The Big Picture - Awards Season Has Gone Cuckoo. Plus: The 10 Best Movies at Sundance.

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

Stonks, SAG Awards, and streamers: Amanda and Sean break down a roller coaster of a week in the movie business (0:36). Then, they’re joined by Adam Nayman to discuss a virtual Sundance Film Festival, the big acquisitions, and the very best films that just might be coming to a streamer near you (30:30). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Adam Nayman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Sundance Film Festival. Later in this show, we'll be joined by Adam Naiman to discuss our virtual Sundance, the acquisitions, and the very best films we saw that just might be coming to a streamer near you. But first, Amanda and I break down a roller coaster of a week in the movie business. It's all coming up on The Big Picture. Amanda, we got more dumb awards.

Did you see the SAG Award nominations hit today? I would say these are less dumb if I had to characterize them. There are still some interesting quirks. When you said we were going to be on a roller coaster of a movie week, I didn't know whether you meant because of Stonks or Jared Leto. So you want to start with Jared Leto? Yes. I think both are rising in the world at large. Jared Leto is rising and the Stonks are rising. Jared Leto has received a second nomination for his performance in the film The Little Things. This is definitely the biggest, I guess, headline, maybe too strong a word,

but the most notable fact about these SAG award nominations. And two doesn't technically make a trend, but it sure makes something. Is the Jared Leto thing happening? Yes, I have no idea. I was actually thinking about like, what if this is stocks? And what if like a group of people within the voting communities have organized in order to give us a bit to which I'd like to say, thank you. Like if that, if this is intentional and people are like, we need to give something for the

awards podcasters, but a sad sentence to talk about sadder sentence, then just know that the awards podcasters are grateful. This is ridiculous, but I'm kind of entertained by it. I find it hard to believe that the 90 Los Angeles based journalists from foreign media outlets who vote on the Golden Globe somehow collaborated with the 2,500 randomly selected members of SAG-AFTRA. But who knows? You know, life kind of feels like one big prank these days and this Jared Leto situation. And this is frankly not even a judgment of Jared Leto. I like Jared Leto just fine, probably more than most people do. I kind of get a kick out of whatever it is he's up to

in the world. But the idea that anything in the little things is worthy of a SAG award is just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I agree. I don't know how we're doing. I will say it was the best part of the little things in my opinion, just because he was trying, I guess. I was thinking a little bit about like whose spot is he taking, which is like not a great way to talk about awards, except it's how we always talk about awards. So it's like maybe Mark Rylance in Trial of Chicago 7, maybe Bill Murray in On the Rocks,

maybe like Yaya Abdul-Mateen from Trial of Chicago 7. I would like to see that, but that already seems like that's not happening. So like who else? Who else is like being robbed from Jared Leto? I'm glad you asked. There are definitely more. I think Glenn Turman potentially for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Coleman Domingo from the same film.

You could make the case. You could say Aldous Hodge and Eli Gorey from One Night in Miami. I think the one that has been most controversial is Paul Rocky from Sound of Metal. That is the one that, you know, Paul Rocky has won a lot of critics' plaudits. And I think a lot of awards forecasters have gotten a sense that he would be a significant part of this conversation. And he has not gotten a Golden Globe nomination nor a SAG nomination. So if

he is suffering at the hands of the little things, that's a lot of people. Yes, that is a lot of people. And I do like the Paul Rocky performance. That's my favorite performance inside of metal. And okay, I accept. Then Jared Leto is no longer fun. A couple of other notable things. Four or five months ago, you and I did an episode of this show about Oscar bait, the history of Oscar bait, what it means, and the inspiration for that

was the film Hillbilly Elegy, which is not a movie that either of us liked very much. And frankly, it does not seem like anybody liked that movie, except for Sag, because Sag has decided that both Glenn Close,

which was somewhat predicted, and also Amy Adams were recognized for their work in the film. Obviously, you and I love Glenn Close and Amy Adams. They're both wonderful actors. Actors gonna act. Yeah.

There's not a whole lot to say about this other than this movie was made so that this could happen. At least it feels that way. I don't know if this recognition means that they have a serious chance to win anything, but I would be stunned if Glenn Close was not recognized at the Academy Awards in some fashion. Amy Adams, we'll see. Similarly, this took away from some potential nominees. Yeah. And it does seem like the actor and actress races are solidifying a bit. At least they're

like, especially an actress, it seems like there are four pretty, not sure bets because there is usually always a surprise, but Viola Davis, Vanessa Kirby, Frances McDormand, and Carey Mulligan are all four showing up pretty consistently. Yeah. And so that means who we're not seeing in this case is Sophia Loren. We're not seeing Andra Day. We're not seeing Zendaya. We're not seeing Kate Winslet in Ammonite, for example. So there are some folks who have not heard their names called in the last couple of days. We'll see if that matters. I thought Scott Feinberg made a really interesting point about this specifically, which is that I think of the 380 acting nominees since 2001, only 29 have received neither a Golden Globe nor a SAG Awards nomination.

So it's not impossible that some of these people that we're talking about here won't be recognized at the Oscars, but it's increasingly unlikely if you miss out on both boats. A couple of other notes about these nominations. There were some good things. We talked about how Minari was largely overlooked yesterday with the Globes. A lot of recognition for Minari here. Um, in particular, Steven Yeun and, uh, Yunye Jung and, um, Best Ensemble, which is, that's a pretty good showing for this film. Yes. Um, so this movie comes out in a week.

I, it feels like it came out six months ago, nine months ago, a year ago. You and I saw it a year ago, more than a year ago at this point. So I am just excited for everyone else to see it. It's a wonderful film. It's going to theaters on the 12th. And then I do believe in that 17-day window, it's going to be available on VOD. And so I would highly encourage people to watch this movie. It's terrific.

What representation it's going to have at the Oscars, I think, is still, frankly, TBD. Because it's still a small film that does not, I think is still frankly TBD because it's still a small film that does not have the benefit of a lot of movie stars. And it is from A24, which is a smaller studio relative to say Netflix or Amazon Prime. Okay. Snubs. This is now two in a row, no Delroy Lindo recognition. And it's not ideal. We talked about this when The Five Bloods came out, which is that it came out over the summer, way ahead of Academy and awards time, and especially way ahead given what's happened with the pandemic

and the way that the awards show schedule has shaken out. And you have long, I think, noted that the early releases can suffer from this. Do you think that's what's going on with Delroy? A little bit. I guess we should note that Five Bloods was nominated in Best Ensemble. And there is a real ensemble element to a lot of that film and the chemistry between those four characters and really everyone in it. So that's something. And it shows that at least people were aware of it. I do think the actor and actress races seems to

solidify a lot faster and a lot earlier. Usually like by September, we know exactly who's going to win all of them. So maybe people just kind of couldn't add it in. I wouldn't be surprised. I am curious. It's such a weird year that like people won't have memories for a lot of things, so you never know. But I really like that performance, and it's a shame to see that it seems to be falling by the wayside a bit. I agree. I think you could make the case that the Defy Blood's Best Ensemble nomination, or maybe the Minari nomination, replaced Mank. We talked yesterday about whether or not it's meaningful that Mank led the nominations for the Golden Globes. Gary Oldman was recognized here, but Mank did not get Best Ensemble. And the biggest shock, the biggest snub you could make the case, whether it's Delroy Lindo or maybe

it's Amanda Seyfried, which I was kind of stunned to see that she wasn't recognized here. And I don't know what that means. I didn't really see very many pundits predicting that either. Do you think, you have to keep in mind that it is, it's actors voting on this. And so they're going to watch the films differently. And I, you know, I always wonder for Best Ensemble, are they thinking of ensemble in terms of all of these people together? Like, is, you know, is it that, or is it just like i you know i liked that movie more i don't really know but it's a good question we'd have to ask some actors i definitely did get

a few messages from friends a couple of people who vote in the academy and a couple of people who are in the industry that was a general like what the fuck is going on here with some of these nominations not like angrily just confusedly the best supporting actress category is an interesting example of that right now for the SAG awards the nominees are Maria Bakalova for Borat 2 Glenn Close who we talked about Olivia Colman for The Father obviously Olivia Colman is absolutely beloved and has won this award and has won an Oscar and is the star of the crown and has a lot going for her her work in The Father is good but it kind of feels like someone saw her name and was like check she's like the she's the good hang she's just like oh i like her and yes and and also a gifted actress listen people don't need me to say that olivia coleman rules but i do think it's a people just really like her i do too but conversely if if we believe

that that speculation is true uh yyao Zheng and Helena Zengel go in the opposite direction. I mean, these are two relatively unknown actors in small roles in small films, both very good performances that we both talked about on the show, but not by no means name recognition situations. And so is Amanda Seyfried

maybe being judged for previous work and maybe not being taken as seriously as she ought to be? I wonder whether Mank doesn't resonate with actors as much. I mean, it's about directors and writers and the side of the moviemaking process that has very little to do with acting. I mean, in some existential way, it has a lot to do with acting. But you know what I mean. It's not about, like, stars. And you can see those supporting performances are, like, you walk out, or you finish news of the world. You don't walk out

of it anymore. And you say that that was a great kid actor, you know? And, and those, I think are the performances that this voting body gravitates towards. So the golden globes are happening on February 28th. The SAG awards don't happen until April 4th. Oscar voting doesn't even begin until March 5th. We've got a whole month before Oscar voting. So I'm a little bit curious to see whether this has any impact on those voting bodies. If this extended period of time, we still have two and a half months until we get to the Oscars. Two months and three weeks, actually, which is kind of terrifying. Do you think people are listening to this and thinking like, this is good. I'm glad

they're doing the podcast about this. I mean, I hope so, do you think people are listening to this and thinking like, this is good. I'm glad they're doing the podcast about this. I mean, I hope so. Just because if you're listening to this and you're not glad we're talking about the Oscars, please go outside, like in a safe way, please like find some other joy in your life. I'm serious. It's a tough year. If people don't want to listen to us talk about awards shows, like my greatest hope is that they find something that they want in life.

