The Big Picture - ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ and Top Five Most Audacious Movies

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

We’re diving deep into Daniels’ multiversal extravaganza ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ one of the year’s most acclaimed and thrilling movies. Sean is joined by Adam Nayman and Joanna Robinson to break down the film, its bold style, and why it’s become such a sensation (1:00). Then, they share their favorite, zany, audacious movie swings (39:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Adam Nayman and Joanna Robinson Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Dave Chang here, host of The Dave Chang Show. You might hear me on with Chris Yang, Noel Cornelio, and a host of other guests. We've been on air for quite some time now, and it's changed over the years. But one of the things we always try to talk about is what's delicious, how to be a better eater, and you might hear me rambling incoherently, contradicting myself every five minutes. We talk about some sports and culture and all kinds of other things too. I think we're the most expert opinions you'll ever hear about anything. Check us out if you haven't before on the Ringer Podcast Network.

I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about everything, everywhere, all at once. We're diving deep into one of the year's most acclaimed and accomplished movies and taking a page from its multiversal manual to celebrate some of the most audacious and zany films ever made. Joining me to do so, two of my boldest colleagues, Adam Naiman and Joanna Robinson. Hi, guys. How are you? Wow. Bold. How exciting. What a parameter to live up to. Well, there's a lot to live up to in this conversation because this is a movie that many listeners of this show have asked us to discuss and that I flipped for when I first saw it and have been eager to discuss and break

down. I saw it for a second time this week. I wanted to try to have a excited but measured conversation about it. And so I've brought a measured man in addition to his boldness and Adam and Joanne, I think you have a lot of enthusiasm for it. But Adam, I'll start with you. What'd you make of this film directed by Daniels, this multiversal exploration of self? So when I wrote about this film for, for ringer, you know, I'm kind of got this competing, this competing reaction to the movie, right? On the one hand,

it's very accomplished. It's very entertaining and you kind of have to give it its due in that sense. A lot of crowd pleasers don't accomplish actually pleasing crowds. And there's something to be said for a movie that can get that kind of reaction from an audience. I saw it with a big audience and people were very much into it. And I thought about the complexity of it. And I thought about the complexity of it and I thought about the accomplishment of it. And so

in my review, I ended up likening it in an odd way to the Hudsucker proxy. I was thinking about the Coens in 1994 and the fact that their reputation was as these kind of snot-nosed, precocious kind of postmodernists. They were kind of seen as the problem. It's funny because now they're the last classicists of American cinema and these veterans, but at theists they were kind of seen as the problem it's funny because now they're the last classicists of american cinema and these veterans but at the time they were these kind of interlopers and people's problem that they had with them is that they're trying to do too much especially with the hud sucker proxy which is kind of blank check studio movie that they made like it's one thing when you make you know raising arizona for no money and hud sucker is this big thing and i was thinking about the daniels who are not

the coens and this is their second film and not the fourth and the landscape has changed a lot in the last 30 years but this has some of that same feeling for better and for worse of these talented guys trying to do everything that they can at the same time that's the theme of the movie is that theme of being overextended or that theme of being overdrawn. And they're doing it through the language of pastiche and reference, sometimes ingeniously, sometimes I think a little derivatively. And there's an aggressiveness to the movie sentimentality that in my review, I thought I just had to kind of acknowledge the idea that this is a movie that keeps going in for a hug.

And sometimes I think a hug can be a complex thing. And sometimes I think a hug is pretty simple. So I was sort of just trying to wrestle with having those differing reactions to this obviously impressive movie. Well, Joanna, what about for you? Because I think Adam has located something right, which is that it is drawing out extremity of reaction,

myself included. When I saw it, I was over the moon. What did you think when you first saw this movie? Yeah, I also saw it twice. I did absolutely love it. I'm a huge fan of the Daniels. I was a huge Swiss Army Man fan. And so I went in with those expectations.

I actually went in trying to know as little about it as possible, which is actually not my usual MO. And I absolutely loved it. The listeners of one of my podcasts, The Ring Reverse, have been also clamoring for us to do it because it is very much in that, also in that fandom space as well as like indie cinema space. And I think we, a lot of us are really, I mean, maybe this is me reviewing the context again, but I think a lot of us are so thirsty for something that feels fresh and original. And even as it's like riffing through these big IPs that we understand and are fluent in, it's still giving us something new. The second time I went to see it, I went to see it with a friend who also didn't know anything about it. And about 20 minutes in, she's like, how is Dr. Strange involved in this? Because she thought it was a Marvel multiverse movie. And I just love that, again, that there was like a huge crowd

when I saw it the second time and they were all eating it up. And that is something that I really enjoyed. And maybe that's exactly what Adam's talking about. I'm willing to engage in that. I think it's hard to separate those two things, the narrative of a movie and the narrative around a movie. Let's just, for the listeners, give them a little bit of context for our conversation. We've mentioned the Daniels a couple of times. They are Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, two filmmakers who got their start in music videos

and commercial work in the, I say early 2010s, I feel like is when they really cropped up on the scene. They're best known for the Turn Down for What music video. They directed 2016's Swiss Army Man. Insanely inventive, antic filmmakers. They have a real joie de vivre for a certain kind of ridiculous style that's maximalized in this movie for sure. So the story is basically, um, a middle-aged Chinese woman, uh, is swept up in an insane adventure. She, she is identified as a person who alone can save not just one universe,

but all of the universes of the world, um, by connecting all of the lives that she could have had. This is at times a tremendously confusing movie. Um, I think that's sort of the point of the movie in some respects, but we can get into that. Eventually, it becomes clear that this isn't just a story about this woman and what her fate is or could have been, but also a movie about family and the way that the people who

are related to each other are actually interconnected through time and history. So it sounds quite serious and complex. It is very, very goofy, very zany. There are tons of sight gags. There's tons of visually explosive imagery. It's an insane movie in many ways. It is also very self-aware and self-reflexive, not just about itself, but about the history of movies. And that's part of the reason why I think a lot of movie fans are flipping for it. It stars Michelle Yeoh, who is herself an icon of many different types of genre cinema, and Kiwi Kwan, who I have not seen in a movie in quite a long time, and a young woman named Stephanie Su, who I've never seen before,

who I thought was terrific in this movie. Then Jamie Lee Curtis and James Hong, these two icons of 80s genre movies. So every single aspect of the story is deeply intentional. All of the casting, all of the storytelling, all of the structure, all of the homage, all of the riffage. For some people, it's too much. Was it too much for you, Adam? Did you see the scenes as you were watching the movie? Did that distract you? So this is a film that begins in a very self-contained way.

There's like about an opening 10 or 15 minutes where you meet this character. She's preparing for an IRS audit. She's got her receipts strewn all over the place. And it's sort of juxtaposing all the different responsibilities that Michelle Yeoh's character Evelyn has. She's accountable to the government. She's accountable to her husband, but she's not really giving her attention. She has this adult daughter who she kind of on one hand is very overbearing and attentive to, but she's not really giving her attention. She has this adult daughter who she kind of, on one hand, is very overbearing and attentive to, but it's not the right kind of attention or, you know, what her really wants to respect and pay tribute to, but who she also clearly kind of uses this liability as she kind of has to take care of him in his old age. And this is a movie that you could imagine playing at Sundance. We've sort of seen a version of this intergenerational assimilation narrative or immigrant narrative. And then around the edges of it, there's these little blips that suggest

there's all this offscreen space that's waiting to be activated. And there's other stories, and there's other movies that lie beyond the purview of this movie. And so what the Daniels do is they decide to interrupt this movie and stage about 40 other ones within the space and within the plot of this first one. And for some people, that's a really ingenious way to deepen and diversify and sort of create new meanings. Instead of just making one indie drama, you're making 40 different movies on the same theme. It can also be, if you're cynical about it,

which I kind of am, a way to, first of all, audition for a kind of bigger spectacle thing, these movies produced by the russos who you've made some really small movies you might have heard of for marvel uh and uh not only as a kind of an audition piece but as a disguising of a lack of depth right if you keep subdividing you don't have to go more than six inches down or drill more than six inches deep i'm not saying that that's necessarily true with this movie but i wasn't always giving it the benefit of my many doubts. I had doubts, you know, and sometimes the movie addressed those doubts and sometimes it just like steamrolled those doubts because parts of it are really funny.

