The Big Picture - Is ‘Weapons’ a Classic? And an Oscar Contender? Plus: The Best Movies at TIFF!

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Adam Nayman joins the show to recap his experience at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. He breaks down the fanatical scene at the traveling Criterion Closet, explores his mixed feelings about the lineup at large, and shares his personal favorites from the festival (1:19). Then, Chris Ryan joins the show to share his thoughts on Zach Creggers’s horror hit ‘Weapons.’ They talk through the discourse surrounding the movie about whether or not it’s “about anything,” celebrate Amy Madigan’s wonderful performance as Aunt Gladys, and wonder whether it has a legitimate chance to receive some Academy Award nominations (45:13). Finally, they cover the newest legacy sequel from the 'Conjuring' franchise, ‘The Conjuring: Last Rites,’ starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. They highlight its shockingly impressive performance at the box office but explain why they found the film to be largely unsuccessful (1:21:09). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan and Adam Nayman Producer: Jack Sanders This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is presented by State Farm. Life's full of decisions, big and small, and sometimes you make movie ones you can really stand behind. For example, I was wise enough to stick around through the mid credits during Ryan Coogler's sinners. And unlike my co-host, Amanda, I got to see a very special sequence with the great buddy guy, among other things. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create an affordable price for you. to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal

price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the big picture at Conversation. show about weapons and Toronto way back in the Halcyon days of early August I recorded a solo episode covering one of the years biggest and most exciting

new movies weapons by myself well Sierra and Amanda have seen it now they're here to talk about it today as well as yet another mega horror hit the conjuring conclusion last rights but first we have to talk about the Toronto International Film Festival which has just concluded which means our mean pod guy

correspondent Adam Naiman is here Adam hello hey guys how you doing that doesn't seem very mean you seem very mean you seem very gentle, pleasant. Did you just see a good movie? What happened? Yeah, I saw an embargoed film. It was good.

Okay. The big question on the street in Toronto, I was asked this five separate times is, what is Sean Fennacy really like? Oh, no. Oh, wow. Because I quite mortifyingly kept getting embarrassed, recognized from the podcast.

Oh, yeah. And then everyone's like, oh, you're out and for the podcast. I was like, yes, this was especially true of the criterion line. this is the target audience so people like what is what is Sean fantasy like they also said what's Amanda like Amanda is a very nice she's great

like what is Sean like they're like what does this exterior disguise yeah and I said I said what you see is what you get that became my line an aging insecure festering boil on the pox of cinema culture right

no no no no the only a couple people were like that most people were like he's great you know and that that that weird that weird feeling of on the other side of a parisocial relationship or like a parissocial relationship on top of one because like I said, this was the line for the Criterion van, which was very much the center of attention on what's called Festival Street. You know, in Toronto, we have streets. We drive on the

same side that you guys do in America. Okay. Sounds like a nice place to live. It's a very nice place to live, sort of. The van was just parked there. And, you know, I didn't go to it in New York Film Festival because I live in Toronto, but it was sort of the static center of attention and all the festival traffic kind of circled around it. And it was very interesting to work the line, right? I mean, I got recognized because in Toronto, I guess, you know, I host a lot of events

or people sort of know that I do film stuff. So a lot of people getting yelling out, they're like big picture, whatever else, what are you going to get from the van? But I asked people why they were waiting in line. Not as a skeptical question, but I'm like, this is exciting. and I got such a beautiful range of responses.

Well, what are, you know, the Criterion Collection Van has obviously become a thing. We've had it twice here in Los Angeles outside of the Idiots in the Arrow. We've had it at the New York Film Festival. I think they went to Chicago at a certain point two earlier this year. They're traveling the world and it is a frenzy. And on its face, you can say, this is a lot of time to spend to wait in line for a solid but modest discount on Blu-rays and a photograph. And yet, when I was there, I definitely felt a little tingle of excitement. And I had a – Chris and I had a lot of fun going inside the band.

And, you know, you are a little bit more skeptical about our mass consumer culture around cinema. Like, what were you hearing and what do you make of it? Well, there was one guy who was very nice who sort of – I said, so what is this? He's like, well, you know, we're crackheads, and this is a line for crack. Right. And he said – and when I asked him to sort of, you know, expand or what I got was, I mean, it's not the discs, you know, it's the clout or the perceived clout or the self-deprecating version of clout because, of course, you know, you're not being invited in as a celebrity or an actual filmmaker. You're paying your dues in terms of time and then paying your money in terms of, you know, paying at a discount.

But people seem very excited. I saw lots of my students from U of T in line. Oh, that's nice. who I, people who I recognize from, you know, various TIF Cinemathex screenings and rep culture in line, skewed very young and, you know, quite enthusiastic. And I thought that as a, not as a festival within the festival, but TIF is very compartmentalized, you know, and we could do like five different podcasts about what TIF was like this year. Because if you paid attention to certain stuff, it was the most rancid festival vibes in history. And if you didn't pay attention to other things, you know, than less so. But that just sort of seemed to be a space where people were, I mean, it sounds. so cheesy, but people seemed actually excited about this idea of community and the skepticism kind of evaporates. I think it should still be there at the end of the day or at least it deserves to be talked about. But yeah, people were giving up an entire potential day of film watching for what's kind of like just cheek to jowl conversation and a bunch of different people use that

word and you want to maybe not want to scoff at it, but like we're wired to scoff at that idea of community. And I thought it was really nice. And I thought that seeing people go in and out of the van, you know, clutching their, their disc was very nice. I got to go in just ahead of the great filmmaker, you know, Christian Petzold. Oh, yeah. One of your guys. Yeah, certainly one of my guys. You're starting this last feature, a fire. A fire, yes. I've been, I've been, I've had to deal with that, particularly with my wife, Tanya, when we watched a fire, which is what a guy who goes to the cottage and then doesn't want to do anything sitting on his laptop. She's like, oh, look, they made a movie about you. It looks a lot.

like you. And I'm like, this is great. I'm so, you know, glad we're together forever. But no, I mean, you know, you see Christian, I mean, if anything I'm surprised, more filmmakers on the ground didn't go in. I don't have a record of like who had truck time, but you have everybody there, you know? Although in a way, celebrities going in was a bit against the on-the-ground spirit of the thing, because the whole point is this is the truck that you don't have to be famous to go in. But anyway, I mean, TIF shuts down this big drag downtown. You can't shut New York down the way you can, even parts of Toronto.

And I will say that for the three or four days that it was open, literally you could not navigate the festival without noticing it. So great branding and great positioning. And, you know, for all the little jokes or criticisms I might have of TIF, it's such a cinephile city. So it fit. You know, it was a fascinating thing to watch. It's so nice to hear your heart melted by the communal experience of buying plastic.

It really makes me feel wonderful to hear you say that. Well, actually, I haven't posted my video for reasons, but all three movies I got were movies that I already own and have a little personal history with, and I instantly gave them away. I thought a good bit would be to go up and down the line giving away discs, but that might have made them. Or I was also going to just find some bad movies and hide them in the closet. Okay. You know, standard, standard dev DVDs are my least favorite directors.

Yes, exactly. But you know what? People do bits when they're in there. I have a friend, another local critic, former TIF programmer. He brought, I think I saw on Instagram, his close encounters laser disk in there to demonstrate, you know, that there's a long history to this company that sort of predates the, you know, predates the closet. But look, you know, I'm not really mean anyway, but I will say you talk about the heart being melted part. being in there, even with all of my professional reasons to be skeptical and projects I'm working on and whatever else, those four walls are pretty impressive. And they activated all kinds of memories for me of purchasing because this isn't my first rodeo.

You know, literally, I was looking around and I was like, this is the disc my wife bought for me before we started dating or this is the movie I paid for with babysitting money. They're embodied experiences, even if they're discs. And that's why I tried not to roll my eyes when people showed up to wait for this thing at like eight in the morning. When are we going to get you inside? I was out of town for the L.A. one. I also, you know, I don't collect DVDs or Blu-rays or discs. Maybe I like Adam's terminology. Maybe I'll start using that.

Is it acceptable for you? Sure. Yeah. Do whatever you like. Live freely. That's the fun part of collecting. When I say DVDs, I get in trouble because that's not appropriate. Well, it's not the correct terminology.

Yeah, until you give me an Italian ready to wear, you know? That's true. That was a DVD. Yeah. And then I, I think Adams, I think it would be fun to speak to the other people in the line. Like that vibe seems right. But as a, I'm not a line waiter generally.

I'm not like a hugely patient person. Yeah. You know, I'm not there for the drops. I see. Do you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. So that would be tough for me. Better than waiting in a line.

I'm not better than. I know my personal limit. which are standing in a line for seven hours or whatever. Were people camping out at them? Like, were there tents? What was the vibe? I mean, I don't think that there were tense, but on the morning where I got up there,

I think at 9.30 in the morning, they said that their line was full till 5.30, meaning by 9.30, they had eight hours worth of slots. Yeah. Okay. So filled for the day, because to be fair, everybody gets their time, right? Yeah. Everybody kind of gets to go in there and they, you know, They pick discs and take a and take a photograph.

I mean, you know, it's like a roller coaster line economy where it's a long wait for a short time, but it is time. I'm not dissing the line or that everyone gets their time. It's just like me showing up at nine. I personally can't wait until 5.30, you know? Well, but this is the other thing is that TIF there's supposedly so many great movies to see. You're basically blocking off a day where you can't engage with all of these masterworks of cinema.

Yes. You know, you might, you might have to give them. them amiss because there's no chance that movies play at Tiff will ever open theatrically in a week. So I'm glad you frame it that way. Were there any masterworks of cinema at Tiff this year based on what you saw?

