The Big Picture - ‘Encanto’ and the 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2021

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Andy Greenwald joins Sean to discuss Disney’s latest achievement in animation, ‘Encanto,’ and share some tips for how to be a dad who wants to introduce their child to movies (1:00). Chris Ryan swings by to talk about Paul Verhoeven’s sexy nuns movie, ‘Benedetta’ (38:00). Then, Adam Nayman and Sean list their 10 most underrated, underseen, or underdiscussed movies of 2021 (51:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Andy Greenwald, Chris Ryan, and Adam Nayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Peter Rosenberg from Cheap Heat. Join me and the fearless, physically large stat guy, Greg, and of course, super agent 35 Under 35 Dipperstein as we tackle the biggest stories in pro wrestling each and every week. To hear us, follow The Ringer Wrestling Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay mage and enjoy yourself. I'm Sean Fennessy and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about some movies you really ought to see.

Later in this episode, our pal Adam Naiman will join me to share our 10 most underrated, underseen, or under-discussed movies of 2021. I'm always trying to create a broad swath of coverage on The Big Picture, Adam Naiman 2021 movie we never got around to. And we have a special guest on the show. And I think for the first time in the 15 years I've known him, and in the almost 10 years we've been colleagues, this is our first solo podcast conversation talking about the co-host of My Favorite Pod, the creator of Briarpatch, my old friend, the overlord of Daddington Island. It's Andy Greenwald. Hi, Andy. Sean, I think you need to add something to that. It's because you've been scared. That's all.

It's okay. It's okay. It's the season. This is going to be a touchy-feely pod. I know your favorite adjective for anything, touchy-feely. And it's fine. This is a comfortable place. We're just two dads just chewing the fat.

No pressure. I feel warmer than I ever have. Despite this, this chilly holiday season, I feel, I feel ready to bond with you truly to connect with you, to better understand what you've been putting Chris through for years now on the podcast in, in recommending, uh, animated content in recommending shows and films for kids. I've obviously always been a little bit open-minded about these kinds of things, but now that I have a daughter in my house, I'm constantly questing to figure out what is right to show her, what is not right. I've started with horror movies and extremely violent content just to kind of prime her for

where we're going, but you have a slightly more gentle approach to these things. You want to tell me why you wanted to come onto the show to talk about a specific movie today? Well, first, I want to say thank you for even suggesting that what I've been doing for many, many years on The Watch Podcast with Chris is anything like suggesting or influencing. In many ways, I feel like I have been a Nigerian prince, and he has been everyone who's ever received one of my emails. Because not once has he ever taken me up on a single offer, even when we, in front of the world, made a bet that he had to watch a Miyazaki film as if that was some kind of punishment. So finally, I'm in a safe place and I can be my true self with you.

And so what was going on was fairly simply, you, Sean, you're a cineast, you're a lover of films. You are a great supporter and advocate for the movies that matter to you and that mean something to you into the larger marketplace with one large glaring blind spot. And so though, as you said, we've been friends for many years, I am easily able to text you my thoughts at any given moment.

I decided to do what all mature people either in their 40s or soon to be in their 40s would do, which is I decided to Twitter shame you for your Disney movie erasure. And, you know, sorry, at Jack, it worked because here I am. I wanted to talk about a movie that I think is, well, of the threes of movies I saw this year, easily, easily one of the top two. And no, but in all seriousness, I saw the new Disney movie Encanto with my family and I thought it was absolutely brilliant and more than brilliant, meaningful and kind of noteworthy. And I was desperate for a venue to have this conversation. So you have one. I'm glad you're here. I don't know why Encanto got past me. Honestly, the movie opened on over Thanksgiving weekend, I believe.

And it was only in theaters. And it is now available, if you're listening to this right now, on Disney Plus. And this has been a slightly different rollout from some of the other films we've seen over the past year from Disney. Some went directly to Disney Plus. Some went to Premier Access on Disney Plus before becoming ultimately available for free as part of the traditional subscription service. Some stayed in theaters for long stretches of time. This one, having 30 days in the theater, where it's done pretty good business. It's nearing $100 million in grosses.

But now, over the Christmas holiday, the New Year holiday, families, I imagine, are going to be burning through this one. I did get a chance to see it finally. I'm glad that I did. I really liked it. Why was it a bigger deal than Luca or than Raya and the Last Dragon or any of the other animated movies that came out this year? Why was this the one that encouraged you to Twitter shame me? Well, first of all, I just thought it was, I truly thought it was brilliant on two levels. I thought it was gorgeous. I thought that the color palette, the design, the detail with which the animators went to create not just a vision of Columbia, the nation, but of a kind of folkloric, magical, realist, animated dreamscape version of what that might be from the colors to the foods to the trees and vistas. I thought it was just a stunning achievement.

And I just feel like also, as someone who was not paying any attention to this for a large number of years and then suddenly started paying very close attention to this within, I would say, the last eight and a half years, the character work in the animation has jumped up another level to the point where I was completely transported

in the way that usually, usually I think, and I don't know if you share this, I think Chris Ryan certainly shares this. There might be a barrier for entry in terms of losing yourself in a film if it's an animated film once you reach a certain age. I am also not a fan of the uncanny valley, like photo realist CGI work. This found a perfect medium to me in terms of just the sheer visual storytelling and beauty of it. There's also songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda in this movie that should have Surgeon General's warnings

attached to them. I think they're brilliant musical theater songs, but more than that, they're brilliant musical theater songs written in, I think, the Disney style that was kind of codified by Mencken, Alan Mencken in the, I was going to say the classic days, but I don't know what you even call that, but the second golden age of Disney animation, which I guess is like Little Mermaid and Aladdin. These songs are brilliant in the moment in terms of their storytelling. They're brilliant in their incorporation of Colombian rhythms and pop songcraft.

They're also just absolutely deadly, like in terms of how sticky they are to your brain. Now, obviously, I live in a house where I have two small people who want to hear them all the time. But, you know, we're all epidemiologists now. So I would say the, what is it? The, is it the R plus one of like the, the, the spreadability of these songs is dangerous. It is dangerous. I try to like put on, I put on that Pharaoh Sanders record as like almost an attempt to create like a shield.

And let me just say the immune escape of these songs of, of we need to talk about Bruno was, we don't talk about Bruno was, was shocking. It was off the charts. And then the last point was that I feel like this was the moment when the Disney machine, the Disney animation machine, which has gone through a lot of turmoil, but certainly change over over the last few years and turnover. And Jennifer Lee, who is the co-creator, co-writer, co-director of the Frozen series, is now more firmly entrenched at the top spot. I don't know what her direct day-to-day was on this movie. It takes years to develop every animated property. But this felt like a breakthrough for me in terms of the types of stories they wanted to tell. There were no princesses. There were no,

she's not a princess, she's a chieftain, like Moana, which is also a great movie with Lin-Manuel Miranda songs. It was, there were no villains. It was entirely a story about emotions and family that didn't shy away from the consequences of the larger world, of life. It didn't sugarcoat things. The main character doesn't get a special power to make her feel special at the end. You know, I think it really worked beautifully. And it made me very hopeful about the storytelling being done in Disney. And there are other points to make.

I've been monologuing for a while. But also on my table of contents, Sean, are why Disney does this better than the other studios that these studios are trying. There's never been more stuff being made and certainly more thirst and hunger for kids content on all the various streamers. Also, why Disney animation is where it's at and why Pixar I am totally done with. And that could be a hot take I can give you at the end. But that's my thesis. Chop it up for me because I know you like to keep things structured and I've given you

a lot of raw material. Yeah, let me sink my teeth into all of that. The latter point is fascinating to me because I feel like Pixar is in a little bit of a transitional phase, but to be done with it, I think is a fool's errand.

Well, the thing about Pixar, and I admired it, and there are a lot of movies that I like, and I have a lot of time for certain Pixar films. But I think that Pixar, especially as I get older

as a parent, I think that Pixar is just so it's not just so deeply American in its storytelling approach. It's deeply tech bro in its approach in that Pixar looks at every moment of life with artistic creativity and sensitivity and intelligence, but as a problem to be solved. What happens to us when we die? Why do we like certain things? Why is childhood weird? And let's fix it. And let's fix it with, you know, brilliant humor and absolutely seamless storytelling. It's an incredible machine they've built up there to push story through. It's unparalleled. But after watching certainly the Miyazaki movies, which is just like, the world is fucking weird. And then the movie's over and you're like, boy, that really reminded me that the world is fucking weird. And I'm movie's over and you're like, boy, that really reminded me that the world is fucking weird. And I'm glad my children know that. And now to come to these Disney movies,

which really run counterpoint to me to a counter to the Pixar movies, particularly the last Disney masterpiece, Frozen 2. Yeah, we're going there. And Encanto, which villainless, emotional, messy storytelling in a way that I find really interesting and really impressive and definitely totally a break from the previous 70 years of Disney animated storytelling. Well, it's funny that you say that because one, the most recent Pixar film I don't think does what you just described. That's Luca, which is a movie that I did not think was terribly successful, but maybe I didn't think it was terribly successful

because it doesn't do the thing that I think you very eloquently identified in most of their projects. On the other hand, I feel like Disney animation is very hit and miss in which stories it chooses to tell. It's big event films. It's Frozen 2s almost always do the job they set out to do. But, you know, Ryan, the last dragon is actually a movie i liked perhaps as much as incanto but i don't think most people felt that way and you know this is this is also the studio that um you know occasionally makes a i don't i don't know zootopia is a really good example zootopia i thought was one of the best movies of that year

and the same people who directed this movie directed that movie but Zootopia I liked in the same way that I liked Deadpool the movie which was like here's a bunch of stuff I've seen before but with people in different costumes doing those things Zootopia was a Bogart movie and I love Bogart movies and but with a bunch of animals Zootopia was copaganda Sean Sean I mean, let's say it let's rip the band-aid off I've heard that argument in the past I will neither confirm nor deny my feelings on it I agree, and I also should

be clear here that Disney makes a lot of product and when I say that when I'm referring to Disney animation what I am referring to, and this definitely suits their larger interests, at least in terms of their engagement with the critical community, which is negligible and actually totally irrelevant to their overall corporate concerns. So true. I basically am like they make one movie a year or two movies a year.

