The Big Picture - ‘Dune: Part Two’ and the 10 Best Movies of the Year … So Far

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Sean and Amanda revisit Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune: Part Two’ and assess whether the fervor for it holds up (1:00). Then, they share their 10 favorite movies of the year so far (25:00), including ‘Immaculate,’ ‘La Chimera,’ ‘The First Omen,’ and others. Sean is then joined by the director of ‘The First Omen,’ Arkasha Stevenson, to discuss the subversive nature of a her legacy sequel, how she got it made, and the career that led her here (1:15:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Arkasha Stevenson Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind your favorite song lyric, or why certain melodies make your skin tingle? I'm Cole Kushner, and these are the kinds of questions I try to answer on Dissect, a podcast that dives deep into one album per season, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. I've dissected full albums by Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Tyra the Creator, Beyonce, Kanye, and more. Our latest season just launched all about MF Doom's mad villainy.

Listen to Dissect wherever you get your podcasts, because great art deserves more than a swipe. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the best movies of the year so far. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Arkasha Stevenson, the director of The First Omen, an unexpectedly impressive legacy prequel to the 1970s horror classic The Omen. Arkasha, one to watch, friend of Andy Greenwald, that's how you know. Good co-sign there. Visually gifted, thematically conscious filmmaker, really liked talking with her, really surprised and impressed by her movie. We'll talk about it a little bit as we get into some of the best movies of the year so far. But first, let's talk about movies through the first quarter.

Is it premature to be doing a best movies of the year? Or did you find some good stuff? No, it's Q1. Q1. And there were a few things I liked. Okay. But if you want to speak holistically, I don't know that it's been the best Q1 of our lifetimes. No, there's one big, full-chested, strident film

that is clearly a behemoth and we're going to be talking about for the next year plus. And then there's a bunch of other stuff. There's some big Hollywood temple stuff that was okay. And then there were some gems. I found a bunch of gems hidden in the rough. I found a couple interesting things. Okay.

I mean, what do you think that's about? Is it just a strike hangover, basically? Yeah. It seems like real leftover delays plus things that they saw a soft spot. And they're like, well, there's nowhere else to put Argyle. Yeah. You know. Argyle, is that on Apple TV Plus now?

When's that coming to Apple TV Plus? No, I think that it is like in a week or so but it's not available yet. I think they all I know is that they made the announcement during the New York earthquake. Oh wow. Yeah.

Literally buried under the rubble of the 5.4 magnitude. Do you think this podcast will be buried under the eclipse? Because there's going to be such a

massive consumption of eclipse content that people will be deleting this episode of the big picture and their feed. I guess it does come up come out after the eclipse but we're recording it during eclipse mania.

What do you think, just like nine or 12 straight days of eclipse content? I mean, it has felt like three to four already this weekend. It was a slow news weekend. Yeah. And it was like, it was, you know, women's basketball championship. And then people being like, where do I buy glasses for the eclipse? What's more powerful, the eclipse or Caitlin Clark many people are asking

this question well I think the University of South Carolina clearly Dawn Staley had something to say about that yeah well and then they won so good for them

undefeated in retrospect maybe we should have had the podcast where we devolved into insanity on the day of the eclipse so that we would have

an explanation for it but now people just saw what it's truly like well it was a little bit like that because just saw what it's truly like yeah well it's it was a little bit like that because gonna be honest it's been a weak movie year so far it has been it's been like there have been highlights and we're here to find the good yeah and to celebrate you know what we enjoy but i don't know well one thing that's been a little bit confusing for me is and this happens every year, of course,

is you get these films that get these one-week engagement runs for award season. And that technically makes them 2023 releases. But then really they get released February, March, April to kind of get time to the Academy Awards or whatever award show is happening. So if we're being honest, there are a bunch of movies that we've covered or I've covered with director interviews that are quite good.

I mean, The Promised Land, the Nikolai Arslan film, Perfect Days, the Wim Wenders movie. Yes. We did an entire episode about Love Lies Bleeding.

Good movie. Good movie. Yeah. And Immaculate, which I liked quite a bit, the Sidney Sweeney non-sploitation horror movie. Great discourse.

Explicit, with The First Omen, it's going to be amazing pairing those two movies together. But, you know, those are all good movies. And those movies would be good in September as much as February. So I like those movies a lot. I do too.

The strategy of doing the one week release to qualify for the Oscars and then hoping that your film gets an international feature Oscar boost and releasing it in February or March is, I don't know if it's paying off totally because only five films get the nomination and then everything else is just sort of frittered away in February and March and April because they don't get extra promo. Yeah. This was a tricky year because the zone of interest was so dominant for so long that it kind of didn't matter. But getting that nomination can be really impactful for the box office for films. You didn't put the taste of things on this list because you saw it last year. That's right. And then it did not get the nomination, but it was another where

they were banking on it. You're right. And it just kind of didn't happen. You know, I also forgot about the Society of the Snow. That's another movie that was pretty good that we both liked. Good movies, yeah. And came out in January. So, you know, if you just go off of the stuff that we've covered and we've talked about already, in addition to what we'll get into in a second, I think it's been pretty solid. Sure. It is.

All of those movies to us are associated with last year because of the Oscars race. And, you know, the fatigue of like, let's move on. And that's not fair to the movies, probably, or to our judgments of Q1. A couple of these movies that we'll talk about, I mean, I made a long list of about 10 that I really liked, and you've seen some of these too, that I think also kind of sort of feel like 2023 movies. And so, you know, it's just an invisible delineation of time. Years are meaningless. It's all one agglomeration. But you know what?

We're creating rubrics to have conversations on podcasts. So when we set these borders and we try to stick to these borders, things get a little bit confusing. I think also is, of all the quarters, Q1 is always my least favorite quarter. It's the worst quarter. It's the worst quarter. I agree. It's just, it always stinks.

So that's going to flavor my, you know, every aspect of my Q1 experience, including movie watching. Do you feel that way about the first quarter of sporting events? Yes, they don't matter. We'll rank them from one to four. Well, four, three, two, one. Because the only stuff that matters happens in Q4, as we know. I do like a zesty Q3. Sure. That's number two. This team came out of the break and they're kind of sleepy

and they've given up their 14-point lead. You see that a lot. That also corresponds to movie watching. I would rank the movie queues as four, three, two, one. Though often the best movies come in three. But four is zestiest for watching a discussion. The tides are shifting, though. Four is becoming

a stepchild. I don't... But you forget that... The force is strong with three. I said that three is... July was Barbie and Oppenheimer. Is July... When is... July is three, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You're right. I think three is probably the secret best, especially for you and me.

Plus, we get to see all of the very good movies. I guess October is four, right? And October is where a lot of the best movies are. Whenever the Venom movie comes out, that's the best quarter. Yeah. So usually that's October. So that would be Q4. Right.

So it's between three and four, but it is like in movies, in movie release calendars as in life, right? It really is just a four, three. And, you know, two is frankly overrated, but we are just trying to get our spirits up after one. We'll be previewing two shortly. We have a summer movie preview episode coming up. I mean like in, in life. Especially if you live in LA and it's just gray all the time. What quarter of your life

do you think you're in? Hmm. I think I'm closing down Q2. And Q3 is about to start. And so, like, the magic is coming. Isn't that exciting? Let me tell you something.

The magic is not coming. There is no magic in Q3. You don't know. No. I was in the shower this morning and I looked down and I saw like a mark on my leg and I was like, hmm, is that cancer? What is that? Like, I really, I'm in a new concern area with my Q3.

That has nothing to do with Q3. That just has to do with you and what you're reading on the internet. And also like your long-term hypochondria that is really just finding new expression as we move forward in science. Yeah, it is. It is. I'm looking forward to your Q3. So you think 80, is that the cutoff?

That's when you're just going to drop dead? Spiritually, if not physically. Okay. If I make it to 80, wow. We are throwing a fucking party. Listen, Francis Ford Cop wow we are turned to 85 yesterday yeah what a legend he's just hosting screenings in atlanta i think he was invited to that one but you never know wouldn't it be fun if he just if his megalopolis tour was just showing up to random theaters uninvited everywhere across this great nation the film has no distribution so he might have have to. It might just be like,

surprise! What did you think of that? Like the story about him screening the film for lots of luminaries in Los Angeles? Right. I mean,

why not? If you could do it. Also, really divisive reaction. Some people were like, this is one of the bravest artistic acts in recent cinema history.

And other people were like, this movie is incoherent. Right. Like all the people with money were like, no, we won't be giving you the money, which again is not surprising.

We have read and watched Francis Ford Coppola throughout his entire career and the people with the money are never on board. I think it was cool. If I'm 85 and making movies, I will just,

I won't do it at CityWalk. Will you be making movies at some point? No, probably not. Though, you know, no, I won't. It seems like a lot of work and a lot of interacting with people, you know? Yes, yes. So that would be sort of the thing.

And I am good at like telling people this is what I see and what I want. I'm decisive. Yep. But then the follow through, that's pretty tough, right? The follow through of what? Making sure it happens that way. Oh, I see. And then it doesn't happen that way. And then you're no actually like i meant this and do you understand the difference you want

to instruct but not manage yeah okay yes sounds like you should be a teacher that's that is just that's child care yeah i do enough of that at home okay so you're in you're entering your third quarter yeah what quarter would you say this podcast is entering? Oh, let's see. Maybe we had... What kind of breakdown would you classify Friday as? I don't think it was midlife. No. I thought it was... Maybe to quote John Mayer, a quarter-life crisis.

So maybe we're done with... Maybe we're in Q2. We're wrapping up Q1. Yeah. Of the big picture. So that means we have... This is a 25-year podcast? I was going to say.

Is that going to happen? Do you think podcasts will exist in 10 years? I don't really want to have an AI conversation, but I mean, you know, it's something to consider. I was talking with a friend who is a college professor this weekend. And I was like, well, how's it going? How are the youth? And she was just like, I mean just like I'm just reading AI papers you know and then she's like and you know and then sometimes I can see that it's their grammatical mistakes inserted into the AI papers in order to you know let's set aside the moral quack of AI for a second one

thing I've noted with some interest, my stepmom was a high school teacher and is now a college teacher. My father-in-law is a college professor. I come from a big family of teachers. And one thing I've learned spending time with my family in the last 20, 25 years is that these kids today, it's so much easier to fucking cheat.

