Sardonicast - Sardonicast 218: Disclosure Day, Scary Movie (2026), Bound

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Listen early and ad-free at https://sardonicast.com or https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast. Merch: https://ymsmerch.com/products/normie-masterpiece-sticker-sheet Website: https://sardonicast.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sardonicast Twitter: https://twitter.com/sardonicast Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sardonicast.bsky.social Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sardonicast Sardonicast Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8AhJ0bzQgs5fb9m_ZCRqkw/featured Adam's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@YMS Alex's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial Jake's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ManCarryingThing Jake's movie channel: https://www.youtube.com/@womancarryingman Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHE_OFFICIAL Adam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/2gay2lift Adam's bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/yms.bsky.social Jake's twitter: https://x.com/ManCarrying Jake's bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mancarryingthing.bsky.social Adam's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/YMS Jake's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mancarryingthing Intro music by: https://www.youtube.com/user/anUnkindnessvideo Fan art: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sardonicast/s/3Be6gLPXNE Timestamps: 0:00 Scary Movie (2026) 33:20 Disclosure Day 1:25:22 Bound 1:54:33 Questions 2:34:07 recommendation + outro

Three, two, one. Bitch, I'm Tiana Taylor. My abs got abs. Hello, everybody. I'm Tiana Taylor. This is Sardana cast, and that was a quote from your movie sex. Nice.

Brilliant. Awesome. Well, I'm Alex from I. H.E. And you guys might not be able to hear this through Discord, but it will definitely be picked up on my mic. Okay. Okay.

Okay. I heard that. Yeah. Yeah, I heard a bit of that. Nice. Cool. Yeah. Shout out to bound

having a jewel hop in it and it not being a Weston. I was thinking of you. When I saw that. It's my main instrument. Do you actually have that or was that electronic? No, it's real. It's my main instrument.

Oh my God. That's great. Hell yeah. I'm jealous. I want one. Hi, I'm Jake from Mancaring Thing. And this is Disclosure Day, which is a line from the film,

Disclosure Day. That's true. How are you guys doing? I'm doing okay. I got vexed twice. Uh-oh. Scary. Making it political, are we?

That's political now. Um, speaking of... Speaking of political. Uh, Jake and I... Wait, wait, before you... Okay, yeah, go for. I need you guys for scary movie six, right? There's a new scary movie on the scene.

Yeah. I need to know because I didn't see this. I was not going to pay money to see this person. Why don't you do the job of the podcasts? You're so lazy. Because I thought I was too sensitive, okay? Because you know what? I need to know, was every line crossed?

No. No, in fact, you know, they, they crossed imaginary lines that didn't exist. It was a more tame version of what the president of the United States posts every day. And ironically enough, he seemed to be free from being targeted. They vaguely referenced the existence of the Epstein files without, you know, connecting it to any, yeah, just, oh, the book says Epstein files, but didn't implicate Trump in any way, obviously. Oh, so it was risque, very risque. Yeah, no, they crossed every line except, you know, the actual power in the country. They didn't criticize that.

There were a lot of just references to things that exist in the culture now that just don't really have anything to do with. Like, even though they're like, oh, we're crossing boundaries and like crossing lines, like all of the jokes were very like, they weren't even like edgy or like they were just like badly done, you know? Yeah. Just like, here's a trans character. Isn't that funny, you know? I seem like 10 years late to all of the humor in the movie. Like, I'm looking at the poster and there's like a student, I guess, holding a I'm woke so I am broke sign.

Like, is that a gag in the movie? Like, is that as far as it goes? That's not as a literal gag in the movie. I don't know if someone holds that sign in the movie. I don't think so. But there is a visual gag where, a character pulls up to a church and it's about to become a sinners parody. And so it's the old church from the beginning of sinners, but he pulls up in an electric vehicle

and there's a charge station outside the church. And it looks like a Tesla charger, but instead of the Tesla branding, it says woke watts. And that's the joke. And someone in the theater found... Well, because electric cars are woke. Yeah. Especially Tesla. especially Elon. It just doesn't make sense. Elon's known for being woke. Yeah. Yeah.

And like someone in the theater found it funny enough to like actually say out loud, like woke what? Really? No, I'm actually kind of more curious about like, yeah, both are your theater reactions to the movie. Did it get a lot of laughs? Because it's making obviously, it's like, I'm pretty sure the last time I checked close to like 200 million on this like 30 million budget as a surprise to nobody.

Yeah, that's the only reason I saw it in a theater Because yeah It's one of the movies where you look at the trailer And if you don't like the trailer You're not going to like the movie If you love the trailer, you're going to love the movie It's exactly what the trailer is Just more of that

So I wasn't really looking forward to it And I just I had this morbid curiosity about like Okay, if I see this in a theater in Vancouver Will there be people there that just like love it? Yeah You know, like, what's it going to be? Like, theater was, like, somewhere between, like, 20 and 30% full. So, like, not empty, but, like, decent amount of people.

And most of the people there seemed to be really enjoying it. Like, there was a few consistent people laughing throughout the entire movie. When they showed weed, I heard one guy go, yeah. Like, yeah, it was like, I was like, wow. And when the person vocalized their love and support for woke wots, I just, I had this thought in my mind like,

is it really just the word woke? Like, and that's like great for you? Because if so, then you've got to just be loving reality for the past like 10 years. Like, love reality. You've got to be loving every day.

Like, Like, you see that word and you laugh. Like, holy shit. That's like an antidepressant drug that should be, you know, like that would be like a class C narcotic. That's actually a great way to talk about this movie, Adam. Just like, this is for people who think reality right now is mildly amusing, you know? Yeah. It's like, awoke, right?

Yeah, like it's just, I'm actually surprised you got such a good reaction out of your theater. I mean, there were like two people in my theater, including myself. And I think I was the only one who laughed. And I can tell you at what point I laughed. And that was when they did their weapons parody with all of the kids accidentally get high from like candy. And they're running around like the kids in weapons during the opening, you know, title sequence. And I laughed because. because they obviously couldn't afford the rights to the George Harrison song,

so it was just like a sound alike to beware of darkness. And I thought that was very funny. It's just references. It's just references to, I mean, you got get out, you know, you got sinners, what else? You got weapons. One battle after another was an odd one. One battle, so it's not just horror movies.

John Wick. Yeah, that was the opening. Well, yeah, it's not just horror movies, but to be fair, the first film wasn't just horror movies. Like, they had Matrix parodies and shit. It's just like, okay, you're just doing pop culture references loosely themed around horror movies in general. But I don't know. Like, at least the first film felt like it had more of like a narrative throughline. Whereas in this film, like, I shit you not.

there's a scene where they do like a Michael movie parody, Michael Jackson movie. Okay. And my theory is that this was added very late in the production because, you know, Michael being a more recent movie and that being a hit, they're like, oh, we got to have Michael parody to help promote the film. And the way that they do this scene is like a character in a hospital has the TV on and then all of a sudden the scene just like, you know,

focuses on the TV for a second, and then all of a sudden you're watching the TV as if the, like you're in the scene basically as the viewer. But like the, I'm overcomplicating explaining this, but they essentially just do a cutaway gag as if it were family guy. Like it had no relation to the rest of the film or even the scene. It had no relation to anything. It was like, okay, two minute break, we're doing a Michael parody.

And then we're coming back to the scene. It's like, what? Okay. Like, you're not even trying to tie it in to the story. Yeah. It was just Keenan Thompson being silly. Like, there wasn't really, he was just like bad at dancing. Yeah.

No, but they just had to put it out of Michael parody. These things have always been pop culture references. The first two scary movies felt like they were, you know, A, edgy enough, B, wacky and weird and different enough, right? Like, it was always crude humor. But, like, there's something that worked about the first two films. I mean, especially the first one. I think the first one's way better than the second one on a rewatch.

But there's a real lack of creativity and effort and also just awareness of art and culture to be able to like to to to effectively parody those things you would have to have an understanding of them right and especially now that this one is delving into like politics right not not to say that like you couldn't interpret politics from any of the other films like you know weed is political it's always been you know it's always been in those films but this is like an explicitly like, ooh, woke is, woke is the bane of existence. Like, within the first 10 minutes of the film, there's a character basically saying, like literally verbatim.

It's 2026. Race isn't an issue. And then the other character goes, but haven't you seen black people Twitter? Which, like, the implication of that joke is like, you only can see racism if you're terminally online and in the real world it doesn't exist. And for this joke to like be something during this administration, during ice, right? Is like really fucking like just what reality are you living in, you know? Well, that and also the movie wants to do this thing that you see a lot of, I think like older boomer comedians try to do, which is they kind of want to be canceled.

And they're kind of like, hey, cancel me. What are you going to do? You know? And it's just it has this feeling of like. faux edginess, you know, and that's what the movie does. And it even tries to throw in some jokes like on the other side, you know what I mean, where it's like it'll have a cutaway to Fox News, but it says fake news. And it's like, what is- But Trump called it Fox News fake news at one point. So that's still pro-Trump. It just, it just honestly, like there's just so much incoherence.

Like there's a, like, police brutality. There's a police brutality scene that's just like, Like, there's just no, the problem with, like, if you're doing satire, you got to have kind of, like, a perspective to come from. If you're just kind of like, hey, like, all this stuff is wacky and relevant and we want you to be offended, but we don't actually want to, like, you know, say anything. Like, then, like, great. That's what you get. I think they were saying things, though. I don't agree with them not saying anything. I think that they were giving the illusion or, like, trying to signal towards the idea of, like, see, we can make fun of Republic.

too or whatever, but they didn't, they didn't really. They didn't really at all. It's really unsuccessful. They just referenced the idea of doing that maybe. They like signaled towards it like at two times in the movie. But most of the movie, it's like they do seem to have like a perspective that they're trying to propagate for sure. Just one that doesn't really exist in reality is the problem.

The perspective kind of fits into the narrative. that's going for, which like it has this dynamic between the old cast and the new cast that they're very self-conscious about like, oh, we got the old timers here, we got the new people, and this is the type of movie where we pass the torch onto the new cast. And can we end to spoilers? Sure. Okay. Is that okay?

Can I spoil it for you, Alex? Please. At the end of the film, they literally just decide to kill, like, Anna Farris just decides to kill her own children because they're like, hey, we're the OGs. We own this scary movie franchise. Like we don't actually want to pass it on to the young generation. And weirdly enough, that's just narratively very fitting for what the movie is in general, which is like, hey, we like doing things our old way. And we're just going to kind of like, like, we don't give a fuck about you young whippersnappers, you know.

We're just going to be how we want to be and make, like, I don't know. It just felt so boomer. I don't know how else to put it. Yeah, it sounds very boomer. I mean, there's not like no merit to that, like in terms of, you know, wanting to do like edgy comedy or whatever, right? The scenes that felt the most like the original films were basically just copy and paste scenes from the original films. Like the sex scene, right? There's like a one-to-one comparison with a scene from the first movie.

The fucking... Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. There was a sex... Was it the first movie or the second movie? I don't know. There's been very similar scenes in the other movies. So they'll remember burying it.

They were doing the nostalgia play for scary. Kind of. I guess it's been enough time. Like, gosh, why did the first one come out? Early 2000s? Like, yeah, there's new blood now. There's a scene where, like, Ghostface and Shorty are, like, smoking weed. And then it's like, ha, ghost faces mask changes to, like, the high-looking mask.

And it's like, okay, that was one-to-one from the first movie. Except in the first movie, it ended with the Budweiser, Was-A-Up parody. and in this one they're just playing Fortnite or whatever and it's like, okay, that's just, you're doing the same but worse. Like the joke is that they're playing Fortnite. That's cool, though. Yeah, but was Kai Sinat in the first movie, huh? No.

They got Kai Senat. It's funny you mention him because like these kind of movies, they feel like such a relic of kind of that pre-internet era where they kind of have more of a place, you know, where so much humor on but YouTube is like movie parodies and jokes like that. So it just seems like, just out of touch and irrelevant to even do this at all.

Well, it feels like this movie is, it feels like you're scrolling TikTok for a lot of it, because so much of it is just like not even narratively connected. It's just like, okay, here's a parody of the substance, here's a parody of sinners. It does feel like you're just kind of scrolling. But how does it compare then to those like Friedberg and Seltzer like, that was like the bottom of the barrel, you know, that was like inspired by early scary movie stuff and it went into those and those were like actually completely unbearable. Whereas the old funny joke in the original scary movies, I seem to remember.

Oh, yeah. No, this is nearly identical to those, but they figured out a way to do that exact same thing with the exact same amount of effort, but have 20% of the population vigorously defend it. That's why people grift. Right? Like, it's why people do it is because you don't have to have any talent or effort or thought or consistency or actual beliefs to get people to support. support it. There's a hard percentage of people that will just support it no matter what it is.

If you just signal in one direction and pretend, like that's it. It's such an easy band-aid, right? Like, it's just, it's pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic. I mean, I do feel like a lot of the movie is trying to be just like throwing jokes at the wall and see what sticks. And, you know, I had a weird feeling because, like, I'm watching this movie and I'm not laughing. I'm not finding it particularly funny. But I'm also not, like, annoyed. Like, with certain bad movies, I'm just like, I want to get out of this theater. I was just kind of like, oh, yeah, this is what these movies used to feel like, you know.

And I got some pushback on my review of it because I, me and Nadia, we were talking about it. And I said, like, these movies have always been bad. Like, I don't know. I feel like that's just kind of like what they are like. And I got some people who were like, no, no, no, no, the first two scary movies. They're actually good. And so maybe I need to rewatch them. But I don't know.