There's the showpiece movie. There's the one that they push all their chips in, the ones that has the original songs, the ones that they consider to be heirs to Snow White's throne, the ones that they'll put in the montage in the years to come. And yeah, I think that Raya is, which has gotten an enormous amount of burn in my house, is a very, very well made and thoughtful and at times lovely cartoon. I think it is of a different stripe than Zotopia which i think was kind of a weird fit and i don't know i mean we won't need to do the zootopia pod but that movie started as a spy movie right and then it became a cop movie like it just feels like they were throwing stuff at the wall and then some of it stuck it felt like more like a fox or a um a son Sony animated movie than a Disney movie,

but it maintained that kind of like whimsical, not too meta snarky attitude that you sometimes find in like the Despicable Me franchise or something like that. It was still soft, but yeah, it felt a little bit out of time. And I'll say that's what's surprising about Encanto is that it comes from that team.

Should also say that Cherise Castro Smith co-directed this movie, obviously Lynn writing the songs for it, elevates it in a pretty significant way this is kind of my favorite Lynn stuff since Hamilton um yes I think that's absolutely legit I I think the song is really really great by far the best part of the film for me um the story itself is interesting one the film has been praised for spotlighting Colombia and Colombian history and the sense of family and identity in that country. In part because a lot of the time when people think of the country of Colombia in our popular culture, they think of narcos or they think of Pablo Escobar movies or the drug trade. And this movie kind of steers the wheel back in the direction of a lot of its emotional history. And I like that part of it.

And I do like a magically real story. And this feels not so far afield from like a. And I do like a magically real story. And this feels not so far afield from like a kid's version of like a Borges story. Borges is from Argentina, but it's not so far adrift from it. That being said, I felt a little lost

without some of those, I don't know, those armrests of the villain and the superpower and the princess. And maybe that's just something I need to get comfortable with because as I was watching the movie, I was like, is this a movie? Is there any real tension here?

What is actually happening that I'm investing in? I was trying to work my way through that as I watched. That's spoken like a new parent. I mean, I'm being glib. It's a little unfair. But I do think that the ability to lose yourself in a, I guess we're going this way now, is central to the parenting experience. But I also will say that I am with you. I think that there were moments, and this is true, I think, of any highly worked over property, whether it is a Disney animated film or a loaf of bread. You can tell when it's been needed a lot, and maybe the end product looks good, but you can tell. And there were. Like you can tell when it's been kneaded a lot and maybe the end product looks good, but you know, you can tell. And there were moments where you can sort of feel the fists of a number of Disney people who may be punching the dough into a different shape or different direction.

Less so, I think, than in other animated properties, because I think that for whatever reason, like the metaphorical candle in the film, something pure was lighting their way. They did have a very clear sense of what the story ought to ultimately be on a macro level. The moment for me that was surprising and a little jarring, and you're catching me in a moment where I've seen the film once in theaters. It has arrived on Disney+,

which means it is the only movie I will see now for the next month, and I may have a very different impression of it should we have the opportunity to speak again. But the moment when the quest is clearly beginning, like a traditional Disney film, and Mirabelle has to figure out what's going on. And what she does in that moment is she goes further in the house.

That, I think, is the moment that's a little jarring because you see those mountains. You hear the story of her grandmother, and they came and they sought refuge here. And are they making their own life or are they hiding? And what is that tension going to be? And that would be the traditional moment, I think, in the script for it to crack open. But this movie instead turns inward, which I think you may have bumped on.

And I think a traditional script structure may push back on. But I found that to be the most interesting part of the movie, that at every moment when it had the choice to go broader, it turned inward and went deeper. Well, let me ask you, how did the kids in your house respond to that? Did they sense that there was something a little bit unusual about the structure of this movie? I will say that there was clearly something unexpected. Their reaction to it was extremely engaged and alive, like not just, you know, passively taking in content like younger versions of the blob people in WALL-E, which can happen with certain.

Like if you leave them in front of Netflix kids and they're watching something that is just barely not been dubbed in Russian, you know what I mean? It's just like I it's it's it's incredible, some of the stuff out there. But the moment into Bruno's Tower, they were both scared. Now, not scared like this is a horror movie, but I think the scariness that also happened recently when they watched Princess Mononoke, which is a far more complicated and challenging film. But the thing that would unite them in my mind is that moment of, wait, we're veering off of the map here. And kids like formulaic stuff for a reason. The result of this movie and taking some surprising choices was that both of my children, an eight and a half and a four and a half year old, declared it the best Disney movie they'd ever seen.

And they are equally, equally in love with it, like deeply with the songs, with the story. They talked about it. They'd laugh about it. They'd quote jokes about it. And that may seem like a small thing, but to have a four year old and eight year old feel the same way, I think is noteworthy. Wow. That is so fascinating. So let's, let's extrapolate out. I would say I recommend Encanto. You heartily recommend Encanto. Yes. It seems like it's going to be a big, big part of your life. You know, you actually, I just remembered something. One of the things that I've been doing over the course of the last two years is aggressively logging everything that I watch on Letterboxd. And I love the Letterboxd platform. And i know that in the future when my daughter is

big enough and is in control of our viewing and i know that that's coming for me should i just log whatever disney movie we watch 12 consecutive days in a row on letterbox like should i always should my letterbox transform into her viewing habits um, you're speaking to someone who cannot participate in the global community event known as Spotify Wrapped because it's just songs from The Lion Guard,

the off-brand Lion King spinoff TV show that ran on the Disney channel from the last six years. So I would say that it's probably best to try and keep separate channels. But I do think it's worth it.

I think it'd be interesting to see how much your screen time changed. Yeah, it will. For sure. I did notice that you didn't share that The Big Picture is your most listened to podcast. I was surprised by that. Did you not want to share your podcast data? Yes, I did not want it. You're correct.

And I didn't want to share it mostly because I have been so severely red-pilled this year that I just, you know, my friends and family know in that they are no longer speaking to me, but I didn't want to share it with a larger world. When you say red-pilled, you mean you've developed new takes on the Matrix series? I wish. I wish. And he talked to me about parenting and showing movies because that's really why you're here. Give me like a little bit of the playbook. What should I be doing? What have you done? What mistakes have you made?

Can I just, last thing, Sean, I'm sorry about Encanto. There are 12 main characters in this movie, Sean. I would say that's a flaw. I would say that it is a marvel that each one is clearly articulated and delineated so that when they come together in chorus, as they do in these fantastic Lin-Manuel songs, and you're excited for each one of their points of view, this stuff is so hard. I was watching another animated film from this year that shall remain nameless, but like just little things you take for granted in some of these Disney movies, like two of the characters

in this other movie kind of looked the same, you know? And I was like, well, that could be fixed. You know, like that was a choice, but you didn't take the time to make them feel same, you know? And I was like, well, that could be fixed. You know, like that was a choice, but you didn't take the time to make them feel alive, you know? Or Stephanie Beatrice, who I never did completely underestimated as a performer. And then she just owns this movie in a, in a really big and beautiful way. Okay. So, um, one lesson clearly ahead is that if you have, if you have strong opinions and then you watch a lot of children's content, you will not be able to express that content until your friend lets you come on his podcast as a favor at the end of the year. So you will talk over him and not go along with the way he structured the show so beautifully.

So let me go back to your question, which was, tell me again. Well, how do you decide what to show your kids? And how do you respond when they like something that you don't like or you don't want them to watch? I am probably too careful in this regard. I can't think of many things that I have shown to them the way Moses showed the tablets he found up on that mountain. In my mind...

Old Testament Andy right there. Love it. In my mind old testament andy right there love it in my mind that is a surefire recipe for having them rejected because okay what you're doing is not showing them a movie you love you're showing them a small still quivering unblemished part of your soul that they will then see through and reject just to see what will happen. And that could be painful and it could cause you to retreat and cause them not to be curious and things anymore. That said, you also have to like be mindful that you are the guard rails and it's important to put good things in front of them before they are so far gone that

they don't have a sense of what's good and what's bad. And they certainly won't choose unfamiliar things. I think that in terms of screen time, two to four, two to five is the sweet spot where my older daughter was really, really, really into things like Mary Poppins, before she returned, Singing in the Rain, Funny Face was a big movie for her. This was before we let her watch things like Frozen. And I am a Frozen partisan, even though the second one is better. But I think that there is- She started with real person content, not animated. Yes. And as much stuff that we loved as possible. And also there's also different tiers,

of course, of animation. Like I find the original Winnie the Pooh film, Disney's Winnie the Pooh film, to be just wonderful and kind of magical and transporting and nostalgic and very rhythmically good, you know, for young children, as opposed to just the sort of, you know, bots screaming at each other while dropping occasional clever lines for the

grownups garbage, which is 90% of the animated films out there. So how do you decide that something that they're watching sucks or is bad? And can you take it away from them um no i i think that that's the other thing is i don't ever want to say too strongly that something is terrible you know they need to come up they need they can their pleasure is their own their taste is their own and i don't want to um it can get in as the child of a very opinionated person. I think it becomes very, very easy to,

to get confused as to what's your taste and what's you trying to please a parent or an authority figure by, by parroting their taste. Now that can get slippery, of course, because maybe you guys agree on stuff, you know, which is fine,

but I try to hold it back. But the beauty of the world is they know it, you can only keep up the mask for so long, if it's particularly egregious. Have you shown your oldest Star Wars? Yes. So this has been interesting. She was briefly interested in Star Wars, and we watched it. And I think she was mostly interested she didn't really want to watch the second to watch Empire because I guess either she heard from us or from others that it was a little darker she didn't want to watch Last Jedi because it was so woke

you know so we weren't even married sorry I told you you I was red. I love the idea of her running like several bot accounts trying to take down Rian Johnson. That would be. Yeah. Oh, my God. There's just a server farm in the backyard now.

Bobby was like, why is his email address dot RU? Don't worry about it. OK, anyway, what was interesting, I think she watched Empire, maybe even some of Return of the Jedi at a friend's house, a friend who was more into it, who definitely was a child of like Star Wars obsessives. Here's the thing. She's not interested. She hasn't, I've suggested watching it again. And she's like, I don't want to watch a movie about a boy with a sword. Not interested in that. Same thing. Like there are superhero stuff,

like she loves comic books. And there are a couple things where I was like, maybe, maybe would you ever be interested in watching like the Spider-Verse cartoon or anything? She's just deeply uninterested in the patriarchy, Sean, from a naturally, from a young age. She's not interested in our old boy action figure stories that we loved but what what about something like captain marvel like could she get into that it was a pretty bad movie i i agree with you but i'm just i'm searching for a very powerful female hero i think if there was a good version of that you know that was more age appropriate i think wonder woman i think was one that a lot of people pointed to and saying like my daughter and i saw this and it was

incredible for her to see that on screen. Not a fan. Maybe as a nine or 10 year old, she could see it. But I just don't. There's also just something that I think, going back to your first question, that's important to me is trying to reduce the audio visual pollution in her life. Like, I thought the first Wonder Woman movie was really good and had some very good sequences in it.

