The Big Picture - The 2017 Movie Draft

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

We’re drafting again, and this time we’ve got a doozy of a year. Chris Ryan rejoins Sean and Amanda to select their favorites from one of the most memorable movie years in recent memory.  Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chef David Chang and the members of The Recipe Club sift through millions of search results to find the very best way to make the food you want to eat. Each week, they cook three recipes for the same dish, debate them, and ultimately declare the winning recipe. Check out Recipe Club on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the year 2017.

Yes, we are drafting again. It's the movie draft, 2017 edition, and CR is here. What up, CR? Hi, guys. Chris, do you like it when you're referred to strictly as CR, or do you think it's important that the listeners know it's Chris Ryan? No, it's fine. Christopher Patrick Ryan is joining us.

I feel like when it comes to the big picture, there's only one CR. Are there other famous CRs? Christopher Robin, right? Yeah. From Winnie the Pooh? Yeah, and you guys have a lot in common, right? Dude, I was sending Amanda some baby pictures of me

because she seems to get a kick out of long-haired child Chris. It was really long. They let it grow out. What did they know that we didn't? They were like, enjoy it while you can, brother. There's definitely some side character in Paddington Winnie

the Pooh story. They definitely dressed you like a small British child with a lot of like crew neck sweaters and like socks that kind of offset the color of the sweater

is very cute. Do you know anything about Winnie the Pooh, Chris? That's the bear who likes honey, right? Yeah. Do you know who

Christopher Robin is? He's kind of like the kid from Peter Pan who's like also like real shook off of his windows, right? He's just like, there's some magical stuff happening. I can't remember. This is why I asked. It's not like I have a full handle on what's up with Christopher Robin. I mean, he just has these imaginary friends, right? And it's like 100-acre wood, Sean?

Guys, every time you talk about this stuff stuff it's clear to me that you were both born like smoking a pack of palm oils sipping a whiskey reading don delillo novels were you never five years old what is wrong with you guys i mean i watched the cartoons and he's like i'm so rumbly in my tongue like i remember it and he doesn't wear pants you know like i know i know about woody the poo but I just like Christopher Robin. I don't know what his role is in the story besides like not having friends and needing to have imaginary friends. It sounds like you guys did not watch the 2018 film Christopher Robin from the Disney

Corporation. We'll have to save that for the 2018 draft. That was my number one pick coming out the gate. It's too bad. It's a nice film. Ewan McGregor, he plays the grown-up Christopher Robin. You don't remember this? I do, yeah.

But it was kind of weird, right? I liked it. There definitely were CGI Winnie the Pooh characters, though, frolicking through London, which was, that was strange. Nevertheless, 2017, we were oh so young back then, too. Maybe not quite young enough for Winnie the Pooh, but I don't know. Amanda, who were you in 2017? What were you doing? What do you think of when you think of that year? I honestly was just a person who saw a lot of movies. I think I've seen the

most movies of any draft year we've done in 2017. I guess I was just really in the zone. Also, let's just say it up top, one of the great movie years in recent memory. Like, I definitely think it's the best movie year of the last decade. Sean, I know that we kind of had a debate about it at the end of 2019. And you made the argument for 2019. This was the same podcast where we, like, yelled about Rise of Skywalker for a while. I remember it very vividly. And I was very angry that Kylo Ren and Rey kissed.

And I liked that little person, the little, what was his name? Grogu? Babu Frick. Yes, that guy. Thank you, Bobby. Christopher Robin. And then we argued about

what was the best movie of the decade. But for me, it's 2017. Was this the Palm Springs pod? Was this the like, it was over okay yeah right um so you landed on 17 and i said 19 yeah and chris what is what do you think is the best movie year of the decade have you given this any thought this is a real bill simmons prompt like i have not did not mention this to you and you have to answer right now i wouldn't be able to summon one up of the decade man i would probably looking at this list just in front of me it would be hard to beat this one uh it's worth noting that outside of the movies this was this is just a fucking awful year like this is just like true it's just an absolutely awful awful awful time to be alive and uh yeah

like i i just needed my memory jogged a little bit. So I was just like typed 2017 into Google and looked at the Wikipedia page for this year. It was terrible, man. American Carnage, just like in your face. Yeah. Well, thanks for that segue. Appreciate being able to spin out of that combo. I'm grateful that it is no longer 2017, but I am grateful that we had 2017. Obviously, the three of us were working together and quite hard at The Ringer. And so also we were all working on culture stuff. So we were seeing a lot of these movies together.

It is pretty mind-blowing though, Amanda, when you look at the list of movies. And movies that clearly have survived the last four years and have retained their power or have grown a kind of cult around them. Some of that stuff is franchise stuff. And some of that stuff is totally individual singularly made beautiful work. And in both cases, the work is good. You know,

there's really good franchise stuff and there's really good, um, Oh, tour driven stuff too. And, you know, I, I guess,

how do you, how do you like land on the fact that this is a great year? Is it just, Is it just luck? Is it just the timing of the production service that happened over this period? Was there something in the air that led to this? I don't think it's like a Trump thing at all that really led to this because we were at the beginning of something. So I don't know, Chris, does anything account for this being such a good year? I think sometimes the stars just align. So like my long list here, like often in these drafts, I'll have some just completely wacky bullshit that I pull out of like, nobody saw this, but a video on demand that I watched in 2014. That's not the case this year. Like my entire list is just movies that everybody saw and liked. And that's just so rare. I mean, and also you just had a certain level of quality and I think playfulness, not even playfulness, there was risk-taking in those big movies. And I don't even want to step on any of the conversations we'll have about some of them,

but across the board, I think you just saw from a Marvel movie to a war movie to a comedy to a horror movie, it was just like, let's push the envelope a little bit. Yeah, I agree. Amanda, what do you think? What do you think accounts for the bounty we have here? I mean, again, I agree with Chris that there's some years you just get lucky. But in this year, you get lucky in all quadrants. Like we do six categories here in the draft and I have something for everyone.

Well, almost everyone. There is the animated and foreign film category. Chris, you and I will be on a journey together. And that's okay. That's the fun of the movie draft. I think I'm going to lose on that alone. Right. Well, me too, but it's okay. But there are comedies and horror films, and there are blockbusters that could fit into comedy or drama that, you know, everything is like really movable. I don't have a strategy for this draft in the way that I normally do, which makes me very nervous. I think it's a really order dependent draft in a lot of ways, but I could be wrong.

But that, I mean, that makes me very, very anxious. But also that speaks to just the variety of the year, which is exciting. Do you guys have a most beloved or cherished movie going memory from this year? Absolutely. See, I almost felt like the opposite. I couldn't really think of one where I was like, this one stands alone because everything seemed so good so consistently. Chris, what sticks out for you? It's definitely seeing Dunkirk. It's definitely Dunkirk on the biggest screen possible. I want to say it was Cineramidome, but I can't remember's it's definitely dunkirk on um on the biggest screen

possible i want to say it was in a ramadome but i can't remember but it was dunkirk and you guys went to the one where you got free hats and i went to like a two hour earlier screening and i didn't get a hat we had dunkirk merch yeah and uh yeah i mean like that movie is is exactly the kind of movie you're supposed to see in a theater it It is sit in the dark. It is have your head chopped off by it. It was so great. But it was one of like half a dozen that I remember being like, oh, this is awesome to see this with people. Get out. Awesome to see with people. Amanda, what about you? Anything memorable? I saw every superhero movie this year with chris chris's wife phoebe just like me and phoebe trying to driving to pasadena to see logan which like why did we do

that we did that and the reason we went to the pasadena arla at rip and saw logan together and then we went to houston's so like it worked out for us the real reason we went was to get to go to houston's but i also saw Wonder Woman with Phoebe, just like a great Phoebe time. Both of us seeing movies that like really we don't care about, even though obviously I do love Wonder Woman. And then a tremendous number of movies

seen alone this year. Just like once again, I remember all of them and it's just like me alone seeing The Lost City of Z, me alone seeing Phantom Thread, me alone seeing Beauty and the Beast for like no reason at 3 p.m. and realizing I still remember all of the words. But that's okay.

