The Big Picture - ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’ and the Top Five Puzzle Movies

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Sean and Amanda dive deep into Rian Johnson’s ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,’ the delightful sequel to his smash murder mystery (1:00). Then, they share their five favorite puzzle movies (50:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about the albums you love with Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushner, a lifelong musician and composer. Each season of Dissect dives deep into a single album, forensically dissecting the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. Our newest season is covering Tyler the Creator's Igor, a beautifully honest album in which Tyler explores love, communication, masculinity, and truth. Listen to Dissect today only on Spotify, because great art deserves more than a swipe. Get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Davins.

And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about seeing how the other half lives, looking through a glass onion. We are talking today in full spoiler detail about Glass Onion, a Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson's eagerly anticipated sequel to 2019's Smash Murder Mystery original. Can you say it again? Full spoiler. Full spoiler.

Yes, we are spoiling this film. Don't at us. But this film is also on Netflix right now. It's been a holiday weekend. How was your holiday, Amanda? You can't tell me because we're recording this ahead of time. Thank you for playing. I hope if you are listening to this, you've seen the film. Although we know that there are some people who love to listen to episodes of this podcast,

despite never seeing the films. We appreciate you, even though we consider that psychotic behavior. I don't. I do that all the time on television shows. And do you feel that you get an enriching experience by doing that? Yeah, I love it. I'm just hanging out with my friends. I really get it. Here's what I don't get. If you don't want spoilers and you listen to the episode anyway. This one especially. So just don't.

We're talking about the movie. We're talking about it. We're going to give away the revelations in the film. Not because we think it's good to spoil movies for you, but because it's inherently necessary when talking about a murder mystery. You, of course, a huge fan of this genre in both fiction written form and in movie form. This movie, in addition to being a murder mystery, is a bit of a puzzle movie. There are a lot of objects that explain what's going on in the characters' heads, what their motivations are, what drives them,

and then ultimately what leads to some explosive consequences. So we're going to talk about our favorite puzzle movies. You have four. I have five. Correct. We're going to work together to get you a fifth. It's beautiful. It is beautiful.

Here we are at the end of the year, just podcasting together. One other thing about Glass Onion, named after a Beatles song. Yeah. Another uniting force between the two of us. I admired your restraint in not saying the lyrics in the song cadence in the intro, you know? We're already off on a crazy tangent, but here's something I spent some time over my weekend doing. I started researching the song Fourth Time Around, which is a Bob Dylan song on Blonde on Blonde. And I got really interested in this song because

it's meant to be either a tribute to or a parody of Norwegian Wood. And Norwegian Wood was written in the aftermath of John Lennon acknowledging what a huge influence Bob Dylan was on him. Okay. And then Bob Dylan, before the song was released, played the song for John Lennon four times around and said, what do you think? And John Lennon, being the intelligent man that he is, knew right away that he was basically being punked by Bob Dylan. Right. And I was like, that's what I want in my art is that level of deep self-awareness.

And like, I don't even care about the audience. I'm just, I'm doing loop-de-loops around other artists. I wouldn't say The Glass Onion is quite that necessarily, but The Beatles have been on my mind

over the weekend. Sure. And I don't know if this is a Beatles movie per se, but I like that Johnson has now started using song titles as entry points your knives out of course was a Radiohead song last onion is

a Beatles song what do you think is coming next ABBA know that there's already a franchise oh that's right that I enjoy mama me there's a third yeah also filmed in Greece as was glass onion and I've got mystery so I think

he's probably let's's see. The Stones? No, that's too obvious. Okay. What's the, I guess Radiohead's 90s. Okay, so we need like an 80s. I think so. Yeah, maybe like Wham or something. Oh, Wham.

Sure, Wham. I don't know. Last Christmas has been on my mind. I was thinking more like REM, but okay. Oh, well, yeah, but I think of REM as early 90s, even though you're right. They started in the 80s. I love REM. So in Glass Onion, Daniel Craig is back as Benoit Blanc.

He is the lead figure in these Knives Out films. And he's just having the time of his life. Delightful. He is, I think, the best part of this movie. 100%. He was really fun and good in the first film as we were kind of figuring him out, this kind of post-Hercule Poirot detective figure, a Southern fried gentleman who is smarter than everybody else in the first film as we were kind of figuring him out this kind of post Hercule Poirot detective figure a southern fried gentleman who is smarter than everybody else in the room in this movie uh

he gets like almost every good line and they're all really really funny I really enjoyed him in this um this is an action-packed star-studded cast of actors though uh it feels very directly inspired by The Last of Sheila which is a movie movie that Ryan mentioned on his press tour for the first film, was a huge inspiration for him, written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, that takes place on a boat and features several friends who are kind of involved in a murder mystery plot. That had a star-studded cast for that period. This one similarly.

Now, Edward Norton, Janelle Monae, Catherine Han, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Jessica Hen Monae, Catherine Han, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Jessica Henwick, and Madeline Klein in this movie. What do you think about the all-star assemblage? Do you think that that's a good way to build these movies out? Yes, it's very true to The Last of Sheila, which you mentioned is an obvious reference, and also every Agatha Christie movie ever, and book ever, which Brian Johnson has also talked a lot about. His love for Agatha Christie, I share that enthusiasm and that's kind of the value proposition or one of

the main value propositions of these types of movies. And this movie in particular is like a bunch of fun people together. And then they, they kind of invite the other value proposition is this is a movie filmed in Greece with a bunch of fun people. And Daniel Craig understands that more than anyone. So and has really embodied the well, this is hilarious that we're all here and shouldn't we have fun with it and and and have fun with all of these other people. So it's good that there aren't that many movies made anymore that are just like, wouldn't you like to be with a bunch of fun people in a cool location? It's a romp.

Yeah. And I think that was part of the success of the first one. And it certainly works here. So here's the outline of the story. Tech billionaire Miles Braun, that's Norton's character, invites his friends for a getaway on his private Greek island. When someone turns up dead, Detective Benoit Blanc is put on the case. Let's talk about it in detail. Basically, the movie opens with these close friends of Braun, the alpha head scientist Lionel Toussaint, that's Leslie Odom Jr.'s character,

the governor of Connecticut, Claire DiBella, that's Catherine Hahn's character. She was the governor of Connecticut? She is, yeah. She's also running for a larger office. Yeah, so, okay. A fashion designer named Birdie J, who has had some trials and travails on the internet,

played by Kate Hudson. A men's rights streamer, Duke Cody, feels pretty loosely based on Joe Rogan. And Miles' mysterious former business partner, Andy Brand, that's Janelle Monáe's character are sent a stereogram box filled with puzzles that ultimately reveal an invite to a secret murder mystery party on that island Blanc is also invited maybe by accident or maybe not and so he sets off to go to this Greek island along with this crew. Great setup.

This is really where the puzzles begin. Yeah. We watch the characters in a pretty nifty split screen sequence in which they are all talking on the phone to each other and trying to solve the stereogram puzzle, which I really enjoy. And this was filmed during COVID, but that part of the film is set during COVID and they're like using the zoom and to, to benefit to benefit and solving the puzzle together. And there are like mask references and COVID references that aren't annoying somehow. I thought so too.