But it's just noisy CGI punching, ultimately, like all of them are. And I feel like that part, that's more objectionable to me than finding them watching just another cartoon on Netflix about talking animals. Like, it may secretly be teaching them that democracy is outdated and bad.

Like, it's very, very possible that this would be the way to Like it's very, very possible that this would be the way to upend the world, by the way, to slip the stuff into animated films on Netflix. But they are all generally on the same script. And then the noise of some of the more contemporary stuff, which let's be honest, it's all made for, what, 17-year-old boys, like all culture.

We're seeing it with Spider-Man more and more. Yeah, so keeping her from that seems seems more important to me um but like they watched they watched et that that worked really well oh okay that's a nice one that'll be a good experience showing showing my daughter that movie let me ask you one other thing that i'm curious about because when you and i were coming of age yeah we watched a lot of tv we read magazines you know sat at the bus stop looked at a poster our awareness of movies for a long time yeah i just i was i was in many bus stops over the years uh you'd get excited about a new movie that was coming out and it was not difficult

to learn about what was coming and now obviously we're in this insane content overload all the streamers all the studios constantly churning through things. I was just listening to you guys with Sam trying to pick 10 movies or 10 TV shows out of the year. It's like, how the hell do you even do that at this point, given how many shows are on the board? I don't even know how you guys watch shows on the show at this point. Some would argue I don't, but thank you for saying that. Well, you're doing what you can and um i'm curious how how your kids figure out what they want to watch where they how they build anticipation because even on this show i'm just constantly

trying to build anticipation for the stuff i love but if you're eight and a half years old are you watching commercials on television is that how you find out about movies you are not um they think i mean we are also not a, there are some houses where the TV's on, like whether it's sports or whatever, this is not that house. And they don't, so for them, like if I do manage to sneak in like a Sixers game or something,

like they get so excited because then they get to see commercials, which is something that they're very passionate about in a disturbing way. Makes me think actually, maybe it's a good thing. Maybe all that Russian propaganda is not working, that they're very passionate about in a disturbing way. Makes me think, actually, maybe it's a good thing. Maybe all that Russian propaganda is not working, that they're just quietly absorbing via Netflix. They are kind of going, I mean, they're clearly,

if the question is from a Hollywood perspective as inevitable consumers, they are even more elusive than the previous generation, right? Because you cannot directly get to them. And maybe you you'll be able to if God forbid, they're ever on like TikTok or something, but they are, they are offline. And so they live kind of vicariously through not unlike a young Sean fantasy through the posters at bus stops or on the sides of buses. They were extremely, extremely aware of the recent installment of American Horror Story. Thank you so much fx for

putting those nightmare fuel on every corner of los angeles um they learned that horror movies come out around halloween and that there's a movie called halloween kills which was positioned right above my older daughter's school so that was cool um but they also then learned about incanto that way and got very very very, very excited about that accordingly. But how they then find the things that they love, sometimes the Netflix algorithm gets them in a good way. I don't really know how they found, I guess I know how they found Lion Guard, a show that they both loved. It's because they watched Lion King on Disney and then it recommended that as something else. But there's other things that are just tricky and require curation from a parent that sometimes doesn't

have the time or memory to do it, like the live action Babysitter's Club show, which is really good and made in part by Lucia Agnello, who made Hacks this year. We watched some of the first season. Really good. Nice thing to watch together kind of forgot about it never finished it there's a second season i i don't really know how to get that back in front of her um and maybe in a way she's kind of like on the watch we talk about how people could watch anything in the history of recorded whatever but mostly they watch friends reruns. That's kind of the role Avatar, the last airbender plays in this house where she just loves it. So why not just fired up again?

And again, last question for you about that. And specifically, Avatar is a good pivot point. Do they care about the mythologies of the stories the same way that we did? Yes. One thing that is, I mean, again, this is, I can only speak to the experience in my household, but my older daughter is a voracious reader and read all the Harry Potter books now twice, and they are like canonical to her existence. And I think that that experience, plus something like Avatar, which I don't know if your listeners know about, but

is a truly brilliant tween show that is all streaming on Netflix, taught her a love of serialized storytelling in a way that I don't know if I personally, I mean, I guess Star Wars gave that to me and gave that to our generation. But I think it took longer for it to be an at-home experience in terms of I can just watch a TV show that does it to this degree. I remember like in second grade or something or third or fourth grade being told by someone that that show Airwolf, that there was like a secret bee story to Airwolf that while the dude Sinjin had his fighting helicopter, his twin brother had the other one, and they were trying to find each other. And at that age, I wasn't like, wouldn't you just like go to the microfiche machine and just search Warhawk helicopter involved in multiple civic rescues?

And then be like, well, bing, I found my brother. Later, I found out it was because I think young Michael Vincent like quit the show, right? Or had a contractual dispute. So they just rebooted it with his brother. But I remember being told that there was a secret other version of the show. and that consumed me for weeks because the only way to watch it would be like you know if i was home at 4 p.m and it was on channel 17 or whatever

to find the episode that would unlock the bigger story and that is baked into the kids at a much younger age in a way that at least so far until they just become chum for the algorithm seems fun. It informs their games. It informs their sense of larger stakes and excitement. Last thing for you, what advice would you give me as I think about strategizing or not strategizing about the way to introduce my daughter to anything, not just the things that I care about and feel are important, which I recognize will be shattered by her lack of interest in them,

but just anything. Like what should I do? I think my gentlest advice on everything is to as much as possible, take yourself out of it, which is extremely hard because you're not coming at it from a place of dictatorial egoism.

You're coming out of a place of, I love this. This moves me. I want to share this with you. And that's the greatest thing in the world. But I think that, um, the most effort you could put into just holding some parts of that back and letting her develop her own sense of fun and wonder, and then connecting once she's already there is going to be the best thing in all things, truly. Um, before long, you will realize that you have many, some things in common and that can be a fun celebration. But it is especially fun to watch it develop as independently from you as humanly possible,

even when being independent emotionally is completely impossible. And know that waiting around the corner, thanks to our friends at HBO Max, all the Studio Ghibli movies are there. And she's not that many years away from firing up Totoro. And then you're going to be in a great,

great place. Oh, and also, Sean, we haven't even talked about the best show on TV is Bluey. And Bluey, I think, can be watched by like two-year-olds. Not familiar with that. Sean, it's the best show on TV,

full stop. It is better than any adult show that was on my top 10 list last year. I'm sorry, Barry Jenkins. Louie is better. Louie is, for people on this podcast who don't know, and they should know, it is an Australian show. You can watch it on Disney+. Seven minute long episodes about a family of dogs, two girls, two parents.

The entire show is play-based. So it's just about the children playing. Deeply influenced by Monty Python. So it is deeply, absurdly funny, but so pure and true to actual childhood feelings and experiences. There's nothing cloying. There's nothing phony. There's nothing cloying. There's nothing phony. There's nothing corporate.

The children are voiced by real children who aren't even listed in the credits to protect their anonymity. It is a true, it's really the only purely good thing in the world. And it is something that all four members of this household watch happily. Love it.

Like can't wait to watch it. And it's there for you. It's there for you. And it'll make you think, I think soon you will be banging this drum too, which is just stuff should be better. Love it. Like, can't wait to watch it. And it's there for you. It's there for you. And it'll make you think, I think soon you will be banging this drum too, which is just, stuff should be better. Just because you can put them in front of something,

like, it just should be better. Just because you can get, you know, The Rock and I don't know who else to like, go into an ADR booth for two hours and like collect a paycheck. It doesn't matter. Like, make it good. And that is so, so hard to find. So I feel like it's not hard to find

high quality cinema at the moment. Well, you can't go to a movie theater, but you can watch good things. You can find it on your TV, yes. You can find it on your TV. You can find really high quality scripted stuff for us. But the wasteland of kid stuff, the things that are good that we're talking about,

and maybe that really pops. And maybe that's why Encanto resonated so much to me because i just thought it was beautiful and thoughtful and i feel like that's the missing word in a lot of the youth content andy this is you're on a movie podcast here this is your last chance to get off any movie takes anything you want to share before i send you off movie takes i'm gonna go see spider-man we when we hang up i'm gonna go see it because I want to engage with the culture. Did you know that there are multiverses? What?

Here's the thing. Like you said before, I'm an Old Testament kind of guy. You know what I mean? It's not called Spider-Men. It's one. There's one Spider-Man who got bitten by one spider one time. Right? That's,

so I feel like knowing that and knowing Marvel doesn't screw up stuff like that, I'm going to walk into this theater and be delighted.

Sounds like you've been spider-pilled. Andy Greenwald, thank you for being here. So good to see you. Happy New Year, my friend. What an honor. My favorite

blue pill podcast. Is that the other color of the pill? Is it blue? I promise it's blue okay we have a little interlude a special guest one of the most important men in the history of the big picture it's chris r. Hi, Chris. Hi, Sean. Chris, I gave you a homework assignment last minute because we're wrapping up the year.

It's been a really fun year on the big picture. You've been a big part of that. And I know that there was one movie that you didn't see that we've only had a chance to discuss once or twice on the show. And there's only one man whose take I really need on it. That movie is Benedetta. It is the latest film from Paul Verhoeven, the brilliant Dutch filmmaker who has a new film about, I think it's been loosely described as the sexy nuns movie, but it's so much more than that. It's a lot more than that.

I hit you up and I said, Chris, I need you to watch this. It's available on VOD. You're at home with your mom in Philadelphia right now. So did you and mom pull up a chair and watch this movie together? You often talk about how I don't show you enough affection and how all you want is for me to show you how much I love you. And so here's what happened.