That is the magic of going to the movies. All I remember about Lost City of Z is being the Morris Day to Sean's prince as like he toured across the country introducing James Gray at various Lost City of z screenings and always being like yeah sean astor that shit is great yeah i did talk to james quite a bit during the release of the lost city of z which of course is a a movie that i i i love i really love this is also uh lost city of z for what it's worth i think like when we did 16 a couple people were like how did you not how could you not mention this? You know, another one of these

like very fluid release date movies. Yeah, things are a little, are even more confusing than ever in terms of how to do this. I did my best in terms of the list that I share with you guys about what is a proper 2017 release. I think Lost City of Z

was like meant to be late 16, but then got pushed into 17 for wide release. We'll do our best there. Let meant to be late 16, but then got pushed into 17 for wide release. We'll do our best there. Let's talk quickly about the Oscars from this year, because even though this was an absolutely unbelievable movie year, the Oscars kind of Oscared in a pretty big way this year. These were the nominees for best picture. For those of you who forgot, The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Half of those nominees are incredible. The other half are pretty forgettable. The winner being Shape of Water, which I think kind of falls somewhere in between. I think it is like certainly- That's diplomatic. I was gonna say, cue Sean being like, actually, it's a very surprising choice for the Oscars.

Well, it's all about proportion, right? It's not as exciting as Lady Bird or Get Out would have been, but it's better than Three Billboards or The Post would have been. I think we can all agree on that. So yeah, not ideal. Best Director, Gamal Del Toro, of course, for Shape of Water. Best Actress, Frances McDormand for Three Billboards. Best Supporting Actor, Sam Rockwell for three billboards. Best Supporting Actress, Allison Janney for I, Tonya. Hmm. That's okay. I don't know. None of those really inspire much excitement.

Was this for you guys? Because you were obviously doing the award show by then, right? Was this the steepest drop from anticipation and excitement about the race to, oh, this is who won? Or was it pretty sealed up like who was going to win by the time you guys went into Oscar night? Alice and Janney was, right? So you may recall that this was before Amanda and I were doing the Oscar show. It was actually the last year that after the show, me and you and Andy and Amanda all got together and did a video. We were all together. The four of us were doing it

together okay and that was I believe that was the inaugural you guys don't realize the shape of water actually is a weird Oscar best picture winner that was when I first broke out that take um but but that was after you picked get out and got it wrong thanks for reminding me amanda no problem i was i was working i was working hard on trying to keep things interesting but to your point choosing get out was considered foolhardy in the moment and foolhardy in the aftermath because it seemed pretty clear that shape of water was going to win right amanda that's what that was the narrative at the time yes and i mean we really just needed to have something to get excited about because it was like pretty locked up certainly Certainly the acting categories were totally locked up. Once again, Winston Churchill wins best actor. But thank you again to Winston Churchill. What a year for Churchill. Yeah. you know, we do enter like the Oscar race and get excited about it because like we like the movies

and there were so many other films that we were so excited about this year that we were just kind of like, well, I guess our angle is going to be just like to not believe this. And then it happened and we were like, oh, okay, it happened. Yeah. I don't really mess with that angle anymore. Not something I'm interested in. That's a, that's CR energy though, to just be like, get out best picture. I'm just willing Dunkirk to the Oscar yeah um the box office looked a little bit different than the Oscars obviously the last Jedi was the biggest movie of the year though also perhaps the most controversial movie of that year other movies that did well at the box office Beauty and the Beast never saw it sorry about that uh Wonder Woman Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle CR's favorite movie of the year Guardians of the

Galaxy volume 2 Spider-Man Homecoming it Thor Ragnarok despicable me three shout out to amanda and the minions and of course justice league which uh you guys remember justice league i do it's worth noting since we've spent so much of our uh mid-adult lives talking about these movies is that last jedi and justice league became such flashpoints for the fan debate, like the fan power debate and the, if you build it, they will come kind of idea that you can just correct the artistic vision of a bunch of filmmakers and writers by just being like, no, that's not how it should be. It should be this other way. And then eventually Hollywood will probably be like, yeah, probably right. Do you think that that has evolved at all since getting the Snyder

cut? Do you think that there is a sense that this is how things will be going forward? Because obviously Last Jedi, I think had the kind of the inverse effect. There seemed to be this hope that like if they could satisfy everyone, it would all work out well. And then we got Rise of Skywalker and that film sucked. So Snyder cut though, it does seem like the people who wanted it, got it and were happy. Well, by now I think the issue, the thing is,

is that you can just, everybody can have like their own TV show. So if you want the kind of like rugged sort of like vaguely PG 13 version of star Wars, there's like Mandalorian. If you want the more sunny version, maybe the movies will be like that. If you want something that's like deep,

deep lore, you've got the animated series. Amanda, what, amanda what what what will you be campaigning for what kind of fan content are you excited about none i mean no it's because there is this element of like you get what you want and then there's there's a movie that is coming out that we're going to talk about soon that i'm like completely baffled by because on paper, it has like a lot of things that I'm interested in and I have no idea who it's for. And I am just like, why is this happening? But to some extent, fans are never happy. That's the definition of a fan culture at this point is being like, OK, we got all of

this, but it's not quite like this and not how I imagined it. And what if I could ask for this other thing? It's the questing that that is as much what fan culture is. So and but Chris is right. A lot of it starts here. I spent a lot of time just now trying to remember. So Justice League is the one that they remade into the Snyder Cut. It's the one Joss Whedon did. I can't keep all of the things together at this point. It's a lot of proper nouns and they just keep moving them. And then they added the and I watch all of them and it's all very dark. And like the only thing i remember is the force majeure pregnancy joke which wasn't really so so that's what i'm taking with me from that experience of 2017 um but i did re-watch the last jedi before this and i'm interested to talk

about yeah um okay perhaps we'll wait until someone selects it exactly yeah okay it sounds like you have some takes loaded up let me ask you guys real quick before we get into the draft how are you feeling about the draft you know we're inching ever closer to present day we obviously have a lot a long history of movies and movie years that we could analyze but you know should we put a halt on 18 19 20 to explore the past more deeply? How do you want to do this? Well, I mean, I think that we could start doing individual drafts. I know that you guys obviously do a lot of top fives and everything and you do Hall of Fame. So I wouldn't want to encroach on

various pieces of big picture IP in the process, especially- Don't last Jedi me, bro. I'm just a lowly executive producer of this show. So I don't really get to say- Not an actual title that Chris has on this program, but you know, I, part of the thing that's been fun about going back and doing these years, especially the ones 10 years in the past is that I feel like you really get to find out like what matters and what lasts, you know, and it's been kind of neat. You guys do so much talk about awards, but it's been sort of awesome to talk to you guys about the movies that you've actually identified that you love rather than

the ones that are being shot through the prism of awards season. Yeah. Sam Esmail just really pulled our pants down on that one a couple of weeks ago on the show. And now it's got me kind of rethinking about how I've devoted the last three years of my podcasting career and why I did any of that because none of this stuff this is and this year is a perfect example just based on that conversation we were just having about how much those Oscars don't at all represent what I think was such a meaningful year. Amanda what do you want to do with the draft in the future? I like going back I think also maybe we can start shaking up the categories which you know if we did a spy movies draft or whatever, like Chris suggested,

you would have to change the genre category, the categories anyway. But even beyond that, just, I wonder if we could even redraft some years with different categories. We could also redraft decades. We could make it a real blood sport. Wow. You know, we got one note, or we got this note from a lot of people actually about the Oscar winner's draft, which I thought was really smart, which was what we should have done potentially was once someone took a performance or a director from a certain movie,

that movie was off the board in full, which I thought was very smart too. And maybe we can apply that to future drafts as well. There's a lot to do. Let's just say for now, the next draft is 1975 the year 1975 one of the most historic movie years of all time also it's probably going to require a higher level of research for the three of us and for the listeners out there so if you're boning up i'll

share a link it'll give you a list of all the movies that are out there the top letterbox got you back yeah i'm here i'm still out here the top six are like six of all the movies that are out there. The top six. Letterboxd's got you back. Yeah, I'm here. I'm still out here. The top six are like six of the greatest movies you've ever heard of and everyone's seen them. After that, it's kind of interesting and a little bit more challenging. And the availability of some of those movies

is more dispersed. So that should be fun. But stick around for that. We'll do that next month. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we will start drafting. Okay, we're back. Bobby Wagner is here and he has a very important role in this draft, which is, as always, he will determine the draft order with some sort of mechanism that he has on his computer. Bobby, let's do this. It's just zeros and ones spinning a random wheel on a website called Wheel Decide.

It's a pun in the title. I don't know. The wheel spinning. First pick is Sean. I did not want that. Sean's on a five-game win streak, right? I'm on a five-game win streak. Like, it's hurting to him.