And sometimes those doubts nagged at me and made me feel like one of the heartless cynics who the movie is trying to hug. And I'm like, don't hug me movie. So, Joanne, I want to ask you about that specifically, because a lot of times when you see a good movie, you'll hear people say, I'll be thinking about that for a long time. I'm not sure I had that reaction when I saw this movie, in part because of the overload, and because of the amount of story and character and sight gag that we get in the film and then i did see it a second time and then i saw i had a much better understanding of the

structure of the movie of the visual motifs that they're coming back to over and over again and i do now find myself thinking a lot more deeply about it and happily able to have a conversation with both of you about it joanna i you know i i assume that there's no such thing as too much for you when it comes to this kind of a story, but maybe I'm wrong. No, there is. I mean, I will say that I had a moment the first time I saw it where I was like, oh no, am I too old for this? Because it's so frenetic actually in that anchored in reality space. It's I think even more frenetic. Everyone's talking over everyone and it's just go, go, go. I see it sort of as the opposite of what Adam sees it as where he's like, they wanted to make this small indie movie about this family. And then they injected all this

genre stuff. Cause it's the only way to get people to see that kind of movie. I see it as they want to make this big, loud, crazy movie and they want a core, an anchor for it to make sure that you don't just get lost in the multiverse skipping and the homages and the gags. We're going to talk at the end, not to do your job, Sean, but we're going to talk at the end about a bunch of other sort of wild out there movies. And as I was going through them, I was like, the ones that stick with me are the ones that managed to tell a human story at the center of this boldness. And so the fact that, and I also would disagree with Adam. I think it has a lot of different things to say. But I think at the center, this woman who is both daughter and wife and mother and small business owner.

So there's like something in there for most, at least women to latch on to. Hopefully everyone to latch on to. I love watching her try to heal all of those roles at once. As someone who understands their world through film and television, which is how I navigate the world, I really empathize. Swiss Army Man, I cry every time I watch that movie. I find it very fun and inventive in different ways, but I find Paul Dano's performance and also Daniel Radcliffe's, I think it's the best thing Daniel Radcliffe has ever done, both their performances really, really moving. And so I sometimes understand the world through Jurassic Park. And so I don't see that as just, I want to remake Jurassic Park. It's like, I want to help Jurassic

Park. I want Jurassic Park to help me understand my own human drama. As silly as that might sound, that is how I move through the world. And I think that's how a lot of us, when the Daniels were talking to Sean, they were talking about how a lot of us are just sort of pop culture addled at this point. We're all TV fans and film fans and YouTube fans. And that's how a lot of us understand and navigate the world. So that's how, that's how I saw it a little differently. One of the more fascinating things about my conversation with the Daniels, which was a few episodes ago, in case people are looking for that, I probably should have held it for this episode. That would have been a savvy podcasting strategy was that Daniel Kwan at least was like, I'm not a big movie fan.

He identified video games and anime and YouTube as really the things that are most interesting to him. And I think if you see the movie and think about it from that perspective, and also the fact that obviously Daniel Kwan is pulling a lot of his own personal experience as the son of an immigrant and somebody who has clearly been working through some of those narrative structures that kind of top line and then close the movie. You can see that even though this flatters someone like my sensibilities where I'm kind of picking out references as it's going along and kind of like cherry picking the homages and getting all excited. It's my synapses are firing because it's like, oh, these guys, they also like, you know, super cop too. Like that's isn't that how cool

is that? In fact, it feels like it's something more idiosyncratic than that. Maybe even more idiosyncratic than, say, what someone like Tarantino does, where he is wholesale, microscoping single movie moments and then blowing them up big on screen. So the blending of not just genre,

but medium and style, like a storytelling style is part of what i think is so fun about this i think it's kind of exciting that two people as smart and insightful as you guys can see like almost the opposite can see like externality in the early and late parts of the story and it a depth there. And then Joanna, you seeing something like a little bit deeper about the middle part and kind of where the movie gets a little bit crazier. I don't know if I could have planned it more perfectly for this conversation. I will agree with you in that there's a part of me,

there's a sinking feeling in me whenever I am watching a movie and I'm like, oh no, is the answer love? Oh no, don't let the answer be love. Like it can't be love that fixed the multiverse. However, I do think there's some darker, stickier stuff in here when it comes to like mental health and all,

you know, which Swiss army man also extremely deals with. And I, and you know, Daniel Kwan specifically has talked about how there's a great, if people watch this movie and like this movie, the press tour around it, not just Sean's interview, but like every video interview that I've watched has been so interesting. Even the South by Q&A and usually movie film festival Q&As just make me want to sink into the floor because they're terrible. This one was like actually kind of deep and Dan Kwan talking about how he understood his

own mental health while he was writing this and how his own ADHD approach to the world, which is deeply informs his, the kind of filmmaking and, and, um, you know, music video making that he does, um, how there's a dark underside, there's a cost to that sort of whimsy. And I think that's something that he's trying to address here. Does it all end with a hug? Absolutely. And I agree with you, Adam. But I think they're not completely shying away from the cost of living this sort of

schizophrenic adult sort of way. There's one other pretty significant part of this story from the filmmaker's point of view, which is that Dan Kwan is the father of a toddler right now. And this is very much a parent movie. It's a movie that is thinking a lot about the generational modes of care and how we look after those who are older than us and those who are younger than us and what we can do to make them feel better or how we kind of process our relationships with them the only way we know how there's this moment early in the movie where we've already been told that stephanie sue's daughter figure like when her mother says something negative to her it's an expression of love her girlfriend becky identifies that that's

how she tells her she loves her but then 20 minutes later in the film we witness michelle yo's character say something really nice she calls calls her daughter fat in front of her. And even though Stephanie Sue's character knows that this is her trying to find a way to say, I love you or I care about you or I'm thinking about you, she doesn't know how to do it. I think the movie does extend beyond modes of sentimentality and it's trying to get underneath the surface of I love you to something that is a little bit, I don't know if deeper is the right word, but a little bit more difficult than that. The trickiness is they're visual filmmakers. They wrote and directed this movie, but they know how to best express themselves physically. And what is a more physical representation of I love you than a hug than a big hug now I will

say conversely part of what makes this movie so interesting is it has it does have these kind of recurring visual ideas it's not just the circle around the body of a hug it's like it's the the black hole of nihilism and depression that a big part of this movie is about then most movies are really not about or would prefer to you not to spend too much time thinking about. And in fact, the big bad of this movie is not Jobu Tupaki, the multiversal representation of all evil. It's like, it's actually nihilism. It's actually oblivion, the sense that if you spend enough time thinking about how nothing matters, then ultimately nothing matters. And Adam, I will say, you and I are very much connected in cynicism and in a kind of doubt about the goodness of people and I think we have a lot of similar movie tastes because we share some of

that perspective but I actually like when a movie is willing to be sincere enough to rip me out of that and part of what I liked about this movie was it forced me to not be such a withering asshole. I was like, you know what? I got to go home and spend some time with my family. And I don't think that there's any bad in that. Now, whether or not... And I also don't think it's insincere. So when something is sentimental but sincere, is that lacking artistic value?

It's an interesting query, I think. As Sean's saying, the enemy in this movie is, is nihilism, which is a good enemy for a movie to have. I, I think I preferred the big Lebowski where nihilism is embodied, not by a bagel, but by passed out German techno musician in a pool.

And the dude is like, someone says, who's that guy? Oh, he's a nihilist. Oh, that must be exhausting. You know,

that takes two seconds instead of two hours and, and 15 minutes, you know to to to to to punch nihilism in the nose like it deserves but i'm not sure that i think this movie's insincere i think it has a great abundance of sincerity right or i think its sincerity clashes with some of its careerist aspects or some of just the industrial realities that these filmmakers are dealing with and the thing is as well i'm of, you know, while I'm kind of putting them in league with Marvel, I guess, and it's hard not to feel the synchronicity because there's a big Doctor Strange movie going on at the same time. You know, it's also just a reality, you know, you want to bring in a big tent audience, you kind of got to

make a movie that's all things to all people. So on the one hand, the movie is arguing the dangers of overextending yourself and containing these different identities and these different selves, but it's also thematizing that. It's about how hard it is to make everybody happy, right? While it's also trying to make everybody happy. And maybe that's a really ingenious self-critique

or maybe it's just one of those things that you don't notice till the movie's over that you're kind of proving or disproving your own point well i think on on the subject of nihilism the thing that i want to say that i think is interesting i'm not sure i grokked it the first time i saw the movie and maybe that's a feeling of the movie or maybe it's a feeling of me as an audience member but something that the daniels have said in interviews with sean q a etc is that this idea of nihilism, the idea of the everything bagel is something that they're not saying is inherently bad. They're saying it's a stage you

have to go through or a stage that's necessary to understanding our world. That's a very natural stage. So even though they call it the biggest evil in the world, I think there's something, they understand the appeal of it. And the thing that they said to Sean that I thought was so interesting was this idea of like, and I think it's maybe just literally in the movie, this idea of if nothing matters, why not just be kind, right?