I was tucking in to Eagles versus WFT last night. I was getting really excited. The playoffs are on the line. Jalen Hurts is back. You get a text from Sean. It's just like, I would love it if you could just watch Benedetta tonight to do a hot 10 minutes on the big pick and I

look at my mom we watch the Eagles game and I'm like I think I'm going to go upstairs and she's like oh you're going to go upstairs it's a little early and I was like yeah I'm just going to go up she's like well do you want to watch something and I was like I actually had to watch something for a podcast and she's like well i love movies what are you gonna watch and i was 13 again and i was like

i'm watching a foreign film and i scampered away like a thief in the night you brought shame on my house in this most holy of times and this is what you get now you get me talking about about the nuns so obviously you did you steal away to to your bedroom to watch some of other uh some other verhoeven films in the past perhaps basic instinct or the hollow man I was definitely like a big black book guy appearing when I was visiting last time. Yeah. So I think Benedetta has been widely acclaimed.

Has it? Amongst those who would acclaim it, including Adam Neyman, who will be on this podcast shortly, who is a huge fan of Verhoeven and has written about his work in the past. I actually don't know where you're at in modern day Verhoeven. Are you a fan? He's great. I mean, it's also another example of these... We are living in a time of old masters,

you know, with Spielberg and Ridley Scott and Verhoeven, these guys who are just... They just keep on cranking them out, quite literally, late into life. I hope i can be this productive when i'm in my golden years um can you just outline what you thought benedetta was going to be and whether or not it lived up to that i thought it was going to be about lesbian nuns living in a convent and it it did live up to that there was a lot more papal politics than i uh was anticipating and that's one of your side hobbies. Oh, it is, though.

I love I love a good blaspheming and a and some steak burning. So it was exciting to get all of that in one movie. You know, the thing that I think I noticed is that while I would have been uncomfortable watching this with my mother, obviously, you know, I just watched the last duel with her. And that was like I was like, I've already done this this week, so I'm going to spare myself the second time around. Is whether or not we have the capacity

to be scandalized anymore. And how Verhoeven, as somebody I associate with, protests outside of his movies. And God damn it, you can't see this sir and now I'm just kind of like oh look these two kids they're working it out you know yeah there's definitely something to the fact that the culture has maybe moved not necessarily ahead of Verhoeven but like far enough in a direction where there nothing can be seen as ridiculous

like I was in this movie, unlike say sitting down to watch Starship Troopers in a movie theater or watching Basic Instinct at home. I just fully got the joke this time around. I just was laughing in the movie theater

when I saw it. I having the time of my life because you can tell that Verhoeven is having the time of his life actively blaspheming or at least raising into question, you know,

the ultimate emotional or spiritual necessities of Christ-like figures who ultimately has the ability to say, I am the one who is touched. Obviously, we live in a culture now where everyone believes that they have the secret truth to how to live a better life and how to be more pure. He seems to be toying with that a bit. He also obviously loves to watch people fuck on screen. This is something that he is really excited about and he's cast some I would say exciting performers who are spiritedly taking

on some of these tasks. What did you think of Virginie Effira, the star? I thought that she very much understood the assignment. I read some interviews with her where she was just there like, what did you watch to prepare for this role? And she was like, basic instinct. I think she

understood that she was in a very over-the-top tribute to slash satire of biblical epics with this kind of almost weird 90s erotic thriller undertone to it. And so I

found her very convincing, I guess would be the right way to put it. I mean, she's a really interesting character outside of her bedroom antics. The whole idea that this person who's been betrothed to God from her childhood is at once in touch with Jesus, but then has to kind of goose the numbers a little bit

to get people to really believe it. And then there's basically this ambiguous idea throughout this movie as to whether or not the Sister Benedetta is causing her own stigmata or her visions and what they amount to and whether it's like a political power

play so that she can take over this nunnery or whether or not it's sincerely like she's touched. She is touched. That is definitely the case. She has gifts, no doubt. Charlotte Rampling. She's been a subject of some

odd fascination on this show over the years. Use the voice, dog. She's had quite a year. She's had quite five years, honestly. She seems to be getting them checks in interesting ways. She's the BS in this film and she's had quite a five years honestly she seems to be getting them checks in interesting ways um what did you think she's the the fs in this film and she's kind of the villain for a spell but then things evolve in the storytelling um i always forget that she can work in many languages it's unbelievable it's like it's like she's basically like because i think like i saw

fast bender in inglorious bastards i was like no one's ever been able to do that in the history of Western civilization. It's like Charlotte Rampling just knocks out three languages all the time. It's pretty incredible. She's like a perfect British actress who has flawless French and probably flawless Italian, if pressed. She's great. She has an awesome character arc, they'll have closed her closing scenes are seared into my memory and pretty amazing if you've ever seen the film the devils the ken russell film there's like a sort of a big homage to that movie at the end of this movie that is

really exciting there's one other person that i wanted to give a shout out to and this will be a mild spoiler for you for the matrix but i don't think it'll come as a huge shock but this has turned out to be a huge year for lambert wilson yeah you may know about this the the merovingian in the matrix films and uh makes quite a memorable appearance in this movie uh as as the nuncio what do you think of lambert's work he reminded me a lot of you uh he reminded me nuncio reminds me a lot of your attitude when i'm on movie drafts and i'm, I've got this stigmata, and I'm just trying to bring the word to you. And you're like, no, no, no. I have to get my papal taxes up. I got to keep control over Pescia. That's you. You're right. You nailed it.

What do you think about the idea of being as good at podcasting at the age of 83 as verhoeven is at filmmaking at that age i mean what have i got like eight more years to find out yes no i'm i i i think that it's you could make an argument that it's like you know uh there are systems set in place for guys like this to just keep doing what they want to do even though he's a much debated figure or there's controversy surrounding his movies. If he's like, I want to show naked nuns getting after it, there's some arms dealer in Europe who's like,

yes! Give it to him! But he's just obviously... I was reading Naaman's piece in M Plus One about this movie and he actually brought up a really good point, which is that like, he doesn't really have like a distinctive visual style.

There's not like a signature of Verhoeven that you would maybe associate with somebody like Martin Scorsese or maybe like the painterly vision of Ridley Scott. It is kind of this provocative circus master ringmaster. Who's just like, I'm going to put all these pieces in place. And sometimes you're going to think it's a joke. And sometimes you're going to think it's melodramatic. And sometimes you're going to think it's both, but ultimately I'm going to provoke.

And I like that he's doing that so late in the life. You know who he reminds me of in an odd way is Steven Soderbergh in that he doesn't have a signature visual style, but he does have a signature tone. And all of his movies all feel the same way. Steven Soderbergh's movies all feel kind of like a little bit smarter than you, a little bit ahead of the curve and the telling every time. All of these movies seem to be very mischievous,

very sort of like, I dare you to get mad at this. Yeah. And this is, it's impressive that he was able to do it. I thought L was one of the more mature and provocative movies that he has ever made. This felt much more like poking the bear in an entertaining way. Would you recommend watching this

with your family at home over the New Year's Eve break? Absolutely. No, I would fire this up like Christmas Eve. I would turn off Home Alone and put on Benedetta. Can I ask you though, do you think that there's room for... Because I was actually... You mentioned Silverberg.

I was thinking about Harmony Crane and other intentionally provocative filmmakers and like where they where they are now in the age of the troll like where they are now in the age of like both the troll and people very very vocally voicing displeasure or offense if they they are offended by like a comment or a piece of art or what have you we don't have to to get into that kind of debate, but I don't know whether movies can scandalize unless they're literally immoral and offensive. I think they're more likely to be considered as

transgressing if they do something that actually hurts people's feelings as opposed to very transparently attempting to make someone mad. I think actually the person who attempts to make someone mad is oddly celebrated now. I think the Verhoeven's in Harmony Courier, and if he makes another movie, I think, you know, when the Beach Bump came out,

I had the same reaction to it as I did to Benedetta. I was like, this is a fucking riot. Like, this is amazing that he's just doing this. I don't think I saw, say, kids that way when it came out. He wrote that film, he didn't direct it. But those, the movies in that time, the same way way the same time in the 90s there was this pearl clutching attitude toward some of these ideas largely filtered

through the mainstream press and i just think like the media has been become much more diffuse people are much more self-aware about the intentions of artists um i think it's amazing that this movie did not get trapped in some sort of you know christian right slipstream because what would be the point of that this movie's made like a million dollars at the theaters like what are you fighting against you know it's just an old guy who really wants to show nuns on screen having sex and you know more power to him yeah sure i mean i'm glad that there's still a place for that i mean it's it's it's it's interesting you mentioned that like i i think i texted you a while back about um an episode of Mayor of Kingstown.

And I was like, in this episode, and sorry for any spoilers, a child dies in a meth explosion and then Jeremy Renner organizes an extrajudicial killing where he unites the Crips and the white power guys

in a prison to kill this guy. And I was like, this feels transgressive. This is on a paramount streaming service and they're just like, here you go, dial this guy. And I was like, this feels transgressive. This is on a paramount streaming service and they're just like, here you go. Dial this up.

No one wrote about it and no one pointed it. Everybody was like, oh, cool. Another interesting episode of this insane show. So we're in an interesting time. That feels like

that feels almost more provocative than Benadett. Well, I'm really glad that you watched it. I'm sad for your mom. I feel like she would have enjoyed it. It's got a great sense of humor. terrific performances, you know? Yeah. And she loves this period of history. She's always fascinated by the Italian history. So maybe

I'll just leave it under the tree for her. Yeah. 48 hour rental period. You know, there's plenty of time for her to get in there on Benedetta. You guys can discuss it over a beautiful Christmas meal. CR, thanks for coming on, man. Always good to see you. Thank you for having me. Delighted to be rejoined by Adam Naiman. He's the author of David Fincher Mind Games. He's a Ringer contributor. He's one of the best film critics on earth. He's a father of two.

What other titles can we share with you, Adam? You know, still hoping the Raptors make the play-in game. I think we're playing tonight. I don't know why the NBA is not canceling this game. I think the Raptors have six guys. Well, I wish you luck. I hope they trade Pascal Siakam to the Knicks. That's really where my heart is at this point. That's where your heart is at?

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, Raptors, Knicks, these are the great franchises in pro sports. So, you know, maybe there'll be maybe an Eastern Conference Finals in 40 years between those two teams. I'm not going to hold my breath. You got a title recently.