I'm glad you said that. This is a COVID movie, but it's not really a COVID movie. It's more just a reflection of the time that we were in. Right. And so I think it will age certainly, but it didn't feel groan worthy. There actually are a couple of mask gags that I thought were genuinely clever, including Kate Hudson's character's mask, which was netted. Right. Oh, good. That was really funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And not serving any meaningful purpose. Yeah. It's like an incredibly recent period piece almost. Yeah, yeah. That's well put. And of course, it was made in that time. Right. I guess it's a little bit of background that this film was originally a theatrical film. And then there was this extraordinary bidding war for the future of the Knives Out franchise. Lionsgate released the last film. Netflix acquired the future films.

I think they have a guarantee of two and three. So the film did open in theaters for a week, a month ago. But now it's available widely. This part in particular, I could feel a new energy into the series. It was slightly different from the first film, a little bit zanier. Actually, I thought a little bit more broad.

I felt like there were a couple of characters who played the first film very broad. I thought that this film in particular was really broad because a lot of the characters are all outsized. The first film is largely about a single family, like an eccentric kind of old money family, but not as eccentric as six famous people effectively you know a governor and a an influencer and a twitch streamer and you know people who like by their natures are performers are performative um that played really well with a big audience and when i watched it at home it didn't work as

well and it was sort of like a it was a perfect evocation of the thing that we grouse about all That played really well with a big audience. And when I watched it at home, it didn't work as well. And it was sort of like a, it was a perfect evocation of the thing that we grouse about all the time where I was like, man, this was like people laughing. The laugh lines work better. Um, I don't, you haven't had a chance to see it at home yet, right? No. Yeah. So I'll be curious to know your opinion about that.

If you feel like it's missing a little bit something, cause there is a, there's a, a spirit to a comedy that you, you want to be sitting beside somebody. that if you feel like it's missing a little bit something because there is a there's a a spirit to a comedy that you you want to be sitting beside somebody and as much as this is a murder mystery and a puzzle movie and all these things it's pretty much just a pure comedy right i will say the first one even though it had a huge theatrical run was also like really successful at home it was pretty much immediately and i think some of that was timing, right? Because it came out in late 2019 and then kind of hit home VOD and streaming as the pandemic started. And so a lot of people were like, you know what I would like right now in this very fraught time is to watch like a funny movie with a bunch of people that I like and feel that vibe. But

it could play at home. I don't know. I guess I haven't seen it. One thing that becomes clear as the film is taking place, and the film is kind of split into two distinct halves, seen from two slightly different perspectives. The first perspective is more or less through the eyes of Blanc. And it becomes pretty clear that everyone here at this gathering

kind of sort of hates Miles or has reason to resent or fear Miles, and there is this anxiety around him because he is so powerful. Miles is an important character. This movie is unbelievably timed because Elon Musk is clearly an inspiration for this character,

a kind of extremely smart, dumb person who makes loud proclamations is incredibly successful has a sort of sycophantic behavior with his friends and fans and could potentially do something really damaging but also is kind of just a dumbass yeah and the movie is really funny about how dumb he is and especially into the second half when there's a lot of revelation about all the decisions he's made um edward Norton gave some interviews a couple of years ago about how he had really gotten into day trading and looking at the technology markets. And I don't know.

I think he spoke with David Marchese, our friend. And he made some very weird comments where I was like, I couldn't really wrap my head around what he was talking about. He was kind of saying how easy it was to dominate those spaces. Right. wrap my head around what he was talking about he was kind of saying how easy it was to dominate those spaces right and as i look back i was like was that a bit because he was preparing to play miles in this movie or did ryan johnson read those interviews and see some i thought that's what you were setting up well that's certainly possible there is a self-awareness to every aspect of this movie and kind of a winking, impish nature to almost every decision

that makes me wonder whether, you know, Rian Johnson was at least aware that there was a quality there that someone could channel. I heard him give an interview to Fresh Air and he said that he likes these stories in these Christie books in part because you get to have

all of these various characters in a room together and then you get to let those characters represent something. Usually in Christie books are very archetypal. You know, it's like, it's the grand dame or it's the wealthy heiress or it's like the hubristic bachelor. You know, there's a lot of familiar tropes that she leans on. The doctor, the, you know, the maid, there is like an upstairs-downstairs element to all of it. Yes. Yes, and this movie, while it's not necessarily aping those things, it's using them more as kind of a societal snapshot.

It's like these various modes of power, and here's how they operate, and here's what they have power over versus here's what they have like a kind of fealty to, what they have to serve, which I think is really smart. And maybe even a little smarter than I'd realized. Watching it a second time, I was like, oh, the jokes are broad, but the structure is not broad. It's a little bit more complicated, a little bit cleverer than I had initially realized

when I was watching it the first time. But anyway, you know, Miles sets up this murder mystery plot in which he is going to be murdered, quote unquote, murdered at the party. And then his guests will have to solve the murder after this lavish dinner that they are having together in what is the Glass Onion, which is his sort of like his palace on this greek island so it's like a really really mega rich person version of playing mafia during the pandemic very much yeah which like people did or mafia or trivia or you know whatever um but yeah a murder mystery did you ever have one of those like murder mystery in a box parties? Have you ever done those?

No, which is weird because that would probably be my wife's favorite thing of all time. Oh, yeah. And we've never done that. We did it once like for my fifth grade birthday party. Okay. That was sick. And then Katie. Fifth grade?

Yeah. Is that a little young to be introducing the concept of murder? Well, I had read a lot of Christy movies. Maybe it wasn't a murder. Maybe it was a crime. Also, it was the 90s. So like maybe we didn't care as much, you know? And then my friend Katie did one for, like, a birthday party in our 20s.

How was that? It was really fun. But, like, we all imbibed so much that I don't know if we solved the mystery. That's usually an issue. And, in fact, that's an issue here, too. There's a lot of drinking. And drinking goes into the execution of this plot that's really funny um unfortunately for miles's character benoit blanc is at this party and solves his planned murder mystery in a in a matter of not

even minutes like seconds it's really funny in 30 seconds he explains the entire plot which is really really fun uh so you know that's roughly the first hour of the film what i've just described to you there's obviously a lot of detail that goes into this and a lot of the characterization and kind of like trying to figure out what's not quite right here um one thing that we know is that andy janelle monae's character has somehow been wronged she confronts various you know folks at this party about the way that they have you know pledged their allegiance to miles and betrayed her in some way we feel like she's been cut out of something it's a little unclear why she's even at this party likewise blanc we don't even really know why he's there at a certain point edward norton's character brings him upstairs and is like i didn't invite

you man what are you doing here and blanc plays dumb and it's like i got an invitation how strange how could this have possibly happened and then the movie takes a strong shift. Right. And it shifts the perspective and it shows us why Andy is at the party because in fact, it's not Andy. It's Helen, Andy's twin sister. Correct. Who is a very different person, has a different haircut, has a different voice and a different accent, has a different manner. And we learn that andy has reportedly committed suicide right though that's not yet public and when helen discovers this

she also sees this stereogram puzzle box invite thing and she suspects that miles is somehow involved in the death of her sister and the only person she can think of to help her figure out what the hell happened to her sister is Benoit Blanc. When it was first revealed that she was a twin sister, I was like, this is so stupid. But then I started to think, if you know anything about Agatha Christie novels or this kind of storytelling,

