and is an epic undertaking and is also thematically about, like, a lot of, like, normalcy versus what happens to normalcy when terror and war come into the picture. I almost felt like that filmmaker was like, I can't let. I felt like he couldn't let it go. Like, he wasn't like, I just want to tell one story with Blitz. I want to tell five. I want to tell six. I want to talk about music and culture during the war. I want to talk about racism during the war, class during the war. I also want to tell, like, a magical odyssey story during the war. I want to talk about what it must have been like to be a single mother during the war, like, and, yeah, like, it fills up and it fills you up because you're thinking about all this different stuff. But when you get to the end of the movie, you're like, what was that about? What was the story of Blitz? And it's hard to nail down when.

[Chris Ryan]

It's hard when you deviate that much. I think Blitz has a really hard time delivering the sort of emotional heft to be the movie it wants to be. When you're not with George all the way through, to be honest, even though he is in fires and he is being abducted and he is jumping off trains and he is in a literal Blitz, I just never felt that he was in that much peril. And it's like for this movie to come off feeling that way is, I think, what makes it a little empty.

[Todd McShay]

I think a little bit of it is the lack of the transformation, too, that we're talking about that you mentioned with the Bale character, the sort of loss of innocence. We don't really necessarily feel that totally communicated. But in addition to Occupied City, which is this really strange sort of four plus hour documentary that uses contemporary imagery of Amsterdam and sets it against this sort of narration that discusses what was transpiring in those spaces During World War II, a year before that movie, a film called Three Minutes a Lengthening, which is another documentary that is about, like, an image from World War II that was made by Bianca Stichter, who is Steve's wife, was. Is also, like, a fascinating exploration. So, like, as a couple, they're kind of entrenched in this project. And I think you're right that they kind of can't. They're really stuck on it, understandably. Like, this is the signature event of the 20th century. And so it's very understandable that there's, like, a lot of rich material. We're going to talk probably for like an hour about, you know, a ton of World War II movies and why it is this fertile ground. But it's just so strange because I think of. I think of McQueen as a really hard, sharp, cynical, bleak. Not like, ultimately there is, like, a sense of potential redemption in a lot of his stories, but there's nothing sweet about the movies that he makes. Yeah, and they often. This movie looks very. Even though it's about terror during war, there's something, like, soft in the composition. And it's notable to me that, like, he's using more or less a different crew. Like Sean Bobbitt, his longtime dp, is not on this film. It's shot by Yorick Lasseau, who's a great cinematographer, but who shot like Little Women and shoots Olivier assayes movies.

[Sean Fennessy]

Softer.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Domestic dramas, period pieces.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, that is what this movie wants to be.

[Todd McShay]

It does, but I wonder if you applied. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

What is Sean Bobbitt shooting the Steven Graham sequence look like?

[Todd McShay]

The other thing too is just that Steve McQueen's never made a movie at this scale. He's never made a movie with this much. This much cgi. Those are tools that are hard to utilize.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did the CGI bother you?

[Todd McShay]

It doesn't look bad. But I mean, you know, at the risk of spoiling something, like there's a very. A signature closing shot of the film that's sort of like a pullback onto the city.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

After it's been fully bombed out. That is very. Just. Just digital. I mean, it is just like it's obviously been fully created in a computer. And you can tell, you know, you can tell it's not in an attempt to be grand and have this sort of vista of a destroyed city. You're looking at something artificial. And that kind of like takes you out of the feeling that you're meant to have watching the movie, which is this sense totally like place and terror. So I don't. It's. It's like these are big, important choices in your head when you're thinking of a movie. You're like, this will be good. We'll be able to do it like this. And then when it's executed, I don't know, it doesn't feel as weighty as you want it to seem.

[Chris Ryan]

There are visuals that I think really do stick with you and sequences that I think are just like well executed set pieces or elements of these things that just really, really click and work within their little sil. And then the transitional pieces, I think are where the CGI sticks out. And it felt a little bit in watching this, like playing a triple A video game, like playing a very glossy story. Like you're running from place to place as this character, as everything is falling down behind you. Or if you prefer like a big transformer hand is just about to grab Shia LaBeouf or whatever. Like, that was the vibe. And that's just not what I want from a blitz movie, to be honest, with. Especially a Steve McQueen blood.

[Sean Fennessy]

But do you know what I'm saying? Where it's like you wind up thinking about it more than you wind up enjoying it. Because I do think that the film itself has some personal resonance for me. Just because my dad was an infant in London during the bombing And I think that there is, at least from my understanding, through my own family's perspective, a mythology that the English tell themselves about. The stiff upper lip, the unity, the collectivism that they experienced during that time period, which I don't think he necessarily suggests is untrue. But it does a great job showing how much more complicated that would have been and how much race and class played into a pecking order when it came even to breadlines. And I thought that was fascinating, but deflated a bit when we then would go off into these almost magical realism sections with George in his adventure across England to get back home.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I just think he's sort of like, teasing you with the possibility of moments or extended stories that are just more interesting than the central story. And the central story is sort of, like, historically significant because George is not white, and there's very rarely been a young non white boy centered in a story like this. And McQueen's family is from Grenada, and that heritage is explored in the movie. And he's made a lot of, like, documentaries and short films about this. And so in a way, I think you could very clearly see this movie as sort of like a prequel of sorts to Small Acts and how Small Acts is about those communities, those, you know, West Indian communities that are in London. And so it's not that it's not new and it's not that it's not relevant. It's just like the framework of the story is really the issue. It's like the script just feels soft, just feels like a little iterative and not exactly what you wanted. So it's disappointing. Like, I really, really anticipate new McQueen mov. And I don't know, there's a little bit of like, is this an Apple problem? Like, I don't know.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was wondering about that. You know, I just feel like you have to take the text as you get it. So without knowing anything about whether or not Apple was like, what we really want to do is tell, like, a wondrous story of perseverance, but you can do other stuff on the side. Alyssa Wilkinson had a really good piece about this movie in the Times where she suggested that the almost like, abrupt nature to the episodic storytelling, like the way that these stories almost cut off just as they're about to take full flight, was reflective of the way in which life itself was interrupted in London and how one of the most striking images, I think, is the moments in this movie before a bomb falls and we know a bomb is coming. As Paul Weller is In bed with a cat or as something is like very normal, everyday life is taking place. I thought it was an interesting read of the film. That didn't change how I felt about my experience watching it. But I thought I would shout that out because I thought it was a really cool idea about the structure of it.

[Chris Ryan]

I think some of that plays in. In terms of the other technical aspects of the movie. I thought the score was very strange and at times it would be building up in a sort of way, like you're about to reveal the alien in signs and then abrupt cut to a new scene and it's like it's building to something, something and then nothing. So I get that sort of like the cutoff momentum. And if that's the artistic intent there, I support it. I just. I don't think it makes for a very cohesive watching experience.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. He said something in the LA Times that I thought was interesting. He said often people think war is what happens in far distant places. And he talked about what's happening in Gaza, Libya, Ukraine as sort of like inspiration points for the movie. He said, I wanted to bring it home. This is what happened here. This movie has a real sense of urgency. Unfortunately, I wanted it to be a roller coaster ride through London during the war. So I think that kind of accounts for that, like, jumpy quality that the movie sometimes has. I did think it was notable that in 2014 when he made 12 Years a Slave. He did a lot of press for that film, obviously, and he said at the time that the film industry had been negligent in covering stories about American slavery and the slave trade. And he said that World War II lasted five years, and there are hundreds and hundreds of films about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Slavery lasted 400 years and there are less than 20 films about it. And yet he was eventually drawn to making a World War II film too. It's like there's something kind of like.

[Sean Fennessy]

Two World War II movies that's.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something kind of like undeniable about the appeal. And maybe we can use that as like a segue a little bit towards our World War II films conversation. Because, like, I just started mapping out the kinds of movies you can make about the conflict in that time in history. It's more or less every genre of movie. Is there a genre of movie that. I mean, I can run through this list that I spent hours plotting, but are there any kinds of films that you can't make during World War II?

[Chris Ryan]

I'm kind of stunned at the variety. You know it. And you've seen a lot of these movies and you've seen the gonzo stuff. You've seen the very somber, solemn things. You've seen like the gallows humor in between Zone, but the fact that you can make outright farce and musical and spy movie and sniper movie and also frontline battle movie out of something that I think a lot of people hold not only historically to a very strict standard in terms of what they want to see on screen, but like, it's a lot of delicate subject matter to just delve into with a sense of humor to the point that some of the best filmmakers have tried it and just completely fallen on their face in doing so. But I don't know why it seems to like, ebb and flow in terms of how we make these movies. And like, why Blitz now? I don't exactly know other than obviously the racial ele that are discussed in the movie are very pertinent and relevant and make sense. But otherwise it doesn't really seem like we're in a World War II moment.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it's interesting. I think we always are. You know what I mean?

[Chris Ryan]

In your house. Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

But I do think that there is something about the moment itself, The World War II moment, those years and even the post war years, first of all, how it gives birth to everything that comes after it. So the way it shapes the world, the way it gives way to the Cold War, the way it kind of sets up all these powers for years to come. But I was thinking about this the other day, actually, after watching Brutalist. We're not going to talk about that. But filmmakers, also a World War II filmmaker, filmmakers fascination with the past because it is a pure storytelling arena to be in. Because they don't want to show people on their phones doing group chat. Lol. Like that is like the way that people do dialogue.

[Todd McShay]

Soft promo for Rob Sootherpo.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, listen to group chat.

[Sean Fennessy]

But World War II technology, World War II fashion, World War II music is like firmly a period, but. And it's got romance now. Like, you know what I mean? Like something about Morse code, like encrypted Morse code is more like kind of romantic than a Nokia phone from like the Jason Bourne era, you know, that would be like an earlier technological development. So there's something about it that I feel like is like modern enough, but also has like the romance of like Shakespeare, you know what I mean? Partially. Also because I'm sure we're going to talk about the. At least in the narrative sense, the Moral clarity of the conflict.

