Pop Culture Happy Hour - Digger and What’s Making Us Happy

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Digger is a loud, surprising, audacious, and sure-to-be-polarizing entry in this year’s Oscars race. The film stars Tom Cruise as a powerful oil baron who’s helped unleash an existential threat on the world — but that’s only the beginning. The looming devastation attracts the attention of the president (John Goodman) and a well-intentioned scientist (Riz Ahmed). The film takes some pretty big narrative swings along the way. But will Digger work for everyone?Want more Tom Cruise? Check out these episodes:In 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' Tom Cruise is too controlled 'Top Gun: Maverick' puts Tom Cruise back in the cockpit, 36 years later'Mission: Impossible' is back, but will you accept it, or will it self-destruct? Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.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

I had heard beforehand that this was almost a three-hour movie, and it isn't. It's a two-hour movie. But I think you spend the next 40 minutes arguing about it. Yes. It kind of takes up that time. We did. They're in the theater. I mean, afterwards we came out and we were just buzzing.

The new movie Digger is a loud, surprising, audacious, and sure to be polarizing entry in this year's Oscars race. The film stars Tom Cruise as a powerful oil baron who's helped unleash an existential threat on the world, but that's only the beginning. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is NPR film critic Bob Mondello. Hey, Bob. Hey. Also with us is Vulture TV critic Roxanna Hadati. Hey, Roxanna. Hey, thanks for having me. So to give a general sense of what's going on here, the digger in the title is Digger Rockwell. He's a swaggering good old boy oil man played by Tom Cruz in heavy prosthetics. Early in the film, we learned that Digger is responsible for a drilling expedition in Greenland, that's gone terribly awry due to his negligence and is sending

a massive ice shelf floating to the northern coast of Europe. That looming devastation attracts the attention of the president, played by John Goodman, as well as a well-intentioned scientist in Digger's employ, played by Riz Ahmed. But there's even more than that going on in Digger, which takes some pretty big narrative swings along the way. Now, it's tough to talk about Digger without spoiling some major twists and reveals. And because the movie is coming out today, we're going to keep this conversation as spoiler-free as humanly possible. But just to be clear, that's leaving out a whole lot of what Digger is all about.

The film was directed and co-written by Alejandro G. Inioritu, whose past films include The Revenant and Birdman. Now, Bob Mandela, I'm going to start with you. What you think of Digger? I had the best time. I was so intrigued by this movie. I haven't been asked to think a whole lot at a movie in a while, I don't think. And this one required me to think and to think hard about a lot of the things it was trying to do.

I had a ball at this picture. Okay. So thumbs up from Bob Mandello. How about you, Roxanna? We, you know, sometimes it's nice when we see a movie together so we can talk about it in the lobby afterward. And I remember telling you, I might wake up tomorrow morning and love this movie. And I'm not at full love yet. But I am at a lot of admiration.

And people will say like they admire a movie when they don't want to admit that they liked it. I liked it. But I also admire all of the things that it's doing, the ways that it's constructed to Bob's point, the fact that it makes you hold, I would say like three to four ideas in your head at the same time. when was the last time a movie did that? And it wasn't doing like time travel or like genre stuff. Like there's something really interesting about the way that this movie plays out. It keeps adding little details that you need to sort of like file away for later. But it is very propulsive. It's a great time. I really enjoy Tom Cruise. And I think that he is doing something here that he is not done. I would say since collateral, honestly, in terms of. of acting. So I'm also pro. I'm not on love yet. Maybe checking with me tomorrow morning, but I'm almost there. One of the things I thought about it, I had heard beforehand that this was

a almost a three-hour movie, and it isn't. It's a two-hour movie. But I think you spend the next 40 minutes arguing about it. It kind of takes up that time. We did. They're in the theater. I mean, afterwards, we came out and we were just buzzing, right? We were just, you know, sort of bouncing off the walls. I thought it was fascinating. I think it is definitely a movie that is not going to elicit a... Yeah. But I do think there is a significant percentage of the audience is going to be infuriated by this movie. I do think this is going to be one of the more kind of polarizing entries in the Oscars race.

