Sardonicast - Sardonicast 105: The Matrix Resurrections, Faces (Feat. Joel Haver)

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

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Three, two, one. Banzanga. That was my intro. I forgot to think of one and I wanted to get started. I don't think I've done that before. Really? What do you mean, really?

It's my catchphrase. I'm Adam from your movie sex. This is Sardonicast. Hello. I'm Rufth the Movie Maker. I'm a member from Movaker. I'm Alex from my H.E. And we've got a special guest to it.

Do you want to introduce yourself, Joe? Yes, I'm Joel Haver. I'm a YouTuber guy. And I'm here to talk about movies. Mm-hmm. I think you're, selling yourself short. I think you're a bit more of a than a YouTuber guy. I think that

if people hear YouTubers, they don't think of like, because you're, you're legit, like, kind of a filmmaker. I would classify you as a filmmaker. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. Ed, I guess a big part of my filmmaking is releasing on YouTube and kind of blurring that line

between YouTuber and filmmaker, because what I release is personal, but it's also presented artfully. So I think it's, like, there's a very personal element to YouTube. that being a YouTuber is presenting yourself and being a filmmaker is kind of artfully obscuring yourself and I think I try to blend those two. David F. Sandberg, the director of Shazam is a YouTuber, you know?

I listen to your guys' podcast with them. That was great. Yeah, that was a fun one. I've directed films myself and put them on YouTube like candy and The High and whatever. So I've done that myself. Yeah. Absolutely. I didn't know before this podcast about, you know, you know, your film work, really. Oh, that's cool. Well, I'm glad to introduce you.

So your channel really blew up really quickly in like a way too fast, actually. Yeah, it was way too fast in a way. It took a while to go way too fast because I spent a good, I spent a good like two years doing weekly uploads with hundreds of views on each upload. And then November 2019, I released an animation that kind of began the snowball effect that took me from like 3,000 subscribers to a million in counting in like two or three months, I think, which was a whirlwind. It felt like a lot of hard work paying off. But yeah, it happened very fast once it happened, I'd say. So your animations, was that was the first anima?

that you'd even posted, just the one that blew up? Like, as soon as you tried that format, it was immediately successful? No, I, no, I did five beforehand. And it's funny because, you know, I was doing it for no money, reaching just like a handful of people for a long time. And I would do an animation every couple months just because they took so much more work than my live action stuff. And I just didn't see it being worth the time and effort

when I was still already struggling. So I'm just glad I stuck to it Because the 6-1 is the one that took off But yeah I guess that's a lesson in trying new things And not like giving up the second The new thing doesn't work the first time You know

I think that that's a valuable lesson Yeah I enjoyed that video Where you broke down the process Of how you actually achieved that kind of rotoscoping effect Like a you know Like choosing to actually put that information out there And not hide it for your own game Yeah, that's very cool.

It's cool to the whole YouTube sharing mentality, you know, it's all about like teaching each other and propping everyone up. It still looks like a tedious process, though, to be fair. Like, I've thought about trying to pull that off before, but man. I don't see a whole lot of copycats. Yeah, I've seen a handful of people do it, and there's two or three people who have actually started a successful channel from like using the style.

But I think, I saw a lot of people just doing like quick memes and little videos with it. And I think what I did differently that really made it connect with people is I made the tutorial fun. I think there's a lot of information out there right now on how to create things and do things and none of it is fun and it feels like homework. It feels like going to school. And, you know, even the team that made the tool that does the AI rotoscoping, even their

tutorials vary like bog standard. presented. And I think just like making the tutorial fun and also a product of what the tutorial will create, you know, like, because the video itself is animated. So I think that was just something that, because that did really well and it did inspire a lot of people to at least take a swing at it. And I think, I think that's what kind of bridge that divide. It showed people a tool that at first would seem tedious or at first would seem inaccessible. Then it showed them like, oh, wait, I understand how to do this. Do I want to do this?

Okay, then I can do it, you know? Yeah, I think it really helped separate you from the crowd, I think, because there's a lot of people making short films, skits, et cetera, on YouTube. And, you know, people don't really have like a way of just being like, oh, I want to latch onto this one or this one. It's really hard to get noticed doing that material. That's the first thing I ever did on YouTube was like skit videos and even when there were only like 10 people watching YouTube It was difficult to get noticed by the YouTube show you know

Like my my films got attention because my reviews like my reviews Yeah, my reviews and then people watch my films. Yeah derivative content I don't know if you've ever heard me talk about that but like when you're making content That's already attached to things that people are already searching up so like a film review is derivative content or even like YouTube commentary or song covers or anything like that, then it's a lot easier to get noticed because that's just inherently how the algorithm functions. So when you're creating like original works, it's really difficult to get noticed, unfortunately. It's almost desentivizing like original ideas, which sucks, but it's, you know, if you want to get successful on the platform, you have to like learn and understand that.

And if you do have original things that you're doing, you might want to consider either having a separate channel or incorporate your channel in some way like, oh, if you make original music, maybe do some song covers every once in a while or, you know, otherwise nobody's going to see it is the problem. I'm somebody who has an absolutely stupid variety of stuff on one channel. And what I noticed is, you know, at the end of the day, there will be some spillover. Because once the animations took off, that was like what the algorithm would recommend. You know, like you're saying, it's like, it knew people like those. So whenever I made a new one, it showed those to way more people than all my other uploads. And I don't know how they detect it's an end. And I don't know how

they detect it's an animation. Maybe it scans the thumbnail or the video, but they just know when they're showing to more people. Yeah. It might just be the amount of people interacting with it from the thumbnail from the moment of upload too. Like it might, it might not even be like a visual representation. It could be just like, oh, this is how other people interacted with this versus the other ones, right? And then it pushes it. Yeah, that makes sense too. I think, but I have like, you know, I have a lot of little live action sketches. I have some personal documentary stuff. I have some, you know, stuff where I just sit and talk to the camera, stuff where I do, you know, feature-length films. And when my channel took off, there was the obvious, like, animations

are doing the best. But there was, like, a significant spillover into the other stuff. And I think it speaks to some level of curiosity in people wanting to check out people's other work and people having that patience. And it's not it's not the majority of people, but it's enough people that you notice. Like I, I, the film, my film, pretend that you love me. It had a thousand views for, uh, you know, eight months. And then after, uh, my channel took off it worked its way up to half a million. And the fact that like people who found me through goofy, weird video game related animations would take a step aside and be like, oh, is this an hour and a half something? And then like, like actually stick with it.

I think there's more credit we can give the audiences on YouTube than YouTube wants to give them. And I think YouTube's actively working against them most of the time. But yeah, I guess it's just pushing back. To some degree. Like some of these films should be on the front page. I'm sorry, Adam. Sorry, I interrupted you. You go for it.

Yeah, like, but what you were saying about like the derivative content too. Like, yeah, like my reviews are like derivative. derivative content or whatever because of like popular movies but then like I make my films or whatever like sauce like sauce isn't based on like that's an original idea basically it's kind of like a parody like godfather like mildly but like that garnered views I think because like people have the same sense of humor as me and so they like clicked on that video thinking like this might be a film I enjoy so like I think it does work in that way like putting it on your your channel yeah if you think about it you can start off creating derivative content

of something like a film or a pre-existing piece of media, but then other videos on your channel that are not that are actually still derivative content because they're derivative off of your brand, which is now something that people serve more. Right? So I wouldn't be able to make film festival videos talking about like a random indie movie,

foreign movie that nobody's ever heard of and still have people watch them if I didn't make meme videos. You know, like if I didn't cover like the larger topics and shit on Suicide Squad and all that, you know. Yeah, I guess there is that compromise, and there's ways to make it less of a compromise and more on your end.

I think if you really refuse the algorithm at times, you could kind of mend it to your liking. Yeah. And you get more popularity, too. Yeah. My most viewed video is a movie that nobody had heard of before I reviewed it, right? Cool cat.

Is that the Frozen one? Oh, Cool Cat. No. Yeah. Yeah. The frozen one's funny. Yeah, frozen ones. Yeah.

I mean, like in my top videos, it's all things I'm passionate about. I never really did anything to be like, oh, yeah, I'm compromising by doing something I'm not interested in to get it. It would always be like, oh, I can incorporate the algorithm, but still be passionate about what I'm talking about. It's just a matter of choosing what your subjects are. Yeah. I guess before we get into, I want to talk a bit about the films you've made because Alex

saw one and I saw one. But before we get into that, I just wanted to point out something about your animations. Is that something that I really respect about them, especially when you were talking about the process, is that there's a quality that I think a lot more people who want to create things need to have. And that is to be able to release and publish something even when it's not perfect. So in terms of like the animation process, you know that there are those like glitches every once in a while, right? And you could go frame by frame. you could fix every single one of them, but then they would never get released.

You know, they would get released like once every like three months or something, right? Or once every like a year. Like it would just make it so that you people couldn't enjoy it as much. When if you look at it and you look at it and see the mistakes, it kind of adds personality to it. It doesn't take away from the core experience. You're still getting the core experience of the piece of art out there to people. And that's a quality that I think more people need to be able to have, especially myself, because I'm a hyper perfectionist. in some ways that other people will never notice, but I just still do it anyway.

It's something I need to work on, so I really, really respect that. Yeah, I think, thank you for that. I think imperfection is actually super related to what we're going to talk about with faces and John Cassavetes. I just think being open to show that you're like not perfect is so much more interesting than, like, hiding all your flaws and, like, wasting your time. like making something like 5% better, you know. And, uh, uh, yeah, I think there's a quality to my stuff in general that's very

improvised and loose. And it's almost like a perfect marrying with that tool that it is so glitchy and so inconsistent because my stuff is already so almost like falling apart at the seams at times. And I think, uh, that, uh, animation style kind of found me in a very, uh, in a very perfect, I don't know what the word would be in a marriage or something, like I had perfectly married with my already developing style. Yeah, it's serendipitous in a way. So Alex, you saw, I don't even, what, I was drowning in potential.

Yeah, because I saw it was uploaded fairly recently. Oh, how long ago? It was 2021 December 3rd, I guess it's not too recent, but. Two months ago, yeah. Yeah. How was it? I didn't see that one. I had a really good time.

I really enjoyed it. I find the setting of LA just to be a great, a great kind of landscape to explore these kind of characters, you know, where it's just that gig, trying to get an acting gig and the kind of desperation that can come from it. It's just an expressive setting that you did a really good job with.

And what I was really drawn to, though, was once I finished the movie, I scroll down to the comments and saw the, that it was entirely improvised. I'm very curious about that process because I figured from the style, there was a lot of improv going on, but I didn't realize it was, as you say, 100% improv. And I'm just curious about how you managed to carve something that, you know, is tangible from that improv kind of style because it's so like loose in its structure. And is that from like a history of improv? Have you always been into that? What was your approach to that whole, that creative process?

Because I mean, I just like meticulous planning and that kind of side of filmmaking. So I'm always interested hearing about improv, the chaos and beauty that comes from that. Yeah. So drowning in potential for a little context is my latest feature-length film I did with Dax Flame. You might know them from old. two days. So I came to L.A. for my first time in October. And as I was driving in, I was on a van trip across the country. And I messaged Dax, who I had done some, like, he's been in some of my animations. And I've been in some of his videos. And I messaged him. I said, hey, I'm coming to L.A.

Let's make a movie. And he was so down. And the first day I got there, we just dove right into making it. The improv process specifically for that movie is you find scenes and then you kind of puzzle it out from there. So what happened is we have this opening scene, which is an audition. It's like him filming a self-tape and I'm his friend talking him through it. And we worked that out pretty well right away. I'm like, I have this idea of like something that could be the opening, which is you recording a self-tape. because I was pulling from my experience and my, I came to L.A. with a lot of biases. A lot were confirmed, but, you know, I have a very anti-Hollywood sort of mindset.

But then Dax is somebody who's very well, well in that world. And he's like dealt with the rejection. He's dealt with the struggles of trying to, you know, make it in L.A. And I just felt like that was a perfect kicking off point for us. I'm like, what if we just show a struggling actor trying his damnedest. And from there, what you do to improvise a feature is you essentially just make, like, one scene at a time, plot it on some mental timeline in your head and say, like, okay, so we filmed this scene where we did an audition, we filmed this one later in the movie where he goes on a date.

We need to bridge that, like, okay, what happens between then and there? what gets his character's mental state from like okay to like a point of despair that he is in this later scene and then you shoot scenes to kind of like bridge those divides and you'd be surprised how like organically conflicts like arise when you're doing that if you're trying to like push a character from one point to another you organically have to create conflicts and resolve conflicts and maybe don't resolve other ones and um and and and and It really is a process I've done, at least for, I have nine features on my channel and eight of them were totally improvised. And it's a process that I've just fallen in love with because it kind of harkens back to what you would do as a kid grabbing a home movie camera with your friends.