[Todd McShay]

I think that's a big part of it. I would suggest that there is also a social component, which is that at the time of the event, movies were becoming the centerpiece of American entertainment, and soon international entertainment and studios repositioned a lot of filmmakers to work to create propaganda. Five came back. It's this great Mark Harris book about some of the best filmmakers working in Hollywood at the time making documentary films to inspire. And then in the immediate aftermath of that, and even during the conflict, you've got the production of really good movies by really good filmmakers and some filmmakers who were exiles from countries who were in the conflict, Fritz Lang in particular, coming to America or to England and making films like, literally during World War II, about Nazis. And so you've got that. So you have this sort of starting place where movies are becoming more and more popular, and this is a deeply cinematic conflict that you can portray in a lot, in a variety of ways. And so it becomes, like, part of the bedrock of not just American movie making, but you've got stories told through the Japanese perspective, the German perspective, you know, the Polish perspective, the French perspective, Russia, like a lot of the great Russian cinema is made in the aftermath of the conflict. So it's this fascinating thing where it starts out as you can make sort of sly thrillers that have a strong political point of view, or you can make sharp satires, right, Like Lubitsch is making To Be or Not To Be, like, really early in the conflict. And then it, like, it expands out and out and out. Adventure action movies. This becomes the best setting for those kinds of stories. Man on a mission movies, Child and Peril movies like this one, POW movies, escape movies, are perfect for this. Romance movies amidst the conflict. Some of the most beloved and celebrated movies in filmmaking history, like Casablanca, From Here to Eternity, the English Patient, these are World War II movies, biopics, obviously, you've got these great leaders and figures that rise during this time. Patton and Churchill and Rommel and all these fascinating people who are part of the conflict. Musicals. There's, like, several great musicals. It's shocking. World War II, the sound of Music, Cabaret, South Pacific, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I mean, these are all Bednams and Broomsticks is kind of a prequel to Blitz. You know, like, it's so interesting to me. And then there's the whole civilian element, too, of sort of life during wartime and how people lived commonly during this period, which we get some of during the Saoirse Ronan stuff. And there have been A lot of movies like that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like, we're saying, like, Remains of the Day, things like that. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And then there's all the fallout. There's Holocaust dramas. There's the sort of post nuclear annihilation dramas. There's desiccated cities and what Europe looks like in the aftermath of the war. All these movies get bundled on top. And so it's so interesting that one, our favorites list is almost like a waste of time. It's just like, it has to be so personal because the list is, like, there's like, 300 genuinely interesting movies made about World War II.

[Chris Ryan]

There were individual years where it's like there were dozens of World War II.

[Sean Fennessy]

Movies, and there are, like, 10 that are some of the most decorated films ever made. So it's almost like, yeah, obviously. But, you know, I try and just have a little bit more fun with it.

[Chris Ryan]

But there is a reason for that. Yes, it is part, like, the propaganda machine and the cultural programming. But I cannot pretend that there is not a part of me that stirs at, like, a big horn section and an emotional salute in the middle of the movie. Like, it hits. And I've been trying to, like, isolate, like, what it is about these movies that works, like, what it is that I want from them. And I think the camaraderie is a.

[Todd McShay]

Big part of it.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, the in the foxhole feeling. Whether you're at home or on the front lines or wherever it is, there's the sense of, like, tragedy and humanity. And then I think the scale sometimes, right. Like, you're either taking the very personal story and blowing it out, or you're showing the full. Like, a bloody ocean, you know, washing up on Normandy. Like, I think the scale of those things can be a little hard to wrestle with in a history book, Wikipedia page kind of context.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's all that. It's the totality of the conflict touching everybody from Eisenhower to a woman working in a factory in the Midwest. You know, it's. I think there's something very recognizable about watching these films because, you know, if you've gotten. If you're lucky enough to have gone to Europe, like, one of the things that's just amazing about that place is you will be walking and it'll be like, oh, Constantine was crowned next to this pizzeria. That's pretty cool. Like, you will be, like, walking through history in a way. You could still do it in the Northeast here and all over this country. Like, you can, but maybe it's a little bit more woven into, like, the cities and the countryside of Europe in a way that just hits you differently. And I also think that there's something about how this is a super genre of film that I am equally open to being romanticized by it and also having all of that deflated. Like, I will do the Longest Day, which is like the successful triumph, the D Day, and I will do A Bridge Too Far, which is the failure that happened before it. You know, I am open to the craven moral decay of the Third man. And also, you know, Casablanca. I am open to every kind of iteration of these stories.

[Todd McShay]

I think another thing that adds to the mythos of it is even though there are no cell phones in any of these films, this was really the first technology war. You know, we're sort of like radar and sonar and mapping and spying and code breaking and all of these complex ideas, plus the level of artillery and scientific sophistication that went into the bomb making and the actions that were taken.

[Sean Fennessy]

So is Imitation Game in your top five, then? It is.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. That's number one for me. Spoiler. But you have all this new world ideas getting bundled. This isn't bayonet fighting. You know what I mean? There's a certain kind of warfare that can be depicted that is so visual and so fascinating to kind of unpack and untangle. And I think the key point is what you said, Chris, which is that there is a simple morality to fascism bad that still works and still makes sense and resonates deeply, and it makes movies that would otherwise seem corny feel inspiring or feel justified in its corniness.

[Chris Ryan]

The concept of a war you can win is just not something that we have a lot of exposure to anymore. But I also think because it is so straightforward in that way, there are a lot of these movies where the Nazis are just kind of like lurking on the outside of the frame or coming two years after the duration of the movie. And it just heightens everything. It just completely raises the stakes. It casts this huge shadow over whatever, like, domestic travail you may be watching. And it just. It completely changes the tone of those movies in a way that you just can't do with any other element.

[Sean Fennessy]

And that's why you prefer films that center the German military anyway, right? Like Valkyrie. And, you know, what do you mean.

[Chris Ryan]

He'S just a history buff?

[Todd McShay]

I hit you with one booster seat joke, and you're just turning the fascism gags on me. Yeah. This is a pretty amazing and special way of thinking through film history. I definitely was like, honey, I just need one more minute. When I was working on the outline and it was like two hours later of just thinking about all the different kinds of films that fit into the idea.

[Sean Fennessy]

I literally did this last night where I was like. My wife was like, can you please spend some time with me? And I was like, I'm making an imaginary list of movies Rick Dalton would.

[Todd McShay]

Have been in from World War II.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is like the happiest I've been in 2024.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, God. We all just want to go back. I just want to go back to a time when Rick Dalton was above the line. What else can we say? What else is. I mean, coming of age for me. Like, I was 16 when Saving Private Ryan came out, you know, so that in the Brokaw book and the Greatest Generation, all of that was being fed. Both of my grandfathers served. Both of them were POWs during World War II. They never spoke about it, but everyone around them talked about it all the time. You know, there was a real consciousness of the war in my family growing up. And so it's just kind of intrinsic to the experience. I think my grandmother had. My grandmother had six brothers and they all served in World War II or Korea. Like, it just was an elemental quality of American life at a certain time, especially if you were of a particular class. And so it's no surprise that this stuff continues on and on and on because it is passed down. It is sort of like it is narrativized and there's like, legacy that is created through it. So, yeah, Saving Private Ryan being the phenomenon that it was not only being a movie that was like, you know, well reviewed and won awards, but was like a big fat hit. On the heels of Spielberg making Schindler's List for my generation, it seemed obvious that there would be another Hundred Years of World War II movies. Now I do feel like there is a lot of. Well, they haven't done it like this. Like, there's a lot of, like, scraping going on on the edges of the story.

[Sean Fennessy]

Or it's like big time filmmaker is finally ready to tell his epic story. Dunkirk, you know, what have you. Like Inglorious Bats.

[Chris Ryan]

I did see Tyler Perry has a movie coming out literally a few weeks, a World War II movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Does he really?

[Todd McShay]

Six triple eight.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Todd McShay]

Is the name of it. So all of our Titans show Black female regiment. Oh, wow.

[Sean Fennessy]

We're also getting. And Spike Lee did Miracle of Santa like a couple of years ago. I do. I will note that there has been a minor burst of World War II genre dramas on TV. So a lot of what would have been B films, relationship films in the 50s and 60s, perhaps have now kind of like, you'll get SAS, Rogue Heroes or what have you on TV.

[Todd McShay]

Do they work in that format? I feel like there's. The whole point is that these, you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Know, it depends on what you like. I like the early season of the Crown are quite good when it comes to the world.

[Todd McShay]

That's a good point. That is a World War II film. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Rogue Heroes is incredible.

[Chris Ryan]

I.

[Sean Fennessy]

You could make an argument that Blitz might have been better as a miniseries, but I think as CGI becomes more and more prevalent, you'll probably see period pieces that look kind of fake, but then you can just kind of rock them up like that.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, one reason I think it works on TV like that. And one thing that as you allude to, Blitz might be missing is these movies lend themselves to big dope ensembles, like huge companies of people, whether they're military or not. And like, I think Blitz by comparison feels very small in that way, in a way that I think is intended. But to me, the most successful ones often have. It's a rogues gallery of actors who become big deals in five years after they were in it or even in real time. It's like, oh my God, they got all these people to be in one company together.

[Todd McShay]

No, it's true. And I think it's often because some of the best and most kind of classically entertaining of these movies are team up movies where you've got like unlikely figures being banded together to. To serve a common goal. I just rewatched the Guns of Navarone for the first time in a long, long time last night. And I was, as I was watching it, I realized that a movie that was released this year is a full blown Guns of Navarro ripoff, which is the Ministry of Ungentlemanly warfare. The first 30 minutes of the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare ripping off Guns of Navarone. Not in a bad way. I mean, this is something that like movies like this do. They're just, they're iterative and they're sort of like paying homage. It's like you're saying like, it's like it's my turn to do a movie like this that is clearly Guy Ritchie's Love Letter to 50s and 60s Action movies starring guys like Steve McQueen and Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck. And I love those movies. Those movies are not very deep. They don't have a ton to say beyond, you gotta save the day.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just cool guys. But they're fun.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, that has its appeal.

[Todd McShay]

That's the thing is, that's most of my top five.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Trust me, there's room on all of our lists for movies like that. There's nothing wrong with them at all. It's interesting, though, whenever people would criticize like Michael Bay, I would always be like, this is not different from anything that's been happening in movies for the last 50 years. Like Michael Curtiz movies are like Michael Bay movies. And this is where a lot of filmmakers make their best stuff. Michael Bay, of course, also made a World War II movie, Pearl Harbor. Like every great filmmaker, really, almost every great filmmaker takes a bite out of this apple.

[Sean Fennessy]

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[Chris Ryan]

Available December 9, 2024.

[Todd McShay]

Game catalog varies by region and over time.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay, that's the ad. You can go back to doing whatever.

