Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Our Least Favorite Movies

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

The guys talk about the movies so bad they make you apathetic, from Challengers to Asteroid City. Plus Soren’s approach to The Penguin, why airplanes are the most emotionally resonant place to watch a film, and what Tinker Tailor Solder Spy can teach us about Rollerball.Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode. RocketMoney.com/qq.  it could save you hundreds a year. 00:00: New Energy, Podcasts That are More Professional Than Us13:00: Least Favorite Movies, Airplane Films, Soren Reviews Challengers25:00: Disappointing Sequels, Kick-Ass 2, The Spirit Critique32:00: Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s Style, Plane Movie Disappointments39:00: The Science of Plane Movies43:00: Closing Thoughts, Patreon Plug

when I was flying from New Jersey to LA and put on Asteroid City and was bored by it, I was like, this was, what a wasted opportunity. I should have just watched a movie I knew was good. I watched the hours on a plane, that Nicole Kidman Virginia Wolf movie and leap during it, like cry during it. Nothing is slower than that movie.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I wanna hear your thoughts on it, slower than that movie. When will I be remembered? Words without a word at all I'm going on Soaring movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to Quick Question, podcast about questions. No question too big, no question too small. I'm one of your co-hosts, senior writer for last week tonight, author of How to Find Presidents,

Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello. Hello, everyone. This is Soren Bowie. I'm a writer for American Dad. And right now, I'm looking at a pen on my desk. But if you zoom out from that pen, you gather the entire room, and you take that in and all that it entails. And if you zoom out further from that, you've got my yard, my house. On a simple block, zoom out further from that. You've got the earth and what is the earth but all of us one connected.

That's where our story starts today. Act one, Synecdoche, Los Angeles. Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting our podcast. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones you don't want. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash QQ.

Oh, I think I like this new one. I think I like bringing a real fucking low energy to everything that I do from now on. Here's the thing that Dan, you that Dan, it drives you crazy too. You go to a live event or you see people who have to be in front of a crowd and they don't know, energy isn't even a thing that has occurred to them. They get out there and they're like, no, I'm going to do it at my own speed. I'm going to do it. And it's not going to be a fun speed. It's going to be right down here.

It's going to be low. And everybody's kind of like leaning in because they're like, not only are they trying to hear, but also they're like, the crowds trying to give to you. Like they're like, come on, dude, like feel us, read the room, take a heat check. And the people who just refuse to do that. It's always amazing to me when that happens. Guests on shows, it's always how it happens. Yeah.

I wanted to change the energy up in this podcast a little tiny bit today. Been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, Soren. And there's, it's sort of humbling or maybe humiliating. Like I've been listening to The Town from The Ringer and it's a podcast about the entertainment industry and it starts with the host telling you what they're gonna talk about in that episode.

Like we're gonna talk about the Martha Stewart documentary with an interview with the director who worked on it. We're going to talk about this latest Netflix credit Gerwig news. But first, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, man, that's so great. That really hooks me as a listener. We should do that. And then I know I can go back in my emails far enough and our business boss, CEO, Bacon,

explicitly told us to do that. Pleading with us to do it. Pleading with us to just like announce what we're going to do on the show. Not only because like it gives people a good hook and it's like great leads, but later when you're trying to find an episode and like you want to do a re-listen, like it's you want to be, you just got to get to the first 20 seconds, be like, okay, I know it's in this episode or it's fucking not. Right.

And for new listeners who are like, okay, even though there's a lot of bullshit to sift through in the beginning, they promise they are eventually going to talk about this TV show that I like. So if I'm just patient or if I'm really good at skipping, I can find it. And that's how we would get new listeners. But yeah, when Bacon told us to do that,

we were like, no, because we don't want to plan the podcast. We want it to be free flowing and natural. And it would be too hard and antithetical to the DNA of the show if we did that. And then Gabe smartly pointed out, I was like, well, after the show is done, you can do it. I can tell you what you talk about and you can record your table of contents later

and I will edit it into the beginning. And we were both like, hmm, no. That's like, if you go on Schmitty's show, if you go on a secretly incredibly fascinating, he just like, he starts recording and you dive in and you're like, whoa, whoa. He doesn't introduce you, he doesn't do anything. And you're like, what is this?