again, it is kind of like the reliance on a trope that is necessary to move story forward to make it more fun right and the other thing it does is that it actually moves the murder mystery it it opens the world um because for me the first hour i enjoyed the setup i enjoyed the puzzles but i was like okay so like all these people have a grudge against this rich guy and they need money and then they're gonna kill him and then the it's the plot's just gonna be who on the island and it's good it's very and then they were none which is a very famous agatha christie movie but i'm like this is like very obvious yes and i don't mind that um but i was kind of like okay so what are

you gonna do here to spice this up because i know it it's Ryan Johnson and I know you're not going to do a straight down the middle Agatha Christie mystery. So when it turns out that there's an entirely different murder that wasn't even on the island and it puzzles it up, if you will. And to your point, you said this is a bit a murder mystery and a bit a puzzle movie. I think this is like 65% puzzle movie. Agree. And 35% murder mystery. And that is the twist. That's how he kind of, he opens it up. Yeah. I don't, I get the impression that Johnson is not as interested in that, those traditional aspects of these movies, you know, where it's not, we just saw Death on the Nile earlier this year, the new adaptation of the Christie novel from Kenneth Branagh. And you know, that's a movie that for the final hour, the whole point of the movie is

just like, who killed this person? And this movie has more in its mind. It has a lot more kind of spokes and wheels and gears and cogs in its storytelling, some of which is very effective, some of which is a little bit of a purposeful distraction. In any event, the film completely shifts gears apologize for that bad one um and starts going through the lens of helen as andy and helen gets her haircut she travels with blanc to greece they get on the boat they go to the island and then all of a sudden we start all of the things that we saw in the first hour of the film somewhat through

some through blanc's eyes some through the sort of like omniscient camera's lens, is almost largely told through the eyes of Helen as Andy. And we see that she's like, she's both detective and journalist at the same time, kind of piecing the story together. And she's having to navigate her own performance of her sister, who has, you know, her sister is sort of like very corporate and very sharp and very clean. And she has, you know, abandoned,

I believe it's her Alabama accent. And whereas Helen is, you know, more of like a teacher, is like a little more down home as a person. And so we're constantly seeing her kind of like fidgeting and trying to get comfortable in her new performer's skin. And the first half of the movie, I was like, oh, this is an odd, icy Janelle Monae performance. It's like not even really a well-written character. We don't understand this person.

And then in the second half, we're like, oh, wow, this is an amazing doubling. Very fun. Very smart. Her performance is really good. I've never been totally sure how to feel about Janelle Monae as an actor. I thought she was really great in Moonlight, but she's had an odd series of choices as an actor. This is a really, really good use of her. She's really funny.

Yeah. Because the other thing that happens in the second half is you kind of re-watch many of the scenes from the first hour. And the first hour does a very funny, I mean, Daniel Craig is just like eating the scenery. And so every, you know, suspicious thing that happens, there's then sort of like a very funny, I mean, Daniel Craig has just eaten the scenery. And so every suspicious thing that happens, there's then

sort of like a very conscious zoom on Daniel Craig in the background being like, I noticed these people fighting. And then, when you watch it in the second hour, you see the shot of Daniel Craig noticing people. And then like Janelle Monet pops up out of a hedge. Like, really funny. It's

really funny. And she has great comic timing and she and Daniel Craig have great like they're great together comedic chemistry and so it's like I had never I mean I guess most actors don't like get the chance to be funny in this way anymore because they just don't make comedies but she's very good at it she is very good um so together they they concoct this scheme and together they start essentially researching in real time what's actually happened to her sister they're trying to determine whether or not miles was responsible for andy's death and um they're kind of you know she's trying to get a kind of justice for the fact that andy was cut out of miles's success at his big company alpha which

you could say is like google or is like tes or is about any number of tech companies. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg also, I'm sure, quite an influence on this. Miles is a step even beyond those inspirational figures because he is attempting to create now a like hydrogen-based fuel with, you know, this sort of like this, you know, this dynamic piece of crystal essentially that is very dangerous, that Leslie Odom Jr.'s character, who's sort of the chief scientist of his company, is very wary of. That Katherine Hahn's character, as a politician who has benefited from Miles' wealth and support, has been asked to support publicly and sort of push through on a bill, even though it could be considered dangerous. And so this is sort of like the underlying power scheme that is related to Andy's demise, that is related to Helen and Benoit's sort of investigation into what's been happening.

And that ultimately is, we learn, powering the glass onion and this massive estate is this new fuel, effectively, that Miles has created. This sort of frictionless um non-destructive to the environment fuel and again like it's a pretty sharp satire that someone who thinks that they have the best idea possible that is quote-unquote good for the world but that actually only just means you know money for his bottom line and danger for the public at large we've seen this over and over and over again with these kinds of billionaires.

You know, eventually, one of the characters, Dave Bautista's character, the sort of, you know, men's rights activist, mysteriously chokes and dies at the party. And that is maybe that 35% you said of murder mystery is actually as much about investigating Andy's death as it is Dave Bautista's character's death. It's revealed, of course, that Miles is the one who killed him. Miles is the engine of all evil in this movie.

That wasn't like a very dramatic reveal. How should I have done it? How would you have done it? I don't know. I just, I thought that you would like have a little more fanfare and i guess it's true to the spirit of the movie that like it is pretty obvious always that miles is behind all of it and it doesn't and it doesn't really matter and i think that there is more drama built into revealing that it was andy who came up with the idea for the completely unintelligible tech company that they have that's like changing the world.

It's like the version, the new version of Watson or whatever IBM is trying to tell me sort of recognition is like fueling everybody's motivation a lot more than like who killed Dave Bautista. It is pretty obvious, but still, I mean, that is like that's the ultimate answer. That's part of what I like is it's not like, oh, my God, it was Miles. Like, that's not the point of the movie in any way in fact as i re-watch the movie and i listen to all of the lines of dialogue that miles has it's clear what a buffoon he is from moment one here's the few things he says you know i got phil glass to compose that that's what he says after the the dong that happens every hour um he can be overheard at the poolside saying you know ak and flea get all the credit but for shantae is really the heart of the chili peppers. That's one of my favorite lines in the movie.

He says, Jared Leto sent those over when they drink some spiked kombucha by the pool. He says, that's Jeremy Renner's small batch hot sauce when they're at the dinner table. He says, I hired, he says, I hired Jillian Flynn to write the whole thing instead of Gillian Flynn,

which is how her first name is pronounced. That's him talking about the murder mystery he's concocted. I also noticed he drinks bullet bourbon. No shots to bullet bourbon, which is perfectly fine, but is not perhaps the most elevated bourbon I've ever seen. So I started clocking like little things like that throughout the movie. Miles is a dipshit. Yeah. You know, he's a very, very, very, very successful dipshit.