Like I can't believe how much cheating is going on in high schools and colleges and how easy it is to get away with relative to when we had to really just pour ourselves into the sparks. I actually wrote papers. I read books. Oh my God, of course. I read most of the books. Yeah. Sometimes I read the beginning and the end. Let's be real. I read all the books in high school. College, a little bit of a coin flip there.

Really depended on what kind of a paper i needed to write yeah true and also sometimes i was perusing i was taking some survey courses and it was really like i'm just like i'm gonna read the first chapter i'm gonna find you know the thematic center about 120 pages in yeah i'll read the ending and then i'll like ag you know, I'll use my Sparks notes to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I was going to say, you would use a supplemental material. Yeah, of course. Sometimes. Of course. Is that why we're covering film? Also, sometimes you're reading

like Faulkner and you're like, I actually read all of this and I don't know what happened and so I need someone then to explain it because that's not something that you can cram through

in one night as I often had to do. That was tough. Starting a lot of books at Sunday at 4 p.m. for a Monday paper. I was like, well, I could have approached this differently. I did it all the time. And now you can just pull up ChatGPT and say, write me a 22-page dissertation on Absalom Absalom. Someone should actually do that because I think that that probably defies like chat GBT's ability right now.

Oh, you think chat GBT can't get into Faulkner? Yeah, I think that it's not going to turn out passable. How can something that's not conscious talk about stream of consciousness writing? It doesn't understand what consciousness is. Some are saying that Friday was our faulkner-esque pod uh no i i think it was coherent i think it was just wildly off topic what stream of

consciousness somehow implies like a loss it was like a soft pilot for hour three yeah i know hour three is coming i can't wait for hour three uh we do not have a patreon tier but if we did have a patreon tier is hour three hour three of the big picture hour three of j do not have a patreon tier but if we did have a patreon tier is hour three hour three of the big picture hour three of jmo oh i was wondering like are we sure it's not hour four because the big picture sometimes is like three and a half hours of content a week that's true that could be our three sounds better than our i agree our three is like it's like an elegant it also it also you know subconsciously it is episode three if not hour three you know, subconsciously, it is episode three, if not hour three, you know? So we need people to be able to just tick off.

This show used to be an hour long. I got hour two. There was a time when this show was an hour long. That's no longer the case. Anyhow, let's just go back to movies before we run the risk of repeating last Friday's either sins or joys, depending on your point of view. Dune Part Two is the big movie of this year. Yeah, good movie. Good movie.

I'm pro. I revisited the film. is the big movie of this year. Yeah. Good movie. Good movie. I'm pro. I revisited the film. Set the scene. It was a Friday afternoon. Yeah. What time? It was a 1230 screening. Love a 1230.

It was nice. It was sparsely populated. What was your lunch strategy? What was my lunch strategy? Yeah. Well, as you've pointed out to the listeners many times, I usually just like

have some crackers and then just get on the go. You know, I had a Dasani water in the movie theater. No candy, no food. Had you eaten anything that day? I think I had an apple and some dry cereal, which actually was bogarted by my toddler who I was taking care of over the weekend. Okay.

So, dropped her off at school, took a couple of meetings, went to the movie theater. Okay. I mean, that sounds nice, but except for the nutritional intake. Yeah, it's fine. I get to 6 p.m. and I just have a large, hearty, protein-filled item, and then I'm good to go. Actually, I did it with you. You may recall. We had dinner on Friday night together. Yeah, but there wasn't a lot of protein in that.

There was brisket. Oh, Friday night. I was thinking about Saturday night. I actually watched you consume two dinners this weekend after not eating anything you make it sound like I didn't give you any food

anyhow Dune Part 2 this is my third time seeing the film in theaters here's what really jumped out to me about this this is my favorite movie of the year so far

yeah mine too major achievement really a breathless act of filmmaking I had listened to the episode of the Director's Guild podcast with Steven Spielberg

and Denis Villeneuve. Have you heard that? Have either of you guys heard that? No. Would highly recommend it because, man, Steven Spielberg, in addition to obviously being

such an extraordinary filmmaker and such a huge influence on Villeneuve, was really into Dune? And not in the way that he was like, I want to talk about how you shot this scene

or can you explain to me the mechanics of this? He was into the mythology of the story. What's his take? Well, he just asked questions. I mean, he wasn't doing his dissertation. He was just saying like, so explain to me when you were thinking about the religiosity of the spice,

how did it intersect with Paul's journey? He really was looking at thematics rather than what we expect from him, which is sort of like a mechanical discussion in that setting of the Director's Guild of America podcast.

If people haven't listened to it, I highly recommend it. Bill Nguyen was like, I can't believe this is happening to me. I can't believe this guy is so into this conversation about this movie I made

because he's like my hero. Close Encounters is, I think, a huge influence on this movie for a variety of reasons. Anyhow, the one tidbit from that pod

that I really enjoyed was just him citing that Spielberg asked him a great question. I had never heard this asked before and I will steal it, which was,

when you were making this movie, who was the one person who was kind of lingering around the camera setup, who was asking questions, who seemed most interested in the actual filmmaking,

who's going to be a director someday? And he said, Zendaya, which is awesome. Yeah. And makes a lot of sense, actually. If you listen to her interviews, you know, she's pretty cerebral. She's clearly like got a kind of leadership quality.

Like people follow her. She's been doing it for a long time. She's very observant. She's been kind of in all facets of the industry. It's a logical progression in many ways. And rather than necessarily being just a producer and seizing the means, making the films would be cool.

Anyhow, I sat down thinking a lot about the conversation that they were having watching the movie. And so that led to just me thinking about specifically Paul and how the movie is even more so than I realized the first time that I watched it. Not just suspicious of Paul, but really anti-Paul.

I mean, I couldn't think of a lot of epic films that have such a distrustful, complex relationship to its own protagonist. You might find that in a smaller film or a character study, you know, like a taxi driver, right? That's an example of a movie that is like wildly distrustful of the psyche of its main character. You find that in a lot of character pieces in a lot of 70s cinema and a lot of european cinema in a blockbuster i mean can you guys think of an example where at the end of the film you're like wow this person is a representation of the loss of control and the way that power corrupts people, the way that

a kind of fanaticism drives division, drives violence, the way that, you know, societies seek these kinds of leadership figures, and then they start to believe their own hype. You know, and one of the interesting aspects of the conversation with Villeneuve and Spielberg was this idea that Paul is not the chosen one. You know what I mean? That he is just the person who's been hoisted or foisted into the role. Right, that it's been created. Yeah.

Manufactured. Manufactured, exactly. Which are all things that as you're watching the movie, of course, like you understand and are feeling. But I don't think I quite realized how hard he was banging that drum. Because the first film is setting us up in a much more classical storytelling mode. Right. Where you're just like, a hero will rise. It's a true hero's journey movie that kind of cuts off in the middle.

And you're like, I can't wait for him to win. And then when he wins at the end of two, you're like, oh, wow, holy war. Yeah. I guess some people will interpret that as really exciting and inspiring. But for the most part, you're like, oh, my God. Yeah. This whole society is going to be destroyed i mean you know i thought and you and you can't like really ever trust the quote-unquote discourse around any of these things

and to some extent i think it's good that there was a large conversation of like wait why is this movie endorsing you know or celebrating this character that is clearly at best a fraud and at worst um you know a leader of like generations of genocide which which is all like plain in the text and it's good to be having that conversation but i was always like i think the movie's very beginning, even to the point where his, you know, final, like, the big reveal, the big, I choose the, you know, the Empress or the Empress to be over Zendaya. I mean, Van Gasp in the theater. But it was like, like, that was text, right? Like that was, so I think the movie does like a very remarkable and pretty straightforward job of handling something that, as you point out, is really counterintuitive. Because we are used to going to, you see a big epic movie and the person who is the star of the movie is the hero and not the hero turning villain. And the hero's journey usually only goes one way.

And this one goes very differently. If you look back at Villeneuve's movies, obviously it makes sense. I mean, he has a really kind of acid, cynical point of view of the world. And if you revisit Sicario or Prisoners, you know, even if there's a hopeful aspect of the story, they're pretty burned out about humanity. Arrival is a rare exception. Even in Arrival, there's kind of like

a thrashing inside of the warmth of the mother-daughter story that, you know, the expectation around Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner's character is the sort of impossibility

of happiness is a big theme of his films. And so, and forget about like his Canadian, his early Canadian Ensemble D

or Polytechnique, like those movies are so, and forget about like his Canadian, his early Canadian Ensemble or Polytechnique, like those movies are so raw and so upsetting. So, you know, in retrospect, it's not, to me, it's not that this was the story. Cause this is a huge part of the story that Frank Herbert is telling. It's not like, oh, wow, this is what he chose to do. It's the audacity of being able to get this done, like get it made this way to show us the movie this way and also to do it with Timothee Chalamet, who has like arrived at this chosen one moment

of his own. He's such a likable screen presence. Off screen, like away from the movies and interviews, he's just like so winsome hipster kid.

Yeah. He's really just not aggressive at all in his public persona. He seems like maybe a little bit of a little caddish, but aside from that, seems like kind of a nice guy.

And so to place him in this role too also feels kind of counterintuitive. Right. And yet, when you're doing a story that is riffing on

the concept of White Savior, he's perfect. Right. He's really well cast. So, you know, the movie is this like big, epic, it's really really well orchestrated a lot of what the first film does the second film does well we saw in the first film but those very specific storytelling choices and then the way that the performances interact with them i was just like

this is actually as good as i thought it was the first time i saw it like it actually holds up to me which is exciting because sometimes a film that is driven by spectacle doesn't hold up. Right. And this one did. Any other Dune Part 2 thoughts? How are you feeling about Oscar chances? Like, after the first

flush of excitement? I think we were pretty much on the money the first time we talked about it. I think it will do very well below the line. Based on what I've heard from everyone who works at the ringer who's interacted with either the wikipedia's or the books um dune messiah's peculiarity could make it difficult

to make it the return of the king of the series it also sounds there was it was announced that he's now making a film about nuclear war next to Villeneuve. So that means it's probably going to be at least five years until we see Dune Messiah. Which, as I recall the story, which I read on a Wikipedia page once at night, mirrors, you know, everyone ages. And there are consequences of that aging that play into it as well. So that's appropriate. So that's appropriate. No, it's really strange. I think also the other thing is that,

and certainly Villeneuve could change this or invent this, but there's not as much spectacle, at least until the very end. It is kind of like palace intrigue. Interesting. Okay. And I mean, I guess there are like- Game of Thrones-y? I guess there are

very brutal wars going on throughout that you could show and that seems pretty depressing. But he changed a lot in Dune Part 2 and I imagine

he would change a lot in Dune Messiah to make the story maybe fit more appropriately thematically with what he's done. I don't know. We'll see.