He's like, oh, I go through and I do the intros later. And I'm like, oh, buddy, that sounds like a lot of work. You're dedicating a lot of yourself to this podcast. You shouldn't do that. We don't. Because then the podcast doesn't end when you're tired like ours does. The podcast ends when it's done and that sucks. And the podcast doesn't end when you're tired like ours does. The podcast ends when it's done and that sucks.

That has been like the one thing that has kept us really going in this podcast is that we get tired of talking and we just fucking hang up. And like clockwork, we're always done at the same time within a window of about 12 minutes. I wanted to start off, Soren, with a recommendation. We haven't recommended anything to each other in a while. Just like pieces of content that we're enjoying. I handle rec- first, sorry, I don't interrupt you, Daniel, but you should inter- you should give stuff to me all the time because I out to you, Daniel, but you should enter, enter, you should give stuff to me all the time because I like recommendations. Yeah. I'm, and I think that you as a human, it's so antithetical to who you are that you

hate recommendations and so you never give them, but try to understand that the people around you, I like the things that you like. Yeah. Lay it on me. Uh, have you watched English teacher? No. It's an eight episode series. I believe it's on Hulu. I can't tell where anything is from anymore. And like I get to Hulu through the Disney app on Apple TV. So I truly have no idea where anything comes from. It is just eight episodes, unfortunately. I wanted it to be 22. It's a sitcom about an English teacher in a high school in Texas. It is so fucking funny. It's

in the year of Our Lord 2024, where shows all seem to be a little bit dark and a little bit important and I'm not saying that like dark and important is a bad thing. Like I'm fine with serious dramas. Like I love Shogun very much and I love Succession which really towed the line between drama, trauma and comedy. It's so it feels revelatory for a show like the English Teacher, or I think it's just called English Teacher,

which is just comedy. It is only comedy. And you'll see some ingredients in it, and you'll think that they're gonna tackle serious topics in a serious way, because the teacher in question, the titular character, is a gay man teaching in Texas and like already your brain is going like, ah, politics, Texas,

guns, gay people, high school textbooks, all this kind of stuff. And like even when they do get into those topics, it's the funniest possible way in and out of all those topics. And no episode has felt like... Alright, Sorin, have you slayed it? Are we getting your audio now? It was mosquito that I was genuinely worried. So I was willing to pause for a moment. Alright, yes, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, even when they like, they talk, they tackle the serious topics like there. There's an episode that introduces the idea of a shooting in a school, which seems like such a third rail in comedy that you couldn't possibly do. And they nail it. It's so funny. Every bit of it is funny. You never. And I don't remember the last time. Maybe it's always sunny in Philadelphia was the last time a show felt so

Confident in itself from episode one. Yeah, like there was there was no Growing pains there was no like figuring stuff out It was just like the show knows exactly what it is. Every character knows who they are I now know who they are too, and you just want to watch them do stuff every week. It's so fucking good. I saw trailers for this when it first came out and I saw they brought a gay teacher in to talk to the gym teacher brought in the gay teacher to talk about sex ed. Yeah. And I was like, it felt just like the ads because I think they have to do with this with ads, felt so broad. And I was like, okay, well, a new show exists.

That's great to hear that it's good. It's so good. All right, I'll watch it. And I'm late to it. It came out a few months ago, and I end up doing this with shows all the time where I don't watch them or talk about them when they're airing and then it'll be

Three years after a show came out that I'm like where season two what the fuck what's going on? I'm trying to do a better job of like Spreading the word about a show while there is still while it's still a relevant time to get another season of it. I That's very kind of you. I will end up watching it six years from now. I, I started watching The Penguin. I watched the very first episode of The Penguin when it came out and was so enamored by it. And I loved it so much that I got scared and stopped watching it because I want it to build up so that I have all of it ready for it because I want it to build up so that I have all of that ready for me when I'm prepared to watch it.

You know what I mean? Like I don't wanna wait. I haven't had to do that experience in my life in a very long time because of just how I consume media that I have to like sit there and wait for another season to come out. So I'm going to forget that the Penguin exists until everyone's like trying to

make sure it doesn't get canceled in season four. And I'll be like, well, give this show a shot. And then I can burn through it. You're not even waiting for season one, because season one is done. You're not even waiting to like binge a season at a time. You're waiting for like the show to conclude five years from now. And I love that nobody's, nobody's talking about it, which is also making me very happy because I'm not missing out on conversations and I know it's a great show. And so I'm just like, I'm just letting it build. I like Penguin a lot.