Going second. Amanda Dobbins that makes Chris third I feel like we get that outcome more often than not am I wrong I feel like that's been happening I think I've had third and fourth a couple of times recently yeah I haven't had the

the flip the double the snake the turn of the snake the turn in a long time so for those of you out there listening if this is your first movie draft welcome here are the rules we each select a movie from the year that we're discussing snake style there are six categories that we draft in these are the six categories drama comedy or horror block, which is a film that made $100 million or more at the domestic box office, animated and foreign language, sequel, and wildcard. So I have the first pick. I can't say that I necessarily gamed this out,

but I know by picking a movie, even if I get a tremendously great movie, I'm going to not have the chance to select four more great movies because four movies are going to get picked immediately after me. This is a challenge. I feel like the number one overall draft pick for this draft is Get Out. And so I'm going with Get Out. I'm going with Get Out for the comedy or horror category too, because that is a slightly more challenging category in this year. And what can you say about Get Out?

Has Get Out emerged as the most important movie of the last five years? I think there's a legitimate conversation around that. We talked about the social network being the best movie of the 2010s. We've had that conversation on a handful of podcasts. But it does kind of feel like Get Out signaled something profound in terms of mainstream moviegoing, not just the emergence of Jordan Peele, not just reviving a kind of social horror. But I think the idea that there was more to do in all of these genres, and I think we've seen not just the explosion of Blumhouse,

but the explosion of this kind of storytelling throughout Hollywood in the last five years, indicates that this was a genuinely game game changing kind of a movie um and a movie that probably should have won best picture nevertheless uh i'm i'm weirdly conflicted picking this film because i know that uh now this is the first time you post-picked vamped sorry i don't mean to eat up any of your time you're not you're not i'm just i'm watching you like like kind of chip away at your own confidence. It's a good, it's the right pick.

It is, I don't know if it's what I would have chosen in spot one, but I think it's like the smart, sensible, but it is pick, but it is also like the downside of being first because you need to take that one. And also, by the way, it's just great. I rewatched that, I guess, last week for our twist.

Just fantastic, enjoyable, smart movie that changed the industry in all the ways that Sean talked about and also just like kind of lives on in the culture. Like really sticky

and smart and fun. So you should be glad to have it. But also, yeah, you're going to get hosed. Okay, fair enough. That goes, that means we go to Chrisris you're number two right amanda you're number two i always forget you and i so i know what i'm gonna pick and i i have to do

it because i know chris will do it otherwise and um it's in comedy horror and i'm going with lady bird which is a comedy and i it means a lot to Chris which is why I have to take it away from him and I like I it's why I love Chris that it means a lot to him but if you had taken it from me like I just wouldn't have we wouldn't have been able to participate in the draft like it wouldn't have even have been fun like I wouldn't be like a good performer about it I would just be like a really sad take my ball and go home this is the um feature debut by Greta Gerwig and just one of my favorite films of the last decade. It is a coming of age story, sort of, but just a story about a bunch of people, not just Lady Bird, trying to figure things out. And it is funny and open-hearted and wry and just

perfect from beginning to end. If you have not rewatched it recently, do because it's completely delightful. And I'm glad to have it. I would have been mad otherwise. I'm glad those two movies went first because there was just a real feeling, especially once the Oscar race started, that I was like, what if this is the start of an amazing era of American movie making? And these are the kinds of movies that are like up for Oscars.

And these are the voices telling these stories. And it was just like this quick moment where I was like, holy shit, you know, and then shape of water one, but still, uh, and then green book one after that.

Yeah. I mean, obviously we've just went back and, you know, erased all their progress. So, well, Chris, it's your turn back and erased all our progress. Well, Chris, it's your turn to

progress through your picks. Sure. I will do Dunkirk for Blockbuster, and I will do Phantom Thread for Drama. God damn it. God damn it. Two of the best directors alive made movies in 2017.

Dunkirk is probably one of the most overwhelming physical experiences you can have in a movie theater. And Phantom Threat is one of the most overwhelming intellectual and emotional experiences you can have in a movie theater.

I guess these are probably two of the most discussed movies on this podcast over the last five years. But I would just say Dunkirk is actually a movie that I think gets better. The more times you watch it, you start to care less and less about the chronological trickery and you start

to just notice more and more little bits and pieces of the performances of which there are several really good ones. Pre Sator, Kenneth Branagh being notable in there. And then what else can we say about Phantom Thread? I, the only thing that I was like kind of wondering about was, I believe Phantom Thread is a comedy originated in this podcast in terms of like the genre designation it could have gotten.

And I think if I was really feeling like a playful, I would have done that. But ultimately, I think I'm going to go trad here and put it in its drama category. So Dunkirk and Phantom Threat. I mean, it's even more perfect because our category is comedy horror, which I think actually is

like what Phantom Threat is. That's the most appropriate. Yeah. And I was going to be cute and maybe flex it in there. But then it got taken. It is a fantastic movie and I wanted it.

And it also is a comedy, but I accept as a drama. I don't think you guys really know what's coming on the big picture this year. There's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie coming I wanted it. And it also is a comedy, but I accept it as a drama. I don't think you guys really know what's coming on the big picture this year. There's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie coming out this year. Do you realize that this, we're renaming this show

the Paul Thomas Anderson? Yeah, we're really aware. I just, I can't overstate. It's just so exciting. It's not even that. It's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie where you can like drive to the gas station where they shot it in the valley. You know, it's're gonna be able to reach out you're gonna do your own tour

like Sean's like soggy bottom extravaganza well you couldn't do that with the house of Woodcock you know like that's the thing he's returning to California after a brief respite in England um can I just very briefly mention an aside that appeared in Dave Itzkoff's profile of John Krasinski this week in the New York Times? This is one of my favorite things that's happened in publishing in the last week. So Itzkoff obviously profiled Krasinski because he's got A Quiet Place 2 coming very soon into theaters and there's a lot of anticipation around that movie. And the piece is very much about Krasinski's anxiety about the release of this movie. And at a certain point, Itzkoff writes, among the fellow filmmakers that Krasinski said he commiserated with during this period was his

friend, Paul Thomas Anderson, the elusive auteur. As Krasinski recalled one of their conversations, quote, he said, it's like you delivered a baby and then the doctor put it back inside and said, I'm not quite sure when this is going to come out. So obviously that is a phenomenal quote, but that is a quote that comes from Krasinski retelling the story. And then in parentheses, Itzcoff writes, through a representative, Anderson confirmed at least that he and Krasinski are friends who talk regularly. That's iconic. That's iconic that Anderson's representative would not confirm that quote. It's iconic that Itzco cough thought to fact check whether or not Paul Thomas Anderson and John Krasinski are even friends, which I guess I'm a little bit surprised by that,

though not completely. Just in general, the PTA industrial complex powers on. So I'm here in Philadelphia visiting my mom for the first time in quite a while. But when I visit my mom, I get to do two things I normally don't do, which is watch the national news on a major news network. So I watched the news with David Muir every night with my mom. And then she inevitably will watch one of the late night monologues. She always is like, well, let's watch Colbert's monologue first. So we watched some of Colbert last night and Krasinski was just like his first in-studio guest since last March. So Krasinski is just like sitting in this like small room with Colbert. And Colbert actually, like as he's like doing his opening bit with Krasinski's just sitting in this small room with Colbert. And Colbert, actually,

as he's doing his opening bit with Krasinski, is like, do you mind if I just describe what happens in the opening five minutes of this movie? And Krasinski's face just falls off where he's like, I have been dragging this fucking film up a mountain for basically two and a half years.

And now Stephen Colbert's's just gonna be like you know what's crazy about the first five minutes man like i gotta tell you without spoiling anything the first five minutes are really good yeah i don't think he wanted colbert to describe them yeah that's understandable yes oh dear okay so it was spoiled for you i think it's in the trailer a little bit but still yeah because i was trying not to spoil it for you earlier this week. I actually really did think about it, Chris, but now you've watched Colbert, so we can have a conversation later. Let me ask

you guys a question. So Phantom Thread was my favorite movie of 2017. Get Out was number two and Lady Bird was number three. That was my top three. Did I make a huge mistake by not taking Phantom Thread number one? No, I'm just glad you didn't go like true fantasy populist and pick something like like star wars like right first so that you would win the vote that's not how i do it chris i vote

with my heart always okay i'm i'm i'm i draft on you pick marvel movies every time i love marvel movies what's wrong with that i have no shame in that um amanda it's your turn to draft i am stuck here between i don't know whether i should be what chris just described and like preempt sean or whether i should go with my heart which would also preempt sean in a different way but then i'm trying to think about do i want to win or do i want to be myself and the reality is i want both uh but you know here on draft, they're often at odds. And even though at this point, like, I don't really think democracy is an action. Sean has, quote, won five times.