But it is interesting to think that we'll spend the next year celebrating Dune Part 2. It'll probably get right up to the finish line, not win Best Picture, probably not win Best Director. And then we'll wait another five years for another movie. And then if that movie is really weird, it won't do anything.

And then he'll win for something else that isn't genre. See also Christopher Nolan. Wouldn't it be interesting if it was the next movie that he made? The nuclear holocaust film, which we just saw. It's on theme. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I wonder if maybe the Academy will be burnt out on those kinds of stories too.

Hard to say. Okay. Give me one that you liked so far in the non-part two division. We've already done the, you know, we covered all those movies. Yeah, you made a good call on The Taste of Things. That's the one I forgot that came out this year already that was very, very good. But Sight of the Snow, Taste of Things, Perfect Days, Promised Land, Love, Lies, Bleeding.

Like, we've gone through some good stuff. What else? What have we not talked about? So I guess the big one is the Alice Rohrwacher film. You want to do it in Italian for me? Alice Rohrwacher's La Chimera chimera yeah okay wow you did the the full name as well yeah i had this i had i was i was corrected on this when i was atelier ride when i saw this film oh okay yeah um which was released finally last weekend you saw it atelier right it was like bopping around festivals and stars my boy josh o'connor along with just just an incredible cast of italian actors and and non-actors also

as the case may be um i this has been called basically like uh emo indiana jones uh which tomb raider Yeah, like sort of, but it's not exactly like when you say Tomb Raider, you know, Josh O'Connor is not like He doesn't have a whip. busting through doors. There aren't like rolling balls.

Like he's not hanging off a train. He's basically just holding a twig and like looking sad for the better part of two and a half hours while he tries to like find Etruscan remains and also his lost love I I was very very charmed by it it is like it's like a mood piece for sure it is um but Rohracher has a great way of creating like her ensembles are very funny in the energy one of

the best my favorite parts of this movie is when Josh O'Connor is just sitting at a table surrounded by like 18 Italian women, including Isabella Rossellini, and then a bunch of her daughters and some other people. And they're all just yelling at each other and he's just like eating pasta. And it's very funny. So it is funny as well as wistful and beautiful to look at. I thought, I mean, it's just, you know, filmed in Italy on a bunch of different film stacks and Josh O'Connor can wear a suit. He literally wears one suit. He wears one suit, but he wears it well. It's a white linen suit. Yeah.

He's, he does not speak very much in this film. It's an interesting, almost like a silent movie performance. And he's a guy who I think has served some time in prison and is clearly a bit of a bandit. The character. The character, not Josh O'Connor. He seems like a lovely man. Have you been following the Challengers press tour? Not closely.

It's really, so they're going everywhere. They are in every single like international city wearing clothes and taking pictures in front of the local monuments and it's just like zendaya in full glamour mode and then these two nice guys who are just like what am i doing here really i would have thought that they would have both been a little more stylish no they're very very stylish and they're all attractive and they're charming and they're great in the movie um but that's that's thematically consistent with what the movie is

yeah totally the center of gravity but it is just really like, it is just like Zendaya movie star and then two kind of like quiet guys who are like, hey, how you doing? So Josh O'Connor, I believe this is the first time I ever saw him when I saw Lockheed Martin because I didn't watch The Crown. Oh, no, that's not true. I think I saw him in a Terrence Davies movie. But what, he played Prince Charles, young prince charles he's incredible um so he's prince charles in season three and season four um which is you know both it's a generous casting with prince charles that's what everyone said um you have more of a thing for prince charles you think maybe he's more handsome than josh no i think i think the show is very, very pro-Charles.

Or very empathetic with Charles. Interesting. Because, you know, no one loved him. Yeah. Especially his parents. We'll come back to that. And so that, the generous casting extends to seasons five and six, which is Dominic West. Right.

Which is like really a generous edit. He's wearing some prosthetics or no? and and just dominic west yeah well he doesn't look like charles at all it's a it's like like we said it's a very generous edit no eat no fake ears no but joshua connor doesn't need them no but he has he has yeah like me strong italian or excuse me strong irish ears yeah so he's season three and four which is like season three is just like my mom hates me and i don't have a purpose and he has like the single best episode of the entire series and also like some standoffs with olivia coleman and then season four he does he gets all the diana stuff okay and camilla so he it's a it's like a juicy role yeah

okay i mean he's terrific. He's incredible. He's really wonderful. And his role in Challengers, which we'll talk about in a couple of weeks, is like the exact opposite of the La Chimera part.

Got a ton of range, major, major charisma. It's fun to follow him in La Chimera, which is, it is like a kind of shambolic, bucolic,

beautifully shot Italian journey that's very much in conversation with The Wonders and Happy as Lazaro her two previous movies and La Pupile

the Oscar short that she was nominated for speaking of groups of young women in like decaying buildings just chattering if you happen to watch that

during the Oscars run of 2022 you'll really like La Chimera too very very good movie it's in movie theaters right now let me tell you about

The First Omen a little bit okay okay um my intention some high low here the tina brown mix see i i would say that the first omen is a little bit of a high high oh okay despite its its genre trappings it's genre wolf and sheep's clothing project it is my thank you thanks thank you for seeing me uh in this case my project is preserving the tina brown mix so it's okay for it to be high because low can be high we have our passions what tina taught us well yes and and frankly we were raised in a pre-poptimist era where we actually truly were able to come by our low culture honestly yeah and valid valorize it and appreciate it without it being part of some sort of philosophical mode.

I'm just like horror movies are beautiful art and in this case it is actually You and everyone on Letterboxd but that's cool.

I'm excited. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. You guys all found each other. Maybe you're right. That's beautiful. The first Omen it's so funny that this movie

has come out it came out two weeks after Immaculate the Sidney Sweeney Nun movie. This is also a Nun movie. It is a prequel to The Omen

it's a story about a woman an American woman who comes to an Italian convent her sort of mentor who's played by Bill Nighy brings her to Italy

to spend time proximate to the Vatican effectively it's clear very early on in this film that something is not right something's not right

at this convent something's not right at the Italian convent that the American woman showed up at? Lo and behold, a plot to birth the Antichrist

starts to emerge. I'll say that the first hour of this movie, I wish the movie wasn't called The First Omen. I wish it was just called like a nun story.

You know, I wish it was just called something different. And then, because then you wouldn't know that she's going to give birth to Damian Owen who is a person who I don't,

I'm not aware of aside from you telling me. There are four, technically, this is technically the sixth Omen film. There were four films and then a remake in 06. The first one in three, I think are interesting. I wouldn't say this is my favorite horror franchise. I don't really hold it in the same esteem as Halloween. I don't even really hold it in the same esteem as Friday the 13th.

I think it is, it's got a great story and a great idea, which is that this couple, a diplomat and his wife living in Washington, D.C., I think are struggling to have a child and they adopt a child. And the child that they adopt turns out to be the Antichrist, Damien. Just a series of tough breaks for them. It's brutal. And many brutal things happen in that first film. This movie is all about the plot to birth the Antichrist and why.

And the story is so similar to Immaculate. It's bizarre. And you can tell that neither of these productions knew that this was happening. I really liked talking to Arkasha. The thing with Arkasha, the director of this movie and the co-writer, is that she's like a David Lynch, David Cronenberg person. She is, even though she's working

in the legacy horror mode, where you see the poster and be like, oh God, another Omen movie. This is not that at all. There's a shot in this movie that is among the most bracing images I've ever seen in a studio horror movie. This movie is released by Disney.

There is something that, and she said in our conversation, that she sold the movie to the studio on this image. And while it was happening, I was like, I literally can't believe she got away with this. I can't believe this movie is an NC-17. So one, she's got a real knack for shocking visuals. Two, I think one of the reasons why the movie has maybe disappointed a few people

is because it's not Jump Scare City. It's much more ethereal and upsetting in an ambient way. Until it's really physically gnarly? Until it's really physically gnarly.

Because you told me it's about childbirth, right? I mean, it is very much about the act of carrying and birthing a child. And, you know, the movie was made for a reason.

The reason that she wanted to make the movie is because that idea in our world right now is under fire. Isn't it really threatened? Right. And I think she was trying to find a way to express that. I don't think it doesn't like hit you over the head with it.

It isn't like this is just like when Roe v. Wade was overturned. It's not that at all. But it is about control of a woman's body. You know, that's really ultimately what it comes down to. And the same is true of Immaculate. So it's fascinating that they've come out together. Do you want to segue to Girl State? That's a good idea.

Or I guess you could segue to How to Have Sex also, but. Yeah, yeah. Well, women's bodies and control over them is a theme of this episode. It's a good call. I would recommend the first Omen for people who genuinely like a certain kind of body horror, especially like Cronenberg and Possession and movies like that. Girl State? I haven't seen this in a few months.

I saw it at Sundance. This is the follow-up to Boy State, which is Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss's documentary about the sort of youth government program to find young leaders in America, which has authored many a president, secretary of state. The first film showed, I think, really some of the origins of toxic masculinity, the male character and what's wrong with it. It's very memorable. What's right about it, maybe in some ways too. Maybe some vulnerabilities that are helpful, but mostly it's bad things. So this is the other side of that coin.

Yeah. So I did not see it until this weekend because it's available on Apple TV+, which I'm one of three subscribers to. But I had heard that the reactions were like somewhat muted after boys' dates. Mine was somewhat muted. Yeah. And so I knew that going in. And so I guess I wasn't expecting And so I guess my, I wasn't expecting like, you know, the definitive take on Girlbostom. And I thought, I mean, it was interesting.