I'm glad you brought that up. I think that's a very good show as well. All right. I'll watch English teacher. That sounds great. Do you want a recommendation from me, Dan? I'll take it. Yeah.

But if I say it twice, it's over. Right now, yeah. Right now, no one has recommended anything to me lately. So, okay. This is, there's, there's, there's, there's fresh virgin snow on the ground, Soren. All right, let me put my boots in it then and just say, Daniel, I think you should check out the band Bronze Radio Return. Bronze Radio Return. BRR. Yeah. Speaking of snow, brrr.

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Rocketmoney.com slash QQ. Uh, yeah, I think you should check out. So there are some elements. This is like a, this is a little bit of a swing for me for you in recommending it to you because I like the music a lot, which I know is already a red flag for you. And then also the lead singer, I mean, the vocals are strong. Vocals I will say are forward. It's like a vocal forward band, but not a weird sounding guy.

The guy doesn't have like a fucked up voice. So I'm not sure you're going to like it. I'm excited to check it out. I'm in a bit of a musical rut and a friend of mine, I don't want to get too specific because some of my friends listen to the podcast, but a friend of mine recommended a band and I put them on and immediately like five seconds into this band, I loved what I was hearing. I loved the voice and the lyrics and the song, like everything, you know, the components

of a song. I liked all of it and wasted no time texting my friend and saying, this fucking rules, great recommendation. Thank you so much. And then a second song by the artist came on and I almost was like, hey, I spoke too soon. I found one good song. The rest of this is dog shit.

I should have spent some more time. That's like why I can't recommend Ween to anybody because I'm like, well, you shouldn't explore Ween on your own. What are you doing? Don't do that. You don't read Moby Dick on your like nights before you go to bed by yourself. Oh, we should check out Tom Waits.

Just like, yeah, just pick anything. Yeah, it's all good. It's all good. Can't mess with Tom Waits. Yeah, I did the same thing. We're like, I have a friend and all we do is like share music with each other because we're constantly looking for it. That's all we like are in college.

Like that's how we got very close was we liked so much of the same music and everything, and then now we're just like, we want to make sure that we're still at least keeping pace with what music is. And so we'll share stuff with each other constantly and I'll hear something. And I'll be like, fuck yes, this is what I'm talking about. And then the minute I try to listen to any other, their other songs, I'm like, no, they fucking all,

like they got it right once. They did it right once. And then all of this is bad. There's a reason that this one's at the top of their Spotify playlist, because this is the only song that they've done right. Yeah. Should we get into the show, Soren? Please, please.

Let's just do it. Okay. I have some quick questions for you. This came up at work where we were talking about favorite movies and least favorite movies and worst movies. And when we started talking about the least favorite and worst movies, there was a lot of internal discussion that seemed very illustrative and productive to me. That some people for like their worst movie,

or not worst movie, because worst movie you could say like, you know, here I am, ally of the year. I think the worst movie is Birth of a Nation, you know? You pick like a movie that is bad morally or bad for the world. I think Lee's favorite movie is slightly more fun. And when people were talking about it, a lot of them were saying like,

there was a lot of recency bias with movies that had come out in the last couple of years to great acclaim. Like people were saying, my least favorite movie is Everything Everywhere All At Once, or Jojo Rabbit, or Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. And these are like, I mean, I like those movies. These are, but those are reasonable takes.

Those are reasonable reactions. But I do think as people who are coming on strongly to a movie that got a really positive reaction when it came out a couple of years ago. And like, I totally understand that impulse of everyone liked this movie and I saw it and I thought it was dog shit. So like the gulf between the buzz and the expectations and the experience is so

great that this has now become my least favorite movie. I understand that impulse that is less interesting to talk about to me than movies that are, that are bad in an even more boring way, which is what I want to talk about the movies that are bad in an even more boring way, which is what I wanna talk about, the movies that are like, cause I've seen movies that I've hated, but have still made me want to leap into a discourse

about them. Like the first Joker movie was like, this was so bad. And it's so bad that I wanna tell people about it. And even though that's like a negative reaction, it is still making my brain fire up and lighting something inside of me that ultimately provides joy for me. I don't want to talk about bad discourse movies. I don't want to talk about enjoyably bad. I want to talk about specifically movies that are like, man, I, I, it's a cliche.