He's not necessarily stupid, but he's a jerk. Yeah, he yeah you know he's a very very very very successful dipshit he's not necessarily stupid but he's a jerk yeah and he's annoying yeah and um that that seems to be the reason for this movie in many ways is to put somebody like that in its sights and and perhaps also the sycophants that surround these people and powerful or not can we talk about his art collection yeah for a second which sets up kind of like the remaining piece and theme of this movie, but in terms of him being a dipshit, this is an incredibly funny art collection and

set design because it's like a bingo of every single obvious pop art and fine art collection of it's really mostly modern with the exception of the mona lisa but you know there's like the gustin the twombly the war hall yeah there's like everything and they're very obvious and like funnily placed throughout

um it's i was really really amused by it and i guess that sets up this piece where he also like owns the mona lisa yes uh this is a really important aspect of this story for me and i i'm gonna i i i pitched this to you just as we were exiting our screening and i've been thinking about it a lot so the mona lisa sits in the center of this dining room slash living room in the heart of the glass on Miles' estate. And he tells his friends, like, this is the real Mona Lisa. The Louvre was hurting during the pandemic. And so we traded. I made a significant donation to the Louvre and they gave me the Mona Lisa.

Right. Now it exists inside of this sliding glass case where whenever something that could potentially damage it comes in close contact, the sliding glass case slams shut. Bautista's character and he did kill Andy and that he is responsible for stealing all of the ideas and the technology for the company from Andy and that he also is pushing forward with this hydrogen fuel technology unabated and finally all of his sycophantic friends realize that they can no longer abide by his destruction and his egomania. Andy sets off or excuse me Helen as Andy sets off this sort of like explosive smashing of all of these sculptures throughout the room. And then she sets fire to this main hall area. And at the very, very kind of conclusive moment, she smashes the button that opens the glass case and the Mona Lisa is lit aflame and it burns. And then eventually, because this place is powered by this very unsafe hydrogen fuel, the entire Glass Onion estate effectively explodes. Burning the Mona Lisa in your movie is not a funny, ha-ha, see you later kind of a move.

And I've been thinking a lot about Rian Johnson's movies recently. We just had the five-year anniversary of The Last Jedi, which of course is a very controversial movie. One of the reasons why it's controversial is because it sort of dispenses with some of the accepted white male hero mythology of the Star Wars films. And it tried to imagine a kind of new future for the franchise. Right. And as a part of that, it has Yoda literally burn all the Jedi books. It does. They set the cannon on fire.

Exactly. And that is something that if you look through Johnson's movies, he does over and over again. He takes very familiar archetypal genre character tropes and fucks with them.

In his first movie in Brick, he makes a real hard-boiled noir, but he sets it in the world of high school. There's literally high school kids talking like Bogart in Dark Passage. In his second film, The Brothers Bloom, he makes effectively a con man movie, you know, that's in the spirit

of some of the Redford and Newman films or that's in the spirit of some of the 80s comedies that maybe we'll even talk about here with the puzzle films. But it's got this like deeply sentimental strain to it that is like almost working

in complete adversity to the cynicism and the kind of hard-bitten nature of a lot of those movies. In Looper, he takes a science fiction movie, a time travel movie, and he imbues the sense of like

shattered identity into it. So he's always like taking something that we know and reevaluating it. And in some cases kind of destroying it and making it hard to make another movie in those genres again, without having thought of the way that he kind of redefined them.

The same is true for the original Knives Out. That in some ways that's a true blue murder mystery, but in other ways it's sort of like, you've seen it all before, so I have to do something a little bit different. the original Knives Out. In some ways, that's a true blue murder mystery, but in other ways, it's sort of like, you've seen it all before, so I have to do something a little bit different. Him burning the Mona Lisa

in this movie, shortly after he has just accepted the bag from Netflix, shortly after Netflix has essentially decimated the theatrical movie experience over the very short period of like seven or eight years. Feels like kind of one more step in the punk rock,

Rian Johnson, burn it all down project. Like it felt like to me that seeing the Mona Lisa burn in the movie was almost him like flipping the bird at the company that paid for his future by saying like, you, you, you, you, you killed something. You and your tech company, your tech billionaire company killed this thing that I really care about.

And I'm willing to profit and benefit off of it. I'm willing to almost be sycophantic off of it. But let's all acknowledge here that this thing we really care about is dead. Now that might be a, a, a massive overreading, but Ryan Johnson's very smart and he's very diagrammatic

in terms of all of his movies. And every decision is made with a point. And so I walked out of the movie theater thinking like, this is one of the last things we see is the Mona Lisa burn. I think we're supposed to have a significant takeaway.

Is that too much of an over-read? No. If anything, as I watched it, I was like, okay, buddy, but like, I've seen you light the Mona Lisa on fire before in a different franchise movie

where you like, took a lot of money in order to, you know, reinvent, but also, and I've, and I actually liked The Last Jedi

because, you know, I don't have the emotional investment. I do, I do, I do have it, but I also love it.

Sure. You know, it's the whole, like, do you have to go forward or do you want to go back? Yeah, but I was just kind of like, oh, interesting. So you're doing this again, but with a lot more effort because I have to

be very honest, the Mona Lisa aspect of this movie does not really fit in with the rest of the movie. That's what I mean. It's like, it's really, it's a big red arrow pointing at it. I spent a lot of time learning about the shield and the button that you have to press for the shield to go up and down. Except like I still don't really know how it works.

And I wasn't really sure when the shield was up and the shield was down in the movie, but that's okay. Well, but it does create this incredible sonic tension machine where when the party is happening and things are starting to go awry, it keeps opening and slamming. And it has this like, it's unnerving hearing it over and over again. You know, also the idea of the Mona Lisa, which is this sort of cryptic image, is beautifully mirrored by Janelle Monae. There's a shot that moves from the Mona Lisa to her face, making the Mona Lisa smile.

And revealing that we don't know if she's laughing or self-satisfied or happy or a bit melancholy. You know, that's obviously been debated for hundreds of years about what is the true nature of that figure. And I feel like that's also true of Rian Johnson. It's like, is he mocking us? Right. Is he mocking the people in that room? Is he admiring it?

Is he amused? Like, I like the idea of him sitting in her seat and watching all of these people destroy themselves because that is a little bit what it has felt like watching powerful people blow themselves up over the last few years. You know, constantly put themselves like stepping in bear traps over and over again in public forums because they can't get out of the way of their own greed, their own vanity, their own desire to be seen, heard, and their ambitions understood and executed. And it's very clever about that. He also does this smart thing, which is that he wends in all of these great pop culture figures throughout the film as sort of like an acknowledgement of his understanding that we're in rarefied air here. I counted eight great cameos. Did I miss anybody? No, you have my two favorites here. So what are your favorites? So obviously Serena Williams is doing so like the Edward Norton character has one of those like fancy workout things that you see advertised.

Usually like by either LeBron James or Serena Williams. And then it turns out that Serena is just like on call on the other end of this like fancy exercise portal being like, do you want to work out right now? Like, I guess not. I'm like, okay. Yeah, she's like the virtual Peloton instructor, but is just on call on a video screen

in that room at all times. And two other characters are like having a conversation while Serena's just on the screen in the background being like, okay, you know, just let me know, which is very funny. And then at some point, Benoit Blanc's presence is like fully explained in the second half of the movie. And it involves something being delivered to his home and a knock on the door. And Hugh Grant as his partner answering the phone, answering the door, just A-plus stuff. That's your guy.

Yeah. And I just, I really like, he clearly did 10 minutes, but was happy to be in on a joke. That's, it's a great vibe. The one that has been discussed the most is the quartet of people who appear on a Zoom screen, Blanc, at the beginning of the film is depressed and is And as so many of us were at the outset of the pandemic. He's in the bathtub. He's in the bathtub. And he's playing, I can't recall the name of the game that he's playing, but he's playing a video game, a sort of virtual group game.