But like, what? According to people who like click a button on Twitter, I, you know, what is this? This feels like I feel like the CIA is behind this point. OK, so like the fucking Q shaman of this whole thing. What are you talking about? I just won. The numbers are online. It was a perfect election.

So I'm like, do I want to try to compete with that? Like history has shown us what happens. Or do I, you know, get at you a different way? At the end of the day I'm competing against Sean and what I'm going to do is you're competing against Chris too Amanda Amanda this is not about me I'm competing with

Chris well that explains why you guys keep getting your asses kicked because you keep trying to focus on me when it's about you know us the end of the day we still like each other and we're proud of what we've done I don't know whether you could say that for yourself well live long enough to see yourself become the villain i guess that's right but yeah all right here's the here's the reality so i have three options in every single

category except for sequel and i only have two options in sequel oh really and honestly I yeah because I hate a lot of the sequels and also I only remember what happens in one of them so I'm gonna go with the last Jedi in sequel and I'm gonna take it um but that was a lot of these sequels I like there's one that you guys love that I like I vividly remember walking out of the theater and being like I want to punch somebody and that's is that guardians too love that I like, I vividly remember walking out of the theater and being like, I want to punch somebody. And that's, is that guardians too? Yeah.

It's just, it's not for me. I don't think it's funny. I don't think it's cute. I think it encapsulates everything that I can't stand about that. Like Marvel fan. Like, what if we just need like,

no, thank you. Absolutely not. Last Jedi, very controversial movie that I enjoyed a lot. And I, I like what it does in terms of like honoring the Star Wars franchise, which, you know, I have actually seen and can enjoy on like the broad popular level.

That's I'm just like a normal person who saw Star Wars and was like, wow, they flew some spaceships, you know, and then I like went on with my life and didn't think about it very much. I understand that it upset the people who think about it a lot. And I like understand that it like confronts those people a little bit in certain points. And I really like all of that. I really enjoy the Kylo Ren and performance and just Adam, right. Adam driver in general. And I like what they do between Kylo Ren and Ray. It's zippy. It's, it's funny when I rewatched it, I was just like having a nice time at home. So I feel good about it. And also, I did see Logan with Chris's wife, but I don't remember what it's about.

He's like in a lab. That's all I remember. He's not in a lab. Not really. Don't they go to a lab? Briefly, yeah. Kind of. There's a set piece with the lab.

I know he's in a lab somewhere. There's like some high security thing. Well, this is why I picked The Last Jedi, okay? You guys couldn't even help me with that. But he's, like, Logan doesn't work at Pfizer, you know? But like, isn't he, wasn't he created? Logan ruined the Johnson & Johnson batch. No, it's more of a bunker.

It's more of a, there's a young girl who is also has the there are scientists in this movie there are for sure what are they sciencing they're they're trying to like clone logan right or clone like like super weapons in a lab i would guess right yeah they're juicing the kids okay they do a lot of different things in labs is all i'm saying i think i think you're a little confused, honestly. Amanda's definition of the lab is like how rappers talk about the studio. They're like, I'm just in the lab working. Yeah, Logan dropped some hot tracks.

I've never seen Logan, so I'm with you, Amanda. I don't know what's going on. It was very violent. It was. But Hugh Jackman was good and the claws were very long. And then we sat at the bar at Houston's and I had a chicken sandwich and it was awesome. Um,

Chris, did you like Logan? Dude, I love Logan. It's really good. Yeah. I mean, no one has even drafted it yet and who knows if it,

if it'll even get drafted, but I think it's pretty good. And I don't think, I mean, it is really violent and I know maybe a little bit extreme for you, Amanda, but I don't think it has a lot of the trappings of the comic book and franchise stuff that you hate.

That's true. It's like, it's not like sort of fantasy magical nonsense um it's yeah i think it's like a cool superhero movie also boyd holbrook's in it oh yeah uh do you want to talk about the holbrook news from last week chris this is your chance so nobody really commented on this i listened to the big picture very carefully and you guys refused to acknowledge this development in culture but boyd holbrook got cast in the next indiana jones movie yeah which is just like my coin hit like my boyd coin this is my second bitcoin joke of the week on big picture i don't care my boyd coin buy high because we're only going up baby you are the elon musk of boyd holbrooks boyd coin uh i you know who's he who's he playing in the indiana jones movie i think he's gonna be playing like a villain of some sort you know because i don't think that they're like i for some reason

don't think they're uh they're they're kind of making him the next indiana jones i don't think he's being groomed for that yeah i don't i don't think so either ch. I don't think he's being groomed for that. Yeah, I don't think so either, Chris. I don't think that's what's happening. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe James Mangold, the director of Logan and the director of the new Indiana Jones film is all in on Boyd just like you are, but we'll just have to wait and see.

But did you see Mads Mikkelsen is like, this script is awesome? Sure. Mads Mikkelsen is like like i'll show up and do whatever and then go work with vinterberg yes excuse me what do you know i mean he wouldn't say the script is good if it wasn't good that's true he does speak from the heart wouldn't it be great though if he was like i've read this script and it's a piece of shit but like what are they gonna do to him yeah no he i mean i mean he doesn't he's a

indiana jones paycheck is fat too we don't you don't down talk that sort of thing i i think it would be fantastic if the indie movie was good i think we all love indie um we got a big indie anniversary coming up this year everybody's got indie in their hearts harrison ford's like 98 years old he's still out there we through this movie just keep him on the ground until it's done so amanda had jedi right i had jedi and so i'm up i've got two picks um i think i've got to go a little bit more strategic here so one i i have to go animated foreign language and go coco um this is the the best animated movie of the year it's the best one of the best animated So one, I have to go animated foreign language and go Coco. This is the best animated movie of the year.

It's one of the best animated movies of the decade. A Pixar classic. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago with Charles and Rob on the show. And it's a very, very thin year for animated films. Not necessarily for foreign language film. There's a couple of really cool foreign language films that came out this it's a it's a surprisingly sparse collection of animated movies so i'll go coco there now that leaves me with drama blockbuster sequel and wild card so i think i will go in the sequel category with thor ragnarok. Now, Chris, you may mock me if you like for choosing Marvel movies, but I heard you on The Ringerverse with Mallory Rubin giving this movie a hearty shout out

and saying that you liked it quite a bit. I think for most discerning Marvel fans, this is the third or fourth best Marvel movie. Obviously, Taika Waititi's taste point of view, sense of humor was a perfect match for this. He also completely unlocked Chris Hemsworth in this role and frankly, like in the culture in a way that I think he probably needed. And it's a very fun, funny movie. It does have some of the magical elements that you don't like, Amanda, but I think has enough of a winking sense of humor about that stuff. Right. And it also has Cate Blanchett just going for it in a very fun way. And it also has like the Matt Damon cameo.

Is that right? It has the Matt Damon cameo, yeah. It's like in on the joke. Very much so. Really entertaining movie that like fits into the Marvel bigger storytelling but also completely stands on its own as an entertainment. So that will be my sequel pick, Thor Ragnarok.

So Amanda, we're back to you in drama I'll take The Lost City of Z which I really thought that you were going to take but I think we all three love this James Gray film adapted from David Grand novel about the search for a

city somewhere in the Amazon that may or may not exist. And it's, you know, it's a movie about, I guess, adventure explorer culture in the early 1900s in the UK and, and colonialism and, and class in the UK and all that stuff. But really it's about fantasy and dreams and ambition and what you lose when you,

uh, invest in, in the idea of something else and maybe also what you gain. Um, but a beautiful movie also just like a, a fantastic Robert Pattinson performance. And this is like when Robert Pattinson's like really getting weird, finding himself again,

he's just cooking and we love that. Um, and, and it stars Charlie Hunnam and also Tom Holland, Pattinson's like really getting weird, finding himself again. He's just cooking. And we love that. And, and it stars Charlie Hunnam and also Tom Holland, but a great Sienna Miller performance as well. That I just want to shout out because the, the woman in these movies doesn't usually get to do very much, even has very much to work with. And she's still like the woman at home,

but it thinks through that a bit more. And she really, she delivers. I honestly would do a Sienna Miller draft. I mean, same. Would you, Chris? Yeah. Tell us more. 21 Bridges, classic.