I want those two hours of my life back. Yeah. Because everyone has these like complete waste of time movies. Yeah. And everyone was picking movies that like say something about themselves a little bit. Like when someone is saying like everything everywhere all at once is my least favorite movie because I felt like I was a crazy person because everyone loved it so much and someone was saying the same thing about JoJo Rabbit and and and what a terrible message it sends and I was like man mine is the rollerball

remake why just a movie that rollerball remake that was uh gosh 2000s movie with Chris Klein, 2000s movie with Chris Klein, LL Cool J, and a few other people. And it was a movie that I saw in theaters with my family that we almost walked out of the theater to walk into Gosford Park, which was playing at the same time. So we were like, maybe this will be better. Two incredibly forgettable movies. But like Rollerball for me is this was not good. This was not even, it doesn't even inspire me to, if this were a few years later, a movie that was so bad that I could then go home

and like write a cracked article about why it's bad. Rolling Ball doesn't even pass that. And the other movies I had in that category for me were Kick Ass 2, The Spirit, and one other. But I can't remember it right now, but I would like you to talk for a while while I try to track down what my other one was. I mean, it's possible that this one doesn't totally qualify only because we're in, I think it was successful. There was a claim for it, but I didn't know that. Let me preface this by saying I didn't know that. I watched it on the way to your wedding on the plane

and got mad. And let me just like give you, you know what? I'm thinking it counts even less and less as I'm talking because I, on a plane, I love the fact that I mean I can't do anything else. That is my time and it has to be my time. And so watching a bad movie is like the best way to fill that time. And even this fell short of being a bad movie to fill that time. I watched Challengers. Oh, the horny tennis movie. The horny tennis movie. Thinking this is perfect. Like this is a perfect plane movie. And it was, it was so bad. It was so bad in a way where I was like,

at the end, upset. I was like turning to Colleen and I was like, don't watch that movie. And she's like, why? And I was like, I don't even want to talk about the movie. Like, I don't even want to just don't watch it. And she's like, but it's got all these like, it's got all these people in it. This guy from the crown and stuff. And I'm like, no, don't watch it. It's not a good movie.

And I don't even want to get into why. Did you watch it? No, I didn't watch it. But I do. There's like a real, there's a serious ache and I don't know why, but there's a serious ache when you're let down by an airplane movie. There shouldn't be. There shouldn't be such a thing. It's free. At the end of the day, it should be like, well, like I picked a movie out of a library of movies and I sat and it like killed time that I otherwise wouldn't be making productive. But still, when I was flying from New Jersey to LA and put on Asteroid

City and was bored by it, I was like, this was what a wasted opportunity. I should have just watched a movie I knew was good. I will. I will watch the book. I watched the hours on a plane that Nicole Kidman Virginia Wolf movie and leap during it like cry during it. Nothing is slower than that movie. And I'm like, you have me. You have my time here.

I'm dedicated to you. And when a movie still like somehow cannot stoop to reach that bar, I'm like, well, you're fucked up. You're fucked up big somehow. That movie, if you don't know, Daniel, it's Zendaya. It's a love triangle between these two young tennis phenoms. One of them is all skill. One of them is technique.

And eventually, one of them becomes very successful. And then Zendaya was supposed to be a big tennis star better than both of them. And she hurts herself early in college. And then it's about their, the next few years, their love triangle. Like will they, won't they? And even with the guys, like there's supposed to be a lot of sexual tension between the guys. They never really capitalize on or anything.

It's supposed to be a sexy movie. It's very clear to me that this movie started with an idea that was going to be just one shot, which was two people playing tennis and everybody watching and everybody's heads going back and forth. But one person is not like one person is just focused on something that is not the game. And what a compelling image that is when there's one person who is not following the game. And it's you can tell because they use that shot a lot. And then they just built around that and tried to like build a story.