And his game partners are the late great Angela Lansbury, the late great Stephen Sondheim, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Natasha Lyonne. And it's very sweet and very clever and very weird that the last appearances of Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim are happening inside of a Zoom screen in a movie on Netflix. Nevertheless, they are. I really enjoyed that. There's a very funny Yo-Yo Ma moment. Incredible.

He shows up at a pandemic party early in the film of Bertie J., the Kate Hudson character, and he explains what a fugue is, which I thought was very amusing. So you and I saw this at the premiere, like a big fancy Netflix premiere at like the Academy Museum. And the Zoom with Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim got like a very like, it was like, oh, I think I even did it. Great response in the room. It was not clear to me that many people recognized Yo-Yo Ma. I don't think anybody did. Yeah. I was like, oh my God, it's Yo-Yo Ma and people were like,

what's a cello? I heard you gasp but nobody else did. That was very funny. There's one other person who appears in the movie and this is the weirdest thing in the movie to me.

I enjoyed his presence. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what was going on there. When the... Oh yeah, I completely forgot about this. When the friends gather on the dock in Greece as they prepare to embark on a boat to the Glass Onion Island, they are greeted by Ethan Hawke.

Ethan Hawke with his long moon night hair. And he is a kind of security guard slash concierge as they prepare to get on the plane. Or excuse me, as they prepare to get on the boat. And he has a kind of binocular spray that i think eliminates covid yeah right yeah the film is set in may 2020 so this is very early way before vaccines and everyone is told that they can remove their mask and comfortably go about their time there because he has sprayed them and so he sprays all of the people he sprays dave bautista and kate hudson and everybody who's waiting in line to get on the boat.

The one thing that I tripped over in the movie is, granted, Miles is kind of a dipshit, but this feels like a very managed environment. And Benoit Blanc was not actually invited to this party. In fact, it was Helen as Andy who got him to the party and invited him to the party. Wouldn't Ethan Hawke's character know that he shouldn't be at the party or on the boat wouldn't he have a checklist of some kind of people that he's dispensing this banaca covid vaccine to that's a good point but maybe he radioed you know there is like a there's a seamlessness and a controlledness to this world as well that also doesn't like um surprises admitting uh any sort of power imbalance um or a defeat and so or doesn't want kerfuffles and there is also something i i'm not in these worlds but

you know these people all seem to be like oh we like know each other like once you make in the rarefied space so there's something about like oh oh yeah, Benoit Blanc, you know, it's like how sometimes famous people tell stories about like, we'd never met, but I wanted to say hello. And you know, then we bonded because like we have like, we're in this space where we're both just like more important than other people. So maybe he was just kind of going with the flow. You could see Elon Musk being like, I don't know what's up, but I'll go with it. Just because it's a cool person to be at my party? Yeah, and he's interested.

I mean, there is like a bit of like an erratic quality to these like weird founder myth people that they seem to cultivate. So you're right. There's another thing that strains credulity more. Is it the friendship amongst these people? Yeah, it's the setup of getting the group of people together. Yeah. So these are six extremely different people.

And when the film resets and we start hearing about Andy and we start hearing about the history of Alpha and we start hearing from Miles about this kind of collection of people and how they all came together um it's not believable that these people would hang out it's not even a little bit or that where they hung out which was at a local dive bar called the Glass Onion and then then you know Google Tesla was founded on a napkin that Andy wrote at the Glass Onion. Yeah. Yeah. When you see these people at whatever it's supposed to be, 10 years previously, they're all kind of supposed to be like in their early 30s at that time. And they've all kind of like not quite reached where they want to go.

Katherine Hahn is an aspiring politician, but she hasn't really won any elections. Leslie Odom Jr. is a kind of a failed scientist at that point. The two that are the most bizarre is Bertie J., the Kate Hudson character, who is a former model who's hanging out in a dive bar with five losers. Even in the most loseriest of loser former models, that's just not something that would happen. This is not like a cool East Village dive bar. No, no. It's a shitty pub.

Yeah. And then the Dave Bautista character, who's like a meathead and a gamer, but like also not somebody who would be spending his time with these people. So if you're picking nits about the movie, the idea of these six very different people all wanting to be spending time

with each other is a little bit debatable. However I think the the only way that all these people became as successful as they are is because they kind of hacked a system that was open to be hacked that like a kind of hucksterism is what dominates this

world and you know there's like 12 to 18 people that get over that get through the gates every 10 years they just happen to benefit by being close to one or two of them in the form of miles and andy that i guess they just came along for the ride but it's a little bit of a like when i saw the old the younger versions of those characters i was like okay this is like this doesn't totally work um You also noted that there's an issue with the house on Greece. Yeah, it sucks. And it's like, I know that's the point that this guy has more money than God and a private island and has built like this completely like garish monstrosity with like a literal glass onion on top, which like, I don't totally understand it but like part of the reason i see this movie is

like to be on a fantastic greek island with like famous and glamorous people and i was like this just looks like a a weird house it's not very nice it has no identity and i understand the garish taste of a dumb person it's's the point. It is the point. I'm not like, oh, they thought this was a beautiful house and it's not. I'm not impugning anyone's taste. I'm just like, I would have liked a nicer house. You know? I would have liked a bit more escapism.

In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Yeah. There's the sausage bacon and egg, a crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg, worth the detour.

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The Netflix service. We both liked it. Yeah. I had fun with it. I'm glad that this is a version of franchise entertainment in 2022. I certainly love Ryan's movies. This is, you know, I think pretty consistent in the manner of film that he makes

and that it is like very irreverent but very crowd-pleasing. That's mostly what his brand is at this point. I feel like it's going to be a huge hit on Netflix. Yeah.

You think so? Of course. Yeah. They're very smart in terms of, I know people had a lot of complex feelings about the fact that they released this for a week over Thanksgiving.

It made a lot of money. Shouldn't have Netflix have made more money. They're leaving their theaters out to dry. This is whatever they're releasing this on Christmas. When people are going to be at home with their families, this is a perfect watch this with a large group of people movie. And they don't make movies like that anymore. So I think everyone will be like yeah sure

i'd love to watch the new knives out so um reed hastings and ted sarandos who run netflix have been very direct about their rationale which is that that one week in theaters stunt was was marketing and it actually did what i think they wanted it to do which is sure they made a little bit of money but that wasn't ultimately the point the point was to make noise about the new Knives Out movie. And in a way, it's as strong a marketing strategy as any billboard or TV spot could possibly be. You know, in addition to the fact that it'll be in front of hundreds of millions of people on the service,

here we are talking about it on the show in a way that we might not otherwise if they hadn't decided to put it in theaters. Rian Johnson, conversely, fought hard to get it in theaters. He got it for a full week on 600 plus screens, which is pretty impressive. The film actually will be playing in theaters at least at the New Beverly over the holidays. I think it's playing on New Year's Eve at the New Beverly. I'm not sure if there are any other theaters in Los Angeles that will be playing it.

I don't know if there are any other theaters around the country. But it is a good movie theater movie, as I said earlier. And I don't know how to reconcile that, you know? I don't think you're going to be able to. I can't. And I think you've got to let it go. I can't. I know.