[Todd McShay]

You were doing now. So you're getting hungry, really hungry. Head to Jack in a Box and pick up a smashed Jack. It's a juicy, delicious smashed burger topped with cheese, pickles, grilled onions and boss sauce. And it's now available on Sourdough. The Smash Jack. Only a Jack in the box. Order one on the Jack app today. What were your hard cuts here? Did you have ones where you were like, I'd really like to put this on my list?

[Sean Fennessy]

I had movies that I was like, is there really any point to me putting this on a top five of World War II movies? Because we've talked about it so much. I tried basically to do this. The movies that I have watched the most and that I returned to over and over again out of pure pleasure. And one that I was like, I think everybody should see this.

[Todd McShay]

Okay?

[Sean Fennessy]

But I left Off a bunch of stuff that I was like. I would just say, like, well, yeah, obviously, you know what I mean? But, yeah, that was sort of my guiding rule of thumb. I also tried to keep the movies more or less set between 40 and 45. So even though my favorite movies are probably the fallout movies, I kind of tried to keep them within the rails of the actual conflict.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, that's interesting. I have one that is pre war, just in an effort to talk about a rounded group of films. But that's the other thing I'm trying to look at. What is the best way to discuss some of these things? Like, you know, Night in Fog is a tremendously important movie about World War II. I wouldn't say it's my favorite. You know what I mean? Like, it's not something I'm going to fire up. And there are even some films, like you mentioned, A Bridge Too Far or Longest Day or Torah Tor Tour, like these big splashy ensemble epics. I don't necessarily always love those movies. I find them kind of a chore to get through. So some things work for some people, some don't work for others.

[Sean Fennessy]

So the big Cornelius Ryan joints, like, you're kind of.

[Todd McShay]

It's not really my thing, but I know you're more into those.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you. Were you mostly European theater? Did you find yourself wandering over the Pacific theater?

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I mean, there's like a couple of incredibly important Japanese films like Kandichikawa's movies. Fires on the Plane and the Burmese Harp are both, like, great, essentially made in, like, 1946, like, in the immediate aftermath of the war and sort of like reckoning with Japan's role in the war and effectively like, what happened to soldiers after the war. Burmese Harp is particularly fascinating in that respect. But a lot of those stories are more in the sort of post nuclear examination that resonate more with me. Like, I haven't seen a ton of films about the actual conflict through Japanese eyes. Clonista would be one of those movies, actually, but they're not. I just haven't seen as many of those. Unlike Ballad of a Soldier, like in Russia, there's a lot of movies that are like that, where you see the world through the eyes of Russians, like Ivan's Childhood, the Tarkovsky movie. But I think I'm entirely in the European theater in all the films that I picked. What about you?

[Chris Ryan]

I picked some in the Pacific theater, for sure. And I think generally you were talking about how personal these lists are. For me, war movies when I was a teenager were not something I felt comfortable watching, like, in the same way that I don't really like listening to a true crime murder podcast. It's like a frontline battle movie is just not something I was locking in on and throwing on tv. And so the Pacific Theater movies that resonated more with me are a little bit more smaller personal stories, a little bit more every person involved and the tendrils of this great conflict than they are. Let's show the battle on the beach. Let's show the U boats. Like, for some reason, that stuff when I was younger felt a little too tangible.

[Sean Fennessy]

Gotcha.

[Chris Ryan]

And I don't want to say abstract it, because obviously the nature of the war is shaping all these movies driving the conflict. I think the movies we picked are not just movies set during World War II, but World War II movies in terms of what is driving the action. But there's lots of ways you can do that. It doesn't have to be machine guns on the front lines.

[Sean Fennessy]

Absolutely. I mean, in some ways, I think that, like, our personal relationships, both to the conflict itself, but also to where maybe America's place in the world was at various points over the course of the last couple of decades, definitely influences this. I'll also say that I was largely introduced to these movies by my parents as comfort food. And even when Saving Private Ryan came, I was kind of like, ah, well, that's. I kind of intuitively understood that this is what happened, but, like, that's kind of a bummer. You know what I mean? I kind of wanted to see Steve McQueen throwing a baseball against the wall.

[Todd McShay]

You know, I think the most iconic movies are movies that we'll probably all talk about from our list, but that are often tightly focused on groups that are not in infantry battles.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sure.

[Todd McShay]

You know, like, Saving Private Ryan is weirdly more of an exception than it is the Rule, which is very different from the World War I movies. You know, like, All Quiet on the Western Front is trench warfare. You know, Paths of Glory is trench warfare. Those movies, I think the war was fought differently for obvious reasons. But the kinds of movies that emerged in the canon are just very different from the Great Escape or Bridge on the River Kwai or these other movies that are sort of, like, locked in as important films. You have to see if you want to understand the history of movies. So it's interesting that what the war demands, like, what kind of movies they'll give. You should also note that Oppenheimer is a World War II movie.

[Chris Ryan]

It certainly is just one Best Picture.

[Todd McShay]

And was one of the movie sensations of 2023.

[Sean Fennessy]

I wonder if we charted this if we're on. Every five years there's a great World War II film run. Because it's like before that Dunkirk before that, Inglourious Basterds before that. You know what I mean?

[Todd McShay]

Absolutely.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think that fairly routinely now. This isn't going anywhere.

[Todd McShay]

No, I don't think so either. There's probably been more than just ministry and blitz this year too. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but they're always coming. They're always coming. And now it's time for a very special segment presented by Walmart. Since Amanda is on leave, I thought we could use this time to plan the perfect gift for her for the holidays. I honestly love going above and beyond getting gifts for my friends. Amanda doesn't know we're doing this right now, but I had this incredible lineup of possible gifts. So many quality gifts from Walmart. And when it comes to shopping, I thought about a lot of different kinds of things. I thought about maybe some gifts for Knox, her young son. I thought about maybe a new TV or a Roku that she could stream movies on. I thought about maybe a Lenovo, a laptop that she could, you know, look at all my spreadsheets and download what we're doing on the big picture going forward. But then I thought, I need to take care of Amanda. I need to give her something that makes her feel safe, comfortable, happy at home, which is where she is right now. So here's what I came up with. That is the Ninja Creamy? You might be asking yourself, what is a Ninja Creamy? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's an ice cream maker. Amanda loves ice cream. I love ice cream. On this show we support ice cream. And so I thought for this holiday season she might like to dig into some ice cream. During the holidays, thoughtfulness is a big deal. So give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart. Shall we do our list?

[Chris Ryan]

Let's do it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sure.

[Todd McShay]

Chris, would you like to kick us off? Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

So this is probably the most like important film history one and the one that I think is probably underseen at this point, but is important to see. Which is paisan, Roberto Rossellini's 1946 movie. This is an episodic film. I think there's six stories told. It's set in Italy in the end of. Towards the end of the war. It is stunning. It's a mix of professional and non professional actors. It's got Rossellini's Neorealism style in full bloom. And one of the things that you have to kind of remind yourself of is that, like, you're not watching newsreel footage, and so you'll see, you know, footage from a dock in Sicily or something, and you're like, that isn't. That's just the boat and the people. Like, that is really happening this, you know, like, because of the episodic nature of it, you may. Your mileage may vary on various stories in it, but you'll never be bored. In fact, I think you'll be stunned by the modernity of the storytelling and the maturity of the subject matter and the moral kind of gray area that it operates in. He made a World War II trilogy, which I recommend everybody see. So Rome, Open City Paisan, and Germany, Year Zero, right?

[Todd McShay]

Yep.

[Sean Fennessy]

And Rossellini's movies are just fucking incredible. They are on Criterion Channel. It should be considered like a foundation of your film education.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm taking notes. This was underseen, including by me.

[Todd McShay]

Those three movies are made literally in the immediate aftermath of the war, too. And they're capturing something that could only be captured at that time.

[Sean Fennessy]

And if you can, if you're watching these, specifically Scorsese, but lots of people have talked about these movies, but you can find Scorsese talking About them on YouTube or on Criterion. And it's like getting a film education in and of itself. To hear him talk about what these movies meant to him is really pretty awesome.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, Rob, your number five's already come up. What is it?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it's not underseen. It is Saving Private Ryan. And I think you can watch that movie, and the story and the music and the sentimentality can hit you in a way that works really well. I think it cracks, like, wide open when you realize how fucking bleak that movie is. To me, the whole idea of this sort of, like, earn this conceit is that you can't. No matter what you do, no matter what anyone does, all of this, there's nothing that can make it worth it. And to have Tom Hanks at the center of that is really breathtaking to watch and to revisit. And this is one, like. I think there are a lot of movies in the genre in this world that we're talking about. They're just really hard to go back to. I do think you can go back to Saving Private Ryan for a couple of different reasons, maybe with enough time in between. But it is propulsive. It does the thing that Blitz does in that it is kind of a winding Vignette story, as a lot of these war movies are.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's travelogue.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it's a complete travelogue. And it feels totally different. And I think it packs the sort of punch that I was hoping Blitz would be able to deliver for me, but didn't. It is a World War II movie where, like, the stakes don't have to be end the war or kill Hitler or whatever. Like, it can be smaller than that. It could be more fragile than that. And look, it's a. It's an instant classic for a reason.

[Todd McShay]

Spielberg has made 1941.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan. I'm forgetting Empire of the Sun. Empire of the sun.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

5.

[Sean Fennessy]

You could call Bridge of Spies a post World War II movie.

[Todd McShay]

Yes. Yeah. War Horse. World War I.

[Chris Ryan]

What's his deal? Like, why. Why is that the thing to keep going back to over and over and over?

[Todd McShay]

I mean, you know, I think it's also, like, very much a prismatic American experience, you know, And Spielberg, one of the signature American filmmakers and storytellers of the 20th century, so not shocking that he goes back and back to it. Saban by Ryan, probably my favorite of all of his World War II movies. I like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think there's an argument that this is the greatest film ever made about World War II.

[Todd McShay]

Do you think that's true?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, I just. Like I said, these are films, for the most part, with the exception of Paisan, that I go back to over and over and over again because I just love the feel of them. But I probably. It's pretty close. But I think Save and Private Ryan, you would not get a lot of arguments.

[Chris Ryan]

It might be the one you put in the capsule that you send into space to explain artistically what that period of history was like. It would be hard to pick one of these sort of fringe side stories from some other element of the world and say, like, this represents this massive global conflict. So I think it probably taps into that as well as anything else.