And there often are movies like that, right? Like there is a didactic quality to the film that occasionally recalls don't look up, which was a very polarizing film in an Oscars race from a few years ago. Inioritu has made polarizing films like Birdman. Some films are just attempting really, really big swings, and those are going to work more for some people than for others. I will say, for me, like, yes, it is a very propulsive film. It is a very loud and grabby film. There is long stretches of this film are just like men screaming at each other. And as some of those scenes were playing out, I found myself kind of feeling hostile toward this film in the way that it felt sort of hostile toward me. But then, of course, and we can't reveal how or why, decisions are

made in the film that re-contextualize some of what we're seeing and make you understand why some of the weird choices that are being made in this film are being made. There are elements of the look of this film that are a little inscrutable early that make a lot of sense late. And in that way, I did ultimately find myself enjoying it and found myself, as Roxanna said, admiring it, which can sound like a very backhanded way to praise a film. But I do think there is going to be an army of haters coming after this movie. The film that it reminded me of briefly in spots, because it's a tackling some something that is very much of the moment, right? We're very worried about global warming and all that

kind of thing. This notion that a chunk of Greenland floats off creates havoc is sort of of this moment in the same way that, say, Dr. Strangelove was of its moment. Right? Well, I went back and looked at reviews of Dr. Strangelove just to refresh my own memory about how, because now it's regarded as a classic. Almost everybody thinks it's freaking brilliant, right? And at the time, the New York Times just dismissed it. Other people dismissed it. It was incredibly controversial and sort of all over the place

in its critical appraisal. And so I think that it's reasonable to expect that same kind of thing whenever there's a movie that sort of takes a big swing. This is a big swing in some of the same ways that that was.

There are these major speeches in the middle of it that you just think, you know. Yeah, and it's very broad in spots. Yeah. Right.

I'm remembering George C. Scott doing this, incredibly broad read of a general, whatever his name was. And it was very funny. I can imagine this picture 25 years from now being seen in that way. I wouldn't be surprised if it were. I think it's very much of this moment, but speaking to a future. I also think in general, and this is sort of building on Bob's point, is that I think at the time we just reject satire generally. Like, Like, I am thinking of my favorite satire recent years as Observe and Report, which is a very nasty movie starring Seth Rogen as a mall cop. And it really is like a treatise on police violence.

And at the time, like, nobody got that or enjoyed that message. And I feel like in, you know, like the 15 or so years since that movie came out, it's like, oh, no, that's borne out. So I do think there is something here which feels very current. but at the same time alludes to the fact that climate change is an issue that we have been arguing about socially for decades as well. So I think there is sort of like this broadness to it, Stephen, because I think it is sprawling and trying to tell this like decades-long context for this issue. But the way that the production design looks, the way that it's shot, the focus on these actors faces. In a lot of ways, it made me think of like a bizarreo Wes Anderson movie.

And I'm good with that. I'm really okay with like a nightmareish version of a Wes Anderson. So I just think for as much as sometimes my attention deviated a little bit when there are these rooms of yes, white men yelling at each other and just like amping each other up, then it would sort of move to a composition or a staging that was not what I anticipated or expected, and it pulled me back in. I'm glad you mentioned the production design, because I do think there are some really, really clever choices there. Much of this film is set kind of inside this kind of fascinating building where there are screens behind them. And you can spend a lot of time in this film just kind of looking at the way shots are composed. It's beautifully shot.

There's a scene where Digger is giving this kind of thunderous monologue, which I suspect you'll see versions of that monologue in auditions for years to come. Yes, probably. But the costuming in that scene, I thought was so clever. The way that colors are playing off each other in that scene, I was struck by kind of the beauty and the cleverness of the look of that scene. I'm also struck by the things he's saying, which sound as if he had listened. to Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and said, I want to do the You Can't Handle the Truth Speech. Yeah.

It's like, I mean, I thought that was what that was. It's just gorgeous. He's not the only one who has speeches either. I mean, Rez Ahmed has an amazing takedown. There's some, there's some really, really interesting writing going on in this. It's a complicated movie under every circumstance. And then it's like all kinds of interesting stuff. addition to this thing about global warming.

Yeah. I also think, and this is just my own preference, and so I might say this and turn people off as I am saying it. But I think that a lot of the issue for me personally with our recent satire also is that so often it sort of ends with this like tidy, actually everything is going to be okay messaging. And I like that the movie rejects that. But I also just think it sort of adds to this sense.