You're right. People are going to watch this with their families at home over the holidays. And honestly, that's great. Okay. Did Netflix cut the check? check no they did not would you want them to no i wouldn't okay i'm trying to maintain your objectivity yes i do and it's just i think if they cut the check for me then i'd have to watch a lot of movies i really don't want to watch you know so that would be another issue people who can cut the check for me uh Campari they have

not cut the check okay um any you know hotels or airlines associated with the Cannes Film Festival um you know Airbnbs there any anybody who wants to facilitate that and um you know the row if the row would like to sponsor me I'd be open to. Bobby, can you cut this part out of the show? Just the moment when Amanda prostrates herself before brands. You asked. I'm not for sale to Netflix. Is this a better puzzle movie than Murder Mystery? Yes. Is it a good puzzle movie?

Yes. Is it one of the best puzzle movies you've ever seen? I guess so. Okay. I don't know. I mean, the puzzle does become like a puzzle

for puzzle's sake at some point. It does. But aren't all puzzles? Yeah. Well, I was going to ask, are you, to quote Juliette Lipman's

Twitter bio, a puzzle person? Well, when it comes to Survivor, I certainly would be. Survivor, one of my favorite shows. And frankly, I'm just going to say this because I don't have a lot of platforms to share this information.

Survivor needs a reset. Yeah, everyone's very outraged. What happened? There just was a winner who, whether you thought he was worthy or not, like the conclusion of the show for like the fourth or fifth season in a row, just a bunch of people who played

like very mild, uninteresting games getting to the end of the show, as opposed to aggressive, creative players who were getting eliminated because they made aggressive, creative moves. It's an interesting kind of artifact in many ways of even what we're talking about here, which is if you're a little loud,

you're going to get shot down. That's the time we live in right now. And puzzles matter on Survivor, but they're not everything. Puzzles in movies are challenging not everything puzzles in movies are challenging uh puzzle movies are challenging it's hard to make these because it's hard to make puzzles coherent to all audiences and so it's a rare kind of a movie there was a lot of movies like this in the 1990s and my list in particular is very dominated by the kind of just before the turn of the century when it almost felt like Hollywood got a little bored with the conventions of erotic thriller, murder mystery, courtroom drama. And they needed to kind of amp up the stakes by complicating the stories.

But I do love these movies. I've always loved these movies. I think a little bit of it for me personally is uh my dad is a detective literally um he was and was on hundreds of cases over the years and so he has a very kind of diagrammatic mind and if you look at my spreadsheets for example you might understand where some of that comes from and he's constantly kind of disassembling things as he watches things and so so I think he really enjoyed a lot of movies like this. The Usual Suspects was a huge bonding thing for the two of us. That's not on my list, although it probably should be.

It certainly is an honorable mention. It's like my one challenge with that movie is there's not really any way to solve the movie until you've gotten to the end of the movie. I've heard very few people say I knew who Kaiser Soze was. Unlike some of these other films in which you're sort of like, as you're working through it, you are taking the pieces

and putting them together to see the totality of the puzzle. Do you like these movies? My list was interesting. I like them when the puzzle and the story really mesh and achieve a balance. I can't do pure puzzle or like puzzle plus violence, you know, which like some of the 90s boy movies kind of get into.

Yeah. I also am not a person who can sit down and like do a puzzle, like a puzzle piece. You can't do those? Yeah. What's the word for them? They're called puzzles. I know, but there's not like a specific identifier. Yeah, like the actual, I don't know, like.

Yeah, like a thousand piece puzzle. Jigsaw. Oh, jigsaw. That's what I was looking for. Thank you, Bobby. No, and members of my family, like my sister-in-law loves a jigsaw puzzle. We went on vacation this summer. Shout out Ruthie.

Yeah, Ruthie just like took over the table and they would sit down every night and do the puzzle and i'd be like bye because i was just like you do have to have a certain kind of a brain to get into that sort of thing i i can't do it so i also like ordered them during the march 2020 like everybody else we made it like two nights and then i just abandoned it so i need a story to keep me together but I think that there are movies that really successfully meld the two and it's like very exhilarating. That does sometime verge on like our great twist list. Yes, it does. You know, because when the puzzle is really working with the story that the answer is a surprise and you're like, oh my God, it all came together. So I tried to do a list that didn't totally recreate my best twist list I like and

I don't have a fifth one because it was also on my the obvious one is also on my twist list and also you have it as well

so we can find another one together but but yeah I like these movies I mean when they really sing they sing so

agreed when they're good they are the best shall we start our list? Yes. So, we both got Christopher Nolan film

on our list. Sure, number five. You're making a face at me. Well, we haven't even talked about the Oppenheimer trailer. Right. What's coming there? Is this podcast airing

after the movie, after the James Cameron? Yes, it is. The James Cameron one already aired where Chris just came in and was like, you know who's better than James Cameron?

It's Christopher Nolan. What a king. That was a really. I think he was just trying to get under my skin. I think. So what happened there was that you and I recorded 30 minutes, 45 minutes about Avatar 2. And we just like left him on ice outside. Yeah, Chris.

Incredible experiment that we should do more often. Of just like put Chris just like in a closet, you know, in a silent chamber. 15 minutes and then just like let him out and be like,

let's podcast, baby. He doesn't do well with alone time anyway. You know, he's a very social animal. So you're right. That's a good way to get him amped up

to get into the room. So at number five, what do you have? I have Inception. So I don't like Inception yeah why not it doesn't make sense

well it doesn't actually fit right and it's a little bit too obsessed with trying to explain how it does fit when it doesn't

now I have been roundly rejected for my opinion on Inception people are very mad about how I feel about Inception you don't like to have fun

I think people have misunderstood my opinion on Christopher Nolan because I'm not a fan of Inception well you don't like to have fun. I think people have misunderstood my opinion on Christopher Nolan because I'm not a fan of Inception. Well, you don't like to have fun. I don't know. Why do you keep saying that?

I have the most fun at the movies of anybody that is alive. I don't know whether I would characterize that as fun. What do you mean? You're not there to enjoy. I get a nice big box of Sour Patch Kids. You do. It's amazing how many Sour Patch Kids you can eat. I get a giant lemonade

or a cocktail. You shared your Sour Patch Kids with me during Avatar, and it was very nice. You put them in between us on the seat, which is a level of sharing that I've really never seen from Sean. I care about you, Amanda. And it's very clearly because you're teaching Alice how to share, and so now you're sharing with me.

And it was really nice, and I was like, sure, I'd love some Sour Patch Kids. I had like five, and like five and then i was like am i gonna vomit i can't eat any more of these i honestly wanted to get a second bag and you housed them it was incredible they're so good thank you that's yeah so no you approach movies as a comprehensive um gotta know everything historical like experience and not as a fun experience. Except for when you have fun. But Inception's fun. I was hooting and hollering at Avatar The Way of Water when the poachers were getting rocked. That was awesome. That's true. I don't understand what happens in Inception either.

Yeah, thank you. So there are the levels and then they are in the snow and then there's that famous don't try to explain there's that famous meme where it's like why can't leo just why can't his kids just come to france you know which is like a great question unanswered but as soon as you say puzzle movie i'm just well, they're in the one place and then the other and then the world folds on top of it. It's like a literal puzzle. And it also mirrors my experience of some point just being like, I don't know. I'm just going to let other people kind of solve it and let it wash all over me and then move on with my day.