[Sean Fennessy]

And actually, I mean, like, what's crazy about that movie is it does what it takes hundreds of other movies to do about the conflict, which is it both kind of launches the Greatest Generation idea and this sort of lionization of this entire thing, but also talks about the incredible horrors that these guys went through and obviously didn't have the tools to, like, really talk about after words.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I. There was a conversation going on online over the weekend about the best shots of the 21st century, or, you Know, like, people were screenshotting images from movies that they really liked. And a bunch of people had pointed out that image from the Fabelmans where young Sammy Fabelman is filming himself in the mirror while his family is sort of breaking down, like, while his parents are telling the children that they're separating. And, you know, it's the. This fascinating self reflexive moment where he's talking, like, showing how he can't really cope with any emotional experience unless it's shot through the lens of storytelling in his own eyes. And someone pointed out when people were pointing to that scene that that was something that he came up with on the day, that Spielberg had not mapped that out and it wasn't in the script, but he was like, I want to try something. And then someone else pointed out in the immediate aftermath of that, that another thing that he did. And he's done this, he does this on every movie where he's just like, what if we did this? But the sequence where Adam Goldberg gets into the knife with a German soldier was like something that they just came up with. Like, it was supposed to be a gun battle.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And they were just like, what if we just did this on the ground in close quarters, body to body, begging, don't do this. Which is one of the most harrowing, visceral, and upsetting scenes in World War II movie history. And I think it's like the kind of scene that you could shoot that scene in 1957, but not that way. Yeah. And I think that's maybe one of the reasons why it, like, stands the test of time as one of the greats, if not the great. Because it seems like one of the most direct representations of what this looked like and felt like. And that probably will always be true.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it's weird that, like, I mean, I haven't seen Paisan more than I've seen Saving Private Ryan, but something happens in Paizon that's similar to what happens to Giovanni Ribizi in Saving Private Ryan. And that's just so much more upsetting. Even though Paisan was made in 1946 with people who had just literally come out of that conflict.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, so for my list, I tried to basically choose one type of movie for each slot. So I've watched the Guns of Navarro maybe more than some of these movies, but I wanted to see how the kind of movie, the weight could be held from the conflict. So A Matter of Life and Death is my number five. It's a Palin press burger movie from 1946. Same year as Paisan. That's about a British pilot who. The film opens with him sort of in the final moments of his life. There's just been a bombing raid and he's going down. And in a moment that he's going down, he sort of flashes and is essentially entering, if not the pearly gates, like he is about to be escorted to the afterlife, and there's some confusion, and the person who's supposed to be escorting him misses him. And so he slips into this sort of like, purgatorical, imaginary experience where he gets to sort of negotiate for the future of his life. The movie's not like an infantry battle movie. It's not a pilot battle movie. It's about a person who sacrificed his life for the war and sort of like what the sliding doors of that experience could have been for all people. The movie is ultimately like a romance and a fantasy and this incredible proscenium for Powell and Pressberger to try things in America. The movie was called Stairway to Heaven because there is a literal image, just sort of like an escalator moving into the sky that is very memorable. Resonated with Led Zeppelin quite a bit. And it's like one of the signature films of the first half of the 20th century in Britain, but is like a beautiful movie about using real world events to apply the imagination and the mind and what a movie can be, springboarding off of the world. And the fact that they did this immediately after the film, this is something that Blitz actually never gets to. It never gets to an idea beyond when you had your boots on the ground. It's not a bad thing, necessarily. It's not really what McQueen is going for, but it's a testament to, I think, the kinds of stories that you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Could tell around this and those. The Archers, which is the Powell and Pressburger production company, for a while there, they made like, 15 movies about World War II. 10.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like, I can't remember.

[Todd McShay]

Life and death of Colonel Blim is probably the other most.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's the big one. Yeah. But they. A lot. Some of them were like propaganda movies. Some of them were like, basically like submarine action movies. And then some of them were like these amazing romance films. So. Yeah, very cool.

[Todd McShay]

Number four, Chris.

[Sean Fennessy]

My number four is the Dirty Dozen. So this gets into the sort of. This movie was just on for the first 15 years of my life, all the time. This is how I was introduced to Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Men on a Mission. The dregs, the convicts who Come through and save the day. I can't even remember really. Like they have to blow up a hotel with all the Nazis in it, you know. But I just know that Jim Brown runs like a football route with at some point. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Split into two. First half is basically training. Second half is the mission. Yeah, funny. Corrosively like cynical and every. Every cool guy ever is in this movie.

[Todd McShay]

I just.

[Sean Fennessy]

I just love it so much.

[Chris Ryan]

I could just watch Lee Marvin cook dudes all day. All day long. I do think the first half does take. It takes its time kind of getting up and going a little bit. So it's kind of a perfect have on all the time movie where you can drift in and out a little bit. Oh, now we're really getting into it. But look, it's an incredibly enjoyable watch for a reason.

[Sean Fennessy]

One of the all time shitlord characters is Telly Savalas character in this movie.

[Todd McShay]

All of these movies, almost all of them that are considered like the 1960s classics of World War II are all two and a half to three hours. And so like you said, they are sort of like we have hijinks to get into in the training sequences before we actually get to the mission. But it's funny now though that we're.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like so mad at like Red one being long and I'm like. But Dirty Dozen could be seven hours.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Okay, Rob, what's your number four?

[Chris Ryan]

My number four is lust caution. And maybe that's all I need to say about that.

[Todd McShay]

I don't know if this is the.

[Chris Ryan]

Movie I want to be on record a bunch about. Even though it is beautiful. Like it is a team on a mission movie. Except the team is a bunch of students in Hong Kong who are like playing at being spies and getting in way over their heads. It also includes.

[Sean Fennessy]

I've never seen this movie.

[Todd McShay]

It is great movie. Ang Lee.

[Chris Ryan]

Ang Lee. Ang Lee directed. Maybe the pitch to you is it's kind of like a soft black hat launch because basically half the cast is in this movie. Oh, awesome. It is very racy. If that is not your speed, this is not the movie for you.

[Sean Fennessy]

But as like I would be scandalized.

[Todd McShay]

Is it NC17? I think it is NC17.

[Chris Ryan]

I have only seen the R rated cut. I don't think they're that different, to be honest with you. But people seem to clutch their pearls very hard at this movie. It is a spying as seduction movie. Basically the entire premise is this Group of these would be spies, are trying to seduce and eventually hope to assassinate. This government official basically was like working for the Japanese puppet government in occupied Shanghai, played by Tony Leung. So it's gonna be smokey. You know, it's gonna be like. I think overall, the vibe of this movie of just turning out this incredibly charged thriller in the middle of a war, something that I didn't know Ang Lee could really do until I saw him do it. I would recommend it to literally everybody. It's just an incredible watch.

[Todd McShay]

Really great film. Definitely the first time I saw Tang Wei shot by Rodrigo Prieto. Martin Scorsese, she's so good in it. Yeah, she's amazing. Joan Chen is in this movie. Really, really good film like that pick. Rob, what is my number four? Hmm? Oh, Cabaret, which I did mention, which of course is Bob Fosse's musical about kind of Weimar Republic Germany and the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s, and has, like, another movie that is kind of durational, where at the very beginning of the film, you see the aspirant Third Reich sort of not being respected and still being a minority in Berlin and then over time infiltrating the arts community and effectively running all of Germany by the end of the period. And it kind of sandwiches the rise of an ambitious singer and performer and this world of performance and theater and what's happening in the world around it is much more significant. But the way that you can kind of throw yourself into your own personal experience as something very awful is rising around you feels like an important movie right now. I don't want to put too fine a point on it.

[Chris Ryan]

That's funny.

[Todd McShay]

But I'm a person who throws himself into his personal experience a little bit at times like this, so I think it's good to at least have a little bit of self awareness. But if you haven't seen Cabaret, it's one of the great movie musicals and is. If you think Wicked is a really good musical.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Check this out.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, watch this movie. Listen to this. I'll look right into the camera for that one. Check out Cabaret. Consider it okay?

[Chris Ryan]

I'm not even a musical guy. I will watch and listen to literally anyone who is not Eddie Redmayne. Do Vilkommen like the MC welcome song?

[Todd McShay]

Did you not like that? Tony's performance?

[Chris Ryan]

Respectfully, I'm gonna decline to comment on that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are you a fan of the films, like Veronica Voss, stuff that's set in and around Germany throughout this period?

[Todd McShay]

I don't mean Fassbender Movies. Yeah. Yes. I think this entire period is fascinating to me.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, you're a dad now.

[Todd McShay]

I am, yeah. Well, it's just very unnerving. 31 through 37 in in Berlin is. Even 29 through 37 is upsetting to imagine and it's not to be too pod save about this but you know, it's not that unimaginable.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's like the octave jump in your voice.

[Chris Ryan]

The cabaret really is us.

[Todd McShay]

Who knew? Okay. Number three, Chris.

[Sean Fennessy]

Number three is Bridget Remagen. Have you ever seen this?

[Todd McShay]

I have, yeah. We talked about it once before on the show.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. So this is a 1960s movie with George Siegel. It's very simple. It's like the Americans have to hold a bridge and the Germans got to take the bridge. And it's got an awesome cast. Robert Vaughn plays the German officer. On the other side of things. It's got some absolutely extraordinarily violent, realistic feeling, kind of shoot em up scenes. But I think if I'm being real, I just find these films that are sort of set in these western European countries to be incredibly picturesque. And I love looking at the scenery and the landscape, even if it all is about to get blown up. This is a real like very interesting story that also is about the futility of this entire thing and about how like we're just fighting for an inch here and an inch there. But is just an awesome B movie. John Gillerman directed it. It's not. I would just from what I've read, the not most historically accurate World War II movie ever made, but incredible George Siegel performance at the center of it. So I would really highly recommend anybody who's just looking for like a kind of like cool 60s era. So like a little bit more modern, a little bit more racy World War II battle movie.

[Todd McShay]

What relationship did your dad have to movies like this? How kind of it became like box office bait to make these adventure movies in the 60s.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Like did he like them? Yeah. Oh, he loved them.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Like I think like when he saw stuff like Hope and Glory, it was a little bit more traumatizing or upsetting or triggering for him. But I think when he sees like these kind of like imagine the coolest people you could possibly think of doing cool shit in Europe.

[Chris Ryan]

He's like, yes, well, speaking of traumatizing and triggering, my number three is Grave of the Fireflies. Thinking about this movie fucks me up.