I'm not expecting one anytime soon. However, we can send out some laurels. We can raise some championship trophies to a couple of films that we maybe didn't get a chance to talk about this year or that we feel like are underrated that's kind of a loaded word or under discussed i get a lot of i get a lot of tweets from people who are like why didn't you talk about this movie asshole and so i'll talk about a couple of those but i'm excited to hear what you have to say too because i think you uh you are as curious as i am

you'll watch anything and so yeah you're. Yeah. Well, your curiosity is underrated because while you do monitor the industry and the quote-unquote big picture, I know you on Letterboxd. You watch everything. Not that Sean Fennessy needs to be defended on his own podcast, but I will say you're a curious cat. You watch a lot of stuff. And I'm like, good. Sean saw that too. You know, not just, not just me, but I, I said this when I was with you guys on the, the, the, the,

the all-star pod, you know, with your actual co-host and with, with, with see it with Chris, I did not watch as much stuff this year as I wanted to. And there's a couple of movies. I don't know if either of them are on your list. I'm mentioning them not because they're underrated, but like, I didn't see what do we see when we look at the sky and i didn't see um bad luck banging or loony porn which are both on really a lot of reputable top 10 lists and are completely my shit and i just didn't see them and that's when making a top 10 list you

start feeling really self-conscious not about your taste but you're just like i did not do my my my job right so it and it's hard because this is not in some ways it's easier to watch stuff than ever before but when you have real life it's it's it's very difficult yeah you'd think being trapped in your house for most of the year you would have an opportunity but i will say as you know having kids presents a lot of challenges to piling through these movies. Well, that, and then not all film festivals are created equal and not all film festival access is critical.

I mean, for example, this isn't one I'd mentioned cause you had it on your top 10, but like, I haven't seen red rocket yet and I really want to, you know? So under seen almost becomes like a descriptor for me of my year, even though compared to normal human beings,

I watch very little. Should I have watched Malignant twice? Probably not. Should I maybe, you know, watch, what do we see when we look at the sky instead of Malignant again the other night? But then it's also just like, you know, you got to watch stuff to relax.

Yeah, no, the Malignant point is an interesting one because I think Chris and I sort I briefly reviewed that movie on this show and we watched it because we didn't get invited to a screening. So we watched it at 8 a.m. on a Friday morning and then recorded the pod right after that. That's not really an 8 a.m. movie. That's more of a 10 p.m. movie. And so I also had to re-watch

it. And when I did, I found a lot to appreciate and enjoy. But we're not going to talk about malignant here. Why don't you start off? We're not ranking to talk about malignant here um why don't you just why don't you start off we're not ranking these we're just we're sharing recommendations well i'm going to start with a horror movie that i only decided to to talk about like about five seconds before i i logged on to this call and i am not going to say that this movie is underrated i imagine it's underseen i'm not sure i consider good, but I want to talk about it because I saw it being covered the other day. This is a film, I can't wait to see your expression. This is a film called

The Scary of 61st Street. Oh, yes. Thank you for bringing this up. This is actually on my long list, though I was not going to recommend it. So explain what this is. This is a really lo-fi shot on film. So there's a partial thumbs up there uh horror film which is conceived and directed by an actress named dasha nekrasova who is the co-host of a podcast that i have no fondness for or or time for from a little i've listened to called red scare which is a very um niche political podcast with a huge amount of discourse i teach a satire course in toronto and so podcasts like chapo trap house and red scarer things i often let my students listen to and sort out right and this concept of dirtbag leftism and these different ways to prod at authority

and she's very entertaining on that podcast i don don't like it, but they both have really fascinating personas and a lot of cultural currency, let's say. And so this is a film that she's conceived and directed and written and co-starred in about a couple of young women, not her, she comes into the picture as a third character, who are trying to rent an apartment in New York, a great relatable horror movie premise, right back to Rosemary's Baby. Yes.

And they come across a suspiciously affordable place that is being made available because as they find out, it was a residence kept by Jeffrey Epstein. And in that sentence is all you need to know kind of what's about, about what's shameless and superfluous and unnecessary and exploitative about this movie and yet when i was thinking about some of the other big genre titles this year this is a movie that was willing whether out of a lack of shame or the freedom afforded by a low budget and to some extent conviction artistic conviction to go to like really quite disgusting places. And while I'm not always a fan of provocation in and of itself, and I think provocation should be artful, or I think

provocation should be accomplished, I can't deny that if I'm personally comparing this to a very similarly themed movie like Last Night in Soho, which is about possession and bad vibes that are left in places by sexual violence and the way that the sexual violence in the past inhabits the presence and how trauma is kind of, you know, of supernatural. I think this movie has got more guts and I don't know if it's guts and

brains, or I don't know if it's necessarily guts and like the chops of filmmaking. I watched it with a friend who criticized it, I think correctly when he said, this is just basically a movie about being obsessed about anything. It's not about like the fact that it's Jeffrey Epstein means this internet rabbit hole, the characters fall down as almost kind of immaterial.

And yet that's very true of life now, to some extent, this is like one of the only movies I've ever seen. That's about online brain or about doom scrolling brain or about that way that you get sucked into and drawn into this kind of ephemera and it kind of wrecks your life. So I think most of the more persuasive writing on this movie is negative, but it's so bound up also in Dasha's online persona and her fandom and all of her reply guys and this fascinating persona that she has. So what I was referring to off the

top was I looked at the New York Times and I saw the film critic panned it a couple of pages apart from Dasha getting a big profile, where she is articulate and smart and quite winning about you know how and why she made this movie and the necessity of making it as someone who's getting very interested in millennial horror for various reasons something that is this un-elevated and in some ways as unclassy and as basically so narrow in terms of whoever would want to watch this i can't quite call it underrated but it's almost a badge of honor that it's going to be underseen i mean i'm amazed it's getting a release it is um it is quite lo-fi it feels self-consciously a bit lo-fi to me and it also feels you know chris and i were just talking about your beloved benedetta on this very episode

right and it feels like an interesting, similarly aligned provocation. And Red Scare, of course, is known for its provocations. Also, we should say Dasha was one of the co-stars of Succession this season. She was Comfrey. And so she has some additional cultural currency

along with that show. I thought the movie was in pursuit of something entertaining and amusing and it did lose me at a certain point. About halfway through, I was like, I get the joke.

I get what you're trying to pull out of me and it didn't totally come together, but I appreciate it that it's out in the world and the idea that successful podcasters

are able to become filmmakers is an interesting... Let's put a pin in that for the moment. I mean, the way... I will just say the way it loses you is the way that your friends who get obsessed with stuff lose you yeah yes right where you sort of say this you say to someone at a certain point like enough and then they go on and there's a kind of integrity to that given what it's uh given given what it's

about i got bored with someone telling me about their dream last night. That's what the movie feels like. But anyway, it's a good recommendation. It's an interesting movie. Somewhat similar kind of, maybe not tonally, but in the same orbit of lo-fi horror or low-budget horror. I'm going to recommend Agnes. Have you seen Agnes yet?

It's on the list as a double bill with Benedetta. So that is the ultimate double bill that the two nun movies of 2021 this is a movie from a filmmaker named mickey reese who only in the last couple of years has come onto my radar though he has made many many films i think he's made north of 25 films a sort of proudly no budget filmmaker who uh i guess has been described as the is he the flyover fassbender have you you heard that nomenclature? That's good alliteration.

Yeah, it is. Because he's very prolific, right? He is. He's made many, many films. I've only seen three or four of them. This one I enjoyed quite a bit. It starts out as a kind of non-demonic possession horror film

that is sort of very traditional, very down the middle. And it evolves into this kind of self-reflexive, parodic, curious about the scope and structure of horror films kind of film. Really, really strong performance from Molly Quinn, who plays Mary. She's not the titular Agnes. Agnes is the demonically possessed nun. And Mickey Reese makes movies with a tone that I'm having trouble describing. I think that it is very much in on the joke, but I don't know if he wants you to laugh or just scratch your head,

especially in the second half of this film, when, when it takes a significant shift in the storytelling, when it moves away from core horror into something much more kind of emotional and talk, think talking about trauma, but then also poking fun at films that are about trauma like obviously trauma has become the signal storytelling structure of the last five years especially on television and he seems to be kind of needling

people who lean too much on those things too in this movie which i enjoyed um very interesting movie uh it's it's available to be uh rented on pvod and it's literally sitting right next to benedetta on your apple uh movie store so yeah that's a that's a sleek three and a half hours for you if you want to get into nunnery why and i thought that that film novice would make it a triple bill but that's about something else totally isn't it yes i know and i will be talking about that movie too but you're thinking of novitiate which was the movie from a few years ago which starred who was it andy mc McDowell's daughter, Margaret Qualley, I believe, as a young nun.

Right, and all under the sign of the Conjuring spin-off The Nun, where the nun from the painting got her own movie. I would like to think it's all spun off from Ken Russell's The Devils, but who am I? Yeah, well, that's

a whole other podcast. My number four is the first of two that I'm going to file under mild conflict of interest, only mild in this case, because I haven't seen Robert Greene in many years, but I like Robert Greene personally. There's a film called Procession. This film is on my list as well, Adam. It's on your list as well. Well, then we'll talk about it together. This is a film that, like a lot of Robert's films, is very exploratory and experimental in form, in a risky way, maybe was a, I won't say a bit player, but like a recurring role on The Wire, which did not end up making a huge career for her, but certainly was a beginning of a career where she then left, started a family.

And then he's making a film that's ostensibly about her comeback, except the movie is her comeback because it's a semi-scripted, posed, imagined kind of hybrid documentary. And then, you know, he drifted further into that territory with kate plays christine where the actress young caitlyn shell is rehearsing and planning to play the late tv anchor christine chubbuck who killed herself on air and you're supposed to see that this is partially about her process and maybe also to some extent this is

disturbing for her or difficult for her and And those are both intense subject matter, but they're kind of about acting. And this is more about regular people acting, right? This is about survivors of sexual abuse, adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse by priests joining in this collaborative filmmaking experiment where using a trauma coach who's almost like a theater director or a theater coach is guiding them through these stylized stage recreations of what happened to them and what's at stake in the movie is somewhat unclear which is what's fascinating you know the episodes are not meant to be dramatically persuasive They're very popping the hood open

and you see the pistons, right? Like we know they're staged. We know that these are non-actors. We know that this is channeling personal trauma. And so it's like, what's the end goal? Is it convincing drama? No. Is it catharsis?