I just got the impression of like going in, like, I'm not expecting it like a really quality comedic experience. It just felt like a relic exactly. I don't know. No, I know what you mean. And you're not wrong in saying that, but I will say that like on a rewatch, the first movie definitely stands out compared to all the sequels for me. And I mean, some people that would extend to like the second and third.

but I would say yeah I would say the first movie is like the best at being like the full piece of what it's trying to be and like in terms of jokes and gags and everything it just seems like more effort was put into it like I still love the actors you know I love on a Ferris love Regina Hall you know love Marlon Wayans still even um but yeah there's there's there's a there's a very strong strong aura of just like old and tired and pathetic with this movie that is not necessarily from the actors, but just like the entire project. And the caliber of the joke. So here's a good example, actually. I don't know, maybe I should rewatch the first movie to find out if this exact same thing happened, but this felt very particular to this film, where instead of just saying a joke, they would often explain the joke further, but not in a like mad TV, like,

oh, I can't believe it's still going kind of way, but in a way where it's like, oh, for the stupid people who didn't get what the joke was. And all the jokes are is pop culture references, right? Like, opening scene, it's so clear that it's one battle after another. And, you know, she's saying like pretty uncanny lines she says pussy popping

even and it's Tiana Taylor and you know then they go even further to make sure that people like really understand she says like we've a love revolution in a way that just like doesn't even make sense for the scene and then later she literally says

bitch I'm Tiana Taylor like in case you don't get that that's her it's like okay Right? There's a line where one of the characters is like, oh, a killer stabbed her. And then the other one's like, like who? Ghostface? And then the joke from that moment is what, from Wu Tang? Because, you know, Wu Tang ghost face killer, right? But they don't they don't just let that be the joke. They have to explain it further. And the character then says, oh, why would Ghostface Kill a, aka the guy from Wu-Tang, aka and says like all of his different names, why would he do this?

And it's like, okay, you had a joke, you're ruining the joke by just making it more and more obvious. And this happens like 20 times in the film. And it was just so irritating to me where,

like it has no respect for its audience members' intelligence in any way whatsoever. And, you know, it's a movie where the jokes are poop, poop, fart, whatever. Like,

who cares? but they don't have to make it like lowest common denominator right like it can still be crude without being like without signaling that they expect you to be the dumbest people on the fucking planet by watching it one other

one other weird thing about this movie is like the reason why it felt to me like they had beliefs is because there was a there was a constant sense of like bitterness

towards like ideas and groups of people that was just on display in this film. So one of the lines was like they do this whole meta thing in the movie where they talk about like the Wayans Brothers is like

filmography and you know directing and etc. etc. And at one point they're like they say oh like a Judd Apatow movie. where white people only watch it to feel smart. And it's like, okay. Feel smart.

The Wayans that wrote this clearly have some weird bitterness towards the success of Judd Apatow films. Who watches Judd Apatow to feel smart? Exactly. That's not reality, right? But that's something that whoever wrote that line has told themselves to feel better about an insecurity in their own lives

about why Judd Apatow films were more successful, right? Yeah, I watched Tarkov. and Shantelle Ackerman and Judd-Hattel, you know. Yeah, a 4-year-old virgin. It's like a thinking white person's movie. What the fuck? That's really fun. There's a scene where, like, in the train scene, so there's one trans character, there's

one non-binary character, right? So there's more than one non-gender conformant character. the non-binary character is presented a femme female and like you wouldn't know unless they'd said it right but the character someone someone stabs them and someone on the bus or the train says oh she got stabbed help

and she's they're like it's they them stop saying she and it's like okay in the trailers yeah yeah that was in the trailers And what happens from that point on is everyone in the train just like gets so irritated at them from existing that they have that they prefer different pronouns. And obviously the scenario is like, it's a ridiculous scenario to even care about that because someone got stabbed, right? But everybody in the train takes turns stabbing this character. Now, on its own, that would be like a little weird, a little suss. But this is a one-to-one recreation of the scene.

in the first film where Brenda is in the theater and she's being an annoying nuisance yelling and like taking phone calls and like talking over the movie, ghost face stabs her in the theater and then everyone's like, yeah, she deserves it and then starts taking turns stabbing her, right? That's a scene where Brenda is like becoming, she's a character that is performing actions that everybody in the audience is supposed to relate. to being like, yeah, we all hate her too, and we're glad to see this character die. And they're recreating that in this film with literally just a character that's different,

right? Literally just a character that like is, is like, can you use other pronouns or whatever? It's like, yeah, that's a little obnoxious, but like, is it really, is it, is it really something to be recreating that same sense of feeling on a one-to-one with? Like the trans character in the film Like his his only sin was just being different Like looking different Like got like a pretty brutal weird death That made me feel like okay did a trans person hurt you

Like Whoever wrote that scene did they hurt you Like what It's just so weird Yeah I mean I was just offended that it wasn't funny You know it was just like really poorly done Yeah where are the jokes Yeah

I'm still way waiting to hear about a single joke. Like, a reference on its own isn't a joke. You know, it's just like, oh, the thing I recognize is like that Big Bang Theory beam. It's like, yeah, it's just a reference. And it doesn't have to be like this. That's what kind of bugs me about it, you know? Like, we used to get like good parody movies, you know, the Mel Brooks stuff.

Black Dynamite. Yeah. Great parody movie. Like it is possible. You just have to put an effort. They just know, I guess, they don't have to try because I guess the name is big enough. I thought the naked gun was pretty good. I still haven't seen the new one.

Yeah, that was a recently good one, actually. Yeah, true. And that was the Lonely Island guys, or one of them, you know, taken over the help. Yeah. It was just, yeah, it felt very fresh. You have to put an effort, know how to make a movie, right? That's the big one. From a standpoint of, like, craftsmanship, right?

Like, Black Dynamite is a very technically well. made film, like on all accounts, right? Like that's a very, very well made film. But also, you have to have some understanding of culture, right? And you can't just be in this weird fucking insulated bubble where you think racism doesn't exist because you're a fucking millionaire, like, no shit, people suck up to you all the time, I bet. People want to be friends with you just to sell a screenplay, right?

Like, dude, you don't have like an understanding of what life is like, and so your art is reflecting like a facade. Your art is reflecting your imagination. Meanwhile, you say like, oh yeah, racism only exists on Twitter. Like, what do you want to bet? Like, their ideologies are just, they exist because of the fucking algorithm, right? Like, this is exactly the movie that, like, fucking Elon Musk would make. Yeah.

Like, it's just brainwashing. You'd post on Twitter and, yeah, yeah. God, that's cringe, dude. Woke Watts, yo. The problem is, like, there would. be such an interesting and fun parody of modern horror trends. You know, like to actually do that, like do like an A-24, you know, that's what I was happened for.

That'd be so fun. And the thing is, the first scary movie was responding to scream and 90s horror, you know? So it's like, you can't just like do it. Like, you have to reinvent the whole thing from scratch and try to make something that actually speaks to what horror is like today, which is booming and huge. And it's like, there's so much you can talk about. it. Yeah, it'd be so fun. But no, we just have to do, hey, remember this, remember this.

They don't understand it because they don't love and appreciate it. This is something that Mark Kermode brought up in his review is that, like, the creators of scary movie aren't people that love horror movies, right? Like, that's one of the problems. Is the best parodies come from people who actually do love and appreciate the genre enough to want to replicate it. Even if it's a criticism, it can still be a love letter, right? And the first one almost kind of touched on that, but like, didn't really. And every sequel just was a failure. Sorry, did you say Kermode? Are you Kermode-pilled like I am?

You like Mark Kermode? Oh, he's my favorite YouTuber. Really? No. But, I mean, it's funny to call me a YouTuber. Okay. I love him. No, he's great. I love seeing him when he's upset, which is the relationship that a lot of people have with me. He's got such a good vocabulary.

Yeah, he's fantastic. Does the other guy watch movies with him, or does he just, like, tell him about movies? I always watch the clip. No, he's the spread. He's the mayo. He's the mayo. Promotes the meat. He watches them sometimes, not every single time, but.

Okay. I like their, I like their rapport. It's very sweet. good nature. He's there to be befuddled and ask questions. I enjoy that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, no, I

would agree, like, the most offensive shit in this movie was just like, the lack of trying. Because you don't... There's so many easy fixes for the shit. You just have to be a person that, like, understands anything.

Like, understands comedy. Oh, here's another example. Like, the fucking John Wick thing. Like, they could have just done the scene in that style and the style and situation would have been the joke of like, oh, this is a John Wick parody. Like the Matrix parody in the first film. They replicated the style and you as an audience member could go, ha, they're parodying the Matrix because it's in the pop culture.

Everybody recognizes it when you do that music, you do the fucking 360 bullet time or whatever, right? Same exact same, exact same fucking thing with John Wick, but they didn't. They had to say before the scene started, oh, I'm about to go John Wick on them. I would have said ballerina, but that movie didn't make any money. Tons of jokes in the movie,

quote unquote, jokes about like the financial success of other movies for some reason. Like, nobody watched that. Anyway. And then in the middle of the scene, the fucking ghost face is like, ah, you're John Wick. Who do you think you are?

John Wick. So they say the name of the film that they're parodying twice, one before the scene, one during the scene. I want to bet that like, maybe the pre-scene mention of the title

was like an afterthought and like a reshoot like oh no we gotta like make it clear before the scene starts like it's just made for the dumbest people like that's the most offensive shit I love edgy humor I love everything that PFFR made

you know like I love fucking wonder shows and Xavier Renegate Angels shivering truth you know like I love I love things that actually push boundaries and are funny First and foremost are funny, right?

Drawing together. Very offensive show. It's funny. Right? South Park can be very offensive. Like, that's the most popular example. But there's way more offensive shows that exist. But, like, it's just, it doesn't serve a purpose existing is the problem.

It's so lazy. Yeah. It doesn't, yeah. I mean, I agree with you. I find you offensive. but... Same. In a good way.

In a good way. And I think it's funny. You mentioned South Park that I had no awareness of South Park until this podcast, so I thank you guys for that. Oh, as in, you were aware of it, though. But just not. I was aware of it, but I didn't know what it was like. You know it existed. Okay, okay, okay.

Now I know there's a guy called Kenny, I think, who dies a lot. Spani. Yeah. So there's good, we need to talk about more good comedies on here. I think that's something we need to do. I feel like people underrate great comedies. Sure. Okay.

There you go. That's my, that's my opinion and wish. Do you have any other thoughts? Have you seen Black Dynamite, Jake? I haven't seen Black Dynamite, no. Okay. Yeah, that'd be a good one to watch. Yeah.

I'm just kind of shocked that Scary Movie Six is out of touch. Like, what? My mind's kind of blind. I know, sorry to disappoints you. I know you were really eager to watch this. It just, yeah, it has no grasp on culture. So as a pop culture parody, what do you do? If you don't even know what culture is at this point.

Like, what the fuck are you doing? You're literally just like rolling around on the ground. And we call them roly-pullies and they add to society, you know, they're just rolling around. The ending was very anticlimactic. I've given this a high one out of ten. Oh, a high one. No, it's close to it too. Why the high specifically?

Why the high? Because it's a weed joke. Could have been worse. High one. It's for the woke-wits. Yeah, by what you're like describing, it makes it sound like they structured every scene to just repeat itself again and again for like the greened out audience who like can't bear Tentric because they're so they're stoneed. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm giving this a three out of ten because I'm slightly less woke than Adam.

So I was able to enjoy it a little more. But yeah. Cool. The lips got owned again. Nice one. Great film. Yeah. Now time for Spielberg. Okay. Here we go. Are you guys ready for I'm scared. Honestly, I don't know if I have the heart for this. This is been a week. This has been a week for me after watching this. You're scared. Okay. I was not expecting the way I feel like this movie to kind of coalesce the way it has.

Because I think you, Jake, had basically the inverse kind of expectations that I did for this. Where, grant me if I'm wrong, but you were kind of like anticipating this. You were like, is Spielberg going back to aliens? Like this is huge. This is. Yeah. Close encounters. E.T. is one of my.

I mean, yeah. I mean, God, yeah, I was excited. I love Fablemans. I love Westside story, so I'm like, let's do this. And in concept, I'm not against that. Like, that's exciting on paper, but what was putting me off was, like, these trailers I thought were really bad. I thought that advertising for this film was terrible. So then, like, when the film began, and I was like, oh, this is like a Pulpy Spielberg movie.

Hell yeah. And I kind of love my experience with it now. It has issues. God, it has many issues. mostly around this script. It's terrible script. Yep, but I would say like some of those,

it feels kind of out of time in more ways than one. Very. Like some of his older kind of action schlocky movies, it's not really the script that really is the good part. It's the direction.

It's the music. It's the action sequences and the way that is put together that kind of thrills you and wins you over. And I feel like it does a pretty good job of that. I feel like it's, I don't know, it's kind of taken away with this movie,

especially with like the pace of it. It was so, like, quick. And I was kind of scared by that runtime, but I didn't, I personally didn't feel it. Even though it was like two hours, 25 minutes. A lot of my issues with the movie are kind of how it wraps up, which I won't talk about yet. We can get into that in like the spoiler section. But this, this film is like pleading to his audience. It is Spielberg Schmoltz to a tea.

It is earnest to a tea. And someone about that just spoke to me in this. I remember when I was in Vancouver for the Southern August livestream, Adam and I were having a discussion about this tech future we're going into. And I brought up this concept to you of like, man, I wish through tech or something, magic like in this movie. If there's some way you could kind of stare into someone else's soul into them as a person, then a lot of this shit would be harder to fight over. And there is something earnest and it's naive to a degree and optimistic.

And it's optimistic in the face of every piece of evidence kind of guiding you to pessimism. But I came to this conclusion a few years ago where I have. to live as an optimist even though everything is kind of telling me to be a pessimist. And that's kind of this movie to a T and it's using this kind of alien framing, which a lot of people are upset about that it isn't more of like a science fiction movie, whereas I was fine with it kind of being this. It feels like fantasy. It's like a, yeah, it's more of a fantasy kind of whistleblower road trip thriller,

which I was like fine with because again, my expectations weren't like high and I was just fine to let it wash over me and I just thought it was. energetic and fun enough to watch and I was intrigued by what it was putting down and these like concepts that it was playing with were cool to me and Yeah, I enjoyed this way more than I thought I was going to Wow. Yeah, I think I'm probably gonna be the most positive actually out of the three of us in the discussion That's hilarious. That's awesome Shall I shall I say my thoughts or do it? Would you like to? Okay, so I Yeah, like you Alex, I was super mixed on

this, there are things that I think are just fantastic. I mean, it's obviously Spielberg directing action, directing a chase. This whole movie is kind of one battle after another e, in a sense, you know, with a lot of chasing, bad guys and cars and all that stuff. There's lots of like weird, magical mcuffins that are just kind of like fun and they get to do kind of like silly little hijinks and Colin Firth, you know, kind of twirling his mustache and being an evil villain and like Like there was just so much that feels so, um, classic Spielberg that I just cannot help but enjoy. And I was hooked and gripped. And although there are issues with the screenplay as you're watching it, I, like you said,

I felt this earnestness, this like, oh my God, we're building to something that's going to be extraordinary. Like, again, close encounters is one of my favorite movies. And that movie delivers on that ending. This movie is an interesting parallel to that in the sense of like close encounter. coming out in the 70s with all of Nixon and Watergate and paranoia and those paranoid thrillers. And this movie is also trying to be like a paranoid thriller, but in the vein of Edward Snowden and whistleblowers and modern stuff. So like the aesthetics are different. The atmosphere is different.