Like I wanted, I wanted to talk about it afterwards. So it's set, it was filmed in 2022 in Missouri, which is significant for two reasons. One, because it was filmed after the leaked Roe v. Wade opinion that ultimately led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. So Roe v. Wade is very much on the minds of everyone in Missouri, which is not the most liberal of states, shall we put it that way. And the overturning of Roe v. Wade would have like serious material consequences for people in Missouri. Because it was filmed in 2022 in Missouri, the program for the first time was being held on the same campus at the same time as Missouri Boys State. So, and at first I was pissed off about that.

I was like, oh, why can't you let them have Girls State with Boys State without Boys State? And I, you know, I would like my own time. But to me, honestly, the most interesting part of it was that no matter their goals, political beliefs, backgrounds, whatever was going on with the young women at Girl State, they were like, the way that we're being treated as opposed to the way that the boys are being treated is bullshit. And I also thought the filmmaking even captured that.

Like, the dances and the songs that they lead the girls in and like the amount of time you like, you have to put your cardigan on once you get back inside and all of these. And I was just so viscerally angry, you know, because I have experienced that. So I thought that was actually really interesting. And then that is actually the thing that animates most of the young women, even one of the characters who's like maybe not unsympathetic, but she doesn't win. And then she does like amazing journalism. That young woman is fascinating.

She's so wonderful. Just like in the first film, they found a couple of kids. I thought her story was really, really complicated and nuanced and didn't force you to say she's a villain, she's a hero. That is the one thing so I was a little

a little mixed on the second one because I felt like it was a little iterative and it was only just kind of betraying the difference in characteristics obviously between

the boys and the girls right but in the same way in the same film where they cast two or three kids they're so good at finding characters

and they found two or three kids in this movie and especially that girl who I can't recall what state she's actually from and she like starts out where they cast two or three kids. They're so good at finding characters. And they found two or three kids in this movie. And especially that girl who, I can't recall what state she's actually from. And she like starts out in the film. And she's, oh, they're all from Missouri. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she starts out as sort of like

one of the few conservative voices that is featured in the film. And you can watch her in real time involving how she thinks, but not wanting to give up her strong point of view. The film is very much about young women realizing a certain kind of independence in in a structure that is otherwise extremely conservative and old and mannered and you know needs to be kind of dispensed with in a lot of ways but she i just

never really had seen someone quite like her in a movie her name is emily worth more i googled her afterwards she's in college now she's's studying, following her journalism dreams. I really liked how they portrayed her. I really like how she comported herself. Like, very rare to see something like that. To see someone, like, literally evolve. Yeah. And she does in the movie.

So just to see her. And there are other good characters. And there are other. Who were the two girls who were very unalike who became close friends yeah both run for supreme court and then they do by the end they're doing their joint interviews together and i mean that was that was a great story that was very lovely i did also think you know it's maybe not the most trenchant insight into roe v wade and how teenagers and young women are thinking about Roe v. Wade given like the timing and the setting and what is palpable there but there was something

pretty interesting about you could almost tell the filmmakers wanted more and certainly wanted more conflict on it and it's I mean maybe they just didn't have access but to me it seemed like all of the young women even the young women who were like i am pro-life but i'm not going to tell anybody else to do anything and it was and it was just almost like there was no real conflict there because this group of young women like knew how they felt and you know that there there's like the one or two token conservatives and and they get a little bit of airtime but but not a lot but it did almost i don't know whether they didn't want to get into that conflict with the kids i don't know whether it's like a timidness or whether it just wasn't there which is interesting it's it's really hard

to say i think it's probably worth noting that in a lot of elections like special elections around that part of the country in the in the in the ensuing years a lot of results were not quite what conservatives were expecting before i think in part because of the psychology the character of what you're describing among younger people around this issue so in a way it's kind of representative of the time in a meaningful way you don't you don't want to overread a documentary about nine girls but i think there's something to that but and i just thought, like, because of the exact moment in time that they captured.

And then, you know, the last card, sorry, spoiler, is, like, five days after Girls' State Missouri ended, Roe v. Wade was overturned. Like, and that's it. Yeah. And it's an interesting snapshot, at least. It's so interesting how I completely inadvertently, like, paired all of these movies.

But How to Have Sex and sperm world are all are both in the same universe of experience so how to have sex is a film that premiered at can in 2023 it's available on mooby now um which is an excellent streaming service by the way i don't know if anybody likes movie um it's molly manning walker's first film she's a british british filmmaker and this is sort of like an uncharitable way to say is like feel bad spring breakers you know like it's about three young women who are at the end of high school british spring breakers british spring breakers yes three young women who are at the end of high school who are trying to figure out where their lives are going one's going to college the other two don't know what they're going to do yet they go on a crazy yeah uh like island vacation basically yeah the the alternative of feel

bad is like it's not fantastical it's like yes you know spring breakers has this sort of i mean it has the harmony just we're dancing around a ball of clothes no genre yeah there is some neon in this movie in the club settings. Sure, but there is nothing otherworldly about it. If anything, it's like too real. Upsetting at times. Yeah. I think, I thought this movie was solid, like an impressive debut. Yeah.

In part because I think Molly Manning Walker's willingness to, in an almost verite fashion, like focus in so deeply on Mia McKenna-Bruce's character's psyche and experience is kind of what distinguishes the movie. And also the performance of Mia McKenna-Bruce, which is incredible and really affecting.

And there is, you know, there's one shot. I mean, it's just like, it is the walk of shame put on cinema. Like like and I will always think of it but what she is able to do emotionally in just what is one still shot of her like walking down the street yeah is was like pretty upsetting and amazing yeah there's a few moments that really I don't know it's really hard to be a girl dad and watch a movie like like really hard good luck I mean I thought of you watching Girl State I was just like I don't know. It's really hard to be a girl dad and watch a movie like really hard.

Steph, good luck. I mean, I thought of you watching Girl State. I was just like, I don't know. I know those girls are inspiring though. You know, like those girls are really smart and aspirational and maybe they're in the wrong place because they're trying to be like presidents and senators. But that movie is about ideas. How have sex is like man it's hard it's hard to watch that like you just it's a totally different valence than i would have had on it five years ago i thought i'm very curious to see what she does next molly manning walker i think it's it's worth recommending i'm also watching me and mckenna bruce yes well i don't know if i i don't think i've seen her in anything before i hadn't either i think uh i'm not sure i googled

her british shows that i hadn't seen but she seems like known in that space okay did you get a chance to see Sperm World no I didn't okay let's talk about this okay

we can come back to this for a bigger conversation because the filmmaker of this movie his name is Lance Oppenheim he made a documentary in 2021 about I think the villages

in Florida is that what it's called the sort of retirement the massive retirement community oh right it was thought to be very influential on Donald Trump's election in 2020. That documentary was called Some Kind of Heaven. He has one now called Sperm World, which is on Hulu.

And he has another series on HBO, I believe this summer, called Ren Faire, about Renaissance fairs. This is my favorite documentarian who's come along in like the last five years. I think he has like an exquisite visual style and also the same thing we talked about with Girl State and ability to cast characters. This movie is a documentary, a kind of episodic character-driven documentary about what is described as the wild west of baby making. The online forums where sperm donors connect with hopeful parents.

There are these men, whether they feel that they are contributing something meaningful to the world, whether they have some sort of kink, whether they just are kind of excited about participating in this act, seek out families. Okay. Make themselves available in these forums. The film shows the kind of typing conversations, but then the film also shows you the interactions, the actual personal interactions

between, say, a young woman and a man in his 60s who likes to do this, and they get to know each other. I think there's a young woman who has cystic fibrosis and who really wants to have a family. She doesn't have a partner, so she's seeking a donor. And she makes this connection with an older man, a divorced man in his 60s who's donated his sperm to many people,

many families. And they have this kind of like not quite romance, but this journey of connection that is a little bit unnerving, a little bit beautiful. It's really strange. I've never,

I've just never seen anything like these particular characters. These, it's four men who we mostly spend a lot of our time with. And they're, they're odd guys, you know, and they're not bad guys, but there's something weird going on with their desire to do this. Well, with their desire to donate their sperm or to then be in contact, you you know this is not like a rare practice anymore and the technology has gotten like pretty amazing um and their profile but that but it can also be very separate you know what i mean and so there are legal questions that i have and also just like i don't know if this is representative I don't think that the men

that are featured in this film are attempting to make inroads interpersonally that are unwanted you know what I mean they're not being invasive we see one man in particular who has donated dozens to dozens of families who is literally

actively helping to take care of a couple of kids that he has sired, even though he's not in a relationship with a woman. And the film is sort of disorienting because at first you're like, oh, this is his family. And then you're just like, I think it's a young girl at a beauty pageant

and her mother is there and he has donated his sperm to this woman. And so he's sort of like taking care of these kids. Okay. But then he just like gets in his car and drives away and we never see those characters again in the movie. But we follow him and we see him with his family and his family is ashamed of him

because they're like, how do you, why do you have 60 children? This is crazy. Like, I don't want to hear about your hobby of donating your sperm to people. It's very strange of it as a hobby. Yeah.

It's bizarre. But nevertheless, it's in the spirit of, you know, great Errol Morris movies or Albert Maisel's movies or Fred Wiseman movies. These verite portraits, in this case, in the Oppenheim case, really stylized verite portraits of weird characters in our world. Right. And it's a weird thing because it's just a movie that's on Hulu.

I think it's effectively on Hulu because it's inspired by a New York Times piece that Nellie Bowles wrote called The Sperm Kings Have a Problem. Great. Well, okay, there we go. I'm sure this is interesting, and I haven't seen it. I'm, like, bumping up against what seems like a strange but not representative subset of a culture that doesn't have a lot of, like, normal representation. Do you know what I mean? You'd have to watch it to decide. I don't have a ton of experience in this world,

so I don't know what's representative. And then you say Nellie Bowles, and I'm like, oh, great. Okay, so this is absolutely rooted in reality. There's no sensationalism whatsoever. I will say at least what you see in the movie feels real. I'm not saying it's not real.