Burnt, another banger from Sienna. She's got like eight movies that were like, they're all named after the name of the female character and then they just disappeared there's like a movie called like sandra and it's just gone you know like nobody's seen it uh yeah lost the z so this is you know two of my 10 favorite movies of that year, you guys have taken, um, two filmmakers that I have a deep abiding emotional connection to, and I've, I've passed them over for Marvel and, uh, for Pixar. So shame on me, I guess. You got to let your light shine,

I guess. CR you're up. Um, I think for sequel, I'll go with Blade Runner 2049. There's a couple here that I think that ultimately, I really did think a lot about whether or not it would be this, whether it would be Logan, whether it would be a couple of the other sequels in here. And I just think that Blade Runner 2049 was sort of unfairly maligned when it came out. And then when you take a step back

and look at what he did with that movie, it's just kind of mind-blowing. When you look at the visuals that Villeneuve came up with, and I actually think that Leto's performance aside, and maybe Sextal and Adarmus aside, it's actually a really interesting movie. And I

thought it was just kind of an impossible task that they actually almost pulled off and in the process have just these mind-blowing visuals. So I'm going to go with Blade Runner 2049 for sequel. Any thoughts on that one? I'd like to revisit this movie before Dune. You know, Adam brought this up

when we were talking about Dave Bautista and his performance in Army of the Dead. And he has that incredibly memorable prologue sequence that he appears in with his tiny little glasses. I remember being blown away by the control of the movie and feeling completely uninvested in the story. Completely feeling very distant from what it was that he was trying to accomplish. And honestly, that was so different from Sicario and enemy and the Villeneuve films before that, which I thought were so engaging and kind of like swallowed you whole while

you, while you were watching them and Blade Runner 2049 felt very meticulous and in a way that was like a little distancing for me. So I, I'll have to rewatch it. Um, so I've done a drama. I did blockbuster and I did sequel correct that sounds right okay for

comedy horror i'm going with it okay um there's a lot there's some really good horror movies from this year uh i think it is obviously um the biggest i think but did it make more money than get out probably probably did? I think it did. Yeah. It was a global sensation. To me, it's like, it was just like a dynamite time in the movies. I really love going to these horror movies with my wife

and we both are big Stephen King fans. And so this was like, to kind of have something that was like this big of a deal and like to pull off Stephen King this well was really kind of a surprise. So in the same way where I was just kind of like, maybe Blade Runner didn't live up to expectations, but in retrospect has kind of exceeded them. It was like, I had very low expectations for it. I had no idea really who Andy Muschietti was. The kids in this movie wind up being very good, you know, and I just thought

they really grasped what made Stephen King special in this movie. So do you think that the enthusiasm and the sort of admiration for this movie has been diminished by a kind of milquetoast reception of part two? Absolutely. Because part one, I think we, I don't want to say we all, Amanda, I don't even know if you got a chance

to see this movie because I know it's not necessarily your bag. But like people were like, this movie is actually legitimately good. Yes. And like Chris actively was like, Amanda, you cannot see this movie because of these specific

scenes but normally chris doesn't go out of his way to be like amanda here are the reasons that you aren't allowed to see a horror movie or the reasons that you'll freak out and so you can kind of tell by the warning that i get from chris that it's like a sensation and it's a real thing it's really working for people so i haven't seen it but i know that there are a lot of like, you know, children hiding in gutters or other things, hiding in gutters, waiting to get children. And,

and it's scary and effective. Okay. So Chris, you've made your two picks. Amanda, we're back to you, right? We're back to me.

Okay. I'm going to try a thing here that I think should be allowed, but I don't know. Wait my god no it's just gonna be a genre thing right yeah well it's gonna it's so it's in animated foreign because i'm gonna try to solve this and it's molly's game um okja is a international co-production and i'll allow this so like i think it counts i when i did go back to rewatch it this week i was really moved by it and also it's like it is definitely half in english so i you know i present that up front and it stars tilda swinton and jake gyllenhaal and many other you, famous movie stars in addition to the Korean actors. But it is a Bong Joon-ho film. It was, I think, financed in turn, you know, co-production.

So I think it counts. And I really liked this movie at this time. I still really like it now. It's sort of Bong Joon-ho's like Spielberg, like spielberg et thing but is also just sort of a vicious satire about the food industry and also uh not charity workers but uh what's the word i'm looking for the paul dano character do-gooders yes thank you and you know the motivations of everyone involved except for for children i guess also maybe it counts in an animated sense because Okja is technically not a real thing. Yeah, that would be in the Paddington corollary. Right. You know, there's been some dispute about that decision we made a few episodes back.

I do have Paddington 2 as like a backup, backup, backup. That's not until 2018. Oh, it's not? Yeah. Late breaking was, it's actually an early 2018 release. So that will be on the board for next year. It's good that Okja's working out. But also, you know, in terms of non-human things on the screen,

I find Okja to be a very, I connect with Okja, the animal, the super pig. I'm very moved by it. How come? Oh, I don't know. Literally the character? No, it's not like I identify with Okja. It's just like they, you know, do it. The film establishes that relationship and then you like care about Okja.

Amanda, you are, are riven with contradictions. It's amazing. You, you connect to the super pig and you defy the magical elements of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy films. You know, you just. That's yeah. You just, you just... That's, yeah. You just, you contain multitudes. I do, you know?

And at the end of the day, I would just say, if things are good, I like them. And if they're not good, I don't like them. So believe it or not, Bong Joon-ho directed a good film. What a relatable and totally normal way to evaluate all art. Thank you. Okja is definitely a foreign language film. I mean, it's obviously a foreign-born filmmaker whose films are primarily

in Korean and half of the movie is in Korean and the main character is Korean. So I think that there's no question that it qualifies.

Okay, so that means I'm up, right? I got two picks. I get a pretty good idea what I'm going to do here. I'm trying to figure out if I need to vamp. I have one tough decision to make.

One not tough decision to make is I believe my number four favorite movie of this year was, or number five was Good Time. The Safdie Brothers. I was waiting for you to do this. Breakout, which I'm really excited that's still on the board.

I had a weird fear that you were going to do something really mean, Amanda, and just like take this in wild card just to spite me and you didn't do it. And I thank you for that. You got it.

This is not the Safdie. That's how, that's how. That was definitely a calculated act. Amanda, I thought you were going to shoot me right in the face, but you didn't. So thanks for, thanks for that. I don't know. You, you heard her whole soliloquy about how she's actively working against me in every draft. I think you just thought that I made the decision not to hurt you by like not picking good time. I definitely didn't make a decision not to hurt you just so you know, it just was not on my list, but thanks for clarifying that you'll find another way

to hurt me in the future. Um, good time. What, what a heart pounding, uh, thrilling piece of cinema. Um, obviously this isn't the Saffy's first film, but it's their first kind of mainstream accessible movie, uh, starring Robert Pattinson, very similar to that Lost City of Z conversation you were having around his work at the time. Obviously exploring work with highly skilled, highly experimental auteurs. This is a heist movie. It's a movie about brothers. It's a movie about losing control of your life. It's a movie about New York. It's a movie about living in a giant building and how scary that can be sometimes. It's just an absolutely wild ride. If you haven't seen this movie, it's probably the least seen movie of all the movies we've talked about thus far. I would absolutely recommend you check it out. It obviously led to Uncut Gems and those two movies are kind of twins in many ways in terms of

the anxiety and excitement that they produce while you're watching them. So Good Time is my drama. Okay. So outstanding, I have Blockbuster and Wildcard. I guess you could say... Can I ask a quick procedural question? Of course. When you guys go into Wildcard, how much do you treat that as best movie available left behind

or something kind of funky that doesn't quite fit into some of our other categories usually depends for me on what i've taken previous to that and i it feels like we usually hold wild card to last because it gives us the most flexibility but if i've taken a bunch of mainstream stuff i'll try to find something really weird and and vice versa if i have some more esoteric picks in the primary categories am Amanda, do you think about that? Yeah, I definitely save it until the end. And then I think it's sort of assessing what I have. And then personal flair.

