The Big Picture - The Best Movies of 2019 So Far. Plus, ‘Yesterday’ Deletes the Beatles. | The Big Picture

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

In this double episode, Sean and Amanda review ‘Yesterday,’ a movie that delivered in Beatles nostalgia but came up short in plot payoff (1:00). Then, Adam Nayman calls in from Toronto to share his top five movies of a slow year so far (42:50). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Adam Nayman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. This week on TheRinger.com, our staff is ranking the 100 best moments in culture so far in 2019. This includes everything that happened in film, TV, celebrity news, memedom, and more. Cracking the top 100 so far are J-Lo and A-Rod's engagement, the rise of Lizzo, and the Cliff wife phenomenon. Also, be sure to listen and subscribe to Ringer Dish, our new celebrity podcast, and catch the latest episode covering their favorite moments from this year in pop culture. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy. And I'm Amanda Dobbins.

And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the sound of music and the hills are alive with takes. No, I'm just kidding. We're not talking about the sound of music today. We are talking about music and movies. Later in the show, I will have Adam Naiman on to talk about the very best movies of 2019 so far, which, you know, frankly, it has not been the greatest of years. And in this segment of the show, we're going to be talking about what is almost certainly not one of the best movies of the year, and that movie is called Yesterday.

So we're just getting right to it. I think we have to, right? Yeah, we have to be honest. I mean, what are we going to... I see no reason to tease it. So this is not a bad movie. No, no. I was thinking about that this morning.

It's like, this movie is better than Men in Black International. How would you describe it to an alien that landed on Earth? The premise of the movie? Yeah, the whole thing. Okay. It is a kind of musical fantasy where a man wakes up and realizes that he is the only person in the world who knows the songs of the Beatles. And he's living in an alternate universe where everything else is normal or most everything else is normal. There are some good jokes in it.

But for some reason, no one knows who the Beatles are. No one knows any of the songs. And he has a near perfect memory of all of them. And then he decides to use those songs to start a musical career. That's all correct. This movie is written by Richard Curtis. It is directed by Danny Boyle. When the trailer premiered, I guess earlier this spring, maybe in the winter, I think that there was a genuine excitement around it. I think in the ringer offices, I think certainly between you and I, and we will foreground this conversation by saying, I think the only thing that you and I

have in common, literally. That's so rude. I mean, it's a good bit. And I, again, I was a little, it was early in the morning and I was harsh to you. We have things in common. Let's just say one of the things that we share. A key point of connection between us is we love the Beatles. Now that of course is not terribly interesting. Everybody loves the Beatles, but you and I are, are, I would say uniquely passionate about the Beatles. I think that, of course, is not terribly interesting. Everybody loves the Beatles. But you and I are, I would say, uniquely passionate about the Beatles. Yes. I think we're also surrounded by a lot of Beatles haters. Yes.

In our lives. Yeah. A lot of people, a lot of like Stones are better than the Beatles bullshit going on in our life. How are you? Yeah. And so I'm not here for that. I am pro Beatles. And also, I think more specifically, you and I are pro McCartney.

Yes. We are. McCartney is the alpha of the Beatles. And this is a kind of McCartney-esque movie. It is. The tone, the vibe, the sensibility, I think, is very McCartney. And the songs. And absolutely the songs that are leaned on.

The movie does not work for me. Now, I do think that there are moments when it does work, and it reminds me a lot of some of the musical fantasies we've been talking about in the last year. Chief Among Them, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Rocketman, which is to say, when they're playing these songs, the movie is good. Yeah. And it's because the songs are good, and they're loud, and it's exciting,

and it's fun to be at a Beatles concert. I, of course, was not alive when the Beatles were banned, nor were you. And so it's just great to see somebody, you know, blasting back in the USSR as loud as possible directly at you. And we should also say credit to Himesh Patel, who is the star of this movie and has to perform a lot of these songs and under the shadow of Paul McCartney and John Lennon and George Harrison and Ring of Sauron does a great job. I completely agree.

He is terrific and committed. He's a great musician. He's a very fine actor, especially in this mold. He's basically got a little bit of a Jimmy Stewart thing going on. Yeah. Little aw shucks, but also a bit of wonder in his eye. I really liked him a lot. I don't know if I could say

I liked virtually anybody else in the cast in their performance in this movie. I don't dislike Lily James, but her entire subplot story, which is essentially the love story of this movie, feels like it's born of another movie. Yeah. It's also just really, really half-b movie. Yeah. It's also just really,

really half-baked. Yeah. It's really, they defanged everything that you would expect from Richard Curtis writing a romantic story, which I, you know, I come, Richard Curtis wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral. He wrote Notting Hill. He wrote the Bridget Jones adaptation, like three of the most important movies in my freaking life. And I have certain expectations of him when he's writing both a movie and a love story. And it seems like they took all of the cleverness and the repartee and the wordiness out of this script. And so she just has nothing to do. Do you think that that's because this movie is so high concept that it can't bear the burden of anything else around it? Well, maybe if they pulled off the concept, but that's the thing. It's very clear that they didn't know how to deliver on the concept. And so they're struggling throughout and maybe they're paring back on other stuff,

as you pointed out, and kind of searching to create the universe that this like the very basic premise kind of demands. And, you know, they're outmatched. It was amazing. The trailer was released, and within 24 hours, like, the internet went crazy, kind of doing conspiracy theories. And, like, Andrew Gratadero, who works for The Ringer,

in the span of, like, an hour was like, well, if the Beatles don't exist, then the Kardashians don't exist. You can please look that up, his, like, weird web that he wove. And I do feel for them, because when you're going up against the imagination of the internet, you're like never going to compete. You're never going to be able to be as weird as specific and all expansive as like the entire world is simultaneously. But they don't even really try in this

movie. And to me, that's the ultimate problem. Right. Because the movie is a Richard Curtis movie. And so it is fundamentally focused on its characters as opposed to its concept. And so, you know, there's this great line of comic books called What If. Oh boy. You familiar with What If? No. What If is basically just this movie. It's basically a Twilight Zone episode. It's what if Spider-Man never met Mary Jane and then Spider-Man goes off and marries somebody else and then has a series of adventures and it just takes you on an alternate reality an alternate universe and i think that those that comic book was always fun but it was ultimately

frivolous and it didn't mean anything because it wasn't real and we knew it wasn't real and so invariably the stakes of a movie like this which has a great idea and that you want to be inside of you you can never fully separate yourself from the fact that the Beatles do exist. And there's a really good piece on the site right now, a review of this movie by Manuela Lozich. And in the piece, she, I think, locates the key problem with the movie, which is the Beatles are not just about their songs. The Beatles are about the Beatles. They're about the story of the Beatles, the human beings who made those songs. Now, there are moments in the movie that kind of nod at the existence of the men who made these songs. Huge problems there, but anyway, continue. That segment of the movie, without spoiling

anything, I think doesn't really work at all. However, the way that the Beatles' careers played out and their lives played out, John Lennon's assassination, George Harrison's long solo career and life, the sort of political influence, the sex-crazed teenagers that surrounded this band. That whole mythology that surrounds the band is part and parcel to their story. Now, you don't need to like She Loves You. You don't have to understand all of that to enjoy She Loves You, but it helps. And it helps you appreciate everything around the band. And the movie doesn't really seem terribly interested in any of that stuff. And to your point about what Andrew wrote about, the sort of counterfactual or the implications of all of those choices, like, don't really have, they have no payoff in the movie whatsoever.