Like, as you both have been saying, that through these speeches, the movie is really trying to interrogate something, which you can't do in two hours, but it is leaving you with all of these questions that, like, have been discussed in eco-ci-fi for a long time and have been sort of nibbled at through other mediums. But here we're really getting like, we're going to throw you into this argument. And you have to figure out what you're persuaded by. Can we talk about the cat? Yeah, we don't. That cat is amazing.

Digger has a cat, and it's 30 years old. And it is the saddest creature I have ever seen in my life. Oh, my goodness. And he is so devoted to that cat in ways that he doesn't seem devoted to the world over any number of other things. And it's like, whoa. I kept looking at it and thinking, oh, my God, it is not quite real. Yeah. There's a big, uncanny valley thing going on.

at the cat that I could not tear my eyes away from. There are all these little touches like that, which are like production design, set design, effects, all these little things that just made me think, again, a lot of thought and care and deliberation went into making this world both recognizable to us and not. Because there are some things like midway through the movie that start getting introduced that made me think, did I, wait, did I miss something like earlier? But the movie just, it depends on you to be paying attention. And that's what I want from a movie.

Trust me. Yeah, I kept realizing that I had actually seen something that set this up earlier. Yeah. Right? But had not really registered it. It just was there. And as I'm watching the movie, I'm thinking, oh, I get it. That was this.

And anyway, I think it's fun to see a movie that requires you to do something besides, I don't know, Except that superheroes can fly and that time can be traveled through. I just, I found this so refreshingly engaging intellectually. It almost could have done anything it wanted in the last 45 minutes. And it kind of does, actually. Yeah, and to my mind, I think it needed to. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

The decisions that it made for me were very clarifying in a way that made the earlier part of the film make more sense and made me less frustrated with it. I did want to talk about, you know, and obviously this is the time of year where studios start really rolling out the big Oscar movies. You know, we never want, you know, every discussion of every Oscar movie to be like, what are its chances? How many nombs is it going to get? I do think that part of assessing this film is like, is this going to be heavily Oscar nominated? Because I came away from it thinking, I think it's going to be. Yeah, I do.

I think so. I can't imagine that Cruz wouldn't be nominated. I think his performance is astonishing. It's a big most acting kind of performance. He's doing a lot of acting. He's doing a lot of acting, maybe too much, but just enough acting. But I do think that sort of everything that we've been speaking to, I think in this current era of the Oscars, there is a lot, I think, of sort of implicit pressure to be relevant

in terms of like what is going on in the world. So even if the movie is divisive, which I think it will be. And even if it is a flop, which it might be, I think that there is enough in this film that is reflecting, like, our general social, like, malaise and concern that I think enough people will be like, hey, check out what this movie was doing to approach that in a different way. Yeah, I agree completely. And I think that this is the kind of movie. First of all, Inuri, too, is the kind of director that the Oscars love. Yeah. They have loved, I think, considerably worse in your two movies than this.

Birdman. Oh, Birdman. And I think this film kind of fits in the general vibe of kind of your weirder picks, you know, that get kind of folded into the best picture field. Films like poor things. Films like, well, blonde didn't get nominated for Best Picture and is a terrible movie. But Anadamus got nominated. We disagree there. Oh, my gosh.

Roxanne. I hated that movie so much. But yeah, but there have been, like, very divisive things that have been nominated in the past. As much as I liked Cruz, I'd like to say that Riz Ahmed is doing some very interesting work there. He's not doing anything like something I've seen from him before. And it's one of the few subtle performances in this film. Yes, I agree. Well, I don't know about that.

I mean, Jesse Plemons is subtle. On the other hand, seriously, go see this movie so that we can participate in the discussion afterward. And at some point, let's revisit the film when we can talk about. about it. I feel like the way we could talk about Citizen Kane now and I could say Rosebud's a sled. Right? There's so much I want to say. Jeez, okay, Bob. Spoiler morning. Bob wants to integrate so much language from this movie into our common vernacular. It's true. Yeah, I mean, look, I think you might love it, you might hate it, you will definitely have opinions. All right, up next, what is making us happy this week?