You know what I mean? But what's the goal of a documentary? Is it to find interesting characters? Yeah, that is true. But I'm just like just like you know i'm thinking about all of the people who are like oh well we're gonna use a donor maybe we're not gonna use a donor and it's like the you know grandpa's not gonna be knocking on your door necessarily yeah i don't know i don't i i don't know what takeaways to take away about to me it's less about the experience of what it means to be um what it means in a society to have sperm

ownership and more what it means to be a person who donates sperm right right right that's really what the movie is interested in yeah anyway i've got your i've got your interest though i'm interested so i think it's worth checking i think it's worth checking out for people who are clicking around um do you want to talk about scoop yeah or we can talk about the beast uh which i saw at venice yeah so i feel like you said you didn't like it i did but it was i mean it was just like a lot you know and that was like the third film of the day and you know me when someone is like doing their best lynch sometimes it lands and sometimes i'm like you're doing your best lynch yeah and i can i will remember a lot of these images and also I'm like, you're doing your best Lynch. And I will remember a lot of

these images and also I'm getting impatient. No, it is Lynchian. There's no doubt about that. This is the new movie from Bertrand Bonello, who is a French filmmaker who has been on a bit of a run in the last 10 years. He's made some really, really interesting movies, Coma, Nocturama. There's a really good series of his films, I think, on the Criterion channel right now, if you haven't heard of his work. I don't think we've ever talked about him on the big picture. My girl, Lea Seydoux, is in this film, one of my favorite actresses. And she's just amazing in this movie, which has a very unusual structure. It's effectively a movie that is set in 2024, and a woman is trying to have her, essentially like her negative experiences deleted.

She's trying to, quote, purify her DNA by going back in time to previous lives and sort of end those negative experiences. George Mackay of 1917 plays her lover over time in 1910, in 2014, and in 2044. So it's a little sci-fi.'s a little horror it's a little uh historical romance right it is at times very confusing and very strange i've not seen very many movies like this i would say i liked it but did not love it but when it was clicking for me it was really clicking. Bonilla has like a really devilish sense of humor. And then it's very, very, very upsetting at the end of the film.

The ending is exceptional. And I kind of wish that the movie had the same energy of the last 20 minutes. Right. But for the last 20 minutes, it is worth checking out. So what was your take on it when you saw it? Because it's three separate time periods, it's very segmented, if you will. Which is, you know, another thing when I'm like, well, this is not quite an anthology movie, but you're trying like an anthology and my eyebrows raise at that. I thought the modern day or maybe like the 2014 basically like stalker video cam segment was just incredibly upsetting but like effective yes and held my attention it's the best part of the movie yeah

so and you know the the other the henry james whatever was fine yeah it is an adaptation of henry james story very loosely adapted um the 2014 segment I've seen some people say this and I tend to agree which is that maybe just should have been the movie yeah I agree um there's something interesting in the idea of the purifying of the DNA and kind of going into this science fiction setting where she's sitting in this like black goo that reminds you of like under the skin or films like that but some of that stuff is not quite as developed in my opinion as the 2014 stuff which is a very very like bang on yeah about that kind of stalkery in cell culture and the position that leah sadu's characters in and george mckay's characters in and this sort of

video is so that he oh really i mean but like effective memorable um so that's the beast yeah that's in theaters now two more left scoop and snack shack let me do snack shack for you really quickly this movie is so fucking fun it's available to rent on vod right now it's one of three movies that t street produced last year that's ryan johnson's company uh they produced american fiction of course academy award-winning film they produced fair play the workplace erotic thriller. And they produced this movie. This movie had a very short run in theaters in March.

It's on VOD right now. It's a very, very, very obvious throwback to a certain kind of 80s and 90s teen comedy. It's directed by Adam Rehmeyer. He directed a movie in 2022 that's become a bit of a cult movie called Dinner in America. This one is set in 1991. It's about two friends. They're played by Connor Sherry

and Gabrielle LaBelle who played young Steven Spielberg in The Fableman. He's good. He's a fucking star in this movie. He's so, so charismatic.

And it's just a very small stakes story about two kids in Nebraska who are looking for to make some money over the summer and they put up a bid to take over the snack shack

at their local pool. And in doing so, they create like a phenomenon out of the snack shack and then a manic pixie dream girl enters their lives. Young girl whose dad is in the army.

Is this movie riddled with a certain kind of cliche? Yes. Is it very conscious of the cliches that it is riffing on? Yes. The reason to see the movie?

Insane energy. The way that the movie's cut and the way that the performances are given, the speed with which they're given, like reminded me of the 90s Sundance classics. It is totally in the vein of Linklater, Kevin Smith, all that stuff, with a slightly higher production budget. Are these the best female characters

I've ever seen in a movie? I'm gonna say no. I don't care. You had me a pool snack shack. Like I don't care when the Man and Pixie Dream Girl shows up. I just

should that be hour three as we host we have a pool snack shack? Oh man. You don't have to go out in the sun. I will. Man I love

I love a public pool. I do love a public pool. That's all I want is like the neighborhood public pool with the snack shack. We got to move to Nebraska. Okay. I don't know how I would do in Nebraska. I don't like planes. Planes?

Like P-L-A-I-N-S. Oh, like the rolling planes. Yeah. What about corn? It's okay in small doses. I love football. So I feel like I would do all right in Nebraska. Okay.

I like flatland too, ever since I had a kid. I want my land to be flat. No, that's my problem. There's nowhere to hide. would do All Right in Nebraska. Okay. I like Flatland too ever since I had a kid. I want my land to be flat. No, that's my problem. There's nowhere to hide. I don't like Flatland. Okay. That's Snack Shack. Okay.

It's definitely worth checking out. Very fun, funny movie. Okay, Scoop. Yeah. So I watched this this morning. Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to squeeze it in.

At what time? I woke up at 6 a.m. and then I watched the film. Thanks so much. So it's fresh. Thanks for dedicating your time to the things that I'm fucking interestedm. and then I watched the film. Thanks so much. So it's fresh. Thanks for dedicating your time to the things that I'm fucking interested in.

What are you talking about? Yeah, all right. Well, it was ruined for me because I listened to your podcast about it on the press box. Oh, sorry. I knew a little bit about this story,

but not a ton. Yeah. What is Scoop about? Scoop is about the infamous 2019 Prince Andrew interview on Newsnight, which is a BBC news program, about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

And this absolute train wreck of an interview truly derailed his royal career, if you can call it that. He was like exiled from public life after this. And so this is about, this is a newsroom movie. It is about the News is a newsroom movie. It is about the Newsnight team and specifically the booker, Sam McAllister, played by Billy Piper, who secures this interview and who basically convince this dummy

to sit in front of a camera and say a bunch of stuff that he should not. And a big part of that interview and the public reaction was like what what was he thinking like you you you if you didn't watch it and they do recreate bits of it in the in the movie which is kind of interesting um you're just like what what what were they thinking like why did, why did they do this? And the movie explains how. And I think like a pretty exciting way. It also is just an absolutely stacked cast.

You got Gillian Anderson. You got Billy Piper. You got Keely Hawes. Poor Keely Hawes, who has to play Prince Andrew's sad press secretary. Really taking some L's there. Thankless role, yeah. And then my girl, Romula Garay. Wish she had more to do in this movie, if I'm being honest. I mean, sure, but. She's kind of

playing the Robards. Yeah, but she doesn't, I don't, this is the movie about the Booker, which is like a pretty uncelebrated role in the world of journalism and they work really hard. Very important job. Very important job here at the Ringer. We have a booking team. They're amazing. I thought Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew was kind of amazing. Now, I don't have a relationship to, as you know. I don't even really know what Prince Andrew looks like. If I tried to conjure his face into my mind, I couldn't do it. Yeah.

Like, I do not care about the Royals. Right. So, I don't really have much to go on here in terms of, whether that performance was good but watching him perform the anxiety and the mental gymnastics of trying to not screw up

while screwing up I thought was exceptional I thought he was wonderful and Gillian Anderson conversely the stillness

and the focus that she exudes in this especially during that climactic scene is amazing. I mean, they're both brilliant in that sequence. It's riveting to watch them.

And because I've never seen this interview, I felt like I was watching the interview. I was like, oh, this is what happened. Holy shit. But like the things about like the pizza express in Woking that I don't sweat. Right. All true. I have those memorized because they've been like memed into existence. Yeah.

Like many people have said that this is just, you know, another episode or two episodes of The Crown. And I will agree with one of Denim, which is like season six of The Crown. Like I want my money back. It was so, it was so bad and so much. It was so poorly cast. You want your money back? Yeah. What do you mean by that?

Like you want your $ back yeah what do you mean by that like you want your 1499 from netflix and and like my and like all the girl era that i spent you know investing on scoop like in the in the crown and the project would you like to apologize to me for browbeating me about not watching the crown for seasons one through five are exceptional television and i will defend season five season six is so bad and in addition to just like truly disastrous choices on the actors who play Prince William Kate Middleton and Harry there's just also the lack of distance between the lack of time really you know between what's happening and what we remember and six contemporaneous to the events in this film? No, it's even 10 years before,

but they really just get tripped up on how reliant they are on tabloid coverage, which we all remember and lived through to recreate it. So they're just, they're stuck. They can't be inventive. They're just in full recreation mode

in season six. And what I thought was really remarkable about Scoop is that they're covering like a, it in season six and what i thought was really remarkable about scoop is that they're they're covering like a it's about a different piece of media you know like it is about a thing that you can watch on youtube we see a few private moments of prince andrew but for the most part it's a forensic procedural about right tv news organization but you know it does the seasons one through five crown thing of it focuses on someone like other than prince andrew he's sort of like a side character it's a newsroom story it

it manages to create spin on this like very recent history and reveal something about it which i thought was interesting yeah i i thought it's good crown. I thought it was extremely watchable. Yeah. I think, I thought it was thematically like a little thin. It was a little like, look at what a good job I did. Yeah, sure. And I mean, it's like, it's based on a book written by Sam McAllister, the booker. And you can feel that, but great performances.

It's kind of like, it's a real overachievement. Like a bad version of this movie is really bad. This was the best version of this movie. But totally watchable. Extremely. And what I wanted The Crown to be. Extremely. So I'm glad to have it. And also candidly, what I wish more Netflix movies were like.