So I'll just say that, you know, be safe. But otherwise, it is a weird Oscars year. I'm hoping that between the very, very strange and disappointing Golden Globes nominations and I think these these SAG Awards, there is like a buffet of films for people to catch up on. I think most things that you and I saw and liked are now in some way on the board with some obvious disappointing exceptions.

But if you're using all of these as a short list for catch up, you'll be in a good place. So maybe that's how people will use those two and a half months. In the next three to four weeks, particularly in the month of February, people are going to more than likely get a chance to see Nomadland, Minari, Judas and the Black Messiah, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Malcolm and Marie.

There's a number of different films that may or may not be contending for awards this year that after all this talk, the 14 protracted months of potential Oscar conversation for these films, you'll actually be able to see stuff. And, and whether people would get invested or not, I don't know. It just so happens that some of those films are some of the best films that were technically released in this period. So it's,

it's good for us to be able to have a couple of good movies that we're excited to talk about. I think it's good for the Academy Awards to theoretically get people invested in what it is that they're doing and the movie business in general. So lots more to talk about there. To your point about what we do when we don't want to be in our house anymore, I usually go to the movie theater. And I can't go to the movie theater because global pandemic. Please be safe. I meant like a walk. I don't know. I take a lot of walks now. Masked, distanced.

That's what I do. Yes. Unfortunately, the movie theaters are closed. There was a sense last week that maybe movie theaters were saved. We didn't really do a GameStop stonks episode of this podcast. It occurred to me on an idle Friday morning, should we just get in the booth

and talk about Margin Call and Boiler Room and the big short? Should we yell at each other about what we're shorting and what we're loading up on? And our fashion friends. Yeah. And our fashion friends. I didn't do that. Should we have done that? We talked about it. You and I sent each other a lot of like partially informed messages about things that were going on. And I think our reluctance was just that we had no idea when it was going to be over or, you know, and as soon as we inserted ourselves into the narrative, then the stonks would, you know, go in the opposite direction and all sorts of maneuvers would happen. And there's the, you know, the impermanence of it.

And also our, listen, I'll just speak for myself, my just really minimal understanding. I understand some of it. I've been reading a lot. So I want to shout out Matt Levine, the Bloomberg writer who wrote the original column that was screenshotted and shared around the internet with the paragraph being like movie theaters are saved. And he is very informed and can put that in a lot more context for you guys. We're also going to try to put it in some context ourselves. But I've been reading him a lot. Very informative.

I enjoy it. But I by no means am an expert, nor did I make millions of dollars last week short selling things. For those of you listening who live under a literal rock and or do not have CNBC in your home, there was obviously this conflagration, this huge moment last week in which the users of r slash WallStreetBets attempted to provoke, ignite, complicate the nature of the stock market by investing,

buying stock in a number of distressed companies in an attempt to upend the desires of certain short sellers on those companies. And one of those companies, notably GameStop, was the one that certainly got the most press. Probably getting the second most press was AMC, the movie theater chain. And that movie theater chain has been an extraordinary amount of debt and obviously has had its whole business model threatened, not just because of the pandemic, but because of this slow devolving nature of the movie theater business over the last 15 or 20 years. And so AMC is in all this debt. And some of the folks from hedge funds who held onto that debt were able to clear it because AMC's stock price reached nearly $20 last week, which is significantly higher than the four or five, six bucks it was

trading at in the many months prior due to all of this complicated news. And so for a vanishing moment, for what seemed like 12 to 18 hours, there was so much joy and optimism about the future of AMC. And that did not seem to go well. As soon as those articles about how AMC had been saved were published, the stock price began to do exactly what you just suggested. It started to dip again. It's back under 10 bucks. And all of that excitement about what this could mean for AMC, which was able to issue new stock and theoretically invest in the future of its business, maybe improve its movie theaters, maybe build out some sort of subscription service more effectively that could help its consumers, now seems to have been eradicated. And again, I wouldn't say I'm specifically

rooting for AMC, the corporation. I want movie theaters to make it through this. And AMC is one of those movie theater companies. In fact, it's the biggest movie theater company. But I have so many conflicted feelings about this, about its survival and the way that it was being positioned and the way that we're thinking about it now. What was your reaction to AMC being positioned in this story? Well, I think at best, it was a short-term solution, right? And at best, it was going to help them with like debt and balance sheet problems in the next year. But as you've already alluded to,

I don't think that any amount of stonking was going to change the fact that people like really like to watch things in their home. And it's really easy to watch things in their home and it's really easy to watch things at home and it's often cheaper to watch things at home and even you know in a post-pandemic world and I miss movie theaters too and I want them to survive not just because I like going but because of like the economy around movie theaters and the many jobs and um lives that it. But it just is going to be different. Like it was already going this way. I think people are really tired of hearing us saying that,

but it was, there has to be a fundamental change. And I don't know whether AMC can ever get back to what it was 20 years ago. I mean, that's just not logical from a basic business and world standpoint. So they're going to have to solve some larger problems years ago. I mean, that's just not logical from a basic business and world standpoint. So they're going to have to solve some larger problems than what can be done on like our slash Wall Street bets, whatever. Yeah. I mean, experts have begun to throw a lot of cold water on AMC's future all over again, which is, I mean, it's brutal. They kind of can't get out of the news.

AMC first, they were in it with the universal showdown and trolls world tour court it because what else are they going to do? They do. You could make the case that it helps their business theoretically. It maybe helps them raise money to continue to be in the press. And that's something they've had to do to kind of offload some of that debt. Nevertheless, MarketWatch basically significantly downgraded their stock and said equity shareholders have been diluted by roughly 75% over the last couple of months. And there are still approximately $5.7 billion of debt, a total which is growing each quarter due to deferred interest payments,

which are tacked on a principal balance. Then The Motley Fool writing about this, I read last night, says AMC has burned an average of $124 million in cash in each of the last three months of 2020, or nearly $400 million a quarter. The first quarter is likely to see a similar cash burn rate. Management said the company raised enough cash to survive the year, but that's very different from being in a position where it can thrive. That's it. It's still basically imperiled here, and we'll see what happens.

You could make the case that if a company like AMC is forced to declare bankruptcy, that maybe that means a new and different kind of future for mainstream cineplex moviegoing and that another company can rise in its stead. We'll see. We'll just have to see what happens. I'm rooting for movie theaters. I just want that on record. Relatedly, I thought we should just check in on the HBO Max decision because I don't know if I'm changing my tune necessarily, but I want to refine my thoughts. I'm just literally, hold on. Let me stop right there because you want to do this, then I'm going to milk it.

Okay. I just flashed back to the emergency podcast about this decision. And you just, I know exactly where I was. I mean, I was recording a podcast, but in a different place than you. You were in your home. Yeah, but if people want some color, it was unexpected. And so I couldn't be in my normal podcasting spot and I was in a different podcasting spot, but I made it work. Okay. Because this is big news and you just weren't so angrily yelling the words Godzilla and Kong at me. You were furious at me because Godzilla and Kong was going to be available for free to you on your home device.

