Michael Lasker (17:31)
But, like, one battle's not an Oscar movie, you know, not on its face. Which I think is one reason why that's had so much staying power, is that when that trailer hit a year and a half ago or a year ago now, really, people did not quite know what to make of it. You know, I mean, PTA's work, he's a genius. He's my favorite working director, but his work as of late has been very, very experimental. Like, you watch the Phantom thread, you're like, I think this movie is really funny, but she's poisoning him. This is like a very weird, like, rom com, sort of. And then Inherent Vice is a really odd, you know, movie, you know, in the kind of in the vein of, like, Philip Marlowe detective movies and novels. And so I think people didn't quite know what to expect with this PTA movie. Like, Leo looks really odd, and he's being really goofy and. Yes, sensei. And then when I saw that movie in September, I mean, I was absolutely knocked out. I felt like he really did kind of make a movie for our time, even though he was writing it for, like, 15 years. And it's based off an old Thomas Pinchone novel. But it does have a lot to say, and it was funny. I'm gonna. I'm gonna really nerd out here. I was on a plane recently, and I was watching the Godfather, which obviously I've seen 10,000 times. And I realized watching, like, the first 45 minutes of the Godfather, that the Godfather, being about 10,000 things, is also very much about how the new generation is it up for the previous generation. Don Corleone, Vito Corleone did things a certain way, not really with any malice in his heart. When you go into the second movie, you see him as a young man. He's really just helping people out in the neighborhood who are being extorted. And he's really not killing people, you know, maliciously. And what you realize is that he's come to the end of his era and his sons are not ready to take over. And by the first 45, 50 minutes of the movie, when you know right before Sunny's spoiler alert, Sonny's gonna be murdered and Michael is going to kill the cop and go away, and you realize that all the sons, the new generation, they're. They're doing everything wrong. They're not doing it the way he would have done it. Remember the beginning of the Godfather, Solazo comes to Don Corleone and says, I need you to stake me in the narcotics business because you have all the politicians in your pocket. And Don Corone says, I wouldn't have them in my pocket if I got into the drug business. It's the end of an era. And one after another is saying the same thing, a little more nuanced. It's saying that this generation, they fought as hard as they could to make it a better generation, and they failed. You know, you look in that movie and every person who is caught by the government ends up squealing. Nobody has a choice. The government's too strong, right? Like Regina hall squeals. The guy who's taken, you know, who's doing the two way radio. He squeals. The minute they say that, you're, we know where your sister lives. You can't defeat the government. And I think what PTA was doing on a macro level, he was talking about the times we're in and some of it was kind of pushed with the Christmas Adventurers Club. But I mean, you look at those scenes and you're like, well, that's what I feel like J.D. vance is doing every day like that. So far, you're so far fetched. But then the core of it, and maybe I'm just saying this because I have two daughters. It's a father daughter story. And you realize that he's, spoiler alert, he's not her father, but he loves her. He doesn't know how to tell her that he loves her, but he ends up saying that I love you in the way that only he can by trying to save her. And so I think the movie just, it just hit on so many levels of it's people in crisis and this young woman who is the world is in front of her and she's got to now figure out what choices she's going to make. And her mother made a lot of bad choices. Her mother shoots that bank teller, the bank security guard in cold blood, you know, because she's going through PTSD from having a child. And so I don't think the movie has any easy answers, which is why people loved it so much. But then pta, because he is such a brilliant filmmaker, he really, in that third act was like, but I'm going to give you, I'm going to entertain you. I'm going to give you these hills. I'm going to show you something you've never seen. I'm going to take these rolling hills and I'm going to turn into this roller coaster and create this amazing action set piece that is surprising and is rooted in character because the daughter has some training, she's not an idiot. And she figures out how to outsmart this guy. And then every time I watch the end of that movie when Leo says, it's me, it's your father, it's your dad, you know, it's like waterworks. So, yeah, it's been a great year for movies. So many things to look at and think about. Mari supreme was great. This is an amazing foreign film, international film year. Secret Agent, which I know people, some people in my life have struggled with watching. I thought that was a great movie. It was just an accident. Which is made by an Iranian filmmaker, but it's from the country of France. France. That's a, that's sort of a technical Oscar thing. That was a great movie. Obviously, there's so much going on in the world right now with Iran. There are great movies not nominated. So, anyways, I'm, I'm monologuing, and I don't mean to, but it was a great year for movies. And I think, to answer your question, Simon, the Academy gets different things from different movies and, and that galvanizes them. And, you know, would this have happened for Ryan Coogler if it was his second movie? Maybe. I think the fact that it's his fifth or sixth movie, he's just now one of those people where when he makes something, it's special. I think that that happened for Guillermo speaking. He made Blade two. Guo del Toro was making all these amazing kind of genre films. He had made Pan's Labyrinth, which won best international film in 2006, I believe. But then when he made Shape of Water, the Academy was like, oh, he's kind of growing up. This is a more adult story. But it's with his unique spin now, every time Guro makes a movie, they. They notice it, you know, they pay attention. Frankenstein's nominated for a lot. It's going to win a couple below the line on Sunday, for sure. And so I think sometimes filmmakers, they have to. They grow into the people they become, and then the Academy and the business takes note and it elevates it.