And there's she buy it like within their later age, she and this one guy are together who ends up being a really good tennis player, very successful. And then starts to take a nose dive in his career. He's just not as good. And he doesn't really want it anymore. She's doing like, um, car ads with him. She's trying to create a billboard of like the two of them for a car. And I was like, thinking about it.

I was like, that's it. That's this feels like a car commercials idea of, of a really sexy sports movie. It's like when I, when a, uh a perfume or a scent gives you like a mini movie for their commercial with like Natalie Portman walking through a desert or whatever. And you're like, you're supposed to fill in the details. It feels almost exactly like that. It's an empty calorie, but it looks pretty.

And so you're just like, there's nothing here. There's nothing going on. It's a director who maybe English is a second or third language and they're like, this commercial, it's Adam Driver with a horse at the beach, Calvin Klein. And he's like, sure, all right. Yeah, yeah, because you didn't take up too much of my time. Right?

Like, even if I don't, if I'm not gonna be like, I don't wanna fill in those dots. So I don't wanna connect those dots. So I'm not gonna, it doesn't matter cause it's throwaway. This was a long time. This is a long time I spent watching a movie with no payoff. Terrible is terrible. It was a bad movie. They didn't even have the courage to let, I mean, clearly the movie is very little about Zendaya actually and about these two guys who should be having sex with each other. They don't even have the courage to like explore that. They'll be like, they like dance around it a little bit.

They have the guys kiss, but by accident. And then by the end of the movie, you know, these two guys are not addressing the fact that they want to fuck each other. These two little rat boys. That is a sincere disappointment because I was watching that the trailer and I know the it's coming from, I'm not going to try to pronounce the director's last name, Luca Guadagno. Hey, look at that. I did try. You did.

And he is he directed Call Me By Your Name, which was, I thought, a great film. And he's coming at this. He's got this movie, which is like this is a sexy sports movie. And it's got Zendaya, who, who has been like a white hot star for five or 10 years now. She just picks really cool things and does really great work. And you got Mike Feist, who was also on the rise and I guess whoever the other guy is, is known maybe from the crown. It sounds like you said. And I was watching the trailers and I feel like I know trailer language well enough that I was like,

this sexy tennis sports movie is trying to Trojan horse an incredibly gay movie into the mainstream discourse. And so the fact that it's not is a huge bummer. Like that's the thing that I's not is a huge bummer. Like that's the thing that I thought that movie was going to do. I thought. I mean, and they, you can tell that that was probably in there at some point. Like there's like, there's a lot of them tackling each other and like eating food out of one another's hands and stuff. Like they're trying to like raise the sexual tension between these boys. And like it's clear that they should at least try it.

By the end of the movie you're like, no, this is all about two guys and this girl who fucked up their friendship by sleeping with each one of them over and over. Which, you know, to our younger listeners, life is long. That doesn't really screw up a friendship. No, it doesn't. They would get over it. That's one of the things that happens. Look, go read the Saturday Night Live book and you'll realize everybody was having sex with everybody and everybody's getting their feelings hurt.

Yeah. Because, oh, Dan Akroyd had sex with Laura Michael's wife. Oh, they're still buddies. And yeah, because you know what that is now? It's a funny story. It's a crazy time that bonded them all. If you didn't think every one of us had cracked was fucking in 2012, you're out of your mind.

We were just in a dark room together, just putting it in holes. We didn't know We we were out. We were just in a dark room together, just putting it in holes. We didn't know what we were doing. They had to legally film after hours from the waist up. You couldn't see what was happening under the table. It would have been banned on the

Internet. Soren, I thought of my, I remembered my other movie. Yes. And I don't know if you saw it or not, but it was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Yeah, I have seen that. That's Gary Oldman. That's Gary Oldman. I think it might be Colin Firth too.

It was, it was like a very, in my mind, it's black and white, even though I know it's not, but it has those vibes. It's like a very serious war movie based on a very serious book that might be based on a true story. I don't know. But it was a time in my life where I was seeing almost everything, and it was also important for me to see movies that seemed important so I could seem smart too. I was with my friend Samantha seeing that movie and truly almost walked out like leaned over to her and was like we can

there's no rule that says we have to be here and stay to watch the whole thing because the entire movie I kept thinking like okay enough stop it stop doing this movie you have spy and soldier in your title. What are you doing? I do remember watching that. I don't remember hating it, but I was also, I think that maybe I saw it at a time when all I needed from a movie was something to be on while like my child was asleep. It's like, I was like watching the new French connection and stuff and being like, okay, I watched it. I don't know what just happened in that movie. I can't remember a single thing that nothing was memorable, but there it was. Got it.