Should we have Bobby check in on this? Was I angrily yelling about Godzilla? Did that happen? Yes, but it's fine. It's a good thing we record these so we can go back and check out the evidence. My memories are my own. Flashback to Decembercember 3rd 2020 the other thing that i have been fascinated by and i'm very curious to see how this evolves even in terms of the movies that are announced over the next two to three years is what kinds of movies will we get will this mean that the budgets shrink or grow will this mean that the intellectual propertyization of Hollywood will change? Will an MCU movie not be as meaningful because you don't have to do the zero-sum game

of get every possible living human into a theater, otherwise the movie isn't meaningful? Is it possible that Happiest Season is actually a better play at $7 million than King Kong versus Godzilla at $180 million when they basically both count for the same level of engagement on a respective streaming service. Now it's impossible to know the other thing that this means, which I find fascinating. Um, I think I'm not saying necessarily that I love they did this. I think I'm not saying necessarily that I love they did this. I think I'm looking more specifically at the films we've seen so far from HBO

and Warner Brothers and maybe what motivated some of those things. So The Little Things has been a big topic of conversation over the last week. One because I think it's probably the most watched movie in America over the course of the last I don't know, seven or eight days. And in addition to that, Jared Leto is obviously in the awards conversation. And HBO Max has upped its subscriber numbers. They reported that they

have over 40 million activated users, whatever that means, since the Wonder Woman 1984 launch. And even though the little things in Wonder Woman 1984 are no vision of quality in the eyes of many critics, and frankly, even many regular folk who like to watch movies, they seem to be using HBO Max, which is really all HBO Max wanted. They wanted people to get on their service. Now, conversely, there's a movie coming out in a couple of weeks that we'll actually talk about later in this episode too, Judas and the Black Messiah, that I don't think there was a guarantee of a theatrical audience. But I think a lot of people are going to watch this movie because it's going to be available to them on HBO Max,

which they have because they signed up because of Wonder Woman 1984 and the little things among other stuff that is on that service. And so now I look at this and I'm like, this is great because a lot of people are going to watch Judas and the Black Messiah, which I think is terrific. It's great because most of these films are not very good anyway. So people aren't wasting their money in movie theaters, having to worry about the dissatisfaction of the theatrical experience, having spent $60 to bring their family to go see Wonder Woman 1984. The timing is not inconvenient because January, February is usually dumpuary and maybe warner brothers was dumping some of these titles and so this is it kind of feels like win win win

what do you think yeah but i didn't i always think that i mean we have a record of it i you know i understand it's bad for um kind of long term what types of movies are made and how the business how the business is structured. And because there are financial implications to it. And so-and-so's backend means that like, so, you know, they'll only spend this much money and, you know, whatever. I understand that. And we are both on record as liking it when movies have a lot of, you know, cost a lot of money. Like I, that's fine. I still like big tent poles. I still think if you can get a studio to pay a lot of money for something, go for it. You deserve it. Let's see what we can do.

So I think long-term as it affects the market, but in terms of people being able to see movies with movie stars in a time when they otherwise would not be able to, great, A plus. Yeah. Whether or not that specifically happens what you're suggesting which is that the scale of movies is significantly reduced and that hbo max movies look more like netflix movies which sometimes is a good thing and sometimes it's not such a good thing it feel that can feel a little bit more cut rate we'll see i mean i would say lockdown felt a little bit which was a hbo max streaming movie starring in hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor and many other movie stars. But that had a Netflix feel to it.

But it was still, that was Doug Liman, that was Stephen Knight. It was more quality than I am used to in a straight-to-streaming movie. It was also a quarantine movie, though, too, which I think puts an asterisk on it. So it's very hard to say. It's very unclear.

And Netflix does make very big tentpole-y style movies. I think they're still trying to figure out how necessarily to launch those movies and create the ongoing IP experience that so many theatrical releases currently have. But just in the next couple of months here on HBO Max, they're putting a Tom and Jerry movie out, which is just good for kids and that's good for families. And that's one more thing in the Trolls World Tour soul constellation of adults needing to sign up for services for their children. That's probably a win. We got a big old Snyder cut coming. You ready for that cut? Pure cut? Yeah. Yeah.

Four hours, Amanda. Four hours. I'm really excited. Are we going to... Will we be allowed to take bathroom breaks? This is one of the things I was wondering about. No. No bathroom breaks, unfortunately for you unfortunately for chris ryan for bobby no one can use the restroom so we won't like stop recording if i gotta you know take a call or something i just roll out and you guys keep talking uh no no you cannot step away you have to sit and watch the film in its entirety we won't be pausing is that legal not only that but that is also the rule for anyone who wants to listen to the pod if you want to listen to the pod you're not allowed to use the restroom so i'm sorry if this seems draconian in some way but okay that's

just that's what zach snyder intended and we're trying to represent his artistic intent here on this podcast okay cool after the snyder cut uh the aforementioned godzilla and king versus king kong's coming out um You know, we'll see. It's Godzilla. It's Godzilla. It certainly is. Kong bows to no one, but we bow to Godzilla vs. Kong. There's a Mortal Kombat movie coming out after that.

Did you know that? No. Did you play Mortal Kombat? No, I didn't really. There was one arcade version of it at a place where I could go and briefly interact with video games which has like an outsized memory and for me because I don't I didn't really play video games so I know what it was so when you play Mortal Kombat you know it's a fighting game and there'd be two characters maybe fighting each other and if you successfully

defeated in two rounds your opponent you were then allowed to perform what was called a fatality. And before the fatality, you would hear an announcer's voice say, finish him or finish her. Very, very exciting moment when you're 11 years old at an arcade and you heard that. I was thinking that this podcast deserves Amanda's fatality where you just finish someone on the podcast.

Where you're like, I got a chance to see this film and I would like to finish someone. What do you think? You know, I'm open to it. So I'm doing this in my head all day, every day. I mean, you may have to be somewhat political and selective about who you finish on a moment to moment basis, but you seem capable of a fatality. Something that crossed my mind. That's one of the nicest things you've ever said to me. I don't know whether you meant it as such, but that's how I'm receiving it. So yeah, I mean, with the exception of Judas and the Black Messiah,

most of these movies are certainly not awards worthy. And frankly, they may not even be good, but they're going to be content. They're going to be something that people have around to experience. And it's probably going to keep people on HBO Max, would be my guess, and probably grow their subscriber base, which is really what they want to do. And I feel like we are now in the, we're in the zone now with the five big companies are doing everything that they can.

We'll talk a little bit about a big acquisition that Apple made at Sundance shortly in this conversation. You look at everything that Amazon prime is doing. You look at the way that Netflix is positioning itself, both as a every week of the year release calendar strategy you know who am I forgetting Hulu and Disney plus Amazon did you say Amazon I did I did mention Amazon okay you keeping up with WandaVision no but I'm hearing people are really liking it and also I am keeping up with podcast content related to WandaVision specifically the Elizabeth Olsen episode of Table Manners with Jesse Ware. Do you know about this podcast? I was made aware of it by the podcast Jam Session, which you're a co-host of. So Jesse Ware, who's a musician, and her mother, Lenny,

host a podcast. And they are my new best friends. I listen to them every day. But the Elizabeth Olsen episode is wonderful for many reasons, including she talks a lot about the MCU process, and she talks about her contract with Marvel and the MCU. So that seems great. Maybe I'll finish WandaVision. How's it going? Well, episode three, I think, was along the same lines of episodes one and two in terms of the homage strategy.

Episode four, I would say, is more Marvel-y. And i don't know if you would like that or not like that it's up to you but it is a significant difference do you know who he is now there is some revelations about the beekeeper i would say it's very the show is very clever i'm really enjoying it um unsurprisingly once i got to the third episode i was like oh i see what they're doing here and i get it um i i i mentioned this to chris ryan in a in a private call yesterday, but I was like, it's just extraordinary how Marvel knows how to keep you on the chain here. They have a real sixth sense for what their audience wants. I mean, I think the only thing was that they only released the first two episodes and not the first three all at once to keep you on the hook because

then you had your, if I may, brief meltdown about about it but we got you back you got me and i i think i think the one mistake is that if if it had been released altogether it would just be like a total sensation but i agree with you i think there are some people who are saying they should have released the fourth episode as the first episode that would have been all wrong i think i think it may have been annie greenwald and chris on the watch who pointed out that the genius who decided to make the fourth episode the fourth episode deserves a raise because that it made the show

make so much more sense, not just to people like me, but to a lot of different kinds of viewers of the show who have Disney Plus. So, you know, maybe we'll get into WandaVision more in the future. There's a lot of stuff going

on in the world of movies. Nothing bigger in the past week, probably, though, than the Sundance Film Festival. So let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk with our pal Adam Naiman about the best stuff we saw. Well, we're delighted to be rejoined by Adam Naiman, Ringer contributor,

great film critic. Adam, how you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. Thanks for having me. Adam, Amanda, you and I all experienced a virtual Sundance Film Festival. Now, I know you were never an attendee of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. Amanda and I were last year for the first time for both of us. So this is something a little bit new. I'm curious for both of you guys. Adam, feel free to start here here what was the virtual sundance like for you how did it go well i left my back door open and ate overpriced takeout and i figured that that was pretty much like um utah utah in january now i'm uh i'm housebound with a a newborn baby daughter so in that sense because people were tweeting they're like oh these are all the bad things about festivals like seeing new movies with none of the fun stuff. And I thought, well, actually, it's quite cozy to kind of be watching these things a

bit at my convenience and not abandoning my family. But I had the strange experience last fall that I wrote for for the site about TIFF being virtual. Because I know this city, and I know where to go and to eat and to drink, and I entertain people, and it's very social. And I felt an acute sense of lack when that happened in September. I was like, this sucks. This for Sundance, I didn't think that it sucked. And I thought their platform and their interface was great.