[Todd McShay]

You have to explain it to Chris because there's no way he's seen it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I have not seen Grave of the fire.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I mean, I think the one animated entry on our list which explains it, a studio Ghibli production, which they've actually made multiple World War II movies. Somehow it follows these this year was another one. Absolutely. It follows these two kids in Japan who are orphaned by the war and basically left to fend for themselves. And it is one of the most devastating things I've ever seen. Like, it is. You should watch it, but don't. And you really should, but, like, absolutely not under any circumstances. I watched this movie almost 20 years ago. I cannot watch it again. Some of the imagery in it will just, like, haunt you forever and ever. The fact that it is these. It is these two kids so young that they shouldn't have to be doing this, but trying desperately to look after each other in a community that just doesn't have the means to do that for everybody all the time. And again, not to bring everything back to blitz, but it's part of the reason why I'm frustrated with that movie is I've seen that you can make a movie about World War II featuring and starring only kids, and it can work and it can be an absolute emotional haymaker. And for whatever reason, like, that wasn't able to connect in the same way. But Gray with the Fireflies, it's a masterpiece of this kind of filmmaking. It's just not the kind of thing you're ever gonna want to watch again.

[Todd McShay]

It's a. I'm not speaking directly to you because I know you won't participate, but it's the first non Miyazaki studio Ghibli movie. That's Isao Takahata, who's one of the co founders of the studio. And it would be like kind of a perfect bookend with the Boy and the Herons for the movie. They're very much in conversation with each other. Great pick. My number three is a movie called the Train, which I think is one of the best movies ever made.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Todd McShay]

This is a John Frankenheimer sort of heist movie. It's a movie about French masterpieces that the Germans are trying to steal.

[Chris Ryan]

So Monuments Men.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, Monuments Men doesn't need to exist because we have.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, but it's like Monuments Men if it was about the killer. Like the David Fincher movie where it's.

[Todd McShay]

About black and white.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Labiche, the Lancaster character, who is the train guy? He's Train Man.

[Chris Ryan]

Train Man.

[Todd McShay]

He literally fixes the connecting rod on a train wheel in the film, like, in real time.

[Chris Ryan]

This is what I'm Talking about a.

[Todd McShay]

Lot of men's stuff going on in this movie, but it's shot in black and white. Beautiful film. Like, incredibly gorgeous to look at. Great performances all around. Classic German motherfuckers as your villains. Uncomplicated kind of narratively in that respect. But it's a movie that's about sacrifice. Most of the great World War II movies are about what you give up. A lot of Frenchmen in the Resistance give their lives during the course of this movie to protect these great works of art. And then the movie kind of confronts you with this big idea which is sort of like, is this sacrifice worth it? Because people are literally giving their lives for works of art they may never see that are basically just boxed throughout the entire movie. And there's, like, it just says, like, Picasso, like, written on a box during the film. But it has all the spirit and intensity and grit of heat and all of the, like, real world consequence of Saving Private Ryan smashed together. So it's a great movie. If you haven't seen the Train, it's.

[Sean Fennessy]

Jean Moreau and Paul Schofield are also in it.

[Todd McShay]

Paul Schofield as the German SS motherfucker.

[Sean Fennessy]

Lancaster fucking fired Arthur Penn after, like, a couple of days and brought Frankenheimer in. But there's like, a what if Arthur Penn had made this movie?

[Todd McShay]

Like, it probably would be much more strange. Yeah, it would have that, like, itinerant New wave editing and all the stuff that he was doing at that time. But this is a great, great movie. There's a great Kino Lorber transfer that I would encourage the physical media heads to pursue because it looks very much better than if you stream it compressed on Amazon or whatever.

[Sean Fennessy]

Before I get to two, I'll just say a worst train movie is called Von Ryan's Express, which I highly recommend people see, if only to watch Frank Sinatra read off of cue cards. Because every, like, conversation shot of Sinatra, he's, like, just looking to the right shoulder of the person. Like, let me tell you something, Mr. Mr. Fritz. I'm not getting on that train. I don't know why I'm doing Trump. I don't know how it sounds.

[Todd McShay]

I think you were doing Byron Mayo as Frank Sinatra there.

[Sean Fennessy]

My number two. I think this is on everybody's list.

[Todd McShay]

So we all have the same number two, which I personally view as an acknowledgement of the long history of these kinds of movies on this movie, which I think is one of the most perfect movies ever made. What is it, Chris?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's the Inglorious Basterds certainly one of.

[Chris Ryan]

The most big picture movies ever made. Yeah, it was gonna come up.

[Todd McShay]

It might be. I think with Moneyball and the Social Network, it might be the big picture movie. Yeah. The film that we are the most.

[Sean Fennessy]

Celebratory of, in some ways. Every World War II movie is inside of this movie. Every little genre that you've broken down could be applied to this. The men on a mission, the romance, the satire, the sort of, in some ways, fantasy. In some ways, like fantasy of vengeance. But, yeah. I mean, what else?

[Todd McShay]

During wartime. Yeah. Everything is captured here.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think the thing that I keep. I was thinking about this because Fassbender is obviously back on screen with not only Kneecap, but with the Agency. And so I was just thinking about his character in Inglourious Basterds, how that's still my favorite performance of his, other than hunger by Steve McQueen. And how indelible the characters are from this film. Like, half a dozen people that I'm just like. That is one of the most fully fleshed out, amazing depictions of a person, even if they're just like Quentin, people I've ever seen. And then how many movies do you think have six of them?

[Todd McShay]

Well, it's like a testimony, I think, or testament to the fact that he's seen all these movies, you know, like, he's seen all of them and he has processed them, and he is, like, attempting to outdo the best parts of all of them. You know, especially with Hans Landa, you can feel him, in a fun way, saying, what if I could make my Peter Cushing Hound of the Baskervilles character the worst Nazi ever?

[Chris Ryan]

I know.

[Todd McShay]

And it's just. It's like a lot of inspired ideas like that, where he's sort of like. He's filtering his taste so wonderfully through this prism because there's so much to pull from. And still making something wholly original and just, like, wildly entertaining.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, and that character messes with you so much because, like, Christoph Waltz is so watchable. And there's also, like, the Sherlock thing going on where it's like, you almost want him to solve the puzzle, but obviously you don't want him to solve the puzzle. And it just wrenches you as you watch it. This has to be the most rewatchable of any of these movies. Like, you can return to Inglourious Basterds. I feel like, in a way that is much harder to do with almost anything else on our list.

[Todd McShay]

It's very pop. You have a movie on your list coming up that I think is because for an older generation, almost like this movie where people would just put it on at all times. I think it's funny, too, because, well, one, obviously, there's a kind of fantasy element to Inglourious Basterds, because not only do the good guys win, they win in the most extraordinary fashion imaginable.

[Chris Ryan]

I think that's what makes it rewatchable that way.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Maybe that's what it is. That there is a. It's not even hope and positivity. It's just, like, if only delusion. It's just straight delusion. I really enjoy that one. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was trying to tap in. I was trying to articulate this. It's just so weird how I'll have a movie that I think is, like, one of my 10 or 15 favorite movies of any given year, and I'm like, there's this guy and this guy, and then I, like, forget the names of characters or really what they do. And then I'm like, I still think about Bridget and Shoshona and Hickox and Zoller, and it's so wild.

[Todd McShay]

It's great writing. Yeah, it's just great writing. Okay, Chris, why don't you give us your number one, then?

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. My number one is the Great Escape.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Literally, like a nightlight on in my house for most of my life. This is weird. It makes being a prison of war look incredibly cool. Like, it seems kind of fun. Like, these guys do definitely go through a lot, but it's Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Richard Attenborough, and they, like, look cool and smoke and have, like, a July 4th party and dig tunnels, and it's. You can see the Alps and they're trying to get to Switzerland. And it just. It's just like, the most romantic version of this kind of story I think you can have. And the star power of it is blinding. You know, it is just blinding. It is so long, and you forget. Like, is it.

[Todd McShay]

I don't remember.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, it's like a double videotape. Like, I think this one's 320 or something like that.

[Todd McShay]

Wow.

[Chris Ryan]

Does, like, the star power of the World War II movie or the war movie still exists? Like, in the Guys Being dudes part of this canon? I felt like there was really a time where it's, like, it's a fun thing to play as an actor, to go be a soldier for a couple months or whatever. I don't know that we're gonna see, like, the Jacob Elordi war movie. Except Elvis, I guess. Like, I don't know what the version of that is or if that's a thing young actors are still interested in.

[Todd McShay]

It's a good question. I think one of the ways that in the post Saving Private Ryan world, they navigated that was that onslaught of TV that Chris was suggesting. Like Band of Brothers, the Pacific, all those.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

And we had Masters of the Air this year. So. Speaking of Austin Butler, he did do his version of it just happened to be on tv. I don't know. I do think that the movies could use more movies. They're like original stories about historical events that have all the movie stars. For whatever reason, I tweeted about this. I'm sorry to say I tweeted about this on a podcast, but I tweeted last night. I just, for whatever reason, stumbled on the Revolutionary Road.

[Chris Ryan]

Why didn't you skeet it?

[Todd McShay]

Because they don't allow you. Because they don't allow you to upload videos more than 60 seconds on blue.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sky and you were filming yourself crying.

[Todd McShay]

I was so captured that. So you can check that out over on my Twitter. No, I was watching the Revolutionary Road trailer and I was like, there are not movies like this anymore. There are period piece adaptations of great literature with the biggest possible stars, like in Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's follow up to Titanic. Together they made this desperately bleak movie about the impossibility of love in America. That's what that movie is, that movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Fucking riffs. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise anymore. We got to get over it.

[Todd McShay]

That was how I felt. I was like, I don't care about the pretensions, about Sam Mendes not being good or whatever. When I saw that movie, I was like, this is incredibly powerful and good. My point being, I feel like the same thing that I'm identifying in that movie where I'm like, it would be awesome if it was. Let's just do it. It's Jacob Elordi, Austin Butler. Who else? Chalamet, obviously. He's the sniper.

[Chris Ryan]

I think he's in there.

[Todd McShay]

Who else is on the list?

[Sean Fennessy]

Who should. Who would be Attenborough? Who would be the British actor?

[Todd McShay]

Josh Brolin.

[Sean Fennessy]

Josh Brolin would be. He would be like, I need you to get me Zinn.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, you mean the old. The old. Oh, like the David Niven type?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, the guy who's like, the mastermind of the whole thing.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, that's a good question. He has to be British.

[Sean Fennessy]

Maybe it should be British.

[Todd McShay]

Maybe it should be Fassbender. As a kind of nod.

[Chris Ryan]

Not mad about that.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, it's not right. But I would go with Brave Spall for David Abner.

[Todd McShay]

You'll never quit him.

[Sean Fennessy]

No.

[Todd McShay]

You're convinced one day he will be Jimmy Stewart.