If nothing matters, then choose kindness. And if you beautiful, cynical film guys on this podcast are like, that's not for me. i get it i do what else should we say about this well there's also a difference though between you know choosing kindness and being bear hugged into submission right and i think and i know and i think there's different ways to oblige kindness you know one of the things about these these filmmakers is

and yeah jonah said this at another point already in the podcast, so to echo, I think, a thought of hers I agree with, you know, they really do process the world through their film experiences, right? I mean, in Swiss Army Man, these, you know, the two characters, one living, one dead, are on an island for about 20 minutes, then they're reenacting Jurassic Park, because we do that. We quote things that we like, we recite catchphrases, we talk about favourite scenes. I recite catchphrases. We talk about favorite scenes. I mean, how else do we know about other lives unless they're lives that we can kind of imagine in movies? There's something very tender about that. And there's something very

emotional about that. We're not all probably going to get to experience multiple lives. We're not going to recall our past lives. We're going to remember the movies that we've seen, right? And there is something about the way the movie plays with that that is edging towards something even more profound than the idea of being kind it's edging towards just something about a social condition in a 21st century condition where you know the only way we can dream beyond our experiences is to remember and recycle and sort of regurgitate movies i guess the question is is this movie diagnosing this condition is the symptom of this? Can you ask something to be more than a symptom of this larger condition? It's good enough as a movie that I guess in a way I wish it was better or I wish it was more sure that those higher functions were there. And I wish that

some of the difficult things it's working through, like mental health, like familial relationships, like just the difficulty of being an adult child or the parent of an adult child. I guess I wish it left more residue instead of trying to just sandblast that residue away through this idea of be kind. I mean, to cite a filmmaker who also I like, you know, a movie like Magnolia takes three hours to basically say, be nice to your kids too. And I'm not sure that Magnolia needs to be three hours in order to do that either. There's the question of, is it the simplest moral that signifies in the biggest way? Or do simple morals make movies feel sometimes bigger than they should be, right?

I love that. I think that's really smart. I think one thing that the movie does that I do appreciate is that even though there's this very sentimental resolution and even you know jamie lee curtis is brought into the hug like it's all it's all happening um michelle yo's character has not completely changed right she's still expressing her love through criticism the way that um her daughter's girlfriend knows that she's part of the family is because she tells her to grow out her hair like she's still doing the things that she did before.

And there's still going to be conflict in this family, but everyone understands each other a little bit better than they did before. That's sort of, that's the ending I see. It's, it's sunshine and lollipops, but there are still some rain clouds left. I think I see the residue,

but I hear what you're saying this is more of a rorschach test than i would have imagined this movie and maybe it's because i have two distinct approaches to emotional content and that's really like what this movie this movie kind of transcends moviedom and i think goes into another realm it feels like it's a movie that is going to be sliced and diced onto youtube very quickly it's a movie of scenes it's a movie of images as much as it is this locked together puzzle well and and since i've been cast by the two much nicer people on this podcast as the main voice joanna's nice and then you know sean is like we should all hug our kids that's so funny i feel like i've been cast as the nice idiot and i I'm like, no, I'm dark, man.

And I'm like, no, fuck them kids. You know, that sort of thing. What I was going to say is that there is another kind of extremity with this movie. And I think some of it has to do with reviewing the distributor. And some of it has to do with reviewing the discourse around the distributor, where A24 is a company that is known for not just shaping and working with interesting filmmakers, but for a branding of those filmmakers. Right.

And for, you know, where does their brand begin? And the filmmakers brand ends, they have a real success. I think with this movie and the social media sphere is being kinder to this movie or more celebratory. This movie probably than the brick and mortar box office ever would.

But like, this is one of the highest rated movies of all time on letterboxd which is a really good excuse for people nice and otherwise with good taste to be like well it must suck right people who aren't me like this yeah it's probably terrible and it's like the shawshank redemption it's actually bad right like that's sort of uh that language exists on social media too and in that sense i think it's a movie on the one hand, you have a critic like Richard Brody, who I think did review what was on screen and reviewed it quite devastatingly. So I don't think Brody is reviewing the distributor. I think a lot of the

tweets you see about this movie are kind of reviewing the distributor or they're reviewing a movie that has the temerity to be likable. And i'm just saying there's extremes in both directions this is not the best movie ever made like i'm allowed to say that yeah so if on letterbox it's being hailed as such you can see where the cynicism comes from but it's also like if people like something and something is accomplished and enjoyable and is gaining traction there's a lot of people who kind of want to tear that down sight unseen as well so So to echo Sean's point, not only do I think it's going to be sliced and diced and discussed, it's kind of going to be a discourse monster in a way, a film cultural discourse monster, not because it's offensive,

but because it's inoffensive, not because it's radical, but because it actually seems to make people happy. It's not problematic. It's successful. And that's going to be a real sore point for people. I think for me who, you know, It's successful. And that's going to be a real sore point for people. Boy. I think for me who, you know, spends, I love, do love comic book properties, but I do find like sometimes when I watch them, I am trying to excavate for emotion. And so for me coming from that aspect, this feels so rich. This feels like a full banquet for me where there's like really fun, like an entire Rakukui subplot with Harry Shum Jr. from Glee and actually Randy Newman voicing the raccoon.

Like all that stuff is there. But then I can also get emotional watching the entire family, not just the mother grabbing the daughter, but then her husband and her father grabbing her. And all of that means something to me watching it. So I feel like there is meat on the bone here in a way that when we complain, as we often do, even those of us who love comic book, TV, and films, that it's swallowing other spaces where we could find other kinds of stories. The fact that this one is a four quadrant, like hits, hits all the sweet spots that if you go and you want some sort of fun, multiversal adventure where there's like cheeky little dirty Daniel's jokes, which there always are in their, in their stuff, you know, like that's there.

And then if you want to cry, which I often do, like, and I find that there, you know, I got, I got mother issues. Like it's usually dad issues that are dealt with in these movies.

I got mom issues and they're here on the page. And so I, I just, I hear what you're saying. I haven't seen as much backlash as I think you've seen. It's right on the precipice. Yeah. It's so funny because I have been making a concerted effort to stop reviewing the discourse

on the show. And I am not, I'm not casting any aspersions at him. I think it's actually quite relevant to this movie because of the way that it has been received and is now being kind of regurgitated through the machine. But I, this is a movie that I think is, it's more useful to me personally to hear what you guys actually think about the text of the movie and what it means to you or does not mean to you because I feel like it is so big and it is, there's so much to pull apart. That being said, it was in many ways designed for the discourse and a movie like this and the distributor and all of the component parts fit very neatly.

It's, it's like the, it's like the multiversal version of let people like things with MCU movies, you know, like that same kind of debate that we see online where it's like, if you love the Snyder cut, cool, man,

that's great. Like I'm, I'm super excited that you have something that you care about that I think is bad but it doesn't matter what I think on the other hand I think just anytime anybody expresses an emotion of extremity whether it be on screen or the reaction to this movie invariably someone will say actually the exact opposite is true you are a moron and this movie is gloopy bullshit. I don't think any of us are saying either of those two things on either extreme.

This is certainly not the best movie ever made. It is not among the 100 greatest movies ever made. Frankly, that doesn't matter. That doesn't mean anything. These are all subjective opinions. That's going to end up on the poster. Not one of the 100 greatest movies ever made. 101.

It is, though, like so many great movies in the last 30 years bound by movies it is it is it exists inside the existence of movies and so it like it's inextricable from so many conversations about what came before it which makes it different from something that was made in say 1937 you know this might this might seem like an odd thought but it's such a digressive movie. I mean, why not? The only movie I kept thinking of while watching this, I mean, in my review, I talked about Hudsucker, but that's because I'm a Cohen obsessive, right? And we talked about Tarantino. People have pointed out how sort of thematically similar it is to Turning Red, which just came out.