Yeah. Which, you know, Chris, maybe that's why we're losing. Because we're allowing for personal flair. How dare you? Okay. So I'm sticking with this movie. I was into this movie in a big way when it came out, and I'm still into this movie in a big way. It's Edgar Wright's Baby Driver. I'm taking

it in Blockbuster. This is a movie that just barely became a Blockbuster. It was a hit though. It was an original story. It's obviously hugely movie inspired as all Edgar Wright movies are, but it's an uncommon kind of a thing. And Chris, similarly to your point about the Oscar movies of this year, the get outs and the ladybirds, I think this movie gave me a little bit of hope for what movies could do. I had heard a little bit about kind of how this movie was funded and how it got off the ground. And I think it was not necessarily easy for Edgar to make this movie, but I'm glad that he did. And similarly, a very exciting, fun jukebox musical car heist movie where the songs are as big a part of the story as the performances or the plot.

And it's perfectly synced in a way. It's also a perfect movie theater movie. This is not a movie that works nearly as well at home. You need to hear this movie loud and you need it to be rollicking. And there's a chase scene about two thirds of the way through the movie that is among the best and most beautifully choreographed that I've ever seen in a movie. So Baby Driver. You got so excited when you heard

John Spencer Blues Explosion in this movie. I'll never forget it. You were just like, and then they played, was it Orange? What's the song? You were so hype. No, it's Bell Bottoms, right? I think it was Bell Bottoms.

Yeah, I mean, I love it was Bell Bottoms. Yeah. I mean, I love John Spencer Blues Explosion. As you know, Chris, that might have been one of the first bands we ever talked about when we first met.

But yeah, it was cool. I felt seen. It's cool to feel seen. There's a bunch of nerds out there just like me who are rocking out to JSBX. Because you never are seen otherwise at the movies.

You don't get what you want. Amanda, don't play woe is me. You got Lady Bird all as well. I do. I did get Lady Bird. It's nice. I love Lady Bird. I think you're up now, right?

Yeah. This isn't Blockbuster. This one goes out to Bill Simmons. I'm taking Wonder Woman, a film that I liked. And that Bill's still mad I liked however many years later. Yeah.

I've talked about this a lot. The first, i mean the opening scene of this movie um directed by patty jenkins you know just to me i like finally got superhero movies i was like oh i like this is exciting and i understand why people connect to this and that is i've sat through a lot of those movies at this point and never felt that way what happens at the beginning of this movie it's the whole themyscira but it's like the first time you go to Themyscira and it's um and they do the training and then there's like a you know the real life invades but basically the Themyscira sequence um to me is really exhilarating and then I really love the Gal Gadot Chris Pine you know screwball rom-com reversed that great chemistry i enjoy that the the no man's land

sequence in the middle like very exhilarating it obviously falls apart at the end but i mean so does everything um certainly a lot of superhero movies so i i like what i like about this movie a lot and that's and i'm sticking to it bill chris did you hear bill giving amanda shit about the oscars this week on the pod i did yeah like you know one thing that i like thought about afterwards you know when you like think about what you should have said in the moment and then yeah here's your chance this is your podcast well i just i still really earnestly want to ask bill if he likes oceans 11 the movie and ocean swamp because like i he doesn't we've talked about this it's yeah it's unclear

right it's notable that we have all been allowed to run rough shot over the Ocean's franchise on the rewatchables and he has not participated right and also it wasn't featured on heist.com no it wasn't yeah it wasn't see well but is that on cr though we're still beta testing though okay I just you know I think that that would be an appropriate data point to have if you're going to have a conversation about the work of Steven Soderbergh it's a co-pro by me and Bill but there will be sort of curated playlists

with our own you know you have your little studio ghibli Chris exactly exactly but you would do the Ocean's Trilogy well I'm not sure of anything anymore so i just am trying to like make sure i know where people stand on the oceans movies amanda what's your streaming service called i i don't know i'm like a it's not heist.com am i supposed to have like a specialized one or is

it just like amanda's stuff yeah what's the the amantheon you know what's going in the amantheon i mean what's going in it is all the movies I like. Am I just supposed to do it up front right now for you? Okay, so it has Working Girl. It has Four Weddings and a Funeral. It has Lady Bird. It has all the movies that

I've drafted in this because I like all the movies that I've drafted thus far. I'm feeling really good about my choices. Will you outbid Bezos for the Bond movies? Yeah, sure. Definitely all of soderbergh so i will just take that back from hbl max because you know the property brothers don't care so i can have it and what else a lot of rom-com programming obviously and then and then liburo because i'm i'm only in season four but i'm really liking it so don't spoil it for me chris i won't um you still haven't given me a name for this streaming service i'll think about it it just takes time it needs to be good branding you know okay i have a i have a suggestion logan just consider that I don't know what happened in that one

okay why don't you call it Amanda Plus okay isn't it always Amanda Plus aren't we always having kind of an Amanda Plus that's rude I'm just I'm here performing I'm trying to it's a podcast I'm bringing the energy last time on the podcast

you and Bill started calling me a princess for no reason just because I have high standards which everybody knows did I use the word princess yeah you did you guys calling me a princess for no reason. Just because I have high standards, which everybody knows. Did I use the word princess? Yeah, you did. You guys called me a princess, which it's like, it's, you know, I do have high standards and that's okay. And now it's Amanda plus.

I don't know. I'm just being me. Are you more of a Diana or a Meghan Markle? Yikes. Next. Pass. Chris, you have two picks. You're up.

Alrighty. So I got Wild Card and Foreign Animated. For Foreign Animated is a film that I don't even remember if I saw in 2017, but I think is just an amazing movie, which is The Square. This is just hell of a film. Clay Spang is in this movie, stars in this movie with Elizabeth Moss. Dominic West is also in it. It's from Ruben Osterlund. Is that right? Osterlund. Osterlund. And he is the director of Force Majeure. And I don't even know how to describe this because

it's at once sort of a satire of bourgeois cultural leanings and what people define as art and what the people who work in the world of art, the power that they exert

but it's also like kind of a little bit of a mystery box movie and and kind of uh commentary on social media and there's just all sorts of ideas in this movie i wish i you know this is this is very much a piece of a lot of the movies that we talked about for this year which is that it is bursting with ideas i think i love the fact that so many of the films from this year, even the blockbusters, like even something like Ragnarok have like tons of ideas just hidden away in different places in the movie. And so the square would be my foreign choice. Did you guys like this one? Love the square. Yeah. This was my backup. I also just want to, you said some very smart things that I just want to say. Clay Spong is very handsome. Yeah. Just yeah just that really

also another feature of this movie with the red glasses right yeah really and very stylish you know and it's obviously the movie is like playing into his

image of himself and the identity that he's creating and critiquing it but yeah great movie Ruben Ostlund has not made a film since this

but he does have a movie coming out this year and it has one of the greatest titles I can recall in recent memory and it's called Triangle of Sadness. It's this podcast. This truly is this podcast. And the star of that movie

is none other than Woody Harrelson. So looking, really looking forward to that movie. What's it about? I'll read you the description. A pair of models find themselves at a crossroads in their careers. Sounds fantastic. Is that seriously what it in their careers that's what it says oh my god it's kind of like you two yes i was about to say same

two guys so this is the tough part we come to wild card there are movies that i feel like deserve a shout out there's movies that i would love to kind of say like maybe this wasn't perfect but i liked it a lot maybe i had a great time seeing it in the theater and then there are movies that just either got a lot of critical acclaim or made a lot of money and i feel like it would be good for the bottom line for my voting yeah so three billboards for you then but just just the rockwells um fuck come on chris there's some good movies out there no i know but i'm trying to decide Rockwell suits. Fuck. Come on, Chris. There's some good movies out there.

No, I know, but I'm trying to decide. Don't rush it. I feel like we're getting a great CR moment shortly. It's not. It's not going to be that great of a moment because I remember.

We did a rewatchables on one of the movies that's still on the board. I don't know if you remember this. This was an odd choice for a rewatchables. We did? Yeah.

You don't remember? Oh, I think I know which one is it's not i i'm i'm into that movie but i wouldn't pick it okay i have no idea what movie it is amanda you never listened to our rewatchables of the killing of a sacred deer it's just what dinner with you is like sean uh i guess i'll just go with logan lucky yeah wild card which is like do you guys remember when that came out and we were like this is gonna and silverberg was like this will change movie distribution yeah movies are saved spreadsheet that everyone had a password to and you could log on and kind of see what the marketing budget was. So my issue with this movie was that I felt like he put a cap on the natural charm of some of the people that was, that were in the film.