You know, you're not, you're not doing pre-production. You're not sitting down writing a script. You're not like getting caught up in your ideas and you're not getting writers block. you're literally the step one is you film something and then it's like okay i have something so like this is a project now and uh it's just very uh encouraging and i think there's a lot of life in it and i think there's a lot of uh and at most people who come came into dachshundice film were like people who there were some people like we have some youtube cameos people who have acted before but um a lot of them were people who have never acted before and i always encourage people if you're

working with non-actors give them a lot of like space to be themselves and give them a lot of space to to just like exist in the scene because people are good at existing like people are really good at like every day we're improvising every day you're having conversations every day you're your your problem solving and what people aren't good at is pretending to be someone they're not that that's a skill you know the skill side of acting is getting lost in a character that's may be different, quite different from yourself. But most people, if you just say like, okay, so this is the context, this is the point A, we want to get to this point B by the end of the scene. Let's find, let's find it. They'll be funny. They'll be like, they'll find the scene with

you. And, you know, because sitting around with your friends, you're always making each other laugh and doing little bits and doing little characters in your own way. And that's really the process. Each scene is improvised and then it's plotted out on this sort of rough mental timeline and then you're like, okay, we need to get here. Then finally you'll find an ending and you'll be like, okay, this is definitely the ending. You know, like we came around. We reach some sort of statement and I'm not somebody who crafts things with themes in mind, but I think themes also emerge. Yeah. If you're being honest and you're being like truthfully, when you're actually talking to something that interests you or you're passionate about,

I think things will organically arise. And, yeah, I think it sounds a lot crazier than it is when you say like a feature film was improvised just because the alternative is what people are used to. But I think what people are already doing on YouTube with vlogs and stuff like that is they're telling stories out of their everyday lives and they're making things exciting that seem mundane to the outsider. And that's what like improv filmmaking is. It's winging it and piecing it together.

And even incorporating your life is an option. You know, my work gets very hybrid documentary fiction at times. And I think that that's something I've always gravitated towards because it's just not, it gives you no opportunity to not create, you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, what you mentioned about improvising with non-actors, I guess conceptually, it's probably a lot more difficult to get a non-actor to read lines than it would be to just, you know, let them exist in a scene. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I've done one project I did that is sort of the epitome of that idea is I did this. My second feature film was called 31 Days in Marshall, North Carolina. And it was this. project where my friend and I, we went to a town we'd never been to. And we found it just because an artist, we announced the project. We kicked started it for something cheap, like a thousand,

500 or something, but just enough to have food and gas. And we released it and an artist was like, hey, come stay in my trailer in my town. I live in a cool town. So the project was, we lived in a town for 31 days and made a feature-length narrative film with the strangers we met in the town. So, you know, we spent 31 days meeting people and be like, hey, you want to act in a movie. And everyone in that movie is just like people who have never acted before. And it's a goofy movie. It has some good moments of heart, though. And at the end of the day, like, it was the epitome of that because these people just like came to life on camera in a way that they'd come to life if you were hanging out with them.

And, you know, we gave them a lot of room to be who they actually are. of people pretty well just played themselves or at least an exaggerated version of themselves. And yeah, I love that project. And I think that's like my biggest proof for being like, hey, this is how you film with non-actors. What's that one called again? I'll put that on my wife. 31 days in Marshall, North Carolina. It's a couple years old. I still think the project is quite interesting just for its conception. Awesome. I will add that to my list. With, so I saw pretend that you love me and I really enjoyed it. And I went to ask, like, have you considered or have you submitted any of your films to like film festivals or is that something you would want to do? Do you feel like that would take away like the YouTube kind of audience thing?

I've sort of become radicalized through my own work to kind of want to pave my own path. And the reason for that is I think film. festivals. I know you're a huge fan of film festivals and you guys talk about going to Sundance and all this. And I think they serve a very like very deliberate purpose in the filmmaking world. I think the smaller ones can be quite like fun venues. But it's when it gets to that Sundance can kind of level that it becomes a marketplace in ways and it forces filmmaking to be sold. and you bring a film to a festival with the intention of selling it to someone else. Ed, I just want to, I see YouTube and I see this world of like owning your art, at least to some extent, like, of course you're throwing it on Google and like Google's a mega corporation,

but at least you still own the rights to your work online. Right, the online thing is huge. I feel like you can put your work not just on YouTube, you can put it on Amazon, on. You could put it on to Mimeo. You can put it on all these places now. Yeah, YouTube's just one of the options. Yeah. When I was talking to Jim Cummings at Sundance, this was, unfortunately, I forgot to remind him to bring this up during the interview. So this was before the interview that

made it onto YouTube. But he was telling me that, like, retaining the rights to Thunder Road and, like, self-distributing it was, like, the best financial decision he ever made. Because it did find its audience, and it did kind of blow up in kind of, like, a sleeper hit way in France. And then, you know, later internationally. Yeah, it was like, it was doing well in France. That's interesting. And then on like digital media, you know, like he, it wound up blowing up and.

Yeah, you know, like that's what happened with Lover. I got distribution offers for it, but I never took them because I wanted to keep the rights to it. Yeah. And that worked out for me because I kept all the money, you know. Yeah. And that's good because I can make other films with that. Yeah. Sometimes I think filmmakers are faced with like the, I guess,

fear of missing out idea of like, well, if, you know, if you get bought, then that can distribute it to more people. And then that might not, you know, that might all, not only give you more money, but it might help kickstart your career. It might help give you mainstream legitimization and, you know, potentially Oscars or something like that. It really depends on the film, but I've always loved the idea of retaining the rights to my own material. Uh, so I'm kind of caught in this like, you know, my music. I'm caught in this situation where it's like, I know I could get more exposure and also better quality production, you know, better recordings, work with like actual producers if I were to like sign with a label. But at the same time, like, I don't, I don't want

some other company sending people copyright claims for things with my name on it when like my whole, you know, like, I would feel like such a hypocrite. I want to be able to have that control over something. And so I guess I'm, I'm curious, Joel, do you ever, have you ever considered or have you released any kind of like blue ray physical media or anything? Do you think that's something that you'd, uh, you know, work, uh, your way into doing? I would definitely do it on top of having it on YouTube. Uh, I, I like having my stuff for free online. And I think a big reason for that is this film festival thing where film festivals

really makes sense when your film is a mega investment, you know, when your film like cost a hundred thousand to a million dollars it's like of course you want to sell it because it's like you get a you got a lump sum and it's like okay we covered the funding and um but my films cost nothing you know pretend that you love me cost i say zero dollars like maybe i took the subway i took the subway here and there yeah yeah 50 yeah like king candy's like 50 bucks or like lover's actually 10 000 dollars really even like whiplash that was like two million dollars Like, that's a crazy amount of money. And that's considered, like, a low-budget film.

Yeah, it is kind of a crazy, uh, weird thing that we've accepted film to be this inherently expensive medium when music, you know, there's jam sessions in music. Like, film needs its jam sessions. Film needs it's like, you know, gathering around a bonfire and just doing it for the love of it. Film needs it's like unplugged album. Unplugged album. And it needs the, the simple version. of itself and we've seemed to like kind of bastardize that to the point that's like yeah a million

dollars is the simple version of it rather than like a million dollars is still more money than you'll ever have than anyone in your life will ever have french dispatch like that was an indie film that was like how much to that movie cost right like probably a lot of actors and yeah 20 million dollars probably like yeah and i i get in a lot of debates with people over this because i am very radical in this way, but I don't think expensive films are like evil. I don't think they, I don't think they, they also, I love Ramey Spider-Man, best trilogy ever. I love that. Hell yeah. But yeah, I think they definitely serve their purpose. And I think where they become problematic is when they begin to discourage people from even trying because they think that's the

only way, you know, when young filmmakers like see that, like, you know, you. You know, when young filmmakers, like, you know oh this cost a million dollars well i guess i'll make a movie when i can get a million dollars or or when young filmmakers submit their like cheap project to festivals and they get rejected and then they feel like they have nowhere to put it they're like oh god i i i wasted all this time it's a waste and it's like you know you grew and you could still put it on youtube and maybe people will love it or maybe it is not that great and you could grow and make another one but i think my problem with festivals and why I haven't submitted to festivals since my first, I think since my second feature, 31 days, I tried that at a few.

But it just is like so much more freeing to like be your own, be your own advocate and be your own like, you know, not waiting for some anonymous screener to give you the thumbs up or thumbs down because at the end of the day, that's what the festival process. That's what it is. You're waiting six months for, because, you know, they're employees, they're people who are paid to watch the movies as they come in. And you could be the six movie they watched that day and they could be on their phone during it. They could be on their laptop. You know, you don't know like how qualified this person is. And, you know, there's movies I hate that most people love.

And like if I was, if I was the screener for those movies, I'd give them the thumbs down and then they wouldn't reach people. So there is this very arbitrary gatekeeping of like, you know, It's like, okay, what screener did you get this day? Which programmer did you get this day? You know, did you submit it to the right festival at the right time? And then most of the big festivals where your film would actually achieve this large-scale distribution you want already have most of their spots filled. You know, they have relationships with like acclaimed filmmakers.

They have relationships with distributors and stuff like that. That, you know, the major spots are going to be filled and there might be 10 to 20 spots. for like genuinely like new artists to break through. And we're in a world where tens of thousands of people are making movies. So yeah, I just think we need to accept other gateways. If we're going to encourage artists to not give up and if we're going to encourage artists to, you know, keep creating beyond the system that is giving them the yes or no.

Thank you so much. That was a great answer. Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with a lot of what you say. I still love film festivals. I understand that there's like obviously a business element to it. Part of the reason why I brought that up is just I guess to say like I think that

when I'm when I watched pretend that you love me I was thinking just like okay like this would this would do well at a film festival that's you know like this this is sure this is up there in terms of like you could totally submit this and there's a bunch of people that would fucking love it and I love the idea of self distributing on on YouTube. too. And I think that it's actually great that you are kind of being a rebel in this sense, because in my mind, what I'm thinking practically about this divide between legitimacy of self-publishing on YouTube versus doing the festival or, you know, even larger routes than that, the discrepancy only exists because, like, there isn't as much of a market for legitimate

content of self-distribution on YouTube, right? And so if you continue to, pave the way for that if you continue to release your material there i think your audience i mean your audience already has found you but i think more people will find you that way i think you're definitely not done growing and uh yeah i'm excited to see where it goes yeah what you're saying about the film festivals like to make a quick rebuttal like that's the big festivals you're talking about like yeah yeah like there's smaller festivals that you could probably submit to and if you submit to a bunch of them you know there will be some met like your film if it's a good film, which it sounds like they are. Right. So like I submitted

my film to like a bunch of festivals like when I was younger and one of them got into like a smaller festival and like, you know, it did really well. Like I won an award for it. You know, that was awesome. The program director, Don Cato, like he gave me an award for it. So like, you know, it's, it's cool. It's a good experience. So, you know, don't discount it entirely. I get what you're saying about the million dollar movies. Like those are, I don't even comprehend those on. Honestly, like, those are so out of my league. I don't even understand. And we've talked about, you know, like, people obviously there in the positions, like, already, like, they're kind of privileged.

And that's how they get to make those, like, million-dollar films in the first place. If you look up the Wikipedia page for anybody working in Hollywood, you'll find out that they're a coppola. Like, that's how it happens. Yeah, or they're like, they're related to someone famous or, yeah, they have a lot of money. Industry plans. That's what Adam said before, I think. Yeah It's funny

It's like, you know Show like that Yeah No absolutely We're working with a lot Less money Right I just wanted to say

I really really liked That movie you made I don't want to delve Too much into the detailed questions Because there are kind of Spoilery elements So I guess I'll maybe ask you about that In like a DM later

Yeah I want to check this out Don't spoil them for me Yeah of course But yeah I guess we got to move on To matrix discussion Beautiful So

Here we go Segway, there was a movie called The Matrix. Let's get it started because they ran out of R-words to use for the title. Yeah, it had to be an R-word. Yeah. Well, here we are. Let's start with our guests. I want to know.

Just a quick, what did you think of this film? You know, I've never been that big of a Matrix fan. I've always appreciated the first, because the first, was very, like, innovative in its filmmaking and action. But I think it was, I've always viewed the first as kind of a war between the allegory it wants to tell and just being a big, dumb blockbuster, you know, because I think it has a lot to say about, like, the systems that control us and how we keep ourselves down and, like, how break, like, I think a lot of people come away with it very literally. They're like, oh, the matrix is like, what if we were in a

computer system? But the actual allegory. is the governments we have in place, the borders, all of this is arbitrary because we agree on it. You know, we all just accept this and live that life. And that life creates a lot of pain and suffering for a lot of people. And I think for there to be that great allegory and then the takeaway is like, whoa, Keanu Reeves dodged a bullet, you know? I've never. I know exactly went meme that I can't describe it. I think

I think that's kind of the pity with the Matrix is that it has a lot of great ideas, even the first one, but at the end of the day, because of its scale and because of its success, it doomed itself to be, you know, an action movie, you know,

it doomed itself to be just an epic action movie with like groundbreaking visual effects. you know, and that's kind of it. Yeah, it was spent after one movie. I felt that way the first time I saw it, like, but I've really warmed up to The Matrix, like seeing it over time. Like, I actually really love that movie now.

Like, I think it is really innovative. Like you were saying. The first one is great. Yeah, the first one, I mean, the sequels, whatever. Yeah. The first one, I mean, it is really innovative. And yeah, it inspired movies I love to, like, Inception and I see, like, how it influenced them, you know?

Oh, absolutely. I think both halves are independently great. like the action and the ideas, I just don't think they're melded that gracefully throughout the series, you know? Yeah. So, so would you say that your criticisms are similar for this newest film? Yeah, I think this new film is interesting. I don't think the, the action's nearly as good. The action's pretty, pretty subpar, actually.