But the movie that I thought of was, I thought of Back to the Future. And the reason I thought of Back to the Future is because in 1985 the idea that back to the future could be sort of idiosyncratic and populist at the same time but on some level the fact that that movie exists as a sort of like incest themed time travel comedy that's taking shot at reagan and trickle down economics with a sitcom star and a huey lewis soundtrack i mean now it's just part of our vocabulary and we just know that it's Back to the Future. But, you know, at the time is very odd

and very pleasing, right? So I guess I'm thinking about what is the nature of mainstream now? What is the nature of crowd pleasing now? What is the frame of reference now, right? And I don't think this movie is nearly as good as Back to the Future. And I don't even think it's is nearly as good as back to the future and i don't even think it's as sticky as the things it's about with families and family familial relationships

back to the future the back of your super weird movie but i i guess i'm just looking at the the mutation or the evolution of the sort of studio-ish crowd pleaser over the last you know 30 or 40 years but then also thinking about the fact that zemeckis who made back to the future is now this ancient classicist whose movies flop because they're too weird. You know, it, I'm just thinking about the larger marketplace and what constitutes popularity. This movie is not going to make a hundred million dollars, right? I mean, we just measure popularity in different ways. We measure visibility in different ways.

I don't know if popularity has been reduced purely to an algorithm or to discourse. On the other hand, I guess I am glad that theaters are open again enough that people might experience this in a group. I did, you guys can tell me if I'm wrong, I don't think A24 is letting people, critics, watch this on screeners, right? They want people to see it with a crowd. They want people to experience it with the crowd they want people to experience it collectively for for the most part that has been true for the studio even through the pandemic there have been very few films that they have made available and that has been very different from studios as big as disney and warner brothers a24 is continuing to ask because that's the centrality of their

business i think is one of the reasons why and some of in the in the case of a movie like this i think it's quite logical because all three of us saw this movie with a crowd and all three of us noticed that the crowd happened to love it and so part of the reason to do an episode like this is to evangelize for it and say hey do you like original movies that love movies here's a movie for you it's it's funny i i love that you guys thought about back to the future that's such a good reference. I thought of a movie that I hated, which was Ready Player One, a movie that I thought was absolute garbage and is the worst version of this, which is just poking you with a nostalgia stick of like, you like The Shining? Here's The Shining with no actual thematic or emotional resonance to it. Like from one of our great directors, even like no actual core story there, just visual frenetic reference or like Space Jam, which is not trying to be anything. So like, let's not, you know, throw it on the same pile.

But I think the other thing that I want to say is that, of course, this is not going to make a gajillion dollars at the box office. Doctor Strange is going to come obsessed and excited by this movie because it feels like something that has risen above the noise in a way that maybe they can get their quasi-original or wholly original story made if something like this is striking a chord. And I do want to say, shout out to the Russo brothers who formed agbo made a bunch of really bad movies and then i think this movie is actually great so they finally made a great movie this is their mission statement they're like we're gonna take our marvel movie and we're gonna fund a bunch of

movies and we're gonna make interesting non-ip cinema and they've been bad different shades of bad and this movie i think is great. So I'm glad they got a win. I will not have you dismissing 21 bridges. One of the great entries in the garbage crime canon in the last 25 years. I'm just going to put that out there. You got Adam, have you seen 21 bridges? I wrote about, I reviewed 21 bridges for different publications. Okay. Then let's not speak of it but you know if a gun was to my head right now and i had to remember anything that happened in 21 bridges i'd be i'd be dead right whereas i could tell you what happened in cherry but you don't want me to

so no that's that's probably for the best uh there's so many like just like little things that we haven't mentioned here that things that are resonating in my mind, you know, the fanny pack as weapon, the Bluetooth earpiece connecting us to the universe and what that means. You know, you mentioned Rekha Cooney and Randy Newman, which is just delightful. And the malleability of the characters, right? We should talk about how her husband,

in one reality, the orienting reality of the film, he's a nobody to her and he's passive and meek and kind of like barely, the husband, Wayman, barely makes a sound. And then he keeps shifting into these different personalities, which allows for a virtuosic performance by the actor. But it's also the idea that people contain multitudes, and in each of the realities that she occupies, he's kind of there as a reality principle, which is why one of the other things you could argue this movie is sort of about is the question can we really get away from the people who are meant for us or can we really get away from the people around us like not just the people who are our family but the people who

we choose right their marriage their relationship is one of the strong through lines in the film and the casting of a of a former child actor who in the eighties, really a lot of problematic baggage, right. Playing short round or, or, or playing as a data in the Goonies. Right. I mean, these are, these are films much like back to the future that everyone saw and took certain things away from. So allowing him to give this suave trim self-reflexive middle-aged

performance, which has some bits of physical comedy worthy of Jackie Chan is a very heroic bit of casting and not only that but I'm again you know I'm an easy cry but watching uh Entertainment Weekly did a round table out of South by with the cast and the directors and um it's one of those things where there's no moderator but then like someone usually emerges the moderator in this case it was Jamie Lee Curtis. And she made Keith tell the story about why he was out of the industry for 20 years and what it meant for him to come back. And I genuinely started crying because what he said is that, yeah, he got cast as these, as you say, problematic roles in these blockbuster movies

that we loved to varying degrees. And then when he got a little older, there were no parts for him because they just wanted him to be the funny kid. There were no parts for him. He saw his contemporaries get auditions. He couldn't, he got frustrated. So, you know,

he went behind the camera. And then he was talking about how he saw crazy rich Asians, a movie that I didn't love, but means a lot to a lot of people. And he saw, he was talking to Michelle Yeoh about this and he saw crazy rich Asians. And he's like, he got,

he said he got jealous. He got FOMO. He's like, I want to be a part of that. I want to be back in front of the camera, went and auditioned a couple of weeks later, got this part. And I just think that that's an extremely beautiful story within all of this, hearing him talk about the like months of work he did with like body coaches so that he could, you know, and all this sort of stuff to try to like, I mean, it's an incredible performance from, from someone who, yeah, was a punchline of cinema for so long. What a, what a beautiful, as you say, it's not, it's not talking about the text, it's talking about the, uh, the context, but it's, it's beautiful context. Let's, let's, let's wrap there and take a quick break. And when we come back,

we're going to talk about ambition on screen. Okay, we're back. Now, I offered a vague prompt to both of you for this. I initially suggested a kind of zany sci-fi as the subcategory that we would be exploring. I have been expanding my definition a bit around that to something that is a little bit more audacious genre thinking, maybe even something that is undefinable as a movie genre. I can't help but ask people to make lists when they come on this show. So nevertheless, with this undefinable definition, we're talking about five movies basically that just seem crazy. You know, that the filmmakers, their vision, their exploration, the world that they're building, what they're putting on screen just is incredibly unlikely.

And I don't know, Jo, what do you think of this prompt? Are you annoyed by me? No, I mean, it's so funny because it's exactly the kind of movie that i love uh and that i grew up on uh because i think the 80s were like a particularly fertile time for especially zany sci-fi so when i was trying to fulfill that parameter but i kept getting tempted by things outside so i got you to relent and you were like genre is okay you don't have to like pick only sci-fi and then I think we even have maybe stepped outside of genre and we're just sort of like, how did this get made basically is sort of the umbrella here. But I think all of the films on all of our lists are really fun. And essentially what started to happen as I was going through this is I was like, well, there are certain filmmakers that I feel like need to be represented because their body of work reflects this kind of spirit, the Daniel spirit.

And so it's like, the question is which one, which one from this filmmaker are we going to talk about here? And that was an interesting experiment. Adam, do you want to start us off? Do you want to give us your, this will help you kind of define how you chose your films. So my number five film is The Remains of the Day. No, I mean, I found Sean's prompt excitingly vague and sort of tried to figure out, you know,

not just what to do with it, but to, you know, we're talking about movies that are sort of crazy and sometimes the rhetoric around that can be a bit annoying. you know the variations on twitter of like you know who are these guys and what were they smoking when they made this can sometimes stand in for actual response or criticism right you know all these described anyone who describes a movie as you know such and such on acid it's like well have you done acid and probably not um so i'm sort of just trying to figure out movies that I like that fit this, but also movies that have a little bit of a subversive kick,

like maybe movies that aren't a hug is what I was thinking of. Cause I think we've talked about the way that, that, that the, the Daniels movie sort of gestures at true craziness. Then in the end it kind of just wants a good hug or a good cry. So my number five movie is by a filmmaker who's not interested at hugging at all but who i think is really brilliant and one of the great music video filmmakers is joseph khan and his movie detention i wrote about bodied for the ringer a couple years ago i think bodied is amazing this sort of like deeply deeply contentious kind