I watched on back-to-back days Barton Fink and Scott Pilgrim in my classes. Those are both five-star films. God, I love Scott Pilgrim versus the world. What a great, what a great friggin movie that is. Toronto movie. Yeah. We're there

masterworks of cinema. As I put, in my ringer dispatch, I had to tread a little lightly because a couple of the very best films I saw are the most interesting ones are not just by Torontoian filmmakers, but friends, you know, and there is sort of this question of objectivity and, you know, how do you be a critic when people you know? I will say that currently Sophie Romvari's Blue Heron is sitting at first on Metacritic for the fall, above Hamnet, you know? Wow. And Sophie's a good friend. So hopefully there's not grains of salt when I say, that's a great movie. I think it's going to premiere in Chicago soon for its American premiere.

She's two for two with prizes. She just won an award in La Carno and then also in TIF. It's pretty impressive. Two festivals, two big prizes for the first feature. Yeah, I'm very excited about that film. And then Nirvana, the band, the show, I don't know if it's a master work of cinema, but as a movie that gets the equivalent of like the city throwing its panties on stage, that's this movie, you know, because it's the most Toronto-centric movie possible

and their local heroes. And it's premiering like in the shadow of the CN Tower, which they breach. in order to film the opening stunt sequence of this movie. I think if I'd seen that movie at midnight with a Toronto audience, then maybe that idea of masterwork of cinema would be in conversation. I mean, for me, there were a lot of really great filmmakers here who I'm always happy to spend time with, and I will spend time with the movies in my head, like Petzold and Claire Deney,

like whether this is their best work or not, I'm delighted to have seen it. And then there was just also an awful lot of like award season stuff that as I wrote about in the dispatch I kind of had mixed feelings about it. There's one movie that I thought was great, but I kind of want to send it celebratorily for the end. Okay. And maybe you can go through the usual suspects first

because I know you have a list you want to ask about and now I'm going to get me, you know. Well, okay. I mean, there's a couple of films that either Amanda or I have seen at the previous fall festivals. Yeah, of course. And then there's a couple that premiered. I don't know, was there any,

I guess you saw Knives Out, the new Knives Out film. I did. Wake Up Dead Man. And it seemed like you liked it. I did seem, yeah, no, I did. I mean. Well, you've been a bit skeptical of the Knives Out films. Well, there's points of skepticism.

I mean, I thought the second one buckled under the contradiction of being about disrupting the system while being made as part of a gigantic Netflix deal. Sure. There's a sort of cognitive dissonance there. But this one deals with something that seems pretty personal to Ryan Johnson, which is this idea of faith, you know, faith as practiced, faith as commodified. It's a good mystery. I thought the second one was like a very cheerful sort of cheat.

The mystery didn't really appeal to me. This is like an honest to God, you know, crime thriller. It cites and, you know, annotates the crime thrillers that it's based on, you know, the lockroom mysteries, the hollow body problem that he's basing it on. And it also does something that everyone's commented on. So this isn't like great critical acumen to say this. But like it sidelines Daniel Craig for a long time. And instead you have Josh O'Connor, who I hear, people are very, very. into.

It's so funny as you get on the train now. Yeah, we've been here for years. No, no, no. I mean,

and I haven't seen Kelly's movie yet, the mastermind for here he's great in too. You're going to love it. I'm so excited. I haven't seen that. Shocking.

You're going to love it out. Kelly Wrightgart's movie is good. He's fantastic in this movie. In Knives Out. I think he's the only one of the three after Anad de Aramis and Janel Monet even compared to them where I'm like, you can hinge this movie on this guy.

It's his movie. Oh, that's exciting. He's terrific. He's terrific. That's good news for us. We haven't not been hyping up Wake Up Dead Man too much. I think the glass onion, we were a little mixed on it as well.

It deflated us a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's a good one. So two movies that have gotten, I would say what ultimately emerged as mixed positive reactions, but maybe more on the mixed side, have been the smashing machine and Frankenstein. Which I saw back to back. Okay. I waited in a long line for a public screening of Frankenstein, emerged, went back in the to the same line for a long,

a long line for public screening of Smashing Machine and then went home. So they're very much joined in my memory. Which one do you want to talk about first? Because with Smashing Machine, I think I liked that a little bit more than Amanda did. I have a little bit more grounding in the storytelling and in the rock. With Frankenstein, I think we

both were let down by that movie. However, the reception out of Toronto, where Del Toro won second prize for the audience award and the warmth that is felt for him in the city, I think kind of lifted the spirits of a movie that didn't really play super well at Venice or Telly Ride. So what do you want to talk about first? Well, he's an honorary

Torontoan, Del Toro. You know, he was given the key to the city this summer. That's not a figure of speech. I mean, literally the key to the city. He's driven economy, you know, filmmaking economy towards Toronto for a long time, whether his movies are set here or not, you know, in the shape of water. There's a big scene set at the Lakeview Diner where, you know, we've all, we've all been there. you know, late night or whatever else. So I feel like the home turf advantage for him is real. And I also think the rhetoric around the movie is hard to resist, which is him saying he's wanted to make Frankenstein for a long time.

You know, this is what he said almost every time he's asked. I want to make this movie for a long time. To me, that's the problem with the film is he's always wanted to make Frankenstein. And he kind of has so many times that by the time he gets right down to it, it's pretty literal. And I found it pretty frictionless. and there's something about the inverse tension between how beautiful the production design is, but how unoriginal the images feel to me.

It's like meticulous, but like weirdly kind of unimaginative. And I think all this CG, especially as it blends into things like the production design and the monster design, makes it feel kind of weightless. I mean, I'm on the record as not being a massive fan of this filmmaker who is very easy to be a fan of. So I'm trying to not be too in the other direction being like, I don't like his movie, so I'm predisposed against this one. I mean, that's the flip side of auturism, right? There's people who speak to you and you're excited and there's people who you don't like

and you're almost skeptical in advance. I think Jacob Allorty's good. I think he's well cast. We agreed on that as well. You know, his performance is great. His performance is great. But there is something about it that is just stillborn to me. It's a frictionless movie.

I don't know if you guys were quite as down on it as that, but I just, I wasn't, I wasn't feeling it and I was feeling it at great length, you know? I'm probably the biggest del Toro fan out of the three of us, but I thought that that was incisive what you said, which is that he's just explored this particular anxiety of what makes a man versus a monster in many other films. And it's fantastic that he was so inspired by the Shelley novel, but it just felt like he was kind of iterating

and iterating on a stage that maybe he was not suited to somehow, which seems odd because it is the movie he's been wanting to make forever. but, like, he has used CGI wonderfully in movies before. But Cigrim looks phenomenal. It's, it's, it's, effects work is fantastic. In this movie, it is,

I found it to be off-putting and quite strange. I mean, I was stuck on it in the movie and couldn't really get past the way that it looked and the, um, the conflict between the very meticulous, quote-unquote handmade,

I mean, actually handmade production design and then all the stuff that is clearly from a computer and I, just like, what are we doing? Yeah, yeah, that stuff wasn't great. I think that it, but it did seem like it, the movie, you know, for the next three months got back on track, so to speak, at the festival, which is interesting. Like when you look at, when you dissect what the effect is of a movie playing multiple festivals over multiple periods of time, sometimes it can be a disaster and a movie can be DOA out of its premiere and sometimes it can kind of shift the narrative.

The Smashing Machine is kind of an inversion of that right now where it feels like it got, I would say, mild, warm reception upon its premiere at Venice. And then Benny Safdi won the Silver Line for directing after Venice. But then I got the sense that not as many people were as high on it in Toronto. You know, what was your make? What did you make of that movie? I mean, I would agree in that the general attitude,

among people I talked to was kind of mixed, not negative and certainly not like, you know, just like, no, it's not like people just like, we are not having this. But it's a movie that, and it's impossible to not talk about the Safdi's work together. And there's sort of this built-in narrative of the reach making their solo feature to be. And we're going to be recirculating this endlessly, especially once people get a look at Marty Supreme. So let's just try and stay away from that. I think in a weird way, the documentary qualities of the film, which is stuff that the Safeties are very good at. I love their non-fiction films or their hybrid fiction films.

I love Lenny Cook, which I think this is the closest of anything in their filmography to. In a way, the documentary makes it redundant because there's already a documentary about this. So the replication of like scenes and mannerisms and speech patterns and even like, you know, images from the documentary, it does beg the question of why other than that you can do it. But I would say is I think Dwayne Johnson in this movie is better than like, Oscar hype criticism. I think it's a real performance from the inside out.

But the reality of his performance exposes how phony I found once performance, not because she's not a good actress. She's a terrific actress, but she's playing nothing. Again, I was so angry, you know, like, oh, the difficult wife. I mean... Yeah, I mean, she's replicating something in the dock,

which is, but why, I guess, is the question. Replicating something in the dock, but why. And to me, it's very obviously a displaced buddy movie because the real relationship is the one in the film between Mark Kerr and the other guy, his fellow fighter, who never quite line up, you know, and it becomes very much about these two fighters who we keep thinking are going to meet and the friendship is going to be threatened. I mean, I'm going to spoil the film, but then how do you spoil reality, right? If this were a more fictionalized version of that story, that's what would have happened. They would have ultimately met in some magical showdown, but that isn't the kind of movie that Benny wanted to make.