And it was really not a bad experience in that sense at all. What about for you, Amanda? Yeah, I would agree. I would like to give a lot of credit to everyone who organized this Sundance virtual festival. It is really hard to make a streaming service that works this well and that hosts this many people. And I don't want to be like too nerdy about technical stuff, but I've used enough streaming services and also used enough screeners from major tech companies that should be able to figure this out to know that this is like a real achievement. And it was really easy. And I feel the opposite, which is getting to watch movies is the fun part of a film festival. And, you know, trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be in freezing cold weather with like a lot of like social media activation surrounding me

is the bad part. So I felt mostly relief and gratitude for everyone who organized this festival. I give them an A. I would like to have an honest conversation about my own Sundance viewing performance at some point during this podcast because I watched a lot of movies. I don't think I picked. I don't think I did a great job picking. I don't know that I was always invested in the same way that I would be in person. I'm hard on myself as I am on everybody

else. But it was interesting to try to recreate that. Okay, now I'm watching this movie and it might be like really spectacular alone in my home at like 2pm on a Saturday. I don't have the self discipline, I guess. Yeah, I think it's a complicated conversation here because on the one hand, I'll just echo what you guys said. I had a great personal experience. Kudos to Tabitha Jackson and everyone who was running that festival. This is hard. And they clearly had a lot of people engaged in the festival and they managed it really well. And I liked having the opportunity to see so many films over such a condensed period of time. I don't know if this is a product of the fact that most films that already had distributors were simply not participating. I thought the slate was a little weak this year,

and it's complicated because I don't want to denigrate the hard work that a lot of people put into putting the festival on, to curating it, and then, of course, the filmmakers who made it. But it was hard to take a chance on something and feel like you got what you wanted. And some of that is obviously because of the pandemic and everything that's going on in the world. Some of it, I think, is relative to the complexities of what it is to be an indie movie, whatever that means in 2021. And I think for me, the documentary films resonated a lot more than some of the narrative films, which you'll hear as we talk through some of this stuff. And thus far, there have only been a couple of acquisitions, which I think is notable. Most of the films that came into the festival this year did not have a distributor. The two big acquisitions were Coda, which sold to Apple for $25 million. Now, Adam, I know you didn't get a chance to see this film. Amanda and I did get a chance to see it.

This is the rare thing that happened at Sundance that felt very Sundance normie. This is a heartwarming story. CODA is an acronym for Child of Deaf Adult. It's a story about music and a family with a disability. And it's about a young woman who is the sole person who is not hearing impaired in her family, including her parents and her brother. And it's like fine. It is the most fine Sundance, you know, formulaic movie that I've ever seen. And it got a somewhat rapturous response from a certain pocket of the

critical and industry community. And frankly, that happens every year at Sundance. And so in that way, I felt comforted by the CODA experience. I don't know. Amanda, what did you think? I want to say that it's a good version of the movie that it is, which is like a heartwarming, broad family, like pulling the strings. And I'm not going to lie. I cried at the climactic thing. I knew exactly what was coming. I knew exactly I was being manipulated. I felt the moment before it started. And then I felt myself tearing up because I'm a human being. So I guess it's successful in that. I watched this film on Friday night of Sundance during the first trade reports of like, there's a bidding war for Coda

had started, but we didn't know how much had been sold for him. And I placed bets with my husband after we watched it of like how much. And I guessed, I believe 8 million, which I thought was going to be pretty good. And then it broke the record with 25 million. And that has nothing to do with what I think like the artistic value of this movie is at all or whether people enjoy it or not because you know it's completely separate but um yeah people just getting really psyched and paying a tremendous amount of money for one good for them I guess yeah I think it's this is as much Apple putting its stake in the ground in terms of this space in the same way that Hulu putting its stake in the ground with Neon last year on Palm Springs and Netflix years before

this acquiring films out of Sundance. This is sort of a rite of passage for ascendant streamers to show that they too are a part of the movie industry in a meaningful way and can acquire these films. So I'm sure Coda will be a film that we were talking about at some point on the show later this year. And I'm bringing this up and I'm bringing up also Rebecca Hall's Passing, which was just acquired for looks like north of $15 million by Netflix, which is a film that I know both of you guys liked quite a bit. Because I'm curious about the idea of like buzz. And if that is if that is that's already kind of a loaded and fake word when it comes to

film festivals and is seemingly very anecdotal and very generated by the media. But in this case, when we're not all together and watching movies together, what does it mean for a movie to have buzz? Adam, what do you think? I mean, I think that, you know, much like any technology, technology kind of replicates what's already there and what we already are. I'm not going to lapse into simulation theory yet. We'll get to glitch in the matrix later. But, online is kind of like buzz in person. Who do you trust? What kind of mood are you in? Who do you tend to listen to? Do you care that someone else likes something or doesn't like something? Social media amplifies it and maybe forces you to share in it in a way you don't have to in person. Because if I'm at a film festival and there's

someone who I don't like, I walk away. And I guess on Twitter, the equivalent of that is muting or actually probably hyper-focusing on what the people I don't like say because we're all so bored and sitting around. But I mean, this was interesting at TIFF as well because there, there were a lot of films that already had distributors. It was not, let's say, a super strong selection at TIFF, much like you're saying with this year's Sundance, though I personally actually didn't have a bad time because I chose to not watch bad movies or CODA, so I was okay. But yeah, Buzz becomes kind of weird. It's definitely not a bar table vibe or a screening line vibe. And one thing I didn't do, I don't know if you guys did it, I didn't do the thing

where you wait in the virtual queue before the movie and virtually talk to your virtual colleagues, which they said they were setting up and which sounded really nice in theory. And then you don't actually have time to do it because actually being at home means I don't have to do any of that. Yeah, I didn't do any of that either. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is I have a whole other job to do most of the time. And so I spent a lot of my time just doing that job. But in addition to that, I would actually just rather spend that time watching more movies. And that probably relates to my reflection on the slate, which is I watched 30 plus movies that played at this Sundance Film Festival. I was lucky to do a couple of screenings before the festival actually started and had links and things like that. And I was happy to have that. But in watching

so many movies, invariably, the math starts to work against you, where if you watch that many movies, it's unlikely you're going to love more than one fifth of them, if not less. So I'm being tough on some things. And I agree that there are some really good movies here. And if I were a bit more curatorial, I wouldn't be as hard on it. Amanda, what about for you? I mean, we talk about Buzz on this show all the time, and most of it feels very manufactured. How do you feel about the version of buzz at Sundance this year? I agree with Adam that the buzz is now all kind of social media influenced and manufactured.

It's also just where we experience it. But the social media aspects of it, they both flatten it and speed it up, right? Like we went from Coda being released to it being sold for $25 million, I think in 24 hours. And even those of us who were participating in Sundance kind of had whiplash about it, like what? Okay. And I think it's, it becomes a little bit overwhelming because the buzz both is everyone all at once. And then I think dies out as quickly. And that, of course, replicates social media. We all get really fixated on a thing and then we all move on to the next thing.

And everybody has it's like white hot moment. And then you forget about it. And I don't know if that's good long-term for movies. And I had a hard time with it just in the sense of by the time I got to a movie that someone else had already told me was great. It, you know, we'd gone through three backlash and cycles of it and, you know, nothing can compete with the expectations of everyone sharing their opinion online all at once. Can I, one thing that to go off what Amanda's saying, and maybe also you have thoughts on this, Sean, is that Sundance's online reputation is always bad. Every year, there are friends of mine who do a fake Sundance movie hashtag, which is very funny. Like this is the sort of movie you would see at this festival. I think more than any other festival in North America and maybe almost anywhere, there is an idea of a Sundance movie that is not positive. It's actually very negative and sarcastic and I think often correct. There you add to that the fact that it was a virtual festival

and the way that because people can't go anywhere, they made a big deal of virtually attending this, like people changing their Twitter names to so-and-so at Sundance. Maybe there wasn't that much hype this year, but there's a ton of cattiness about the festival just in general. Like, why are they bothering?