Very shaky cam, very, like, uh, I think it's like, you know, it's a huge departure. What was that? What was the Neil Parenthood? Patrick Harris effect where he had like a low shutter speed. I just didn't know what they were like going there. Yeah, yeah. That was so bad. It's like you could, if I was watching that without having seen the first matrix,

I would assume that there was a lot of that in the first matrix and that they were like calling back to like a 90s effect. But like the first matrix didn't do that. Like we're thinking like a Ova Bowl film or something like from the 90s. Like that's what would be using that effect. Like sure, there's some dated things. but like the Matrix was so ahead of its time like it doesn't really feel too there's some dated elements to it but it doesn't

feel too dated overall as like a film I don't know it's very of the time it feels like an early 2000s movie yeah it captures the time period but it doesn't feel like lesser because of it sort of way yeah it is just a time capsule movie yeah I guess before we get too deep into the discussion let's just go one by one what did you think of it Alex um yeah I'm I'm kind of with like Joel where

I really like that first movie I appreciate that first movie, but we're already in a position where two Matrix movies are bad, and they kind of explored the story that's set up and the conflict they set up, and it seemed like it wrapped up. Then it's like, oh, 20 years later, we got this valuable IP. Let's make a new one. Let's see what we can explore that's fresh with this, because it's like a trend now to do this. And it's like, there's not a single point in the movie where I'm like, yeah, there was like a really honest.

good starting point with this. It's like it acknowledges that it doesn't want to exist. It's like Yeah, that's like the whole point of the movie, right? With all the meta-humor. Yeah, because I was seeing mixed things about it before it came out. It's the last Jedi of Matrix

films. Yeah. It's like the Deadpool of Matrix films. It's like so like self-referential and we already self-sick of that. But that's the thing, like, the Deadpool writing like works within the vacuum of Deadpool, but now when you're having this whole kind of meta-narrative slant

and that's kind of what the first act of the movie is. It's like Keanu being game-dove. We're in the free guy era. I was just so sick of like the meta-he. Yeah. You just made me think of like if Keanu turned to the camera and just said, well, that's just lazy writing. Like that, poor boys.

They might as well have done that. I mean, yeah, it's pretty much on that level. Right. I mean, there is the line in the movie, like Warner Brothers wanted a sequel. Yeah. I heard about that before the movie. That made me grown. I'm like,

it's so bad. That's like, all the meta shit is just like in the first third or half of the movie anyway. Well, that's the best part of the movie, I thought, was the first third.

And like, I thought it was all just fucking garbage. I thought it was consistently, I couldn't handle the meta shit because there wasn't any, at least that was funny. There wasn't anything clever about it. It was just,

it's happening in this way, right? Like, so I was, not that clever. I mean, you know what they could have done? I was wishing the entire time that they went even further with the meta shit

because they didn't, They didn't really think of how to utilize the idea properly. They made Keanu a fucking game developer. They made Neo a game developer. And then they're showing all these clips from the movies. And then later they're like, oh, that's the game. And it's like, okay, are these cutscenes from the game? Is this like, was this the most revolutionary game of all time?

And it just looked like real people. What they could have done instead, two things. If you wanted to keep it, Neo is a game developer and, you know, these are clips from the game. You could have actually just created like really low polygon scenes from the Matrix and make it look like a 90s video game. That could have been cool if you wanted to be like, oh, here are clips from the game. And then you recreate those scenes in like a shitty video game engine to make it look like it's the time period. That would have been awesome. But what I think they really should have done was have Keanu Reeves play Keanu Reeves.

And then he like gets off the set of the Matrix. It's like being John Malkovich to adaptation or some shit. Yeah, yeah. He's like getting off the set of the Matrix and then it starts like invading his real life like fucking West Craven's new nightmare or some shit. And then like, yeah, like directors play themselves and like you could have, you could use like unreleased footage from like the special effects and stunts from the first Matrix films and incorporate that into it.

That would have been fucking cool. That would have been more meta and it would have worked so much better. Why is he a game developer? Why are we doing this shit? Why is it why is that happening? That doesn't make any fucking sense. That's it feels so much less. purposeful. If they would have just like

done it a bit more. What do you think of Keanu is acting in the movie? He's bad. He's flat out. Well yeah, he wasn't great. Is he better or worse than the original Matrix, do you think? He's better in John Wick,

honestly. He's better in the original matrix because at least there's all the martial art stuff. He's really good physically in that movie. There's just not as much in this new one because of that action, as you said, sucks. And he seems more like physically into those John Wick movies. He does all his own stunts in those riding horses, and it's really impressive. But he still knows Kung Fu. That's true. I mean, was it really in this movie? I feel like they

barely focused on that. Both the acting and the fight coordination and choreography, that's less of a problem with the actors and more of a problem with the other people working on the film. So if you look at all of these individual roles where it came to, like, the cinematography, the score, you can look at the Wikipedia pages for, like, who's credited or the IMD or whatever you'll see the consistent people across the franchise one two three and then just somebody else for this newest film and it's just like oh you replace some yeah like what the fuck of course the cinematography is worse of course the score for the film is worse like and it's noticeable it's incredibly noticeable you just got some other random person to do it fucking hugo weaving was going to be in this film and then they just he he was he wanted to be in it and lana was like no we're filming it right now like he was he was he was he had to be in it and then they just he was he was he was he had to be in it and he was he was he was he had to be in this film and he was he was he was he had conflicted scheduling with another project he was working on. It's like, he's like, I can do this in three months from now, but she's like, no, we want to do it now. Maybe it was her, maybe it was Warner Brothers, like, forcing her hand to do it, but either way, like,

Hugo Weaving was supposed to be in this film, and then they wrote him out of it because he wasn't available at that specific point in time, and they wanted to rush the movie out sooner. So that whole, like, young Agent Smith cringe boy, like, that is not even something that was, like, an intentional like, oh, this is artistic choice to put in there. Apparently, Lawrence Fishburn was not even contacted, so who knows? Maybe he said something to make them mad at some point, but yeah, Hugo Weaving was supposed to be in the movie. So it's just like, it's all just nonsense and bullshit.

Like, you can't even explain it a way of like, oh, this is just some artistic choice. It's nonsense. It's bullshit. I'm sorry. Yeah, I was feeling that the whole time with the recastings. If it's not a reboot, it just is distracting. if you have new people. And I guess you can explain it away

through the Matrix, you know, their avatar looks different. But then it's like, why don't some people's avatar, you know, why don't they look that different? What was that about? Yeah, never ends. Because, like, this is taking place 60 years after the first Matrix, right?

And so you have Jada Pinkett-Smith. I always want to say Plinket. And she's in this really shitty old-age makeup. But then, like, Keanu Reeves I forget what the specific line is, but they tried to explain a way why Neo looks like a old homeless person to other people, but not himself.

But then he goes out of the Matrix, because they explain that by saying the machines were altering your digital self-perception. I think that was the word. But then he comes out of the Matrix, and he still only looks like 10, 20 years older than before, but why is Jada, who is out of the Matrix also? Why is she 60 years older?

Why is there a discrepancy between how old the characters are? Like, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, what? That kind of stuff was really clunky. And why would they explain away the only the thing in the... Like, why was he an old homeless man in the mirror in the Matrix for one part? Why did... Why was that required explanation?

That doesn't make any sense. Because they needed a reveal. I think it was like the slapdash excuse to like make a reboot. You know, you needed to rebuild him. Like, that whole scene was just kind of embarrassing when, you know, he was being put back together and it's just like the no one's ever really gone star wars thing where that was horrible yeah it's like if he doesn't die then it's like kind of defeats the whole allegory of the third movie i still don't understand why he's not dead there's so much of this

movie that's exposition i couldn't pay attention to all that it's just so boring it's basically all it is yeah mostly it's that and kind of a love story out of all the matrix movies it's got to be the most kind of anchored in the love story aspect because that's basically what the plot is it's like saving trinity that's kind of breaking around. That's where I kind of come around to it and I think I might be giving it too much credit because before the film I saw the discourse, it's either the worst movie ever, ever. It's like a meta-genious, you know, self-referential thing.

And I don't think, like people are saying it's all about like reboots and, you know, it's about its own redundancy. You know, the people who like it are like, oh, it's purposefully redundant. And I think that's kind of a lazy, like way, it's like, It's like, okay, great, you made a pointless movie. I can't get down with that. The fight choreography was intentionally subpar. Yeah, I don't buy that for one second.

They got the best fight choreographer to make it seem like the most subpar choreography. Like, that's a real skill. Yeah, to make it seem like a 50% effort. Like, what would they say to him on set? Can you make this scene bad? Yeah, like, you just not do a good job. That didn't happen. Supposed to be that way.

This is probably the same people that think that the first sonic design was like a marketing stunt. Yeah, it's just not, it's not to the point of parody that you could excuse it to that level, but I do think there is some philosophy behind this new one that is interesting. I think it harkens back to how the first movie wanted to be this wake-up call. And obviously, like a movie's not going to start a revolution of people like, you know, not paying their taxes or whatever it would take to break the system down, you know. But I think it kind of harkened, there is some interesting thought. in this one about the reboots and how, no matter how many times you package people the same,

you know, like the Truman Show thing or this or that, people are just going to play with the packaging is what I wrote. I do letterbox. That's what I wrote in my review. They're going to play with the pretty thing and be like, oh, this is fun and ignore what's inside. And I think that the movie's self-aware of that. And there is this kind of acceptance as like maybe living in the Matrix is better than we gave it credit for. You know, I think, I think the last, scene betrays this interpretation where they go, I don't know, are we in spoilers? Spoilers, spoil it. Spoil it. Spoil it. Where they go and beat up Neil Patrick Harris and then they're like, oh, we're going to rebuild the world. I think that's really lame. But I do think before that scene,

I did get this feeling that like there was this resignation to the audiences of the Matrix and it was this sort of like, you know what, living in the Matrix is okay if we just love each other and maybe love is better than nothing, you know? And that's why I felt the film was so centered around love. And I think there was sort of some good moments. Like, I think when they grab each other's hands as cheesy as it is, and it kind of propels everyone off, it's a very obvious visual metaphor for that message that like, if we're going to be in here, we might as well make the most of it kind of feeling. And I think if you were to give the film any credit, I think it's aware of that. It's Beyond like, oh, just the meta-narrative.

It's beyond reboots are bad, you know, Marvel bad, DC, you know, it's not, it's not that simplistic. I think it's aware of how it interplays with the commentary of the other movies. I just don't think the execution was anywhere near what it needed to be. Execution was fucking awful. For you to give it enough credit to be like, okay, it really brought this together, you know, it really sold these ideas. I value themes.

I also value the technical elements of a film. And I think that in order to have a great film, not in every sense, but if you're going to have a film that does explore any number of themes, like your presentation should not be distractingly bad so much that it takes away from that, right? But even so, even if we ignore the presentation,

even like thematically, I'm still kind of just like, okay, this is movie, it doesn't make any sense and it's a bunch of bullshit, right? So when you're talking about the end sequence, It's like maybe you were thinking about them holding hands and what that meant about, like, living life in the Matrix. And I love that commentary. That was awesome. But I was so distracted by how it seemed like the tone of the film just shifted into this weird, like, this is a girl boss feminist movie.

But only for the last, like, 15 minutes, which was really jarring because it didn't feel like it was going for that for the entirety of the film. It felt like just at the end of the movie, they were like, okay, girl boss time, and that's it. And it's like, if that was a more conceit. thing throughout the movie that it wouldn't feel so jarring but like just yeah like it was the weirdest fucking thing at the end of the movie it's like okay Trinity's gonna be the one to say everybody we're gonna have Neil Patrick Harris

being like this weird chauvinist and he's gonna say lines like oh can't you make her stop or like ooh like all this like sexist shit that just appears at the end it's like was this established like was I did I miss the whole first like 90% of the movie and it was like they were doing shit like this the whole time like that was

just so weird to me it was so bizarre just the marketing for this It was just the It was like they changed their mind At the end of the movie about what the movie It looked like it was going to be a bad movie Like just from watching the trailers It was a bad idea from the beginning

It was just a question of what they Yeah I was like oh man this doesn't look so great Yeah what angle are they gonna take Why did they bring back both Wichowski's that's all I kept thinking Because they didn't want to do it Warner Brothers said that they would make it without them Even if Even if they didn't do it

So Lana was like Well going down with the ship or whatever. I don't know. That probably would have been a better choice. To get like a young filmmaker who is a fan of the Matrix and really wants to make a Matrix film and and they like they can do something with it.

That would have been more interesting. Instead of like this meta like oh yeah, screw the Hollywood system man. Meta but not meta. This Matrix movie. They forced us to make it like okay, who cares? Like I don't even care. Like just do the same shit again.

Like that would have been better. Like a bland remake would have been better than this. you know, because I like that Spider-Man movie. It gave me a lot of like the same crap I want. Yeah, like that was borderline meta even. Yeah, really. It was very fun though, which is not what this movie is. This movie tries to, it's fun maybe 1% of the time.

But it's like doing a million things at the same time. It's so confusing and jarring. There's like a lot of stuff going on. My problem is like... It's dull. Oh, it's very dull. My problem is like, even... trying to make this like super weird meta narrative sort of thing like there's so many better ways

you could have done it it even fails at doing that is the problem right if they had actually i'm not somebody who's like oh i'm mad that it was something subversive right i would never be mad at that i love shit like that but the problem is that they failed at doing even that they did it in like a really lazy way like it's just it was just so embarrassing i don't know who to blame if it's the writers or like the directors, the Wachowski or... I don't know who to blame for... You gotta blame the director.

