Pop Culture Happy Hour - Black Bag And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

The cool, stylish new Steven Soderbergh film Black Bag is about a group of British spies who discover there's a traitor in their midst. It stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. He's a lie detector expert; she's one of his chief suspects. The thing is: They're married.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The cool, stylish new Steven Soderberg film Black Bag is about a group of British spies who discover there's a traitor in their midst. It stars Michael Fasbender and Kate Blanchett. He's a lie detector expert. She's one of his chief suspects, but the thing is they're married. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about BlackBag on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is B.A. Parker. She's one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast.

Welcome to the show, Parker. Thank you. Hi. Hi. Also with us is NPR film critic Bob Monaster. Welcome back, Bob. It's always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. So in Black Bag, Michael Fastbender plays George, a London-based spy who's great at reading people. Kate Blanchett plays his wife, Catherine, also a spy.

When George learns one of his colleagues is a mole who has stolen deadly software, he invites them over to dinner. What's on the menu? Funning games. Will there be a mess to clean up? With any luck. By the time dinner's over, after a few party games, mind games, and a chanam. Masala dosed with truth serum, George is dismayed that his wife is heavily implicated.

He has one week to discover the traitor, and the only tools at his disposal are his wits, his polygraph, and how good he looks in a turtleneck. Seriously, both George and Catherine, our stylish AF black bag is in theaters now. Parker, kick us off. What did you make of this? Stylish A.F just made me giggles. I mean, I really enjoyed it. It was like this really taut thriller.

The ensemble is great like that. ensemble is top-notch. You've got Michael Fastbender. You've got Kate Blanchett. You've got Naomi Harris. It's ridiculous. Like, Pierce Brazzan. But, like, it's like this incredible ensemble that Soderberg is lucky to have, to be honest.

That's true. And I was going to see it anyway because I'm a big Steven Soderberg nerd. And I love his 90-minute, like, experiments. Like, I was the first one to see presents at the beginning of the year. He's way more prolific than he needs to be. I can't believe he threatened to retire a while back when we could have like these every couple of years. All right, Bob, what you make of it? Well, it kind of had me when I first read that he apparently Soderberg said to David Kep at one point.

The screenwriter. Wouldn't it be interesting if who's afraid of Virginia Woolf had been conceived as a spy thriller? Well, in that clip we just played, he said fun and games. Fun and Games is the title of the first act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And because I was sort of keyed into that, I had a wonderful time with it at first. I was like, oh, my God, they're going to be playing games and they're going to be sitting there and the lesser people are going to get caught up in their business. And oh, dear.

Well, it kind of doesn't go there. I mean, it does some interesting things. And there's no question that the two of them are a team even when they're fighting or even when they're not. When they're not acting in sync, it's them against the rest of the world. That part of it is all definitely Edward Alby. So I got a kick out of that. For Soderberg, it seems to me that it's kind of lesser Soderberg. I mean, that's better than 80% of everything that's out there.

True. You know, that's fine. Right. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, Bob, because, I mean, I thought this was a very light, very stylish little movie that I'm not going to remember in a month. But that while I was sitting there in that theater, I thought, this movie understands the damn assignment. I mean, I like Fassbender in this, even though he's hard to get your hands around at first. He's, it's such an inward performance that he kind of seems like a cipher. And I was thinking to myself, why invest in this guy?

But then we see him with Blanchet, right? And his character emerges. They're both characters emerge when they're together on screen because we find out about George that he's a wife guy. And the script needs him to be that because the gimmick of this movie is that a marriage is like being a spy and that there's things. you tell your spouse, there are other things that go in the black bag, what they call the black bag, the stuff you keep confidential. I agree with you, Bob, about that dinner party at the start of the movie. It goes on so long, you have a chance to think, is this, is this the movie?

Is this what we're going to be doing? Because I would be down with that. If we never got up from that table, I would be happy. But then the plot plot kicks in, and the plot plot involves a cyberworm called Severus that could cause a nuclear explosion in Russia. And I remember thinking, I was loving this dozed chanobes. Masala movie, I'm not sure how I feel about this cyberworm called Severus movie, because it seems like cyberworm called Severus movies are kind of thick on the ground, but do you understand what I'm saying there? I have no idea what you said, but yes, I understand what you're saying.