And I don't even totally disagree. I prefer to judge movies based on the actual movies I'm watching. But the attitude around Sundance annually is always a little sarcastic. And this didn't help. Yeah, it raises an interesting question, I think about the purpose of a festival like this and like TEF and like Berlin and like I can and all of the other film festivals, which is, you know, are they meant to be ceremonial displays of great artwork? Are they meant to be a business trade show in which new property is acquired and ultimately

marketed and distributed? Are they meant to be a convivial meeting of the people who work in this industry and talk about the future of it? Are they meant to be a platform for the press to go gaga over stuff that doesn't necessarily deserve that kind of attention? I think all of those things historically have been true. When you're experiencing them virtually, I think they raise specific questions about their necessity and also how we were going to return to say the workplace over the course of the next year. I don't know what the future of film festivals is going to be. I don't know if you guys, you know, Adam, you being in Toronto, do you sense that TIFF this October is going to go back to the way it was circa 2015? You know, it's, it's hard to say. And while I don't work directly for the festival, I have worked with them and done things at the festival and at their year-round programming. And it's a very, uh And it's a very emotional spot for me to think about because last year we were all

adjusting, but now I really miss it. And the social aspect of it is something I miss. And I know other people who have similar memories about places like True False or South by Southwest. If you're lucky enough to write about films and privileged enough to travel to them. Even the complaining is a kind of privilege and you want to be able to do it. And for a city like Toronto, where the film culture ecosystem at every level, production, distribution, exhibition, journalism is so dependent on a big thing like TIFF happening, of course I want it to happen, but we don't know. What's going to be very interesting, I think, is if some of just the basic social differences in the world, in terms of how different cultures and places have responded to the pandemic and how governments have handled it, might reshuffle the festival ecosystem to some

extent. And without putting too fine a point on it, if, let's say, I don't know, the United States is not at the top of that pecking order after a year, that could change a lot of things about dates and desirability of destination. I've thought about this a lot. It's not a small thing. It's not. My two favorite film festivals are Telluride and South by Southwest. I was supposed to go to Telluride last year. I opted to roll over my fee to attend a Telluride next year. And now I'm not so sure that we will be holding it in quite the same fashion. Amanda, what do you think?

Will you be back in person at a film festival in the next 12 months? I have a characteristically selfish answer to this. But I was throughout the festival just thinking about, you know, is this better for my job? Because it is a lot more efficient. I saw more films at the Sundance Festival this year than I did last year. And that's just like plain logistics. And because I was able to just dip in and out of things, it is, it is easier to get to, I didn't see 30, like Sean, I'm not, you know, I'm not in that job, but I, it's easier to get to a higher count if they're just all on your computer. But then on the flip side, I'm like, did I see, was that time spent well? Because

is this, are these Sundance entrance this year going to be in the awards conversation? Are they all going to be sold? I mean, also like I just picked badly several times, I think. So then I'm just, is that a good use of my time? And is it like, does the festival still have to be in person and have that buzz and have that sales element in order for it to be time well spent for my work, which no one cares about but me. But so it's like a chicken and egg thing. The answer is, I don't know. And Adam's right. And there's so much to be determined in terms of logistics and how we put the world back together. And I think film festivals, while hugely important to the artists who participate in them and

to critics and buyers, they're low on the list of things that we have to get figured out in the next, I don't know, one to five years. I made a grave error during the Sundance Film Festival this year, which is at a certain point, I closed out of the app on my Apple TV and I pulled up the Criterion channel and I looked at all the films I've not seen that are available on the Criterion channel. And I was like, boy, am I really going to rappel down a rabbit hole of four totally unknown titles that may never be distributed ever and feel frustrated that I spent my time that way. But hey, it's a very small gamble, as you say.

It's a really a modest concern. You're telling me Coda is not going to be on the Criterion channel in 30 years? You know what, Adam? You haven't seen it. You haven't seen it, man. You never know. I haven't. You never know.

I would highly doubt it, though, because it is owned and operated by Apple. And so, okay, very quickly, let's just recap at least the US awards. I think the world cinema aspect of Sundance is never the most hallowed aspect of the festival. So just focusing on the US awards, I think they're notable. Last year, a movie like Minari,

which is a big part of the awards conversation, won for the US Dramatic Audience Award this year. CODA won. CODA won four of the six U.S. Dramatic Awards, including Audience, the Special Jury Award for Ensemble, the Directing Award for Sean Heeter, and Grand Jury Prize.

That's interesting. I think that does speak a little bit to the narrow selection amongst some of the narrative dramatic category. And then on the doc category, a film that didn't make any of our lists, but that I enjoyed is Summer of Soul or when the- Yes, it did.

Did it make your list? Yeah. Oh, I misspoke. I'm sorry. It's on the very first one on my list. That's spoiler. Great movie. Maybe because you didn't have the full title written out there.

I'm sorry, that's true. But Summer of Soul or when the revolution could not be televised, which is Amir Queslav Thompson's directorial debut, a music documentary. It is very good that Amanda can talk about very shortly on the show. And that also won multiple awards

and seemed to have a very warm reception for a lot of reasons that Amanda can elucidate. And then there were a couple of other, All Light Everywhere, a film I'll talk about, Cusp, a film I'll talk about, Homeroom, a film I'll talk about, also won awards here. There did not seem to be as much pomp and circumstance around those awards as there typically is too, perhaps for the same reason.

But I assume, did anything jump out to you guys about the way that this was handed out or even what this complex of awards giving is like? I mean, the piece that I wrote on the festival for the site, I did talk about how sometimes the history of Sundance's prizes is like a bit of an elephant graveyard of movies that seem important at the time. You know, like the miseducation of Cameron Post or me, Earl and the Dying Girl, like films that seem really, really crucial for about two and a half weeks. And it's like, who cares? But I also think it's interesting to see any festival where a film sweeps awards like that, both the kind of juried ones and the audience ones i mean this is a not i don't mean it as a reach but like when barton fink won three prizes at can in 91 the can festival was

like we can't do that anymore you know we maximum two prizes per film and you know to try and spread the awards out so i think the lack of diversity both in terms of not being a bunch of different movies but also the other meaning of diversity meaning all the awards went to this one film with lots of other movies from other places and other directors and other backgrounds, a little odd. And I think it's being covered as being a bit odd, at least in the corners that I occupy. People are like, why did that happen? That is very strange. And the fact that it happens to be for the film that sold for 25 million dollars is also strange i read it as both an indicator of kind of the lack of depth that you have both alluded to and that i agree with and then also maybe an indicator of how people interacted with this festival and people heard that coda sold for a lot of money and

watched it and knew to seek that out. And it was easier actually to seek it out. That's another part of Sundance is that when you're there or any festival, you're there in person and something does become like really buzzy, it can still be very hard to get in to see the movie. And here, as long as you set your schedules right,

which once again, Amanda did not always, but that's okay. You could actually see the main movie and it seems like people just kind of glommed on to it. Like that buzz phenomenon of like, oh, is this the one? Okay, then this is the one. And it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's do our list.

There was some good stuff here and I'm excited to talk about a couple of these things. So Adam, why don't we start with you? What's the first film you wanna celebrate here at the film festival? Are we going in reverse order? Sure, yes. Sure.

I mean, it's sort of a bit of a cliche that I would start with this. I ended my piece with it, which was In the Earth by Ben Wheatley, who's a director that I have a lot of interest in, having written a book on him and followed his work. And I thought the consensus around it as a return to form was interesting because he's never been a unanimous director. So the return in this case was not to a movie that everyone liked, but at least to a movie that everyone didn't hate, which is kind of how people felt about Rebecca, which was such a, as a fan of his, such a disappointing movie, not just to watch, but to see his kind of reputation just assailed that way. It's like,

why remake Rebecca? Why do it for Netflix, et cetera. This is much tougher and leaner and closer to the ground and mixes tones and genres and has that ferociousness that I think people associate with him when he's good. I mean, the,

the super quick plot summary is it's about two people who go out into the forest for very vaguely defined reasons in the middle of a very vaguely defined pandemic that might be COVID, but probably isn't. And, uh, a lot of both bad and bad vibey things ensue, but I don't know. I, I think it's too long. I think it's 110 minutes and maybe only 85 or 90 of them are really cooking. But when it's good, it's clearly the work of the filmmaker who I love. And part of what I loved about it or what I really liked about parts of it is just that elasticity of tone where it's funny and disgusting and anxious and absurd kind of all at the same time. He doesn't differentiate between these

things when he's good to me. And I admire that a lot. You said it. This would have been on my list too, but it probably would have been about number five. And I just didn't want to want a chance to talk about more films here, but when it's good, it's really good. It's really good. Ben, Ben Wheatley. And it's not always really good, but there are some moments that are absolutely wonderful, especially relative to a lot of the stuff I was watching. There are a couple of electrifying moments in this movie. So that's a good pick. And maybe I'll talk about it a little bit more next week when we talk about the idea of the quarantine movie.