They made the film. I just feel like there's a more creative, better movie that solves that, that, you know, that problem of... It's being made no matter what we have to make a movie. You know, I feel like there was a more creative solution than a kind of 50% of both. It's like, yeah, on one hand,

we're just kind of just matrix again and like force a work and see. on the other hand we're gonna just surface level kind of critique the whole idea of this but then simultaneously be it and expect you to like it it's like just from the from the ground level it's just so like detestable to me just so dull like it doesn't it doesn't tick like all the things I expect and want from a matrix movie like the the scrappiness of like the main characters and that kind of gross dingy look of that movie is it's just something else now it's so uh i was going to say synthetic but I guess that's kind of what they want to go for in some sense but you know

synthetic in the bad way yeah it doesn't feel like the same thing anymore it's broaching into it's been so long the matrix is like kind of an old franchise at this point 20 years like this just has nothing to say it has no place at this point anymore make another animat i'd only be saying the opposite if it was coming from like uh if i felt that the story was coming from a place of like yeah we're inspired by this idea we really took this this nugget and went something crazy with it I think after that first act that it could have gone somewhere

it could have there was way more room to take those ideas and that self-aware narrative and like do something with it but nah it's just boring and devolves like over time the animatrix is proof of that expected shit there are other innovative sci-fi movies since like

the matrix that are like even either the same or better and like just like we have those movies now we don't need the matrix anymore. Like this movie does nothing. Everything was inspired by it. Yeah.

Like we have Inception now. Inception. Tenet. Yeah. Like things like that. Yeah. We don't need movies after Tenet. Adam, I think your idea of the movie being in the movie would have been so much more

succinct and logical. Yeah. Yeah. That would have sense. It just like, it would make sense to, you know, convince him he's an actor to keep him in The Matrix and the Matrix is all something he acted. You know, like. Yeah.

Why do you need that whole fucking warning? Brothers is making a video game thing. Like, it's just, it's so many, it's not only like an unnecessary layer, but it makes it work worse thematically. And it makes, and it makes it look, look worse when you're like showing shit. And it's like, okay, well, you don't even know what a video game is if you're saying this is your clip from the video game. Have you seen a video game, Lana?

Yeah, I hate when, like, Space Jam, uh, new legacy. I hate when movies just have no clue how video games work. Yeah. And it's just like, you couldn't just consult a nerd. You know, you could just bring a nerd on board. That's right. Yeah. That's what they say.

I'm just like, talk to any nerd and he'll correct like all these mistakes in like 30 seconds. I mean, anyone who knows anything about video games like would know that's like, oh, they don't look like this. There's like a camera angle on the character, you know, unless this is a cut scene like you were saying.

If you wanted to make it look good, but I, Space Jam, a new legacy wasn't concerned about it. anything. No, no. There was no attempt at making a good film, unfortunately. Not even in this latest.

There's the whole like world building side, right? And yeah, talking about like the nerdy stuff, that's one way they could have taken it. And every time they kind of tease stuff that has happened in the world, I was kind of like, oh, this seems kind of interesting. Like this whole, there's like a civil war with like the machines. And there's like defected machines that are like working with the humans now and stuff. They have like elements at play, but it's just background material. It's so, yeah, it's just limited to exposition.

It's like, yeah, this is what's happened in the space. I just thought of another good idea. The movie is so boring. So you know that segment in the Animatrix where it's like a two-parter? It's like probably the best one. It's like it shows like the rise of the machines or whatever and all that. Like you could probably do something like that. Like make a live action version of that, you know, like fill it in a bit,

give it some like good characters to follow, you know? Like the Animatrix was proof that you could. create things within that the existing universe. You don't have to retcon a bunch of shit. You don't have to bring back Keanu Reeves. Like, the Matrix is a universe you can still do things with. Like, they could have brought back Keanu Reeves. I like that Keanu Reeves in it.

Imagine like a Blade Runner 249 kind of movie, like directed by a different director. But like, you know, really inspired. I mean, Neo. Like, something like that. All right, sure, but like, you can make it work. Like, who gives a shit? Like, it's the Matrix, whatever. No.

You got to have Ki-O-Refiose. Rieves in it. No, you can't just say that. It doesn't matter. I wouldn't care. For this kind of movie, no. Not for this kind of movie. They should have just done like a, not in a bad way, but in like a free guy sort of way.

Just have a guy in the Matrix, like slowly breaking out and realizing anything like that would be interesting to like redo and revisit. They could have just done that. Right. There's like a million things they could have done. That would have been better. A billion. Yeah. Like this is like the worst outcome.

of like making a new matrix film you can't get much worse than this it's like you really can't it's like the dumbest it's the dumbest like yeah conceptually and execution like you can't I really enjoyed the third

the first third with like the I couldn't even I enjoyed the most a lot of it was like so fucking transparent her fucking husband's name was like Chad and shit and then she was like she just immediately goes out to coffee with

Keanu, she's like, oh, I actually don't like my husband and children. It's like, what the fuck? Like, it's so obvious where you're leading the story. And then like, what, he's this, like, famous game designer for forever. And then he gets this, uh, this, uh, what's it called, like, assistant now. He's like getting him coffee. He's like, oh, by the way, right now, clearly for the audience, I really loved all these themes in your video game and blah, blah, and it's like, oh, I hate how transparent the script is. It's just so embarrassing and obnoxious. And then this whole like boardroom meeting of like, oh, how do we make the game good how do we make it sellable and then they just use

I don't know if you stuck around after the end credits but they basically use like an extra shot from that where they're like people like cats we're gonna call it the catricks and that was their like post credit like ha ha woo fuck it was so there's a post credit gag

yeah I didn't even know I did not yeah right I can't believe I saw that either yeah like you don't need a post credit thing just because marvel does it like I like the idea that like whoever um i'm blanking on her name trinity whoever she was supposed to be like carry i mass

like whoever she was supposed to be like a car mechanic or something would know about a famous game developer like you know she was like in some mechanic shop and i'm like whatever avatar she was controlling like would not know like hideo kajima if you walked into you know it's like game developers don't get which would make so much more sense if he was an actor or like a film director or Yeah, you fix so many of the problems with that. You fix so many of the problems. Famous game developers are only known by people who play video games. They're not like A-list or stars.

Most people don't know who Gabe Nihilis. Yeah. Yeah, Hito-Kajima is not like, I don't know, Stephen Spielberg. You know, it's not like the same. I have a note in here that was, I made sure to write it down because it was so funny. They introduced like some machines names. I don't even know if they were shown on screen. I don't remember.

But like, she was like, these are. They're watching over you, Keanu. They're your friends. The machine's names are Shabebe and Octocles. Oh, the sidekick robots, yeah. Yeah, were they ever shown on screen? I don't even remember. So much of this movie is so much of this movie.

Yeah, it was like full Star Wars, like prequel stuff. Shebebebe and Octocles. In a weird offshoot, just this week I watched this Bollywood movie called Robot, which you've probably seen the clips from. Yeah, I've seen it. It's an insane movie. It's the one where he like magnetizes like 50 guns and like shoots them all at once. Yeah.

He has like a bunch of clones or whatever. He has a bunch of clones. Like you've probably seen the clips on YouTube. But the whole thing is just insane in a way that like makes me look at something like this. That's just so like bog standard and so uninteresting. I just wish like these people with all this money were a little crazier. You know, I wish they were a little less boring. I mean, that's the first Matrix film.

Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. Even films we talked about on this podcast, yeah, like Stephen Chow movies are insane. Like those movies like, like Shaolin Soccer. Like I'd rather watch that. That's that's crazier than this. Yeah, there's like a million other movies. Yeah, this is kind of like you were saying, it's kind of lame now. Yeah.

They need to try a little harder. Like if the action was cool, that really would have helped. Even in the Matrix sequels I don't like, the action scenes are really good. Exactly. That highway chase. I like that chase. It's just the rest of the movie. movie, you know, that highway chase is cool.

Yes or no, did any of you come out with a newfound appreciation of the original Matrix sequels after watching this? Not the sequels, but of the original one? Yeah, I mean... Yeah, the original Matrix series. The original one. As far as the actions concerned, yes. Yeah, like...

Well, yeah, the action scenes. Watching this newest Matrix film, like, you understand, like, even the first two sequels of the Matrix, like, they still met the bare minimum requirements for making a Matrix film. Yeah, the highway chase scene. Yeah, like that was a great chase. The music was still fantastic throughout the trilogy, you know? Like, there were a lot of like innovative, really cool and interesting special effects and action scenes and like computer, even computer animation, even though that's like the most dated part of it for the sequels now.

Like that was revolutionary for its time. You couldn't do a scene in that year before that point where you had like the slow motion punch of, I said his name already. Hugo Weaving's face and have it look convincing enough for an audience in a theater at the time. Like that was like a new thing to like have someone's face look realistic. Yeah, exactly. I remember actually reading in like Guinness Book of World Records. It was like first realistic like as if that means any of those. Oh, really?

Yeah. You know, that's a lot of like movies at that time. I remember the early 2000s or like even just like the yeah, like the 2010s or whatever. Like the CGI like that big push of like special effects. Like there were so many groundbreaking movies Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and then like Avatar was 2009 Now it's like kind of peaked

You know like now we're not even impressed by it anymore It's just like like the Avengers had like a million effects in it It didn't even care like no one cared He's just like yeah whatever we're so jaded now We're so like jaded to like CGI and that kind of stuff It really used to be impressive like even in this movie I was not impressed at all by like any of the action sequences or the CGI or that kind of stuff.

It was so bland. I actually, I liked the shot of the apple in the slow motion Neil Patrick's that was the only moment where I was like, oh, that looks kind of cool. And then the rest of it looked fake as shit. Yeah, sure that. Okay. I think that comes back to the sort of Bollywood Stephen Chow argument that there's so much you could do with unlimited money.

You know, you could, like, those movies have far less funding than Hollywood blockbusters. Yeah. And they just go insane and they don't limit their ambition. And, you know, I just, like, hate that, like, the logical end for, like, these blockbusters is to convince us things look real. It's like, why do we need to think that things are like, like, every Marvel movie, everything. It's just trying to, like, ground it in reality. The effects are trying to seem like they're married with the world and the humans. And I'm just like, why don't we just go goofy, like, go over the top?

And I do have such a soft spot for like early 2000s blockbusters because they, they like, CGI wasn't there yet. They couldn't convince us. And the ones that recognize that like the Ramey Spider-Man movies and just went crazy with it. Like, you know, it's like, why did we lose that like want to be experimental with CGI? Like we lost that want to like go crazy. And instead we pulled back and we're like, okay, now we could just like look real. This is what we wanted to do all along.

You know, it's like, no, you miss the excitement of it. You know, you missed what was making CGI such a bold new thing. If you're making a Matrix film, you can do whatever the fuck you want because it's in the matrix. Yeah. Like, you were not limited in the story. Like, you don't have to do things a certain way. You know how they like in the film?

They're like, oh, well, nobody uses pay phones anymore. So people go through mirrors now. Like, you wouldn't have to alleviate that issue because it's the Matrix. You can do whatever the phone. It can be whatever. aesthetic you want. You can set it still in the 90s in the matrix. Regardless of what year you want the not in the matrix scenes to be, you can still have the matrix, whatever they're in the matrix. It could still be like in that time period. It doesn't matter. Like you have full control over this.

How are you like trying to correct and alleviate these issues that you are creating by you making decisions that you don't need to? Like it doesn't make any sense. You can make the animation whatever it wants, you know? Like you can have like an unrealistic world. It doesn't matter. Like, they did this in the Animatrix. Like, they had so many different, uh, they had such a variety of, of different stories and different styles. And like, remember there was one that was like this weird, like crazy trip out, like, you're not limited in the way that you are even with writing other films.

Yeah. It seems like they limited themselves and just set to with, yeah, we'll just go with apathy. They cause their own problems. We just make that apathetic matrix movie. I haven't seen it, but I've seen a lot of love for their, uh, speed racer movie. because it's sort of a weird ballet of CGI and expression, like impressionistic, CGI like, yeah. Have any of us seen it?

I've seen parts of it. It's one we've been meaning to recommend, actually, for a while. I've seen it, but it's been such a long time. I need to watch it again. I can't... I can't write it. But I just get lost in, like, then Jupiter Ascending came out, and it's like, so how much of this is, like, intention.

Intentional. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jupiter ascending's a piece of fucking garbage. Like, there's no arguing that. What were you trying to say about it? Speed racer before?

Just that, I think that would be more akin to what we're talking about as far as making a Matrix movie with like more imagination, you know, because it seemed like, at least I'm only speaking as somebody who's only heard while other people think of speed racer, but it seemed like there was a lot of love for that movie's just will to like lean into the unrealness of it, you know, it was like a real life. anime, you know, it was very... It's pure cartoon. Yeah, and I don't know why there's this one to make, especially something set in a

computer so grounded. And I think I even had the same problem with like Inception and stuff. It was like Inception's dreams were so boring. It's like, who's dreaming of some like James Bond like snow base? You know, it's like, my dreams are like crazy abstract. And I'm like, why aren't we leaning into that now that we have the tools and funding to do so? I had a dream last night that a friend with. I was helping a friend move out of their house.

I don't know. It depends on the purpose. Inception, though, there's a reason for it in the plot. Like, this movie is just, like, lazy. Like, yeah, it's not creative. I'm just saying, like, there's this trend to, like, go for the realism over the expressionism in, like, large-scale movies. And I just don't think it works.