And whereas in close encounters, there's kind of, in my opinion, a sort of transcended extremely mind-blowing ending. That's just gorgeous to look at. And you go, how did they do that? how did they pull it off? Like it inspires awe. And that's what Spielberg does great, you know, the special effects all through his career, you know, that when he gets to those places and it can inspire, ah, it's wonderful. And I was waiting for that to happen. And then the ending happened. And it was just like, oh, okay. It's like, it's like Spielberg saying, I want you guys to be inspired, but you got to do more of the work on your end, you know? It's a weird plea like you're saying to the audience to be like, hey, let's all be more empathetic and be hopeful. And some people,

you know, like Nadia really connected with the ending and was like, hey, this isn't how reality is, but how it should be. And to me, I just felt like, man, I wish they had someone who was under 40 to look at this script and just kind of like who has been online, you know, and who has an understanding of how culture is now, you know. Like, it just, it really, the ending really. He's also fucking detached from culture. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just, it, it just really is extremely flawed.

And that being said, I do want to watch it again because like with different expectations, I want to kind of dive into, okay, what is, because he's always, especially late Spielberg, he's working through his traumas in weird ways, you know, like the fable means, kind of like laid bare. Like, oh my God, through your whole career, you've just been talking about. your mommy and daddy issues and your parents divorce. And it's just like, it's, it's so interesting that this is his first movie after kind of like processing those things with the help of Tony Kushner, who's, you know, the award-winning playwright who's been working on movies with him since, I think, Munich. And he did Lincoln. He did, you know, West Side Story and the Fableman's,

ironically, some of his best movies of the 21st century. But in this movie, he worked with David Kep, who is super hit and miss. He writes everything. But yeah, I mean, he did, you know, the original Jurassic Park, but he also did the latest Jurassic World. You know, he's done lots of bad stuff and lots of good stuff too. So, and this movie very importantly has a story credit by Steven Spielberg, which he doesn't often do.

So it really does kind of feel like David Kep was brought into kind of channel the spirit of what Spielberg wanted. So for those who are like, ah, David Kep is just garbage. I think you got to kind of replace your blame. If you didn't like the script, I think that's probably more on Mr. Spielberg's shoulders. But, Adam, what did you think? It was so shit.

It was shit the entire time. They were both crazy. Okay. Both crazy. It was like it was ghost directed by JJ Abrams. If his name was on the fucking credits, nobody would like it. Everybody's got fucking blind. Everybody's got, everybody's biased, but me.

I've seen that comparison and M. Knight as well. Sandlight, if Amn Knight directed this, everyone would hate to it. But I don't know. No, true, actually. Eminight could have directed the exact same movie and people would hate it. No, no, no. He could not have directed the type of blocking and syloperative here. Like, that's on a different level.

Like, whatever you think you have to admire, like the craft, especially in certain action scenes, it's unreal, how brilliantly it's blocked and shot. Like, parts of it, kind of. I just like, I have this criticism with a few different things. You've heard me say this before. where like, I just wish there was more motivation at points because there's, you know, I'll agree, there's scenes where the camera is moving around and I go, oh, that's really interesting how the camera's moving around.

But it just, like, it kind of just feels like it's done as like an expectation and not because there's any reason for it outside of like, well, action scene now sort of thing. Like, I don't know, the rest of the framing and blocking felt like not great, like outside of, Outside of the action scenes, like, I don't know what there was to appreciate about the framing and blocking outside of those scenes, personally. Honestly, like, as soon as the movie started, it felt like a fake movie. It felt like a movie within a movie.

And I was waiting for, like, the reveal of, like, oh, they're watching a TV show or some shit. But it never happened. Okay. But you hate Spielberg in general, right? You don't like Spielberg in general, right? I don't like modern day Spielberg. What Spielberg do you like? Well, Jurassic Park's good.

Schindler's list is probably my favorite. Have you seen Jaws? Yeah, a long time ago when I was a kid. Yeah, there's stuff to love about Jaws. See, here's the thing. I haven't even seen Jaws since I was little. I remember distinct shots and visuals that were great. Like the reflection of him reading from like his glasses.

You know, like there's some great stuff. But yeah, just like a lot of his films are narrative messes, right? You could you could make the same statements about like the blocking and camera work in Ready Player One, right? Like you could you could make the same argument, but it's kind of just like a shit movie overall and doesn't, you know, like it. I think this is way better than Ready Player 1. I think a good comparison point is because the obvious one is close encounters, but I think War the World. is the big one for me. It's like the yin's the yang type situation where the inverse of each other.

I was hoping for more of that. Yeah, but that film is extremely kind of cynical and dark in this like 9-11 reaction where this is like the inverse which is trying to be hopeful and go into this whole empathy thing. Sure. But similarly, that film kind of like doesn't know how to end and it's like pastrally weirdly and there's all these issues with it. But when it comes down to it, there's so much great shit and I can't ignore.

Really exciting, scary sequences. Yeah. like beautifully put together and I feel similarly about this like I can I can go on about the the issues of this film always endlessly but like I almost don't care at the end of it because it was just so exciting to kind of watch and I wish more like blockbusters were made this way honestly and it's an original like script an original idea I'd prefer a swing and a miss like that than just like then like a ready player one which is just like reference it might be scary movie bullshit I hate that fucking film I think that's his worst film before no I was not

excited for any part of this. I just like I wasn't able to get into the narrative like at all. Like I was I was listening and paying attention and waiting for them to reveal more. But it just felt like like a movie just filled with like blue balling and that's it. And then by the end it's just, you know, really anticlimactic, not special. I just that the visual style. of this movie was just so fucking aggravating to me.

The fake light sources, the weird, like, lens flare shit that also was computer generated. You know, like... The fake light source... Wait, wait, wait. You think the lens flares were computer generated? I think a lot of them were, yeah.

I don't think so. I think that's just Kaminsky going gamer mode. You know, he's just going nuts with it. No, because you can... So they're the... They look identical. A shot on film. Sure.

They look identical to like when the characters are outside of the news station and each one of them has their phone light on, right? Those are like the identical looking like lens flares and artifacts throughout the film. And they just, the reason why they look fake to me is not because of the look of them removed from the rest of the scene. it's because the light sources often in this film don't affect anything, right? So someone will be lit from the back from a light source that isn't really lighting them from the back. Yeah. It's the problem, right? That's not a problem.

That's great. That's classic Hollywood. Yeah, I don't think that matters. I think Rule of Cool can win out sometimes with stuff like that. And I feel like that's kind of what it's going for. There's kind of like a campiness, a broadness of blockbuster nature to it. I mean, if it just felt like a blockbuster to me, then that would be great. Yeah.

Maybe if Schinders List was shot like that, I'd be like what? But like the JJ Abrams comparison is true to an extent, but like JJ Abrams was just doing Spielberg. Like that's sure, you know. He was just like copying him. So like a worse version of Spielberg is basically what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. I just didn't feel that. I just felt like most of the issues of this movie come down to the script.

And like certain decisions where it's like what I heard, it's like 42 iterations on script. was somewhere like that um from cap and it's like maybe that should have been a sign ironed out a little bit more because there there are a lot of characters in the film i think that's one of the issues with it um some just get abandoned at certain points and don't really have a conclusion to them and i just feel like a key thing that would have fixed that as if the lead two characters could have gotten together a bit sooner and just have more scenes because there's a loads of good stuff when they finally do get together um it just takes a while to get there and just feels like Oh, there's this non-character that is trying to explore the kind of religious side of it, which is very on the nose.

And then there's the boyfriend character to the Emily. Keep saying her name wrong. Blunt. Yeah, yeah. Which just feel like... Dudeweed. Those two characters don't really get much of an arc or much to do particularly. Whereas this film, to me, the glue, we haven't mentioned her yet really, is Emily Blunt. I thought she was awesome in this.

I kind of forgot how good she could be. great. She is kind of what made it work for me. She's speaking to a bunch of languages and all. I mean, she's doing a lot of like technically really, really impressive stuff. That's just like, damn. And also emotionally, like and goes through a lot as a character. And like

her journey there is like the main arc of the film. Josh O'Connor's more of like a, he's more of an expositiony kind of thing. He's like, I've solved this and I know this and I'm the one with the information and Emily Blunt's like thrown into the deep end in a really kind of fun way and you're like with her kind of figuring out like and just watching her kind of just be taken over by this force

that's a that was a fun character dynamic for me and was like an exciting thing to watch develop and hers was latent because she hadn't seen the bird yet the cg i animals were really tough to get yeah there's no excuse for that i don't understand why this is such an issue they all It's like shit. Yeah. It's not even just a critique with this movie. I feel like a lot of the time, CG animals just look bad in films.

Yes. Obviously, you want to prioritize, like, it's a critique we've brought up over many, many episodes with kind of older films where it wasn't even a thought. Like,

let's just abuse animals for this film. Obviously, I don't want that to happen, but at the same time, it's like, you can get like a fox. You can, like, get a real fox. They're not like rare.

And in some of these shots where they're on screen, It's not like one of these complicated, blocked out shots. It's just like standing there and then walks off screen. So you couldn't come on. And from the same director who revolutionized like visual effects with like a drastic park. It's just kind of crazy. This many years later for that to be an issue. Like I just, I don't get that one.

But you know. Yeah. If anybody's curious about the weird light source thing I was talking about earlier that wants to fact check this, look at the shot where they show up. for the house in the warehouse. And she, it's like a shot of her and the light is coming from the bag. Like, that was a really egregious exhibit.

But it's happening throughout the film. It's happening throughout the film. It happened in the fucking Fabelmans too. It pissed me off. It happened at the end of the fablemen. It's intentional. I don't know why it would piss you off when you know that's what they're trying to do.

Isn't that like a set within a set? Like that house when they get the, isn't the idea that it's basically like a soundstage in the same thing? No, it's that the light isn't interaction. with the people. Like, it's not interacting with reality. But that's...

The problem isn't that it's like, it's not the sun. The problem is that it's not in the universe. But if they're like, hey, we want it to be a naturalistic lighting. We want it to feel all motivated. Then if it's not, then that would be an issue. But I really don't think that they've ever tried to make that like... Like, if it draws you out of the movie, you prefer that type of lighting. I totally understand.

For the case of this, like it just seems like it's, you can't really, you know, like maybe it doesn't work necessarily for this movie in particular. But I feel like it does, especially considering it's so, you know, over the top and blockbustery, you know, it's never not really trying to be anything grounded. You know what I mean? I appreciate the pushback, but I'm not confident we're talking about the same thing. I'll have to do like a fucking video or something. Yeah, you should. Sure. Yeah, we'll see when it's on digital.

Yeah, no, I just, I hate the visual style of this movie. It's just, it's atrocious. It's atrocious. And all of the actors are giving worse performances than usual. That was my experience with it. I know neither of you seem to agree with that. That's fine. Yeah.

Worse, worse than usual. It's funny because I feel like I was very critical of this movie. the review I did and now it's like me and Alex are both like no no it's it's it's not that bad it was it was atrocious it's like the worst Spielberg that I can think of other than like maybe the BFG which I would have to rewatch it's worse have you seen always because that's that's not great no I didn't BFG is definitely worse yeah big fucking Gabo I liked I liked it BFG it wasn't anything special I'm a war horse to So, you know, that's the type of person you're dealing with.

Warhorse, I think, is very underrated. I defend one of those words. War? Yeah. I'm pro-war. The lighting thing is kind of reminding me of, have you seen that quote with, something to do with The Lord of the Rings? And it was to do with, like, a critique of where the lighting was coming from in a scene.

Right. And the night scenes, yeah. Yeah, in the night scene. and the response to the criticism was like it's coming from the same place the music is coming from to say where it's like there is kind of a rule of cool

just like a visual like tone to it that that just that's just not really what I feel like the issue of this movie is to be honest I don't know if we're talking about the same thing because like this is something that's very unique to like

Spielberg really like this is something that's unique to his, I wouldn't classify what I've seen in this film as Blockbuster lighting that I could also see in Lord of the Rings or anything else. I don't think that I have ever

maybe I have a couple times. I don't think that I've often made criticisms of like lighting not being naturalistic because that's not really my criticism, right? I'm saying that overall it's a mess.

There's a scene where she gets out of the car like literally she drops her phone of the car. And she, you know, gets out, make sure that it gets run over or whatever. And then she's walking back towards the camera. And during the shot, at the tail end of the shot, if you look at her body, it becomes blown out like a fucking ghost because she walked too close to like, I guess, the diffuser on set and just nobody knew she would walk that close. Like they did all the testing for the lighting, right? They got her in the scene and it looked otherwise good. But then she walk too close and she like literally for like a second watch it again you'll see it it's insane it's

insane i don't know why this is in the film like there's just shit about it that just looks so horrendous i i get i get what you're saying like in terms of like personal preference how you think that doesn't look good and maybe in general like it is weird and unusual and i think kaminski and spilberg we're definitely pushing it in this movie in terms of the lighting but they've been like you watch catch me if you can it's not that that different from the type of lighting they're the type of approach they're doing and And like, yeah, if you don't like how she's blown out in that scene, I don't think it's fair, though, to argue that they just are doing it.

Like, they don't know what they're doing, you know. I do think what they're doing is very intentional, even if you think it looks bad. I disagree. Especially, I guess, with the context of, like, I feel like a lot of the implication to a lot of these scenes is that there is some force, some magical force, in this case, aliens that are kind of, like, guiding these characters and they're doing things that they don't even really understand. I thought that kind of added to the...

Like, it's a lot of lens flare. Like, I'll give you that. There is a lot, but... Yeah. I just didn't bug me about the style. I'll have to point it out in a video. I don't know if we're on the same page about what we're talking about. Bring it on.

Bring it on. It's not a threat. I'm just... I care about... Those are fighting words. I care about being understood. And I can sense that the comment section will likely not understand as well. So we'll see.

No, I would love to see, like, I love your videos. I'd love to see you, like, open up and, like, dissect the visual style and cinematography of this film. That would be really cool. Oh, yeah. We should talk about the script because the script is horrendous. Parts of it, yeah. And I think a lot of it, I've seen takes online where it's like, oh, the first two hours

of this movie suck, but the ending is great. And I've seen takes that are like, oh, the first two hours are pretty good, but the ending sucks. And I fall into the ladder camp. Yeah, same. Yeah, it was more, it was in the back of my mind for most of the fun kind of chase stuff where I was like, this is a big idea you're playing with. And I don't know if this script really has the elegance to find a place to end this in a satisfying way.