Well, if they don't get catharsis, is the process of failure, right? It's fascinating. And of course it's all overlaid upon the guts of a movie that goes after these institutions of which procession is not the first but in its odd way it's one of the most effective that i've seen i mean i think it's very it's punches land i think i feel like the film in its superstructure is trying to avoid becoming what some other films in this that have told stories like this eventually kind of necessarily have to be, which is these sort of confrontational, confessional conversations about pain in their life. And the film obviously using this dramatic recreation expectation, it gets you out of that.

But ultimately the film does just become about people sharing their pain and then finding a way to heal. Like it is a very sincere rendering of this, even though it seems like it's sort of like high-minded and almost like digitally rendered recreation of something terrible that happened to people. But because these stories are so sensitive and the people, the six men who are featured in the story, they're brave. They're brave to participate in this for a variety of

ways. It makes them vulnerable not just to be performers, but just to talk about any of these things. And it's a pretty radical film. I think it's challenging. I think there are some people who don't even want to watch a straight ahead documentary about this sort of thing. And so it's asking a lot for people to fire up Netflix and alongside Cocoa Melon and I don't know, whatever fucking TV show selling sunset. The idea that like Robert Greene's films can live alongside those things is fascinating, but it's expertly done. All of his movies are always very interesting. If not,

you know, if not perfect, but this one in particular, I thought felt like a culmination of all the work that you were describing earlier that he had been doing. Yeah, no, the compliment I'd always pay his work is you can feel his movies

thinking, right? And it's not, it's not to the expense of emotion or or even to the expense of entertainment value though this is not a huge entertainment value movie some of his other movies like his documentary about pro wrestling uh fake it's so real it's an incredible film incredible film and a movie that's made with so much respect and humor for for that business as a lapsed pro wrestling fan who has a lot of tenderness for that community,

I think, Robert, that's a masterpiece, you know. But he's just, he's curious about people. And there's this, I wouldn't call it self-effacing because, you know, if it gets an Oscar nomination, which it might, you know, be like him at the Oscars and he does all the interviews in the press. But, you know, if you look at the credits, he doesn't even list himself as the primary creator of the movie, right? There's a real attempt to share the credit and to acknowledge the shaping role that the subject had in the film. And I actually think that comes from a sincere place from Robert, because he's always working very closely with his subjects. And I don't find it disingenuous for him to say stuff like that. So I'm pulling for him.

Me too. i think i felt like a lot of his films in the past have been about deconstructing artifice and this movie is about artifice deconstructing psychology and so it's an interesting kind of evolution the way that he's thinking about things yeah it's a very good way it's a very good film um you mentioned bad luck banging or loony porn and that is on my list. This has been... Tell me about this movie I haven't seen. Well, I don't want to ruin it for you because it takes a few twists and turns.

This is a Romanian film. And I think when you hear Romanian film, you may think Christian Mongeau and the kind of painful, agonizing stories of living in Bucharest and seeking an abortion. And this movie does have a lot of intensity, but it's really funny as well it's about a history teacher at a prominent school who makes a sex tape and the film essentially

opens with the sex tape this is a a deeply graphic film so if you are interested in uh pornography and or uh this actress and this actor you will see them in full um and the sex tape is used as this sort of like, it kicks down the door of a lot of questions and conversations about propriety and what is right and who has the right to teach our children, who has the right to have a kind of morality. It's a very interesting movie

in that the first part is this contained sex tape. The second part is about this journey across town to sort of prevent the dispersal of the sex tape. And then the third part is this sort of showdown at a prevent the dispersal of the sex tape. And then the third part is this sort of showdown at a, I guess a kind of school board. And it's all taking place in a COVID world. So everyone is outdoors at the school board meeting. Everyone is masked. And then there are these, this open dialogue. The final, the final act of the film is this big long conversation about whether or not this teacher should be allowed to instruct students.

Fascinating movie, really structurally unlike anything I've ever seen before. The filmmaker's name is Radu Jude. And it's very, very, very clever. It's very funny. It's very provocative, another film that might pair well with Benedetta. And I really think it's worth people's time. It's appearing on people's year-end list because it is definitely one of the best things I've seen this year. And I just haven't had a chance to talk about it on the show yeah no I'm I'm I'm I'm dying to watch it and you know it's it's gotten sort of like uh you know praise from you and praise from some of the the the snootier side of the critical establishment then even Armin White said he thought it was one of the great movies of the year which is like is this is this a reason to see it is it not

but I mean I like Radijud's other films and I like the idea of something that sinks its teeth into the present tense instead of sidestepping it. So I'm jealous and I gotta watch it soon. I'm sure it'll be available on VOD at some point very soon too. And the actress's name who stars as Emi,

the lead is Katya Pascaru. And she's brilliant. In a just world would be up for whatever awards are going around these days. Okay, what do you got next? So this is my second conflict of interest choice. This is a local selection, and I'm mentioning it because I think

that, you know, this is a movie that really almost broke through to the point in 2020 that it wouldn't need someone to stick up for it now, and now it's just worth reminding people that it exists, which is called Anne at 13,000 Feet by Kazik Rivansky, who's a Toronto filmmaker. I don't know the extent to which the big pictures listenership needs to know

about, you know, the dynamics of the Toronto film scene, but we are, we are a big city and, you know, with an important film culture and Kaz, the director, he's at the center of that in the last few years, especially a kind of youthful, DIY kind of handcrafted cinema that really, you know, he and a few other filmmakers have been instrumental, not just in making and influencing.

And this is a film that was poised right before the pandemic to break through because of festival dates, because there's a certain indie film cachet to its lead actress dara campbell who stars as a woman with an indeterminate issue and the movie's refusal to necessarily clarify the nature of her disorder or the nature of her psychology is kind of what's mysterious and wonderful about it and kind of a way that you can kind of get at it doesn't really put its cards on the table but it's like this

impressionistic series of scenes about a young woman who works at a daycare and is in a somewhat unstable place in her life and in her relationships and in her friendships and who is sort of trying to navigate these things in ways that are both very brave and then in ways that are also very self-destructive. It's barely 75 minutes long. It describes a Toronto that I recognize and describes a workplace you rarely see on screen, which is the world of daycare, which I think is just beguiling the way that Campbell interacts with these children. And you get these various scenes that are about care. I mean, Kaz's films have always had a semi documentary quality to them,

but here in the way that it's edited and the way that the story is told, I think he's kind of come into his own a bit as a dramatist and some of the comparisons that were being made to this film at festivals and during a ultimately very successful American run because of all the Toronto films, this played the most theaters in the States. This opened not just New York and Los Angeles, but I think Boston and Chicago. I mean, I was following it because Kaz is a friend, right?

It's a film that got comparisons to Cassavetes or comparisons to like some kind of high-end indie drama filmmakers. So I think it's very strong. I think that the grain of salt with which someone might want to take that recommendation, you know, is offset by how well it was reviewed across the board, basically. And it's a movie that if you are curious

about what kind of Toronto film culture has looked like in the last 10 or 12 years, this is kind of one of the culminations of it. I think that when the history of 21st century English Canadian, and especially Toronto centric cinema is written, Kaz and his movies in this one are going to be a big part of that narrative. So as the Torontonian correspondent for this podcast, I kind of need to mention it. I thought that lead performance was unbelievable in this film. Right, yeah.

Truly amazing. And I think you summed it up well. It's not holding your hand to explain what's going on with this character. It is allowing you to interpret and to try to better understand her through the telling of the story. I thought it was very good. You heartily recommended it to me a few months ago, and so I'm glad you're getting a chance to talk about it here.

Yeah, absolutely. So I hope you're listening, Cass. So you mentioned The Novice. The Novice caught me by surprise. I didn't really know very much about this movie. I guess it had debuted at Tribeca, which I did not attend. It comes from a filmmaker named Lauren Hadaway. Lauren has worked in sound primarily on a lot of big budget feature films. She's worked on some Zack Snyder movies. She seems to have a real interest in the sense of intensity and unnerving qualities that like say maybe a David Fincher film might provide through sound. This is a movie about a university freshman who joins the crew team, the rowing team. And she initially joins a sort of intramural crew team and very

quickly finds that she is gifted and motivated to get better and better and better. There've been a lot of comparisons made to Whiplash. This movie is very much in the mold of someone driving themselves almost uncontrollably to succeed at something that they feel is important to their comparisons made to whiplash this movie is very much in the mold of someone driving themselves almost uncontrollably to succeed at something that they feel is important to their identity uh the it's it's kind of an extraordinarily constructed movie for a small independent film some ifc films you can rent this on on vod right now too and it has an amazing performance at the center of it by uh an actress named Isabel Furman who fans of the movie Orphan may recall as

the orphan. Orphan is one of the more entertaining and that's Yom Kolesar, right, Adam? Yes, but when are we going to have, my question is when do we have the Orphan podcast? I, gosh. Because I love Orphan. Maybe we should do a 10-part narrative audio series about Orphan,

which is just a wonderful horror movie. It's a wonderful horror movie, yes. Seeing Isabel Furman all grown up is a bit disturbing, but she's really terrific in this movie. And it's made by someone who you can tell has been waiting to make a movie for a while. It is highly stylized.

It is very Fincherian in its composition. And you can see that there has been a mind at work on this story for a long, long time. Lauren Hathaway also wrote this movie. You can tell it's very important to her in part because she had a somewhat similar experience with crew in college. And so it's very personal, but it also is. It's very easy to project your own experiences of intensity and passion around the things that you pursue in your life. In the same way that I loved Whiplash for that reason, I really love this movie.

I would recommend it to anybody. It's, it's well worth your time. You said the magic word, which was orphan. So I'm, I'm, I'm there.