Right. I agree with everything you just said. And it does seem like they, being interested in characters inside the premise is a good way of putting it. And they are really operating on, like, the characters instead of the premise is a good way of putting it. And they are really operating on like the baseline level of this premise. They are not going into the super, either the musical implications or the philosophical implications or anything of that. But, you know, fine if you're going to make a crowd-pleasing movie and you do want to simplify it, that's great.

My actual problem with this movie is that they just do not engage with the premise at all. And the, like, even within the very simplified version of this movie that that they just do not engage with the premise at all. And even within the very simplified version of this movie that exists where it's like, okay, this guy is the only person who knows the Beatles songs, and then he builds a whole musical career around it. And then what happens? And then what happens is they just end the movie. They don't tease out any of the consequences that even the basic plot of the movie itself raises. Yeah, it's not even half-baked.

They haven't even taken the flour out of the cupboard. There's just nothing there to it. And on the one hand, I guess maybe there could be another movie about this. I wouldn't say the movie ends in a cliffhanger of any kind. But in general, we don't need to explore the logic of something fantastical necessarily. But I do think that we want to know some sort of why or how or where do we go from here? What did the electrical current that like turned the power off? What were the other ramifications of that?

They sort of very cleverly hint at a couple of other things that don't exist in this world. You know, there are no cigarettes there's no coca-cola there is also in an a very funny moment no oasis the band oh yes that that but that is the kind of stuff that i just wish this movie had more of me too though the oasis the band joke is very funny if you've seen this movie great and if you haven't we're gonna do spoilers at this point so i'm sorry yeah um it comes in a very funny scene where he is just like googling the beatles and various things to find out what works and doesn't work and he googles the beatles he googles john lennon he googles sergeant pepper he googles rolling stones the rolling stones exist and then he googles oasis and it's just like a water hole in the desert and everyone in my screening was laughing

along and everything and then you got to the oasis joke like that was not a laugh line and that was really interesting to me i mean i thought it was like the most clever the funniest part of it but did people receive it as a tragedy because they lost wonderwall i don't think that as many people got it yeah you know and so and that was illustrating to me that this is actually a really broad premise that appeals to a lot of people. I got a lovely email from my mother-in-law yesterday, who is a law professor, and she had seen the aforementioned Andrew Guadalero ringer piece. It was linked to it on a law blog, because apparently lawyers are really interested in the ethics of what happens

in yesterday and who owns something. The Beatles are so big big mother-in-law come on the big picture I know hello Jane thank you for this sourcing we need a legal correspondent yeah but so that was just that illustrated to me like a world without the Beatles like millions and millions of people are like oh interesting I would like to know more it's a really really for how sort it's high concept but it's also really really wide reaching to a lot of people it's an all-time elevator pitch it's just like one sentence nails it exactly and so they are working for a lot of different audiences and the movie that you and I want where it's like lol no under wall without the Beatles which is not the movie that other maybe other people want.

And so I understand that they're walking a tightrope, but they're just not even like, here's what I would like to know. OK, so he stands up on the stage at Wembley and it's like, guys, four other men wrote this these songs. It wasn't me. I'm not going to profit off them. OK, but like if those people don't exist or haven't claimed or haven't claimed credit like does the rest of the world believe you like what's on the blogs the next day how does this tease out i need some sort of resolution well this is your corner yeah what you what you

want is to see how the media responds to a controversy i do that's your number one point of interest but like what happens in this? Everyone's just like, oh, okay. Well, these other people who don't exist, who aren't coming to claim credit, who we can't find on Google, are just wrote these songs and we're all going to accept it and move on and listen to this mixtape? It's a good question of does Ringo Starr get royalties for Himesh Patel's character's performance of those songs? Does Ringo Starr exist? He's not in the movie.

Well, but we know that at least one of the Beatles exists in the movie. We meet one of the Beatles. Yeah, but it's like a butterfly effect. It's a real different thing because he's still alive. Yes, but presumably all four of those men exist. Sure, but did they write the songs in this universe? I don't know. It's unexplored.

It's really unexplored. I felt like you're vibrating right now. Well, I thought of you honestly, because I just, I didn't watch Lost, but this is how upset you guys feel about Lost. And I was just like, come on, give me the answers. What do the numbers mean? That's a great comparison. It's so similar actually, because the way they reeled you into lost was so powerful and so precise and so good and so open-ended and the lack of payoff for the last two seasons of lost haunts me to this day i wouldn't say that i had the same level of investment in this movie about halfway through

this movie i realized that the things i was interested in are the things i'm not interested in that's true that half of the movie is basically a satire of the music industry there is i thought just a straight up bad kate mckinnon performance in the movie oh basically a satire of the music industry. There is, I thought, just a straight up bad Kate McKinnon performance in the movie. Oh, interesting. Playing like a way over the top kind of evil manifestation of greedy people working in the music biz. Now, it's understandable because there's a long history of people in the music business basically picking the pockets of creative people and stealing their masters and taking the rights from their songs and manipulating them and making them do things they don't want to do. That's really rote stuff. Also, I think in 2019, the way you project some of those things is a little bit different. We got this great story on the site today about TikTok and the way the music

industry is changing. It's just such a modern thing. The Kate McKinnon character is out of a movie in 1985. It's true. I was reminded, Notting Hill is about celebrity, but it is also about movie stars. And there's this great scene of a movie press junket in Notting Hill that Richard Curtis wrote, clearly from his experience of hating industry people.

And I was like, oh, you're just doing a watered-down version of this for yesterday. I did think the marketing scene was very funny with Lamorne Morris as the marketing executive. That part is funny. Yes. Yes, that is very clever. That actually feels like it was in a slightly different movie. Yeah. But in general, I just didn't think that that entire aspect of the story, and that actually is a lot of the stakes of the movie are built around that because this is a love story. As you

said, it's not actually a high concept story about music. It's the story between Himesh's character and Lily James's character. And essentially Lily James between Himesh's character and Lily James's character and essentially Lily James forces Himesh Patel to a decision to pursue his music career where he is the author of literally the greatest pop songs in the history of music or to hang out with her in England I guess yeah which is just ludicrous like it doesn't make any sense he's rich I agree like what's happening I just couldn't get with any of that stuff. I, you know, that is a little bit classic rom-com. You have to like throw the hurdle. But we've suspended disbelief at such a high level with the Beatles thing that this thing just doesn't work at all. Well, she's standing up for herself a little of like, you know,

it's too late. I agree that it didn't totally work. I'm still so mad about the ending that like the resolution to their relationship as well, which is insane. Yes. Which is, okay. Oh my God, I'm so mad. I don't understand what happened at this ending. Do you think, like, is there another ending out there?

Like, can we release the yesterday cut? Yeah. Is there, like, are they cutting things together? I just don't, it's nonsensical. Okay, I'm going to recap it. I'm really heated. Thanks to everyone for listening. He calls Ed Sheeran.

We got to talk about Ed Sheeran. We will talk about Ed Sheeran shortly. Oh my God. And he's like, yo, can I just have like four songs during your Wembley set? Incredible. And Ed Sheeran's like, sure, man. So just in the middle of an Ed Sheeran concert at Wembley Stadium out rolls Jack and he plays all his songs and then he's like okay before we go I need to say

something and he's had his friend his roadie sneak Lily James backstage so suddenly there's a camera on her just like a giant super un unflattering, huge photo of her. But instead of doing a declaration of love, he's like, OK, now I need to tell you that I didn't write these songs and I'm giving them away for free. And also, I like this person. K, bye. Like, what? What is that? What is that as a resolution to the basic?