It's a really interesting movie. I'm with you completely on The Rock. I mean, it is the kind of thing I've been waiting for him to do for a really long time. And he has been narrativeizing that and he's trying to win an Academy Award by using that narrative. But it was evident 20, 30 years ago

that he had a very particular performance style and charisma that could allow him to transform despite having that body and that presence. And he does in the movie. Yeah, I mean, I'm less moved than I would want to be by his claims that he wants to take acting seriously because a lot of the, not just the specific movies, but the kinds of movies that he's pushed for

in some of his other capacities they're just like a blight. It's not just that they're a bad movie. They're just like a cultural blight that he's been a driving engine of. So this whole is like come to the light moment where now it's like, oh, you know, I've been prevented

from exercise in my craft because I love some of his very early performances in Southland Tales and Pain and Gaines. So I don't believe he doesn't know the difference between a real movie and a not. That's always been my issue. I know he knows what's good because he took some chances on interesting filmmakers

because he has taste. And that's what's been so frustrating about him for the last 12 years. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, credit where it's due. I don't know how my friend knows this. I'm not going to say who it was or I didn't press them. One of my friends said,

they've never seen a better performance of someone trying to act like they are not on opioids. They're like the scenes where he's just clearly trying to be like nothing's going on and just sitting and staring there undergo. They're like, that's the most authentic version of that I've ever seen. And I said, good tip. and moved on. Hamnet?

So we have to... Did you see it? I did. Okay. So we have to talk about it. I haven't seen it yet. So don't spoil anything for Amanda, even though it's a novel that she's read.

Yeah. Amanda, have you read the book? I have. I read it before I had children. So I felt like that was a positive decision for me. Okay. I think you're seeing it very soon, right? Yeah, I got to email them about that.

But anyway. It is... It's the hot movie right now. It won the audience award at Toronto, which after the brief life of Chuck intermission in terms of awards prognostication, I think it's pretty safe to say Hamnet is one of the two or three hottest titles

in the Best Picture Race right now. Chloe Zhao adapting, is it Maggie O'Farrell's novel? Yes. And I saw it before Telluride, actually. And I would say it worked on me, but I wasn't over the moon for it. I liked it quite a bit. I particularly liked Jesse Buckley in the film.

And it feels like it exists for that performance in a lot of ways. Very much so. What did you think? I'm writing at length on this movie for a different publication. I'm happy I'm going to get to write about it in print, not that writing on the internet doesn't matter. Of course it does. But, you know, this is going to be a movie that I'll be very interested to read

what happens outside of festival bubble. I tweeted the other day something mean, which is that it deserves the people's choice award at Tiff as much as, you know, three billboards and Green Book and Jojo Rabbit and all these other movies that live in our cultural memory as great masterpieces, you know. It's pretty much right with them for me.

But I was also interested in questions of going with and resisting a film because I'm being very honest. I felt myself resisting this film and you have to ask yourself, Is this something in you and your attitude about a director, you know, a material, or is it sort of something in the movie? Since becoming a parent, I have become a giant, and this is eight years now, Leah's almost nine, I become a giant pushover for anything pertaining to kids, kids in peril, you know, whatever else. I felt not a thing during this movie, which is not sociopathy, I hope.

It's recognizing the difference for me between my experience of parenting before a tragedy, let's say. And the way this movie shows family life before the hammer of history comes down on these characters. I didn't feel that they, even though it's a period piece and it's stylized and it's Shakespeare's life, like we know all this, I didn't feel anything real was happening. So then the grief of it and the trauma and the power of it did very little for me. And then the movie Rally is because Hamlet's a pretty good play. So if you, you know, you give yourself over to Hamlet at the end, you're going to get some kind of effect out of that. And if it sounds like I'm choosing my words carefully, it's because on some level,

I suspect the movie is much worse than I am describing it as. I'm just trying to give it some benefit of the doubt and figure out what my issue is. Yeah, it's a really interesting reaction that you've had and you're not the first person to share this with me. I was texting with a relatively prominent person yesterday,

not to sound like a complete D-bag, but what this person said to me was very funny, which is that all of his filmmaker friends hate this movie and all of his critic friends love it. Love it. And I am curious to see how that shakes out. That actually is quite relevant to the Academy Awards race, but it's gotten relatively rapturous reviews,

but at Telluride, there were probably five or six people that I spoke to who really had the same reaction that you did, which is like, this did not work on me. And I was in fact allergic to what it was trying to accomplish. But the way you described the ending for me, that did happen to me like it rallied hard for me and I found the first hour of the movie kind of a slog

and then it did eventually just kind of wrap its arms around me and I gave myself over to it so I'm very curious to hear what you think and I don't think it's going to be divisive per se but there will be a vocal minority that does not believe in this and it'll be interesting to see as we talk about it for the next six

months how that plays out well and again we narrativeize everything at film festivals you know there was this idea with this movie in Telly Ride and being here, you know, it was presented with such a flourish by the festival. It's put in the biggest possible theater and, you know, the grandest possible introduction and Chloe Zhao did the same breathing exercise thing. And Intelliorei that you hear that she did and tellurite people are mad at people for not enjoying that. You know, some of us have a schedule is delaying the movie. It couldn't get to something else. But I was, I was thinking that this

is a movie about like going off to write. I'm with you, Adam. I mean, I mean, Pod guy. Yes, he's back. I don't want to breathe with other people. You know, that's me time. We're all breathing with each other every day on this earth. But it's a movie about basically telling your partner, I can't come home because I have to write, right? What's more relatable than that? Well, in that sense, it was the ultimate movie of TIF for me.

Because at this point, I've gotten not being a deadbeat down to a science, but having a festival on home turf exert certain pressures. You get a text from home and it's like, I can't sit through, you know, this movie because I might have to pick somebody. up. So in that sense, I was watching Hamlet, I was like, he's just like me, except he's going to try and write Hamlet or whatever, and I'm texting about, I'm tweeting about Hamlet, you know? But I will say this about Buckley. She is an actress who in films prior to this, even movies I haven't totally liked. I've never really felt hit a false note. I'm very

in the tank for this actress. And then in this movie, which almost seems, if not designed to winner an award, it probably will, although I want to talk about another lead performance in the festival but I liked more. And I wasn't feeling her. I know that's not sophisticated criticism, but I just was not. Damn. That's all I have to say to that.

I haven't seen it. Damn. Are you talking about a testament of Anne Lee? I am. Okay. I'd like to talk about it. I saw it at Venice. So what do you make of this movie?

Let's try to operate the same way we operated with Hemming. You can give the broad outlines detail-wise and share your feelings because this is now, this is essentially this and Marty Super Bowl. Primer. Now, kind of one and two at the top of my list for the rest of the year for what I want to see. Oh, Sean. Oh, Sean hasn't seen this. That's fun. Good. Yay. So the testament of Anne Lee is the new film directed by Mona Fastfold and co-written by Fastfold and Brady Corbe. They have the brutalist fame. Stars Amanda Seifred. And is about the founding of the Shaker religious movement in the late 1700s. So I won't spoil anything more except to say that I

went in having a, I admire the filmmakers. I don't always jive with what they are going for, which, you know, as Adam, you were saying earlier, that is that a me problem? Is that a, you know, a film problem? It's good to be aware of these things. And I, it does feature singing, which I didn't know going in. And can be a real hit and miss with me personally. You know, people just start singing and I can get quite alarmed. I was really taken with it. I thought it was really strange and interesting and working with a lot of the same ideas as the brutalist, but maybe in ways that to me are more fully realized or at least contained within the, they're achieved within the movie more wholly. I also really liked the amazing performance. I will say I think I saw the first press screening at Venice

and I saw more Italian people walking out of this movie than anyone else. So another one that is, which that's a problem with old Italian people. But maybe a movie that will be kind of black licorish for some people. But I really liked it. I just, I'm a big fan, especially in festival season when there's a budget, of movies that are threatening to fall on their face at any time, like that are really kind of taking a risk. And this is like an episode of drunk history with, you know,

Oh, Brother, where are thou dietic songs? And it's so close to either parody or self-parity. I have this thing where it's often a compliment for me if a movie feels like it almost could be directed by David Wayne, you know? Right. This movie has that quality, but it pushes through the other side of it and becomes to me quite beguiling. and strange. And I actually felt some of the emotions dealing with parenthood and loss more acutely in this movie in passing than I did in Hamnet, which it's a somewhat similar movie to in the sense of how is someone channeling their trauma. In this case, not necessarily into artwork, but into this kind of abstinence first religious movement where this is supposedly, I mean, it's not a authentic movie. It's not about verisimilitude. It is a, you know, a brother were a thou style folk musical. But this idea,

that this whole movement was founded out of just absolute grief over the loss of these children where it's like, you know, the only way to be close to God is to take sex out of the equation because the potential attendant loss is too much. And one other thing that I think is handled better in this, but we won't spoil it. No, we, we won't spoil it. And I agree with you, it is handled better in this. I know Sean and I had our long chat about what works and what doesn't about the brutalist. And I still stand by that. This movie doesn't improve. or disimprove the brutalist for me. But I kind of like her half of the filmmaking family. I think the just by virtue of not being so macho, the cult of personality stuff and this is more interesting. Like, you know, it is a movie about cults of personality. They're obsessed with this clearly, collectively.

I found this to be pretty, for lack of a better word, it's very fun. It is, which is weird to say about... It's weird to say. I mean, this is a movie about a... the founding of a religious movement in the late 1700s. Like, you know, line everybody up, I'm sure. Like, what a bar.

But it is, it is fun. Notably still does not have distribution, which I'm quite fascinated by. It's getting late in the day if it's going to be a film that comes out in 2025. I know, theater kid energy for the win with this. It's true. And I normally am so allergic to that. And it really did win me over. Yeah.