[Sean Fennessy]

This movie is also very cool because it's not important. It's like, it has the room to let these guys hang out for 80 minutes before we really start getting serious about digging tunnels. And that's similar for Dirty Dozen. I think most movies now either have to be incredibly high concept or incredibly important. And the idea of it being like, I don't know, what if we took eight of the coolest guys ever and let them hang out in prison? Is, like, probably not enough to get a movie sold these days.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it's a real shame. I'm glad we have the POW representation on this list, though. Like, the subgenres go. I mean, honestly, you mentioned earlier, like, every one of these movies is about a bridge somehow. Like, bridge movies might have been their own.

[Todd McShay]

We got another one coming for you very soon.

[Chris Ryan]

I can't wait.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, Rob, what's your number one?

[Chris Ryan]

This is my favorite World War II movie. It may not be Adrien Brody's favorite or George Clooney's favorite. It's the Thin Red Line. It's a very different war movie. And in every way that a war movie can be different. And I think there's no single mission. There's not really a team. There's just, like a bunch of guys. There's barely even a main character.

[Sean Fennessy]

And I think, much to Adrian Brody's chagrin.

[Chris Ryan]

No, much to his chagrin and deservingly so. But I think the end point, you.

[Todd McShay]

Want to put some framework around that, that Adrian Brody thought he was the star of this film.

[Chris Ryan]

He was under the impression showed up.

[Todd McShay]

At the premiere and realized that he basically had one scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. Extremely tough beat.

[Todd McShay]

But that's what Terry Malick does, you know? You know who?

[Sean Fennessy]

You think they knew that then he's.

[Todd McShay]

Feeling it out now we do.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

He's just feeling his way through the picture.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

The result of that, though, is, like, this very decentralized story that I think makes it like an everyman soldier kind of thing. Sometimes I just wanna watch sun steepling through trees as people wax poetically about the meaning of life and conflict. And I think it has something that these other movies don't, which is it is in an idyllic setting. No disrespect to the European countryside, but putting a World War II movie in an island paradise is just such a different vibe, and I think lends itself almost to more of, like, a Vietnam parallel in a lot of ways than a World War II parallel.

[Sean Fennessy]

And his obsession with Paradise Lost, like, this idea of an Eden that gets desecrated somehow.

[Chris Ryan]

And also, we are the Eden who gets desecrated by ourselves all the time, perpetually. And I'm here for the meditation for it. I have a lot of leeway for the Terrence Malick experience.

[Todd McShay]

Me, too.

[Chris Ryan]

This is my movie. I do, too.

[Todd McShay]

But I must admit, this has never been one of my Malik movies. Never clicked yet, but I probably never seen it on the big screen, and I probably need to take another look.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is also a really good example of. I would be almost be interested to revisit Blitz in a few years, because when I first saw this, I can't possibly even communicate, like, the level of excitement that was around this film from both, like, film nerds who were like, I can't believe Malik's back. But also just from anybody reading Premiere magazine was like, this cast is. Should be illegal.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. We should say Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson. Those are the guys who didn't get cut out.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, Clooney. Like, I mean, it's like. And it's. It's a lot of Nick Nolte muttering, you know, before you start to, like, get your hands around it. So I think that a lot of these movies need to be separated from their release and separated from their context before you can really, truly appreciate them.

[Todd McShay]

You're going to reclaim Blitz the way I reclaimed Revolutionary Road just now?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, I'm just. I'll see you here in five years, this very day, this very hour.

[Todd McShay]

Revolutionary road was released 17 years ago. So will you see me in 17 years?

[Sean Fennessy]

You don't think we're going to be friends in 17 years?

[Todd McShay]

Well, what do you think?

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you think that I will be in the hospital for my Zen addiction?

[Chris Ryan]

Pulling particle plastics out of your bloodstream Memorial Zen ward.

[Todd McShay]

You're going to be, like, the writer that the dude comes across in the middle of Big Label when he's on a quest for the homework. Okay. My number one is the Bridge on the river quad, which I said I didn't have a movie in the Pacific Theater, and I guess I sort of do. This is a movie about a prison camp in Thailand that the Japanese are running full of British soldiers and a handful of American soldiers. Their purpose at this camp is to build a bridge that the Japanese need to transport materials during the war effort. And it becomes this complicated film about the necessity of duty and honor and the code of the military set against the most unimaginable suffering you could ever see. It's also a movie about a mission and also a movie about an escape. It's kind of a blend of a lot of the best of these movies. This is David lean's film from 57. In addition, Alec Guinness features William Holden, who's your classic American matinee idol in the film. Alec Guinness in this movie is so tortured by the end of it. It's like one of the signature film performances of all time. I don't know. It must have been my grandparents who hipped me to this movie when I was a kid. But another movie similarly, that was just like. Did you ever see that? They would ask you, when you're nine years old, have you seen that one yet? If I was excited about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they were like, bridge on the river, quiet. That's a film. That's a film. Not these turtles.

[Sean Fennessy]

Please turn into that guy with Alice really soon.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, I'm already there. I'm already chortling about Bridge on the river, quiet.

[Chris Ryan]

When is she gonna learn about the secret of the Ooz? That's what I really wanna know.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, I can't wait to perform ninja rap for her. Like, I'm so lit up with Vanilla Ice lyrics from my youth. Oh, God, this is a great film. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. Any thoughts, Chris? You relate to Guinness in this movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was trying to think if there's ever been a non perfect Alec Guinness screen performance. I know there probably is, but it's not coming to me.

[Chris Ryan]

Him mailing it in is usually pretty perfect too.

[Todd McShay]

What about when he was force ghosted in the most recent trilogy? Was that a good performance or not good?

[Chris Ryan]

Did that happen?

[Todd McShay]

Didn't he get.

[Sean Fennessy]

Does he show up? I can't remember.

[Todd McShay]

Did we not see the old Obi Wan in any of the more recent stars?

[Chris Ryan]

I feel like they might have called in Ewan for that one.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is he not in Rise, though? Oh, yeah, right, right. He would be. They would be.

[Chris Ryan]

They did all the voices. I don't know who did it. I know Liam Neeson got roped into something at some point.

[Todd McShay]

Just Googling Force ghost, old Obi Wan Kenobi. Well, I'm seeing the end of Return of the Jedi.

[Sean Fennessy]

Amanda, are you sure you don't want.

[Todd McShay]

To come back early? Maybe you're right. Maybe they're just bringing in Ewan McGregor. What about at the end of Return of the Jedi when he's there? Who's the actor who plays old Anakin? Who plays old Anakin?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I can't even name him. He's barely in the movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Peter O'Toole.

[Todd McShay]

You like Return of the Jedi?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, not that much. Is Luke doing the somersault off of the prison barge?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, off the sail barge.

[Sean Fennessy]

Among the coolest things that's ever happened.

[Todd McShay]

But you were a Boba Fett guy, though.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, no, I was Boba Fett. I thought he deserved to go.

[Chris Ryan]

What are your thoughts on Salacious Crumb? How do you feel about Salacious Crumb?

[Sean Fennessy]

Who's that?

[Chris Ryan]

Jabba's little, like, pet, little muppet.

[Sean Fennessy]

He gets choked out.

[Chris Ryan]

Jabba gets choked out.

[Todd McShay]

Jabba gets choked.

[Sean Fennessy]

What happens to Salacious? He gets thrown in the sarlacc.

[Chris Ryan]

He probably gets fed to the rancor, I think.

[Todd McShay]

What did that inspire in you, Jabba getting choked out just later in life?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's made me passionate about disassembling the deep state, Like I told you.

[Todd McShay]

Sarlacc pit, yay or nay?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Todd McShay]

I like a sarlacc.

[Sean Fennessy]

Kind of a permanent, you know, there's not a lot of parole from the sarlacc pit.

[Todd McShay]

Well, we don't know. Oh, we don't know what's at the bottom. Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Exactly.

[Chris Ryan]

Boba Fett knows.

[Todd McShay]

Is it just an esophageal carcass? Like, what's going on there?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't like that word.

[Todd McShay]

Well, I used it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is there a studio Ghibli movie about what's at the bottom of the sarlacc pit?

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, the Boy in the Sarlacc Pit. It's a beautiful film.

[Sean Fennessy]

Should we do some honorable mentions?

[Todd McShay]

There's so many movies we could name.

[Sean Fennessy]

All right, here's the problem. Dunkirk, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List. Nobody had them. Well, Saving Private Ryan was on Rob's list, right?

[Todd McShay]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not saying that those are not some of the greatest movies ever made. I just didn't feel like putting them in my top five. I know that that won't matter, but I'm just saying.

[Todd McShay]

So, yeah, I feel confident if Amanda were here, she would have Remains of the Day on her list.

[Sean Fennessy]

I will say the Third man is one of the greatest films of all time.

[Todd McShay]

I think I did this, and I set up this whole landscape here. For whatever reason, the movies that are in the aftermath didn't feel like what I should do. That's my favorite movie. So I love that movie, and it's very much about Vienna in the aftermath and what can happen in a world after a war. But I don't know. For whatever reason, I just wasn't linking.

[Chris Ryan]

It didn't feel like a war movie in that way.

[Todd McShay]

What else? Atonement.

[Chris Ryan]

Atonement for sure.

[Todd McShay]

Recent film that I think has been canonized. People really love that movie. You know, Downfall is a very popular 21st century movie about, you know, the portrait of Hitler at the end.

[Chris Ryan]

How scene is the actual movie? Like the meme, the clips? Absolutely.

[Todd McShay]

You know, it's actually quite hard to see now.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Todd McShay]

It's not streaming anywhere right now. I don't know why that is.

[Sean Fennessy]

What's the movie that Branagh and Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci made that was about, like, them talking about the actual camps and stuff, Like.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, yeah, I can't remember. I mean, Anthropoid is another one that I've ever seen.

[Sean Fennessy]

HBO movie. But it was like, incredible, though.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember the name of that movie. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, we haven't mentioned. The Best Years of Our Lives is kind of similar to the sort of the aftermath movies like third man.

[Sean Fennessy]

I got a couple. Stalag 17 and five graves to Cairo are two Billy Wilder movies that are just incredible stylized.

[Todd McShay]

Another Austrian exile who came to America to make films.

[Sean Fennessy]

And Stalag's a great companion piece to Great Escape. In fact, probably a little bit more of like a cynical kind of comic take on it. Some more recent stuff. Fury. David Ayers incredibly violent tank movie. I gotta say, Valkyrie's pretty entertaining.