I think if you have not much money, it makes sense to make a movie that's very grounded in reality. but if you're already tossing around nonsensical amounts of money, why not get nonsensical with it? Yeah. Why adhere to reality? Because you're already creating something in a realm beyond people's understanding of like, how could you have all this money? How could you have all these resources?

You know, and yet you're still desperately trying to like cling on to like, you know, a grain of relatability. It's like, let it go because like you're different than us, you know, Robert Downey Jr. you're making $50 million is not related at all to how we live our lives. So it's like, but he's a relatable guy. He goes in parts with pepper pots. He goes on walks with her. Yeah.

That's what I love about how to rescue films is he's always had like a mentality of like, no, this isn't life. This is a movie. Like, I'm making a movie. It's not supposed to look like real life, right? So that's why you get things like the Holy Mountain. It's just like, oh, wow, this is this is not. suppose this is not trying to be life anymore.

This is making commentary about life. Anyway, we should probably say our ratings for this film and move on to other things. I'm giving this one a two out of fucking ten. The Apple shot was the only cool part. Could have been a little bit worse, I guess, but it was absolute garbage. I hated it. Cancer. Yeah.

It's a one and a half style for me pretty low. I think that might actually be the highest excluding the first movie. I think I gave the other ones a one star, actually. So I might have to appreciate that. What the fuck? Yeah, I don't know. It's because there are things,

there are ideas that I do like, but it's where it goes. It's that runtime. It's the action. It's the look of the movie. It's the acting. It's just every single element when you take it apart. It just is not what I want to see.

And it was like, it was like, case scenario as you said and from the you know just from the first time seeing that trailer was like yeah it was a rut row yeah it was a rut row moment yeah i'm with alice one and a half out of five stars i i was weirdly kind to this movie i did 2.5 out of five and i think it's not indicative of this movie's quality it's more indicative of i don't think it's that much worse than everything else, you know, being put out and all the things that's like, quote, unquote, commentating on.

I don't think it, like, you know, I gave like Spider-Man, the new Spider-Man, like a three out of five. And, you know, I think the Matrix is definitely a little worse, but I don't think, to me, it all just blends together. And it's all indicative of the larger problems of the industry and of filmmaking at such a scale. And, you know, I could, like, be upset that it, like, failed the Matrix. test, but it's like, what's the matrix test if there's only one good matrix movie and the

animatrix, you know? It's like, it's like, what is that test? I can't even get that upset because I'm not even attached to the series. Yeah. So I like, I like, like, Alex, I like some of the seeds had at the beginning and they just grew in really bad ways. You know, they just made crappy plants. And I'm like, oh, wow, okay, never mind. There was a drought. Yeah. But yeah, I guess I gave it 2.5. So that's, that's mine. Awesome. Okay, so it's time for our film recommendation discussion. There will be spoilers for this film, so maybe watch it, I guess. I don't know. Joel, could you introduce the film, maybe give a little blurb about it and why you chose to recommend it, and we'll talk about it. John Cassavetes is one of my favorite filmmakers, if not my favorite filmmaker.

and when I found his work, I saw his first film Shadows, which was this really, it's credited as one of, if not the first American independent films ever. He like fully funded it himself. He cast people off the street, made it for, I think, $40,000 at the time, which at the time you have to shoot on film and it's a lot more expensive than it would be nowadays. But then after Shadows, he got hired to do some studio movies. and he hated the experience. You know, he did two movies for studios. And he just hated the control being taken away from him. He hated all the checks and balances. So Faces was his return

to making something totally independently himself. And I think it took him something like three years to make. And when I saw this movie, it was the first movie of his that really clicked with me. And I think it's a great introductory point because it's him at like this super raw point. But he's starting to control it. He's starting, like, Shadows is just really rough around the edges, but faces is, yeah, faces is this, rough. Faces is this, like, story that is, it feels more intentional through and through. And with his rawness and his style, he honed it in a way that feels intentional.

And it's just the story about, uh, this married couple that have decided to get a divorce and the two branching affairs that happen off of that. And it's pretty well told entirely in like, I think seven or eight really long scenes. You know, they're just these really long conversations that like have ups and downs and like it's almost like roller coaster scenes that like you never know where they're going to go next. And I just think it's a really awesome look at a filmmaker who would go on to do. I think this is one of his best films still. I don't think it's that developmental.

But I think it's just such a good introductory to a filmmaker who would, really go on to like push filmmaking in a very specific direction that only he ever like mastered and I just love to see a filmmaker do that. Yeah, it's one of his best. What do you think? Ralph or Alex? Yeah, I'm glad you're a lover of it because I didn't really fully connect with this one. It was one I appreciate more than fully enjoyed. But I think that's part of it. You know, it's kind of exhausting to watch because of the way it's constructed, because of the stylings of it, because of those, just the uber natural performances that come through, through these, I don't want to use the word abuse, but like, just the liberal usage of all these close-ups on the faces and just the effect that builds over the time and the kind of lack of structure with how it is conversational and how it flows through that. And I was, I was into it for the first kind of hour and 20 minutes. And then I started, I started feeling, um, just kind of a lack of direction.

I felt like I was, I kind of had my fill of this type of storytelling. And I was, I was demanding a bit more, but that's, that could be more on me. Yeah, I could feel that way too. But I also feel like that's kind of the point with, like, all of his movies. Is this like the only movie you've seen from him? It's like, yeah. This is like his style. this is his style like cassavetes i'm sure you'd agree somewhat uh joel like it's just like he's very

natural right very realistic believable characters like very like improvisational feeling yeah it's one of his better movies though like um it's it's not that rough like i i like the performances in it it's um yeah it feels like a cassavetes movie i'm not a huge fan of him i don't love him as much as like people I met in film school loved him. There was like some people I met loved him. Like he's okay. Like some of his other movies I think I like a bit more. This one though, I don't know.

I really enjoyed it for the most part. I'm probably a little more positive on it. For the most part. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it goes back to like it feels like very believable. The performances are very good. The dialogue's really good. The opening scene is great.

like just the way like they're interacting and it's cut and i think like uh cassavetes was like a very innovative filmmaker like how he let actors improvise and and and how he would like cut his movies and yeah it's all about like maintaining that very grounded tone and and yeah he does it really well i think there's like this kind of role in film like you should avoid showing movies or like talking about movies because it'll like take your audience out of the movie or like just remind them that they're watching a movie right but like within the first five minutes of this movie characters are like talking about movies like they mentioned let dulcita and like that kind of shit birds like yeah i like the line uh something like yeah i don't want to be depressed and

then he goes on to just make an immensely depressing movie yeah you can see directors taking from this movie. How did you feel Adam? So I'm somewhere in there. I agree with Alex. I feel like I kind of appreciate it more than I really fully experienced it. I was totally into it.

There are definitely scenes that I was definitely sucked into it. But I feel like the conversation behind the movie is more interesting than the film itself for my own personal experience. So I'm going to ask you a couple questions because this is going to be

like I have a lot of assumptions about this film and about how it stands out from the crowd in terms of like when it was released. And obviously I'm not like an expert on film history. I'm not an expert on older films. So these are just assumptions and I guess you can tell me whether or not these assumptions are justified. But the way I felt watching the film is that for the time period, it was probably a little risque and out there to just have like a bunch of of drunk people belly laughing for like so much of the film or you know like yeah that's true showing these kind of like intimate parts about human behavior because everything else is kind of like you know it's scripted every everything else is like there's a clear plan and goal

of that's his point a to point B style yeah that's what I mean about like the dialogue feeling very believable it's not just how it's written it's the fact that characters talk over each other and there's like screaming. It very much feels like kind of like a rebellious response to like conventions that were popular at the time providing some sort of like outlet for people who didn't want to see everything else that was in theaters. And what's crazy what I enjoy about this, what I like is like to the best of my knowledge like this was a successful film too. It's crazy that he was able to find success doing that. It was nominated for like three Oscars, right? Yeah. So that's crazy. I like that about it too. I guess

also I was trying to keep in mind of like not just human behavior but also like I guess we could call it like censorship for what is considered like profane at a certain period in time. Like I didn't I don't know if there's a lot of

films from like the 60s right? It's the 60s? Yeah, 1960s. Yeah, 1960s. A lot of films from the 60s where you'll have people talking about like eating pussy right? Just criticizing marriage in general, like the nuclear family. Yeah.

For the 60s, that's kind of a big deal, right? It's definitely, yeah. Exactly. This kind of thinking. It's definitely a commentary. 60s was definitely like the transitional period because 1950s was very nuclear family driven, like, you know, Hollywood went bigger than ever with like, you know, the Bin-Hur cinema scope.

Yeah. You know, in response to television at the time, which was this like, you know, very intimate experience that drove people away from theaters. And Hollywood went huge and, like, dumb. And it's like, yeah, like America's the best sort of like, you know, exceptionalism in the 50s. And I think you see a lot of movies in the 60s kind of deconstruct that. But I don't think any did it quite as raw and as real as faces did.

I think what faces did that the other ones did it is it had that production element behind it where it too was sort of like. like a middle finger to the establishment. And it too was a middle finger to the preconceived, like, ideals of the American culture at the time. And I think, I think, I think, I think what's interesting to me about it is now that I, like, I've seen it four times and I think the first time I appreciated it more than I really loved it.

And I, I think as I explored John Cassavetti's filmmaking, you, you become hyper aware of what interests him. And he is squarely focused on, like, humans, how they interact and love and what that does to them. You know, nothing else matters. He doesn't want to tell a grand narrative. He doesn't want, like, he doesn't want to entertain people. Like, he'll go off in interviews.

Like, if you haven't seen interviews with him, he's incredible. But he'll go off in interviews. Like, he's like, I hate entertainment. Like, I shoot somebody in the head. I hate watching that. Why do you need to shoot somebody? And he just is like so hyper interested in like solving the human problem and solving the love problem. And like he, you know, there's almost a tragedy if you follow the trajectory of his career that he never really solved it.

You know, he was always trying to figure out like, why do we do this love thing when it hurts us so much? And I think faces is just like probably still stands like above most of. his other films, just and it's like, you know, the suffocating close-ups force you to look deeper into the characters than anyone they're talking to is looking at them, you know? So you're like being pushed in beyond, beyond the surface level of what they're saying. Like when they're laughing, it's like, what's underneath that laughing? When, when they're like, even when they're like, seem to be speaking the truth and saying, like, I hate you or I want to divorce, they're not speaking the truth. And I think it's all like the key to the whole movie is Chet, Chet, the quote unquote young guy.

He's like playing a 20 year old, but Seymour Cassell's like 30 or something. That was a little distracting. I've always found that funny. But at the end when he, I guess spoilers for faces. Yeah. At the end when she overdoses on the sleeping pills and he's sitting in bed and he says no one has time to be vulnerable to each other, you know. we're all like robots mechanized and i think that's sort of the thesis of the film that that you know everything we're doing whether it's laughing dancing loving there's something underneath it that we're

just not getting at just like there was something underneath the nuclear family at the time there there's a darkness breed like brooding in everyone you know coming off of like the war and you know going into another war. It was just like a really, you know, and I, I don't think, but I don't think the movie is so specific to its time that it's only valuable when viewed in that lens. Because when I see this, I see a lot of myself in it. I see like, yes, I, like, my friends and I will laugh way more, like, we'll laugh and goof around even if we're, like, depressed. And it's like, even if we probably should be like, hey, I just went through this horrible thing with my, you know, my partner or I'm still reeling from a loss or I'm still, you know, and you just don't do

that. You don't open up to people just because, you know, it's hard and it takes like, it takes so much more guts than you have to like do that. And I think this, this film is accusatory in ways, not just of the time, but of people in general. And I feel like it's almost like, you know, turning a mirror on me when I watch it. And it's just, like why do you act this way? You know, I'm not like a cheating scumbag guy like a lot of the guys in this movie are. But, um, they're older characters. There's still like a universality in it. Yeah, definitely. It speaks to how humans interact and what lays beneath that interaction in a way that I haven't seen many movies do. And, you know, after you watch this movie, it's kind of hard

for a day or two to like just hang out with your friends because you're like, oh shit, I'm doing that thing, you know? I'm doing that. Yeah. I think it's valuable like in Cassavetti's like filmography. I definitely feel that way. It's like a very strong movie.

It's much stronger, I think, in shadows in terms of like the technical stuff. That would be seen much more shoddy to me than like this one. I don't know. I don't feel as much to say about it. Honestly, like it's good. Like I definitely enjoyed it. It's just like, you know, it's mostly, it's like,

improvisation mostly. It's like very improv heavy and yeah, it's a focus on like really good performances. Like the performance, the performances are very good. And I think the reason why it's like held up is like one of the most important movies kind of like of this type is because Cassavetes is like attached to it. And he is that like anti-establishment filmmaker. He does have like that career in Hollywood. I'm glad you mentioned that. Like he, you know, he didn't like it. Like he does have that clout too where you know he's he's done it and he doesn't really like it um and and like this is a rebellion like this is a very rebellious film in that way i think that's more of what you should take from it it also has no music which is really like bold for a time too you know especially for

american film there's like no music other than the ending uh-huh i've seen a few of his movies yeah this is one of his better ones i thought anyway uh i really like it but And you're saying this is a more accessible one as far as since. I think it's a good entry point just because it lays the groundwork as to what to expect from him. Because he is like... This is his style. Structurally, his films don't change much. They're always going to be about people at their core.