Listen, it's fun. There is a thing about movies that are going to take down something like spy intelligence, that there's a level of them that I just sort of, okay, well, isn't Tom Cruise doing that in Mission Impossible? and didn't I just have to deal with it? And, you know, so that I'm forever, I'm forever sort of resisting. But not in turtlenex. That's true. We will talk about the wardrobe, yes. Yeah, well, everything about the two of them is so gorgeous.

It's, oh, my God. I thought it was fine. You know, I had a decent time at it. I'm not going to go to bat for this movie. I just, it's fun. All right, Parker, go to bat for this movie. You just got to let it flow all over you. This is my thing.

Immediately, like, Michael Fastbender's character felt like a bit of an anachronism. because he's like always in like the thick black glasses and the turtlenecks and everyone seems like everyone is so impeccable. But it also, I thought it informed this kind of like the fast bender trend right now of him being like a certified lover boy who's kind of bad at his job. Okay. Say more. This from the killer to the agency, which is also a spy series to BlackBag. It's just like a guy who just like really loves a girl. And that tends to be like his.

His weakness when it comes to actually being able to get the job done. We'll say about the plot. It's the same thing I remember someone saying years ago about Tarantino's Jackie Brown. It's like, I don't know what's going on until I know what's going on. That's how I felt immediately while watching Blackback. When they started talking about Seventh-S, I was like, I don't care. I know that things are happening, and like I'm being told that I should be stressed out about it. And you know what, I'll be stressed out about it.

I'm letting it flow over me. Yeah, that's great. we want to talk, I think, about their townhouse, about their wardrobe. I mean, they say, obviously, people give out Oscars for not the best acting, but for the most acting. The same thing is true for production design and for costumes. It's always the most production design, like sci-fi, the most costumes. But I would argue that this gorgeous townhouse says so much about them as a couple. And the way that George is tailored so precisely, so fastidiously, I think that serves the story.

That's what production design and costume we are supposed to do. At one point, Catherine walks in the front door and shrugs off this incredibly buttery leather coat, and you're like, I get her. I see who that is. You've never been more gay, sir. That's probably false, but go on. You're absolutely right. And she is, I don't know that you can dress Kate Blanchett frumpishly. I'm not sure it's possible.

I mean, she is so elegant. It is gorgeous, and the interior design of that apartment is breathtaking, but so is the, exterior of some of the buildings they're around. I mean, every time they go outside, it's also production designed to a fairly well. I can't think of an image in the movie that looks, you know, somebody swept something into a corner. It just, it doesn't feel that way. It's all gorgeous. Yeah. It's very much of a piece. I quite like this. I was torn by the tension between what I thought it was going to be going in when I heard the thing about who's a very Virginia Woolf and what it actually is. And I suspect that having that in my head prejudiced me in a certain way.

I was looking for Tweedy. See? I'm not saying that I would have liked it better without that. But I'm intrigued by my own reaction to it because I was looking for Tweedy and, what, New England, messy. It isn't that at all. It's the opposite of that. Yeah. Thought like elbow patches?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, because Virginia Woolf is about two, well, a college professor and his wife, who is the daughter of. of the president of the university, and they have another couple come over. Well, these guys have their coworkers come over, and it's for much the same reason. It's to sort of, I mean, they're playing Get the Guest, right?

And after a little while, I mean, that's very precisely. I'm not sure they say it in the movie, but that's the game that George and Martha play in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And get the guest is absolutely what they're doing. They're trying to figure out which of these people is conceivably the leak, I guess, of agency secrets. It all sort of fits into what I thought it was going to be and doesn't look at all like what I thought it was going to be, even after seeing the trailer. I'm more interested in my own mixed reaction to it than I am sort of in the plot.

That is, I think you said something similar to that. And I don't know that it matters where this ends up going. It's such a fun ride going there. I had no expectations and no context when I went in to see it. All I knew was who the director was and who the actors were. It really reminded me of like Sodaberg's like Oceans 12 of just like cat and mouse. We're going to do a few like magic tricks throughout the plot to like trick you a little bit and then go about your day. That's fine with me.