And say Freed is, I mean, she's just, I mean, what an actress generally. Yeah. You know, I think she's great and everything. I thought she was wonderful in this. Is there anything else you want to touch on that you saw that was of note? Well, also speaking of theater kid energy, my favorite screening experience was Maddie's secret, the genre of film, which, you know, is the only movie that not a single person I spoke to didn't enjoy. It's a very hard movie to explain, which has been I don't want to try, but, you know, the short version is, I tweeted, I think, wet hot May December, you know, a movie that has the kind of like ensemble, comedy vibes of a David Wayne movie, but the stylization and thematics of a Todd Haynes movie, particularly the Todd Haynes, not just of May December, but like of superstar, the Karen Carpenter story, which is a big influence on this, because this is sort of a, I hesitate to call it a parody or a pastiche. It's not mocking it in a bad way, but of after-school specials or TV movies of the week. In this case, it's a dishwasher at a big food content influencer company who becomes an on-screen star. And this weighs on her personal.

life and whether she wants to have a kid and certainly it reactivates the psychological issue she has related to food and she's played in john early called it not a drag performance but she's you know she's she's played in a wig by by john early the you know the co-writer director of the film and it's a beautiful performance fully realized character the whole movie is in quotes but the whole movie is sincere when it does get online there's a scene of connor o'malley who runs the food influencer company saying something like, let's make content, which I think should just become our stand and answer to everything.

That's a goat right there, Connor O'Malley. Well, this is it. People were like on the first night, there were other things. Like, why are you going to Maddie's Secret? And I'm like, this is like Cape Burlant and Connor O'Malley. These are the people I want to see it. Yeah. Yeah. I give a shit about whoever else has a gal. These people are brilliant. It's a brilliant cast and the tonal

control and the formal control of it for a movie that was made very cheaply. They talked about like filming it in John Early's house. You know, it's the same team that produced Rap World, which is a great film. Amazing movie, yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's really good. And I think it was one of those movies that felt organically, like everyone on the ground went to see it and enjoyed it. A lot of people I know were there for the premiere.

And then over the course of the festival, I saw people adding it to their website, Tiffer, which is this website that helps you share schedules. And I saw people I know logging it on letterbox. Yeah, it's a separate use site that lets you schedule it and see what your friends are doing. It's very helpful, also to know what to avoid, you know. Tiffer. Tiffer. So, yeah, Maddie's Secret, really, really, really good. Great Rex.

What are the big, did any huge, I mean, no other choice. Did you get out to that? I did. And I was underwhelmed. It's one of those movies where, what do you mean, no kidding? It's okay. The filmmaker's great, but I found it tedious, you know? It's like one of those, it's too long, almost when every shot is

perfect what hits you know this guy he's a he's a master filmmaker and in this case i'd be like and because i just you know the material the donna westlake material is very pulpy and this is not pulp exactly it's like operatic pulp i'm going to try and write about it at at some point i know people liked it a lot i would not begrudge anybody enjoying it it's not like it's badly made i did like it um but i you know i i do think that it it's it's two and a half hours and you can you can feel when it hits two hours and things get a little loosey-goosey. On the flip side, there are a couple of set pieces that were very exciting. Yeah, I mean, look, he has, he's, he has juice as a filmmaker, but this is not a surprise.

And I'm shocked that it didn't win anything in Venice because formally it's obviously, you know, very, you know, very impressive. It won the International People's Choice Award this year, which is, that's, is that a new thing that Tiff is doing? It is a new thing. So many wonderful awards at TIF. We're getting into the danger zone of asking me what I think about Tiff and its awards this year, which could make for a very long, contentious podcast. Suffice it to say, it was probably always going to be the movie that won that award because he's a very commercially oriented, you know, quote-unquote, foreign language filmmaker. And as for the other stuff, I mean, you either talk about it or you don't. There were some real controversies on the ground with TIF this year. I don't

know how much they intersect with the listenership of an American podcast or how much it really matters, you know, but there was there were programming decisions that were the stuff of much scrutiny and media explanation, you know, on the ground pertaining to this documentary, you know, the the road between us by Barry Averich, which in it, it could only have ended this way that after being programmed, deprogrammed, reprogrammed, reprogram, under extremely contentious, you know, controversial circumstances with a fortified premiere and, you know, unbelievable levels of online scrutiny and protests. It then went and won the People's Choice Award for Best Documentary, which is, like,

in a grim way, the funniest possible outcome. You know, this is going to, this is one of those chapters in TIF's history that I think will be more legible and interesting in retrospect. And if you chose to not navigate the festival being mindful of that, then you don't notice it's happening because as far as the actual movie goes who gives a shit but the stories were quite thick on the ground is that obscuring it too much to say all that or it's i mean that's the thing is that these festivals which if you do not attend seem like ivory tower experiences were only the most blessed people get to walk into them it's like these are all made by regular people doing their

best and making mistakes on a regular basis. And they're very, um, the narrative and the feeling changes every day based on what movie has played or what person has been allowed to participate in the party. And so I'm not surprised to hear you said. Also, you know, it's such an important event to Toronto, but there's no denying that Tiff has fallen back a couple of steps to some of the other major festivals. Like it just in terms of the hierarchy of what films premiere there, like it's clear that it's happened in the last 10 years. And that narrative is both, like, true because it's a narrative, and then if you take it apart, sometimes it's not a fair narrative or the way that people think movies get invited or programmed or whose choice it is. I mean, it's not really the way it works. And you guys know this, right? But this year's the 50th anniversary of the festival. And it was funny, they show these pre-film bumpers, which if you ever attend the festival once or twice, you laugh. And then by the 10th or 11th time, you want to drill to extract the evil spirits from your head because you're just so sick of it. But they had the one, the ad for the volunteers, who deserve applause every year. They're great, which is like, I think the punchline is like, stop trying to make

TIFT happen because it's the TIF 50 and that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that portmante word. And, and the joke is that, you know, in the end, you know, Tifty turns out to be a good nickname. But it was almost like TIF itself stopped trying to make Tifty happen because some of the press about, you know, this idea of programming and who was taking responsibility for inviting this particular film, which was invited and then disinvited and then re-invited and their interviews having to clarify the reasons for this, it curdles things a little bit on the ground to the point where some filmmakers, you know, were even mentioning it from the stage where local press and Twitter are definitely talking about it. Like, it sort of supersedes the question of like, hey, remember

when the Big Chill premiered here 40 years ago? Like, that's what they wanted the feeling to be. And that just sort of became hard when reality comes and sweeps in and and intrudes. And I mean, if anything, I think we're going to start seeing this more and more. More, as we saw it at the Emmys last night or, you know, various, you know, red carpet speeches. I mean, that was starting to pierce that tiff bubble of everything's fine, you know, while having massive respect for programmers at the festival who I work with and being lucky enough to cover it, it did not feel like all was fine. And that's why if you choose to just put your head down and see movies and navigate it, that's a valid reaction. And if you're covering it or if you're on the ground living in the city, you can feel it. It's not something I'm imposing.

It's something that was felt by all kinds of people I spoke to, filmmakers, visitors. Maybe not in the criterion line, but yeah, a lot. Yeah, I mean, just to put a cap on that in general, I think the criterion experience and that community that you were describing earlier is for many people, a respite from what seems like a very, very chaotic and scary period of time in the world. And I certainly have been using movies for the last decade as a, a rejoinder or rejection or shelter from a lot of those things

but especially if you're a film festival that is inviting international cinema the works of art are going to be about what's happening in the world and you're going to have to contend with them and confront them and so it's a paradox right because you want to escape but that's not using art to not escape as one of the great things about art

can I ask Amanda something because I've not been I've been to Venice the city I've done like, you know, the don't look now tour of Venice, but I've not, I've not been to the festival. You wear a raincoat? Yeah. Are there, yeah, I keep wanting my daughter to dress up in a red raincoat for Halloween and my wife's like, that's a bad idea. I'm like, it's funny. It's a bit.

Were there people at the movies, Amanda, like regular people? Yes, there are. And if anything, I would say that this year was a little oversubscribed in terms of the number of people who were there on a sort of. small island in a city that has some infrastructural challenges, if you will, trying to get into the movie. So it was hard to see movies. And I was not able to see everything that I wanted to see. Venice does it slightly differently where everything is ticketed.

And then you can kind of stand in a line last minute to try to get in if people don't show up. But so it was more that it was difficult to get tickets than it was just to be standing in line for hours. and hours. But people are there. And I met young people, like, young listeners of the podcast who, you know, one was traveling for, he had like a scholarship before college. And so used the money to go to the festival and other people. Did they ask what Sean was like? No. No, they just asked for a selfie on a water bus, which was sort of tricky from a balance perspective, but we got it done. This message is brought to you by Apple Pay. Forget your watch.

wallet, it's all good because with Apple Pay, you can pay with a simple tap of your iPhone, the wallet you never forget, millions of places worldwide, including websites, apps, and anywhere you see the contactless symbol. Security is built in with face ID, so you don't have to worry about your cards getting lost or stolen. And the best part, you still earn the card rewards, points, and cashback you love. So say goodbye to the buyfold, add your card to Apple wallet, and start paying the Apple way. Terms apply. Adam, thank you for great work as always covering the festival. The Oh, thank you for having me.

The good news is that there's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie coming soon, so you'll be back on the pod very soon, which we're excited about. Yeah, one podcast after another. I look forward to it. There it is. That's how we live every day. All right, let's go to our chat with Chris Ryan now. Okay, CR is here.

And he's here because an unusual thing happened, which is a movie phenomenon struck. and I picked my head up and my two pod bros were not here. You guys were on the East Coast. You were alone in the classroom. I was alone and I was the Alex Lilly of the big picture

when weapons came out. And I did my best and I had a really fun conversation of Zach Greger about the movie but the streets needed to know well they needed to know what CR thought but now the streets need to know what Amanda thinks too.