I got through it. Now you said, what was the other one you gave me? The other two were Kick Ass 2. I might boot that out of my own list because I might be more mad about that than bored with it. Because I enjoyed the first kick-ass movie. I'm sure it's problematic in a lot of ways. And it was problematic then too, but I just enjoyed it. I thought it was fun.

That was my first time seeing Chloe Grace Moretz. It was my first time seeing Aaron Taylor Johnson doing anything. Nicolas Cage was doing like a fun bonkers Nicholas Cage part. And it was dealing with a fun, playing with a fun superhero trope in a way that I haven't seen any other movies or comics play with the idea that what if, I mean, there's a lot going on in the movie,

but the thing that I latched onto was what if Spider-Man suddenly started getting laid, which is like a tiny premise buried within the first kickass where you've got Aaron Taylor Johnson, who was clearly your Peter Parker stand in. He gets into some kind of accident that renders him incapable of feeling pain, which inspires him to become the superhero vigilante kick-ass where he's going and he's fighting crime and he's stopping crime.

An unexpected result of that is he gets stronger because he's doing more physical activity. He also gets more confident in his real teenage alter ego life as Peter Parker would if he was suddenly fit and capable. And his newfound confidence and strength attracts the girl that he had a crush on in high school and they start dating and he doesn't be a superhero as much anymore. And it's like, this is like a very funny kind of dark, but incredibly realistic. Like that's realistic Spider-Man to me. I know that it flies in the face of what Spider-Man is

and that he is like, the whole point of him is sacrificing what he wants for the greater good. But in real life, Spider-Man gets his powers, gets strong, gets confident, and then starts fucking. And it's like, oh, this is way better than all the other stuff that I was doing. I'm much happier. And now I don't want to be a superhero anymore

because I'm in love and I'm happy. And I want to let that part of my life go away. It was a fun idea, Barrett and Kick-Ass, that I liked in addition to all of the big, dumb, fun action set pieces that went along with it. And I was ready to like Kick-Ass 2 and it just so didn't deliver on anything. It's always tough when a movie is successful and it's very clear in the sequel that they didn't they they latched on to the wrong things from the first one and thought like oh people must really like how

crass and profane it was and how stupid and violent it was let's just like amp that up to 11 is like no no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't the good parts of it. So that was one. And The Spirit was my other one. A movie that, so Sin City came out and was great that Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, highly stylized black and white comic book movie that looked so cool.

And it was so good. Most movies all had this feel to them. Yes. Frank Miller feel. And the spirit was another one of those that I saw in theaters and were just like, this is. It's got a lot of really talented actors and really good looking people, and it's so stylized, but this is such a a slog. There are some really good people in this. I didn't even know this movie existed. I remember Michael Swaim and I both, it came out, I have like a very

clear memory of it coming out around Christmas time because I was living in LA but back in New Jersey visiting my family, saw it with my family, came back from that trip to LA to learn that Michael Swaim had also just seen the spirit in theaters with his family and we were both so unhappy. We both felt so robbed and we're like, we are easy audience, we are easy movie audiences and we were both just like, man, what a not even wasted potential, just, just you couldn't fix that movie. It was just a waste of time. And like, one of the things that make it great for this particular game that we're playing is that it's so uneventful, uninspiring,

that it's never even going to make a list of top 100 worst movies of all time. That's what drives me crazy is that it didn't make enough of a dent that it's worthy of one of those lists. And it's frustrating for me. Yeah, like movies that just get there's quiet criticism. Like there's not not only happiness rights white everybody like there are lot of, there's like bland writes white as well. Like movies that aren't even worth talking about discussing are, and like they don't ever get, they don't get razzies. They don't get like any of this accolades in the other direction.

They just like float there. They're the worst. That's a great way to describe this game. It's like the movies that are that bad. It didn't occur to me until you were describing the movie. Aaron Taylor Johnson, somebody who I, the first time I thought I was even encountering him was Bullet Train. And I was like, I love this guy. Like this kid's got it. And then he, he started showing up in all these trailers for other movies where I was like, Oh man, when I see that in five years, I'm going to love it.