When it ends, it kind of feels like at the end of season one, you know? And it's like, the next big part of the story is, I think what they were going for was to try and leave it open-ended in a way to let, we're creating discussion here. and we're leaving up to the audience and trusting in them to have certainly agreed to come up with some kind of conclusion. But also that just kind of came across to me like, yeah, you don't really know how to handle this. Oh, yeah. And they don't trust the audience at any other point in the script, right? They're spelling things out exposition-wise, like the toddlers. No, it's like classic, like, cool concept, sci-fi action stuff, like with this weird device Colin Firth is always using and this like weird shady government agency using it to, like,

like not only spy on people, but take people over and control them. That action scene with the car and all that is awesome. It's how things are explained though. It's not, it's not like the what, it's the how, right? Like it's the, the, is there not a better way to explain that the device in his hand when applying pressure activates it? Then put that down, don't squeeze it, you know that it activates it, it. even though you already knew this I'm saying it for the audience like is there no better way to

communicate that information like it's just I I feel crazy it's just it's this movie sucks so bad in that instance perhaps I thought it would have been cool if maybe there was a character who had like a not like a literal robot arm comic style but something like that an injury on their arm to indicate that it's gone wrong or something like that before but I thought the column first character was cool like as a as a villainous force I liked his performance I liked his performance I like that character. I kind of dug that, especially with all the kind of like concept action that came of it. No, I agree with you in terms of first performance and character.

I liked how he's like, his body's falling apart. Like the more he uses the magic. Like this movie feels way more like a fantasy, like story. Because there's a lot of like magic rules and systems and there's like a magic wand. It's like a magic rock. Yeah, this is a lot of like magic rules and systems. how Neil O'Brien probably, like, imagines it in his head. But they use the, the devices or whatever to create, like, interesting, fun shenanigan, like, set pieces, you know, like Colin Firth possessing a woman's body.

And then she's like, oh, is she going to kill Josh O'Connor just when he's trying to go, you know, not to get into spoilers. This is earlier in the film. But it's like these types of, like, fun things where you can have, like, cool set pieces and the camera's going crazy and spinning around. And like, it's just, it's visually fun. It feels like cinema. It feels like old school. Spielberg just like showing off. And that's what I liked about it, even though the end of the movie basically feels like, oh, yeah, the guy who made this is personal friends with Barack Obama.

Like, you just remember. Oh, yeah. They are actual, like, you know, they text each other. Like, that's, you got to remember that. That's the perspective of who's making this. Obama. Yeah. I just like, I don't know.

I wish that I wish that I was rewarded, like, as a person that wanted to be thinking about, like, the ins and outs of how things work, of being reminded that these tools exist in the universe and then having characters not use them is just, like, so weird. Like, where's the device, Colin Firth says, as he shows up to arrest mastermind guy, Josh O'Connor? one character's missing. The character that you literally brain hijacked to find out where they are. Where the fuck do you think the device is? Why aren't you hijacking her mind right now? They just forgot to do it. Just shows him the next morning getting onto a plane.

What are you talking about? Do you not want the device? Isn't that why you're doing this whole thing? Hijack her brain again. You were just inner brain. There are definitely issues with the antagonists being stupid. Like there are, like when you go back through and go like, oh, why don't they do this or this or this?

Like, there are things that just clearly don't make sense or were just not baked well into this movie, especially in terms of, like, what the protagonist plans are in terms of preparing for disclosure day, you know? Like, you have to assume that there are reasons that what I don't like about the script is that you have to assume that there are reasons outside of what is being told to us. And that makes sense in the script to justify it, you know, basically from, well, We have to get into spoilers to talk about this stuff. Sure. Do you guys want to get into spoilers now? Yeah.

Let's just do it. It'll be a little easier. All right. Spoilers. Yeah. I mean, it's like there's a big alien, right? Who gets wheeled in at the end. And you have to imagine like a lot of what Coleman Domingo is doing in the movie is because

the alien told them to do it specifically. And I just imagined in my head the reason why they had to go to like a local network broadcaster to reveal all this information was because the alien learned about human culture in the 90s or something, you know, because all of this stuff, all of the stuff in terms of revealing the information only would make sense if it was like the early 2000s or something. Yeah. This movie is just so disconnected from 2026 as much as it wants to be contemporary. They should have just said it in like the 90s or something.

They should have. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. It's too rushed. When it actually gets to that point where it's supposed to be the payoff of the movie, And yeah, it is the old school, like news station. And they acknowledge the AI issue because, like, obviously, that's everyone's first thought

as if they saw this on their phone or on social media, it would be like, well, this is obviously fake. I see, like, the alien videos on my timeline like every day. And it's like, well, it replies of what? Yeah. Like, what? You see this shit constantly? It's, yeah, there's like barely any, there's a glancing reference to AI where, like, the news people are like, wait, how do we know it isn't AI?

and someone says, I believe the phrase they use is, no, we checked. These are all ground pixels. What is that? What does that mean? This is just... Oh, you know. That was just talking too quick. So you just, just move on, move forward so you're not thinking about it.

Yeah. Don't worry. Everyone knows it's real. Just like trust that the whole world is different. Yeah. Maybe they needed to delve more into the like radical empathy thing and maybe have like, they're already playing with the like magic rules anyway that aren't. that important. Like, it's not really, it's not like a rival or something, you know, where it's

like taking itself really seriously like that. And it's all about like the rules and whatever. It's more about the excitement and the movement of it here. Maybe they needed to have like the magic aliens, like, and it would be corny, like talk to like everyone in the world at once or something like, do something magical instead of it being like videos, maybe. Or just like have a big ship come down and fly in and just look cool or something. Or something. Or something. Or just like, have a big ship come down and fly in, and just look cool or something big, you know? Like, uh, close encounters. I don't even think this.

I don't think like having the social media angle would even really work either. No. Cause like no one believes shit they see on that anyway as well. So the news thing's kind of out of it. The social media angle doesn't work. You need something like magical, right? Or like, or it would start getting kind of dark because like, yeah, people would believe if you could like go to an alien zoo and like tap on the glass and there's like an alien.

could like look at you know and it was like like a drastic part for aliens but that would be too dark for this film is going for and it just it can't be about radical empathy and also delve into kind of the darkness and the the complicated nature of what would actually happen to humanity it just leaves it open it's like you you decide like if you're optimistic then it was optimistic if it was if you're pessimist then you could imagine it being utter chaos and that was that was one of the things I did kind of like about the movie is this kind of World War III situation, like bubbling in the background. It's very COVID-looking, like in terms of like the stores being rated.

Yeah, exactly. Feels very COVID-y. Yeah. I think it would have been an interesting angle if, let's say, they did try to incorporate into the script the idea that people in this day and age would be harshly skeptical of anything they see. Because that's not fixed by it being on news, on cable. news, right? Like, whether

it's YouTube or cable news, right, there's going to be some significant amount of people, like pretty significant, especially if it's on cable news, actually, like, probably more so. Nobody trusts cable news. Yeah, that are not going to believe what they say, especially if every

single fucking channel is broadcasting the same thing. Yeah, there'd just be conspiracy theories. You know, like that would say conspiracy theories. That would create conspiracy theorists. That would be COVID-2. We'd have like an entire new chunk of the population that are now in some weird rabbit hole in the internet, right? Like, that would facilitate that. But the film isn't aware of those things, right?

The film doesn't want to delve into those things. That could have been interesting. Could have been interesting. It just, again, does not have a grasp on culture or reality. It exists to try and make an emotion that's similar to ones that we felt in the fucking 80s without making a film that's set in that time, pretending to just do the same thing. again. I don't know. It just irritates the hell out of me.

How did you guys feel about the decision to have the aliens be like the classic greys, the classic like Roswell, New Mexico aliens? Wow, dude, Roswell. I mean, to me it is, it's bold because it's like, okay, this is a

cliche that we've seen in a million movies and you're trying to depict it with a sense of wonder and awe, and it's just there's something so discordant about the fact of the movie hinging on the performance of a news anchor, like an MSNBC news anchor, crying and getting emotional over footage of what looks like the cheesiest fucking-looking alien footage that just looks so. It doesn't look good.

You know, it just doesn't look good. And you can't get through the fact of like this looks fake and phony. There's no fucking way that she's crying about this stuff, you know? It looks dumb. Why did the old cameras in the archival footage have the same lens flare bullshit? it. Because Kaminsky's just, he's just been around for that long. I love how they had slates.

They had slates being like, Roswell, New Mexico on this date, and the news anchor was just able to read it. I love how we cut to the news anchor because in the script, they didn't want the emotional residents of Emily Blent's character already basically having known everything. They wanted someone to explain it for the first time. So then we experienced the entire thing through her for some reason. everything feels so cynical. I don't agree with the authenticity.

I think it's authentically trying to create something that he's done before in the 80s, but I don't think the project in of itself is authentic in terms of like expressing a real thing. I think it's cynically made. I think he's trying to go through the motions and recreate something that he once did, which I don't know. I don't think it was cynically made at all. If anything, it's way too sincere in earnest. and trusting of, like, it has, the ending kind of justified, or has this sense of, like, the image is this pure thing that can move people still. And it's almost like this,

him almost reflecting on his own career, if you want to look at it that way, of just like, what does the image do? Like, can an image like this move people? And I think in the year 2026, when we look at, we've, we've seen the most horrific insane images on TV and nothing changes, right? We see, like, that's the type of cynicism that we feel, you know, because we live through that and we're, you know, younger and we're up to date with how things are, that it's like this, I just can't move past that level of like, I can't buy into an image like this being shown on television really moving people like this. I just can't get, I just can't get past it. Yeah, the setting really has. It shouldn't have been contemporary because I get,

no. You're in like a post-truth setting. 100%. With, with the truth of it being like the most important part of it. And it's like, that's too complicated for a movie of this tone for what it's going for to pull off at the end. And I totally get why that would like take the wind out of its sales for most people in it. And it did. It did feel unsatisfying. And it's trying it's best, you know, like the final line. It's like, listen. We just got to listen to each other, everybody. We're going to love each other and we're all humans together. It's like I do, I do. There's something I like about there, but it is corny. It just doesn't really work as an end point.

It was more the scenes of Emily Blunt communicating with people and these little moments where she'd just bring people to their knees where it's like, that was effective, like, emotionally to me. But it was, yeah, just that wrapping up stuff, like with the memory sticks and the videos. And I was kind of surprised that they actually showed off the videos as early in the movie as they do to try and get the religious character on board. I said, okay, I guess we're going to see more of that. I saw Richard Nixon. Yeah, yeah. And she's like crying and like, oh my God, they're being tortured. And yeah, it can't balance that quite right.

For sure. I would never disagree with that. Yeah. I just kept thinking this would be a much more interesting movie if Tony Kushner had had a hand in the screenplay like he had with recent Spielberg movies, you know. It would be more fun if there was someone like Tom Cruise running around. Oh, man. What would I give for another Cruz Spielberg movie? Oh, man.

I don't know if that'll happen. Legit, right? Like, that's a part of what made War of the World's fun. I think they had a big falling out because that was that press tour after War of the Worlds was when Cruz went on his Scientology Matt Lauer stuff. Do you know about Ritalin? Matt, Matt, listen. Do you know about Ritalin?

So I don't think that they've worked together since they haven't worked together since then. So the agency Wardex, yeah, Wikipedia, I don't know if Wikipedia is getting it wrong here, because it's saying it's a secret arm of the U.S. government. I remember in the film they said it was a non-governmental agency. I don't know if both of those things can be true at once. I don't know. Comment section maybe. What was their motivation? Why are they trying to stop people from knowing about aliens?

Because they thought it would be chaos. Yeah if that information about out Because God exists No that was more the like None stuff They were more just like It would be chaos

And all of society Would like crumble And people wouldn't always do themselves It was I guess it was like It was personifying kind of that Idea of Just governments

Like hoarding information And using it to control people Basically And like Being the ones to decide When perhaps people should decide You know Like big institutions

using the fear of societal collapse to like gather power and hide information. One thing I did not like was Colin Firth basically deciding to just give up at the end. Like they basically can, they basically want. That was a funny visual. He literally sits down. He just sits down. He's just like, uh, fuck it. You worked really hard.

You got the magic stick. Yeah, you win some, you lose some. Yeah. All right. All right. Let's do it. You know. Like his.

character, as much as I enjoyed him playing the villain, he needed a bit more to, like, justify him having a character change like that. We see that he has a wife, you know, but that's kind of it. That's all we know about him. Yeah. Very flawed, very flawed movie. It's, it sucks. It's horrendous. It's genuinely horrendous. I liked it. I enjoyed myself. Yeah, I kind of dug it. I'd watch this again. I'm glad you both liked it. I'm just, I'm going to have to do something about this. What are you going to do to Stephen Spielberg? I'm going to have to correct the record.

Oh, no. Is Stephen going to be the new John? Well, I kind of feel like I'm seeing more people kind of on your side out, and to be honest, as far as like responses to it. Like, I'm seeing way more people saying, like, this is like the worst shit I've ever seen. Like, I can't believe you have the goal to release this type stuff. I feel like more general audiences are like that. Yeah.

Well. Yeah. I like the kind of slop. I don't know. It could be an algorithm. thing. It's got a 6.8 IMDB. I don't know what letterbox is like 74 metascore. I'm assuming the Rotten Tomatoes is higher. So if we're basing it on like people logging ratings, like it appears to be well enough received, but not like blown out of the one. Like I think above a seven on IMD

would be like. It's not unanimous. Like really well received. Yeah, yeah. This seems like mixed enough. It's divisive. It seems like the perfect, the perfect opportunity for me to make a stupid thing about it. I think I should. I'll wait until digital. You should do it. That settles it. All right.

I can do it. You can and you will. I believe in myself. I believe in you. I believe in all of us. Man, like with the earnest stuff, like, on IHG TV, I did like a joky,

like ranking like panic attacks in movies like that tier. And there's one in this movie and again, I kind of really liked it. Like the setting it was in, the performance was really good. I don't know. It just spoke to me. That was a special moment.