I think personal against you but you know you're not a horror expert. This was one of the horror sensations of the year. year. So we're going to talk a little bit about weapons and a little bit about the conjuring last rights, which is also going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, because that's just how things are going in Hollywood right now. But CR. Yeah. Zach Kreger's weapons. What did you think of the movie?

Loved it. Loved it. Seen it twice. The second time it went from like four stars to five stars for me, I think. It really, like, knowing where it's going and knowing how long each of the sections last, I think, is just like, it kind of settles your, your loser brain while you're watching it and you're just sort of enjoying every little piece. And, you know, the second time I went with my wife and she was like, let me know when I can pee. And I was like, you can't. Because I actually can't pick a point

where you should be absent for one of these sections. And each time, like, I kept thinking like, oh, because she could kind of like, no, this is the Marcus section. This is where Gladys reveals and all this stuff. So I think that to have something that's such a huge movie and so deeply entertaining, and satisfying. That's also like something you can pick over and something you can wonder about

how to interpret and think about all the different ideas in it. But also it's just an incredibly satisfying movie experience is a really, really big reward. Amanda, the last time we talked about a Zach Kreger movie on this podcast. I had a concussion. Yes, you've damaged your skull because you walked into a piece of furniture. It was my first day back from leave after So my first day at work after having a child, a pretty emotional, disorienting thing, and then I did, in fact, walk into a pole. Yes, and you were rewarded after that with a scene-by-scene description of Zach Kreger's barbarian from Chris and I.

This time around, you saw the movie. I did. Even though you saw the trailer, it's in the McCona and said, I will never be seeing that movie. Right. But you didn't suspect that it would become as big as it has become, right? That was what you had said earlier this week. No, I knew it was going to be a thing. because Barbarian was a sensation and you both were so excited for it, you know?

And because of the presentation, the reason that I wasn't going to see it because it was like about a bunch of kids disappearing, and that's a pretty tender topic at any given time. So... Because you are hiding children? Not Drake. Poor glass. But it wasn't because I didn't expect it to...

to do well. But I still, I think we all were kind of like, wow, 43 million or something around there the very first weekend. That was a big deal. Especially in August for a movie like that to pop. So there's two places to go in this, well, first of all, what did you think? Oh, I liked it a lot. You did? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I really, I liked it very much. I thought it was strange and also compulsively watchable. I want to like talk about what it's about. and also it's resolutions. But, yeah, no, this is quite good. I get it.

It is really, even though it has supernatural elements, and we're going to spoil the movie all the way through here, even though it has supernatural elements, like it is basically a suspense thriller for the first hour and a half. I mean, like I was thinking on my Tchamalan, but like more pinned down. Yes, yes. Sort of. It is, I agree with you. But then it goes into some outlandish.

places in interesting ways. The other reason that I think the movie is kind of demanding some conversation is, is like it is also potentially an awards movie this year, which is not something I ever would have guessed. Even when I saw it at first, I never really entertained that. And then the way that it has picked up in the culture, it's now available on VOD so people can watch it. But I think it is among the highest grossing original

horror movies of all time. And I think it is actually in the top 30 highest grossing horror movies of all time. which is just fascinating when you think about the origins of this movie, which is that it's a movie written from like a place of vulnerability after Craigers' close friend passed away and just trying to get something out that is related to the feeling that he had around that and then find a way to turn it into movie form and then manage to create this bidding war for the movie with the studios

and that being the studio that it landed at is the same studio that launched sinners this year. And so it becomes part of this bigger conversation about what's going on in this genre. but before we get into that I have no one to blame but myself for this but I pointed out that some frustration with critics who were asking the question what is this movie about or it is not really about anything

and you know that's my mistake for being on social media but I do want to have that conversation with you guys because we've now had over a month to like witness the movie and it's you know residual discourse. Oh, has it been good, the discourse?

No, it's been very divisive. That was sarcastic. I don't think the discourse has been bad. I don't think it's been bad. Like, I don't think it's not like, it's not toxic. It's just that there's a, there's certainly a strain of people who don't like the movie who think the movie is like thin or doesn't really decide on what it wants to be about. And then there are other people who are like, how many movies do you watch a year? Like, no movies feel like this. Right. Yeah. So for you, Chris, like, what was your takeaway in terms of what you thought this movie was about? It hadn't occurred to me

that it had to be about anything. You know, I mean, I don't necessarily think that's a requirement of a movie to be both great and about something. I don't really know what Pulp Fiction's about. I don't really know what and what's eyes wide shut about.

You know, like a lot of stuff, but like not explicitly at the end of the movie. You're like, now I understand. Yes. I'm not comparing weapons to either of those movies in terms of... You think it's much better than that. I think clearly, like we should just start cinema history over again, AD, B, C.

Let's delete the other films that came before. Yeah, let's delete all the other pods we've ever done. But I do think that there are some pretty obvious ideas. I think the thing that people are having a hard time with is this movie is meant to be interpreted but perhaps not solved. And because it happens in a genre that people often are either given a third act that explains like, well, there was a farmer here before.

and he killed his family and their demons have been haunting this house the entire time because there's not like a really tidy explanation for why is Gladys doing this

or how is she doing it and you know why are these people susceptible but some other people aren't and what the fuck is with the gun because there's not a tidy explanation I think people are like kind of grasping at straws

and we're being like he doesn't know and so how dare he like hint at this that or the other thing without having like a a suitable explanation yeah I saw that is like a little bit of a hangover effect of

10 years of post kind of post Ariaster Jordan Peel horror where those guys made films that had a lot of subtext and thematic meaning and that they were often very definitively about ideas and then a lot of kind of

imitators that came in their path that then got identified as elevated horror each film had to have like a central thesis for being. Often one that the characters themselves would explain. Yeah. And this movie obviously doesn't do that. Even though it explains some things, when you were watching it, did you find yourself like hunting for theme or were you just watching it as a thrill ride?

Well, I definitely was like, hmm, what's that gun about? You know, but not in like, but as it was reasonable question as it was happening, I was like, well, that seems like a very large assault weapon, just floating in the sky. But then, but, and that was also, I was trying to figure out, like, this is a mirror how, you know, that was very much in a like, I'm trying to, I am trying to solve whatever is going on like the characters in the movie and like you know my dumb brain based on this movie and then what you told me about weapons when I had a head injury barbarian oh oh that's right that's right you still have that injury unfortunately yeah sorry CTE is real yeah I was as the Gladys stuff starts coming together I was kind of like

okay, so older maternal figures, interesting depictions across two movies. And perhaps, you know, maybe we could investigate that slightly. I was like, hmm, what should I take from this? But that's really all, and I didn't, you know, I wasn't suddenly like, okay, well, so Zach Greger is saying that all women over the age of 40 are bad or something. You know, I wasn't, I was just kind of, I noticed that, but that's as far as it went. Yeah. There's definitely some something to that, to the, you know, the hag figure. But then there's also like, I think the movie, I think Barbarian weirdly has a lot of empathy for its monster and its monster as a victim in that movie. This is different. In this movie, the monster is the monster. Yeah. And there's no confusion about that. You asked whether I was looking and thinking about themes. And I was like, hmm, I see this. But that's as far as it went. Otherwise, I really was trying to figure out like, okay, what's happening. And to Chris's point, you know, I had to keep watching. I watched this on VOD, but I was locked in. I did not look at my phone because you could not.

Yeah. You don't want to miss anything. Exactly. And the story moves quickly, and you do want to understand, at least plot-wise, what's going on. I feel like it is potentially about a great many things. And at least being suggesting, to me, the grief element was that was the thing that popped out to me the most. It wasn't this idea of like, it's this movie about school shootings. That was something that people jumped to right away because

of the disappearance of kids in an empty classroom and then the image of the A.R. 15 over the house when Brolin is searching for his child. And the title. And the title, certainly. But to me, it was the confusion and the depression that engulfs people

when you lose someone. Like, that that is really the driving force of the movie's idea for me. And to me, even if it is not the most deftly explored version of that idea. I was like, that's more than enough for a movie to be about. And I think that's something that movies generally,

but specifically horror movies, have often explored. It's like a common anxiety or fear or malady. So there's something wrong with my child, right? And then it's like, what if your child was Pizzou? You know, like, that is what the horror movie comes in and is like, I can't, as a community, And look, like, it's obvious that, I wonder whether Craigor is now, like, it's awesome that I have everybody spinning out about this AR-15, or if he's like, if I had just taken the AR-15 out, like, there would be no kind of, like, what the fuck, like, what does this really mean?

But if you take it at face value, you're like, well, this is a movie where a bunch of children disappear and then an automatic weapon is floating around in the night sky, so it's an allegory about a community dealing with the loss of children after a mass shooting. If it is that, that's totally fine with me. It's also like, how would you deal with that? And what if, what would you need for there to be to deal with this kind of situation? And what you would need is a monster. You would need a witch. You would need something to explain it. Explain why this happened.

And possession and turning good people into bad people and that there's something out there that's doing that rather than maybe something inside of them. So I think I find that awesome to think about. also coming out of like there's good needle drops and Austin Abrams is very funny in this movie you know? Right. Yeah. It's funny my reaction to

I think that's very smart and is in line to maybe not my frustration but as a non-horror you know habitual at some point when it's clear like the literal explanation in the movie is like

a supernatural thing and I always am just like well I I always feel slightly disappointed by that just because I don't like really seek out horror movies for the gore and so then the only other aspect of it and often in Hormey is like a supernatural or else someone has just lost their mind

and the explanation is like never quite good enough for what's going on in the movie which is maybe itself something like profound about life but I think that it's, I don't think that I was looking for an answer or for a lesson. Like a lesson from it, but that at some point, like the structure of, the reason that I don't always seek out horror movies is because like some sort of like supernatural, like metaphorical thing that like sort of solves it, like doesn't really never, quite speaks to me in the way that I guess other movies just dealing with actual real life things. So I think I'm on your side even though like I felt like I like I agree with you

even though I like I bumped up against the lack of the answer. But that's just because I think the form and the and the horror movie asks the questions but maybe doesn't totally provide answers. Yeah. I think in this movie that that conversation has two tracks. One track is goes down a road of questions about Aunt Gladys and how she works and what she's actually getting by trapping these kids and is it keeping her younger? Is it making her more young?