But thinking like, yeah, Hollywood saw what I saw and he's getting there. But I had completely forgotten. I've even seen Kick Ass. I completely forgotten that he was a child actor. Yeah. I think he's good. He's wonderful. I think he's great.

I think he's a really great actor. I do think he's someone that we will look at a full IMDB filmography at some point and just think like, well, I hope he fired his agent because there's some, there's some rough choices in there. Well, yeah, he's in a Marvel new movie right now, right? He's in sort of a Marvel movie. Craven. He's in Craven, which is the Sony studio. Sony, who famously has access to Spider-Man and all of the Spider-Man characters. They made Mobius. Yeah. They loaned Marvel Spider-Man so Sony could still have a piece of that. But like Sony knew, So Sony could still have a piece of that, but like Sony knew we don't we don't know what to do with spider-man You should have it But still let us retain the rights to him and like we'll make our Venom movies and our Morbius movies and our Craven movies

As we try to build our own MCU through Sony holding on to the one good piece of IP We have access to and they have just been Fumbling it every step of the way. I thought all the Venom movies were fun and enjoyable, but Morbius sucked. And like they clearly don't have a flight plan for what they're doing. And-

I mean like home run with Madame Webb, but other than that, yeah. Yeah. I forgot about Madame Webb, a movie that we both saw for this show. The only homework assignment we've ever been given was to watch this movie and talk about it. Did you ever end up watching all of Asteroid City?

No. Me neither. I did this thing where I put it on and I was like, this is a lot. You know exactly where I turned it off was when this when Edward Norton comes into like somebody's big office to talk about the script that we just saw. I was like, oh, this is a lot. So there was, I'm going to get the exact details wrong, but I'm going to get the exact details wrong, but Wes Anderson, who is the director of Asteroid City, did a really fun, goofy, had a really fun goofy framing device for Grand Budapest Hotel, where it starts and you see someone like pick up a letter or a book and they start reading it and there's narration and the

narration is like focused on a guy who is in like a like a radio broadcast booth doing essentially the story of the Grand Budapest Hotel. The story he is telling is the story of another old man walking into a room. So now we cut to this old man walking into a room who sits down and is telling a story to a young guy. And then we cut from that story to the actual story of the Grand Budapest Hotel. So it's like four layers deep nesting doll of narrators for what is essentially like, you could have just started the action on here is Ray Fine, the owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, here are the wacky characters around him,

here is the adventure. But it's like nestled within a story that a guy told to someone else that is then being told as a radio play that was also written down as a book. And it's just like, it just adds like a little bit of fun and whimsy to it that when I watched it the first time, I was like, I don't think anyone has done this exact game before. It's so stupid. It's so fun. I love it. I'm so into this movie. And then he did a very similar thing in Asteroid City where it's like, well, you did this before and you did it better.

And and and now I'm over it. That's like more of a lateral bit that he's decided on. Yeah. But like, even when they start and it's like, it's all happening on a typewriter. Like you watch you guys sit down and start writing the story and you're having like, you're getting slug lines and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, let's like, let's do it that way. Sure.

This is all, and like, you see the sets come together. It's like, Oh, now I have a reason why the set looks like, like a Wes Anderson movie instead of a real place. That's great. That's fine. But then like we got to now there's a whole nother narrative because now we got to follow that guy and like what he's writing. And you're like, I don't want to do all this work.

Can I just, could I just watch a movie? It's the classic Wes Anderson thing of like, did you like that thing I did? Would you like too much of it? Yeah, you feel like a little bit like a goose that's being prepared for some foie gras. Where you're like, oh, you like grain. Well, let me just put this funnel in your mouth and cram more in. Sir, sir, sir, you can't have birthday cake for dinner. You just can't. Yeah, Asteroid City was certainly, and I'm not even prepared to say that that's one of my movies for this list because I didn't watch it. No, I didn't finish it. And but like that's

where my brain went for airplane movie because I was watching that on a plane. And it shouldn't, my time shouldn't be so precious there, but I stopped that movie some amount of time into it and I was like, well, there's not enough time to watch a full other movie. So what am I, I'm going to start some other movie or I'm going to like watch two episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine or whatever. And it's just such a bummer. I, I, there's something about movies and in general in planes, like a movie, if a movie Brooklyn Nine-Nine or whatever. And it's just such a bummer.