If I thought her performance was good, I might have liked it. I'm not sure. The pianos and the sound design of the... Oh, yeah. The sound design was so weirdly extra. But it's kind of an extra movie, isn't it? Yeah, okay. There's a point, right?

where there's a difference between like Wachowski extra sound design where it's like, ooh, you're doing something really creative and interesting and unique here, versus Spielberg extra sound design where the character rests her fucking head on the table and we hear a loud thud. And it's like, okay, you just use the sound design to trick us into making us believe something that we didn't actually see, that you're not willing to try and cheat on camera in any way that would involve like, I don't know, you could have used it extra. you would have to like do an extra step.

Instead you just kept that take and then added a band-aid with the loud sound design. It's bullshit. That didn't bother me, but my toxic trade is that I think sound design doesn't matter and doesn't exist. I think all movies should just be shot with the... Doesn't exist. Yeah, no. I think this movie was shot

just with the sound from the camera, you know, the little camera. Oh, Dogman 95. Yes. That would be the best Spielberg. If he tried to strip it down to the basics, And it was like, what can I make without relying on all this bullshit? I would love to see that. I would love to see that.

He is the bullshit. That's what's good about it. He is the bullshit. That's his magic and that's his darkness, you know? That's what the Fablewins is all about. It's this beautiful gift he has. That's also a curse. Come on.

About him being bullshit. It's a curse. It's a curse and it's a gift. And he's, you know, he's got the darkness in him. That comes out and weird. ways, you know, like... Like being obsessed with aliens. Like being obsessed with aliens.

He literally said that he refuses to go to therapy because he thinks that his movies, he works it out through his movies. That's valid. Yeah. Yeah, no. I feel that very strongly in this movie. Yeah, I don't know. There was a fun discussion.

Yeah. I got angry. I'm sorry. Um. And I think on the score is like the last thing. Because like John Williams did this. I like the score. Yeah.

I mean, John Williams is like 100. It's crazy. Yeah. It didn't have anything like that's going to really like leave you humming it or anything like that. But it complements some stuff. It's not like a standout William school. The fact that I like it's John Williams and I can't remember a single fucking theme within it is not a good. It's not a good thing.

I'll have to watch the movie again to like remember. I kind of wish the music was a bit more extra. Sure? Like the movie, yeah. That's what you would wind out of a John Williams. I guess, yeah. I mean, he can do some subtle stuff too. He did like, Schindler's List.

True. Depends what we mean by extra and subtle, but that's a conversation for another day. Right. I think Louis Ward should get Spielberg to a cameo in the next castration movie. Oh, hell yeah. I'll text both of them right now. Please do. Let's get them collabing. And Barack Obama. Nice. Yeah, got Obama in the yeah. Apparently, I watched a little clip that I guess Barack Obama showed up to the set on Disclosure Day and hung out. Like actually. Gave some secrets. Gave some insight. What I don't get is like,

like Spielberg knows Obama, you know. And, did they talk about alien? Like Spielberg seems to believe that aliens are real and that they've been around. That was his marketing campaign. Yeah, I love it. Like the alien community is like pissed off. They were like convinced that this is going to be the

the real life disclosure day. Like this was going to be the like. That's what he was marketing it as. I was like, what are we doing here? Aliens are real and everything you've ever heard about aliens is just fact. everything I love that

Hi I'm Mila Yoavovich And this is real and not a movie Oh I forgot about that That's funny I know right What's the title I can't remember it But didn't end on like a website you go to

Like go sardreel.com or something I don't remember I mean probably probably I think it was called the fourth kind That's it yeah Was that it? How did I pull that? This should have ended with

Go to Ali Are Real.com, the ending of the movie. Go to fear.com.com. Should have been like a sound of freedom thing. Like, I buy some more tickets so that other people can know about the truth. Go to YMSmerch.com to find out if aliens are real. Spoilers, they are. Yeah, I don't even know if it counts as an normally masterpiece

because I just see too much disagreement about it, you know. No. It's divisive, yeah. No, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't call it that at all. Yeah. You know it when you see them, and this is not, there's not one of them. Mm-hmm. I would say that there aren't many a year that I would call that.

I don't think this is normie. It doesn't even feel very normie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the normies are bouncing off of it. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, Adam. Yes, yes.

This is two. not normie for my taste. It's too weird for you. We needed Tom Cruise in it for it to be more normie for you. Sure. I mean, yeah, if you just made like something that was not horrendous, then yeah, it would have been better. If you just made like the standard Spielberg thing. There's something about contemporary.

Spielberg that just it feels like a Frankenstein it's like new simpsons you know i guess you wouldn't know but if you like new Spielberg would not the relation if we're talking about yeah like bfg and uh ready player one ready player one was that for me like the the the anger you have towards this movie is how i feel about that movie um yeah especially like it coming from him the the blockbuster guy and making this like Fortnite bullshit like like we're just doing the Shining we're doing

40, ugh, look it's Jurassic Park again, it's the dinosaur remember that, I did that, the member berry shit. Yeah. I'm making a movie about pop culture being just me. I made

pop culture. He has been just fucking masturbatory for the past 20 years. Jesus. That's why the me believing it's cynical comes in. It's just everything has felt like he's just jerking himself off.

If he wants to do that, I will, I will be sad. I will watch. Him jerking off? No, well, you know, cinematically. Okay. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah, it just sits more with me with like the early 2000s kind of stuff, like the, like AI, you know, where it's like a super flawed, like weird film, but there's something

I love about it and the same with all the worlds. Same. And this kind of felt like it was doing a lot of what Crystal Skull was trying to do on. too and doing it a bit better. People hate that fucking film, but... I love Crystal Skull. It's kind of funny,

but like... Yeah, and just the fascination with aliens, like the amount of movies he's made about, like, aliens, I think, it's kind of, like, charming and funny at this point. He's still doing it, like, this late. Do you guys like Close Encounters? Is that a movie you rate highly, or...

I haven't seen it yet. I really like it, but it's not my... It's not really my... of Joyce. I like, honestly, I think it's Indiana Jones for me. I love that.

I can put that one anytime. They're perfect. Yeah. And that, yeah, they are like perfect, but they're not like, I like the second one.

You know, it's not really about the scripts. It's just like the charisma of these characters and the action, um, kind of blocking and spectacle of it and the ore of it. Extended tension.

Yeah, the music. Hell yeah. You're making me hype. You want to watch it right now. Well, it's also, it's also like the most economical, I think, like filmmaking that he does because it was like he was hired by, you know, Georgia Lucas to be like, hey, I want you to make these movies for me, you know, at a time when he had, you know, career issues with, like,

what was it, 1941 flopped or whatever. Right, yeah. Yeah, and this is just unsirious and, yeah, silly. Yeah, there's a balance. You need to get, okay. Well, let's, let's wrap. I have to pee. We should wrap this up.

Yeah. And then we'll pee and then Maiden movie recommendation. This is a long episode. Yeah, this has been a long one. All right. I'll be right back. Three out of ten. Wait, ratings.

Oh, six. Six out of ten. All right. Yeah, I'd be the highest, I guess. This would be a low three and a half star of seven for me. I'll see how it comes together on a rewatch, which I will do again. Yeah, me too. Are we up disclosing our days?

Yeah. yeah done disclosing all right time for the film recommendation yeah so this was my i guess pride month wreck bound the wichowski sisters 1996 first feature which i was intrigued by for multiple reasons one it was the only film of theirs i hadn't seen haven't seen the show since eight but I was counting like features. Obviously, predating the Matrix and the film that kind of they bounced off of to go onto that huge phenomena. So it's always nice seeing that kind of early DNA and what was kind of bubbling there in the

background. And it being like a lesbian neo-noir, like, crime thriller, erotic thriller, was also cool. of like, how did you get this made in 1996? Like, I was reading so much interesting stuff about the process of how this film came about with Wichowski's learning the harsh lesson of when they sold their first script they wrote and made this, like, corny, um, blank on his name, the rocky dude. I can't believe I'm blank blank on right now. Sylvester Stallone?

Sylvester Stallone, like, stupid movie. that their script was like rewritten a bunch of times and they tried to get their names taken off of the project and it was like a mess and they'd learned the harsh lesson of you know maybe we got to direct the stuff if we want it to if we want us to be proud of this and what we want to do in this industry and the stories we want to tell so then bound comes around and they get this this italian dude and fund it through a you know it Lorettairentis? Yeah, yeah, De Laurentis. Instead of going through the kind of traditional Hollywood kind of system, the film was funded through this way where he'd, this Laurentis guy would go around all of like Europe and all over the world selling distribution rights, country by country, using the script before anything was even shot.

And then pairing that with like the 90s video home boom thing. was like this perfect maelstrom of a way of making this kind of unsellable within the studio system concept this huge success which then of course went on to the matrix and so on and so forth but this actual movie is what's about an italian crime gang with this violet character played by jennifer tilly whose neighbors with the gina gershen character corkey kind of love it first sight sort of situation that develops into a heist kind of crime caper movie and uh i was kind of in love with this i thought once this film got moving i was like this is awesome and seeing all that DNA of the matrix like the the score and the the kind of soundcape of it was like reminding

me of that a little bit just seeing them figure out like oh like You guys love comic books and like storyboarding and that kind of like exaggerated style of presentation that I find to build like a really engaging. It's really great for like tension and for these kind of cool touches with the characters and the way it all like builds together. It's really exciting and scrappy for how kind of small its budget is. It looks way better than the $6 million budget that it was made on. That was, you know, in part what convinced the Matrix stuff, ball getting rolling. Great villain in there. Just, it has a lot going for it.

And a, yeah, in a nippy hour 49. This was really cool. Probably one of my favorite movies of those, actually, like, probably being like a top three. Not that. Yeah. It's that many up to the Matrix that I really care about. Exactly. I really enjoyed this.

How did this strike you guys? Adam? Okay. I enjoyed it. No, yeah. Like, it's got a lot of cheese, but it feels like a familiar cheese. It's definitely in the same vein as a Matrix and definitely not as polished or fully fleshed out or realized, I guess. but it is yeah no it's it's like a cute fun and still like impressive and cool at many points

uh film very simple wish that things were like maybe trimmed down a bit in some sections um things got a little repetitive uh but you're absolutely right once once things start moving. Once the ball is rolling, it is a very satisfying and silly little suspense action crime thing, whatever we want to call it. Joey Pants was fantastic. He was awesome. Great villain. Yeah, I mean, I've never really liked The Matrix. I mean, I respect it for what it is, but it's just never been something I really enjoyed. So this is without a doubt my favorite film from the Wachowski's. It, it, it, it, it scratches exactly the type of, like, crime story that I absolutely love. It is similar in a lot of ways to one of my favorite movies,

Blood Simple. It's very Coen-y in that sense. And it, and it follows, like Blood Simple, the patterns of a James M. Kame type of noir, which is the, you know, the lovers, trying. to commit a crime and it just all goes horribly wrong. However, you know, just seeing things unfold and go bad in the type of ricochet fallout that happens from what they're trying to do is fantastic. I was a little disappointed. I understand why it wasn't necessarily this way is that the characters are always like, you know, they're screwing over the mob and like bad guys. So it's like they aren't really that horrible in that sense. You know what I mean? And that's something you see a lot in like a classic, like double indemnity. I know I was reading that the Wachowski's

were thinking of Billy Wilder and like classic noir, which would be like double indemnity type of movie. And I just love the little, it's like a perfect little toy box of just like things unfolding and going bad and the little set pieces and the way the camera moves. in these sets, which are beautiful. I love the monochromatic, like, set design of these apartments. And everything is just basically taking place in a few places, but it's so cinematic. It's, like you're saying, Alex, it's very comic bookie, storyboarded in a beautiful way. And, you know, at the heart of it, yeah, you have this really interesting, cool relationship

between Jennifer Tilly's character and Gina Greshon. They give a great performance. It's very fun. It's very self-aware. of what type of, like, crime story is trying to be. And I just thought it was a blast. I thought this was such a fun movie. And, yeah, Joey Pantiliano is so good in this.

Just, yeah, I loved it. Yeah, the dynamics between the characters and the situation it sets up. It's, you know, I do have to admit, like, every character feels like a fucking idiot. Like every plan is the worst plan. Like it very obviously the worst plan. Like, oh, even Joey Pants' plan. I'm like, you could, I don't know if we should do spoilers or not, but, you know, there's obvious solutions to each of these plans and especially, not even just the concept,

but like what you decide to do when you're in the middle of the plan, like, you want to talk on the landline again? What are you doing? At least he kind of had the excuse of like being in a panic. kind of. Yeah. I don't know. Whereas the main two don't really have that.

Everybody's an idiot, but the situations are fun enough that it's, you know, I'm not, I don't get so bothered by it. Like, I'm bothered, but it doesn't feel like there's nothing earned from it. Because if they weren't idiots, then things would go fine, I guess. It's part of the genre, too. It's like everything that can go bad will go bad, and that involves people just not really thinking through their choices and action. Oh, shit.

Yeah, and it maintains the tension extremely well with that once that gets moving. And it just was like, yeah, everything just gets worse, keeps compounding on itself. And yeah, it maintains that for the, for a huge chunk of the movie. That's just so entertaining to watch and the way it's put together and all these, these fun, like, little comic booky shots of, like, following the cable and they're talking through the phone. Oh, I love that. There's loads of cool, like,

like stylish touches to it. You know, it's like dirty, it's grungy, scratchy. There's like the, they like love Sin City. There's a lot of like Frank Miller in there. And I've got to go back to the jaw harp. Like that was. Yeah, yeah. You know, see the jaw hub.

I was so happy to see that in like a non-Western setting. There's not a lot of lesbian romance type stories that feature a mask character. They're kind of underrepresented in the genre. True. That was another cool thing. Because like in real life you see a lot of mask, more butchy, you know, gay women. And that's what the, when they were pitching it to studio execs, they wanted to change one of the main characters to a man. It was like, oh, this is an awesome script, but like, can you just change one of them to a man? Then we'll make it.

But they hold true on that, which is cool. And also, um, Gina Gershian's agent was like, you shouldn't do this movie. It's going to hurt your career because of the lesbian content in it. You know, they're so, like, risk averse. And it's like, I'm so glad they stuck to it and found a way to get the movie made the way they wanted to make it. And I mean, the rest is history kind of. Yeah, true. No, it is pretty risky and groundbreaking in that sense, especially.