Because one thing I liked about it is, as opposed to most people making quote unquote quarantine movies, this movie is happening outside. And that seemed like a very clever way to invert what we think the production model should be here, as opposed to being in one room. A quarantine movie outside, and also one that has sound and image that almost is like it will drive you from your house it's like oh you're gonna watch this at home well no you're gonna you're gonna run out of your living room which of course the the inversion being that if and when this

thing plays in theaters and i think at sundance it actually played at a drive-in or two i could be wrong but when this plays in theaters this is like a true midnight freak out movie where the experience of being assaulted like that by sound especially but also by this stroboscopic EDM close encounters the third kind but folk horror light show I think is going to feel pretty exhilarating like I could imagine a midnight audience sitting and watching this movie not all all alone in their homes, but together. And it was a nice feeling. Of all the movies I watched this year, it was the one that I wished I was in a theater for most. 100%.

When it flips on, when it tips over halfway through, there's something electrifying. Amanda, this is definitively not an Amanda movie, I must say. Well, I knew that as soon as you said horror film by Ben Wheatley. But then also once Naaman said something about EDM strobe lights, I was like, I'm out. Good luck. I'm glad that you guys have things that you love. And not for me. I'm going to bed. What was for you? What was your number five? So I didn't know we were ranking them. So I'm doing this on the fly. Once again, these are loose approximations. Okay. It just, but like I tried really hard and I would just give myself a C on my Sundance performance. It's, you know, cause we don't reward effort only performance. Anyway,

I'm going to go with, uh, in the same breath, which is a documentary by non-food Wang, who was the director of one child nation, which I very much recommend. It was also a big sentence hit. And this is a COVID movie. And I have really like a COVID documentary about COVID-19. And one of the jarring things about it is that it starts, you know, many of the dates are late January of 2020. And I was watching it in late January of 2021. And that that had the intended chilling effect. I am a little complicated about COVID documentaries right now, just because,

you know, we're still living in it, but, and the, you know, the impulse to narrativize when it's, we still have a lot to solve can be complicated, even though that is how we understand things. But a lot of this, the director is, is, is here in the U S she moved from China to the U S I believe nine years ago. And she found a lot of photographers and videographers in China to film a lot of the footage that is in this film. And that footage is pretty astonishing. And kind of what she's doing in terms of the on the ground footage, and she's scouring kind of social media sites and taking, you know, a lot of things that are later censored. That is a look at COVID and the Chinese response to COVID that I just would not have access to. And I thought was pretty remarkable. She tries to bring in the American

failures as well. And I think that's interesting, but like, especially when you get into some of like the misinformation stuff is like a little rushed but i understand why because it was made in a year um but i i really do think just kind of the access and the footage um is worth recommending i found it hard to watch because it's just yes terrible time in history i did watch it um and that has nothing to do with the filmmaking it's just how much do you want to be reminded it's very similar to in the same uh uh in the earth um the fact that in the same breath and in the earth are so close in title even it's kind of chilling because they're both reminders of a difficult period um i wanted to give a quick shout out to the sparks brothers which is one of the more celebrated movies of the

sundance film festival for obvious reasons it's directed by edgar wright filmmaker i love um i think this is an interesting documentary to discuss it It's a very long film about a band that very few people have heard of called Sparks, a Los Angeles duo of brothers who make a very brainy and active kind of, I guess, postmodernist rock and roll is the best way to describe it. Edgar Wright is a huge fan of that band. On the one hand, this movie is way too long and way too dedicated to its source material and spends a lot of time digressing on things that are not necessarily meaningful to a broad audience. On the other hand, I kind of love that about it. I kind of love that Edgar Wright's decision to just say, I'm just making the exact movie about something I love.

And if you don't like it, that's okay. But otherwise, maybe this will be a portal for you to this band. And it has some sort of typically Edgar Wrightian flourishes and some kind of antic filmmaking, tons of interviews. But the thing that I think most recommends it is the fact that the brothers who consist of Sparks are just very strange, singular dudes. And the way that they are presented and have presented themselves over the years is unlike any other band. And even after watching the film, I'm not totally sure I get where they came from or what they're after. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but they have managed to preserve their idiosyncrasy despite being in front of a camera for what seems like hours and hours and hours. So very interesting

movie and obviously very well made by a kind of master of his craft and also kind of unusual i think for sundance that someone this high profile would do something that seems otherwise not like a a blockbuster so that's the sparks brothers what do you got adam i'm trying to think of what i can do next for efficiency's sake looking at everybody else's list. Why don't I mention one that Amanda liked as well, and Sean, I don't know if you saw or just left it off, which is Judas and the Black Messiah. Which strikes me as a movie that is now positioned, interestingly, calendar-wise, because in a normal year, if this is a Sundance premiere, then it's a very long tale to get it into the quote unquote awards conversation. I'm not sure if you guys know what the awards conversation is.

It's a conversation that people have about film awards. What? Are they doing that? Yeah, they do that now. Someone should start a podcast about that. But now, playing at Sundance in January, in the year of our Lord 2021, this movie is also being positioned by the various guilds and critics groups and voting bodies as a kind of Oscar contender. And this is a strange function of pandemic land, right? I mean, I don't want to be wrong and say that this has never

happened, but typically if a movie premieres at Sundance, it then has to wait a year. And now it's like a movie premieres at Sundance and those rules are kind of out the window. I mean, I don't think the interesting thing about the movie is Oscars, but it is going to get a certain amount of notoriety and attention because it's sitting right there. It's a docudrama by a director named Shaka King, whose previous film is called Newlyweeds, which is like a Brooklyn stoner romance. So the way you go from that to this muscular docudrama about the FBI plotting the assassination of Fred Hampton is an interesting trajectory in and of itself. I believe Ryan Coogler is involved with this film on some level. And I think people are looking at a similar trajectory from a kind of indie guy to maybe a kind of very, very gifted kind of mainstream

player filmmaker with Shaka King. I mean, I'm going to write more about the film, I think, for the site, and maybe Amanda can talk more about what's in it. But I thought it was a pretty striking, big canvas, real serious grown-up movie and a really successful narrative movie. And that's not putting down the non-narrative or documentary experimental stuff at Sundance. That's what I gravitated towards and actually chose to watch, right? But in the middle of all that, to watch something that I recognize on some level is, this is the kind of movie that usually comes out at the end of a given year, and that people get really excited about, and that kind of makes an impact, was a kind of strange

wrinkle in my Sundance viewing. I also think the fact that this comes out in the same year as Trial of the Chicago 7, which it is considerably better than while orbiting similar material, it just makes for a ready-made discourse or conversation about how do the Black Panthers look in a movie made by a narcissistic, self-glorifying white filmmaker who could give a shit? And how do they look in a movie like this? I think it's a big difference. And I think that whatever merit Chicago 7 has, this is a sort of very necessary double bill to that movie. Yeah, we've had a few of those. I felt similarly about Mangrove when you put those two movies next to each other and how they feel and look um Amanda I know you've got it on your list too Amanda and I are going to do a whole episode about this movie next week because I was gonna say I don't I don't

want to step on it too much because we um we're gonna I really like this film and we're gonna talk about it next week I hope that we continue to talk about it during award season um I agree with everything Adam said you know it is it's a It is a biopic that is playing with both the history of that genre and the structure of that genre and how you tell a biographical story. And I love all of that. And it's immensely watchable. So I look forward to talking more. And I do hope that these newfound things called awards shows continue to include it. I think you also hit the nail on the head there, Adam, with the hopeful positioning of Shaka King as a mainstream filmmaker who is able to take on

serious material that will be paid for properly by studios. That would be a nice outcome, candidly, because there's just not a lot of people that are being put in that position these days. I'll quickly shout out three documentaries that have a lot in common. They are called Try Harder, Homeroom, and Cusp. Cusp is directed by two women named

Isabel Bethencourt and Parker Hill. Try Harder is directed by a woman named Debbie Lum, and Homeroom is the third in a trilogy of films about Oakland by the filmmaker Peter N nix all three of these films are about high school kids and what it's like to be a high school kid in 2018 1920 and let me tell you it seems like it sucks it seems like it's really hard and complicated adam you're a father of two i wish you well in your journey to raising these children maybe maybe in Canada, it's a little bit easier. These American children at these various high schools, one in Texas, one in Lowell High School in San Francisco, and one in Oakland High School.

And the various challenges that they have in these three films look at like three very specific different prisms of the high school experience. Homeroom is very much about the way that social activism and what's happening in the world collides with young students. And I must say, I did not realize that the, you know, for lack of a better phrase, the kind of woke dialogue had so clearly infiltrated the school systems and youth at that level, which was fascinating to see. Try Harder is very much about the aspiration to achievement and getting into the right college and the anxiety that that provokes in a predominantly Asian American populated school. And Cusp is about

three young women essentially right after high school in that weird fever dream of summer that happens before you go away to college or go into the workplace or decide what you're going to do and the challenges that some of these women face. I thought three very well-made films, all three verite, but done in completely different styles with completely different tones, different editing strategies. And as anybody who's heard me talk about Boy State knows that this is kind of a... And also Minding the Gap from a few years ago, this is kind of a sweet spot for me in terms of my interests and watching people coming of age, not in the somewhat bullshitty coda way where it's very mechanized and strategized. And then what feels a little bit more, if not realistic, at least aspiring to be realistic.