I liked Inception. So Nolan is really well known now for time shifting um and there's been it's been some really funny reactions to the oppenheimer trailer which i must admit like looks amazing and is i think a worthy subject for the kind of storytelling that he's very good at and i was a huge fan of tenet um i think it's to me it's more about about memory and eye confusion is the thing that he is really good at, more so than the time shifting. The time shifting is the thing that tends to bug me. Like, the one thing that bugged me about Dunkirk was the shifting of the time in the stories. It felt like a hat on a hat.

Similarly with Inception, it feels like it's so overwhelming so as to be confusing. And in some ways, you could be could be like well that's total cinema baby just turn yourself over to the majesty of his you know vision but I don't that's exactly what you said

about Tenet like almost word for word that's total cinema baby turn yourself over to the magic but you being like that's total cinema baby is your character

every other minute of the day that's total cinema baby here's the difference can we get hats that say that's total cinema total cinema baby would be awesome yeah it's total cinema, baby. Here's the difference. Can we get hats that say that's total cinema? Total cinema, baby, would be awesome. Yeah.

It's total cinema, baby. Okay. Here's the difference to me. Okay. Inception is very interested in explaining to you how things work. There are several scenes in which the characters- That is literally the definition of a puzzle. No, no.

Whether or not it's a good puzzle movie, I'm not debating. It's more about what I like about it. Tenet is like, it doesn't fucking matter. Shit's going haywire. We're going backwards. It's not, it doesn't. That's true. It doesn't go out of its way to explain. And so in a way, it's sort of like I, it almost felt like him acknowledging

all of the criticism of him, which is why I got so excited by that movie. It felt like he had become sentient in a way. And whereas in Inception, he was just like, I have thoughts so hard about this and I'm going to tell you how it works. Trust me, all of this is real and it's really happening. And there are three layers of dreams.

But is it? But is it? I don't know. My number five is Memento. Bob, you like Memento? Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's a good movie.

Memento is rather than time shifting or dreams it is of course working in reverse and it feels like a series of Polaroids splashed on a bed and of course Polaroids

are a significant part of the storytelling I just thought it was an ingenious way to make a movie for not a lot of money it's like one of the great independent film

success stories features amazing performances and that's not fun though what you just said what is that that's just not like a fun person like if i was a little bit more interesting you're just like wow but like my personality didn't have very much money you know but then they oh my god amanda come on i don't know there several levels. People are on skis. And Piaf is playing. Like, why not?

Okay. Fair enough. Memento actually makes sense, is the thing. And when you go back and look at it and you put all the pieces together, and it is a series of pieces, because when you tell the story in reverse, you can feel them almost like the pieces snapping together as the film continues to unfurl.

I just think it's a little bit more effective as a puzzle movie. Here's the thing. Christopher Nolan, he's great. I'm a fan. I'm a fan, man. You're good at your job, except a couple of times when you weren't. You're just trying so hard

to make it through the end of the year without people just upping your mentions. Being like, oh man, the top was spinning. Would you say Memento is total cinema baby or quasi cinema baby? It's deaf cinema. Is it total? We're not quite at totalization. Not total. Okay. What's number four? Inside Man.

Yeah. I like this pick. Yeah. So it's a heist movie and you're invested in all of those elements, but the heist is also a puzzle that you didn't really see coming. This could also be the Ocean's Eleven spot, you know? But I talk about that movie on every podcast. But to me, that moment where they solve it for you, you know? And you're like, oh, and then here's the picture of the cell phone. And then here's the guy putting on the hoodie. And then they built this thing, which is very exciting. There are also a fair number of riddles within Inside Man.

So it's conscious of the fact that it has this puzzle element. It's just also great Denzel performance. Love a heist movie. Good New York movie. I love this one. I'm a huge fan of this one, too. This one didn't occur to me so yeah good call thank you because it really is it is a puzzle movie for sure um Spike with a good genre script

right I wish there were like two or three more movies in Spike's career that were like this because he really is really good at this kind of thing my number four is The Sixth Sense yeah which is very similar to Memento and and this was also like this was on my twist list and this is a this is a great is a great one a great twist movie a lot of great puzzle movies are great twist movies it's kind of essential in some ways um but also a movie that when you walk go back and walk through the steps and the film also does kind of walk you through the steps of revelation when you learn that in fact bruce willis's character is a ghost um i see that people you're really i don't no like i said i said to you i have a real finals energy right now and

this is just when you let it loose you do some character work i had a good character amanda i encourage you for 2023 every time a movie comes up to do one impression from it just one don't every time it comes up okay please don't please don't i had some really good voice work yesterday that i was like, this is really impressive and now I can't remember what it was. Were you just sitting alone in a room saying that to yourself? I think I was doing it for Knox, but then I was like, oh. When you and Chris,

and Chris is obviously the king of voice work, and you've really been exploring that this year. I'm spreading my wings, yeah. And I think that's a beautiful thing, and I'm really proud of you. And I just like to appreciate your talents you know I'm here as a supporter I'm a generous listener um not true but all right but I you know I like I don't want to compete but I had a really good one and now I can't remember what it was but um thanks Bobby I I'll I'll keep working you know we gotta grow we gotta we gotta build in 2023

iteration is yeah what is your number three eternal sunshine of the spotless mind which this is kind of the only context in which i like this movie oh i'm like pretty mixed on aspects of this movie i have a complicated but like ultimately like really admiring relationship with charlie kaufman but this is like a puzzle about a relationship and like why didn't it work out and can it work out again is the puzzle and and the structure and I think that that is a like very compelling idea and way to explore a relationship now like the problem with the movie itself is that I kind of think the answer is because like both the characters are annoying and like get your shit together,

but that's okay. The premise and the puzzle is really clever. So, and a lot of people love this movie. I really,

really love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hadn't really thought of it specifically in the way that you just described it, although that is definitely accurate.

I have always felt like, well, one, I think i have a little more tolerance for annoying characters than you do um and i've always felt like that was the point yeah that there was like of course kind of chaotic anti anti-attraction between the two of them you know that like feeling of like sometimes you're drawn to somebody that you know is bad for you of course it's very common but also that sometimes when you're drawn to that person like it can be explosive and dangerous and trying to rebuild it is impossible um and the way that it's revealed is ingenious it is like one of the great scripts of the last 25 years um my number three is house of games so this is also a kind of related category which is the con man movie the con man movie the twist movie and the puzzle movie are in a dance of death together and house of games i mentioned my dad already this is a movie

that he turned me on to um probably before i was 11 years old uh my dad probably wouldn't appreciate me saying that he kind of like fucked me up by letting me watch a lot of adult stuff but he did in a good way um this is a david mamet film um that he wrote and directed stars joe montana and his then wife lindsey krauss um just an amazing evocation of people who run games on people by using a psychologist psychiatrist figure as the protagonist in your story and letting you think that that person is one step ahead of the people in the story when in fact she's one step behind and she is still getting worked over and over and over again. And there are big puzzles and there are small puzzles. There are big scams and there are small scams in this movie. Very,

very, very good film. Highly recommend it. Okay. Number two, you're stuck. Yeah. What should I do? I mean, the sixth sense is one of the all time for me. You can make it your number two. But I think that I'm just with two and one that I'm recreating my twist list. And that's not the kind of, that's not what we're trying to offer here on the big picture. You know, you want to read some of your honorable mentions? Yeah, sure. So I love all of these films. All of them could have been on my list. Shutter Island, which is a little bit more of a twist movie, but when you go back and watch it again,

you can see the puzzle pieces coming together. The Martin Scorsese psychological thriller. Fight Club, of course. Of course. Which I think loses some points if you read the book and doesn't totally feel like... I didn't read the book, Sean. Prestige, another Christopher Nolan film, of course. I do remember a lot of boys in my high school reading that book.