I didn't do, I did not do a cursory Wikipedia look. Does anybody know if this was a box office success at the time? I could look at it. No, not at the box office. Because that's what started me looking into it was that it was like, yeah, made for $6 million, but didn't. do well at the box office, but the caveat being, uh, the, the video boom at the 90s. And this kind of thing was like exactly what was like, uh, popular in that kind of space, you know, a little bit edgy, a little bit like, it was big in like the LGBT community,

obviously. And yeah, they made heaps of money on it. Because I was confused by that too. Like, how, how did they then get $60 million to like make the matrix? Like, they were sneaky. Yeah, they were clever about it. You know that story, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, with the, like the intro scene or whatever and all that stuff. It was more like how they even got that to begin with, you know. What happened? What did they do?

So, yeah, I'll fact check this to make this sure that this is actually accurate. But the story about the funding for the Matrix is they were given some amount of money that would definitely not cover what they wanted to do. for the Matrix because it's so ambitious. So what they did is they just took that money, spent it on the opening scene with Carrie Ann Moss, you know, and presented that as proof of concept to get more funding. Basically, they just did one scene and were like,

look how cool we could make it. Give us to make a real movie. Apparently that's what happened. It was that also paired with, they paid a storyboard comic artist to do the entire movie

so when they were explaining it to like executives like it was all there like every single shot and it was so like gorgeous to look at it was like basically reading a graphic novel

as a proof of concept so that helped too that's awesome oh that's really cool more deception is I feel like filmmakers you got to just deceive your financial backers

that I feel like that's that's always a good thing to do you kind of have to right Like there's funny, there's funny clips of like David Fincher talking about that, like, just how you have to lie whenever you get like a phone call from like the money guy and be like, yep, this is going exactly. Yeah, we're going to do that. They'll pitch a shitty idea and just be like, yep, we'll do that. And then you just don't do it. And, you know, the politics of it, they're just exhausting, you know.

Or always, you know, you read about some of these great movies and there's always the one producer that's trying to fuck it up or ruin it. Yeah. about like the elephant man like Mel Brooks was the one who's like protecting David Lynch on that movie just like hey all the notes you guys gave us we're not going to listen to them and fuck off for trying to suggest things you know um yeah i don't know i mean it it is amazing that this movie was made and and that it is so good for i mean that bill pope bill poop cinematography i mean he he's he's he's great i mean the lighting is wonderful yeah again like the set design and everything it looks like it costs way more than it actually did.

Let's see. I'm trying to fact check those. You continue. I'm so interested in this. Those are great concepts and kind of like visual set pieces like the I love the ironing the money and like washing it and like that

being the backdrop for like a scene and little details like that or after the shootout which I love the execution of that shootout later in the movie like the slow mo and the accentuation of everything. And then the plane ticket and the framing of his eyes through the bullet holes. It's all just very like meticulously put together like that despite that kind of smaller budget.

And you mentioned like the recurring locations. Like it doesn't feel like distracting. It's not staging. It's not like you're on a set. Yeah. And like when it turns into like a kind of a chase with the elevator and running up and down the stairs and getting more tired. and yeah, it's just so well executed. Yeah, I mean, it's just the, it's all of the little reversals, like,

and the script is really tight. It's like really effective at just like, okay, now we have this problem to deal with, now we have this problem. Now she has to work with the guy to kind of like get out of this other situation and these other gangsters. And it's like, yeah, the gangsters, they're all cliches and just kind of like, it doesn't really matter. You know, they're just like the gangster characters.

But what matters is this kind of like weird three-way dynamic between them. And it's so like upsetting when he, well, I don't want to get into spoilers. I'll just leave that for later. Why not? You guys want to do spoilers? I'm fine doing spoilers. Yeah, we like it. I love the like narrative device of having the walls be established as super, super third.

That is like the whole movie kind of hinges. on that when Gina Gershahn is hearing Jennifer Tilly having sex with men, you know, in the other room. Like that informs so much when eventually, you know, he, like, I love that shot of, that dramatic shot of when, you know, he finally realizes that she's talking on the phone. And he's like, hold up, hold up. And the redial button when the camera just does that, sweeps into the, and I love the sound effects too that you don't see, you just don't see that anymore.

when a camera moves, it like has its own sound. It's like wind like whew. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're moving through space.

Create. And the redialed, just hearing the phone through the wall. Like all of that is just, there's something so like elegant and simple about the plotting and storytelling here that, that just, God, it just works so well. It's so, it's so, it's depalmae, you know. It's just like the gun being under the towel. It's all these images that are. so classic, classic, like fun. And on the thin wool stuff?

Yeah. Like with the torture scene as well that she hears through it. And it's like making the toilet bowl water kind of move. A lot of like water imagery throughout the movie. Like early on with the extremely horny scene with the earring in the drain. And the way that's shot, it's like so sexual with that kind of sexual tension between them. Oh, yeah. but like reincorporating that, you know, the clippers for the fingers being cut off later on in the movie.

And just loads of nice little touches like that. The entire movie was like Jennifer Tilly doing a fuck me voice and the other character doing a fuck me face. I think that's just her voice, right? Oh yeah, no, that's probably why she was distracted by that. She was cast for that. Yeah, exactly. Because like she's in fucking family guy. and like Monsters Inc.

So I was like, I've heard this voice before, I swear. She's bride of Chuckie. Yeah, and she's got a good voice for that kind of thing. It's very distinct. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. In my fact-checking journey, I can't tell if there's a misinterpretation from, I can't tell if it's like a telephone game thing.

But basically, what is true about the Matrix is that they were given 10, million dollars and created the opening scene, what I can't find out is whether or not they deceived investors doing that or if the investors only gave them 10 million because they wanted proof of concept. So I don't know if there's like a little extra to the story that people are kind of making up because it sounds good. Maybe it's one of those Hollywood legends type thing. Yeah.

No, people do that sort of thing. It would make the story more interesting by adding a little bit of fiction. without knowing it. I also learned Danny Boyle directed a dance show retelling of the film. Oh, okay. Sure. Love Danny. Free your mind.

I'll do that later. I did want to mention briefly, like, the notion that having a guy played the Gina Gershahn character is funny because that's stupid to suggest that. But it's interesting because that would be the role of the guy in any of these, you know, classic double indemnity James and game type stories. Like, and usually what I love is the subversion of that because the movie ends with them succeeding. Like they won. They get away with it.

And that's not what this type of story is like ever. You know, usually it's the guy is seduced by the femme fatale, the Jennifer Tilly character who's in a relationship, she convinces him to help her kill the husband for some amount of money and things spiral and go out of control. And it's all this evil woman's fault for, you know, being hot, you know. And he pays for his crimes, you know. He can't get away with it. There's doom and gloom and despair.

And what's so fascinating and lovely about this movie is that it kind of subversed that and the fact of like, no, they're screwing over these bad people. and they're doing something for themselves and they have actual love for each other. So even though it is drawing on all these influences of the noir genre, the fact that it is this lesbian romance makes it something unique, it's special.

So it's like that's what's so cool about this movie. Yeah, it would lose a bit of its personality for sure. Yeah, if it was just a one-to-one. I mean, if there was not that love between them and that kind of sense of self-discovery that they have, especially Jen Fortility's character, then, yeah, no, it would be a little bit more like, oh, yeah, well, that's what you get for doing crimes.

And also, they're just like, yeah, there's already been millions of that type of movie. Like, it kind of all makes it stand out, you know. Yeah, totally. Lots of flirting, lots of exposition, but it pays off. Did you, so you didn't, did you like the script very much? Did you, or you feel like the exposition was kind of poorly done? If they, they either needed to like trim down or simplify or add something else. But also I'm like, you know, not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm probably the least likely to be like really into the girl on girl romance.

Yeah. I'm just like I don't know if I love the handmaiden but like I think that there was a a point where just the

like flirty fucky voice and flirty fuckingy face I was kind of like yeah move along it was repetitive yeah I didn't I didn't really start loving it

until the crime element and the Caesar character was like thrown in the middle of it that's what gave it kind of tension and the drive for it to kind of get like Okay, this is cool now. Yeah, I felt the length in the first half, but not in the second half.

I really liked that stuff. I feel like that gave it a lot of characters, especially like seeing Gina Gershahn at the lesbian bar, you know, and all that stuff. That's like, oh, wow, they're showing. It needed to be there. Yeah, no, that scene worked. And I do, I bought into their romance, even though it is like Jennifer Tilley's voice and all that stuff, it is exaggerated.

And I feel like you see it in Gina Gershant's face. That's just kind of like, the fuck is, what am I getting into? Like this, it feels like she's falling, she's fallen out of another movie and she's entered this like weird noir fantasy world. And I like seeing her like navigate that. So I really, I don't know. Those those early scenes, they didn't bother me. Even though once it gets into like the plot, once they're, once they're explaining the heist and how it's going to go while showing what happens in clips, you know, like that's one of my favorite things movies does. You know, I love heist scenes.

Yeah, yeah, same. Also the sex scene between them was like really well shot. I thought that was like a good execution of that. It didn't feel like exploitative. It felt like kind of sincere and genuine and like there were characters and not just, you know, eye candy. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was very, yeah.

I mean, there's a reason why I think it's held up so well and so beloved. I like some of the practical effects and like visual set pieces. So like some that jump out to mind there's when the mob boss is like falling backwards and you got like the full shot of him landing on the floor most instance tongue twister

most instances of characters falling like that in films would be edited or cheated in a way where they can land on like a mattress or something, right? Whereas this shows the floor that he lands on. And so, yeah, it's interesting to think about how that might have been done practically. I think potentially they could have had him like basically lying on like a braced board or something. That's why I see.

Because you don't see his feet and then just like tilt it down with the camera. But still, even when you do something like that, there is a lot of detail and artistry when it comes to pulling it off convincingly and making it still feel as though there's a weight to the impact. Yeah, there's a physical performance. Yeah. Yeah. No, that that shot was incredible.

Loved the getting shot and bleeding in a puddle of white paint. Like, I just thought visually that looked fantastic, like a really great set piece. Great idea. I love watching a movie where I can very distinctly remember visuals like that. If I think of the title of this film, I'm going to be thinking of those shots, and that's nice. And for our first feature, too, I'm incredibly confident and just knows exactly what it wants to be. It seems like they really pulled it off to, yeah. Yeah, really cool stuff.

I mean, just some of these shots and setups, like for especially small moments that are just, like, it takes so much fucking time to do these things and give it that style, that flare. Like, they didn't have to get the shot of the, the cord of the telephone, you know, like these are all really extra and over the top that without that flavor, it loses so much. Like, yeah, this could have been shot like a normal movie, but the fact that they shoot it like this. Again, it reminds me of like the Cohen brothers do on this sort of thing where like just letting the camera move and be free and getting these shots from above. And from, you know, weird angles and all that stuff. It just it adds so much to the visual language, the visual storytelling. Yeah. It will just emphasize an emotion really well.

Like when the Caesar character opens the briefcase for the first time and it's realizing like, oh, I'm fucked. And it's like this perspective show. like locked to him and it's like a lot of maybe isn't shot that way so it's really kind of unnerving and off kilter it's like the requiem for a dream shot yeah yeah yeah yeah like yeah like yeah there like yeah there's like a lessical stuff there's like a fun dutch angle in there at some point really cool yeah i mean good it's a cool movie it's a great wreck yeah i mean i wish i i feel like i don't have much to say about it because it does feel like it's such a uh a display of style and it's not like the deepest movie but it's like it's

It's not complicated, yeah. It's not complicated, but it's such just like perfectly, I wouldn't say perfectly, but it's so, so well executed. And just like a fun little, yeah, I mean, I keep talking about Blood Simple, but just like Blood Simple, it is kind of like this extremely good display of craft. And I get why they, however, by whatever means they were able to make the Matrix, I get why they, they did that and how they could have done that based on watching this movie. Based on watching this movie. Yeah. Yeah, good, good wreck, good Pride Month,

met wreck that straight men can enjoy also. Hell yeah. Successful. What do we give it? I give it a high six for now, maybe low seven, but I think high six is where I'm, yeah, I'm comfy at a high six at the moment. A comfy seven for me, I think.

It definitely got better, it went along, I think now knowing where it goes and how good that kind of pay off. Like, I don't think I'd even feel the establishing stuff in the beginning as much as it's still still so short. I like the violence in there. The villainous character is awesome once he gets involved and developed a bit. Keeps things tense and maintains the tension. It's, I'm a sucker for this kind of movie.

I'm going nine, nine out of ten. Let's go. Damn. Yeah. I mean, I, just fantastic. And I think about the kind of irony and the comedy of like, you know, these two trans women who were not, you know, out or anything at the time. I don't know what the timelines were. But the fact of them making this movie and it's like, oh, wow, that's two straight guys made this.

What? It's like, no, not actually. As it turns out. But it's just, yeah, it's very, it's very funny and interesting that this was their first. movie. And I think it's just fucking really, really, really good. Nice. All right, it's question time. Right. Let's do some questions then from the Saldonikers community. Head over to the tongue twister today. Head over to the suggestion. Thread over on the subreddit if you want to leave questions for future episodes. I want to start with this one from Seneck Docky, who says,

recently Boots are rarely posted on Reddit to raise awareness for his movie, I Love Boosters. One point he up was how he's been historically muted on social media and how meta didn't allow reposts regarding this movie to be widely seen because of its subject matter. What do your thoughts on this situation and how it relates to your ongoing conversations about audience awareness, the demand for smaller movies, and the availability of choice? Do you want me to read the post? It's not too long. So Boots Riley on his account posted on movie theater, our slash movie theater employees,

I Love Boosters needs awareness Discussion Hey I'm Boots Riley writer-director of I Love Boosters The NRG survey tells us that awareness of this movie's mere existence overall is low Neon did spending on marketing but a lot of what was internet and streaming ads which are now a problem for me in particular

as I've been historically muted on social media platforms and with this movie in particular people have shown me cases where meta has said that they weren't allowing reposts to be seen as widely because it was connected to quote organized criminal activity. I'm asking for your help at this late date. If you've seen this movie and like it, let patrons of your theatre know.

If people seem to be unsure of what to see and you like my movie, let them know about it. These facts may help. We have 92% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 75% on Rotten Tomatoes from the audience. We have a 3.8 on Letterbox and a B cinema score given by the audience. So people like the movie when they see it. Most people who are fans of me or of sorry to bother you or Kiki Palmer. or Lakeith Stanfield or Demi Moore, don't know about this movie. If you're a cinephile and follow this stuff you do, and it may seem like folks know, it's a problem.