It's not quite a sequel, but it's something of a spiritual sequel to orphan. And my number two is a movie that I gave some play on my, on my actual top 10 list and is by one of the great filmmakers in the world. So on some level is not underseen, but maybe under discussed, which is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Wife of a Spy, which is a World War II espionage film

that's really about almost role-playing in the domestic sphere versus role-playing in this kind of cloak and dagger world. And it's funny, I want to bring it up, but I also don't want to spoil it, right? I mean, suffice it to say, it's about a woman who is an actress. She's almost kind of an actress of leisure, though, because her husband's quite wealthy, works as an importer. She's not, like, bringing home the bacon and carrying the household and she's not a

star. It's more like a kind of private aspirational thing. And obviously, you know, Japan's 1930s and 40s cinema is a big deal within that country's culture. And so there's references at the time to filmmakers like, you know, Kenji Mizuguchi, but this is not who she's working with. She's kind of acting as a pursuit, and she's comfortable enough to act as a pursuit, and she begins to at least be cognizant of and question the sources of that comfort, the source of that income, the source of that money. What is her husband kind of actually up to? The revelation of what he's up to, who he's working with, who he's working for, who he's working against, and why a wartime Axis Japanese government might have problems with him starts to create this incredible web of political paranoia and really not super safe ground for us as viewers in the

current moment because, you know, Japanese politics, the politics of occupation the politics of collaboration uh you know are really complicated and kurosawa is a smart enough filmmaker to to to give us our bearings and then kind of keep surprising us with like what is the actual mystery at the heart of this movie and because he's a great horror movie director i would argue i think the greatest horror movie director in the last 30 years, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, he can make what is being revealed frightening, even though it's not a horror movie. I'm not trying to misadvertise it. It's not genre in that way. But there are very few directors that I take more pleasure from just how they stage a scene, how they light a room, how they dress their actors.

He's a true master. And I think this film has a little additional currency this year because it's co-written by Ryosuke Hamaguchi, who, based on the critics' groups, is about to become the new Ron Howard at the Academy Award for Best Director. I mean, I will believe that when I see it. I don't think a film has ever won the New York Film Critics and Los Angeles Film Critics Best Film Award and then not been nominated for Best Picture. And if Drive My Car is a three-hour

Chekhov riff that's nominated for Best Picture, then we're truly through some kind of looking glass. I'm glad you said that because I have been having the same reaction. I love to Drive My Car. It was on both of our year-end lists. It's a wonderful film. It is amazing to watch the differentiation between the critical bodies this year and where the Academy is headed. Because if Drive My Car is nominated for Best International Feature, that will be wonderful. And if it goes beyond that, it means we are in a new era of Academy Awards. Well, it does. And what it also means, I think, and this will probably be a subject

you guys will have for January and February to talk about is that, you know, the Academy in some levels has to choose which way to go. And ratings and, you know, people's interest is obviously to some people's minds. I mean, you know, it's hard to care about this

because we're dealing with other bigger problems. Remember when they were going to do a Best Popular Film Award? Yes. Remember when they were going to do a Best Popular Film Award? Yes. Remember when that was going to happen? Because the impulse behind that, I think, is super real. I'm not laughing at it. I'm like, I bet they want a Best Popular Film Award because they want some way to give Spider-Man best picture.

Yes. I know people who are listening. I know that they're not a they. I know that they're not in an island lair plotting out the nominations. I mean, they're just basically people with bad taste in movies, 5,000 of them or whatever.

But like, you want to give best picture to Spider-Man because then people might actually fucking watch. That was very much the impulse behind it. I think, would that have made it easier, quote unquote, to nominate a film like Drive My Car for best picture? Would it make it easier for a film like drive my car for best picture would it make it easier for a film like wife of a spy to even be in the conversation for the academy awards i don't

know i mean i think there was some sense that parasite might have changed the game completely the big difference there is that parasite is a is a genre film it's a thriller and so films like that can compete in a way they are much more accessible than drive my car wife of a spy i have not seen yet um i'm a huge fan of Cure and Pulse and Kurosawa's films, especially Turn of the Century, are incredible, among the best ever made in those genres.

So I have to find a way to watch this one. Yeah, it's really good. And I think that it has been a weird period for him where his eccentricities and the movies that he's made, let's say in the last 10 years,

he's been way out there, way outside a certain strike zone and certainly outside of his genre niche except for the movie creepy from 2016 which i really like it which is a lot like parasite it would be good double bill with parasite but for people who are listening i mean if you're familiar with kiyoshi kurosawa as a horror director you didn't know this movie was out as sean was saying seek it out but even as an introduction to him or even just as like a really strapping effective kind of period piece thriller it's it's pretty good one of the only movies this year that no one i know who saw it thinks it's bad interesting okay well that's that's a good sign for me when i check it out

later today uh so my number two was procession and so i'm left with the number one but there's a bunch of movies that I just never even got to say anything about this year so I'm just going to spew a little bit there's a movie coming to Shudder early next year called Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched have you had a chance to dig into this movie? no but it seems like

an urgent piece of work in terms of introducing a whole genre I've read a lot about this movie I've ordered the folk horror box set that's kind of unofficially work in terms of introducing a whole genre right i've read a lot about this movie uh and i've ordered the bump i've ordered the folk horror box set that's kind of unofficially parallel to this movie is that severin are they putting that out yeah i think so yeah so if you are interested in folk horror and i am this is the ultimate text this is an almost three and a half hour documentary that is traversing the entire history of the subgenre it is immersive

it is hypnotic it is informative it will recommend somewhere between 10 and 500 movies for you to check out if you like these kinds of films um kira kira janice is the name of the filmmaker and i don't want to say too much about it other than to say, if you like these kinds of movies, then you will love this movie. And if you've never really encountered these movies, this isn't necessarily the best place to start, but it is a place to start.

And it will get you excited about things in a certain sub-genre of horror in a new way. So that's Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. A couple of other quick ones. This is on Amazon right now. It's called The Voyeurs. We did an erotic thrillers episode about the trashy sub-genre of late 90s, early 2000s films. This is very much an homage to that. It stars Sidney Sweeney, who you may have seen in The White Lotus. It's a lot of fun. Is it a great film? Maybe not. Is it a, is it a fun watch on a Saturday night? It absolutely is.

The number one movie, Adam, that people have asked me to talk about on this show was the harder they fall. Did you watch that? The Netflix film? Not yet, but you should.

All I'm always going to say about voyeurs is that until they free deep water for us to watch, it's an okay holding holdover. Dark Waters being held hostage by Hulu, Fox, and the powers that be at Disney is a crime. And frankly, they should be taken to the

Hague. They don't understand how much as a culture we need this movie. If 80-year-old Paul Verhoeven can release Benedetta, and 90-year-old Paul Verhoeven can release Benedetta and 90-year-old Clint Eastwood can release his masterwork in 2021, then why can't we see

Adrian Lyne's 80-year-old masterpiece, Dark Waters? Did Ben Affleck and Anand Armas pretend to date for nothing? I mean, where... That movie already, by giving us that picture of his, what is it, his brother

throwing out the life-size cutout of her, just for that, it's a good movie. That was a great moment. That was a truly great moment. I mean, give us this movie. We have so little, you know. Here in Toronto, we're almost locked down. I'm reducing just like walking my child

through cold fields in order to entertain her. like give me this movie our crops are dying our crops are dying just give it to us uh so the heart of they fault is a is a revisionist western is a movie directed by a guy named james samuel who is better known as the bullets he's a musical artist it's a movie a long time in the making produced by lawrence bender a former producer of many tarantino films in the 90s and 2000s. Incredible cast. I would say I half liked this movie. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't devote an entire episode to it. I thought the performances were dynamite. I thought it was very fun in an attempt to kind of Avengers eyes a Western that really feels like this sort of like the revelation. There's obviously a lot of Sergio Leone influence in the movie and

Peckinpah. And it's very much riffing on the sort of neo-western and the you know redefining who really had power at it during during this kind of expansionist period in American history it is based on real life figures like Nat Love and Rufus Buck stage coach Mary incredible cast Jonathan Majors Idris Elba, Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, like really a dynamite collection of kind of under 40 young black actors in America and in England as well. It was incredibly stylish, perhaps to a fault. That was my one note on it was it is perhaps a little bit more interested in construction than ideas. And I think it is worth checking out. I'm interested to see what James Samuel does next, but I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it all on the show this year.

So that's the heart of they fall. Yeah, I was, I mean, I, it had a, it seemed to have like a kind of prestige season runway and then it just didn't take off, but I haven't watched it yet. So beyond being, beyond being excited to, being excited to, I have no insight. I like what you were saying about a film more of construction than ideas. My last film that I'm going to mention,

and I'll keep it short because I mentioned it in my 10 best list as well, but a movie that is all about ideas, and I love the way it constructs those ideas and deconstructs those ideas, is The Inheritance, which for a while i thought was the best film i saw a year and i think is pretty close this is a first-time filmmaker named efraim asili this is based loosely on his own experiences living in a black marxist

collective in philadelphia this movie brings in some really fascinating incredibly if you don't know it incredibly disturbing and and relevant and relevant Philadelphia civic history in that the characters in here is very much trying to inhabit literally and ideologically the same space as the Move Collective, who were firebombed by the Philadelphia police in an act that really went almost largely unpunished in terms of police violence towards a political commune of black activists. Can I just say something about that really quickly since you mentioned it? The Juice World film that we produced at The Ringer as part of the Music Box series was directed by a guy named Tommy Oliver, whose previous film was called 40 Years a Prisoner, which is very much about someone

who was a part of the MOVE Collective and about that moment. So I would just recommend 40 Years a Prisoner as well. It's a 20. Yeah. And I don't know where it's floating around now, but there's a film from a few years ago by Jason Oster called let the fire burn, which is like a great film, which is like a Verite reconstruction of that using footage from the, from the time. But anyway,