I know one remembers the Beatles. And what is that as a resolution to the basic i no one remembers the beatles and what is that as a love proposal this is the man who wrote i'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her and suddenly it's just a freaking jumbotron i i'm really upset also while i'm going can i just tell you i started laughing so much i knew this movie was going to do this I knew it so this is what happens when you invest in things can I just tell you like I was convinced that I knew how this scene was going to end okay I was just what was it what was the what was your ending absolutely convinced that he was going to sing something to her oh that would have been good wouldn't that have been good? Yeah.

Okay, well, great. I should have written this movie. Instead, it's so weird and there's no something in the movie. This movie disrespects George Harrison. It definitely disrespects George Harrison. Let's do a little bit on Ed Sheeran and then let's just kind of transition out of this movie and talk about the Beatles in general.

Ed Sheeran plays a significant part in this movie. And I think on the one hand hand I found him kind of winning because it's like a very self-effacing performance and I think between this and his Game of Thrones cameo he's obviously he's a pretty self-aware cat I agree with that on the other hand I think it also

it sort of makes me want to believe that Ed Sheeran is some sort of inheritor of the Beatles throne? Certainly why he said yes to the movie. They're positioning him on that level. And then there is the one point where I was like, this is too much Ed Sheeran is I believe after the kind of climactic scene, they don't play something.

In fact, they play a freaking Ed Sheeran song. The romantic reconciliation is soundtracked by an Ed Sheeran song in a Beatles movie called Yesterday. Do you like Ed Sheeran song. The romantic reconciliation is soundtracked by an Ed Sheeran song in a Beatles movie called Yesterday. Do you like Ed Sheeran's music? No. Well, that's disingenuous. I think he actually is a good songwriter. Some of those are, they come on the radio and you're like, oh, this is a jam. You know what's really good is I Don't Care, the new one with Justin Bieber. That's an actual straight head. I really like that. Okay. I sort of ambiently know his songs. He's one of the first major pop artists who I think has risen to a level of high power

and high fame that I have just kind of ignored. Yeah. I know that The Shape of You is basically the most street song in the history of Spotify, but I just have no investment, and I don't really... I kind of know his story. He's somewhat Taylor Swift adjacent and. Oh yeah. That's why you tuned out. I mean,

the other thing is that I'm, I think his songs are good or some of them are very good. And I agree with you. I have no interest in him as a pop star and that the personality and the story around him, I like don't really know it either. I just know he shows up in movies a lot of from time to time. One of the scenes that I liked was shortly after Jack's sort of big premiere performance in Russia, I believe. There's a sort of after party. And there's a songwriting

showdown suggested by Ed Sheeran, between Ed Sheeran and Jack. And I guess, where did they get it? A minute? An hour? Ten minutes. Ten minutes to write a pop song. And Ed Sheeran writes this kind of nudely, fun, little, sweet, limerick song. And Himesh Patel's character enters with The Long and Winding Road. Great performance of The Long and Winding Road.

Yes, very beautiful. Really one of the great Paul songs ever. And I was kind of hoping that the movie would be a little bit more like that. Like almost zeroing in on individual songs and then helping us kind of figure out what's great about them, and it doesn't do that. Now, you know, Jack's character goes to the places that inspired the songs, but you never get the impression that he's only going there to remember the lyrics.

He's not going there to think about what the songs mean or what they're about, which is, you know, maybe that's a little music critic mind of me but we all like want to see in the movie what we want to see in the world but no i agree with you like if you're going to go to strawberry fields like help the viewer understand what strawberry fields actually means and what it meant to the beatles you know likewise with abby road like don't just use it as a sight gag. And, you know, the Beatles are obviously the most picked over cultural artifact,

I think, ever. I mean, in the history of modern society, is there anything that has gotten more attention? Yeah. Probably since Shakespeare. I was going to say,

it's in the conversation with Shakespeare in terms of the most analyzed, considered, consumed culture. And a movie like this really has to bear that weight too. And it just, it, it, it, it melts instantaneously. Yeah. It's, it's light as a feather and that really works against it. Now,

you know, it's a rom-com, so it should be light as a feather, but I don't know. But even there, it doesn't kind of land the land the beats as I just had a meltdown describing. And I think also, you know, I want to know about the ethics of all of this, which you could use that in a rom-com way as well. Like, oh, that is a common trope of like someone has to learn how to be a better person in order to deserve the other person. Yes, the hero's journey. And this movie like kind of does that, but not at all. There's actually no engagement in any of those thoughts or emotions. Is what Jack is doing even bad?

Well, we don't know because we don't know. Do these people exist? Can we talk about the Lennon scene for a second? Sure. I mean, I guess I legally understand why because he is you legally understand why it's john lennon that he goes to see as opposed to paul mccartney or ringo star or george harrison even but i mean this movie is filled with paul mccartney songs and he is a palm it's a paul mccartney movie and then he goes to see john lennon which you know all respect to the memory

of john lennon but it is a little incongruous. Well, I think it's, that's largely a storytelling choice, honestly, just because the idea of John Lennon still being alive and not being killed because of his artistry is the most kind of enticing story to tell, you know, just visiting a guy named Paul McCartney living in Liverpool, watching, you know, soccer, cheering the Champions League on. I don't think that that would be very interesting. It is interesting to see what John Lennon would be at the age of 72 or however old, you know, he and Paul are right now. Right.

I think that's the only reason. I don't think it was like some sort of rights issue. I think the Beatles have a light co-sign on this movie, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, you would assume so, given the you would assume so given the songs and the titles and so i i don't think it's because those guys are alive you know ringo and paul are alive and john is dead i think it's because there's something hopeful about the idea of john lennon being back in our world and again that to me that kind of misunderstands the whole story of the beatles you know that didn't even really connect with me. I was just like, what's going on here? And this was the only one that you were allowed to use.

Would you recommend this movie? This is a long pause for a pretty light movie. Yes, this is the thing that I wanted to start this podcast with. And I know that I had a moment of insanity in the middle of it but it's not a bad movie no I mean it's made by Danny Boyle and it's written by Richard Curtis and I think Himesh Patel is great and it's like the Beatles at top volume and there is real value in the movie that you can go to with your parents or on a date or take your you know kids to where you can watch on a plane or you can.

And I do think it's like it is better made than your average Netflix movie that you have on. Oh, no doubt. Right. But so I think that there is value in that. And you want to go see a movie and have a nice time and then like argue about it afterwards at great length as we just did. I think that this is a great candidate. I think movies in the 21st century, though, are all expectation game. Yeah. And this movie did a great job of getting my expectations high.

Yeah. And it just failed to meet them. That's true. And that's unfortunate. And there's no kind of grading curve for that. It just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. I do wonder whether kind of the non-Beatles nerds like you and me will feel differently or and also frankly whether like the non-children of the internet will feel differently I went to like a family dinner a few

weeks ago and some friends of the family were there who I'd never met older gentleman who was just like found out that you know I do talk about movies part-time for a living and he was like do you know about yesterday and he was so excited about it. And imagine if you didn't know, well, I know I haven't heard of it, but I think that there are a lot of people who are just kind of have an idle knowledge of it.

And they're like, Oh, that seems interesting. And then maybe they'll go see it and have a nice time. I do think that like we gremlins of the internet expect certain, like, well, we expect certain things to be resolved on a level

like that maybe the average moviegoer does not or a different type of moviegoer does not i think that you're right you don't need to have read ian mcdonald's revolution in the head you know to be disappointed by this movie though you know it's not it's pretty rickety yeah but you can be disappointed in a different way you know of like oh i wish the ending i have some questions about the ending as opposed to, you know, this movie is a failure because it does not deliver on the premise of the something. I agree. What, was there a Beatles song performed in the movie that you liked best? I did think the Long and Winding Road scene was really quite moving.