Yeah. Like a little bit more serious, but not serious movies. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think that the docudrama, this, you know what it reminded me a lot of? An HBO docudrama from 1997. Totally. Which is like, was a great thing that they used to do

where they would just rip events from real life. It would not be a lifetime movie. It would have movie stars or big TV stars and it would have a veneer of importance. You'd get to the end of it and you'd be like, I learned a lot about that event. Was it Citizen Kane? Not exactly.

But you know what? I enjoyed myself. I think that this is like a really good zone for Netflix. I wonder if this movie is doing well. I'm not actually sure. Should we see if it's in the top 10? Yeah, go ahead. Let's take a quick look.

This is podcasting. Bob, any bets? Is it in the top 10? What do you think? I think it is. Yeah, I would say yes. People love the Royals, I've learned. Scoop is number six.

Not included. Okay. Number six, Bobby. Can you, any guesses at any films in the top five? This is a chaotic top five. In fact, it's a chaotic top 10

and it tells us a lot about the movie consumption in America right now. And if you can guess a single film in this top 10, I'll be stunned. Is Anyone But You

on Netflix yet? It is not. Okay. Jumanji. Well, for starters, there's not a single... No, there's one other Netflix original, and I've never heard of this movie before.

It must have just come out. Okay. Literally only one other Netflix original. I'm going to read it to you. This is crazy. Number one, The Little Things. This is the Denzel Washington, Jared Leto serial killer movie with Rami Malek.

Sure. Which came out during COVID. That was Day and Date on HBO Max. And now it's number one on Netflix. I think it was a dumpuary Day and Date on HBO. Number two, Happy Gilmore. Five star classic. Wonderful.

Number three, Glass, the M. Night Shyamalan thriller, which is a sequel to Unbreakable. Oh, right. With James McAvoy? James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, and Bruce Willis. Number four, Baby Driver. Did that just recently come to Netflix? It must have. Why is that?

It said, yes, it says recently added. But the little things in Happy Gilmore do not say recently added. Number four, Baby Driver, a movie I like very much, recently added. Number five is a movie called The Tearsmith. So Netflix original. Could you spell that? T-E-A-R-S-M-I-T-H. Okay, well, I didn't know whether it was T-I-a-r okay s-m-i-t-h okay well i didn't know whether it was t-i-e-r or t-e-a-r nika is tormented by rigel as she endures her days within the gloomy walls

of an orphanage until they're adopted together in a strange twist of fate but and then is it like wizards or or does not appear that way it seems to be just a teen drama set within the halls. But there's no supernatural element to it. Are you sure? Because what are the tags? The tags are emotional, romantic, drama. Okay. Number six is Scoop. Number seven is Space Jam A New Legacy.

Also a HBO Max day and date. Dreadful film. Congratulations to Warner Brothers. They're doing great. Number eight is Skyscraperper starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson sure I was close Jumanji

give me a half a point for that I was close I thought you meant the original Jumanji you meant the remake no the new one okay yeah

because The Rock was featured in Cinematrix the other day I think so I was trying to think of films that starred him in the last 10 years in WrestleMania this weekend I wonder if there was

a little bit of WrestleMania he also won't be endorsing anyone for president because he doesn't believe in cancel culture. Fuck that. What an asshole. That sucks.

I really hated that. Okay, number nine is Split. Also an M. Night Shyamalan film starring James McAvoy. I'm happy for James McAvoy. Number ten is Signs. Number ten is the Super Mario Brothers movie.

What the hell, man? What's going on here? That's weird. Netflix is weird. No, everybody's at the cinemas you know just yeah yeah watch those netflix at home yeah or else it's no you know children at home they're watching caitlin clark they were watching wrestlemania what else are they watching me and all my homies this weekend we were seeing all about eve you know i saw raising arizona in the

theater this weekend and then yesterday i was on a sold out screening of monkey man when will raising arizona be number one on the Netflix top 10 literally never that will never happen I have one more movie to tell you guys about okay speaking of chaos

this is the most chaotic movie that is in movie theaters right now it's called The People's Joker started playing film festivals a few years ago it's co-written

and directed by a woman named Vera Drew this is a public domain parody of something that. This is a public domain parody of something that is not in the public domain. It is a very bold decision by a filmmaker to make a movie about sort of the characters

from the DC universe without Warner Brothers' consent. So it's about a law-breaking comedian who's grappling with her gender identity. She forms a comedy troupe and a friend and she gets into a battle with batman but that's not really what it is at all it's like can she say batman she i think she does say batman i mean she's the joker she's she's like joker the harlequin like she's like a mash-up of harley Harley Quinn and the Joker. And the world of DC and Gotham are featured prominently in the film, but it's shot using a lot of animation

and digital effects. It seems like a kind of surreal world. It's a very arch comedy. It's clearly a very indie crowdfunded movie. It's a small movie. It's a movie that is like simultaneously a very sincere portrait, like a coming out story

using these characters but also kind of making fun of coming out stories and how sometimes superhero stories use these silly worlds to

narrativize real world problems it's like weaponizing IP in a really fascinating way the movie when it started premiering at festivals, most people were like, this movie is never going to get released. It will never see the light of day.

Just for legal reasons? Yeah, just for legal reasons. Because this is not, like Mickey Mouse went into the public domain this year because it's been 100 years and the copyright expired. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to Mickey. Thank God Mickey is out of my house. Mickey is no longer an interest set.

Not at all? We don't watch any Mickey anymore, which has been absolutely wonderful. What about any, I guess I didn't see any Mickey or Minnie when we were at your home on Saturday. Mickey and Minnie have a, they have a seating arrangement on the couch in the spare bedroom and they're all arranged neatly. And every once in a while we go in and we have a little tea party with Mickey and Minnie. But for the most part, we've powered down on Mickey. We're fully into Cinderella right now. We're focusing on Cinderella and Prince Charming. Nevertheless, the Joker is not in the public domain.

Okay. Batman is not in the public domain. It's good that I have you here telling me that so I can make all my content decisions going forward with that legality in mind. This is actually shocking to me that this movie was made,

that this filmmaker spent money on it with the expectation that it would somehow see the light of day, but that it probably wouldn't. And that someone at Warner Brothers clearly watched this movie and allowed it to be released. And now that it's been released,

critics are... Richard Brody in the New Yorker this weekend said, this is the greatest superhero movie I've ever seen. Listen, Richard Brody has his own project and it's powerful and sometimes it aligns with mine and sometimes it doesn't. But I salute him without accepting that that changes

my personal opinion about this film, which I don't have because I haven't seen it. I would be fascinated to know what you think of it. I thought it was really bold, occasionally tedious, sometimes thrilling. It's cool that someone

is doing this, you know? Sure, yes. Brody compared the movie favorably to John Waters' movies. It has that spirit. It has a kind of rambunctious, wild, like,

look what I can do kind of energy to it that is really, really exciting exciting where Vera Drew goes from here I don't know she seems to have like a real contempt for the system and

filmmakers like that sometimes can be hard to work inside the system when you actively despise it but I thought it was cool that she pulled this off and that she got somebody I'm trying to

imagine like David Zaslav sitting down and watching this movie and being like, it's okay. No, of course not. But someone who works for him did and found a way to allow this movie to be released.

How do you think that person's Monday is going? Like, what quarter of their life do you think they're in? Like, when did the calendar invite come in? They're probably looking

at the eclipse right now. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's just an amazing like prankster experience of filmmaking, which we usually don't get. Everything it's just an amazing like prankster experience of filmmaking which we usually don't get

everything is usually so freeze dried and pre-prepared for us and this is something where I was like this is different this is a little bit I don't know if it's dangerous

but it is in the spirit of the Joker you know like that and that's part of the arch nature of the commentary that's good we don't have enough of that this year

shit are we going to live folie a deux live stream the trailer reveal tomorrow oh well there's there's talk of a some big picture youtube content coming soon no i know so yeah which is that the sort of thing you would want to do i mean no that was a joke also i don't like first time trailer watches okay i like i would prefer to watch it once and then watch it again and talk through it.

Okay. But do you like the other way? No, I think most of the time I would be like, who is that? Right. That's why I don't want to do that. Yeah.

Because then you explain things and then you miss things while you're explaining it. You know. Yeah. I don't like that song. You like when there's a slowed down children's choir

version of a pop song? You know what? Sometimes it still works. You do. As long as you are aware of, you know, what came before you in the trailer land

and you know that you're playing homage to the Social Network trailer, like, that's fine with me. Okay. Did you know that my son is really into Lady Gaga?

So that's going to be a really interesting experience for me. The real people's joker is Knox. Yeah. Loves the music of Lady Gaga. Request it.

It's also, he calls my mom Gaga. So I do think that he thinks that it's my mom performing the songs of Lady Gaga, which if you've met my mom, wonderful lady, that is a hilarious image. That's incredible.

But like, he'll be like, I would like, this is how he goes. I want p-p-p-poker face. And he does that. So, will I take him to see Follier Deux? I would be a little concerned with the potential violence in the film.

All I'm hearing is that he's a budding renaissance man. He has wonderful taste up and down. He plays sports. He's fucking left-handed. Maybe they'll do, like, a Just the Musical numbers cut that I can show to, you know, although I assume there will be violence during one of them, but maybe they can do. Do you see that Netflix now does a thing where it edits out all of the sex scenes? I don't support that. Or you could, there's like an option that you, or maybe this was an April Fool's joke, but I didn't.

Look at you, misreporting. I didn't investigate. You got fake news on your movie podcast. But it's like, if you could click it, so if you're watching with a family, it doesn't have to get awkward. But they should do that for Joker, folia de, for real, but with the violence.

You think there's like graphic sex scenes between Lady Gaga? For the violence. For the violence. You think Arthur Fleck gets off in Joker? I mean, I really, I don't want to watch that. You don't want to watch him getting off? No.

That's your man. No. That's Joaquin. I only want to watch him dancing. Okay. He's a good dancer. It's very powerful when he dances. I feel like, you know, we talked about Pennies from Heaven.

Is it going to be lip syncing? Like, is Joaquin going to sing? Can he sing? I guess he can. He sang in Walk the Line. Yeah. You think he's going to use the Johnny Cash voice as Joker? That'd be really funny okay that's a lot

of movies I'm gonna relist the movies okay that we talked about here of course we talked about Dune part two we talked about the first omen we talked about La Chimera we

talked about Snack Shack Scoop How to Have Sex Girl State Sperm World The People's Joker, and The Beast. I haven't seen a bunch of stuff. I listed them here just for my own sake.