How old is she? Where did she come from? Is she actually this woman's great aunt in the movie she represents herself to the principal as her sister? There's a lot of unexplained kind of hidden information around the Amy Madigan character.

So that's one thing. And then the other thing is, to your point that's like a little bit more broad, I think you would agree with this for the most part, but for most horror movies, the first hour is usually more satisfying than the second hour. And this is a movie with a relentless first hour where you are just like, good God, I'm inside this. They have like completely wrapped me around their finger of the unraveling of this story.

And the second hour, there is an answer about what's happening. Some people may not like the answer, and that's okay. That's just, that's movies, right? It's subjective. But the answer not being something hard-coded into what it means seems to be what is bothering some people about it. Whereas for me, it did the thing that I think a lot of great horror movies do, which is that you get an answer, right? We find out what's happening. Dan Gladys we actually find out with a lot of movie left that there's a witch and this witch has trapped these kids and that she's using them to stay alive.

and she's kind of like got this town under control but the resolution of the story which is this unbelievable breathtaking moment where you know Alex wraps and snaps the twig and the chase sequence is the most incredible thing I've ever yeah which is just like pure pop

cinema joy and it's shot for maximum laughs yes it's so fun the lawnmower it's like Colin Brothers making an exorcist movie it's fucking awesome And mirrors, like, the opening, like, montage of all the children running away through the night, which I found, like, to be very memorable and upsetting. So, no, it's great stuff. But so then you get to the end and you're like, that was really satisfying.

Or at least that's how I felt. But I didn't feel like I needed to kind of unpack those additional details that were otherwise unexplained because I'm like, this is a super natural horror movie. He does a lot of things that are really interesting in terms of the narrative organization of the movie, not only because of the chapter, kind of, like, not quite Roshaman where things are massively. different depending on who's watching them, but like you just get different pieces of information from different narrators and different POV characters. I thought it was striking to me. You're right

about the horror movie first acts or often where the audience sees themselves the most, because that's the scenarios. You've gone on vacation in the woods. You've been to a punk rock bar. You've been to you've had nights, I'm sure, where your kids just won't calm down, you know,

or whatever it is that the horror movie is picking at, the longer the horror movie goes in, the more it gets further away from the audience, I think, because it's like, well, now this guy's changed through them in the chainsaw. That's never happened to me. My car's broken down before, but I've never been chased by leather face.

I think that the interesting thing with the way this movie starts is the indescribable happens first. So the first thing we hear is that all these kids have disappeared. It's interesting, too, because they never. They also says they never come back. You know, uh, then

most of the beginning opening shots are from like following these people walking into rooms and following all of the like first justine shots are from behind yeah which is a very first person shooter trick to put you in the perspective of this person but it's happening after the tragedy so i think that almost lessens lessens the effect of it being like trauma porn you know what i mean it's almost becomes more of a fairy tale as it goes on that way i i zach my husband agreed to watch at least the first half with me which is pretty rare because he will not watch anything upsetting. And he was like, I heard

that it's not like scary, scary. It's more just upsetting. But I think, like, I think that's true. But the first hour, there aren't any kills. There's nothing really even, I guess there's some spooky stuff. There's three big jump scares in the movie that all feature

and Gladys. It's the two dreams in the basement. Yes. Yeah. And then I guess to some extent the moment in the woods where she's that's creepy. Right. Yeah. She's really a great. and shot, but particularly Justine seeing her in the light fixture in the ceiling and then

Brolin seeing her in the bed, or the two moments really where you're like, in a movie theater at the premiere, I was like, that was fucking scary. You know, like, it is using the James Wan like loud bang trick where when they show you the fright, you know, it's using a familiar trick. But when you don't know anything about Aunt Gladys and you see that in a loud, in a quiet, dark movie theater,

it was very effective. But the rest of the movie doesn't really care about that stuff at all. I mean, it really doesn't use any of those horror movie tools. Yeah. It's really kind of only interested in unfurling what it thinks is good about the story. I think there's also a lot of, like, am I supposed to laugh or be scared here? Like when Alex's mom comes out of the house with the scissors and walks up to the car and Justin's sleeping and you're like, is she going to kill Justin?

Is she going to kill herself? Like, what's going to happen? Well, when the back door opens, everybody in the theater was like, yeah it was really really good it's like that's like that moment that gets described by the great cinematographer William Fraker often talks about this scene Rosemary's baby where Plansky has him

moved the camera so that everybody has to crane their head around the door jam to see and he's like everybody in the theater at the premiere just like move their head to the right it's like little tricks like that are amazing there's one other idea that this did not occur to me but I love it as

something that this movie could be about which is just the way that older people just overlook what's going on with their kids and all kids and communities and that they don't really are not attentive enough. And also that Gladys represents an older generation that is

vampiring younger generations and using, like, siphoning their life force quite literally to stay in power. To sit on that, to sit in that three bedroom house. Yes. Yes. And that is, I thought,

a smart reading a cool way of thinking about the movie again I don't know if that's what something Craiger was thinking about specifically but you could you could feel that you could that interpretation makes a lot of sense to me I spent a lot of time trying to figure out parts of this movie and then I like let it go

where it was like what is it about the characters who Gladys basically like indoctrines over the course of the film that makes them vulnerable to her powers versus justine who I guess is really the one who is impenetrable, you know, and even though she gets her hair cut and everything,

she has never snapped into a sort of accolade of his glattices. And I couldn't really figure it out. There's something obviously childlike about Marcus the principal, who's like a Disney adult who's watching, like, eating kids food, basically, the entire movie. Seven hot dogs, you and Phoebe, could you do it? I think they cut them at half, so I bet. Do they?

They're pretty small hot dogs, aren't they? I thought there were seven full hot dogs on a tray. Yeah. I can't do sad. I honestly shouldn't. You should shoot two is like my living. It's a lot. Two is a lot.

How many hot dogs could you eat? I mean, three if like pressed two, you know? Cool. But I think that two is probably best. I did after the, when I saw it the second time and I was at the supermarket afterwards, hit up some pepperage farm for the first time in a long time. Nice. Because I got some Milano's.

Oh, yeah. Quality cookie. Mark is very inspirational, just like, it's about me, you know. Is there anything to, well, one other idea that's in the movie is about sobriety, which I thought was kind of interesting, which is that in the weapons font, we see the AA symbol, you know, the triangle inside of the circle. And, you know, we know that Aldenara Rake's character is in AA. We know that Justine reluctantly.

He's very reluctantly. Justine is a drinker. There's some... James is a myth addict. Yes, there's a drug addict who's trying to get money any way he can so they can get more drugs. Again, these are not like... They're details about characters that help you understand the world that they live in. It's not a thesis about addiction or recovery or any of those ideas, but it's there.

And it does, you know, is just... Justine's relationship to alcohol dictate whether or not she's susceptible to the witch or not. I don't, you know, I don't think there's any clear line of logic there, but it is the kind of thing that gets you thinking. And I think of fair criticism is like, that's messy to not clarify that, but I didn't ever felt that when I was watching. But then I read people and they're like, why is this not resolved or communicated more clearly?

Why she is the exception. And does, yeah. I, uh, I, uh, I like the. idea that all the characters in the movie you know as we join them what is it a month after it's happened right something like that is like when it starts have moved into even though the the dominating thing that should be shrouding this town and darkness is this disappearance of all these kids they're moving into their own shit you know and justine is kind of both at once like trying to clear her name and become a detective and get to the bottom of it but is also having like

this sort of narcissistic moment of being like everybody is against me. Everybody thinks I'm a witch. I mean, to me, the biggest plot hole is, ma'am, leave the town, you know? But I understand it's a classic horror movie. Like, don't go down there. But like, don't go to the meeting. Well, one explanation I think for that is that she's already been like let go from one job as a teacher. And if she leaves another one, then she might have trouble getting a third job.

That was my interpretation. of it and that if she's kind of like I have to stay here to teach and then she gets put on leave. But I don't think she would be able to let it go though because I think she's somebody who's either like I'm on it. That's why she wants to talk to Alex. She's like we're the only ones left.

Or I'm drinking a giant glass of vodka and watching reality television and going to bed. Seems like a good teacher and the rest of her life is kind of a mess. Not full. Yeah. But as far as Paul and James goes it's interesting. I mean I guess Paul is making a

passing kind of gesture towards sobriety but clearly he seems like reluctant to go to a meeting when his fiance or his partner suggests that he does so and then James

in some ways is kind of like the most naked character but I don't know what did you make of the Austin Abrams character in this movie is he there for comic relief

is he there to have like to move plot along I mean a bit of both I think he's there to, like, represent a certain kind of, like, real-life concern in communities, you know, that, like, when you're looking for explanations for problems, you'd be like, it's the drug addict's fault, you know what I mean? And the way that cops would be distracted by your local junkie and not really getting to the bottom of gent bigger problems in communities is, is, son of a police officer over here, you know, like, there's something to that. There's something to the way that time is spent in law enforcement and whether or not it's adding up. to a greater good is like that's a provocative idea you know i don't know if he's fully exploring it it's another piece of the puzzle um in this magnolia by way of hereditary movie right that he's

constructed um aunt gladys let's talk about her so i told this story on the pot i when i saw the movie at the premiere craigar brought amy madigan on stage before the movie oh did you really and he said Now I'd like to introduce my dream come true, Amy Madigan. And I was like, Amy Madigan's in this movie? I was like, I haven't seen Amy Madigan in a movie in like 10 years. And when she came on stage and was the last person introduced and everybody was clapping, I was like, hmm. Seems like she's going on here. And, you know, you're an hour plus into the movie.