I think something would have been fantastic at the end. I'm seeing something on the soundtrack here. Does he perform it like in the studio at some point or something like that? Maybe. Okay. This is an odd, I mean, I guess it is basically the big hits,

but I mean, here's what we see on this rundown. Obviously the title song, I saw her standing there, let it be, here comes the sun. I feel like has leaned on quite a bit in this movie the long and winding road help yesterday she loves you a hard day's night in my life this is kind of the 101 beatles it's not deep beatles it's not bad beatles no such thing but this is kind of like

when you get the greatest hits when you're 11 years old and you just throw yourself into that and then by the time you turn 15 you're like what else is there yeah it doesn't really have the what else is there and i feel like a couple of nods to the super fan probably would have warmed our hearts a little bit more i think that's true though i think that's just really indicative of the type of movie it is because like that is that's how the beatles became famous and that is what they're known for and also what they're excellent and what people get excited to hear about and we're going to talk about our Beatles our favorites in a minute um but you know I think people like respond to different eras and this movie wants the crowd-pleasing this movie takes for granted that it's going to get the super fans it's not for super fans huh this is almost like

the the first iteration of comic book movies you you know, when they were like, this actually is for regular people. This isn't for people who really love the comics. Yeah. Maybe we just need like 10 or 12 more Beatles oriented movies. Yeah. I mean, that would be great. I would love it. I also, I like that I don't want a super, super fan one or I wouldn't respond to it in the same way.

It would be interesting, but i get tired when people overthink just like really great popular things so i appreciate that they just embraced the popularity because that's that is what makes the beatles great it's the freaking beatles you know it's they are hugely hugely important and listened and to kind of be like well my favorite is the something from heavy road to me that's not the tone. The tone is the Beatles were already movie stars. The Beatles made five movies. And they're all funny and they're all self-aware and clever.

You know, that actually is who the Beatles were. And they weren't just that when they were making Abbey Road at the end of their time together. They were doing that in help. They're making like. And Hard Day's Night. And Hard Day's Night. Weird, off the wall, self-reflexive. What does it mean to be a famous person? Movies in their time. I mean, these guys were really smart and really understood who they were at an extraordinarily

young age. And the fact that this movie 50 years later can come close to approximating that feeling. Easier to do that from within the machine. You know, like they, a lot of people went to see a hard, like I watched a hard day's night at like 11 because that was when I learned about the Beatles. And like, I watched it thinking like, oh my God, Paul's really cute. And I, you know, maybe I appreciated some of the humor and commentary in it, but it took me another 10 years to, to like understand some of it. And that doesn't mean that I didn't like it as an 11-year-old. That's true.

You're right. It spans all ages. Yeah. Speaking of spanning all ages, we're going to give our top five Beatles songs right now, which is something you've been planning your whole life. Yeah. I really would love to do a Fab Four on Sirius XM,

the Beatles station, if anyone's listening. Can you explain what that is for those who don't know? Sure, it's when people call in and are like, here are my favorite four Beatles songs. So we're doing a Fab Five. Great. I have been planning my whole life. I had eight crises of confidence yesterday, redoing it.

I was up last night after dinner, just going through various options with my husband. It was really stressful. And I kind of went through a lot of different approaches and then ultimately I just decided to do my favorite songs instead of being a music nerd so I've got a I would say I have a combo of the two okay I also had some um qualifications okay on my list no solo songs right no no just just beatle songs yeah but so so here's i took yesterday hey jude and let it be off the board okay just like those are three of the greatest songs ever written of all time yep and i love them and we're just it's not interesting to have them on a list

they're not on my list either you know that i love yesterday deeply and i think like probably and that's actually what i like about this movie is like that it acknowledges that yesterday which is literally the title of the movie and one of like it's like the pop ballad is like an incredible song and i don't think that there's any shame in being like wow yesterday is one of my favorite beatle songs just because it's like even though it's super overplayed and popular it's's really, really excellent. It is the song that they use to reveal that Jack knows this music and nobody else does. And a man alone with a guitar singing Yesterday has an extraordinary power. Right. So I don't think I'm better than Yesterday.

It's just like we all accept that Yesterday is great. Let me assure you, you are not better than Yesterday. I also didn't count songs that aren't written by the Beatles. So Twist and Shout's not on my list. Yes. I almost put Twist and Shout on there because I think it's maybe the best rock vocal performance ever. I agree with you. You know what I mean?

But I had the same feeling. They didn't write this. No, and it's like in my Fab Four that I have been waiting to do. I think Twist and Shout might be on it, but for these purposes, it's not on my list. Okay. And by the same token, I didn't put Till There Was You on this list which is from Music Man originally

so it's not on the list also a great vocal performance okay got to get you into my life got to get you into my life yeah good one this this is a revolver yes yeah um revolver rubber soul revolver revolver yeah um i as my husband said last night this song is like a rocket ship taking off uh i love the horns a great outro you get some paul, but it's not too weird. It's still, they wrote, like, there's still songwriting, which I appreciate.

I'm a huge fan of this song. I think this is my buddy Ryan Dabble's favorite Beatles song of all time. I think he once made a rap beat out of this song. Not to put him on front street. Ryan, please send us that. There's a really good cover of Earth, Wind & Fire, by Earth, Wind & Fire in this song this song too really um exciting ecstatic kind of song yeah uh my first song my number five is also from revolver it's called for no one you want her you need her and yet you don't believe her when she says her love is dead you think she needs you.

Which is, I promise not to have super hipster choices here, but I think For No One, and the reason that people love Revolver so much and it gets called sort of like the ultimate Beatles record in a lot of ways is because it's in that middle period between hyper pop and the super experimental stuff that comes on the backside. And For No One I think is

like perfect ballad but also has a couple of weird twists there's like a French horn solo in there that is just like where did this even come from that feels like it's born

of a song in the 1930s but also sounds very modern and just just beautiful lyrics beautiful lyrics love Paul number four while my guitar gently weeps Beautiful lyrics. Love, Paul. Number four. While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Really? Yes, I know. So I, for my 18th birthday. I'm shocked, I know. So I, for my 18th birthday. I'm shocked. I know. For my 18th birthday, my high school boyfriend gave me the White Album. Okay. And I would say that that was kind of, we were talking about it as an 11-year-old. You listen to like super pop and then you grow up and you like kind of learn about the other stuff.

White Album is extremely important to me. And the other thing he gave me, by the way, was electric Kool-Aid assets just to understand me being 18. Yeah. So that's, wow. Shout out to high school boyfriends. Sheesh. I, this is,

respect George is what I have to say. Number one. I respect George. And if you're gonna like use a guitar, do it like this is kind of my,

my philosophy for rock music that's what I got I completely agree George is an interesting he's a paradox for me because he obviously has written the fewest number of songs

of the three primary songwriters in the group some of the some of the best some of the most beautiful but I much prefer his solo albums that immediately follow

even more so I think than the Lennon solo albums I'm not really super into solo Lennon solo albums. I'm not really super into solo Lennon. I love solo Paul. But solo George, those first three albums after Dynamite are incredible. Incredible. Like literally among the best songs ever written.

And so I always kind of get distracted when I hear a George Beatles song. I'm like, actually what I want to hear is, isn't it a pity or whatever song I really like. My number four is Eleanor Rigby. That's a good one. That's two Revolver songs in a row. You have Eleanor Rigby on your list?

I don't. I thought about it. I was like singing it last night and I will say one of the great jokes in the movie is that Jack can't remember all the words to Eleanor Rigby and I was doing it last night and I was like Eleanor Rigby lives what does she do in a church where a wedding has been yeah it's it's good I agree that was maybe my favorite part of the movie was Jack trying to remember all the songs. And that part is really great and shows you how complicated and simple that song is. And it's a very similar kind of one-two punch with For No One, which is like, this is a bunch of guys who are 26 figuring out how to become more serious artists without sacrificing connecting with millions of people instantaneously.