of fake eminem biopic battle rap movie that's directed almost like a video game. I see it as kind of like the hip hop Scott Pilgrim B-side or whatever. But Detention is kind of his horror movie mashup. And it's one of the only, you know, post-millennial horror satires that I like because it's not just the kitchen sink. It's like 50 kitchen sinks. You know, he's trying in a way to deal with the way pop culture works, which is that the surfaces endlessly change and the underlying syntax remains the same. So it's kind of a slasher movie and kind of an alien movie and kind of a high school movie. It's a shape-shifting as the Daniels film, but it's really dealing with that stuff in an

analytical way. And it has one of the best sequences of any 21st century movie I know, which is a detention scene where you see this one kid sitting in detention for 20 years. And you can take it as a metaphor for the carceral system, especially because it's a non-white kid. You can take it as a metaphor for school or for getting older. And all the fashions and the clothes and the logos and the surfaces of the people around him change, but his purgatory remains the same, right? Pop culture is freeing and liberating and constantly changing, but fundamentally you're trapped in the same relationship to it. And I think that Khan, who's made music videos for Wu-Tang and Britney Spears, Beyonce and Taylor Swift, who has worked with these giant artists,

what's truly crazy is how he made the movie, which supposedly, when I talked to him, he said this. He put up $10 million of his own money to make a movie that no one was going to like. And that, to me, is baller. I think Detention is a wonderfully hard movie to like. It's really putting your money where your mouth is. And as a satirical vision, I think it deserves a lot of respect. Sean, do you know this movie? Do you like it? I've never seen it. And you know what I'll be doing tonight is watching it for the first time.

Yeah, you sold it. Very well. That is exciting. Bodied is... I think you and I differ on Bodied, though I love hearing you defend it. And it's not the first time you've defended it on this show. I thought you wrote beautifully about it. I think I had almost almost the opposite reaction but it is truly audacious in the way that i think a lot of the movies we're going to be talking about are and so i assume that this is the same thing yeah even more so actually okay joe what's your number five uh my number five i just i just put on as we started recording and actually bumped like my original number five so shout out to the fall by darsim singh which almost made its way on here but instead i put kung fu hustle steven chow's

uh film just because i felt like we should have a steven chow film in the discussion here the daniels of course have talked about how much hong kong cinema in general have has influenced this movie but what steven chow did with shaolin soccer with kung fu hustle with a mermaid uh which was a huge money maker for them uh for him i think it's been described as like looney tune cinema um however however you feel about it there's something just very unpredictable over the top audacious about the the way that he puts action and comedy together unlike anything

I've seen anyone else do and you know Kung Fu Hustle I just picked as my favorite I think it's the most confident

and sure and polished of his his whole filmography but yeah I don't know

are you are you a Stephen Chow fan in general? I think both of us are. I got enough thumbs up from Adam, which like, uh, you know, I'm going to take that to the bank.

So, um, that's a great recommendation. If people haven't seen Kung Fu Hustle, they should definitely check it out. Uh, my number five is the movie that unlocked this podcast. Uh, the first time I ever had a dissection conversation about a movie with Amanda Dobbins on a pod was about Mother, which is Darren Aronofsky's.

I don't know if reviled is the right word. somewhat confusingly celebrated what's it of a biblical allegory starring at the time probably the biggest movie star in the world Jennifer Lawrence who is also his then paramour this I'm not going to stand in front of you guys on zoom and say this is a good movie

because I don't think that this movie is worthy of that kind of metric I think it's boldness it's i'm doing everything i can to do exactly what i want and using the system to manipulating the system to make something as self-serious and also self-aggrandizing and also parodical really i mean it's like there's something ridiculous and knowingly ridiculous about mother and if you i interviewed darren aronofsky when the movie was released and you could tell it with this cheshire cat grin on his face the whole time he was like i am

fucking with everybody with this movie and i am enjoying it and i love when filmmakers do that now you can dislike the work of aronofsky or you can love it but he is doing the same thing in a way that daniels are doing which is like you know what this is everything i got i'm emptying my my my medicine bag you know what i mean this is all my tools i'm putting them all on the table this is why the earth is dying this is why man and woman will never get along this is why the earth is broken and i hope you i hope you like it sit in it and seeing this movie with a with a paying crowd is one of my favorite experiences ever because when it ended i walked out and i was like hell yeah brother that's great stuff and everybody around me was like i fucking

hated that and what a magical experience to have didn't get the worst cinema score in history i believe it is an f there have only been like 14 f's in the history of cinema score and it is one of them so you gotta shout out to Mother. You gotta give it to, I mean, he leaves nothing on the floor and he never has. Because you could have just as easily mentioned his Noah movie, which is crazy for a movie

that cost as much as it did. I think The Fountain too is another one of these movies that he was just like, I'm just throwing everything at this and if you like it, you like it and if you don't, so be it. I'm not always in love with his movies. He's not really one of my guys, so to speak. But I just thought that this was, I thought it was so fun that he did this. That he thought that he could do this.

I actively hated Mother until I loved it. And then I kind of loved it. And it has, you know, we're talking about the stickiness of something. It stuck with me. Like, it's saying something. And I'm not at all sure I know what it is. And I'm not even sure that Aronofsky knows what it is, but it is trying to say something.

So it makes it a lot easier to be interviewed when you don't know, and you've decided you don't want to tell people you don't know. Like it's, that's in play. Yeah. All right. Well, what's number four,

Adam? Number four is by my, my choices for the, you know, Paul Verhoeven has not vacated his championship belt. But, you know, if he ever feels like, you know, handing it over, sobbing to a new generation, that'd be Neville, Dean, and Taylor for me.

They have not kept it up, you know. Where are they? I know. A nation turns its lonely eyes to Neville, Dean, and Taylor. Where are you guys? Crank is a spectacularly incorrect film um it has a it has an edgelordish quality that i'm skeptical of because i don't always go in for this sort of thing you know like i've been hesitant to embrace a filmmaker like us craig zahler there's a lot of tarantino acolytes drive me nuts these guys much like the daniels

and i think of the Daniels because they're a filmmaking team, they are so formally gifted. There's one little joke in Crank where you're seeing a character speaking subtitle dialogue from his own point of view, and the subtitle is on the bottom of the screen flipped around. So from his point of view, he sees his own subtitle in his line of view. The subtitle is backwards, which was like a good enough visual joke that David Bordwell, who's the reigning professor of film studies, did a whole blog post about how brilliantly that scene is constructed. And it's also just a movie where Jason Statham keeps almost dying and sex in public places,

shooting people who are in giant transparent plastic bubbles. It's a very obnoxious movie. And I think it comes out the other end of its own obnoxiousness into being just like truly spectacular. You know, I remember I felt like I was levitating after I watched that movie because it's also cheap, right? It's cheap. It's inventive. It's a real B movie. It's unapologetic. I think Statham's the greatest pure action star of the last 20 or 25 years, kind of because he doesn't make great movies. He doesn't make inflated movies. Everything's kind of just cheap and B movie-ish and shaped to his dimensions.

And this is kind of just the apotheosis of Jason Statham, because it's like a blank check for carnage, right? It's a video game. There's no morality in a video game. You just kill shit. And I think that the way that it side scrolls through the premise you know it's like the same basic premise as the movie doa but it's made like gta and i just think it's uh i think i think it's amazing and the sequel is great too but the sequel is too much of a good thing the sequel is so obnoxious that i couldn't get with it crank's just the right level of

obnoxious for me here we need neville dean and taylor back i don't know we need them back now that this is there's been an absence of a certain kind all right joe what's number four for you uh so when you prompted me with zany sci-fi and i asked you to clarify. I said, like Buckaroo Bonsai? And you said yes. So number four, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonsai, cross the eighth dimension, 84 classic. It's funny. It's really bizarre that I am a genre fan because no one in my immediate family was.