And I was like, where's Amy Madigan? Yeah. And then she shows up and she shows up and she's unrecognizable. And I think for most people, they won't recognize. the wife from Field of Dreams right away. You know, the woman who gives the, you know, profound speech about literature in the high school gymnasium. And I think this is just a crazy good horror movie villain performance.

Yeah. And she's very, very scary. And you immediately want to know more about what she's trying to do, which is the sign of a good villain in my mind. Like, what is the motivation? Where is it coming from? How does it work? Right.

All the tools. They do a pretty good job of explaining that, too. I mean, she's made up like a terrifying clown, which is, you know, very smart. And also just the colors are used very well in what is otherwise like a pretty muted. Yes. She's actually in, I didn't notice this the first time, but she's in the opening couple of minutes of the movie where there's a shot from behind Alex as he's given a Coke and they're interviewing. And then they do like a kind of like you can see the red. wig in like a quarter of the frame.

Her side. And I didn't notice that the first time around. It's interesting that she's only truly seen in that way by Alex, the kids, presumably, and Marcus, who is childlike in his own way. And like there's almost like this, she scares me because I'm a kid and this is how I imagine she looks kind of way. But when she's, like, later in the film, when she's like just wearing like her braid and is like drinking the, drinking the.

stews or whatever the fuck she's doing she looks so much different but like to these to these kids she looks like this grotesque kind of red-headed clown figure it's very very chilling now was it when I was in

Telleride I was talking about how supporting actresses a weird and possibly weak category this year and you can see him it's a it's a good story I like the idea of you like bellying up to a bar with nobody and just started talking about supporting You're talking to a bartender who's never seen a movie before.

I mean, this is who I am. This is what I do. But yeah, it's not the most robust category. Penny for your thoughts. This is, you know, her career is a very interesting one, and she's given a lot of great performances, and seems like someone who's very well liked. You know, I think a lot of people think of her, and they think of the not applauding Ilya Kazan moment at the Academy Awards with her husband, Ed Harris, because of the House

and American Activities testimony that he gave. and just being a very ethical and politically minded person. And, you know, she's done a lot of good work, but like I said, just, you know, Gone, Baby Gone, maybe is the last big movie that I remember her being in. I guess she was in Scott Cooper's Antler some years ago, but really it's like places in the heart, female perversions, field of dreams,

80s and 90s is really a sweet spot for her. I'm sure that she did. You would know that better than me. But now when you Google Amy Madigan, one of the first images you see is Aunt Gladys, you know what I mean? Like, this is going to end up becoming. One of the signature roles of her career.

For now, she seems to be having a blast of it. I'm really happy for her. I mean, she's really wonderful in this movie. Any, you think any other Oscar potential, having seen it now? I mean, it's very, it's very well made. It is upsetting to a lot of people. You know, below the line, I don't know. Something like this would have to have some, like, up top support in order to, I think.

really make it into some of the guild categories. And when is the last time a big budget horror movie was in the in, like in the best picture of conversation?

Probably get out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's like every 10 or 12 years. Yeah. Yeah, it could happen. I hope sinners in this are nominated for Best Picture. I think that would be really good. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the conundrums of this year and that a

campaign, Warner Brothers, I guess, announced DeLuca and Abdi announced that they would be mounting campaigns for sinners' weapons and one battle after another. And it's very hard for movie studios to campaign for more than two movies, let alone one movie. I would imagine

that weapons is the you know, the little sibling relative to those two because those two movies have big potential as Best Picture candidates and all that other stuff. You know, in a different year in a softer year, I think an original screenplay for weapons is not out of the realm of possibility.

It's now contending with sinners in that same category. You know what I mean? Where it's like, would they really nominate two horror movies for original screenplay from the same studio? Maybe they would. I don't really know, but that would be cool. I do think Amy Madigan has a good chance. Best picture I don't really see it, but I hope it happens.

It would be fun. It would be very fun. Craigor. So he's making a Resident Evil movie next, which is coming. out next year, starring Austin Abrams. I've never played Resident Evil, but I know that you have. Extensively, yeah.

What happens in Resident Evil? You are in a town. You play different characters in different versions of the game. I can't remember the name of the girl that you play as, but that's who Milo Jovovich plays in like all the Paul

W. Anderson movies. And then the town has been, like, had a chemical accident in a biological lab and the residents are all zombies. So in the game, it's just like a lot of like horror setups where you walk into a room and it's dark and then like all of a sudden I'm trimmed out of you. But you also have to solve a puzzle to get out of the room. So it's okay.

Pretty entertaining. I played it mostly early in my video game life. When I talked to Zach, I asked him about IP, making an IP movie. And he was like, this is not in the same way that you would think about it. Like this is an original story that just takes place in the world. He said he had never seen any of the Milo Giovovich movies But he's played the games But he said he loves the games

Yeah he worships the games To me this is the way This is the way If we have to make 80 million dollar video game adaptations Okay This is the way I don't know if the movie's gonna be good But it's like turn your IP over to someone

Who's like I have an idea for this I have my own vision Alex Garland is doing it with Eldon Ring If you Wallerbridge is doing it with Tomb Raider. Is that true? Is that officially happening? Sophie Turner. He's playing Laracroft. That's good casting. And Death Stranding, 824 is going to

adapt that game with, I think, Michael Sarnaski, who directed Pig and Acquiet Place Day 1. Mm-hmm. I pledged to get into video games. Oh, my God. Okay. On the ringerverse. You did? You want to play Eldon Ring?

I think it's like $100 to play. Yes. and your family and your screens. I don't know how I'm going to do it. Yeah. We're going to start with Fortnite. Oh, yeah. Really?

Yeah, because there's a one battle after another skin. And so we'll be playing it live. Are you serious? Yeah, we're doing that, yes. September 23rd, 1 p.m. Pacific, everybody. September 20, your calendar. Ring your YouTube channel. Put on your, you know, appointment of life.

So you're going to play Fortnite? Yeah. I mean, Jack explained it what it is to me, but I don't really remember. Okay. But, yes, I will be doing that. But that's the only video game that I will be playing. Okay. It's a real, if we have to do this, then okay.

And, like, I hope you guys have fun. If it's, because comic book movies didn't start out this way, where it was like, it's the realm of otors. And I wonder how long this era will last. But while it's happening, I'm happy about it. But I'm a little bit like this for you. The way I feel about Greta Gerwig doing Barbie and then Narnia. And it's like, what if instead Greta Gerwig and Zach Kregor just made their own movies?

I did. I mean, I said almost exactly that to Zach. And he was like, don't worry, my next thing is original. I've already written it. And I'm really excited about it. And it's a sci-fi movie. And he also said that another movie that he's very excited about that he wrote took place in Gotham. He didn't say that to me, but he did say that.

He did say that. Yeah. I mean, that's fine. People should do whatever they want. I suppose. I don't really want to watch video game movies, just like I don't really want to play video games, but that's fine.

They're making Devil Weir's Prada too and, you know, Wuthering Heights with Charlie X, X, X. So I'll just be in my corner and you be in yours. My corner is in the Conjuring House. So it's still the same house? No, well. We're in Pittsburgh now. Ed and Lorraine, it's the same house.

They're still storing all of the evil objects. Explicably keeping all the demonic possessed objects from the previous conjuring movies in their own home. So they relocated them to a new... They've always been in Connecticut and they have like a basement of like... Okay, but so they still live there? Yes. But this movie is not about them? Yes, no, this is about them.

This is apparently... So why did you say it's a different house? It's a different haunted house. The house that they are de-haunting is different. They live in the same home, but there's a new family that is haunted. In each of the Conjuring films, it's a new family or a new group of people. that are haunted. And Ed and Lorraine Warren,

who are paranormal psychologists, need to go explore and solve and defeat the evil force that has taken over this family. The Conjuring Last Rights is the new movie, reportedly the final movie in the Conjuring franchise is 0% chance of that happening. It's the ninth Conjuring movie, if you can believe that, nine?

Along with all the Annabelle's and the nuns. The Curse of Lawyrona, two Nunn movies, to three Annabelle movies and four Conjuring. And this one draws heavily from Annabelle 2. Okay. Maybe this is the 10th, actually. Is Lai Yarona part of The Conjuring? Yeah.

Okay, so there have been 10, I guess. Directed by Michael Chavez, who's directed a few of these. Story by James Wan, who came up with the Conjuring franchise. Although it sounds like this will be his last one. It sure does, thanks to some reporting from Matt Bellany. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are back. Vera Fermiger, her neckline gets higher and higher every movie.

Yes. The Wikipedia page does not include La Yerona. Okay. And a list of... So maybe it's not officially a part of it. I'm not an expert. I'm just... That is a Chavez movie.

I did not see why Yerona. You didn't see it. I didn't see it. Because... Ed and Lorraine, their daughter is growing up in this movie. She's a teenager. Judy.

Okay. Judy is experiencing some of the same visions that Lorraine experiences. Intrusive psychic sensitivities. Tough break. She's haunted. She's just mentioning. She's seen no signs of this.

We've seen no signs of this before. It's been with her since she came into this world. A really rough birth for Judy. Yeah. Where a demon was present. Demon was present. Not the power out. Is born still born.