I mean, that's all very heavy and I'm not, I'm not switching away from the heaviness, but the thing about the inheritance is just so frigging funny. I mean, it's a movie that is, there's a, there's stuff in that movie that i'm going to be uh among the last people you would want to hear comment on it right in terms of the way that it functions as an archive of black thought and black activism and artistry and the relationship that

has to these things that the characters have to these texts i mean that's something that you want to read about and learn about and listen to as opposed to give much of an authoritative opinion about because it's very much outside my experience and it's very much outside my strike zone. I find it fascinating without pretending to have authoritative knowledge of it. What I can say as a critic

who likes the way movies are made is the way the movie is made is frigging hilarious. It's static shots in a cluttered house and it's all about people occupying each other's space and kind of what is the line between like solidarity and getting on people's nerves like what does it really mean to live communally like there's different kinds of principle here there's like you know how do you define yourselves and how do you write the house rules and how do you share food and what do you do when people are hooking up and, you know, how do you make decisions? How can you all be on the same page? And when impurities of thought or impurities of action come into that, how do people react? There's a big, big poster in the house for jean-luc godard's film le chinois which is his

malice satire uh it's a wonderful bit of uh upset dressing because it indicates you know the director's own filmic frame of reference in ways that i i admire and uh well i haven't seen everyone who's written about it describe it as like a laugh out loud comedy certain words always do pop up in reviews of it people calling it wry and knowing and satirical and that's the part of it that i love i mean it's a weird way to end by talking about the opening shot but in that list i just did for shots of the year in the ringer i love this very early shot where you see these two signs and one is like do not enter and one is you know what's mine is yours or let's share and it's so john singleton and spike lee like it's the stop sign for boys in the hood and it's the signage at the beginning of jungle fever and it's setting up this contrast between like

inclusivity and like denial or inclusivity and sort of you know uh, this is not for you. And I find that it's just the work of an extremely smart filmmaker. I think that this is a director who I'm just dying to see another feature from or two features from or three features from because just the filmmaking is brilliant. I still have not seen that one,

so I'll have to check it out very soon. Really good. My last one is one I wanted to talk to you about very quickly, because you wrote about it around TIFF, and it's a movie called The Humans. Yeah. Oh, good. I'd love to talk about The Humans. So The Humans is an A24 film, so you'd think it would arrive with a kind of pomp and circumstance

the way all A24 films do, but this movie went straight to Showtime. Yeah. So the only place you can really watch it, maybe a handful of theaters scattered across the country, but over the Thanksgiving holiday, it was released on Showtime. And I can't remember another film from A24 doing that specifically immediately. This is an

interesting movie. It comes from a guy named Stephen Karam, who also wrote the play upon which the film is based. And it stars Beanie Feldstein, Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun, June Squibb, and in an incredible performance, Jane Houdishel, who's reprising her performance from the stage show. And it all takes place in this apartment in New York City over the holidays. And it's about a family coming together in this decaying,

decrepit space in New York. And we were just talking about the challenges in The Scary of 61st of trying to find an apartment in New York. And this movie is very much about that as well. And it is similarly a sort of horror movie. I think it's a horror about the loss of a sense of decency, the loss of a way of living sanely in this world, the dissolution of the American dream in a lot of ways,

but it's also about the difficulty of human relationships and family relationships. Pretty staggering movie, honestly. I had not seen this play and it feels a little bit unceremoniously moved to a streaming service

and I feel like in a different time it might have been received a little bit differently. It's not easy or fun to watch, but it is very expertly made and it's the people who worked to make it you know nico muley making the music and lol crawley who shot um some of andrew hayes films and works with the kind of that antonio campos brady corbett group of filmmakers most of the time shoots this movie like it's in the pit of hell um i thought it was a really good film and it seems to have come and gone quickly,

but you wrote about it and I think you liked it quite a bit. I did. My wife and I saw The Humans when we visited New York in the before times. And it's a very scary play, staging-wise.

It's almost got like jump scares in it. I mean, the same way the movie does. And there are jump scares that more have to do with how sucked into the space you are than people being spooky. But it's also got people recounting nightmares in a very scary way.

The title refers to the Steven Yeun character talking about, I think, his favorite comic book as a kid is one where a bunch of aliens or monsters are sitting around freaking each other out by telling stories about human beings, right? And that humans are quite frightening or that you know what humans do and the way humans you know hurt themselves and hurt each other is is scary so that's the the source of the title and the movie communicates a lot of that same intensity it's strange because on stage what works about it is it's a two-flo floor set and you're always looking at it.

Right. So the upstairs downstairs thing, which in the movie has to be communicated more through editing and camera setups in individual rooms, like on stage, you're constantly up, down, up,

down, up, down, and you don't know who to look at. So you really kind of edit the play yourself as you're watching it. The movie, I think is almost too much. It's really pushing the sound design and the color palette,

but I think it's mostly pushing it in effective ways. I think the acting is amazing, and I think that, yeah, there's aspects to the script that maybe betray a little bit of trying to write the definitive post 9-11 play i won't spoil it but you know there are that there are these little moments where you can feel the script is really pushing to universalize something about the american experience in the last let's say 15 or 20 years but it's also interesting to watch like a holiday movie that's not Nancy Meyers you know the problems

that the characters are going through are really ground level and relatable and kind of upsetting I mean the Amy Schumer character and I'm not fond of Amy Schumer typically but she's very good at this I think she's terrific like just the humiliation bodily of what she's going through and just frailty

in general physical frailty and mental frailty in this movie i mean it's a movie it's hard not to see yourself in at some stage of life because what the characters what's making them fall apart are the things that make everyone fall apart to to some extent and i'll give it up also for for for beanie feldstein because you know she's an actress who in some of the other movies that she's made there's a preciousness or an adorability that's kind of kept me at arm's length. But she's interestingly cast in this.

I agree. She's interestingly cast. It's not the same energy that the person I saw on stage had. I think she's surprisingly very effective. I think the cast on the whole is terrific in this movie. I recommend people check it out. Can we just do five minutes on one other film that I have not had a chance to talk about much on the whole is terrific in this movie. I recommend people check it out. I want to just, can we just do five minutes on one other film

that I have not had a chance to talk about much on the show? Yeah, sure. So, Tatan. Oh, sure. Yeah. I'd love to talk about Tatan. So, you were, I would say, somewhat critical of Tatan. I thought you wrote,

I think it was on Letterboxd where you wrote quite dissectingly. Yeah. But I think that Tatan is a movie that if people feel strongly about it, and especially people who are writing about it from different positions with regards to how it figures, let's say, disfigurement or disability

or the way it works as a kind of trans allegory. I think that there's space for that. My issue with the movie is that it's trying so hard to be so many things that to me, it loses a certain, it just loses a certain coherence. It just completely flies apart. And I think she's a big show off and the showing off doesn't do it for me. But it's not a movie where when I encountered people who enjoyed it, I really felt annoyed the way I did some other movies. There were some movies this year

where when I saw people like them, I was like, oh, give me a break. But I can't quite say I felt that way about Zazen. Yeah, I think I had a somewhat similar reaction to you. I flipped for Raw. I recommended Raw to everybody that I met back in, was that 2017 when Julia Ducarno's film came out? That's a sort of a kind of a cannibal vampiric story

about going off to college and felt very focused on what it wanted its themes to be. Hyper-focused. About carnality, sexuality, desire, the sense of transformation that the body can sometimes go through that is inexplicable this movie is in the same species but it is as you say trying to do all that and more and it it adds a kind of secondary character the vincent lindon character who um is similarly encountering

some of these kind of self-inflicted body horrors that adds a whole other layer of storytelling to it i thought performances were great i thought the design of the movie was fascinating i thought it was viscerally engaging but at the end of it i was like what did you want this to be like I left myself kind of wondering what ultimately she wanted to say about particularly her lead. And I'm sometimes excited by movies that have that, that tension where, you know,

feeling Trump's coherence. I mean, it depends, right. I mean, to contextualize it for your listeners and people don't know the film, not so much the plot, but the positioning of the movie this year.

I mean, it's a major film of 2021. It won the Palm door. And she's, I think only the second a major film of 2021. It won the Palme d'Or. And she's, I think, only the second female director to win the Palme d'Or. She's very young. This was a Spike Lee-led jury. And for Spike to choose a female director, for Spike to choose a French horror film,

you know, like in some ways it's right in his wheelhouse of kind of wanting to, you know, disrupt stuff. And his fondness for the movie was very endearing. But it was not even a typical Cannes choice. Cannes has really become a festival of transnational genre movies, like your Yorgos Lanthimoses and your Nick Windig Refens, and even to an extent your Villeneuve's and Del Toro's. I mean, this is now the Cannes thing. This movie is maybe a little squishier and harder, even than those guys, you know, which is sort of why I distrust it. Because when people say this is one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen, and then Neon is packaging it for year end consideration, I'm like, well, you know, and I'll just say this, you know, it's kind of not fair, because it's like pulling out the trump card compare directors to and you you're going to win every time when you choose a great artist but you know

decorno talked a lot about how influenced she was by claire denis and like you know when claire denis made trouble every day in 2001 she was really working without a net she didn't have 20 years of of that at can to contextualize her winning a palmme d'Or. She basically got like shit on and people said, don't come back. And that's why trouble every day is a movie that's not liked. And I think that that's a real badge of honor. I know it sounds crappy to say that to 10 can't be that good because people like it,

but given how extreme it means to be, there's just something a little, I found in the end, there's something a little sentimental and pandering inside of it. Even though, as you say, it does push to certain visceral places. I think it's a movie well worth watching. I think Neon's efforts to elevate it to awards conversation effectively did not work. This film was not chosen for the shortlist for the International Feature Film at the Oscars, which means it's not really going to be in the conversation for the next two months when it comes to all of those things, which in a way is itself a badge of honor, I would say.

The fact that it is not being recognized in that way has made perhaps a credit to it. I was very tempted to see it again, not because I thought I would enjoy it more, but at TIFF, I saw it with a very cavernous press screening audience where there were maybe 10 people in there. And I knew what all of them thought of it already because I just know who reviews movies in Toronto. But I was like, I wonder with a midnight audience and with a certain like energy in the room, if this might be more transporting because there's definitely moments in it where again,

like it it's going for it. Yeah. It's pretty, pretty intense. It's very intense. I think it's a real Testament to discovery versus something being vaulted into our lives. And if this were something that you found late at night on an obscure streaming service,

you might have a different reaction to it. But we can't change the fact that the way we are exposed to things influence how we feel about things. And so if you've been listening to this conversation, and we recommended a movie that you've never heard of, you might feel differently. You might feel like it has uh been oversold to you and it doesn't live up to the high expectations that we're setting for it so it's a complicated

thing watching movies in 2021 yeah also i hear as very good as spider-man uh i i enjoyed the film whether it is actually a film uh i couldn't say if it's actually a movie but it is something that i liked and uh i'm just trying to hold on to things I like. Adam, I like talking to you. Thanks for everything you've done for the show, for The Ringer, all that this year. I appreciate all your insights and your witticisms. It's my absolute pleasure to be here. I'm very, very lucky to get to do it.

Thank you for having me. Thank you, of course, also to Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, who appeared on this episode, co-hosts of The Watch podcast. You can listen to that anytime you want. It's available on all your podcast listening platforms. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, who's just been kicking ass this year. Bobby's doing great.

Thank you to Bob for all of his work. And stay tuned to The Big Picture. We've got a lot of stuff coming in the future. you