There's something about movies in general on planes. Like if a movie can't meet these specifications, it's like, it's a real bomb. But there's something about movies on planes where you watch it, you get so invested in the movie. It's like being in a theater where you're just immersed in it and it's only this tiny little screen. And then when you're done, you want to sit there and like think about the movie

you just saw. It's like never, there's no better audience than people on a plane. And I don't know why that is totally. I think people have like speculated that it has to do with the amount of oxygen in the plane and stuff like that. But it might also be that you are, you're on your way somewhere.

Like you're in transition between probably big places because that is a, it's an expense to like get on a plane and go somewhere. Like this is something you've been planning for and you're in the between probably big places because that is a, it's, it's an expense to like get on a plane and go somewhere. Like this is something you've been planning for and you're in the middle of it. But then also you are zoomed out from the world. Like you look out the window and you have, it's only broad strokes from up there. And that's like a very new perspective that you don't generally get.

And I wonder if you start thinking about just big humanity issues as opposed to the little minute shit you deal with on a daily basis where you're like, oh, like there are bigger things at play and it's fun to think about. It's like being a kid again. I'm sure that is part of it. That's very romanticized though, because there are, you're right, there are physiological reasons why you are like predisposed to crying on an airplane. People think it's a unique

phenomenon to them that like, I watched this documentary on the plane and for some reason I got choked up and I don't know what it was. It's because of the oxygen and the atmosphere. It's like we all, yeah, it's very common to cry on planes. And it would be great, Soren, to your point, if we were all like the astronauts seeing earth for the first time, it's not, you're just, your brain is poisoned because it doesn't have enough oxygen or it has too much, whatever the fucking thing is. It's not a pale blue dot situation. Nope.

That's a shame. All right. Well, that's going to do it for us today. You've been listening to quick question with Soren and Daniel. You knew that already. Shout out to Daniel, I guess. Thank you, Daniel. Okay, that settles that. And for my thank yous, me personally, I couldn't have done this podcast without Soren. Soren, once again, my favorite guy. Podcast MVP. If you like their theme song, that's by meerex, you can find their music anywhere you listen

to streaming music, or you could find their full albums on merex.bandcamp.com. You can find Daniel or I on Blue Sky. Blue Sky blowing up all of a sudden. I know. Just like, you don't have to post anything over there and suddenly you're getting thousands of followers. It's crazy. Everyone has moved there. I can't wait to talk anything over there and suddenly you're getting thousands of followers. It's crazy. Everyone has moved there.

I can't wait to talk to you about that off pod. Okay. And if you want to find our podcasts, you can still find that on X I think. Um, I wouldn't recommend going there. Bad site. I would say look for our, uh, look for us on Instagram. Quick question is on Instagram as well. You can find little clips of these podcasts.

They really just juice. Gabe is great at figuring out which ones are the funniest little clips, pulling those out and giving them to you as like a little daily dose. And you can follow us on YouTube as well. You can find videos of us on YouTube, just subscribe to our channel and you can watch these podcasts instead if that's your thing. Lastly, you can subscribe to our Patreon and get bonus episodes. We do them every other week.

We do bonus episodes of this podcast. It's a little looser. It's a little more, uh, I don't, I'm not going to say fun because it's really just still us talking, but it is very different. It's a very different feel to it. One of our promises to you, just some inside baseball is that something that you should know, the Patreon episodes, they're never the first thing we record. It gets a little weirder. You know in The Shining when Shelley Duvall is past the point where she even makes the words

make sense to her anymore? Yeah, they've got 127 takes. Yeah. That's generally the atmosphere of our bonus episodes. If that sounds fun to you, yeah, you should go subscribe and listen to those. You can also find them through your Apple subscriptions as well. You can pay through Apple subscription and you get all the same content. That's it for us. Thank you everybody. Bye.

Bye. Quick quick question for you alright I wanna hear your thoughts Wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you alright The answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? How did you get? How old I'd be? Don't remember

Words without a word at all How do we know? Oh forget it Saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here