They're always going to be these very vague narratives that are more about what's going on beneath the surface and more about what the characters do to each other than what, you know, the characters do to each other than what's happening to the characters, you know, from external pressure and an external worldly force. It's more about just the interactions. And I think his films, like, are definitely, if you didn't connect with this one, I think just give him another chance sometime, maybe give yourself some time to do it, you know, but. With the same film or do you have a, like a logical jumping off point? There's a few great films from him.

A woman under the influence is great, like, uh, shadows. Like you could you could check out that one. I really like Gloria. Gloria is like one of his more Hollywood movies. It's fun. Yeah, women under the influence is already on my watch list. Yeah, that's probably his best one. That's his most acclaimed.

I think chronologically isn't bad from faces onward. I think that's like Shadows is kind of more interesting only in context. It is like his first film and it's very rough. And I love it because of what it was, but I'm not that in love with like the story it tells. But like, um, husbands is,

uh, him at his full like, fuck the system. You know, husbands is really, even for somebody who's like a diehard Cassavetti's fan like me, it's really hard to watch. It's,

there's like 30, there's 30 minute long scenes of just people being obnoxious, you know, to each other and to, you know, and so just about these three guys who never grew up. Yeah. But,

but, but, The woman under the influence I'd watch next, opening night is amazing. And my favorite movie of all time is actually his last one, which is Love Streams. And the blonde woman in the movie, Jeannie, who is played by his wife, Jenna Rowlands, they worked together throughout his whole career, and she was always like the star in most of his films. And their last film, Love Streams, is he started acting in his films, too, as they went on. And he's such a good actor. He's a brilliant actor. He always considers himself an actor first and

foremost because that's where his desire came from. He, you know, he started as an actor. He was in the exorcist, no, not the Exorcist, or Rosemary's Baby. Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But him and Jenna are the stars in his last movie Love Streams, and he made it after he got a six-month prognosis that he was going to die. And it's just this really intense outpouring of their, like, their love. It's his final crack at like trying to figure out what love is. And it, the fact that he'd never really figured it out, it just makes that movie so devastating, but so beautiful. And I think that one's best viewed as like the end of like you're watching. You don't need to watch all of his films to get to it. But I think watch a couple to get the

feel for like him and his wife. And I think what I really appreciate, like you feel it in faces for sure is he was like a collaborator above all else you know he he I think he joked that he was a horrible director because he didn't really direct people you know he just let them do their thing you know he he let you know my understanding of his process is they would like meet up improvised off camera turn that and do a shooting script and then improvise off that script you know and um this is about right so so he has a few more steps than what I ultimately do but I definitely finding him was sort of a confirmation that I'm like, oh, I'm on to something or like I could make work that I'm proud of using my method or, you know, stuff that stands the test of time.

But he's really, he's really good at just letting people shine. And I think he has like the best performances I've ever seen at times. Like, woman under the influence of Jenna Rawlins and that is easily one of the best, like, performances ever. And I think it's because he gives them such free reign with the characters and he lets them find themselves in the characters. You know, he doesn't try to morph them to what he wants them to be. You know, it's very deliberate in who he has, play who. And, you know, that's who they were. They were an acting troupe first and foremost that, like, love theater and stuff. And then they just grabbed a camera and started making stuff together, like him and all of his friends. And,

it's just it really comes across that like like the female characters like are so well done there's so much empathy for them that like present in the film and i think that's because the actresses were given that sort of you know that sort of power over the parts um like even that woman i feel so bad for her in this movie the like you know the the of the four like uh housewives who like take the young guy home, you know, she's the one who's just like begging for a kiss and like dancing with him. And I just feel like I cried watching that again. I'm just like, that's so sad to me. And there's so much like empathy on screen for just like this like tertiary character to the plot. But, you know, everyone who comes on screen feels like a real person and feels like, you know,

you're curious what they're thinking of the of the argument at all times or of the conversation. You know, when it's those two like scummy business guys, the two, I don't know, prostitute is the right word, but the two women or escort or whatever they are. And then Richard, then Richard, when is those five, the whole scene, I'm thinking, okay, what does, what's each one of these people thinking at all times? You know, like, I'm like, I'm looking for the sympathy in the scene. I'm looking for like, I'm looking for the humanity in each character. And I think he almost begs you to do that. you know, he begs you to like look at everyone's perspective in his scenes. That's what I really love about his work and this film in particular, I think is a showcase of that.

I'm really glad you get that out of this film and his filmography even. And thank you for sharing that with us because I am really interested in the conversation behind the film. When it comes to myself relating to the film, I guess personally, there are definitely moments where I'm like, okay, this is brilliant. But I guess what I'm looking for, and not necessarily what I'm looking for, but what I got out of this experience was like these moments where I'm kind of like really interested in, I guess, I wasn't so much into the characters, but I was into how characters were portrayed in specific moments. Like, so I wrote down a part right where they're in the conversation where

they're saying, remember when we don't have to worry about our wives and kids. And then there's this intentional cut to a shot where I forget the character's name, but he's just kind of like pacing and he's like breathing really heavily. And he's going like this weird kind of almost grunting noise for a few seconds. And then they just continue back into the same conversation. And I love that that was included, especially because I'm the type of person where I think about like, what do I want to communicate or what would I like to see communicated

in a film? And a lot of these things that I would love to see portrayed in films are like these tiny moments where it's like, of course someone's done that when they're drunk, but nobody puts that, like all these things that you just wouldn't think to include in a film because they're not traditionally done

in a movie. And just moments like that where it's just like, okay, why was that there? Like that is something that has happened, would happen when you see it. It's instantly recognizable of like, oh yeah, like they're shit-faced and, you know, like, that's just like a normal but weird kind of like reflexive reaction at that moment. But nobody thinks to put that in a movie. And so stuff like that I like absolutely adore. But in terms of like the overall narrative,

I wasn't super connected to the characters. And also I think the one thing that hurt my experience the most personally was it was kind of repetitive. And I think that for the length, I just would have preferred a film that like this kind of felt one note for me for much of it and I think that was really preventing me from getting like the true experience out of it and again this is my first cassavetes I'm not like huge into like older films in the first place so it's you know definitely an experience and perspective sort of thing but yeah in terms of like personal relatability didn't get a whole lot out of it but really appreciated a lot of things behind it I don't know if you agree Alex about the sort of like one note repetitive

nature or yeah yeah and every time that was bothering me i was just trying to see it through the lens of someone in the 60s watching this and how it is pushing the boundaries and yeah now we do have like woody ellen and scorsesey movies so we're kind of seeing it from the inverse side but yeah i do agree with you where i was i was i was getting tired after an hour and a half of it but hearing the discussion though it's like really interesting it's got a really interesting back Kevin Smith's clerks, like, even that is like improv-heavy makes references to movies. Inspired by his cast of Venice. Yeah, there's a ton of the movies inspired by this kind of thing.

What I was actually thinking of while watching this film for parts of it, because I'm aware, because the poster for the film is like a bunch of like positive critical reviews essentially. And I think on the Wikipedia page, there was like a Roger Ebert review. I don't remember where. But anyway, I got to the point where I was like, oh, Roger Eber gave this four stars. And I was actually like really interested in just imagining like the perspective of him where he was able to see this in a theater like in, you know, experience this in his life and just the amount of filmography over the course of his life and how much film has changed over time going from like, okay, this John Cassavetti's film faces. Like this is like the rebellious sort of like anti-film thing. and then later in his life seeing things like,

I don't know, like Dogma 95. And then like eventually in like 2009, it's like what's an indie movie or like, you know, seeing things grow. Like eventually he went out of seeing like the white ribbon and stuff like that. I'm just like, I'm very interested in that kind of perspective of just like, man, it's crazy to imagine that someone lived through that much history and progression

and just changing of atmosphere and expectations. and, you know, even the technical craft of, like, what is a technical limitation, what is possible with film? Like, that's, that's something that I was really interested in. And that's not even really something that the film is necessarily trying to communicate. But I just, I just thought that was an interesting thing to think about it. And I think he might have put it on, like, his great movies list. I know he gave it four out of four. But it's just, it is interesting to read, like, his review. I forget the specifics of it. I haven't read it in a while, but having a solid grasp on a critics, like, you know, I know

you've talked about this a lot out of that critics. So you're not, you're not supposed to, like, agree with everything. You're just supposed to understand, like, their perspective in how they approach work and how they do stuff. And just, like, having that perspective on it at the time is very interesting because I don't think it changed. I think he spoke about it later in his career and still kind of held it in high regard. my whole thing with the discussion about like films like standing the test of time or like only being relevant in their time is um i think i think there's like a good and bad side to it i think a film should first and foremost speak to its times i think there's two layers to a film and one is like speak to your times like do something that like only can be done in your times push the boundaries in your times and that's

where the film will be dated, you know, because if you're pushing stuff in your time, that stuff will become the, you know, become the new norm or, you know, you'll influence people, then it won't be pushing the boundaries anymore. But I think where faces or something still, like, holds up to me is that there's the universality and the themes. It's trying to tackle humanity. It's trying to look at, like, people in a grander sense and people haven't changed. You know, people, you know, how we connect, how we associate with the world has altered a lot, but I don't think we've changed much overall. You know, I don't think, I think we still have all the same anxiety and self-doubt and, you know, self-criticism and, and, like, love and hate for each other. And I think that's where

a film for me will become like something like, I don't know, like an old silent movie or something that, you know, something I really appreciate, like an old Charlie Chaplin movie, but it just doesn't like do anything for me emotionally. And whereas faces to me feels like one of the greatest movies in my opinion because it was both revolutionary and its time and it spoke to humanity in a, in a eternal way. Thank you so much for sharing. What do we all give it at a 10 or 5 or whatever? I gave it, I'll go first. I give it a 5 out of 5. It's one of my favorite movies, especially on a rewatch. I loved it more. The second time and the third and fourth time is just kind of reaffirming that belief.

I wouldn't go quite that high, but I, yeah, this is a great movie made by a great filmmaker. I mean, Casavetes is pretty revered, you know, his movies are definitely worth checking out, at least a few more. I still need to see a woman under the influence. I'd give this four out of five, which I think is good. It might go up. I could see it going up to four and a half out of five. Yeah, definitely.

it's a good movie for sure it's like really important and like you know there's like a million other movies like we mentioned that like it have influenced you know this movie influenced to them uh like clerks even you know stuff with stuff like that even anything improv heavy you know like scorsesey stuff and yeah it's a it's a good watch definitely check it out yeah for me it's kind of a high three star just verging on a three and a half um Yeah, I appreciate and was picking up on a lot of things you're saying and just the creative way is exploring those themes and the honesty behind it and just the unique nature of pushing the envelope and doing things that are the inverse of like the Hollywood system and everything that represents. I do love all of that. But yeah, I'm just not as entertained as what came after, what it inspired, what was birthed from it.

but I'm curious to check out some other stuff based on your descriptions of this. Yeah. I have a lot of respect for it. Yeah, I'm right with you. A high six out of ten. I feel like I got a lot out of it from the ideas that it's going for and the intentional decisions that were made in this film and what that says about the filmmaker, you know, in the state of the film industry, et cetera, you know, the time period. Got a lot out of that. but in terms of like, I don't know, narrative characters

or I guess just entertainment, I can't deny that I was in your boat, Alex. Very sleepy. So yeah, thank you for sharing it with us and it was great to hear you talk about it. Yeah, the context is awesome. Yeah. I love a good excuse to talk about him.

I really admire Cassavetes. And before we get into the questions, I just want to point out that I was opening up that Roger Ebert review of faces and on his fucking website I just got like one of the worst like fucking fake

virus pop-up things ever it was like a pretending to be a Mackey or whatever thing it was pretending to be that and then it like it made a pop-up and then it went full screen and it started making beeping noises saying like you have like six viruses

on your computer and we're like what the fuck and I had to do my like control out delete and task manager that shit In the middle of this conversation, I didn't make any noises, but like, I just wanted to express that. Because that was really funny. That was scary. And now I guess like, okay. It's really gone to hell since he died.

Word to everybody listening to this. Do not go on rogeriebert.com without a fucking ad blocker. Holy shit. That's unacceptable. That's ridiculous. Like, Jesus. Yeah. They don't even know, probably.

Yeah. Thanks for giving it a try. Yeah. It's one of those things where anytime it's like an altar, you know, pushing these boundaries. It's like Marmite for me. It's like this, this is life changing. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Or it's like hard to stomach at times or, yeah. I totally get that. We had the similar kind of conversation when we watched that like six hour movie, San tango. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Dealman as well. Where. John Dielman, yeah. Jean Dielman. Oh, God,

that one. When it's like the point of them, it's like a really strong artist. statement and it's just to like how much entertainment do you get from that even though still respecting it you know what I mean? Yeah, so much to talk about though with that. I have a love for like some slow cinema but I definitely feel similarly when the slowness is the point you know or it's hard to stomach but

I guess with I guess Cassavetes doesn't quite hit that like Satan tango or like no his movies are sure a runtime game he talks he talks a lot of shit on entertainment but Somebody like me who's hyper interested in humans, I think his stuff is inherently entertaining just because he does such a good job showing humans, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Let's do some questions from the Sardonicars community. If you want to leave your own questions first to answer in future episodes, head over to the subreddit where there's a suggestion thread. AV Center staff member two is going to start us off. Since you are reviewing Matrix 4 this episode, what is the best fourth installment in a franchise? is. Shrek 4. Not too many to pick off. Shrek 4.

It was better than 3. It's a good one. It's a good one. What'd you say? Yeah, Shrek 4 is good. I said Mad Max, Fury Road. Oh, if,

what do we call fourth, I guess? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess you're right. I can't complain. Yeah. Yeah, I'd put that. It's like a reboot.