And yet Lorraine praise her back to life with prayer. Doctors is like, it's out of my hands. And that Lorraine just keeps saying, Heavenly Father. This movie Last Rites, I don't know whether I had a head injury

for the other conjuring movies, but this feels like a particularly like pious film. A faithful film. Yeah, kind of. Like,

it was like a little bit more like, I don't know, like trad wafy than I was expecting. It's very slow. It's like a two hour and 15 minute movie.

And I would say like the first 90 minutes are, just kind of like, will Ed and Lorraine take this final case or not? So it's a long time getting to the place where you know we are getting that. Are they not taking it because...

It's got bad ticker. Oh, it's not that they're worried about their daughter. I think Lorraine is starting to worry about that, but she's not technically a ghostbuster. It's Lorraine and Ed are still like, that's the family business, Judy. I don't even know what Judy does for work. Judy's, she met a guy.

Yeah. And he wants to marry her. But she's a teenager. No, she's 20s or something. Yeah, she's in her 20s. Okay. and it's also in 1986 you know yeah okay so she wants to get married but she's starting to feel literally ghostly hands on her shoulder okay uh ed can't eat lasagna anymore nope incredibly bad beat his diet has been completely yeah he's going to like red tablecloth italian places and being like can i get like chicken on the salad yeah it's dressing on the side so that's really not ideal and um you know lorraine she's a little kooky i would say lorraine she's she's a little

eccentric. Okay. She has encountered several demons face to face. Okay. This is something that is a part of her life. She, I don't, I don't know if Vera Farminga is just a weird gal, but the energy, she brings a great energy to these movies, a very believable energy. Yes.

But I choose to believe that this is how she really is. Okay. She's pretty consistently, if you've seen Bates Motel, you know, if you've seen The Departed, if you've seen running scared the Paul Walker vehicle she's always a little haunted to me I guess so

yeah but that's part of the charm yeah and Tessa Formiga is her sister yes Tisa yeah but she's like 20 years younger than her I thought this movie's pretty bad oh that's right no spoilers

I'm on episode 3 gotcha is she on Guilted age yeah another Gladys yes her name is Gladys Yeah.

Yeah. What do you think of the name, Gladys? It wasn't on my list, and this weapons is sort of like a maybe a setback if it gets some international. Okay, but I think it's a nice name. There is a world where you could say Aunt Gladys is actually Gladys from Gilded Age. Just she keeps replenishing herself. Incredible take. These are both Warner's properties.

Yeah, there we go. This is going to be great news for Paramount. It would be dope if the last shot of Gilded Age ever is just Aunt Gladys, like, popping up on a train. I mean, the Ankladis prequel is rights itself. Conjuring Last Rites Not very good, and it is incredibly successful. It opened

to $80 million over the weekend, which is the third highest horror movie opening of all time. First of all, movies are back. Have you guys heard about this? Yeah, we have. Yeah. You know. $83 million over

in the September weekend? It's breaking us off with hit after hit. Yeah. Seven consecutive $40 million openings for the studio. Good for them. And will one battle after another to make $40 million? God, I hope so. They're working hard.

They're working really, really hard. This will air on Monday. On a month. Okay. The 15th. Well, they're pushing all the premium formats pretty hard. All of that's sold out, at least in Los Angeles. They're selling it as an action movie pretty much.

Have your tickets? Going with him to the city walk. Oh, I guess I'm not going, huh? Once are you going to see it? No, it's a good point. It's a good point. Tough break for me, though. If anyone listening has a spare Wednesday night ticket to one battle after another,

I'll buy it off of you. Yes, it will. I believe in Leo. And Leo is pounding the pavement. Leo is out here. He is leaving Oasis early, but he is talking to people. I know. Sorry about that.

Yeah. That's his fist bumped. Inadermly, that was beautiful. I was just last rates real quick. So Conjuring movies, I go for two reasons. Jump scares and production design. Like, you know, they do a nice job where, like, you know, the second one is my favorite. Well, that's why I asked about the house.

Yeah. I was a nice house until the, you know, all the demon stuff. Well, the second one is in England. The second one is beautiful. It's set in the 70s and it's kind of like, you know, in a cold town. The first two were both, I think, very good. Yes. And then, you know, I actually, if I remember.

remember, I think I like one of the nuns. I'm not a big fan of the nuns. But this one, it just takes way too long to get going, and there are 17 characters, and you're, like, expected to care about any of them. You just don't. Like, there's eight people in the haunted house.

Let me ask you a question. Are you scared of mirrors? No. I mean, I, like, I don't need that many around. What if your in-laws gave you a very heavy wood-carry, mirror with three creepy babies carved into them.

Well, my mother is actually going to try to do this at some point. Like, I think maybe the fact that I live in Los Angeles and she lives in Atlanta has like smoothed this out. But like I definitely slept in some like great aunts, you know, tiny wood carved bed. And there are like definitely angels card and it has like a matching. And one day your mom's going to be like your bed is ready? Yeah, she's going to be like, when are you going to pick this up? Like, when is it for you?

And it's really very, very creepy and it has a mirror. But it's not like an old-timey mirror. Okay. Well, there's a lot of... I would say that the scares don't really work in this movie. So there's a new creepy doll

named Susie who does some cool shit, but it's kind of like they play the same note over and over. This mirror is a portal to demon land. And then Annabelle makes an appearance. Spoilers. She does. But as like five nights from Freddie,

the doll. You know, like, big Annabelle shows up. You know, this is probably not landing for you. Is Annabelle the one that claps or is that the Babadook or what's going on? You know? Gilbert, our friend Gilbert Cruz, used to do that to me in the office of New York Magazine, like 15 years ago. That's the only reference I have. Which one is it?

That's not Annabelle. Who is it? Is it the Babadook have the clap? It's Babadook. I think that the problem with this one is that they just never get like a really scary thing. I guess it's like scaryish when Judy is possessed sort of, but. Yeah, there's a. There are spoilers for the conjuring last rights.

I know we were trying to preserve. I really wasn't, but, and I don't care that much. It's been out for two weeks at this point. There is a family that has been murdered in this house or in this mirror. Smurls. The smurls. Yeah. That's S-M-U-R-Ls.

Yeah. Family of eight intergenerational four daughters. Yes. That is being haunted. Yeah. But then the family. that has been murdered is like a farmer and his

mother and his wife. They're living on what used to be farmland that was who is in the mirror the mirror. The mirror is a farmer and his wife

and his wife's mother. Okay and so then the family of eight just have the mirror. They just have the mirror in the house. The mirror is brought like the mirror is brought into the home because the mother-in-law

buys it at a swap meet. as a confirmation present for the oldest daughter. Haunted Swap Meat is a really good idea for a movie where all the objects of the swamp meat

are haunted. That would be good. Let's do that. It would be called devil's flee. Yeah. And there's like a guy who's like,

all I do is so... No, it's devil's bargain. Oh, devil's bargain. Oh, yeah. There you go. And we follow a guy who's just trying to get cool hipster t-shirts

but instead is being chased by shaker furniture he accidentally buys an unopened box of 1987 tops baseball cards to swap me but the cards are haunted yeah oh and then they all come to kill him Kirby Pucket

hit him in that exactly right Ken Griffey's senior slashes his throat yeah Chris Sabo just slashing his head open last rights yeah wasn't that scary okay I'm sorry

it's okay I'm ready for them to that it's retire the warrens. We've also now far outpaced whatever, however legitimate or illegitimate, like we are now turning the warrens into like Joseph and Mary

bringing peace to the demon land. Like they are just like the Ghostbusters and like the media is like, oh, it's Ed and Lorraine are here. You know, and it's like we need to, they can retire. Ed's heart can't take it. Judy, I don't know. Do you want to see more conjuring movies

with Judy and Tony? Not really. Is there like me at Tomlinson played Judy? She was fine, I thought. Pat Wilson. What a run. Scream King. Truly.

What a run for this guy. You know, he figures prominently in another film coming out this fall. I'm very excited to talk about it. He's great. And when he shows up, it's very, very exciting. It's a great, great sequence in that movie, which we want to swear. He is married to Carolina from Succession. He certainly is.

She is in this new Jewelaw, Jason Bateman show. fun great to see her back on interesting that's a television show you say it's a black rabbit rabbit black rabbit okay um yeah pat wilson I mean just a box office king hit after hit for the guy I hope he got to buy that brownstone in Brooklyn

for real I assure you he did you know yeah but that's I hope that's what he picked he got some profit participation he's done pretty well between conjuring and insidious yeah um that's it any closing thoughts Chris Warner Brothers I mean they did it What's the next best, most viable genre after horror right now in the theaters?

Most viable genre. The Warner Brothers story this year has been a story of elevating horror or playing to the cheap seats. Was Final Destination Bloodlines Warner? It was. Yeah. That's the new line. I mean kids movies? Yeah.

I think that's right. Movies for children. Bringing together. Yeah. And that's what weapons is. That's what I want to do. That's what's so beautiful about weapons, you know. It's a fairy tale for adults.

C.R., thank you very much. You're welcome. I want to say thank you to Adam Neiman for his work on this episode. Later this week, we have a 25 or 25 coming. Oh, that's right. No spoilers on that. And then after that, we have a very special. The curse of Lawyerona?

No curse of Lawyerona didn't make the list. Why is that? We'll probably talk about it a lot. Because you haven't seen that. And then after that, we have a physical. media extravaganza that Chris will be joining. Right. And that I will I'm going to send one submission

in absentia. If you buy if you buy, if you buy 24Ks before our recording on Monday, you are invited. I'm absolutely not going to do that. All right, well, then you're not invited. I need new boots. Okay, so that's my... That is the difference between me and you right there in a nutshell. You would rather

have hand-sown moccasins than 24Ks. Absolutely right. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. We'll see you later this week.