Okay. So when people are like, why didn't you talk about this? There you go. Read them out. I haven't seen Ken Loach's The Old Oak. Apparently it's Ken Loach's last film. Yeah, I saw that.

I haven't seen it either. It's pretty sad. I hope it's good. I like Ken Loach movies. You know about Hundreds of Beavers? No. Another festival favorite that's like an homage

to silent zany comedies apparently coming to VOD in April. Femme. I think George Mackay is also in that. He's in a lot of stuff. He is. I haven't seen that.

Yeah. In the Land of Saints and Sinners and Land of Bad. Two movies that have the word land in it that are both two muscular male movies. The first one is the Liam Neeson Actioner set in Ireland starring Kieran Hines and Kerry Condon. Two goats.

Land of Bad is about big, beefy boys shooting guns. We'll watch it at some point. It's on VOD. Wicked Little Letters, you up on this? Yeah, this is Jesse Buckley and Olivia Colman. Let me tell you, I'm up on their press tour. Why haven't we seen this? I don't know.

It's our two girls. I know. And I've watched every single clip from every single junket that they did because it's been served to me on my Instagram Explore. Maybe that'll be our next movie that we go see, Wicked Little Letters. All right, that's good. I've named so many movies in this episode. Any closing thoughts?

Q2. I'm ready. Here we are. Anything better than Q1? Yeah, it's about to be an eclipse. Do you feel the energy changing? No. I don't either because like this, this, this room is like a vault.

Should we put a sunroof in here? I would enjoy that. No one else would. Maybe we will. Okay. All right. Let's go to my conversation with Arkasha Stevenson. Delighted to be joined by Arkasha Stevenson,

the director of The First Omen. Arkasha, I'll be honest with you. I sat down to watch The First Omen. I was a little bit skeptical. I was like, ah, legacy sequel from Disney, a horror franchise that i like but don't love and i was really really blown away by the movie and i immediately clocked your name at the end of the film and i i was just so impressed and i thought it was so dynamic and visually creative and tense and beautiful and i i don't know anything about you and i pride myself on knowing things

about folks like you. So I was wondering if you could just like, maybe walk me through your journey a little bit as a filmmaker and how you got to making the first Omen. Yeah, sure. No, well, first off, thank you so much for saying all of that. That's very kind. And I totally understand the skepticism. I mean, I approached it with a lot of you know um I wasn't sure what was going on you know and also just oh man sacred do we need a prequel yeah so thank you for saying all that um but yeah I actually started in photojournalism um which is why I came out to LA was to work at the LA Times and then I saw a David Lynch film and my head exploded. And so I went to AFI because he went to AFI and they said, what are you doing here? And I just said, David Lynch.

And what was the film? What was the Lynch movie you saw? Okay. So I was at a bar and they were playing Firewalk with me without any sound on a projector. And I was like, what is this? And I left the bar and I rented wild at heart and wild at heart is what did it to me. Amazing. I love that as an origin story, a firewalk with me. I'm a massive fan of that too. And it is, it is so striking. It might be, you know, that's the, the Lynch film I watched the most, strangely enough. So were you, were you not a, like a cinephile or a movie person growing up? No, I was in love with the television growing up, like all American children. And so I think I was

taking in a lot through osmosis without even really realizing it. And then photojournalism was such a perfect fit. They joke that if you're going to fail out of school, you might make a really good photojournalist. And it just ended up being like a really good fit because, you know, photojournalism kids were the kids that liked to jump over fences. And, you know, and so that worked out really well for me. And it was, you know, it was going to be what I was going to do until fire walk with me slash wild

at heart. So AFI was like, absolutely come on in. You're a student here and, and you'll now be a great filmmaker. You don't know what a director is. Come on. No,

it was so, um, they, it was such a, you know, interesting experience. Cause I was so nervous. I showered.

I think I put on perfume. I did the hygiene thing for them. They're like, just so you know, we don't accept journalists or documentary filmmakers. I was like, oh, okay. They were really kind and started talking to me and um you know they accept my discipline and I have to be this sound this makes me sound like such a bimbo um I didn't really know what a director did and I didn't really know what I was doing there I just kind of was following the gut and they didn't laugh at me and they weren't rude and they were actually quite kind and um I just talked to them about some of my journalism experiences and it worked that's so

interesting so did you have any sense of like was your intent to make lynchian narrative movies or were you just operating in a more like ethereal like got to follow some sort of feeling that I have. It was weird. It's like, you know, when you fall in love and there's like this weird delirium that sets in, that's kind of, I think what happened to me where I was just making like very strange decisions, but just following this, this feeling of love. So you go to AFI and then was the, after you graduated, was your intention to work in movies, to work in TV? Like how did you set about having a career? Yeah, well, I really wanted to make movies, you know, I, um, I thought I was going to be like, I was going to do really small indie films. Um, I was really pumped about that. You know, um, my partner Tim and I did this short film after school called Pineapple, where we found this ghost town and everybody that lived there was involved in the film. And so it was like this very, like, community driven project. And I was like, cool, this is the vibe. And then, um, you know, there's this decapitated pig head in that short and, um,

and Nick Antosca who creates channel zero and has since built a horror empire, um, saw that short and, um, was like, I really dug the way you shot that pig head, the next season of my show is about cannibalism. Do you want to come on board? You know? And I was just like, yes. Um, so it was just like very, extremely lucky. Like he put a lot of trust in me, like the longest shoot I'd ever done was six days. And this was going to be a 45 day shoot six six episodes um and he was pretty i don't extremely generous and trusting um and then from there i went into television um so this movie has been like a really nice return to what i thought closer to what i thought i was going to do graduating sorry i'm rambling i'm very no no no no i mean i'm so fascinated because i did go back

and watch butcher's's Block, the third season of Channel Zero that you directed, which I thought was really quite impressive. And I have friends who had raved about Channel Zero, the series, but I never watched it myself. But yeah, I mean your visual sense is like really unique. It's, um, there's a kind of like physical visceral

body horror thing that you seem to have a real knack for and interest in that you were able to develop in television, which is unusual. Like there's a lot of body horror history that you seem to have a real knack for and interest in that you were able to develop in television, which is unusual. Like there's a lot of body horror history in film, but like, did you find yourself even in the TV format trying to push the boundaries of what you could get away with? Like, what was your experience with the kind of movies that you like to make? Yeah, I think that's totally fair. I think that I just didn't, it was kind of another airhead moment where I just didn't really understand what the boundaries were in television.

And because I was kind of taken under Nick Antosca's wing, he's very into pushing boundaries. And so he was just very much like, go with your gut, try whatever you want. And I, you know, I didn't realize this, but I do really um this was kind of part of a little bit of film school was discovering that I really love body horror and I think a lot of women are encouraged to kind of dissociate from their bodies growing up and so body horror has been actually this kind of very strange therapeutic path where I've gotten to like reconnect with my physical form through tearing it up on screen. Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, you have a real knack for it in a way that I haven't seen before. You directed a bunch of episodic television, but when you were

doing on that, you know, you worked on our mutual friend, Andy Greenwald's show, Briarpatch. You did an episode of Legion. Like you worked on some some big shows you know some some basic cable prestige tv shows the whole time you were doing that work was it with the intention of getting to make a film at that point yeah yeah it was but you know what um because i was so new to film when i entered film school i kind of knew that I was a little bit behind the curve and that I needed to get my 10,000 hours in not that I'm in for that but I just needed like TV was was a really lucky thing for me just because I was trying to still learn a lot and I was with all these very generous collaborators like Andy who let me try things

and who just were really great leaders and saw a lot of things in those guys that I really wanted to emulate. So I think I needed all that time before I made a film. So what happens when you're a director who's made some television and wants to get in the film game?

And is it that a job comes open for a possible, you know, horror sequel? Like, is it that they come directly to you? Like, walk me through how someone gets an opportunity like this. Yeah, I wish I could tell you. I really don't. It's been like a magical whirlwind, you know. But it's so funny because it's like, you know, my Tim and I have been writing scripts. Like we've been trying to get a feature off the ground for like eight years and nothing was, you know, nothing really wanted to be birthed.

And then I just happened to meet one of the producers on the project, Gracie, who works with Phantom 4 randomly. And, and she said, do you you want to you want to read this script and I just had no and like we were talking about I was like a prequel to the omen like I don't know you know and then read the script I was like oh no actually this is kind of a perfect storm of what I want to talk about and um and so I we kind of did this thing where like, okay, we have no business directing a studio film. We have no business being part of the Omen franchise, which is sacred to us. Um, but let's, let's pitch what we want to do.

And if they say, okay, then maybe we're good partners. So we pitched the vagina, um, and we just kind of went for it. And it was really wonderful because we set up the scene and then we said, and then this is the image that we want to show. And we talked about it and the Zoom was just silent. And I was kind of like, oh, God, we froze right before we got to finish the scene. But then David Goyer started nodding, like, you know, very enthusiastically. And then slowly everybody started nodding.