Like that's kind of like Sodaberg's deal like a mini kind of cinematic heist. Yeah, then you go home. I mean I think Kep kind of sensed that there was some kind of electricity in that opening dinner party scene. that maybe gets a little stretched out over the cyberworm called Severus. The film ends with another dinner party scene. Another, you know, George and Martha, fun and games scene that resolves the plot. Yeah. I loved seeing reggae Jean-Page on my screen.

He's always great. I was worried about him when he left Bridgerton because I thought he was going to be doing. Still am. Yeah, because, you know, to people of a certain age, we call that pulling a Caruso when David Caruso left NYPD Blue. But he's great here. he's playing a jerk and he plays such a conceited, wonderful jerk. Yeah. I think from our discussion, you can learn that if you, like Parker and I, just kind of see this movie where it is.

You're going to enjoy it. But if you're Bob... Bob is always expecting too much. That is the story of my life. Please forget. You just got to vibe out, Bob. Just let the vibes flow over you. This is the story of Bob's life.

He needs to vibe out. Tell us what you think about BlackBag. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com. On letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. Up next, What is Making Us Happy This Week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What is making us happy this week?

Parker, what is making you happy this week? Oh, it's making me happy this week. So I finally stopped listening to have played Kendrick Lamar's GNX too much. And I can finally go back and listen to the latest Father John Misty, Mahas Machasana. And it's just, it's only eight songs, but I've been playing it on repeat. for the past two weeks. And there's a song called Mental Health that's like six minutes long

and it just plays like a chant now, mental health, mental health in the court. Appropriate to our time. So the thing that's making me happy right now is Father John Misty's album, Mahash Masha. Thank you very much, Parker. Okay, Bob, what is making you happy this week? So what's making me happy is something

that initially made me really sad. Athol Fugard, the South African African playwright recently died. And I remember seeing his plays, gosh, back in the 1980s. And up into the 2000s, I actually saw him once at the Kennedy Center. And, you know, great playwrights. And I think he's arguably one of the great playwrights in any language in the 20th century have something characteristic about them. I mean, if you think about, say, Tennessee Williams, he's all about the poetry of language, right? And Arthur Miller, It's all about the politics of interaction.

I think what was amazing about Athel Fugard was that his plays, written during apartheid in South Africa, were very much about that moment in history. And they were so intensely about humanity and about the simplicity of how people dealt with those issues. And they were written in very simple language. Everything is very clear. The clarity is astonishing.

in fact and it's just gorgeous writing I went online and I found a whole lot of clips from productions of his plays from movies of his plays from just all kinds of things they're all sort of revelatory about the kinds of things that people feel in situations that are very difficult and he was an astonishing talent he is an astonishing talent and we have him still in his work and the wonderful thing is that you can go and find it online. That is what's making me happy. The plays of Athel Fugard. All right. Thank you very much. What is making me happy this week? Azrael is a 2024 horror film starring Samara Weaving. Look, I'm a sucker for any movie in which

Samara Weaving ends up covered in somebody else's blood because she has been kicking, button, taking names. She did it in the babysitter. She did it in Ready or Not. She does it here, though I will say It takes an awfully long time to open that can of Wapas, but when she does open it, it gets well and truly opened. This movie is a lot in terms of its plot. It is set after the rapture. Also, there's a cult that removes its members' voice boxes. Also, there are evil creatures in the woods who rip you up and eat you. Also, there's no dialogue in the movie.

See above in re members' voice boxes. And it's mostly her getting chased through the woods by cultists or creatures or both. to, you know, the movie we're talking about today, this thing clocks in at a zippy hour in 25 minutes. It is certainly doing its own thing. It is, you know, idiosyncratic as hell. And, you know, I was watching it and I was liking it. And I thought, I like this.

This does not rise to the level of a happy. That's a high bar for me. And then the ending happened. And I will say nothing about it except that it goes there. It's a big swing. And it is just the right amount of goofy. And I kind of love it. That is Azriel, which is streaming on AMC

plus and available on VOD Elsewhere. And that is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. And that brings us to the end of our show. B.A. Parker, Bob Mandel, well, thank you so much for being here. It's great to be here. Thank you.

This episode was produced by Hufza Fathama and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is, of course, Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next week. Thank you.