Now, it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Bob Mandela, what's making you happy this week, buddy? Well, there's a book about an actress I have long admired, Jane Fonda, and it's called Fonda on film The Political Movies of Jane Fonda. And this seemed like the right moment for me to be reading that because we're heading into an election and it's unnerving. And many, many years ago, I spoke to Fonda.

when I was interviewing her for a then new film called Agnes of God. And I asked her what she wanted to be remembered for, which is the kind of question that you ask when you're very young and you don't know any better, and you're confronting a really impressive person. And she said something very simple. She said, making a difference. And I thought this book is all about how she did that.

It is about the movies in the 1970s from Clute to coming up. home to all the ones you remember, basically, to 9 to 5, the films that through which she tried to make a difference. And Nelson Presley, who wrote it, has long been a writer for the Washington Post, and I think it's a fascinating book. And I've just found it kind of really intriguing reading right now, because a lot of the things that she was dealing with are the things that we're dealing with today. So anyway, it's called Fonda on Film, the Political Movies of Jane Fonda by Nelson

and Presley. Nice. Thank you, Bob Mondello. Roxanna Haddadi, what's making you happy this week? What is making me happy is, as you know, as a TV critic, I watch a lot of current television, new television, the endless deluge of television. And so every so often I need a break from that, and I go back and I rewatch an older show. So what I have been doing is I have been rewatching Aalius, which has been so, so fun. And I have such a distinct memory of like, being on the middle school bus and like talking about cliffhangers with my friends. And so it is really taking me back to an earlier time in television with like 20 plus episode seasons and just a real deafness in terms of how these episodes were written and constructed. And it's just a blast of a TV show, right?

Like Jennifer Garner is amazing. Michael Vartan is sometimes the hottest man who has ever lived. It's just a very, very fun time. Victor Garber is always like glaring and you want to know what he's glaring about. So that's been really a good time. And I figure, you know, what streaming costs going up seemingly every month, I want to actually be able to use some of these subscriptions to watch things that I haven't watched in a long time. So you can stream Alias on Disney Plus. Excellent.

Bob Mandela and I were also watching Alias in junior high school. Yes, of course. Thank you for that. All right, thank you, Roxanna. So last week, Taylor Swift released four new songs as part of a deluxe reissue campaign for her album, The Life of a Showgirl. And among the album's four new songs is what I would consider the worst song of Taylor Swift's career. It is called Cleveland. Yes, I knew.

You knew what I was going to talk. You knew as soon as I said the worst song of her career that I was talking about in Cleveland. Yeah. Taste of me is acquired, but it's his favorite dish. She says, I look like an angel. They say, I hate that. Bear that house with a porch is where he lived as a kid. He's been saying forever must not have read that.

And it's just like the shallowest, most spiteful, least relatable possible way to be in love. And understandably, fans and critics alike have been dunking on this song like crazy. Now, I am no Taylor Swift hater. I think she is phenomenal when she steps back and sings about things that are not what it's like to be Taylor Swift. She has had in the past a gift for writing truly relatable songs, but this song is so rough. And I think I'm in agreement with most of her fans that I would like to hear her go in literally any other direction. So what is making me happy as a non-hater who hates this song? song, I've been giggling for days about this Instagram reel from a user by the name of

Dead Eye Breakman. You think I can't dance. You think I can't sing. Couldn't hear you over the sound of my ring. He picked me. He picked me. You hate that. Football man.

Football man. I'm in bed with the football man. I mean, it's better than the song. It is better than the song. Football man. Football man. And it's like, that's actually a catchy song. At one point, Madison, Wisconsin catches astray.

I love this clip. It delighted me so much. It basically was, like, the payoff for enduring this song I hate so much. I hope Taylor Swift takes the reaction to the song to heart and not just as one more reason to feel like a victim, because she is capable of such great music and this ain't it. So what is making me happy? Dead Eye Breakman on Instagram taken a not so gentle little swipe at a song. that really should not exist. That is what is making me happy this week.

That brings us to the end of our show. Roxanna Haddadi, Bob Mandello, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. This was really fun. Thank you. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker, Kaden Mills, and Mike Katzif,

and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next week.