Fight Club. Yeah. Yeah, we were an angsty bunch in the mid to late 90s. Solaris, both versions of Solaris. Tarkovsky's version and Soderbergh's version. I have Michael Haneke's Code Unknown, which is a very, very good movie. Usual Suspects, I mentioned. Get Out, sort of a puzzle movie.

Midsommar. Recently discussed on the 2019 movie draft. Bergman's Persona. Sure. The Parallax View. Sure. Nolan's Tenet. A lot of Nolan movies on this list. Source Code. I thought that was a good recent example of one.

Twelve Monkeys. Yeah. Any of these tickle your fancy? These are all Sean movies. Great movies. That's what you mean by Sean movies, right? Sure. Any of these tickle your fancy? These are all Sean movies. You know? Yeah. Great movies. That's what you mean by Sean movies, right? Sure, cinema.

Films that people enjoy. Yeah, total cinema, baby. Which one would you like to, as a Christmas present, which one would you like to nominate as my number two? I really want to give you Donnie Darko.

Okay. All right. I like Donnie. You know what would be good is a movie that you like is Picnic at Hanging Rock. Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about that what would be good is a movie that you like is Picnic at Hanging Rock. Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about that as a puzzle movie.

More because it's just, I think of that as like a creepy, is there a solution? There's not. There's not. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's an unsolved puzzle. Right. But can a puzzled movie be unsolved?

I think so. Okay. Picnic at Hanging Rock is a really good one. Okay. Thank you for that suggestion. You're welcome. I don't think it counts though. I think you have to solve it for it to be a puzzle movie. So then you don't want it? But then the exception proves the rule. So. I think some puzzle movies are about like real time execution. Like another good example I think is Die Hard with a Vengeance. The third Die Hard movie which features an antagonist named Simon

who puts John McClane and Samuel L. Jackson's character through the paces by giving them a bunch of puzzles to solve. The reason for that is because the movie was originally called Simon Says. They worked John McClane into it. And so I don't know that that's a great puzzle movie because it's ultimately just about John McClane

beating up a bunch of German terrorists, but it has great puzzles in it. I think the movie can have great puzzles. I don't think they need to be solved. I mean, like, when you look at the internet, they tell you, like, Mulholland Drive is a puzzle movie. Inland Empire is a puzzle movie. Those movies don't get solved either.

You know, they're Lynchian surreal nightmares. I was going to say, I kind of feel bad not having a Soderbergh on my list because there are a lot of... You mentioned Ocean's Eleven. Sure. And, I mean, I don't remember how Side Effects is solved, but he there are a lot of... You mentioned Ocean's Eleven. Sure. And I mean, I don't remember how

side effects is solved, but he does this a lot, you know, where it's a lot of there are things throughout the movie that you need to follow and then it all fits together.

There is something so satisfyingly concise and controlled about the way that Soderbergh makes movies that I respond to. But I guess I don't really think of any of them as,

it's just a puzzle world that he's creating. So what are we going with? I guess, I don't know. You do your number one and I'll think more about it. Well, I have my two and my one. Oh, you do your number two. So my two is a movie called Nine Queens. Came out in 2000.

One of the first art house cinema experiences I had. I think this is a Sony Pictures Classics movie, I can't recall. Argentinian film, directed by Fabian Bialinski. It stars Ricardo Darin, who I think a lot of people will recognize, who's been in a number of very well-known international films, including this year, Argentina 1985, which is likely to be nominated for Best International Feature. But he was in Wild Tales.

He was in Everybody Knows, the Asghar Farhadi film. He was in The Secret in Their Eyes. He's a very recognizable actor. And this is also a kind of con man movie that features some of the best bang, bang, bang, gotcha moments of the last 10 minutes. I don't want to say anything else about it

other than just people should rent it. It's on Amazon. Just go rent it. If you've got some downtime. It came out in 2000. It's really fun nine queens it was remade in the u.s with john c reilly and diego luna not not as good that the remake has watched the original okay you're number one i forgot i still haven't decided number two i forgot that maybe as a joke i was gonna put love actually on this list you know which is just like how do they know each other no that would have been the last episode of this show okay my number one is Arrival which

is one of my favorite movies of this century and is it's also marrying puzzle and story and it's kind of like the the emotional heart of this movie is that time is working differently and some of the things you've seen have seen have not happened yet and some have happened and it's like a gut punch. Haven't watched it since I had a kid. I bet it's. I wish you luck. Yeah.

I don't. It might take a little time. If you have not seen this Denis Villeneuve movie it's just it's extraordinary. That's all. That's what I have to say. I love Arrival. Yeah. Great pick. You never put it on your list though. It's just, it's extraordinary. That's all. That's what I have to say. I love Arrival. Yeah. Great pick.

You never put it on your list, though. It's yours. Okay, thank you. That's lovely. Yeah. My number one's The Game. Yeah.

David Fincher film. Kind of the opposite of Arrival. Definitely one of the more mean-spirited movies in recent times. Though it has kind of a happy ending.

It's kind of a reunion ending. I guess so, yeah. A movie that is very hard to solve, movies in recent times. It has kind of a happy ending. It's kind of a reunion ending. A movie that is very hard to solve even though it seems very obvious what's happening if you just remove yourself from being inside of Michael Douglas' experience. But the movie is so good at putting you in his shoes.

I think often of him being locked in that taxi as it hurtles towards the San Francisco Bay and drives directly into the ocean. You're like, is this really happening? Aspect of the movie is amazing. You know, Fincher, my guy, coming back 2023. Can't believe it. The killer with Michael Fassbender. Can't wait. I'm so excited. I love the game. I love puzzle movies. I liked Glass Onion. Yeah. I will definitely watch the third glass onion movie i feel like you could do this for a long long time do you think that there will be five of them

i hope so well does he want to spend his time doing i don't know that's what he produced them and hand them off to people i'm not so sure i want that because i think clearly what's making these movies work is his his pen you know his ideas well he could write them and then that's true you know that's true he could oversee i don write them and then. That's true. You know. That's true. He could oversee. I don't know. It's kind of the James Cameron thing.

Like, do you want a mind like Ryan Johnson spending the next 20 years just making Knives Out? Even though I really enjoy them and I would like someone to. Yeah. You know. It's all about who comes in next then. Yeah. If he's going to keep producing them. Okay.

Anyhow, that's Glass Onion. This has been The Big Picture. Thanks to Bobby Wagner for his production work on this episode. Later this week, we'll be closing out

the year by looking fittingly at two end times mega movies. Oh boy. Noah Baumbach's White Noise

and Damien Chazelle's Babylon. See you then.