Would it be a Phantom Menace or a New Hope? Because if we're going chronologically, new hope is quite good, but it's technically. the first, yeah. Yeah, I'd say phantom menace is the fourth one.

They opened up a can of worms with that. Yeah, I love phantom menace. It's great. Yeah, four, like, how many franchises make it to four even? You know, it's like, I guess Harry Potter, goblet of fire. Quite a few. I've, like, pulled a list up.

It's like the Hobbit, Mission Impossible. Yeah. Is Return of the King the fourth installment? Because Ralph Bakshi did his Lord of the Rings? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, no, it's the unexpected journey. That's the fourth end of Peter Jackson.

Mission of possible four. That's a good one. I don't know. I'd say Mission Impossible Four. And yeah, Mad Max, a good one. Hmm. I feel like I might be like just fucking blanking on something that I'm going to kick myself over later. But.

That's what I thought at first too, but going through like these lists of fourth movies, It seems to just be kind of a trend I always you know sometimes I Go for lists I'm like okay What are some lists of these things that I'm like Might be blanking on one Lists are fucking unhelpful because they're written by people that just like Don't watch the same movies as me

You know I just they're always so unhelpful when I try to When I try to have an answer to one of these questions Like I don't know there's some uh think about like Fucking horror franchise Those go up to like 10 saw Nightmare on Elm Street Friday of the 13th How is Saw 4? I can't remember which one

Saw 4 was bad It wasn't great I feel like 4 is a tough number Because at that point It has to be dragging on the franchise You know Yeah we've broken the trilogy Anything beyond a trilogy is like

Has to be forced in a way Unless it was planned like Harry Potter Or something to be like You know a series Yeah it's fine if it's got a book Even a trilogy is hard to do Trilogy is like impossible Yeah

Yeah because normally what the you know Actually, no, every sequel is just an opportunity for a huge pitfall. Oh, shit. I'm going to be seeing Jackass 4 in Vegas. That's good potential. I got my tickets already, actually. Oh, cool. That would be fun to see that.

Yeah. We all going to see it before next episode while we're... That'll make the list. Yeah, Ralph, you're going to see Jackass 4 before? I don't know what I'd say about it. Yeah, I'll probably see it. Okay. I don't know.

Is Spike Jones directing? No, he never... No, he's always, like, hanging out with them. Fucking Jeff Remain is the consistent director. He's always the old lady character, isn't he? That's so weird. He, like, directed, like, you know, really weird art films that he's, like, in Jackass.

Yeah, yeah, it's hilarious. Yeah, so, yeah, you should I ask this question next week? Because maybe Jackass 4 will be the best. Anyway, I guess next one. Let's do this one from Butter 467. With the recent announcement of Chicken Run 2 and that the two main voice actors are being replaced. Oh, do you not hear about this?

This is the first I'm hearing about this. Oh, okay. I can put you guys in. I think it's a Netflix deal with Arbman to do Chicken Run 2 and a new Wallace and Gromit. I didn't know, I knew Wallace and Gromit was like big. I didn't know Chicken Rung would have that same sort of like push for like 2020. You know? Really?

You're not a Chicken Rund fan. Yeah, I like Chicken Run. I remember enjoying it when I was younger. I just didn't realize it would have the name recognition to be able to build something off of it in current year. Yeah, if the Matrix is pushing it, can Chicken Run get away with it? The Matrix didn't make money. Yeah, true. The Matrix lost money for Warner Brothers is what I read.

Are they bringing back Mel Gibson and Chicken Run too? No, I forgot that he was there. Yeah, that's my question as well. I highly doubt that. But the actual question was, how do you guys feel about characters that switch out voice actors as certain popular characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny have had multiple voice actors voice. That's right, because they're,

they've announced that in Chicken Run 2, they've like recast the main actress because she's too old now or something. Well, I mean, they should have done it with fucking James Earl Jones, John, but I mean, I don't know. I think it's a question of like, are you reinterpreting the character? Because most of the time they just try to get somebody who could do a good impression. Yeah, get Billy West to do it. Yeah, I guess that makes sense for Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. if a character is like around for a century you're obviously going to have to recast them.

The character of the brand. Characters are going to be, yeah. I mean, a voice actor just puts on a voice. I mean, that voice is like, you just have any character or any character actor imitate it, you know? Yeah. Peter Salas, who voiced Wallet and Morrison Gromit, he died a few years ago, so they're going to have to recast him.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, at a certain point, what can you do? You got to, if you're trying to continue the same character and have some consistency from one film to the next, I guess. You know, like a company, when there's money behind it, they're not going to want to, like,

change the character. They're going to want to try to keep it, you know, to some degree. They're going to try to keep it the way that people are familiar with it. So there's only so much you can do. The brand lives on forever,

but the actors die. And Chris Pratt's going to do such a good job as Mario. We're going to want everyone. and Garfield. We can be Wallace. There you go, you just solved it. Yeah. They solved it.

And Chris Pratt as the chickens. Charlie Day. Chris Pratt, it's a me, a Mario. Yeah. I'm very curious about that one. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

It depends on what the reasoning is for changing them. You know, in the Lion King 2019, they kept James Earl Jones even though he couldn't voice act anymore and then they replaced other actors that could still voice act and it's like, okay, well, the fuck.

Yeah. Anyway. Well, you discovered how deep you can go with the whole Lion King 2019. I know. I know. All right, let's do this one from Jimmy Ford. With the release of Season 2 of Euphoria,

there's a conversation being held about teen dramas and the moral responsibility of depicting underage. characters? How do you feel about the portrayal of teenage characters going through heavy themes such as sex, drugs, and violence? Do you guys believe it is exploitation or could border on being exploitative? Even if the actors are adults and if the show slash movie is good, or are people kind of overreacting? Sorry for the loaded question. I don't know. Isn't the age rating on that show like mature? Like mature? Yeah, sure. Yeah. They're all adults. Like put a fucking, if you want your kid to

not watching, be watching mature shows, then put the fucking content filled. or on your Xbox or whatever, your smart TV. Like, I don't know. Like, this isn't a new thing to have this. Well, I didn't realize Euphoria has this whole reputation for being, like, pushing the line in terms of, you know, the extreme content and stuff. Maybe it just isn't less shocking because I'm, like,

from Europe and the stuff on TV is kind of been a bit more explicit and weird. It's HBO also, like, you know, like. Yeah. sopranos and shit. Like, you should be able to write things about like younger characters. Yeah. And, and still have like a mature show. I guess the, uh, the problem is that it's like, they're like underaged characters and you're seeing them naked and in a sexualized light. And, you know, it's very, I haven't seen euphoria, but my understanding is most of the scenes aren't intended to be sexy. You know, there is, is a more dark, uh, look at it. And, uh,

I go back and forth because I think it is a little weird at times. I'm like, it's strange to like be like, oh, these are kids, but they're not because it's actually a 20 year old because then you're acknowledging that complaint everyone has with the show that the people look too old to play their parts, you know? So there's like, why not just make the show about college students or something? I think the controversy right now is more so about like leaving an impression on younger people to be like, oh, I want to be like Rue, I'm going to do a bunch of drugs or whatever. Oh, it's for the kids.

So, I think that's a complaint that I've been hearing. Shut up. Yeah, like, kids are doing drugs now. Kids weren't doing drugs before euphoria, and now they're doing drugs. People are fucking stupid. I don't think media ever influences people in that way. You know, it's the same violent, you know, video games cause violence thing. I do think media does influence people.

I think that there are a certain amount of kids that will watch Rue do drugs and be like, I'm going to take fentanyl now. But there's also a certain amount of adults that watch like the Wolf of Wall Street and they're like, I'm, you know, or like any mobster movie or anything and be like, I want to be like that guy. Like, I think it's a deep, deeper problem of like parenting and education and not necessarily the types of fictional media that people consume. It's about how people interpret them and how people engage with them. Like that's a problem. And you don't solve that problem by just banning certain forms of media and saying you can't make things in that way. That's not how you solve the problem.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess my point is that, like, the people wouldn't, like, the person who would watch Euphoria, then take fentanyl is probably already in an environment with a parenting, you know, situation. Yeah, there's, there's worse problems for that person. Already really close to doing this. Like, Euphoria would have to be the straw that broke the camel's back. It wouldn't take somebody from a pure upbringing with no access to drugs and push them to suddenly do drugs, you know. Yeah, parents would be looking for someone to blame so they choose the show. Media could nudge people who are already close to doing something. I don't think it could completely alter someone.

You know, and I guess that's the way the media is depicting it now that like good, innocent children will watch euphoria, then start doing bad things. You know, I don't think that's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, it's dumb. Satanic panic. Mm-hmm. Brainwashing.

Yeah, I understand. I understand where people are coming from in terms of like a moral responsibility. But yeah, I think that. a much more dangerous show for children was 13 reasons why because that was aimed at children it wasn't as content heavy like it wasn't as explicit it was aimed at children and it glorified suicide like yeah much less tasteful and it's depiction yeah it was like hey hey children who are thinking about committing suicide this is your show and then all of a sudden it's like oh everyone will feel really sorry for you and you'll be like omniscient and everybody will be you know really concerned about blah blah blah blah you'll be held up as like a god

like, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there, I think that suicide rates went up after that show, uh, was released, right? Like that, that actually had some I'm pretty sure that's a real world impact. So I'm not going to pretend like media doesn't influence people, especially children, especially like really hormonal, like figuring out your life, maybe depressed sort of thing. So there's, I mean, yeah, be conscious about what the media that you're putting out there and how people might perceive it. But euphoria is not like a kid's show. Like, so fuck off. Right? No, it really isn't

any of the kids at all. Yeah. It's an HBO show. It's like, it's the same channel as the fucking sopranos. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There's some people who just have like, they don't have their own issues figured out and they need to take it out on a show. But like, just, yeah, they don't even watch.

It's just like, it's too much nudity. It's too much violence or whatever. It's just like, okay, but there's people who are like fully formed human beings who can watch that and like, just watch it as art and view it and move on. and like just, you know, share their experience online or whatever.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb. Yeah. I don't think most people watch this shit are, like, influence to, like, become fucking drug addicts or, like, murderers or, like, the Sopranos didn't make me want to join the mafia. Well, you're already in the mafia. Exactly. Exactly.

I'm already in the mafia. I mean, like, the creator of Euphoria has been really explicit about how the stories he writes, especially within Euphoria. Oria are essentially just him talking about his own previous life experiences growing up and being addicted and, you know, like, struggles that he was having. He seems like a really woke guy just from like, just from watching his movies and like his interviews.

He seems very woke. I mean, like he's talking about his own life. I don't think he's like a bad guy. Right. He seems like a fine like guy. I'm just saying people should be able to express that part of themselves. Like if he's doing. that and he feels like

catharsis or you know like some form of therapy doing that at this rate no one should be making shows because everyone's like flawed in some way yeah he seems fine it's better than Malcolm and Marie probably although I'm probably not going to watch Euphoria and it's full

I mean it's good it's really it's much more well shot and well detected than Malcolm and Marie yeah that seems like that it definitely seems that way have you seen Malcolm and Marie well no I haven't I think I listened to your guys' discussion or you had talked about it, but I've never watched it.

We were a little light on it, I think. A little, like, easy on it. Yeah, it was fine. It didn't, you know. It didn't, like, hurt me. Euphoria seems to have, like, more of an impact, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that seemed kind of, it was just kind of lame.

Like, a couple arguing. Not in a good way, not, like, fences. It was, like, all improv. It seemed like it wanted to be fences, but it was, like, completely failing at it, you know? It's like totally misfiring. We can do a few more questions. Okay. Let's do this one from Andy the Drewbear.

The common critique is show don't tell. However, this rule is often broken in musicals or really anything that has an occasional song. The characters often literally narrate their thoughts and feelings through song. Is this a problem? Are there any examples or any other examples or a story can tell rather than show that you wouldn't critique? Yeah, I think musicals do get kind of like a pass when it comes to that.

but I don't think that show don't tell is like an actual rule that should be applied to everything anyway. Like I don't believe in blanket rules for filmmaking or storytelling. You know, when people bring up the kind of rule like show don't tell, it's the same thing as I before E except after C. You can find a billion like weird neighbor. You know, like you can always find examples of like, oh, those are real words, but they didn't use that rule. And the same thing with the show don't tell rule. Like you can find a billion examples of like filmmakers who are able to tell and not show and it's still worked. So, I don't know. Don't treat those roles as like gospel is what I would say. I think if you're going to even like begin to approach something like a Christopher Nolan movie and

like it, you have to love telling. You know, you have to love somebody who just tells you everything. And there's filmmakers that make an art out of telling. And, you know, exposition, like, is their language. And I think that's Christopher Nolan to the T. Tarantino. Yeah, Tarantino. I think Tarantino, I think Tarantino, operates with a little more subtext at least. Christopher Nolan's pretty well telling you the rules. You know, he's like, it's like you're sitting down to play his board game

and he's telling you how to play it. He's the dungeon master. He's the dungeon master. But yeah, I don't think any blanket rules are very valuable. There's a lot of like aesthetic rules that I think kind of limit people, you know, like as far as shooting like the 180 degree rule and stuff,

people are very rigid with stuff. And they get more worried about like the hyper specific rules rather than like what's best for their feel your way through it yeah and if what's best for your scene is explaining to the audience something that would be hard for you to communicate otherwise or or maybe the fact that the character is explaining is kind of you know subtextual in and of itself you know you

could yeah the point sure and uh I don't know if you guys have seen umbrellas of Sherborg I think that's how you pronounce it it's a it's a Jacques de Me musical. And the whole thing is sung, kind of like Le Miz, is like literally all, every line of dialogue is song. And they're literally just saying what they're doing. And it's a, like, it's a beautiful movie. It's like, I'm walking to the shop.