Number three. I'm going obvious. She loves you. I knew you would choose one of these. Yeah, yeah. I just, I learned about the Beatles when they did, you remember the anthology, Beatles anthology in like 1993, four? Huge thing for me.

Huge thing for me. That's how I learned about them. And I was like 10, 4. Huge thing for me. Huge thing for me. That's how I learned about them. And I was like 10, maybe. I miss when we could have like a four night, three night event about a band. That's crazy that that happened. And then I got the anthology.

I think my first Beatles CDs were in fact like the anthology CDs that they released with it. And I had the book and I learned about all of them, but that I came to it as like a teenage, like teeny bopper. And this song is so good that it speaks to music critics and also teeny boppers.

And like them screaming, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's so essential, joyful pop. I dig it. Yeah. My version of that, we were just talking about George. This is, I think their first George vocal ever. Number three is Do You Want to Know a Secret? See, I didn't put this on this list because I know.

You know what? Yeah, and I love this one. This is, there are times when this is my favorite Beatles song. There are times when this is my favorite song. Yeah. Just like peak George Martin knowing how to make something sound so great. Yeah. Great vocal performance.

Really fun song. I think this is their first record. I think Please Please Me is their first record. I imagine this being, I don't know, on your first album at 22 years old. It's just fucking crazy. The Beatles are amazing. Number two.

Okay. I agonized over this one as well because there were like five songs that could go in this category. But ultimately, I said the White Album is very important to me, so I went with I Will. Sing it loud so I can hear you. Make it easy to be near you. For the things you do,

then dear you to me. Oh, you know I will. Oh, yeah. I love this one. Like, it's, you know, I think it's like a minute and 40 seconds, but it's just like peak Paul and his guitar and one of those like perfect melodies that he makes sound so effortless, but it's impossible. I like I almost put in I love her in this spot because I like from a hard day's Night and I almost put I'll Follow the Sun and then Till There Was You also fits in this like mode of

just like Paul singing beautifully but I think I Will is the best one I think we both like a sweet Beatles song yeah there are really harsh

serrated Beatles songs I like I almost put Your Blues on this song which is like you know John's Freak Out on the White Album

I just realized there are no songs from the White Album on here, which is on my list, which is just bizarre. My number two is A Day in the Life. Also a little obvious. Little music nerd. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup. And looking up, I noticed I was late. Also a little obvious. Little music nerd. Yeah.

But break it apart into its little pieces. Yeah. You got a great John song and you got a great Paul song together. And then you got Convulsion. And the Convulsion is a story of what happens to the band in the future. It's a little metaphor for the whole band. If you don like a day in the life you can fuck off what's your number one can i just say yeah and it's and it's your list and i respect you i everything that you just said is true but there is just like a tradition every person who makes a and thank you for not putting it number one that's why you are good at your job and why i am your friend but

there is this tradition of like music critics, like it's always a day in the life at number one because they're just like, oh, it's the best of both. Like, okay, I get it. Take a side, you know, have an opinion. It's fine at number two. I think everything that you said was exactly right. My number one is I saw her standing there. I mean, I just like want them to just shake their heads and do

stuff. It's like, it's so, it's just, if you boil the Beatles down to like one image, it's just for me, Paul, like doing the little head shake with the hair. And I just, I guess I listened to this one early as well. I don't know. I just really like it. I think it's a great choice. My number one, She's Leaving Home.

We gave her everything money could buy. She's leaving home after living alone for so many years. Which is, I just got a thing for the McCartney ballad, you know? And I think it's a little odd to me that I've got two Sgt. Pepper songs on here. Because I think Sgt. Pepper's is kind of like the basic boy, cool album. You know, you kind of get over Sgt. Pepper's pretty kind of like the basic boy cool album. You know, you kind of get over Sgt. Pepper's pretty early on, I think, and realize that it's a little bit of a, it's a middle period. It's like they're still figuring some things out

and they haven't quite gotten to where the White Album is going, where they're becoming like their own individual artists. Yes. But for whatever reason, I just have a biochemical reaction to that song. You know, and also the chorus is written by Lennon and the verses are written by McCartney. Right. And that is actually probably a better version of the they're doing something together thing, you know, as opposed to like John gets his song over here and Paul gets his song over here and then we mash them together. This is union.

Yeah. And even though I am a Paul guy and you you're you're a paul gal you the union the union is just undeniable they also like the short story songs i do i do yeah and i as an editor and a writer i uh admire structure i don't care for short stories in any format i think that you should write from the heart or write a novel you don't care for short stories in any format write a novel cowards maybe the worst take ever in the history of this podcast. I also, I do. My face is melting.

I do also find that short stories are when writers fuss the most over their sentences and their language and there's a self-consciousness to it. And I like a more pure and also more polished expression. I just like, oh, I'm writing. Wow. Good for you. You're writing. I have no idea how one can be a fan of Paul McCartney

and not a fan of short stories. Nevertheless, here you are. Here I am. I promised a double episode, and this is certainly a double episode. Amanda, thank you for opening your heart and yelling a lot as usual. Now let's go to Adam Neiman

and talk about the best movies of the year so far. Joining me now, beloved Ringer contributor Adam Naiman. Adam, hello. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing really well. Thank you for joining me to talk about the best movies of the year so far, though I think there is a large asterisk next to that title, maybe even larger than the asterisk next to your beloved Toronto Raptors NBA championship.

And that's because this has been a tricky year for movies. I would say not the greatest year thus far. Adam, what do you make of what we've seen from the movie world so far this year? I'm going to let the shot at the Raptors pass without comment. I mean, what I make of the year is this thing that you've kind of written about, other people have written about, a lot of us who write about movies, and even if we don't write about them, if we're movie lovers and cinephiles, we're experiencing this in real time, which is, you know, the erosion of a kind of middle class or the erosion of a kind of upper middle brow kind of movie making with either giant conglomerated blockbusters on top or incredibly niche titles fighting for space underneath. It's hard to find one-offs. It's hard to find self-contained movies. It's hard to find things that aren't designed to Voltron into some larger franchise.

And we've also seen the migration of some really talented and gifted filmmakers into the streaming realm. So like whatever you think of something like, say, Too Old to Die Young, that's an auteur work that doesn't count as a movie the way that Twin Peaks didn't. And also it's only June and we're all conditioned to think

that the good movies come out in the second half of the year. So whether that's true or not, there will be some rallying time maybe. That's far too reasonable a sentiment to share on a podcast like this. We're supposed to be freaking out about how terrible everything is, Adam. But I will say this is the worst year for American new releases at the midway point that I can ever remember since I started writing about movies. There it is. There is the sentiment that we are seeking. I mean, I agree with you, of course. This is not something that has developed

just this past year. It's been happening for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years. Some might draw us all the way back to the release and boom, success of Jaws as to why we've gotten to this place. That being said, I do think that there have been a handful of films, both American, some big top action tentpole, some small indie preserved that have been wonderful. And I think that the idea of contemporary popular movie culture is an interesting thing to me. Because when I think about what this year has given us, obviously Avengers Endgame is by far the biggest movie that has been released, I will say. Spoiler alert, that movie is not on my list. There's a couple of things I was thinking about as I was going through the list, and when I prompted people on Twitter to suggest their favorite movies of the year, I got a lot of responses, and I suspect that these responses

came from bots, for the movie Alita Battle Angel. Have you seen the movie Alita Battle Angel? I have seen Alita Battle Angel. Okay. I'm not terribly interested in the content of Alita Battle Angel, but I am interested in the context. And I think that the bots or maybe not bots who are in my feed responding with their gifts of the robotic android female who plays Motorball, were there for somewhat political reasons.