[Chris Ryan]

I was thinking about watching that one for this. Would you recommend it?

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm just saying it's entertaining. I'm not saying it's like, accurate depiction of the German high grade.

[Todd McShay]

Anytime you can get Bryan Singer directing Nazi Tom Cruise, you got it.

[Chris Ryan]

You had me at Nazi Tom Cruise.

[Sean Fennessy]

I gotta be honest, I thought it.

[Todd McShay]

Was McCoy McQuarrie wrote it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Operation Crossbow is the movie I was thinking of when I was like, movies that Rick Dalton would be in.

[Todd McShay]

I haven't seen that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Dam Busters as well as, like, kind of like either.

[Todd McShay]

Dam Busters.

[Sean Fennessy]

Dam, like, bursting.

[Todd McShay]

Is that the movie that the dude watches in the Big Lebowski? That's log jamming. That is.

[Sean Fennessy]

God damn it. It's the Greatest generation we're talking about. Speaking of which, Mr. Roberts.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, good film.

[Sean Fennessy]

Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda directed by John Ford and Ensign Pulver. Yeah. And it's basically like comedy it's very, very stagey, but it's a comedy set on a destroyer parked in the Pacific.

[Todd McShay]

Come and see. I've mentioned on this show many times one of the. Probably the most destroying film. Melville, Silence of the Sea, another film made right in like the immediate after, I think 48 or 49. Phoenix. Christian Petzl's movie from about five years ago, which maybe actually more like 10 years ago, which is very good. I've talked to Neyman about that on the show a few times. Lena Vertmuller's Seven Beauties. I'm just thinking of international films here. I mean, Pan's Labyrinth is a World War II movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't even think about that.

[Todd McShay]

You're right, you know, very much about like. I think that's right at the end. I think it's set in 45 in Spain. What else? What else is.

[Chris Ryan]

How does history remember the Clint stuff? The Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jim. Like, I feel like Letters from Iwo Jim is probably more successful than Flags of Our Fathers.

[Todd McShay]

I think it's a better movie. And the more well regarded movie, I think just because Flags of Our Fathers just feels very.

[Chris Ryan]

It is propaganda.

[Todd McShay]

Straight.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

But I think the fact that he attempts to balance it by telling the other story is interesting. I mean there's so many more. I think. I do think I made a list of roughly 300. There's a lot on social media I.

[Chris Ryan]

Do love like the spycraft counterintelligence part. Like Black Book I think is worth noting. Also, like, I would never put this movie on a top five list, but I have time for U571.

[Sean Fennessy]

Personally Robbie, it was definitely on my long list.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I'm happy to throw that. That's in terms of that part of this list. That's gotta be.

[Sean Fennessy]

If people are interested in the spycraft part of World War II, I'd highly recommend the novels of Alan first, who's written about like a dozen books that are set between like 36, 7 through World War II and are just all about like resistance fighters and spy networks across Europe.

[Todd McShay]

Would it be helpful if I just said movie titles right now?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, isn't that what we've been doing.

[Todd McShay]

But with no commentary.

[Sean Fennessy]

Should I sing the Star Spangled Banner while you do it?

[Todd McShay]

Just do the brutalist score for me underneath. Bom Bom. Where Eagles Dare is a movie we haven't mentioned. Have you seen that one?

[Chris Ryan]

No.

[Todd McShay]

Really good. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood as two guys going undercover in Germany during World War II spy movie. Quality Patton movie that I like. Don't love catch 22. Mike Nichols adaptation of the Hellor novel Midway. Pop, you're gonna have to pipe this in, I think. Should we just make this the permanent theme of the show?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, it should just be playing while we talk the entire time on a loop.

[Todd McShay]

This is very zone of interest. Honestly. Speaking of World War II, I still have interest.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I still haven't seen the Brutalist, but now when I do, I'm just gonna hear you doing the score when I see it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Has anyone said zone of interest in a more excited way?

[Todd McShay]

Zone of interest.

[Chris Ryan]

I saw every time I've been on a plane recently it's been available. That is a particular plane vibe.

[Todd McShay]

Chris, you forgot your favorite captain. The first soldier.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, you know what? I will say that I thought about throwing on a long list just as an example of how much room there is to play with this genre is Overlord Fun movie.

[Todd McShay]

Horror movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Set during a horror movie with Wyatt Russell set during World War II. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

There's two very big ones, one of which I don't really care for very much. One of which I like. Jojo Rabbit.

[Chris Ryan]

That's the one you love, which I.

[Todd McShay]

Don'T like very much.

[Sean Fennessy]

You like watching that on planes?

[Todd McShay]

I don't. Greyhound. Have you guys seen Greyhound, the Tom Hanks movie?

[Sean Fennessy]

I have. Not bad.

[Todd McShay]

Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Naval battle film set on an aircraft carrier. And it was released during COVID on Apple tv. Wow. If we had seen it in the movie theater, I think it would have done quite well. I think we actually did the dad Movie hall of Fame ground with Kevin Clark hinged to that movie pretty good. If you had.

[Chris Ryan]

How many World War II movies is Apple TV churning out?

[Todd McShay]

I don't know. They sensed something in the marketplace, I guess.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't know.

[Todd McShay]

There's so many more Michael Mann's the.

[Sean Fennessy]

Keep, you know, up in the Carpathian.

[Todd McShay]

Forest, you know, I just want you to know that I bought it on 4K from vinegar syndrome. Over the weekend, they're issuing it on home Blu Ray 4K release for the first time ever. And this completes my Michael Mann collection.

[Chris Ryan]

Wow.

[Todd McShay]

So now I have every film he's ever made.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are you saying you're better than me?

[Todd McShay]

I'm saying level up. Level up.

[Chris Ryan]

To shout out to Vinegar Syndrome, by the way.

[Todd McShay]

It was $44.99 and I bought it, okay. Because I'm supporting the cause. I wouldn't pay that much, honestly, for most films. But the last piece of the Michael.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mann puzzle for the DVDs that you're buying these days? Where are we at?

[Todd McShay]

It's all in the 1999 range.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. Remember when video games were, like, $80?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, they still are.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And your parents would just be like, what the fuck?

[Todd McShay]

You have to wait. I would have to wait for Christmas. Yeah, yeah. Then do you wait for Christmas every year? No.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm increasingly playing fewer and fewer. But the good thing about being an adult man is I don't have to reckon with my parents saying, what are you doing with my life? That's just my intervals.

[Sean Fennessy]

There's also the problem that you can buy them online now. It just doesn't hurt at all.

[Chris Ryan]

You don't have to go to the store.

[Todd McShay]

We haven't mentioned another reason why these films, I think, resonate and keep getting made, which is Call of Duty.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Call of Duty created a whole. Speaking of propaganda around this. Yeah, well, yeah, but I think because of the. You know, only some of those games are set during World War II. Right.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, I think they're all sorts of conflicts, I think.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. But I feel like one of the most popular in the first three or four was a World War II game, and that spawned a whole new level of interest around them. Okay. And anything else you got?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, let's.

[Todd McShay]

Can we talk briefly about Oscar chances for.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was gonna ask.

[Todd McShay]

I've been, like, holding space for this film in the 10, and it seems like no one truly loves this movie, which is not a good thing for a Best Picture contender. And it does seem now like Wicked and A Complete Unknown, which were two movies that people were like, I don't know, is this gonna be good? I'm not sure if this is gonna make it now. I feel like both of those movies are definitely making it. And so I could be wrong. On a Complete Unknown. Wicked, without question.

[Chris Ryan]

That was the stunning. I feel like you lumping it in with Wicked is revealing.

[Todd McShay]

Maybe, maybe not. I think a Complete Unknown does what it needs to do to sponsor.

[Sean Fennessy]

You think I got a designated for Best Picture. Okay, you do?

[Todd McShay]

If I had to guess right now, I would say yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

So it's those two.

[Todd McShay]

Because that area at 910 feels so weak and undefined. And things have been moving in and out of it for the last six weeks. And I had had blitz in there. I think I had blitz in there all the way back in September when Amanda and I did an Oscar bet. I think I had it. I'm pretty sure we had it in two weeks ago when Katie, Rich, and Joe were on the pod.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is that when you did the last power ranking?

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. And now it's like, didn't do anything in theaters. It was released into The Wicked Moana 2, Gladiator 2, Yacht Rock and Documentary Corridor. Have more people seen Yacht Rock a documentary than Blitz? Honest question.

[Chris Ryan]

No. Right. I don't know.

[Todd McShay]

A lot of people have Max.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Not a lot of people have Xbox.

[Chris Ryan]

That is true. That is true.

[Sean Fennessy]

Does Yacht Rock start right at the end of the most recent Dune Prophecy episode?

[Todd McShay]

I thought you were gonna ask. Does it start right at the end of World War II? Is that.

[Chris Ryan]

That's where it picks up?

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, not technically, no, but the.

[Todd McShay]

Birth of Donald Fagan. Was Fagan Born, what, 46? Probably. It's gotta be right in that zone. He's a sort of a post war baby.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's a hapkat.

[Todd McShay]

The Greatest Generation. A baby boomer. Yeah. I don't think it's getting in Best Picture right now.

[Sean Fennessy]

So here's what I wanted to ask you is that there were two movies that were kind of like the flagship awards films, I thought for streaming services. Emilia Perez, for Netflix, this Blitz for Apple in the past. Like for instance, when Coda made its run. I know that Coda is a much more crowd pleasing film than Blitz and is a much more obviously like kind of uplifting film than Blitz, but I was like, what, like literally, what is Coda? Until like two weeks before the Oscars.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, I mean, that was in 2021, at a time when it was there were hardly any movie theaters open for the first half of the year and the competition was significantly more slight than the last couple of years. And like you said, that was a time when a lot of people were depressed and sad and in their home and separated from their family. And that's a movie that made people feel great. It's big contender that that year was the Power of the Dog, which is a real feel bad movie, very artfully made movie, but not exactly what the world wanted at that time. This year is different. I will say I thought about this a lot. 1917, Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, the Imitation Game, War Horse, Inglourious Bastards and Atonement all got best picture nominations. If there's a big splashy war movie with a big budget and a star like Saoirse Ronan, it's probably gonna get nominated for best.

[Sean Fennessy]

And can't you take this movie and say now more than ever, you know, and like kind of.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, that's what McQueen is saying in the press. He's saying that this is a movie about right now. This is a movie about what is happening in other countries and what could happen in England, in America, what have you. So there's a story to tell and it fits the mold. And yet, weirdly, if, you know, we spent 25 minutes talking about it and I'm like, how many people that are even listening to this episode saw it?