I don't necessarily blame him for that, but I feel like driver was not maximum driver. Craig was not maximum Craig and Tatum was not maximum Tatum. But now with some remove, this movie is incredibly enjoyable. Um, and I love what Craig is getting into on this one. like with joe bang the eggs and stuff yeah yeah but um it's it's awesome so i'm gonna go logan lucky for walker there were a bunch that i'm like tempted to pick but i'll do that after we finish that would have been my my next pick if it was still on the board

but i also assumed amanda would consider scooping and grabbing it as well because I think all three of us love this movie. I do though. It's not my favorite Soderbergh even now. And I think Chris identified it. It's like everybody has just kind of the safety on a little bit. Yeah, they're all being really weird guys in a

Coen Brothers movie rather than really hot guys in a Soderbergh movie. That's really well put. Yeah, that's what it put. Yeah. Interesting. That's what it is. And I am a superficial person who looks for the Hot Guys and a Soderbergh movie. The movie I was referring to, by the way,

that was a rewatchables was John Wick Chapter 2. Yes. Oh, I was literally just scrolling through the letterbox trying to figure it out. Believe it or not,

that's not my wildcard pick. I did have Logan Lucky on the board, but since Chris took it, I am going to go with the big sick, which is a romantic comedy written by, uh, Camille Nanjiani and his wife, Emily B. Gordon and, um, directed by Michael Showalter and it stars Camille and Zoe Kazan and Holly Hunter and Ray Romano in a really tremendous performance. The Ray Romano performance is, isano performance is very beautiful and moving.

And it is based on Kumail and Emily's like real life relationship and courtship and is about her illness and also his relationship with his family and their expectations for his marriage. And I mean, it's a romantic comedy and but i thought that it it both has all the things you want from the genre in terms of like the chemistry and the beats and the jokes um but incorporates all of the characters um specifically her parents and and and his family too and the kind of comedy scene that they're in.

And the hospital world, which is sort of a bummer. But it's world building. And you know where you are. And you know who these people are. And you're rooting for them. And it's a lot harder for people to do that these days than you would think. So The Big Sick. It's a good pick.

I'm at a tricky point here with my last pick. Will you guys allow me to talk through it a little bit? Of course. Yeah, sure. This is a podcast after all. So the movie that I think helped me understand how to podcast. Oh my God. Wow.

I think we said, yes, we said, talk through it. We said, we're here for you. And then you needed a movie to tell you how to podcast Chris we're not all born like you with a pack of palm holes in one hand and a mic in the other okay buddy it's a skill and it needs to be honed

and protected over time and it needs inspiration wait are you gonna let Amanda and I guess what the movie is if it's the movie that taught you to podcast yeah if you guys would like to guess okay i'm scrolling through the the letterbox page right now i tanya not i tanya nice try bob spider-man homecoming not molly's game not spider-man homecoming downsizing not downsizing you did like downsizing is I do like downsizing. I see you being like,

this taught me how to be weird and to have an opinion that not everyone else had. Downsizing. Is this like... Podcasting is not about being weird. Is there like an Errol Morris documentary where he like asks people things

and you're like, that's my guy right there? This was a film that was released in thousands of theaters. Uh-huh. Okay. That was instantaneously notorious. Oh, no.

Is it Three billboards? It's not three billboards. A film that I did not enjoy talking about publicly. But privately, you were very supportive of. Come on, Chris. It's like actually not even funny.

You know how many podcasts you've been like, which one of these constitutional amendments do you stand for? Is it all the money in the world? No, no. Is it Boss Baby?

It's not. What tossed you on a podcast? I'm speaking, of course, about Darren Aronofsky's mother. Oh, God. Duh. Because we podcast about it. We podcasted about it, Amanda.

And it was one of the first conversations we had on a show where I was like, let's just talk about the movie. Let's not do an interview with a filmmaker. Let's not talk about it, Amanda. And it was one of the first conversations we had on a show where I was like, let's just talk about the movie. Let's not do an interview with a filmmaker. Let's not talk about the awards race. This is a movie that just demands conversation for good or for ill. Now, I flipped for it.

I really liked it. It's, of course, like a mess in many ways. It's a very purposeful mess. It's also a very obvious movie metaphorically in many ways. But it is a true freakout movie. I think I wrote a column about it, actually, when it came out because i was so excited that something like that happened and i saw it just on a friday night uh my wife and i went and it was a half full theater the movie is a notorious bomb and every other person in the theater who was not me

including my wife was like what the fuck was that like how dare they do this the people were so mad at the arc light coming out of there and And I love that. I love that it got a reaction. You know, so much of so many movies are just like, okay, that was nice. Let's move on and like go to dinner now and not talk about it or think about it ever again. And Aronofsky provoked people and he got people mad. And I think he also did something pretty impressive

from a filmmaking perspective. So I want to pick that movie because I like what that movie did, but that's not the movie I'm going to pick. It's not the movie that I like the most that's still on the board. The movie that I like the most that's still on the board is a movie that I feel like has already a little bit forgotten the time relative to the rest of the movies we're talking about, but it's the Meyerowitz stories, which is the Noah Baumbach movie, which is the first movie he made for Netflix,

that I feel like has been a little bit blotted out by Marriage Story and the success and the conversation around Marriage Story and the recognition of Baumbach as this poet laureate of Gen X or whatever. But Myron Stories feels closer to him kind of reaching the pinnacle of the kind of thing that he was trying to do, like iterating on 60s and 70s New York novelists and filmmakers and telling these sweeping stories about families that are kind of interconnected. It's sort of Altman inflected. It's Woody Allen inflected as always. And just an amazing cast in this movie. Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel, Candace Bergen, Adam Driver. So many great people in this movie.

And I really love it. And so I want to honor that. And so I'm going to pick it as my wild card. Doesn't that one end with, or not end, but isn't there just like a very long scene about like ethics and art and Ben Stiller and maybe Adam Driver just like yelling at each other

like outside an exhibit? Is that? And then that's also the way that Mistress America ends, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, it is. That's right. Because I was like, oh my God,

we're having ethics and art like again. Noah, work through it. Pay a therapist. Better than ethics and gaming, you know? It's true, but I think it was like around the time of ethics and gaming and I was like, oh dear. No, I like this movie a lot.

I like it when Emma Thompson just, you know, backs the car. She's pretty kooky. Yeah. It's just, it's a very touching Sandler performance. Oh, that's right. The whole opening is about the car she's pretty kooky yeah it's it's just it's a very touching sandler performance oh that's right the whole opening is about the car the parking spaces right yes how fucking relatable is that trying to find parking in new york i've never really seen that done so well on screen before but it does feature a lot of really good performance and frankly it feels like going to be

the last significant hoffman performance too um he hasn't been doing a lot he's getting a little bit older now and obviously he's somebody that bound back and wanted to work with for a long time. And then I, I remember when I went to see ladybird, Dustin Hoffman was at the screening because they both had movies out this year. That's,

that was a nice moment. It was nice. So that's, those are all of our picks. We left some obvious stuff on the board. I guess the, probably the most obvious is call me by your name yeah which you know i mean you can go into the sequel category apparently well i'm not so sure now with everything that's happened with army hammer oh that's right i thought a lot about

it and if i hadn't gotten lost city of z i I would have done it. Listen, that's an absolutely beautiful movie that I loved. And, you know, this and Lady Bird together brings us Timothee Chalamet, which is really important. I just would love to spend as much time as possible in a Luca Guadagnino choreographed, like, Northern Italy world. Just, like, take my money. Obviously, the Armie Hammer stuff is not great. So I really also enjoyed lost city of z and and went with that um handful of others that are on the board that we didn't talk about chris you just mentioned spider-man homecoming of course uh the florida project came

out this year that was a really beloved movie um the aforementioned mother itania you were never really here see our wind river did you consider that one? Wind River is up there. I would mention one of the best times that you and me had at a movie theater in 2017 was seeing Atomic Blonde at South by Southwest and just everybody losing their fucking marbles over that. And I walked out of that movie

being like, that's the best action movie I've seen in 10 years. And then it kind of did okay. No one cared. That's so weird. Why did no one care about that? Because they weren't seeing it with 500 people going bananas after drinking all day and having free popcorn you guys know my atomic blonde story right that I accidentally went to the bathroom during the like climactic action sequence like I didn't know and so I just went to the bathroom and I came back and Zach was like interesting choice by you I was like oh she punched a lot of people, I guess.