And it's thus been explained to me that this is a sort of rejoinder to Captain Marvel and the quote-unquote woke aesthetic of certain MCU characters and that Alita Battle Angel feels closer to something that they admire and that they're excited about. And I think that that is a microcosm of something that is happening in movie culture, which is it's very stratified just the way that politics and the consumption of popular culture at large is stratified. And there is a very them versus us feel to a lot of this stuff. So inevitably, when we get into a conversation

around these things, obviously, interest in art is subjective, but it becomes this sort of battle lines drawn series of conversations. Now that's not unfamiliar to film critics. Film critics naturally have to create these demarcated zones of takes, you know, and you have to say, this is why this film is truly important. And you're trying to draw attention to your taste, to expose people to new things. But the fact that it has suffused almost every aspect of movie culture, I don't know. What do you make of that in general? I mean, I make of it much what you said. I was having this conversation with a friend of mine who lives in New York and he's an editor for a major film magazine. We were messaging as we do about nothing and this came up and this idea that movies have almost

become more like ideological prompts, you know, whether by design or by not. People are having arguments that they would have about other topics, other issues, other fields, and sort of using movies as stand-ins or as illustrations for those things, which is actually weirdly close to some of the turns that have happened in film studies in the academy in the last 20 or 30 years where the movie, its intention, its aesthetics kind of become subordinate to this kind of ideological point scoring. And, you know, there's value in that because obviously real life is more important than movies and movies shouldn't be valued as an escape from real life. But it's also gotten fairly grueling to sort of realize how much of the discussion and backlash and backlash to backlash against movies really has to do with how they serve the mandates or the missions or the axe grinding of individual critics and cohorts and i'm as guilty of that as anyone because a movie like dragged across concrete which is not on my

list and yet is the movie i have talked the most about this year with people, is a film where the reception of it critically was inseparable from discussions about its politics and whether we should even be considering it at all. And truly in June, there is no movie I've talked about with people more than that, which I think is very odd. Yeah, you talked about it with Chris Ryan on The Watch. I just wanted to share my takes on Dragged Across Concrete with you, which is that it's not good, and we're wasting a lot of time on something that is certainly provocative, but not worthy of the discussion. I do think his previous films were actually quite worthy of the discussion, and this being the one that broke through to create the S. Craig Zoller content machine, I find fascinating. I am as guilty of it as anybody.

We published pieces on The Ringer about him and his stories. But I just didn't get this movie at all. I didn't actually get why it was the turning point. Nevertheless, I know that we have all talked about it a lot, so I don't need you to necessarily respond to that in kind. What other general thoughts do you have about the year so far? I know there are some things you haven't seen. I mean, general have about the year so far? I mean, I know there's some things you haven't seen. I mean, general thoughts about the year so far. Again, it's stuff that, and when I say that there's been writing on the ringer about it, I mean that in a good way, not in a redundant way.

It's just, it's trying to reckon with what does it mean when so much resource and audience attention is concentrated on such a few rarefied movies and in that sense something like marvel which we talked about a couple of months ago or a month and a half ago when we did that podcast on spider-man it becomes this weird model of a larger economic reality which is like this concentration of wealth and influence like you know in this in this scenario marvel becomes a kind of analogous to the one percent right like they have they contain so much money resource screen space they command so much attention is it a question of supply and demand or are they creating that supply they've somehow not overexposed themselves or or oversaturated in terms of their popularity it feels like we are just existing as a film culture

in the shadow of that stuff and you cited cited Jaws as an epicenter for that. And I think you're right. And I think Star Wars is an epicenter for that, too. It's so strange to think that a moment that is ancient in all other ways, in terms of how special effects have changed, storytelling have changed, how filmmakers' careers have gone. We are kind of still in the Jaws Star Wars moment. There hasn't really been a turn away from that, even if there's lots of little subplots that have built up underneath that. I don't know. Does that make sense?

Does that prompt anything from you? Certainly. And at the risk of getting navel-gazing and self-reflexive about this sort of thing, I think if you are doing a podcast about movies, if you are writing about movies on a regular basis, you have a desire to also be successful, to be heard, to be listened to. And inevitably, you have to cover the things, these very gargantuan things in an overwhelming sort of way. You know, the fact that I devoted a week to Marvel movies in the run-up to Avengers, or rather a month to Marvel movies in the run-up to Avengers Endgame, I wouldn't say that the MCU films are my favorite films. I actually quite like them, but I would love to have spent two hours

on my number five film, which is The Souvenir. But I also know that a very small number of people are going to see that film. It's hard to do full-blown advocacy cultural journalism in 2019. And also, I'm not sure that advocacy journalism is necessarily the only way. I'm the kind of person who, as you know, likes to understand why things have happened, how the pieces fit together.

There's a kind of, I think Hollywood in particular is a commercial art and the film industry is a commercial art. And the way that these choices are made and the way that they interlock is inevitably bound by the conventions of the structure of movie making. So, you know, I am a little bit forlorn about some of the things that have happened in Hollywood and in the movie industry in general, but I also find it to be such a rich text to analyze. So doing the show is fun. I wish there weren't nine endgame episodes, but I would have loved to have done three endgame episodes.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. And I think that if you, it's a very fine balance because if you're not going to deal with those kinds of films, chances are you're in either a more specialized or rarefied publication that can afford, whether literally or figuratively, to use that stuff as a structuring absence instead of dealing with it. And you also run the risk, too. If you pretend that stuff doesn't exist or if you denigrate it at every turn, even if you're doing so in critical good faith, you cultivate a kind of elitism. And I think that this is a kind of thing that's going on also in larger in the culture in North America, where elitism is seen as a dirty word and intellectualism is bad and anti-intellectualism is kind of this populist tool, which is a terrifying thing to me. So I'm of the mind that, you know, if you want people to take a discussion about The Souvenir or some of the other films that might be on our list, it's on my list too.

You know, if you want to take it seriously, you don't pretend that you don't have some stake or interest or skin in the game as far as The Avengers go. But it also kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where even if you just do talk about the most tyrannically available commercial items to criticize them or analyze them or deconstruct them, you still do give the impression that they are fully worth people's attention. So it's hard. It's hard to know how to proceed and also to compare such unalike films in a kind of ranked way, right? I mean, The Souvenir is doing something on one set of terms and Endgame is doing something on another set of terms.

Comparing them is hard, although I know which film I think is much better. Yes, I completely agree. Let's talk about The Souvenir. This is an entree into this conversation. Where does it sit on your list? Is it number one? No, it sits right where it sits on your list at number five. Oh, how serendipitous.

So this, of course, is I believe the fourth film from Joanna Hogg, who is an English filmmaker and longtime television director, who has a quite austere and beautiful and sort of still style to her filmmaking. This story certainly feels significantly autobiographical. It's about a woman in the 1980s going to film school who begins a relationship with a mysterious man who works in the State Department, perhaps. And what unfolds as she figures out who she is as a woman. Is that an adequate description of this movie? I'm not sure that it's necessarily bound by plot. No, I mean, it's a really good description of its outer shape.