I'm going to see the love of my life or whatever they're singing about. That's on my watch list already. And it's just such a beautiful movie. And I think the simplicity and like the naivete of it kind of turns around by the end of it. And I think, you know, there's ways that like telling can be both an effective. form of storytelling and an effective form of subversion or an effective form of a, of, uh, you know, communicating intentionally badly or communicating intentionally simply. Yeah, I don't think it's a problem in musicals. It's just part of the format. It's consistent.

It's something, something like a show don't tell rule is, it's more of a, when you just, when you break the rule and you're trying to establish something like a matrix universe and that's where you're kind of expecting to be shown more than told a lot of the time because you know it's like a big big blockbuster they have the the money available to show you all these wacky visuals and things you'd want to see but that's when those kind of rules make sense to me but when you're trying to rigidly apply them to everything blanketly like a musical like nice it's fine doesn't like the the power of the music and the song is what and how that works and the narrative is more important than just is this like ruining the consistency of

the narration or whatever it's really not a problem to me let's have a musical where like it's not a window into the character's mind and they're just singing about something random like i don't know like what's the solution no musicals yeah it's basically just like an inner monologue or narration but they're singing it i don't really see a problem with that yeah you can still show as you're telling too. Yeah. Yeah. It's a blanket rule.

It's not. You can't apply it to everything. Yeah. I think like you can show and tell, like even in Christopher Nolan's films. Like I think what's separated, I talked about this before, but like what's separated a lot of my experience with Inception versus Tenant and how the exposition was handled in both films is that in inception there was always like a visual accompaniment. Like they went to the dream as they were explaining this.

And Leo DiCaprio was like, see that over there? This is this happening. or when they were talking about like the paradox of like the stairs they showed the visual of that where in like tenant there was a lot of explaining without showing it and that was like really like give me a lot of walking and talking it's like you're just walking and talking it's like fuck i don't give a shit right so i think that yeah something like inception you can do both at the same time you can show and tell yeah right yeah i think two of the most egregious examples where telling bothered me is like I think like David Lynch's Dune is a great example.

All that like, all that internal monologue is just so insufferably pointless. Like you get what they're saying without having to hear it. And then where I get lost with telling is that exposition heavy walk and talk that you see. But more so like in like mob movies and stuff. Like when I'm trying to track like who hates who or who's like after who. And instead of like communicating it effectively, they just like say a lot of names and you don't know like I get lost a lot in movies where like

people are putting out hits on somebody and I'm like wait who who wants who for what reason and I think I think it's just a question of how well you do it you know I think it's that's what what the rule misses I think the rule stems from a lot of people doing it badly and it's just like you could do it well you know you just there's ways to marry it was showing like you were saying with inception and there's ways to just tell but in a interesting way, you know, write good dialogue, write effective dialogue

that like communicates what you want to say. All right. I think we can do like one more question. Okay, let's do this one from the Schnettthorst. What do you guys' opinions on Cisco and EBIT? You guys have big dicks and I love the podcast. Have big dicks. Is that true?

It's true. They're good. The Cisco and Eby. are good they fought a lot they had a lot of conflict off the set because they were too I guess they had like conflicting egos or whatever but they made a good show

made a good review show a lot of funny discussions that you can find them on YouTube there's a lot of funny discussions yeah and they're quick I'm more familiar with Ebert than I am with Siskel, Siskel wasn't around as long and you know most of what I learned about him was through like the documentary

what was it called like some life something I don't know, it was on one of my list. Yeah, I can see the poster in my mind. Yeah, there was a Roger Eber documentary that was really good. Life itself, I think it was called. Yeah. I think that's what it's called.

There's another movie called that, I know. Yeah, that's what it's called. Yeah, that's a great movie. Yeah, like, I think it's really cool that they were able to televise and sort of almost, like, mainstream the world of, like, criticism of film. And, like, whether or not people take that as, like, for purpose of recommendation or for purpose of like, I don't know, like essay style, uh, trying to understand the themes of film or like doing like a deeper dive.

What I've most appreciated about Roger Ebert, um, were always the film, like, art house films where he thought it was as great as me. And it's not about like, oh, validating my own perspective. But, um, something like his essay on like the white ribbon. I'm like, oh, wow, that helped me to understand. my own position a bit better, especially because I was a bit younger when I read that. It's all about like, you know, everything in humanity kind of is collaborative and builds off of like other people, whether we're talking about John Cassavetti's influence on other people helping them to understand like, oh, there are there are other things I could be doing with film.

Like there's other avenues, you know, just outside my peripheral or in my peripheral or whatever. And I think in that sense, critics can be really helpful. I think some people might have like a negative kind of straw man caricature of like criticism, whether it be YouTube critics or like established, you know, print media critics where people will say like, oh, you just, you just believe that about a movie because this person said it. It's like, no, you can still, you can still look at someone's opinion that agrees with you and, you know, appreciate one part of what they said and be like, oh, I agree with that and not agree with everything else they said. And I guess the last thing I know I'm on a bit of a ramble, the last thing I want to say about Ebert, is I find it like almost more amusing that the conversation about Ebert because he is the film critic that is like the popular, you know, like he's the name film critic. And he's built such a brand for himself that like people are still using his name on Roger Ebert.com.

Other reviewers are using the Roger Ebert, you know, you see the review 10 out of 10 or four stars by Roger Ebert.com. but it's a different critic. I find that kind of amusing. But it's funny that everybody knows that like he said some things that are, you know, like video games can't be art and like just everybody has something that they'll disagree with him on. But it's so funny that he's just essentially, he's so high status and so highly revered by people that his words can be used to like weaponize someone's argument.

His words can be used to like justify arguments and be like, oh, well, Roger Ebert said this. or, oh, what, I can't say that. Roger Ebert said that. And I find myself doing it sometimes, too. When people say, like, you can't criticize plot holes in a film. You're not a real critic if you do that. And then I'm like, well, look at Roger Ebert's review on high tension. He literally said there was a plot hole so big that you could drive a truck through it.

Like, he's calling out plot holes in that film. He's like, what, I can't do that? So it's funny that, like, myself included, like, people use his highly revered status as just like, okay, well, what is this conversation even? It's, you know, I don't know. It's interesting to think about, in my opinion. Yeah, it's the age old validation versus just perspective thing, you know, who is like what are, what are people going to him for? What are people going to Siskel and Ebert for? And I think it's the same with YouTube critics. We're seeing the same thing today where people kind of homogenize sometimes behind a singular critic that they like the most. But I do think their value outweighs their like, you know, their, their, their negativity or negative impact. I wasn't even. trying to imply they had a negative impact by saying that.

No, no, absolutely. Just that I think that bringing film criticism into the spotlight and even if they encourage just like a thousand people to look at films more critically, I think that's a great thing they did, you know. Yeah, I've read a lot of Roger Ebert reviews, like you said, that they help you appreciate a movie you already like more. You know, they give you a new perspective on something you didn't like. They give, you know, he's just really succinct and well-spoken, and I think that's why he

reached his iconic legendary status. He was a great writer. Yeah, yeah, I'll often go back and read reviews after, you know, checking something out. Yeah, there's a reason that those names are what they are. Yeah, it's like YouTube before YouTube. Yeah, it was Sardotta cast before Sardana cast. Yeah, so true. There was no Sardinacast.

movie before Tarantino became Tarantino It's the Dark Souls of movie reviewing Oh yeah It was difficult

Nostalgia critic Yeah It was the wall review before the wall It was the wall Before the wall The open the bill It's with a wool review

This Yeah You see the The meme of like The dominoes And they get bigger Just like fucking

Ciskel and Evert and then nostalgia critic's the law review at the end nostalgia critic yeah he's very influenced by Roger Ebert a lot of this love I mean it up in the doors

you know there's a channel awesome iceberg now it doesn't even oh that's kind of funny yeah those memes are kind of funny it doesn't even matter if somebody was individually influenced by like even Roger Ebert specifically

but like the fact that they were able to get a show on television that encouraged people to look at films in a more critical way as you were saying Joel where it's like getting people to, you know, view something as not just like popcorn entertainment and just think, you know, explore why you like a film. What makes a film great instead of just like a passive experience, making a more active, engaging experience. People always say, like,

like films are a passive experience. You don't use your brain during it, but you, but you do when you're reading a book. And sure, there's like some merit to that because you have to interpret a lot and use your own imagination in a book more than you might have to in a film. But I, I kind of like, it's as much as you put into it. It's as much as you are willing to engage with it. Like, I don't view films in that way. I like to think about the films that I'm watching. I like to think behind the meanings of the films.

I like to think about the actors, the production, like the director. Like, I love to be constantly engaged about a film. My favorite films are the ones that I have the most to think about during them. So, yeah, I just, I like the encouragement of films being thought of behind what they are on a surface level and they help to do that really. And all of my favorite films kind of make me confront myself in a way. And I think that's like the, the hardest thing to do with artwork is like, you know, seeing yourself in it and like, you know, reflecting on, you know, some things that maybe you're not so good at or things that like the characters do that. You're like, oh, I've done

something like that, you know. Interspection. For sure. And I think when I hear like that, quote that books are more like active than film i'm like i i can't help but go in my mind into defensive mode just because i love films but i'm just like i'm like are these is that quote coming from somebody who's like you know on their phone during a movie or something or yeah i'm just like i'm just like how are you engaging with films because unless you're only watching stuff that is deliberately popcorn entertainment it's like films are are showing you you like humans and it's like how how detached are you from the humans on the screen that it isn't making you challenge yourself you know how detached are you from like from like the you know

it's like the uh charlie coffman i love the uh universality and the specific that he said yeah uh i'm thinking of anything it's like everything has this universal quality if you if you think you could like if you're watching a movie and you think you're totally detached from any of the greed or you know, whatever you see the characters go through. It's like, maybe you, maybe you're just not mature enough or ready to, you know, you know, see yourself in the, in the work you experience. Well, people only use 10% of their brain is what I was told. Yeah, that's right.

You got to take a pill. Yeah. Limitless. You got to be Scroo-Johansson. Oh, yeah, they did two movies. They did Lucy and Limitless. Because it's based off of just like a fucking dumb meme that wasn't. real. It's like if you cut yourself,

if your blood's blue underneath, it's only when it turns oxygen, it turns red. There's no scientific reason why a bumblebee should be able to fly. It's one of those. Like, you don't know what you're talking about. Stop saying things that are

made up, please. How did these get popular? You're full the internet, man. Anyway, I guess that does it for questions. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Yeah. And yeah, thank you for being a great guest. I guess I got to

recommend a film and I've been so fucking busy that I have a list on my phone but I didn't I didn't it's not eight hours long is it? One of you go for us. No. No.

Okay. That's good. How many eight hour films can there possibly be that I would recommend? I bought Berlin Alexander Plats on the Criterion Collection in high school and I still haven't watched it because it's 15 hours.

So that's a... Oh man. Long movies are hard. I'm thinking, no matter what I do, I want to do something like a bit nostalgic here. Let's, I haven't seen...

Fuck. I'm looking at my list. I'm like, I got to pick it right. I got to pick it right. I, you know what? It's kind of funny. There's movies that I want to recommend.

But I'm like, if they release this on 4K UHD, like three months, months later, I'm just going to be so pissed. Like, it's just a regular Blu-ray right now. Like, you know, if I haven't seen it in five years, I want to see it again in 4K. Anyway, I'll stop rambling. Let's just pick one.

Would you hate me if I recommended a film that is, like, should probably be during Halloween, but I could want to recommend it anyway. Let's fucking watch the thing, the 1980. All right. Oh, cool. Like, I love that movie so much. and I haven't seen the 4K Blu-ray and I own it. So.

All right. Yeah. I'm like, I think it's my favorite horror movie, honestly. But yeah, I haven't seen it in a few years. Okay, cool. The thing, 1982. I heard recently that on the commentary for that movie,

John Carpenter and Kurt Russell are just like shitting on it the whole time. Wow. I'm not sure how anecdotal that was, but I heard it in passing. I'm like, that's really funny. They're just like, ah, I don't know why we made this years. They made like a great movie. Yeah. They're shitting all over.

All right. So if you don't want to be spoiled by for, sorry, if you don't want to be spoiled for the thing by John Carpenter, 1982, uh, watch it before the next episode. These episodes come out every two weeks. You can listen to them early by going to sardonicast.com signing up for premium. $2 a month. You'll get these early as they're edited. Also, Patreon.com slash sardonic.

Also, don't confuse this film with the 2011 remake or reboot or whatever. That's a different film. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not what I'm recommending for the podcast. Also, I guess there's like a 1950s version I haven't seen. Maybe I'll check that one out for context. I haven't seen that actually. But the recommendation, 1982.

So make sure that that's the one we will be talking about for sure. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much for joining. That was awesome. Thanks for being on here. Thanks for insight. Yeah, thanks for having me.

It was great. Yeah, thank you. It was fun. Continue to do what you do. I will. Right back at you. Thank you. Bye-bye, everybody.

Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye, folks. Bye, bur-bye.