And it was only this one aunt I had who showed me Tron and Buckaroo Bonsai and made me Talking Heads mixtapes and stuff like that that got me early into some of this stuff. And I think The Adventures and Buckaroo Bonsai and made me like talking heads, mixtapes and stuff like that, that they got me early into some of this stuff. And I think the adventures of Buckaroo Bonsai across the eighth dimension, which focuses on Peter Weller's titular Buckaroo Bonsai. And it's just a classic sort of sci-fi plot with some of our great assers like John Lithgow and Jeff Goldblum and Ellen Barkin and Clancy Brown along for the

ride. It's, it's bizarre. along for the ride. It's bizarre. Show it to anyone it's bizarre, but it is such a sci-fi bona fide and it is such an extremely fantastic vibe that I've never met anyone who, if they were willing to hang with it, didn't just enjoy the ride of it um delhi d richter is so interesting in that like this is the only thing he's directed of like note no shade to 1991's late for dinner but he also wrote my favorite holiday movie which is home for the holidays which like if you if you said if you told me the the guy who wrote the holly hunter thanksgiving film home for the holidays and directed uh buckaroo bonsai same person uh i want to sit down and have a conversation he wrote he wrote literally my favorite movie of all time which is the 78 invasion of the body snatchers and he was a big favorite of pauline kale who loved invasion of

body snatchers and who loved buckaroo bonsai and it was a great cause for kale because she was sticking up for a movie that at the time no one liked she was she used Buckaroo Bonsai to like beat up on Star Wars as as wild as that sounds right but she was like this is actually fun and subversive and kind of funky and bohemian and strange she wrote a rave of Buckaroo Bonsai and W and wd richter owns i mean home for the holidays is good and body snatchers is good he's great he also wrote stealth yeah no i mean it's funny that you say that because i was thinking about the way in which this movie um everything everywhere all at once wouldn't i don't think would exist were it not for marvel the same way that I don't think that the 80s, which is just full of these movies would exist were it not for Star Wars. Like Star Wars gives all these weird movies

this green light and they're doing something much weirder. But fearful studios are like, well, that weird Star Wars movie made us a ton of money. So let's try this. And I just think that that's always an interesting cycle. Sean, are you a Buckaroo Bonsai fan? Of course I am. I was born in 1982 and I was plopped down in front of the television at five years old and forced to watch HBO all day long. So yeah, I do.

I mean, he also wrote Big Trouble in Little China. Yeah. Speaking of James Hong, who is a critical figure in this film and in those great films from the 1980s. So that's a great pick. I think actually I used that movie as the example when I first explained this to adam too so i'm really glad you put it on your list johanna uh what did i pick as my number four oh annihilation i picked on annihilation for a

very simple reason one i love a filmmaker who has a boldness to take a much much liked if not beloved novel and just totally f with it and just totally change it and do with it what you want already weird novel yes truly strange film it's not like he took a straight novel then was like i'm gonna make a weird movie out of it which some people do he was like i'm gonna take a weird book and made it make it weirder amazing yes i'm on the record about alex garland on the show he's he he's possibly my favorite active maker of stuff. And I just saw his new movie last night. And I don't quite yet know how I feel about it, but I've never seen anything like it. And that's also true of Annihilation. I'd never really seen anything quite like that movie, which is, you know,

I think if we want to interpret it can be about some similar themes as Everything Everywhere All at Once, you know, the notions of self and how we operate and duality and the splitting of our identities and also there's a huge ecological allegory going on in this story and lots of ideas about family and the a ballet of death. It's just a really, really unusual film. And every time I see a movie like this, and I think it's true for all the movies on our lists, it takes a lot of guts to try to convince people to give you millions of dollars to do something like this. And especially the last 25 minutes of Annihilation is just one of those things where I was like, God damn, I can't believe they let him do this.

And I felt very similarly watching Men, his new movie. I was like, I can't believe that someone read this script and was like, sounds like a good idea. Here's money. May we all have such good fortune in our careers being able to be told, follow your dreams, even if they are completely disturbing. I mean, something I will say is is as I was putting these directors together, I could, the only like

women I could find who are doing this were the Wachowskis and that's its own conversation. And so it's like, yeah, it's really cool to get the green light to do that, but it's easier for some people than it is for others. That is undoubtedly hopefully changing in the world right now uh okay number three what's your number three adam uh my number three i mean i again the spirit of the prompt is quite uh you know the spirit of the prompt is quite all over the place and i was sort of trying to think of something that it could could could help anchor it so i thought about in a way a film that's very matter-of-fact surrealist, or a sort of surrealist matter-of-factness, which I think is the rabbit hole that Charlie Kaufman, you know, came out of and went down at the same time, which is being John Malkovich,

right? Which I think, in a way, of all the movies from 99 that are about identity and warped realities, it kind of was the most prescient where it sort of suggested that we're always interested in this intersection to other people's lives and seeing people through other people's eyes, but keeping our own prejudices and our own mindset in place.

Like we want to experience what other people experience. We don't want to let go of ourselves. And even better if we experience what celebrities experience. So that idea of a movie that's about inhabiting a celebrity consciousness and finding out that it's kind of boring is pretty funny. You know, he was ahead of certain curves, I think, Kaufman in writing that.

And I just think that when we're talking about these crazy, multifaceted, over-the-top movies, what I love about Spike Jonze, as opposed to a Michel Gondry, who takes Kaufman's material and amps it up even further, is Jonze just basically puts the camera in the middle distance and steps back and doesn't move it and just lets things be weird in a static frame, or lets things be weird with the kind of slacker detachment that he cultivates in his music videos as well. I like how weird Spike Jonze is as an observer, and I think that his observational style, the deadpan style,

the stillness in being John Malkovich, is still the best actual directing that he's ever done. I think Michel Gondry's a different kind of good director, and that a movie like Eternal Sunshine and Spotless Mind could belong on this list, too, because of how amped it is, and cramped it is, and frenetic it is, and it keeps

finding visual ideas to match the thematic ideas. I like that Spike Jonze makes Being John Malkovich where it's just like, we will take for granted this is a crazy idea and I will treat it as if it is the most reasonable thing possible. And he saves his surreal effects and his visual effects for where they're really, really going to register. So this is a movie that comes out the same year as two other movies we could have used. I'm just not going to use them

because I'm sick of these filmmakers having written books about them. But you could do Fight Club or Magnolia on a list like this too. Those movies have so much. I love how minimalist being John Malkovich is. And the idea that a movie can be minimalist and kind of crazy at the same time,

wonderful balancing act. I just recently rewatched it too because of the new Nicolas Cage movie that's trying to be its own post-millennial being John Malkovich. And man, does Malkovich hold up. It's really good. So funny that you should put this here because we did not plan this. But in fact, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is my number three, which is a counterpoint to this. And Joe, your number three is a more unlikely addition to this canon. I moved my number two to number three while you were talking because I noticed where your number three was.

And I was like, let's have this conversation all together. Because listener meeting was anyway. So like, why not put this as number three? So my number three is A Science of Sleep, Michelle Gondry. I do. And, you know, we're going to talk about Eternal Sunshine, which I think is a perfect movie. And this was Michelle Gondry's follow-up and it's written by Michelle Gondry. And so it's like, if you want to talk the spectrum,

it's like being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, and then Science of Sleep is sort of this process. And Science of Sleep, I think, is the most loose and out of control because of some of the things that Adam was saying about Michelle Gondry's tendencies. I saw this at Sundance. I was like an Eternal Sunshine-obsessed baby cinephile sort of person and a Gael Garcia Bernal-obsessed person. And I saw this at Sundance at like eight in the morning, and I just lost my mind for it. And I still love this movie, and I rewatched it yesterday. And I know every word. I've watched this movie so many times. This is an extremely problematic protagonist. It's basically about a young man whose father dies.

He moves from Mexico to France. It's in French, but mostly in English. And he has this neighbor played by the great Charlotte Gainsbourg. And he sort of falls in love with her, kind of. But he has trouble differentiating his dreams from his reality. The character that Gael is playing, Stefan, is a really problematic, lonely boy kind of protagonist. But this is something that Sean and I were talking about when we discussed Station Eleven. When you cast Gael in a role, you have so much money in the bank

already. He's so appealing and so charming that you're willing to forgive this rather irritating protagonist because of the performances given here. And so I do think there's like a love story anchor, or at least like a young man trying to find his way in the world anchor to this story that keeps it from flying away. I love Michel Gondry. I think he loses the plot often, but I always like his ambition. I think both this movie and Be Kind, Rewind, which he did after, which has all the fun, like, sweeted films in that, I think that Daniels' own owe a lot to, you know, both this movie and that. So signs of sleep, if you haven't seen it and you can forgive a frustrated protagonist is a

beautiful movie. He has not made a feature film in seven years, which I find fascinating. I talked to him on the show when he was promoting kidding, the Jim Carrey Showtime series that i thought was interesting if not successful um i you know i chose eternal sunshine of the spotless mind because i've just felt like our lists would be incomplete without it i think it's kind of perfect honestly that adam chose being john malkovich joe chose the science of sleep and i chose eternal sunshine

i feel like one is head one is head and heart kind of trying to coexist and one is heart and so this is really the union of this podcast eternal sunshine everybody's everybody's seen it who's listening to this it's a you know it's a beloved movie yeah can we give an honorable mention to the onion headline that was like michelle gondry delighted by new cardboard box all the ways he's gonna play with it that was a really really sweet a really sweet little tribute to him. It's quality stuff. I hope he makes another movie soon. Okay, Adam, what's your number two?