When I wrote about it for The Ringer, I tried to get at what I thought was its inner logic, which was a film about addiction, right? And in a kind of dual way, because the male character that you're talking about is, and this isn't really a spoiler, but he is revealed fairly early on to be in the throes of a kind of chemical dependency that compromises aspects of his professional life and in some ways heightens his attractiveness from a certain point of view, his dangerousness, his seductiveness. So, you know, he's addicted to drugs and the main character played by Honor Swinton Byrne is sort of addicted to him. Right. And it's addiction in the sense that she knows it's bad for him. It's compulsive. It's convulsive. She tries to quit, comes back, tries to quit, comes back. It's damaging other aspects of her life. And the way that Hogg keeps those two parallels in play, I think, is really dazzling. And people talk about the style, and the style really is something. But I think it's just an exquisitely well-written film to have those variables in play. Yeah, Hogg is an interesting figure. This movie is released by A24,

which is, of course, the very hip and successful, somewhat indie shingle. And I had thought, I knew her films, but for some reason suspected she was a woman in her 30s. And of course, she's not. She's 59 years old. And there's something compelling about a woman at this stage of her creative life having a kind of breakthrough like this. The Souvenir is, of course, not a blockbuster hit, but a lot of people have seen it. And this movie is making a lot of lists like the one we're making right now. And I don't know if gratifying is necessarily the word, but it was exciting to sort of see a new voice at a different stage of their life than your typical sort of this person emerged from Sundance at 28 years old with this very personal tale and yada yada, same sort of narrative format we hear about over and over again with new filmmakers right yeah no and I mean she

is an emergent filmmaker and there's certain parallels with other emergent UK filmmakers like there's an interesting common denominator between her and um and and Ben Wheatley is that they've both been kind of uh hyped up up and executive produced by Martin Scorsese. Yes. You know, who had a credit on Free Fire as well as on The Souvenir. But I think that what's interesting about Hogg, and this is not a shot at Wheatley, who obviously I'm a gigantic fan of, but it's also the idea of an emergent filmmaker who is not working through genre. You know, whether it's someone like Lynn Ramsey, who's also not exactly breakthrough, she's been around for a while, but she had the A24 distribution or a filmmaker like Wheatley or all this discussion with elevated horror. It seems that there's

something becoming weirdly synonymous now between like exciting director centric cinema and genre, you know, and what I think is interesting about the souvenir is, I mean, I guess there's a couple of descriptors you could use for it. You could say it's a period piece, though that's not really a genre. She just doesn't lean on that stuff. It's a film that generates its own compulsion and its own interest instead of having tropes that it can kind of fall back on. And its frame of reference is also very different than a lot of, you know, the cool hip indies that get put out now i mean this is a movie that i think makes a lot not more sense but is even more enjoyable if you're familiar with the movies of like michael powell and emmerich pressburger the archers who she's obviously a huge fan of and seems to be doing a bit of quoting of and yet it is also way more accessible than her earlier films like if

anyone has seen her film exhibition that is like, remote, cold kind of art film. This, I think, has way more access points for people. Yes. Chief among them, I think, Anna Swinton-Byrne, who gives a really incredible performance. She's the daughter of Tilda Swinton, who also appears in this film, giving a somewhat different performance than the one that she gives in Avengers Endgame. You mentioned the kind of stylish, elevated horror and the also sort of hip kind of indie. A lot of those movies did not make my list. A couple of them did. But, you know, movies like Booksmart, which you probably have heard about on this show,

if you're listening right now, we talked about it quite a bit, which is a movie I like, but is not quite in this top five for me. I think that The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an interesting film. Is that on your list? It's one that I have not gotten to yet. It's one of about a half dozen blind spots that I'm not going to just go list all of them because it makes me seem less and less credible, but that's one that I didn't see. I don't need you to tick off necessarily everything you've seen. No, no, I'm not going to. I bring it up because I think in some ways it resembles the sort of

movie that we're talking about. In other ways, I found so much to admire about it. And I think it's quite beautiful in purely aesthetic terms. There are some things about it that are not perfect for me that don't necessarily work, but it does feel like the arrival of two very, very interesting voices. And I'll be curious to see if they, much like Joanna Hogg, kind of jump outside of their personal storytelling comfort zone. You know, these are very autobiographical tales. What's your number four?

My number four is a mild cheat. I'm cheating a little bit, but I feel it's important because I can't choose between them. It's two Chinese films that it just makes me very happy to get to talk about On the Ringer, you know, because there's a listening audience here that might check them out. One is a film called Long Day's Journey and Tonight by a director named Bai Gan. And the other is a film called An Elephant Sitting Still by a filmmaker named Hu Bo. And I'm not going to take a supersized amount of time to discuss them both. I'll just say that. Did you see either of these first I saw a long day's journey tonight which I really really liked and it has one of the all-time great flex title sequences without spoiling anything yeah so I mean

maybe talk about that one first just because we've both seen it and again I'll try and be efficient in talking about both of them it's just they're both films by young directors, and yet they point in different directions, not just stylistically, but also in terms of the story outside the frame, which is that with Long Day's Journey and Tonight, this director, Bai Gan, is now a bright light of Chinese cinema. This film was a massive box office hit in China

in a very weird way because it was marketed as a sort of popular, populist romance when it's a hardcore art film and people actually were like quite mad they felt like suckered into the theater it had this huge opening weekend and they realized that what they were watching was a very strange abstract movie again with this incredible 3d tracking shot so you know bygone is on the way up but the director of elephant sitting still this director Bo, is no longer with us. He made this incredible debut film and then he committed suicide at the age of 29.

And so it's a career that would have been incredibly major possibly. industrial town and about these characters running away from their problems and trying to leave that cast of misery and pessimism over it which is very political and very specific to to contemporary china um it just links up with the story outside the frame in an almost impossibly moving way like bygone and long day's journey and tonight there's promise for a major career going forward and with elephant sitting still this incredibly choreographed, incredibly well-made four-hour film, it's all we're ever going to see from this filmmaker. But both of them, I think, are unlike anything else I watched this year. And I just wanted to make space for both. I love both of those recommendations. I'm very excited to see an Elephant Sitting Still. I just haven't had a chance to see it yet. I think long day's journey in tonight is well worth recommending. I, even,

even if you are a little bit allergic to art films, there are things happening structurally and visually in the movie that are unlike anything I've seen. So I love that recommendation. My number four is perhaps a movie more people have seen. It's us. Um, us is it's interesting the way that Us has aged because if we go back to 2017 and we think about Jordan Peele's directorial debut, Get Out, that was a movie that was an

almost instant box office hit, but grew in estimation over the months after its release. It became not just a cultural and internet phenomenon, it became a kind of, I guess, film culture at large phenomenon, and internet phenomenon, it became a kind of, I guess, film culture at large phenomenon and ultimately became an Academy Award nominee and then a winner and announced what felt like a great new filmmaker. So when Us came, it was larded with all this anticipation.

And when I first saw it, I was quite satisfied. Maybe that's because I'm comfortable watching a movie like an elephant sitting still and I don't necessarily need narrative logic to work in every movie but I think that over time people have grown a little bit less satisfied or more frustrated by us and when they've re-watched it they've really felt like oh boy this is way more impressionistic and way less logical than I want it to be I still think from a filmmaking perspective, what Peele is doing, especially inside the studio system,

is just, for lack of a better word, authentically cool and fun. And he is taking the best of what it means to get $50 million from a studio and trying to create something that is wholly his. And I really admire that. And we just had this whole long preamble to this list making about how difficult it is to get that high middle. And he really is shooting at, and I still would. I think that there's incredibly impressive things about how it's made and the modulation of tone. And I like

all the influences and precedents that it leans into. The difference for me was that in Get Out, he seemed to have this incredible idea, this metaphor for the sunken place and this plot that we don't need to recap because everyone's seen the movie. And the movie kind of almost seemed to tell itself, whereas here, because he's working in the shadow of this acclaimed debut, and with all kinds of different pressures on him, some of which he's talked about, like on your podcast and elsewhere about following up a big debut hit and being an African-American filmmaker with such a visibility and working in horror. It felt to me like a really talented guy for better or for worse going for broke.