[Chris Ryan]

I think one thing that may work against it is Saoirse Ronan is in this movie. It's telling that we've barely talked about her, and I know there's a long history of Best Supporting Actresses making an absolute meal out of underwritten wives and mothers. That's the whole deal. For the most part of that category. This part gives her nothing to work with.

[Todd McShay]

She gets to sing.

[Chris Ryan]

She gets to sing. And I think the scene of the movie, in addition to the firefight sequence and some of the set pieces, that feels most like a Steve McQueen movie is the Saoirse at the jazz club, like, dance. Like that feels like a movie I want to watch. For the most part, she's just kind of chasing after her kid, which is to say she can't even do it because she doesn't know where she is. She's, like, walking about town. If she were a huge central part of this movie in, like a big movie star way, then I see the route to a lot of different awards. But other than that, it's barely a war movie. It's not a star driven vehicle. It's in this weird, neither fish nor foul kind of situation.

[Todd McShay]

It is. I think it will be an interesting test of the age of the Academy members because they've added so many people in recent years. I think the expectation is always that older film, like, older set films like this tend to do better with older Academy members. The Saoirse question is interesting. As recently as September, I was like, well, she's getting two nominations.

[Sean Fennessy]

She's going to get nominated.

[Todd McShay]

She's going to get nominated for the outrun and she's going to get for Best Actress. Maybe she'll even win because she's been nominated so many times despite barely being 30. And she'll also get nominated for supporting for this. I still think there's a path for her to get nominated for supporting, even though I agree with you that, like, she's not misused. It just. It doesn't feel like a developed arc. No, she's just a mom who misses her kid and is trying to make a living during this terrible time in history. Supporting actress right now, Ariana Grande and Wicked. Ciara's favorite performance of the year, Zoe Saldana for Lioness. Excuse me. Emilia Perez. Felicity Jones for the Brutalist, which you can attest you enjoyed. Thumbs up for this.

[Chris Ryan]

Thumbs up. All right.

[Todd McShay]

Monica Barbara for a complete unknown, I will say, definitely the revelation of that movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's awesome.

[Chris Ryan]

Cool.

[Todd McShay]

Danielle Deadweiler in the Piano Lesson and Isabella Rossellini in Conclave. And the Conclave hive is a buzz because now they're like, I see an opening for a BP win. And a lot of times when you get a movie that is like, everybody decides we're going to make this the best picture, it gets a lot of stray nominations that you don't see coming.

[Sean Fennessy]

Has Conclave been under the microscope yet? Like, is there going to be, like, actually, conclave isn't good. I know that people are saying, I'm sure that would. This movie is just not that good.

[Chris Ryan]

Too many popes in it. What's the problem?

[Sean Fennessy]

I just think it's like, Conclave winning or Conclave being the clubhouse leader would draw attention to Conclave in a way that Conclave didn't have to deal with when it first came out.

[Todd McShay]

It's very true.

[Sean Fennessy]

And I think everybody was like, damn, that shit was pretty entertaining. And now if you actually have to interrogate it, I wonder whether or not it stands up under scrutiny.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. I mean, short of Adam, I don't know a lot of people who really didn't like it, and I think that's going in its favor. As opposed to Blitz, where I don't feel, like, a sense of enthusiasm. But we're reading tea leaves that are illusory. So I don't know.

[Sean Fennessy]

I feel like my letterbox algorithm, for the most part, is either, like, no matter what film I see, if I go on letterbox, it's just like, it's giving Mother, you know, like. So that's one kind of comment. And then the other is, who is.

[Todd McShay]

Giving Mother in conclave?

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't want to spoil it. Or, this is a piece of shit. This is like late capitalist claptrap.

[Chris Ryan]

Wow.

[Todd McShay]

Like, that's on the Taylor Sheridan boards or.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, it's just like. That's just like my. Like, when you go through letterbox reviews, those are generally what, like, the two.

[Todd McShay]

You're just looking at Rando letterbox reviews.

[Sean Fennessy]

What are supposed to be doing?

[Todd McShay]

I just look at the mutual people that I'm following.

[Chris Ryan]

You don't ever, like, pull up a movie? Oh, yeah.

[Todd McShay]

I don't follow.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know. I couldn't tell you.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Guys, let's get on.

[Todd McShay]

We'll have follow you.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is our own Conclave.

[Todd McShay]

You know who's who? I'm Lithgow, obviously. Hmm. I. I don't. I don't think that there's much to, like, cancel about Conclave.

[Sean Fennessy]

I didn't mean cancel. I mean, like, interrogate, like, whether or not this is, like, worthwhile now. I honestly, like, I look at all this stuff from an outsider's perspective. I think probably a Nora should win.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Like, I think Conclave has an opening if you believe the theory that Honora and the Brutalist are a bit too indie for the sensibility of Best picture. After Parasite 1, I've kind of dispensed with that expectation. I think movies like Anora can definitely win Best Picture. It's still probably my pick right now. The Wicked.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is it your want to or will win?

[Todd McShay]

I still think it will win.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay, what do you want to win?

[Todd McShay]

Probably the Brutalist, because I think it represents the ambition that I'm most interested in from filmmakers. It's a cool year, though. Like, I Love Dune Part 2. I think that's a great movie, and I think those pair of movies together are great together.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think I was a Nora or brutalist. And Dune 2.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, those are two movies that I love that are contending. But the Wicked thing is very real. The reason why I said on the show that I would be a brat if it won, even though I think the movie looks kind of ugly and is a little hokey in its storytelling, My issue is more that it's a Part one. So if a part one wins Best Picture, I think, like, all bets are off. In the Moana 2 conversation we were having. I'm just like, movies are going to get fucked up if they're, like, we're awarding half of a story that isn't a fan fiction of classical Hollywood. We will have fewer and fewer new things ever again. So that really was the origin of my concern around that.

[Chris Ryan]

Just to dive into your mind for a second.

[Todd McShay]

Please do. Thank you.

[Chris Ryan]

Would you have felt this way if, like, across the Spider Verse won Best Picture? Like, an unabashed Part one? To be continued.

[Sean Fennessy]

I would feel pretty upset about that.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. I mean, the case that I've made over the years is that I like those movies being represented in Best Picture, and I think Wicked being represented in Best Picture would be a good thing.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Todd McShay]

It's a movie with a ton of crap with big stars that represents, like, a certain kind of Hollywood filmmaking. I have no problem with a movie like that being nominated. It. Winning would be annoying. It. Winning would send a weird message. Just like Spider Verse Part one.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm with you.

[Todd McShay]

A weird message.

[Sean Fennessy]

We're not going to give Avengers Doomsday Part one, Best Picture, right?

[Todd McShay]

No. And if you ever suggested it previously, people would be like, you should kill yourself. And now if you're like. If you say that Wicked shouldn't win, you're like, you're an incel. It's a totally fine music.

[Sean Fennessy]

You're still on Twitter. So hard.

[Todd McShay]

No, I just. I saw all the feedback to the episode that we did where I was basically like, this movie's okay, and it is. It's just okay. But a lot of okay movies have won Best Picture in the past, so we shall see. What do you want to win Best Picture?

[Sean Fennessy]

Uh, I think a Nora.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Have you seen a Nora yet?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, loved it.

[Todd McShay]

You did?

[Chris Ryan]

I think of the realistic candidates, I would love for it to win.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I think you have to pick, like. It's like you get out of the primaries, you gotta pick the president that's gonna lead us all, you know, coming together as a nation to pick a NORA president. Annie.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. I have a theory that I'll share with you later this week on the show. And I can throw to that tease shortly that all the best movies of the year for me, are all about America. That's a very ethnocentric way of seeing things, but that they're all very much ported onto what America thinks it is versus what it actually is. And that has been the theme that has coursed through the year. Anyway, we'll get to that.

[Chris Ryan]

Who's the Elphaba in this?

[Todd McShay]

My daughter, unfortunately, who is just fully dressing like Elphaba every day and wants to go to school dressed like Elphaba.

[Chris Ryan]

Congrats.

[Todd McShay]

Been a bit of an issue in our household. Rob, thank you so much.

[Chris Ryan]

Thank you.

[Todd McShay]

Thanks for being here. You're. You're one of the hosts of Group Chat. I am. You are a frequent host of the Prestige TV podcast. What other pods are you on?

[Chris Ryan]

Mostly those these days.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

And, you know, hopefully this one.

[Todd McShay]

You're coming back on this one? Well, we'll save that. Yeah. Twice this week. Or once. What do you think?

[Chris Ryan]

We're doing a lot of taping. You know, I don't know. I don't know what's coming out when or why.

[Todd McShay]

Can you tape with me three times this week?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, of course I can.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Why?

[Todd McShay]

Well, I might need you to.

[Sean Fennessy]

So, I mean, I definitely signed up for it. I know what I'm responsible for.

[Todd McShay]

I don't think we've put time to the. To the third recording.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. We have Thursday lockdown. I do not know what you want from me on Friday.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. On Thursday, we are.

[Sean Fennessy]

I may have to do the fanduel pregame show at any given moment.

[Todd McShay]

How did that go on Sunday? I missed it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I felt like I was in a little over my head as far as gambling went. I did try throw out the Panthers money line, and I almost got it.

[Todd McShay]

Can you explain what that means?

[Sean Fennessy]

I think the money line is just like, I'm betting on the Panthers to win, but there's. I get like, a spread here and.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right.

[Todd McShay]

Absolutely.

[Chris Ryan]

Are you in crippling debt now? What's going on?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, I was just like, the Panthers have been frisky and I think the Bucks stink. So I just, like, take it from cr.

[Todd McShay]

You're on the Bryce Young train.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was just like, this is the kind of point in the season where teams start to give up, you know, and other teams are like, we need to play for our coach's job or our quarterback's future or whatever.

[Todd McShay]

So when Adam Thielen made that catch, you were like, boom.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was like. I was literally about to hit send on, like, all of my. Like, I was like, come back from more hot picks, from Chris Rya, like, to Sal and stuff. And I didn't.

[Todd McShay]

You just forgot. See our work and people hear you.

[Sean Fennessy]

The big picture.

[Todd McShay]

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to Bobby Wagner, our producer, for his work on this episode. And that's right. Later this week, we'll be picking our top five favorite movies of the year. Chris will be here. Adam Neyman will be here. Amanda won't be here. Or will she? We'll see. See you then.