So I'm cheating by putting three of those movies together, but they totally fit together. And it's interesting that they were all booked together like this. Okay, Adam, what do you got next? Why don't I mention another one that Amanda liked and that that like judas and the black messiah is kind of um uh maybe an example i mean again you don't want to use a vague word like mainstream but certainly an example of a movie that probably would have a kind of boutique or or or art house or kind of you know mainstream art has released which is passing which as you said just sold for 16 million dollars which is the directorial debut of Rebecca Hall and which looks positioned both in good and bad ways to be a

very talk about a bull movie I mean I was just really interested for the Q&A for this film because this is a film from a novel that was written I think it's 1929, it's the late 1920s, by Nella Larson, which is about two African-American women who are friends from high school who reunite when one returns from Chicago to New York and sort of confides to her friend that she's been passing for white. So it's a really interesting movie about navigating social cases and classes and about perception and, you know, about a phenomenon that's kind of deep in American life. And then Rebecca Hall is a white movie star. Now, I watched the Q&A, and she talks about the mixed race background in her family and on her family's side, the fact

that she had family members who did pass or who grappled with some of that some of that sort of perceptual stress is what drew her to the material and also what drew her to cast Tessa Thompson and Ruth Nego both of whom are terrific in this movie I thought so there is a context for Hall making this movie I also think that the more people that see this and the more writing that happens on it there's going to be lots of reckoning with this and there should be about what stories are told and who tells them and who should write about them and who is qualified to write about them and who's qualified to see whether this is you know correct or not but i thought as a period piece and as a character drama and as a movie about

this weird not weird but this very precise two-way kind of envy where you have these two characters who look at each other and they're like well we're kind of the same and we're kind of each other's mirror and we've kind of gone in different directions and we each kind of want what the other person wants and should I be happy or jealous or pitying or empathetic I thought the dance of that was really kind of deft and really, you know, really conveyed beautifully by the actors. And it's a really extraordinarily well sound designed film. It's got this wonderfully subjective use, immersive use of sound. Some of the things that the camera lingers on, visual details about bodies and costumes suggest a real filmmaker. I mean,

leaving the question of her background and motivations aside, Rebecca Hall can definitely direct a movie. As an example of a movie directed by an actor, it's pretty impressive. And so for people listening to the show, this won't be the last they hear of this movie. Sometimes with Sundance, it's like you talk about it and that's it. I think that this is a movie that's gonna come up a bunch this year uh and the fact that it was just purchased for 16 million dollars and has distribution I think kind of cinches that yeah I would agree with everything you said Adam I think that this is a movie that will continue to be discussed and that it in some

ways is like is meant to be discussed you know it, it's, it's open to that, not in like a trolling way, but just kind of, it has the, it's a, um, like a, a dialogue prompt, I guess. Um, but also I thought of like a very accomplished, like first feature film from Rebecca Hall and everything that you said, the performances are great. It looks great. The sound design, um, you were saying it does feel to me like, you know, searchlight five years ago, like a classic fall kind of period piece with an idea, elegant movie, uh, that you would go see like in an upper West side theater, if you live in New York. Um, but that's, that's cool. I like that. And I think this was kind of one of the more fully realized

films that i saw at sundance and that's why it's on my list the most fully realized thing i saw at sundance for better or worse i think is a movie called all light everywhere which is directed by theo anthony who's a documentarian who made a a much celebrated movie in 2016 called rat film that is fascinating. The thing he's made that I most have enjoyed is a short film he made last year called Subject to Review, which Amanda, I don't know if you've seen this, but it's a movie about essentially instant replay and review in sports, particularly in the sport of tennis. And it's a very amusing, self-referential sort of, it's not meta ironic, but it's,

it's metatextual about what we're actually looking at when we look back on something and all light everywhere is a somewhat more serious attempt to pursue similar ideas around the world of policing and how we cat body cameras and the sort of weaponization of being videotaped and what that means, how we're all sort of seeing each other all of the time. It's a very heady movie. It's an essay film as well as a sort of verite film as well as a into-camera sort of interview style documentary. It's got all these disparate parts. It's the sort of movie that doesn't exactly have what you'd call narrative momentum, but has so many ideas and such a po-faced look at a absurd world and an absurd way of looking

at the world, literally looking at the world. I just thought it was a really accomplished piece of documentary filmmaking. And you just don't see many people attempting to make films like this at this level, with this sort of, with this level of attention too. So I really appreciated this movie and I'll be curious to see where it lands and how it lands, because it's not exactly commercial in any meaningful way, but it is, he is a really a fascinating filmmaker.

And that, that film subject to review that short film was, was developed and sold or developed and produced by ESPN. And so, you know, Theo Anthony, I think has some ideas about how to slip his ideas into the mainstream.

Go ahead, Adam. I just missed it. Like, I had it ready to go, and that was just one of the things. The downside of a virtual film festival is when you're there, tired, hungover, annoyed, you still go to the movies. And when you're at home, it's like,

I'm going to see my kid, sorry. And that made me feel especially bad in the case of Theo Anthony, because he's a good filmmaker subject to reviews. Great. And most of the people I follow or a lot of the people I follow, like Sean was saying, said this was a real kind of heady movie, but I'm also sad. I missed it because some of the movies were moving towards talking about. Now my next pick is films that don't just seem like they're screening at a virtual festival because that's where we're at, but movies that are about this condition.

And I don't mean a COVID condition or a pandemic condition, but let's say the extremely online films at Sundance, the movies that take that as subject and texture. So this morning, Rodney Asher, who made a glitch in the Matrix, actually tweeted about All Light Everywhere as a movie he thought would work in conversation with his own and a glitch in the matrix looks like it's been written a couple, but a couple of times already on the site, I mentioned it. I think Keith Phipps wrote about it too. And I'm so glad it's coming out now. You know,

it's going to benefit literally today, like, like coming out literally, you know, literally today. So there's not going to be a long pause. And I, this is actually a movie that i know what i think

of it and what i think of rodney asher's films this is the guy who made room 237 and the nightmare he's so interested in the relationship between psychology and pop culture and the stories we tell ourselves and why we tell ourselves these things but man do i want to see what people think of this movie and particularly his decision which sean maybe you'll speak to to base a movie on simulation theory the idea that we're all living in some simulacrum and have his interviewees a appear as digital avatars which is interesting but not my main point my main point being it's all guys and without knowing too much about their background because he's always good in his movies about giving you no biography it's just people's voices it's just their their opinions it's all guys seems to be white guys certain age living in the united states and it's like is that a limited and

solipsistic selection of people or is this what the film is about and because i happen to think rodney's an extremely smart guy and in his way, a very conscientious documentarian, even though his movies don't follow certain rules. I choose to think that this is the film's subject. I think that this is what he's really making a movie about. What, what are the conditions that have led people to want to embrace simulation

theory? And what does it say that people see themselves as being to quote the matrix the one you know what does it mean to be a neo in a world full of i don't know flesh pods or something to see yourself that way that's what the movie's about and i think that makes it pretty pretty darn 2021 of him and uh pretty pretty entertaining film he's got this amazing gift for seeming suspicious, curious, and empathetic at the same time with all of his subjects. And whether the piece is a criticism of these people or the conditions of the world that have created these sort of folks is a really interesting question. It's honestly, as these kinds of films go, as essay documentary films go, it's just

incredibly entertaining as well. It's interesting to watch. It's as interested as these kinds of films go, as essay documentary films go, it's just incredibly entertaining as well. You know, it's interesting to watch. It's as interested in the idea of the relationship that people have to culture as the idea of the relationship that people have to ideas and where those two things intersect. It's interesting in the relationship that a certain group of people have to the internet and the way that the internet has shaped, as Adam noted, like a very certain group of people have to the internet and the way that the internet has shaped as Adam noted like a very certain group of people and Adam I agree with you that I think it is like very aware of who it's focusing on and what it's interrogating it was quite something to watch this in the documentary in the middle of like GameStop stonks 2020-21 because it's exploring like that same phenomenon and and I do agree it like, it's very entertaining and a

well-executed version of that, but it is, it's a very, it's a specific group of people. One of the clips is of Elon Musk, Elon Musk, you know, just archival of Elon Musk being interviewed about simulation. And of course the person who's asking the question is, I believe Josh Topolsky, who's the founder of the verge. So it's like, we're, we're in a little world here and. Totally in a little world, but then a world that is infinite because of all the second worlds and second lives that people kind of descend into. Like I'm a big fan of,

of, of, of one of the things that Asher does, which is he makes movies where you keep waiting for an objective counterpoint and then he just won't give it to you. Yes. Like you, like you watch room two 37 and a lot of people review that film.