Many areas are having packed audiences, but in others it's a struggle. I think this movie is one of the antidotes to the boring stuff that big studios push. Sure, obsession and backrooms are great, but since they're in the horror genre, Big Studios will look at this as being the exception that they've always set aside for horror, and keep doing everything else the same. I think this film has things in it that no one else has ever seen before, and will be inspire a lot of filmmakers. It's hopeful and about the future we can create together. This film won't blow up at this point, but I can get neon to hold back digital and we can run

this like a slow rollout over the summer and just tread through all the big releases while moving steadily. Thanks for your time. And while I never worked at a theater, I worked at Bots ice cream across from Elmwood Theatre. And I would hook up everybody that worked there with free ice cream every day. Nice. That's a plea there, kind of. And it was really interesting. they brought up the horror stuff because that's been coming up where it seems like, yeah, there are these big, kind of original ideas, but they always seem to be in the horror space. So it kind of sucks that someone like this, which isn't even released in the UK yet, it's not until October because of a, just like licensing. And that's when it's been blocked out to have the best chances according to distributors in the UK, apparently. That's why.

Very weird. Very weird. I don't get it because. Yeah, just release it at the same time. already seen it. We would have talked about it out on the podcast if you were able to see it. Yeah, exactly. It's something very out of touch and it just comes up again and again with like the way this stuff is released. It's just missing out on so many eyes because like the conversations are like sporadic and not linked. But what else jumps out of you?

Yeah, well, I mean like I I I really respect, uh, him being so involved in trying to get his film out there. And I do agree that it's something that if more people saw it, I think, you know, most people would enjoy it. The people in the theater, both screenings that I watched, uh, enjoyed the film quite a lot. Like, it's very funny. The problem is also, it's so out there that it's difficult to market. Um, something like, sorry to bother you. you could get people in with a trailer that appears to be familiar. And then once you watch the movie go, oh, this is not familiar, but I like it.

Right. Whereas it's very difficult to get the average audience member in on something that they haven't seen before. Like, that's the whole marketing strategy, even with horror movies. If you have like a weird, you know, experimental one, you have to try and make a trailer if you want people to see it, that pretends as though it's not weird and experimental.

You have to put it in this weird box of familiarity because the average person driving the ticket sales is not going to take time out of their day and see something unless there is that security of familiarity, right? Like, oh, I want to see this. They're thinking about something they've already seen that they want to see again. You have to, like, trick them into watching something

that's outside of their comfort zone. And unfortunately, I Love Boosters is impossible to market in that way. So I'm not surprised that it's not a hit. Yeah, I posted, I made like little image posts about it on Twitter and YouTube as well. And I've got a video that'll be coming out soon for it. But like, yeah, I'm kind of feeling bad. I couldn't talk about it sooner. There's weird embargo rules for like SIF and stuff.

But anyway. Well, I was going to say, like, I do understand, you know, Boots Riley trying to get the word out, get people to watch it. And I think, like, you know, the issue for me, I didn't get a chance to see it. It wasn't showing in the theater that I, that I always go to. And I would have had to go out of the way to see it. And even now, it's, you know, it's gone. So I wanted to see it, but a big part of like. No, you didn't even watch it. No, no, no. And I would have gone out of my way to go watch it if I felt like it was something I needed to go watch. And I think. think that's part of what I'm noticing. And the reaction is that a lot of people who were looking forward to this movie and who saw it, even people who were, you know, praising it were kind of like, well, it's not really his best, you know, work. And there were quite a few mixed reviews, too, from a lot of critics that I like. So I was kind of like, oh, maybe this is a bit of a miss. Maybe I don't need to, you know, drive 45 minutes to go watch this. True. Maybe I just wait. And I think that is one of the things. Like, yeah, it's a mixture of

it's a combination of things where I think you're saying like, yeah, it's hard to market this type of movie and also maybe neon isn't pushing it super far. But, you know, I was very aware of the marketing. This is the type of movie that I would like to see. However, you know, just the critical reception made me think, well, maybe I don't have to go out of my way. So when I see, you know, Boots Riley, I do think that he posts a lot, you know, I've been seeing him like more popping up in my, you know, timelines and places and kind of like, ah. And I understand the desire to be like, hey, like I'm being screwed over with this. But I do feel like this movie, and maybe this isn't the case,

I do feel like it was promoted significantly and got a big pushback, but I just feel like people, audiences, and critics aren't really connecting with it as maybe they had hoped. So I do think that plays a factor into its box office performance, you know. I mean, yeah, I liked it. I would recommend it. I would recommend other people check it out if you can. But, yeah, I'm also not surprised.

I think you would like it, Jake, for sure. Okay. Like, it's a, it's a, it was a very fun theater experience. Like, I, I didn't hesitate when another friend wanted to see it, you know, and I had already seen it. I was just like, oh, I'll see that a second time. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's, I'm assuming, I'm assuming you would like it more than your current expectations are, but yeah, I would also, I would also say, like, it's just, it's difficult to get the average person to go step outside, their comfort zone is the biggest problem. I wish that I had a video out sooner about it, but hopefully my social media posts did something. I don't know. Also, speaking of social media, the, if that meta thing is true, that's quite weird, right? Connected to organized criminal activity. I mean, I haven't seen the movie, but like it, it's quite like over the top, isn't it? It's not like... It's also a movie. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's fiction. Like, that seems weird that, yeah.

I guess meta standards who at meta decides that I think also he's probably like one of the most prominent like directors that openly identifies as a communist there you go I think that probably scares people in the US right so I didn't know about that communist stuff no yeah he literally said it in his fucking intro at SIF he's like I'm a communist like oh nice interesting

I'm going to have to talk to Jay Edgar Hoover about that. Uh-oh. It's concerning. Wow. Yeah, no, I mean, like the, so I've seen some interviews of Boots Riley talking about this film. And, you know, the main characters are people that are stealing from, like, high-end fashion stores and then reselling them at a discount, right? Right, right. Like, his, his conversation when he talks about, like,

presenting that and, you know, in whatever ethical way is he brings up like, oh, yeah, well, you know, like most of all of this system is theft anyway. Like, they're stealing from you. They're stealing from blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, oh, an interesting perspective. And you don't have to agree with it to just watch a movie and be like, oh, these characters are characters. And it's also so absurdist and clearly, like, wacky and satirical that it's not, it's not

like a prescription for, like, how to live your life. even if you were to say that that was the case, it's not like literally that. So I don't know. It's, the Facebook meta thing does seem a little weird, but, um,

yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't find it to be objectionable. It was just silly and fun. So, mm-hmm. I mean,

I'll definitely, I'll check it out once I, uh, I can. Yeah. Yeah. mainly because of you, Adam, because you've talked about it so much. Oh, well, you're welcome.

Yeah. Also, sorry to bother you is a good movie. I like that movie. Yeah, I should check out his I'm a Virgo show. I haven't done that yet. Yeah, there's stuff in, I love boosters that is like worthy of conversation from like a filmmaking and entertainment standpoint. Like I would like to talk about it with both of the guests.

I assumed that you had watched it, Jake, and we were just waiting for Alex, but... Nope. Oops. Not this time. Sorry. Sorry, everybody. Go broke. Damn, yeah.

I'm curious what you guys are going to say to this one from G-O-H. With Jake being obsessed with 9-11 and Adam always bringing up the Epstein files. I was curious on what Alex's favorite national tragedy is. What would your guys answer be if you had to guess? Mine was an international tragedy. Yeah, true. If you had to guess, if you had to assign one to me, what would fill that gap? Brexit.

I see 9-11, abstain. Brexit. Oh, so we're guessing what your favorite national trade for your nation. Yeah, yeah. I just said Brexit. Just give me something. Yeah, Brexit is a good one. I think your favorite one is when Margaret Thatcher died.

That wasn't a tragedy. Yeah. No, you told me. I thought you said that was like such a bad thing. Yeah, there's a lot to choose from. Oh, golly gosh. Well, if you bring up the Epstein Files, we've got our own royal family mixed up in that.

It's pretty cool. It's gesture broadly. Yeah. Man, yeah, like BBC presenters, like Jimmy Saville was a big one. Oh. Contemporary ones, like it's like a race riot like every week at this point.

over here Russell Brand oh Russell Brand yeah man we got lots of those yeah but is Russell Brand existing a national tragedy yeah

the page flipping on here's Morgan when he tries to find a Bible quote is like that's that's very fun you could pull that out of like a fantastic comedy sketch

that was incredible actually yeah that was completely absurd yeah I mean usually national tragedies aren't funny and I'm just saying usually I think it's more of a you have to laugh so you don't cry type thing or like you're just hyper fix it like you're just fixated on it like I don't know

yeah well I mean I guess the answer would be Brexit then really a lot of a lot of shit goes back to that that's yeah yeah in terms of long lasting impacts that you're going to continue feeling for a long time I would Yeah, it seems to be one that's impacting lives a lot. And the dickhead who's largely responsible for it is still politically popular. That's for us, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating.

Yeah, I wish I could be watching from a distance, but yeah, whatever. Thanks, Elon Musk. I mean, watching the UK fall apart, it has just been kind of like, I wouldn't say comforting to us over in the United States, but it just kind of feels like, ah, it's not just us. We're not alone. I don't know. Like, we have our issues over here, but like USA right now, like, fuck a girl. Like, I see it a lot.

There's a lot of weird American commentary on the UK. It's like weaponized as like a talking point for Americans. When it's like a lot of this shit is like not true, you know, like the Americans are seeing about the UK. It's like actually crazy exaggerating. and just fake news. Like it's genuinely horseshit, like this stuff that a lot of people are talking about on social media.

Joe Rogan will bring up like, they'll arrest you for social media posts in the UK and then the same thing will happen in the US and he'll be silent. Uh-huh. So it's like, oh, we're seeing like literally one-to-one. Like if you're not in a bubble, you're seeing these other examples.

Yeah. Yeah, it drives me crazy because yeah and then it just deletes nuance because like the latest one is like Australia this like social media ban which

is you know that's a whole other thing to go into but you can't have like a nuanced discussion about it because it is just framed through these extreme kind of sensationalist angles really yeah

pick zero or pick 100 there are no numbers in between yeah yeah but always end up picking fascism. Which is a weird thing to just hate trans people that much. Yeah, and I mean like all of Europe like is just, it's weirdly, we just love far right movements in Europe at the moment.

It's scary. It's so in right now. It's the trend. But yeah, cool. A nice, a nice peppy one. Thanks. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon

Yeah Got 11 Well let's do this one From policy impressive 362626 What got you locking in today A nice simple one What got me locking in today

What got you locking in today On this day What has got you locking in Fucking I don't know if I am locked in Really Today? So any day I do the podcast, I go lock in. You know, I got like get my ducks in a row.

I don't have my morning brain. So I've got to make sure I've got my caffeine levels right. Because it's nearly like 10 p.m. right now. No, I've just, I've been like disassociated and just like coasting through a dreamlike state for like weeks now. I don't feel like I'm trying. I'm making steps towards locking in. You're locked down. But in order to lock in, I have to build a foundation, which is taking a lot of time.

Yeah. But it's legitimate, and I'm doing it, but I'm, it's very frustrating, but you have to just recognize the small incremental amounts of progress day to day and realize that there is some point in the future to have some kind of a. That's a form of locking in. You've been locking in, like, sorting out some shits and, you know. I don't feel locked in. I'm doing things. I don't feel locked in. Yeah, I guess I've been locked in a few points been.

Just not in the ways that I want to be. I'm not at my, I'm not at my, like. You don't get to choose necessarily when you're locked in, you know? Yeah. Now, there's things that I want to be locked in on that I'm not. but I have to be locked into the other things first, which is annoying. Yeah, you know, I mean, you can't lock in when you're always locked in, which is what I am. I'm just 24-7 locked in.

I sleep, I'm locked in. I'm awake. I'm locked in. So, I mean, are there gradations to locking in, maybe? But I'd say, even if I am on a sliding scale of locked-in levels, I am at the maximum level of locked-in at all times. That is kind of your vibe, to be honest. Yeah. You're a locked-in individual.

There's no, I'm so locked in, I'm locked out. I mean, it's, it's a horseshoe of locking in. So you're like, you would say like wake up, do it, go to sleep, do it. Right? I'm beyond doing it. It just is. We all are and it is. You are locked in. It's a state of, of, I can't, I don't have to describe you. to have to be locked in, you know. Like Travis Scott. I'm completely forgotten about that. I'm like Christopher Nolan looking at his little grainy CV monitor on the Odyssey,

you know, locked in. That's the locked in I'm trying to achieve, you know. Someone posted on the subreddit we should do more Harmony Korean films. I think it would be funny if Jake's second Harmony Korean film was Agrodrift with his first being baby invasion and have no. experience of his filmography outside of those two films and then we never talk about one again. That would be fun. That would be also.

Wait, wait. This possibility has opened me up to an idea of, no, the idea, because that would be hilarious, because I do love the idea, like, what is the funniest way to introduce someone to a director's filmography? Baby invasion might have been. Like, baby invasion is so insane. Like, here is this director, his name is Steven Spielberg. We're going to watch The Terminal and Always for your first films.

Like, how does that fuck with your experience of his cinema, you know? Like, I mean, I guess I'll get to experience that with my own child as, you know, he starts watching movies. I can just, like, show him like, okay, here's, do you want to know about David Fincher? Here's the curious case of Benjamin Button, that sort of thing. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. You could create the least normie human being.

Could you imagine, you know, that's just. the I could do it. That is the goal. We have the technology. That's the goal now. That's what they do. Yeah. Show your kid to agro drift.

That would be a bad idea. I mean, I have to watch it. Yeah, you create some issues, I feel. Some deep-fruited psychological issues. Has Harmony Corrine made an actual good movie? That's what I'd like to know. And that's what I'd like to see. I mean, I would.

Yeah. Okay. He is my favorite director that I've never given higher than a six out of ten to. So short answer, no. I feel like Spring Breakers is something that might like get to a seven. I think I gave Spring Breakers a seven. Spring Breakers is his magnum opus. I think everybody agrees at this.

Well, some people would say that it's like gummo or something. Is he locked in? That's what I want to know. For that film he was. Not for AgriDrift. I think his last couple films are because he's not locked down. Yeah. Like, I think he's literally said in interviews, like, movies are boring.

I don't want to do him anymore. He just needs to be a Twitch streamer now. I show speed is the new Tarkovsky. I want to make I show speed. That piss me off, yeah. If he could collabo with I show speed, Oh my God. I show speed in Baby Invasion.