You know, very quickly, speaking of Atomic Blonde, Amanda, when we had the Angelina Jolie conversation, it occurs to me that it wasn't just one person that market corrected the Jolie career. It was two people. Emily Blunt was one of them, which occurred to me after we finished recording. And Charlize.

I mean, those are the two actresses who I think took on the kinds of roles that Angelina had been doing previously. And in many ways, did them better or picked better projects or somehow landed in more memorable movies. And so it feels like Charlize owns this now. She's supposed to be Furiosa.

Angelina was born to play that role and she didn't do it. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. What else was on the board? Any others that you guys were thinking of? The Beguile? Did you think about that, Amanda? I did did but it's not my favorite sofia film i you know it's good i like it i think she's extremely talented but i thought spice it up you know i think uh

it comes at night has uh aged particularly well as we moved through the trump era and into the era it's very true A very good pandemic film. Yeah. Amanda, you never finished Mudbound. Do you think maybe you can finish it tonight in honor of this draft? When I read the list, I was like, oh my God, I could finish Mudbound before this draft. And I didn't. I didn't.

I'm really sorry. My favorite movie that I didn't draft, I think, is probably Columbus, which is Kogonata's beautiful movie starring Haley Lou Richardson and John Cho. Oh, yeah. New Kogonata movie coming out this year starring Colin Farrell called After Yang, which is kind of like a soft science fiction movie that sounds really, really good. What else didn't we mention that was on the list? Alien Covenant.

Oh, yeah. Remember when we saw 11 minutes of Alien Covenant at South by? That was so weird. That was so, so they showed us, it was like a reprint. It was a new print of Alien. And they were like, and just as like a little teaser,

here's the first 10 minutes of Alien Covenant, which like a lot of very significant stuff happens. And then when you go see Alien Covenant for real, like it's just really a different experience because you get all the Amy Simons stuff I was just gonna say I feel like we sat down in that screening and you were like oh sick Amy Simons is the star of this movie and then she just gets absolutely annihilated by an alien in the first 10 minutes they're like I guess she is not the star of this movie um what else anything else amanda that you wanted to shout out girls trip which was in my back pocket for uh comedy and is sort of it's where the tiffany haddish

ship takes off um and also just like a very funny movie another movie i saw by myself but had a great time uh chris cr any anything else you want to mention um anything else we didn't mention not really no i think we got everything that i was kind of looking at you it comes at night was the last one uh okay so let's recap all of our picks very quickly here in drama chris selected phantom thread i selected good time and amanda selected velocity of z and comedy horror chris selected it i selected get out amanda selected ladybird in blockbuster cr got dunkirk i got babyirk. I got Baby Driver. Amanda got Wonder Woman. In Animated or Foreign Language,

Chris got The Square. I got Coco. Amanda got Okja. Sequel, Blade Runner 2049 for Chris. Thor Ragnarok for me. Star Wars The Last Jedi, you heard that right,

for Amanda. And in Wild Card, Logan Lucky for Chris, the Meyerowitz stories for me, and the big sick for Amanda who do you guys think won I'd like one of my

picks back but otherwise what would you like back let's talk about it I'd like to fly I wish I had to take in Logan instead of Blade Runner

because Logan's better or what yeah I think Logan's probably a better movie or as a sop to the to the voting audience like what are you thinking about

like a little bit of column A a little bit of column B. How are the CR heads these days? They're doing pretty good. Thanks for asking. What are they up to? What kind of havoc are they wreaking on our society?

Are they in the Apple store now? They're a gentle sort. Are the Apple stores open? Yeah, they are on the East Coast. You can get in there. Yeah. You've been in there fraternizing with your brethren? No?

I actually broke Chris. I don't know why you're teasing them. They're just going to make more memes about you. They're just going to bombard your letterbox page. I welcome it because the truth is that nothing can come between us, Chris. You know, you and I. Aren't they basically like slandering Russell Westbrook online right now?

Don't they have too much on their plate? That's true. That's a good point. Amanda, what's up with the Dobbins crew? Are they in the Apple store as well? No, they aren't. What are they doing? They buy their devices online and then they go spend their time doing normal things.

They're just like, they're normal people. They have families. They have hobbies. Maybe they started cooking. It's like, I don't know. They're just normal, like, God-fearing citizens.

It's really important that you speak to your fans directly. You know, Chris has mastered the art of this with his coded messaging throughout all of his picture appearances. And I think you need to find ways to do the same what do you think i think i'm doing great

i think i'm creating a world where people just listen to the podcast and enjoy it and go on amanda's gonna have an offline group meet up at like a restoration hardware amanda do you think you won this draft i'm concerned that you know your little letterbox hive is just gonna internet you out again you what hive i'm the most hated man on this podcast well within the this within this triangle of sadness yes but we should rename this show the triangle of sadness but on twitter i you know there's like a you have like a lot of twitter dog whistling going on here i think i have a great list yeah because you because like you'll just be like the mets are great on twitter and it's just like so like uncomplicated and you

bring in so many normies to your squad and then they're just like i'll just vote for sean because he just tweets normal shit shit at me do you think that's what's going on is that actually what you think is happening i think anytime i tweet about the mets people are like sick to movies brother uh so that i don't think that's a factor but nevertheless i think this is a very even breakdown because it's been it's such an amazing year and we each made you know one or two idiosyncratic choices but for the most part there's a lot of stuff that a lot of people love so it should be a fun vote. Guys, thanks for doing this. Sorry to the guy

in my mentions who asked me to draft Riot and Cell Block 99. Well, okay, so here's your... Maybe our next draft should be canceled movies or cancelable movies.

What do you think? No? Yeah. You don't want to go there. I'm ready. You guys are the ones. I have to watch every movie released in 1975 before our next draft, so that's why I'm ready you guys are the ones I have to watch every movie released

in 1975 before our next draft so that's why I'm just spending my time just between 150 and 175 not every movie okay

so you guys are gonna go deep on that I can't just do it from like feel probably you okay here's one rule

one important rule you cannot draft a movie you haven't seen how about that okay i mean i'm 43 that makes the game fun i mean for me it's fine so it's a challenge to amanda three why are you making it sound like i'm like a bad movie student instead of the youngest person here chris don't think i didn't catch when you called me middle age earlier in this podcast you tried to lump me in and i've been thinking about it the whole time. No disrespect, but do you think that you're young?

Middle-aged is like, don't put your problems onto me, buddy. Okay. Amanda, you're getting there, man. You're getting there. You know what? You guys have been dragging me forward our entire lives and I just have to say it stops. Okay. Amanda thinks she's Olivia Rodrigo when in fact she's Emma Thompson and that those are facts to an Olivia Rodrigo song I know where I am like a true middle-aged person okay okay let's not end on this note guys you know 75 will be a lot of fun um I made the truth is I think we've all seen without even having to think about it, 30 plus movies from that year.

It's more like, let's just, let's try to not draft something because it has a good reputation. Let's be excited about being able to talk about it because I think that episode in particular is as much about evangelism as it is about the strategy and the joking around

because there's so many great movies from that year and there's an opportunity to say, hey, here's where you can see them. Are we taking bets on whether I do Dog Day Pacino on this pod? If you don't. No one's going to give odds for that. That's off the board for sure.

What if we got to do Dog Day Pacino in a bunch of different movies from 1975? I love it. I love it. Chief Brody doing Dog Day Pacino. Okay, guys. Well, thank you so much. Thanks to our producer,

Bobby Wagner, as always for his work. Next week, Amanda and I are going to be talking about a couple of new movies. We're going to talk about first, a little movie called

Cruella. And we're going to build the Emma Stone Hall of Fame, which is frankly a pretty weird Hall of Fame the more I look over her filmography. Guys, the buzz on Cruella.

What is it, Chris? It's really good, right? I mean, we're going to have to block off three hours for this episode. I just needed an extended therapy session and also just to understand. I don't understand what's happening. I don't understand.

All the heads came out and we're just not a fan of live action adaptations, but Cruella is practically like the best of the best. All that. You mean all the CR heads? Who are you talking about here? Basically, like the recap of Twitter reactions on slashfilm.com that I saw for like two minutes last week.

Well, carve out some time for that. Amanda and I will talk about it on Friday. And then after that, we'll talk about Quiet Place 2. So see you then.