My number two is one of the emblematic American movies of the 80s, a bit like Buckaroo Bonsai, although I think its cult is a little broader. It's one of those movies that if you get someone to watch it and they stick with it, it's very unlikely that they're going to dislike it, which is Alex Cox's Repo Man, which has two of the best lines of any movie ever. The one Harry Dean Stanton, ordinary fucking people, I hate them.

And even better, the Let's Get Sushi and Not Pay, which I think is like the greatest line of dialogue in an 80s movie. But it's a movie that's, again, mashing up all these different genres. Like it's an LA movie and it's an LA subcultural movie with, you know, rock club performances and whatever else. But it's also kind of post Roswell alien invasion movie. And it's about a kind of scavenger culture, right? It's about a culture of repossession and kind of low rent, petty criminality,

which makes it a wonderful trickle down metaphor in the eighties. Like I love these kind of scummy garbage strewn eighties sci-fi movies like brother from another planet, like repo man, like John Carpenter's, they live, which I, you know, could have just as easily put on this list. I think belongs to other cannons, you know, Carpenter's one of the great, you know you know, trashy filmmakers, the eighties, but repo man has such a kind of like, and Carpenter is one of the great trashy filmmakers of the 80s. But Repo Man has such a kind of like,

it has such a weary, beaten, funny sense of humor. And again, a very deadpan reaction to all the crazy things that are happening. You know, like if Spielberg's signature in the 80s is everyone is kind of looking up at the sky and seeing aliens and lights, especially like, oh my God, that Repo Man is sort of people just being very nonplussed by everything when kind of accepting the craziness and the surreality of their situation. So like a bit like being John Malkovich, it's a very deadpan movie. It's very scruffy. It's very unruly.

It's a movie that has really gained and deepened in stature over time. And I literally never get sick of watching it. I mean, I've probably seen that movie in parts 40 times. You know, I, I just think it's really, really fun.

A special Chris Ryan shout out for this episode to one of his, probably one of his five favorite movies. I think. Yeah. Yeah. He lives and dies for that movie. Great pick. If you haven't seen repo man,

fix that immediately. Joe, what's your number two? 2018. Sorry to bother you. Boots Riley's film. Um, I like all of these films are either just the right side of messy or just the wrong side of messy.

Like that's sort of the risk you take. And I think sorry to bother you might even be just the wrong side of messy. But again, I would say like science of sleep, there's a performance at the center of it in Lakeith Stanfield that, that anchors it for me. I love the feeling of these movies where you get nervous. Cause anything could happen. And especially one that starts quasi normal. And then all of a sudden anything could happen.

I actually thought about, I was reminded of this movie cause I was, quasi-normal and then all of a sudden anything could happen. I actually thought about, I was reminded of this movie because I watched Time Bandits for the first time yesterday, sort of prepping for this because I had somehow never seen it and didn't make my list, but there's like a fake game show hosted by Jim Broadbent in that movie that reminded me of the fake game show and Sorry to Bother You. And I was like like which is your first indication that something's very wrong here in this universe and um you know it was a year that this blind spotting and a third movie that i can't remember were all filmed in oakland where i live and like so i feel like an oakland connection uh to this movie i just i i really like it i wonder how that movie is going to be remembered i don't think it is I

think people have already forgotten it you know what I mean I kind of forgot it until I was reminded of it and I don't I'm not sure it belongs this high on my list but here we are uh but I like it as a shout out thanks Adam did you have any thoughts or feelings about this movie I mean I'm trying to remember it not that it's forgettable but it was a movie that I mean, I'm trying to remember it, not that it's forgettable, but it was a movie that I think it's, I think sometimes the more a movie tries to be topical and of its moment, the more it kind of dates. There are certain things about that movie where I think the politics are really important and up top in that movie. They are always important and up top to Boots Riley in some ways. I really like what you said about movies are either, you know, one side of messy or the other.

I think there's something about Sorry to Bother You where it is quite coherent and also maybe a bit narrow and maybe something with a bit more space to project into or really wrestle with might make it seem more like an actually crazy movie as opposed to a pretty lucid ideologically rigorous movie but when you know boots riley's background and his political background and whatever else i mean of course he's going to make a movie that that has a thesis that has a political thesis that has a uh a socialist sort of you know based thesis to it so it's very much the movie he wanted to make and it has great stuff in it i mean parts of parts of it are very funny. It's funny. I feel like the things that it was compared to most often when it was released were movies like bamboozled. Yeah.

What, what Jordan Peele was up to at that time and then Atlanta. And it's interesting because I feel like the current season of Atlanta may be experiencing what you were just describing Adam, which is it's sort of, it's a product of its time. And so it may be dating badly in real time where it's like, you can almost feel the 2020 in the writing of a show that is airing in 2022. And that's a fascinating thing when you're trying to capture conversation creatively, it's a little bit more

difficult. And a movie like Bamboozled, which i think had lots of foresight it was very predictive of where a lot of culture was going and it's hard to make art like that and that's kind of the risk that you take with a lot of these kinds of films is they they are meant to be either reflections of the past that are predict our future or warnings really about what's to come um my number two is, it's kind of a warning. You know, it's certainly in league with the anti-capitalist screeds of Repo Man and Sorry to Bother You. So there's some union there.

It's Jacques Tati's Playtime, which also has something in common with Detention, the movie, Adam, that you talked about, which is that Jacques Tati basically spent three and a half million dollars of his own money to build this extraordinary world.

Tateville, I think that's what he called it. It was a series of offices and cubicles and little dioramas that the M. Hulot character kind of operates in and walks through. And it's a pretty intense capitalist critique, but it's also a beautiful vision of the way that the world traps you. And it's amazing that he was able to get out of his head and onto the screen what he was seeing. That's something that Tati does over and over again throughout his career. It's just, it's incredible to me when someone just lays it all out on the line to make the thing that they want to see and can do so by also riffing on what had come before you know like the hulo character is obviously like a play on chaplin

and keaton and these silent film figures of the past but using those figures to kind of update the social critique while also just making beautiful movies to look at his movies are so aesthetically pleasing and intoxicating that um if have not seen Playtime, I would recommend you check it out. I hope that the crazed Sean Fennessey hordes who come to the big picture to hear about the movie that we talked about off the top all go look at Playtime on the Criterion channel because it's one of the greatest movies ever made. I didn't know we were allowed to pick movies that good for this list. This is your number one. I was like, what? We're picking actually canonical movies?

Because there are times when I think playtime is one of the greatest movies ever made and i think that the the wonderful michelle simon line where he says life is full of homages to jacques tetsy can you say something nicer about a filmmaker than that well i was life seems made in this filmmaker's image sometimes this slapstick view of reality that that he has. I mean, playtime's perfect. I knew I could depend on both of you, though,

to bring your idiosyncrasy to this list. So I actually think it's incumbent upon me to be as normie as possible, to be as canonical as possible, but then also to do the thing that you were describing

about Back to the Future, which is remind people that when Back to the Future was made, it was deeply weird. And the fact that it was a success doesn't make it any less weird. And the same that it was a success doesn't make it any less weird. And the same is true for the films that we'll talk about at number one. Nevertheless.

Because my number one, are we on my number one now? Yes, we are. My number one is the perverse version of your number one. They're the same movie. And my number one wouldn't have been made without your movie. And your movie is better than mine. But my number one is still, I mean, it's not even close how much better your movie is than mine. But I mine but my number one is still i mean it's not even close

how much better your movie is than mine but i still picked mine which is john gorman sorry my movie may be better but my movie does not have sean connery in in red briefs can i just can i just say that watching time bandits yesterday which also features so much of sean connery's size i was like his size but sean connery's size better make it on someone's list. If not, it's an honorable mention. So where do we see them, Adam? In a film called Zardoz by the genuinely visionary director John Borman, whose filmography is interesting as too weak a word.

Because there are some canonical classics here like deliverance and point blank that are just straight up cruel great movies and not innocuous ones right like deliverance is a hard movie to deal with even now i don't know if you've any you guys watched deliverance recently i watched it last year i'm like oh my god imagine if twitter had existed when deliverance came out right and then he's also made these incredible follies and he made two of them back to back and they're the greatest which are zardoz and exorcist 2 which look are budgeted and feel like big expensive hollywood fantasy genre stuff and they're both insane they're insane and they're insane in ways

that i love because they're about myth and archetype. Like the title of Zardoz is a big spoiler, but I mean the title of Zardoz is the idea that like, there's this entire culture that's founded on a misunderstanding of the text of the wizard of Oz, right? Zardoz.