I think he's too big. He's bigger than Travis Scott. He has the new Tarkovsky, though. If you guys could give one streamer the task of creating a work of cinema, who would you, what streamer would you want to watch their movie? Germa and I would watch an entire... Actually, that'd be really good.

Yeah, yeah. an entire Truman show, except it's just clips from his stream replacing Truman over the entire thing. All right, that's good. I think, yeah, Germa would be great. Northern Lion, I'd watch his movie because he likes cinema, you know.

He did say cynic docky. Did he? Yeah. I take it back. I was picturing more like instead of actually giving the reins to a Twitch streamer like a bottle horror movie about like Asma Gold's apartment or something.

That would be a good one. I don't know if I could. I mean, I would like to see him. I'd like to give him like a camera and see like what type of movie he was trying to make. Like it would be really interesting. It would, I mean, I don't think he would do it. He would have to leave his house unless he's doing a documentary about himself.

Yeah. He might be agoraphobic. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. That's set me off, like, thinking about, like, the bleeding gums and stuff. Maybe we should just take all cameras away from Twitch streamers and leave it at that. Yeah. All right.

As soon as Jake mentioned, The Odyssey, Mustard Fan 2002 said, with the ticket pre-sales for The Odyssey, it was shown that only 39 locations worldwide would present the film, in its original iMac's 70mm, millimeter proper aspect ratio. With this, I wanted to ask two questions. How do you feel about the availability and promotion of premium formats that have been expanding, such as Dolby Cinemas slash XL for AMC, as well as the, I hate that it's called this, the XD format. And now Disney even introducing Infinity Vision after the loss of IMAX screens.

You even not heard about this? After the loss of IMAX screens when Doomsday was delayed. my next question is will you be seeking out a true iMacs showing of the Odyssey? I mean, I'll try and see it in IMAX, but I don't know if it would be true. I guess so. I would love to, but it's just I don't have the effort or energy. I'm not locked into that. I'm not locked into that.

But in terms of like premium formats, I mean, it just makes sense. It is like the 1950s all over again with like cinemascope and all these big formats to counteract TV, network counteracting. phone, you know, like, yeah, you got to find ways to bring people to theaters. And I think IMAX is the best version of that, you know? Like, it's just like a cool format that a lot of filmmakers really love and the 70 millimeter stuff, like encouraging people to go see movies like that, like sinners and stuff is, is really cool and people being aware of that type of format. The other formats, like, what, 40X and all that bullshit? I think it's just stupid gimmicks, but I mean, I haven't tried it.

But I mean, whatever's getting people to theaters, right? Like, that's the most important thing. So I have no issue. No issue within. I think that's just the direction that's going to go. Okay. I'm totally going to watch it in 70mm, because it's actually fucking playing at the good theater.

Nice. Way to go. I'm just happy to, if I get the option to watch something in a theater that's not Cineplex, I'm going to do it. Cineplex is disgusting. Disgusting. I hope to go out of business. I'm an accelerationist for Canadian film theater choices.

Is that the main chain in Canada? Yeah, no, it's basically a monopoly. And they're disgusting. They make the worst shit. They look at things that American theaters are doing and then just don't understand what makes any of it special. Like, oh, you can eat food while you're watching the movie, but it all tastes like shit.

And all the staff are going to, like loudly ask you things in the middle of the movie and you don't have the same system at all. It's like they looked at the Alamo and then we're like, hmm, we can do that. They looked like Dave and Busters and we're like, we're making the rec room. Disgusting. It's disgusting. It's boring. It looks like shit. Nobody wants to be there. I hope they get out of business. It's taking a valuable real estate property. What, hold on, hold on. But if movie theater chains go out of business, who's showing the movies? No, I hope this chain goes out of business. and then someone else will sweep in.

So are there chains that are good? Because in my experience, they're just all garbage, and that's the fun of going to the movies. It's supposed to suck, sort of. Oh, yeah. No, there's, I would say every chain that I've been to in the United States is better than Cineplex. Wow.

So whatever it gets replaced with, surely, just statistically, it should be better. Hmm. Do you not have, like, premium chains? Because we have, like, they're called Everyman Cinemas, and they're like, they've got, like, so, those for seats and the tickets are more expensive and there's like a bar and real food and shit. No, Cineplex has one of those and it sucks. I hate going to the movies and eating food, ordering food, or sitting in a cozy chair.

Like, you should go into a theater and sit on a hard seat, a stool. Should be sticky? It's a populist art. It's not a fucking, you know, I don't want to sit on a sticky sofa, you know, where people have been farting. Like, come on. I don't want to fall asleep when I watch a movie. I've seen some pictures of like those, like, it's some American theaters.

They have like basically beds in the front row. I'm like, I kind of want to do that. Because I don't fall asleep during a movie unless I decide to. You know, there's three movies I've ever fallen asleep in. What are those movies? Free Willy. I think I was like four years old or something. Three, maybe?

Free Willie. The town by Ben Affleck, I fell asleep in that. I was boring. I remember that. And then I fell asleep in the film, Awake, ironically. Starring Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba. Oh, yeah. There's no way you didn't do that on purpose.

You were like, oh, it would be funny if I fell asleep. No, I recognize the irony of it after the fact. Oh, okay. I think I was too young to intentionally do something like that. Okay. When did that come out? Awake. 2007, I would have been like 16.

I've never fallen asleep in a theater. 15 or 16. That was bad. It was like a horror movie. Medical drama, it says. The trailer thought it was so cool. I don't know. Awake kind of sounds like a new A24 horror movie

about how the monster gets you and your peels your eyelids off or something. Sure. Are you excited to just see like all of the cynical trying to be like a cool new horror film thing that studios are like going to be making soon? I'm ready. I mean, I've been getting calls from, you know, Bob Eager and everything. They're like, hey, you're a YouTuber.

So you must want to make a movie, right? Come on. No, I think it's, I think it is going to be kind of. I mean, of course it's going to be cynical. And like, you can't recreate something organic like the obsession backrooms thing. But we'll see. We'll see what they come up with those brilliant studio execs. Our favorites.

Our favorites. So in tune with art and not essentially just like playing the stock market, but with movies. The thing is, I don't want. a studio executive who is familiar with art and who has good art. I want a studio executive who knows how to hire the people who can make good art.

You know what I mean? Like those are different skills. I feel like there are lots of execs who like do have a sense of what is good filmmaking. But they then try to impose their own aesthetic interests on what they're trying to make. Yeah, if they're like really handsy and

want to control everything. Yeah. But the middle ground is somewhere between that and like David Sass-left tax writing off movies that he's like destroying. There's somewhere in between. Well, yeah, why I think it is why there aren't more like, you know that billionaire that's just like friends with Wes Anderson and just like fun to his movies just because he likes. Oh, sorry, who? You don't know about this guy? Elon Musk?

Wes Anderson. I don't know. Doesn't he own the criterion collection now? Yeah, that might be right, actually. I've never heard of this, but it makes sense. Wes Anderson. But it's, yeah, it's why his recent movies have not, like, needed to even make money because they're just funded by a billionaire.

Like, I'm not sure why that doesn't happen more often. Stephen Rails, who funds and produces all of his movies despite not making much of a profit. I mean, when you're a billionaire, what is a couple million dollars? It's nothing. Exactly. Yeah. It's fucking nothing. You make that back brushing your teeth.

I guess they're more interested in, like, yachts and shit like that instead of. funding that kind of thing. Elon Musk is a trillioner now. Yeah. And we're all thrilled. Yippie. Billionaires are poor to him. Megan Ellison did Anna Perna, the studio,

and kind of funded a lot of those Paul Thomas Anderson movies too. You know what? Here's my public appeal. Everyone listening. I would like a billionaire friend. If you are a billionaire and you want to be my friend, I would like to be your friend. Okay.

Good Lord knows they need them. Millionaires need not apply. No. Get out of here. You park your car in the street. You drive your vehicle. You don't even have a super yacht. You don't even take helicopters or private jets.

How weird must it be to be a billionaire like Elon Musk and just be such a shell of a human and like have no real friends. No friends. Like no happiness, you know? Like what does that mean? What does that mean to your life? Everyone hates you. Imagine being someone in Elon Musk's position while simultaneously being so fucking

fucking desperate for outside approval that you're never going to get in any authentic way that you have to pay people or that you would even decide that this is a good idea to pay people to play on video game accounts for you to then log into and pretend like you did all the progress yourself and as if that there's other people that are familiar with the game and like that wouldn't be experts that would easily be able to tell and explain in detail why it doesn't make any sense that you're playing like that imagine imagine how fucking pathetic and insecure you would have to be it sucks dude's got an addiction the level of pathetic that Elon Musk has, it is like comic book level. Like it is so insane this trillionaire.

If he was in a comic book, you'd be like, this guy is so ridiculous that this is like badly written and unbelievable. Exactly. This sucks. Exactly. Yeah. There was an article title from like, I don't know, a year ago or something. And I'm trying to, I can't say it verbatim because I can't remember, but it was something along the lines of, I always knew that there would be an authoritarian takeover from, like technocrat billionaires, but I didn't expect them to be so lame. Which is kind of like... It's so funny watching them all try to pretend to be human. Mark Zuckerberg like, I'm grilling, guys.

Meat. I wear like a chain now. Oh, yeah. Just laundering your reputation on Joe Rogan. Did you guys see the social reckoning trailer? Yeah, I did. Kind of. I got to react to that.

I saw a bit of it in a theater, but I don't think it looks great. I think it's funny that that exists. I don't think it looks great, but also I do really like Jeremy Strong. Same. Same. I love Jeremy Strong. So I'll watch it just for him. But Aaron Sorkin without David Fincher, oh, man.

Yeah. I don't know. Mm-hmm. It's a shame, too, because, like, there's so much to say there. Totally. Post, what, 2010 social network? So much has happened with like meta bullshit since then. Well, if anybody knows how I can become friends with Stephen Rails

So we can fund some cool art Maybe I gotta like introduce him to Neil Breen or something You know? Yeah, we'll just have like a dad who had like an emerald mine That's always handy. It's like a Place to start off, you know? If there's one if there's one filmmaker you guys could give a five hundred million dollar budget to

Charlie got one film you'd give him $500 million dollars yeah Charlie Kaufman okay Alex I would make 500 five hundred obsessions that's actually good

my runner app answers are Neil Breen and M Knight Shumelin hmm I'm not M night I 100% agree with that because the more money he puts in his films

the fucking more of a trash fire it is. I think last Airburner is getting a 4K release. Great. We'll be flying off the shelves. I'll get it. I've always thought they should do a box office set of all of M. Knight's films that would appeal to nobody, but me. It sold one copy.

Like you have to, no matter what your taste is, like, it's so all over the place. Yeah, coming in October. Last Airmen I run 4K. Yes. I mean, it's like, it might be my favorite, M-night. No, no, no. Right, are we done or should do one more? Yeah, one more.

What do you reckon? Let's do. This is a great question for a vegan, do. Mr. Man movies says, what cheese do you best associate with watching movies? Be as truthful and honest as you can. I feel like the unrelenting, never-changing taste of cheddar perfectly represents the cinematic experience. I mean, yeah, like powdered cheddar.

Powdered cheddar, yeah. Like fake-ass powdered cheese. I was thinking more like symbolically, like sort of like a moldy cheese of some kind, you know? Like the state of the film industry as a whole? Yeah. Just going to the movies. Yeah. It's a moldy and like stinky.

What is it? Is it a camember that like stinks out your entire fridge? But that would be interesting. Or if it's not like feet when you go into it. The blue cheese would be interesting. Yeah, I guess there's like too much going on. There's too much like texture and flavor. And that's like not as a, uh, depth.

Normie, commercially appealing. I think cheddar is a good, good answer actually. Cheddar can be good though. Like, you need like the American cheese slice. It's like not allowed to be called cheese. Project Tailman. was good, right? A mature cheddar.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't had real cheese in a few years. What's your go-to vegan cheese brand? I guess Daya, I think that's a vegan cheese brand? It is. I mean, it's just whatever is available. It's like not really. I mean, and it depends. Usually it's fine if it's like melted, you know,

and it's pretty cheesy and good. but some of the cheeses is just kind of like you bend it and it like snaps, you know, it doesn't really blend. Daya isn't the most appetizing name for a few. Dalia. Well, I've never been a cheese person anyway, so I don't really give a shit about vegan cheese or anything. So it was never a big loss for me. At that place in Vancouver called Meat M-E-E-E-T, I love their like cashew-based.

cheeses and gravies and stuff. Delicious. Yeah, it was good though. They were awesome. That's where we did our Thanksgiving. I know. That was great. I love that place. That was yummy. I'll go back again. Hell yeah. Well. Cheesy last question, man. That's a rip.

We're doing a guest episode. Yeah. And our guest has a recommendation. Our guest is Kayla says YouTube personality and the recommendation is hairspray

2007 oh okay cool Adam Shankman so if you want to I'm excited sorry what I like that movie I've seen that several times

and it is a remake of a John Waters film of the same yeah I've never seen the Waters one name have you seen the remake and not the water one? I've seen neither. Okay. I was too scared

of John Travolta. Oh. Okay. Well, I won't say anything about it. I have seen both of them once upon a time. A long time ago, and I'm trying to remember when. But this should be a fun conversation. And if anybody listening at home doesn't want to be spoiled for the movies, you've got to watch them.

I guess just the way. The only real recommendation was the 2007 one. So it's not a requirement to watch the waters one, but if you want it, you can't. Cool. If you don't be spoiled for Hairspray 2007, Adam Shankman. Shankman. Watch it before the next episode comes out. These episodes come out every two weeks.

You can listen to them early by going to sardonicast.com sign up for premium. It's only a few bucks a month. Also, patreon.com slash sardonicast. Also, click the members thing below on YouTube. You can do the same thing. You support the show. You get it early. I'm going to do a fucking sponsor ad or something soon, okay?

I'm going to start talking about a product and you're going to hate it unless you go and get it on the other one where there's no ads. So you better thank your lucky fucking stars that we haven't done that yet really. It would be funny if you got a sponsorship for this and you didn't tell us and just like you randomly, you just start reading a ad. I could do that right now. Do it. I'm negotiating the contract. Okay, fair. You can't just say it.

It's a mystery. All right. All right. Yeah, thank you everybody for listening. Bye. Happy disclosure day. Happy disclosure day. Happy Shrek 5 trailer.

Yeah. Bye.