And it was a really, like, beautiful moment. Like, that was a very, did not expect it to end that way, but it was really cool. So this, like really uh provocative aggressive image in the movie that i think a lot of people when they walk out of the movie will be like that is the image that is burned into my mind that's the one that you use to essentially sell yourself to do the movie yeah yeah because it you know we were saying like this this is a

movie about sexual assault and the female form getting mutilated and violated and so if if we are going to tell this story we got to do it with imagery like this you know and um they didn't shy away it was cool that is amazing i that honestly i i mean i was i was that was definitely one of the images when watching the film where I was like, holy shit, how did she get away with this? I heard that there was some controversy, though, attached to it. The fact that you sold the movie against it, and I do want to talk about the development of the story and things that you that was really, it was expected but unexpected, you know, in the sense that the MPA doesn't tell you what they find gratuitous and offensive. You just kind of, it's like this very forbiddenly opaque kind of deal. You have to slowly play detective. Shocker, it was the vagina, you know. Maybe they figured it out um but what was interesting is like we have you know we have this body dice you know bisection and and all sorts of violence

we have a demon penis um you know that literally has body fluids coming out of it like there's some stuff in the film but they were not worried about that none of that flagged the nc-17 rating it was really just the the frontal shot of the vagina and um the original concept for that was that we're in that shot and then slowly something starts to protrude and you think that it's the, the baby's head crowning and then it, the head unfurls and really it's a hand, you know? Um,

and what we slowly figured out was that it, it wasn't the hand protruding from the vagina that was offensive to them. It was the footage before that happened. So just the vagina being the vagina um and that the idea of showing the act of birth actually would be more gratuitous than a demon's arm inside that demon hand stretching out of the vagina is less offensive to them than the actual vagina um which i mean that just speaks to why we had to have the image in there you know like i grew up on georgio keith paintings it's like it's beautiful so

just want to share that sentiment that's it i mean it's a remarkable story it's it is funny that in 2024 that that sort of thing is still an issue but you know i watch a lot of horror movies and still I was braced by a couple of the images that you're talking about. I was like, this is pretty wild that you were able to get away with it. So, you know, it's not done, I don't think, in a kind of like gratuitous and shocking way either. Like it is very much intrinsic to the ideas of the movie and also like the plot, the story of the film. When you looked at the script, did you feel like you had to change a lot? Did you have to reimagine how a story was going to be told?

Because you are working in this complicated space where it's an important property to a studio. It's also a series of films that people have a big relationship to. So how do you navigate the waters of that? I'm not going to lie. That's something that we talked about constantly because that's tricky territory

is finding that balancing act. Because I think, you know, we both, Tim and I really understand that you should not piss off horror fans. Like that is a cardinal sin. Um, so we, we knew that we had to make something different, but also pay homage um so i think what was what was so interesting was that when we got the script the bones were in place right and it's start we had the beginning and we had the end and the end was wonderful because it immediately dovetails into the 1976 version so it felt like that was where we were going to hold the hand of 1976. And then with the beginning, starting with this brand new character, let us talk about what we wanted to talk about. And I think that the whole reason you would make

a prequel is to answer the question of how Damien was born, right? And you're talking about birth inherently. So just thematically right off the bat, you're talking about all these very combustible issues right now about female body autonomy. And so really, a lot of these moments of female body were really important to me because I wanted to make them very personal and kind of reflect something that I'm terrified of I also haven't seen a lot of uh female body

horror that isn't you know doesn't feel sexualized or glorified and so this was kind of these were moments that I kind of wanted to see as a little girl, I feel like. So it was really, sorry, I'm going in such a roundabout way of answering your question, but it was really kind of tailoring the script to really speak to horror through that female lens. I don't think the movie would work without Nell Tiger Free. I'm curious, like where you found her, what that process was like and directing an actor. You know, I mean, she's in almost every frame of the movie. So what was that experience like? Yeah. I feel like heaven delivered her to us. She was perfect. It was, you know,

we were fans of servant and we watched servant and, and we're like, man, this, this girl's incredible. We've got to meet her. And it's such a, she runs the gambit, right? The of margaret she starts in heaven she ends in hell and hell is not pretty hell is not a a like you can't want to be beautiful in those moments you can't be feared of afraid of of juices or or mucus or um being in that really terrifying headspace for so long. And when we met her, she was lovely enough to read two of the scenes for us. And they were both kind of the most emotionally weighty scenes. You know, one of them,

when she realizes what's happened to her in Brendan's apartment. And I was like, do you want to talk about anything? Do you want to go over anything? And she was like, no, I just want to do do it and then she went full Isabella and Johnny made everybody cry you know and I was just like holy hell it is really cool to see it's it's scary actually to see somebody be able to dive into another realm and then reappear and be themselves again in such a quick period of time. But I don't know if we would have been able to do that film without Nell, because she has this really magical quality to her.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Isabella Gianni. There's definitely some possession in your film, and I feel it. And I don't know if, you know, it's a movie that I guess has been really revived quite a bit in the last few years and more people are starting to see it. But that kind of chaotic energy, and that's related to something I wanted to ask you about, which is when you're making a studio horror movie, invariably, like, you have to make scares. You have to make jump scare moments. You have to make moments that, like, pay off with the audience expectation when they're sitting down for, like, it's Friday night, date night, and me and my date are at a horror movie. But you're also making like, I thought of just like a very artistic and physical kind of art house film in some ways. So what's it like like crafting a scare while also maintaining the integrity of the thing that you're trying to do?

Yeah, that's a really good question, which I'm still trying to figure out for myself um but it's like the the fear I think is we're not really a jump scare movie you know it's a little bit more existential it's a little bit more paranoid um and a little bit more of a tragedy you know horror through tragedy I think more so also just being totally honest I'm not great at jump scares also not really scared by jump scares so I think I don't my body kind of doesn't some people like it's an art you know it's like they could teach master classes on this in film school but I feel like I wouldn't pass that class. But you do need those moments. But I think really what we were trying to do so much more is almost have the jump scares be like MacGuffins. Because something else is going to seep into your skin, you know, and maybe you won't realize it until the end of the movie and your muscles are so tight that you can't breathe.

I think that's really effective. There is one sequence in the film that is sort of like a slow bleed jump scare that is so effective in the darkness and a figure in the darkness too. I don't know how much you want to spoil, but like that scene, I don't, I never close my eyes when I'm watching a movie, but like, I felt like I needed to almost like shield my eyes as that was going. Can you talk about that one a little bit oh yeah I love that thank you for saying that well so much you know the the fear in this is is a lot of Margaret not being able to trust her reality am I seeing and feeling the right things um and so mixing the supernatural with like repressed memories and repressed trauma was a very exciting like brew to make and and having that reflected in this image where where we went very dark so you can't really you don't know if

you're seeing something or not and I think that's part of the scare is for that moment the audience wonders if they're if they can trust their eyes. And then this, this sound is crunchy, juicy sound oozes in. And, and, um, I just was so thrilled. And also I think, you know, we worked with this actress Ishtar who is so, she's like such a delightful, beautiful lady. Um, but she was in these like horrid process you know um but was still just delightful with everybody on set and so we were like maybe just be lovely while you look like an absolute ghoul from hell and so that's kind of where her giggles came in and she was like just so happy to be there, you know?

And for some reason, that just makes it even freakier, I think. It's wonderfully effective. So I had the director of Immaculate on the show a couple of weeks ago, Michael Mohan. And I said, I asked him this in part because I was remarking on the strangeness of your film and his film coming out

in the span of a couple of weeks. And I liked both movies a lot. They're very similar structurally in some ways. They're very different in terms of how you guys made your films. But I feel like the church maybe doesn't hold as big of a place in the minds of young people and maybe even horror movie going audiences as it did in the 70s or even in the 90s. And yet these two movies are here. They're very effective. They both kind of feel like period pieces, but I'm fascinated by them getting made. I don't know what relationship you have to faith or how much that factored into the telling of this story,

but it is set largely in this convent space. So I was wondering if you could kind of like address why you think that this is happening at this time or if it's just a coincidence. I have a theory about this and it might be a little long I have a theory about this and it might be a little long-winded, so bear with me. But I think Tim and I were talking a lot about why, when we're talking about why should we make this movie now, we were talking a lot about why

was The Omen made the time it was. And not just The Omen, but other films around The Omen, The Exorcist, Rosemary's baby and and seeing like all these things are in the wake of the vietnam war in the wake of of um watergate there's such a mass loss of faith in institutions but not only that they're they're in the middle of these like intergenerational culture wars where people are very afraid of their children. You know, the people who made these films are representing children as demons. And so now I feel like how to answer to that is now I think it's the opposite.

You know, we're afraid of our parents' generation. And I think the reason why maybe we're expressing that through religious horror and specifically through nuns, stories about nuns and their bodies. And reproduction is because this is something that people really want to talk about right now. Like, I mean, we pitched this the day that the six-week ban in Texas was passed. We flew out when the Dobbs decision came down and it's like these are horror always reflects real life cultural horrors you know like Jordan Peele said to Terry Gross like it's not horror it's socio-horror and it's like this is this is something that's scaring the hell out

of people right now and everybody wants to talk about it brilliant answer um do you know what you're doing next laundry do you will you stay in horror like do you what is your intention long term i mean this is this is one of the not great things about my personality is everything's horror to me i think depending on how you look at it it's just like everything's horror to me. I think depending on how you look at it, it's just like, everything's terrifying. So, so yeah, I, I mean,

I think horror is extremely diverse. I think horror is like the closest thing we have to social realism. I also think that horror is on its way to being prestige. Like I think with what Ari Aster did with war is incredible and has kind of broken the dam. So yeah, I say I'd love to stay in horror, but,

but horror kind of branches out quite far, you know? So I guess it's a bit of a vague answer. Arkasha, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you seen anything good lately? Oh gosh.

Yes. Okay. There's this movie that was just restored by um grindhouse releasing called uh hollywood 9028 yeah you heard of this yes i have please please please say what you love about it oh my god okay this film is so interesting so it was shot in 1973 and it's through a male perspective but it is this hyper feminist horror film about this guy. It's supposed to be based on the Hollywood, um,

Hollywood strangling cases. Right. And it's about this man who, who strangles women in Hollywood, but it's such a perceptive and incredible. Um, I think commentary on what degradation of the heart can do to anybody, especially when you're an artist and you're

pursuing art in hollywood which can get so dark so quickly um and it's just shot so brilliantly as one of the best shots at the end of the film that shot at the end of the film was so ballsy that i almost got angry i was like like, this is good. This is so damn good. Wait, I can't believe you've seen it. Tell me how you've seen this movie. I'm just, I'm like a freak like you, you know,

like I hunt down movies like this. So yeah, I've seen it. It's an amazing recommendation. I can assure you, you are the first person to recommend that movie on this show. Arkasha, congratulations.

You know, just like very exciting to have a new voice. So thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for saying that. And thanks for having me. I been a big fan so thank you thanks arkasha stevenson thanks to our producer bobby wagner for his work on this episode we'll be back later this week chris ryan will be joining us we'll be discussing alex garland's highly anticipated already highly controversial civil war we'll see you then later this week. Chris Ryan will be joining us. We'll be discussing Alex Garland's highly anticipated,

already highly controversial Civil War. We'll see you then.