And they say, so when is someone going to show up and say this is stupid? He doesn't undermine anything. Or you watch The Nightmare and you want someone to say, can someone please explain the cerebral or biological science of night terrors? Like we can clear this up really easily. These are not extra dimensional beings. Talk to someone who knows what they're talking about. His refusal to do that, some people see it as very irresponsible or they see it as very easy. And I'll listen to those criticisms,

but I think that it's a really pointed purposeful tactic in his arsenal to forestall that kind of judgment and forestall that kind of objectivity. And I don't count myself, not just as someone who believes in simulation theory, I don't count myself as someone who is of the mindset of the people who the movie's about but I am so interested to listen to them and so it becomes an interesting question about platforming and indulgence and whatever else I do not think this is going to be an under-discussed movie now yeah I think there's gonna be a lot about it it's a rich text um maybe we'll talk about it more in the future too

Amanda do you want to talk about President yes Yes. I watched this because you said you thought it was good. And this is the one time where that instinct worked out for me. The first time ever in the history of this podcast. Sure. Yes. I don't even know why I fired this one up. This was one of the first films that I fired up ahead of the festival. It's a documentary directed by a woman named Camila Nielsen, who I'd never heard of before. And it's about Zimbabwe and the first democratically organized election of a president in Zimbabwe in many years since Mugabe was forced to step down. Or what is thought to be a democratic election in Zimbabwe between Nelson Chamisa and Emerson Mnangagwa. And it is an incredible piece of work given what we just went through in this country and the relative comparisons that you can make through the United States presidential election.

And then also just as a standard verite documentary about political unrest and confusion and the difficulties of holding, of essentially having democracy, of what it means to have democracy. And that's obviously something that we've been talking about a lot recently in the United States. It's obvious that it's happening around the world over the course of the last 10 years as a kind of nationalist impulse has risen in many countries. I just did not, I don't know very much about Zimbabwe and I did not know very much about this election. And I was watching this movie as if it were a thriller. I was wrapped the whole time. I was literally going to say it's a very tape political thriller and that like, I don't mean to say that in a way that, um, you know, undermines the seriousness of a democratic election in Zimbabwe, but it does, it's gripping. And I agree with you. Part of it was because I, you know, I had a sense of where things were going, but you don't know beat for beat.

And there are some tremendous twists and turns and without spoiling anything, cameo appearances that it was really, really fascinating. It's a very good film. This hasn't been picked up yet, but it's the kind of movie that I could see to your note about awards, Adam. I could see that if a savvy distributor

were to pick up a film like this, it's very well made. Okay, what's next? What do you got, Adam? Well, my last film is a movie that I want to ask if either of you guys got to. Did you guys see We're All Going to the World's Fair? I didn't, no.

I didn't. I regret it now. This is, um again part of that extremely online category of movies by a filmmaker named jane schoenbrunn who had made a part of an anthology film called collective unconscious and has made which is about five filmmakers interpreting and dramatizing each other's dreams and has made some other sort of shorts with a kind of genre and internet flavor so this is a movie about a a teenage girl named Casey who is wanting to participate in a kind of online creepypasta style game where you watch videos and you kind of do initiation rites and whatever else and it's supposed to prompt some kind of big change in you. And then she's contacted by and kind of befriended and chaperoned by an unseen

fellow horror video enthusiast who keeps telling her to make videos, quote unquote, to show him that she's okay. And it's a movie that uses not just the language of horror movies, but the language of, let's say, post-paranormal activity horror movies or post-J-horror horror movies or certainly like Reddit no-sleep thread scary story videos. Uses that language, seems to almost be adopting that language to tell a straight-up horror movie narrative, but that's not what it is at all. It's kind of a movie about growing up online. And the thing that I like about it is that it's not trying to universalize at all. It's incredibly specific. I don't think it means this character's experience to stand in for everyone's experience, which of course is why it feels incredibly relatable. The more movies

dive into that specificity, like the specificity of YouTube and of laptops and of the particular physical environments these characters occupy, you don't get generalities and you don't get banalities. You get something that just feels so incredibly urgent and intimate. It's the only thing I watched this year where I forgot I was watching a movie, which I know sounds cheesy, you know, that's what people say about horror movies, right? So like pinch yourself, remind yourself it's just a movie. But it was hard to feel like you were just watching a movie. It's not a documentary. And I don't even think it's trying to sell itself as a documentary. But there are things in it that I think collapse those categories of artifice and truth. It felt more real than anything I watched at the festival this year.

And I think based on what I've seen online, and I hope that this movie becomes kind of a big deal. This deserves, I think to be a big deal, even as a small movie, it, it feels large to me. I watched 30 fucking movies this week and I didn't go,

go, go, go, go to the world's fair sean go i know i need to go um amanda i'll do mine so that you can speak on yours last because i think yours is a more fun fun conversation candidly um the the last movie i just wanted to mention is a movie called mass which i think in its description and i don't know if any of you guys watch this movie um is uh directed by the actor fran, who, if you're a fan of the movie Cabin in the Woods, he is the somewhat geeky guy starring in that film.

He's appeared in many Joss Whedon projects over the years. And the setup is very simple for this movie, and it feels very Sundance-y in its description, which is it is essentially about two couples who are on both sides of a tragic school shooting in which one set of parents is the parents of the shooter and one set of parents are the parents of one of the victims of the school shooting. And it's very stagey and very playlike, but it is also very cinematic in its execution and it features terrific performances from Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, and Reed Burney. I don't know if conventional is a fair word for this movie. It is somewhat conventionally mounted, but to your point earlier,

Amanda, about the oddity of watching certain movies at certain times of the day, or with maybe the sun streaming into your home or whatever, I was having a lot of trouble with that, with a lot of movies. And I think ultimately what that said to me is those movies weren't hitting me. This was a case where I watched this movie at 9 3030 a.m. on a Sunday with the sun streaming

into my home and in a very weird way. And yet I was completely gripped by this. I thought it was incredible. My wife happened to be in the other room doing work on a Sunday morning, and she essentially listened to the entire film and was kind of knocked out by it. It's very powerfully written. I think it's very powerfully directed. It does not have the same level of acclaim that I think some other films, or at least attention

that some other films in the narrative category have had this year. Films like On the Count of Three, films like John and the Hole, films like Prisoners of the Ghostland. Those movies are fine. I thought this movie was really, really good. So I wanted to give it a little bit of love. Okay, Amanda, on a slightly more fun note. Yeah, well, it's not going to surprise anyone because we already discussed it. I think this is the best or maybe the favorite of the movies that I saw, which is Summer of Soul or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised, to give the full name, which, as Sean mentioned earlier, is a documentary directed by Amir Questlove Thompson. And it is a very accessible, I think, but also

really sophisticated documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. And it centers on some never, a lot of never before seen footage and, you know, as a concert film and every, you've got Stevie Wonder, you've got Nina Simone, you've got Mavis Staples, you've got the fifth dimension and, you know, a lot of people. And I would say at least half of it is concert footage. But there is so much context put around it in terms of both the performers and how the festival was brought together, but also the cultural and social and political context in which this festival was held and what it meant to people and, you know, everything

from the civil rights movement to the moon landing, um, to its kind of place in New York. And, um, it's really hard to do that level of like scholarship and education in a way that, um, enlivens the concert film. And like, and if you're cutting away from a concert to a talking head, you don't, the energy can go down. But I found the way that this was edited and the information was put together to be so engaging and helped me understand not just all of the sociopolitical elements, but just kind of it in some way brings the life and the energy of the event itself to you. And it really enriches the concert footage itself, which is also amazing. And let's not undersell the fact that it's just really cool concert footage. So I just thought it was incredibly well done. It's hard to do these things. I admired it as a so-called journalist as much as I did as a viewer, but I really enjoyed it as a viewer as well.

Yeah. I mean, the fact that most of this footage is completely unseen is what is so extraordinary about it. There's a sequence where Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples sing together that is just one of the greatest singing performances ever. And I don't think that's overstating things. So it's a very cool movie. And I think a lot of people will be seeing it at some point soon. I would not be surprised to hear news of a big noisy acquisition around this film. Adam, Amanda, any parting thoughts on Sundance 2021? No, I mean, I just won't mention the movies that I didn't like because we're all in a good mood. So let's just leave it.

Okay. Thank you so much, Adam. Thanks to Amanda. Please tune into The Big Picture next week where we'll be tackling two very chewy new movies, including Malcolm and Marie, a new Netflix film from Sam Levinson. It's finally happening. It's happening. And the aforementioned Judas and the Black Messiah, which is coming to HBO Max. We'll see you guys then. Thank you.