And it's like, it goes right back to that idea of everything everywhere all the time. Like, you know, what happens when our pop culture myths become our actual myths? A filmmaker who i really like i could have put one of his movies on this list is ben wheatley ben wheatley has gone and said that zardoz movie that made him want to make movies it's like his favorite movie of all time you can see trace elements of zardoz in his adaptation of high rise and zardoz just fits the mandate sean gave us vague as that mandate was, which is just like, what is a movie that goes for it?

Yeah. So when you open with a flying head that has guns falling out of its mouth and you have a like bizarre patriarchal culture, that's all about, you know, conflating guns and penises. And you have Sean Connery trying to reproduce with every woman left. And you basically have this movie about time and destiny and human

frailty. I'm like, this wins. It is truly ridiculous. And it will never be remade. It could never be redone. There will never be anything like it. It will not be canonized the way Sean's number one is going to be. It kind of is closer, I think, to Joanna's number one, except even Joanna's number one has critical respect. You know, Zardoz has very little respect, but good luck trying to scrub it out of your mind's eye once you've seen it. There is nothing like it. And if we can leave aside the fact

that it's kind of incoherent, it's so beautifully made. You know, the craft of this movie is just off the charts i think i don't i don't think i've seen it in 30 years so it sounds like maybe i need to read this the first time i saw zardoz i was in a bar it was like one of those bars where they play like good or cult movies uh on a tv but with no sound so i've definitely just zoned out of whatever conversation was happening around me with my friends and just watch Zardoz with the sound off, no captions, trying to understand what the movie was. Truly a fantastic time.

And then I eventually watched it with the sound as well, but what a treat. I don't know how you can follow that up, Joanna, but what's your number one? Well, I mean, so you say like we put our idiosyncrasies on this list and I wanted to be as, you know, you always want to be as interesting as possible when you put together a list like this of wild and crazy movies. But as I said before, there were like certain filmmakers I felt like should be on the list. And Terry Gilliam is one of them.

And I was considering all of Terry Gilliam's movies. And I thought about putting a more out of the box one on the list, but I rewatched Brazil and it's just as good as it deserves. You know, it deserves the place that it has in the culture and it's just as good as it deserves. You know, it deserves the place that it has in the culture. It is just that good. I think, sorry to bother you.

And in several other movies, I think on these lists, like, Oh, a lot to, to Brazil, 1985, Terry,

Terry Gilliam's attempt to sort of do 1984, but Terry Gilliam eyes it. I think, I think he originally wanted to call it 1984 and a half as like a nod to Fellini and 1984. With like, you know, Tom Stoppard working on the script, a great Jonathan Pryce performance at the center of it. Fantastic work from everyone. The most stylistically cool movie you've ever seen with a fantastic bop that's like runs through the score and is diegetically used over and over again. I just Brazil. What a what a treat. What a joy.

One of us had to do it. Amazing movie. I'm glad you've got it. I'll be I'll be basic. The top of my list. Sure. Gilliam is one of the only filmmakers we've talked about who every time he makes a movie, he does this where he's like,

I will challenge the conventions of movie audiences and movie makers to push the limits. I'm not always successful. Well, I mean, that's why I like lost in La Mancha exists. It exists to talk about a film that falls into the wrong side of messy and,

you know, can't really come back from it so did you guys ever watch his Quixote the one he made with Adam Driver I did yeah not great he's kind of the last analog man right Brazil is all analog clutter like you can

touch everything in it it's all tactile and textual and I know there is some CG in some of Gilliam's movies but he's not a CG guy you know yeah that's what i love about him like i was thinking about tim burton and where he belongs and all this and i'm like early burton is so fun and then late burton is so disappointing to me and i mean that is something that i like about every everything all at once is that uh there is a lot of practical in it there's of course plenty of cg but there is a lot of practical in it. There's, of course, plenty of CG, but there's a lot of practical. Those dildos are real, Joanna.

Well, like, even Jamie Lee Curtis was describing a stunt fight where, like, some, you know, she's fighting Michelle Yeoh's, like, tactile feet. And she talked about how Michelle Yeoh was straddling the stunt performer who was just kicking up between Michelle Yeoh's legs and they did it all in camera and i'm just like that's that's so fun that's pretty much more fun uh my number one is a very boring pick but it really

has to be here um i'm embarking on a journey re-watching every single stanley kubrick movie movie in order right now. And so 2001, A Space Odyssey is top of mind. And to call... Is this... Is this the most audacious movie ever made? I think it's in the conversation. Given

where the industry was at this time, given where the culture was at this time, and its readiness for a mind- proposition given the um even the the liberties that he takes with arthur arthur c clark's ideas and the way that he visually expanded basically movie the movie going palette and how we see movies and you know you just were talking about cgi adam this movie does not have a ton of computer generated effects but it basically foretells the entire industry of computer generated effects in movies i generally work beneath a drawing of uh how that my little girl made because even at four when she accidentally saw some of

2001 she became obsessed with how so she drew a little picture of how in a field of daisies and i do all my writing underneath it you know i mean the the the visual language of the movie is the visual language of a future that it couldn't have possibly really seen coming but it saw it you know and my kid I like I get to talk about her on this podcast she watches something like WALL-E and she sees the bad guy in WALL-E the AI in WALL-E she goes oh that's how and i go well it is you're not only are you a film critic at five but you sort of see there's a graphic clarity to the visuals in 2001 that every movie took something from and it's it's undeniable i mean you can't deny the visual and the the thematic signature that that movie's had over the last 45 years. But at the time, yeah, it was not,

it was not liked and it was seen as incoherent and a mess. And a lot of really high end film critics kind of trashed it, you know, like it's one of those movies that's retrospectively inevitable, but at the time people asked what on earth he was doing. And I should also say that it's a movie that we conflate with absolute precision and mastery like you know kubrick's this perfect genius who made it so much of it is good accidentally you know this right like there was a score that was commissioned for it by alex north it would just be normal music

and it was like actually let's use the temp track let's trash that score there's really a voiceover narration which would have explained all the ambiguities in the movies it's like oh let's get rid of that there's you know it's good choices there's a really good book that was published a few years ago called space odyssey stanley kubrick arthur c clark and the making of a masterpiece uh i think michael benson wrote that describes a lot of the lucky breaks of the production of this movie and also you know it just to put a cap on it, it is overtly referenced in everything, everywhere, all at once.

One thing we have not talked about is the hot dog fingers alternate universe in this story. Surprisingly touching. And there was a sweetness to that story and it uses

the Hallmark, the primates, the evolutionary aspect of 2001 to tell its story. I mean, the way of the stickiness of this oddball film and the culture, I mean, you talk

about Back to the Future, but like, Hal, the primates, the score, you know, people maybe don't reference, like, the space baby or whatever sequence, but, you know, there are, like, sequences of this movie that are just embedded. Yeah, the monolith.

Yeah, everything. Embedded in the culture. Yeah. I'm really proud of us. I feel like we were truly ourselves on this episode of the show. Any last lingering thoughts? Adam, you play in the Chuckle Club in Toronto anytime soon. What are you promoting? What am I promoting?

I'm promoting the six-seated Toronto Raptors. Six-seated Toronto Raptors, who I hope are going to win their series and, uh, you know, it's an interesting, it's a, I guess in terms of the ringer, uh, I'll promote the piece I wrote on, uh, on today's film because it was fun and I'm grateful to have the kind of space to not get, you know, write 200 words on a movie, but 2000 words on a movie and the movie we talked about by the Daniels is

worth, uh, worth writing about outline. movie but 2000 words on a movie and the movie we talked about by the daniels is worth uh worth writing about outline i hope people will read that piece and other pieces about it because it's a fun movie to read and write about joe you're you're on the ringer verse trial by content the prestige tv podcast what other how many other you have seven or eight other pods what other promods should we promote here i'll be talking about better call us sol on the watch next week what's in the watch too oh my goodness extraordinary it's really fun to be here because the ringerverse listeners bless them uh think that i am way too harsh and mean about the stuff that we talk about on that show so i'd love to come play good cop on your show um it's fun for me i i was pleased just to play traffic cop today on today's episode so thanks

to you both. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner for hacking together. This episode really appreciate his hard work. Stay tuned to the big picture next week. Joe will be back. So will a few other of our friends for a very special mega movie draft. We will see you then. Thank you.