I didn't think it had the elegance and shape that Get Out had. I also think that it was deeper and denser and even more decodable. I like the movie more than I don't. And I don't know if I'm allowed yet to talk about an interestingly comparative movie, which is not on my list, but which is Ari Aster's Midsommar, which has the same sort of thing of like, you did really well the first time out and everyone is really dying to see your follow-up. How is film culture going to talk about this movie? I will be interested to see, having seen Midsommar last night, if the reception trail for that film is going to parallel what you were talking about with us. I would guess so. And I think I probably admire both of those movies in the same exact way.

Right. interviewed both of those guys a couple of times and you know but truthfully they're just making a kind of movie particularly a kind of freak out a kind of mainstream freak out which I'm going to write about on the site next week that I really miss at the movies and so if not if for nothing else I really liked us we're not putting Midsommar on this list because that movie comes out July 3rd and this is this this list ends on June 30th um what's your number three? My number three is a film called Transit, which is by a German director named Christian Petzold. He is probably best known in North America for his last film, which is called Phoenix, which is this brilliantly atmospheric kind of noir about a woman who puts on a new face, literally. It's a face transplant movie, which is a very reductive way to talk about it. But trans, it also has a gimmick or a conceit that just strikes me as one of those brilliant things I've seen in a movie this year, which is it's a 1940s period piece that's just shot now with no period design. It's essentially set seemingly during

the Second World War. It's almost kind of Casablanca-ish romance about transit, essentially, about transit and about migration and about immigration in a kind of, you know, moment of fascist political power. And he's completely curtailed all the fetishizing stuff you get with a period piece. It makes the narrative seem in a way quite timeless and makes the narrative seem in a way quite universal. And he's just a director whose whole thing appeals to me. He's very spare. He's very minimal. He gets these really kind of emptied out, hollowed out performances. His lead is this guy named Franz Rogalski,

who's in Terrence Malick's new movie, and who was also a dead ringer for Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, which is incidental, but you watch the movie and you almost feel like you're watching a weird outtake where Freddie Quayle was suddenly German. Really appealing to my sensibilities here with that description. Appealing to my sensibilities. But it's a film that I think is, of all the movies on my

own top five, it's the one that I think is the most challenging and maybe reading about in an outline, it's the hardest sell. It's also the movie I've seen this year in terms of movies that I actually like, that I've thought the most about. And

now that it's out streaming, again, if anyone listening finds that idea of a period piece set in the here and now, compelling as a conceit, I would really urge you to watch it. It's really terrific. Yeah, the one thing that I felt like was missing from this film was Nina Haas, who is... She is missing, yeah. Is Petzold's longtime collaborator, and she is missing yeah is pet sold you know longtime collaborator and she is so amazing in phoenix which you described and phoenix really has one of the all-time final scenes in a film that i've ever seen i don't think i'm overstating myself when i say that um but transit is a very nifty and difficult to to unpack film and i really liked it and i completely agree about the

the sort of lack of time period, the inability, the sort of period piece without all of the surrounding elements that you usually think you need to tell a story like that. I just thought it was a very cleverly designed movie. That's a great one. My number three is also a bit pop. It's called John Wick 3 Parabellum. In an effort to be straightforward, this movie kicks ass. It's a real testament to the ability of brilliant artisans doing what they do best. And I don't think John Wick 3 necessarily aspires to the emotional depth of a film like Transit or the austere sensibilities of The Souvenir. This is a movie about fight sequences. Certainly John Wick can be a paragon for some sort of dignity and some sort of commitment to his workplace.

But I don't think you really need to look too deeply into understanding why John Wick 3 works so well. It's because the fight sequences are incredible. I talked to Chad Stahelski on this show. And he, of course, is a longtime fight coordinator and stuntman. And he knows that part of the business better than anybody. And you can tell at this stage of that series, he's got a little bit more money to work with. He's got a little bit more time.

He is quite demanding and domineering in a way, but it pays off at least on screen. In so far as there are just a handful of moments in this movie that I've not seen before. And they are funny and they are kind of wicked and they are jaw dropping. And so John Wick 3, that's my pitch. What do you think? Well, here's what I want to ask you, because we collaborated about a month ago on that sort of Keanu essay where we sort of talked about what a good actor he is and the things he brings to all these parts. Do you think, and it's not a question of having to choose because, you know, you don't erase the past with each new thing i wonder if in 10 or 15 years

if it's going to be matrix or john wick in terms of the series that he's most hugely universally identified with i think the matrix is still in first place by a by a mile right now because of the first film being what it is but the the two sequels don't have the same legacy. Whereas with John wick, there's a kind of quality control where the three films seem to most people to be all kind of like pretty equally good. And the John wick films also are very much about world building, maybe a little less crazily than the matrix movies,

but I mean, they are their own kind of reality. Like, do you think that in 15 years, if one is to say, Oh, Keanu Reeves is John wick more than he's Neo, that that's a think that in 15 years, if one is to say, oh, Keanu Reeves is John Wick more than he's Neo, that that's an actual proposition? It's an interesting question.

I think it depends on what flavor you like. Do you like mythology or do you like philosophy? Because The Matrix has proven malleable for good and bad long-term to be analyzed. And John Wick, as you say, is about world building and it's about a broader experience in trying to understand how much bigger and badder these movies can get. I think the thing that is working for John Wick is also working against John Wick,

which is that Keanu is in his early 50s and I don't know how much longer he can do this. It's quite famed at this point that he does a large majority of the stunts in this movie and he quite demands that in a way. And he's of course very talented at various forms of martial arts and his director is also very talented at all of those things and they kind of challenge one another. And so I'll be curious to see if he can get a four and a five. I certainly think Lionsgate wants them to keep making movies and if they do continue to make those movies,

maybe what you're suggesting is right, which is that at some point, Keanu becomes more John Wick than he does one half of Bill and Ted or Neo or the myriad of characters that he's played over the years. I'm not totally sure. I mean, I think honestly, people just experience him in phases. He is a generational icon, and that's why we wrote about him. And three generations now have their version of Keanu. He'll always be the lawyer and the devil's advocate to me. There's lots of great Keanu

to choose from. He rules. I'm saying that without a hint of sarcasm. He's the best. Adam, I'm a fan of the man. What's your number two? Number two. Again, it seems like my list's pretty weighted in the direction of a single country, but my number two film is Ash's Purest White by the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. This is a kind of time-spanning epic about small-town gangsters, particularly one couple.

The female half of that couple is played by Jia's wife and great muse and star Zhao Tao. She is to him, in a way, what Nina Haas is to Christian Petzl. She's kind of this constant presence in his movies. And this is a kind of like amazing riff on the gangster film and Goodfell culture, all bound up in her loyalty to her partner, really reroutes her life and sends her to jail on a weapons charge. And she reemerges and is searching for her lover. And in the background of this quest, which takes place over many, many years, all of which are represented by different film formats in the last 20 years,

you just see the country changing around her. This incredible change while she remains constant and devoted and in love. At the risk of hyperbole, I mean, Jia's probably the major international director of the last 20 years, or he's on any short list. He's an incredible kind of poet laureate of modern China. And that's a story that the whole world needs to pay attention to. He's also been a bit of an outlaw in China and that the first half of his career was made very under the radar and against the wishes of the government. And now that he's become more mainstream, he hasn't like let up. He remains critical and kind of intensely skeptical about what he sees going on there uh he made a film a few years ago that martin scorsese was a huge fan

of called touch of sin which is an almost kind of like action epic violent movie and this film has little bits that actually reference and and touch on john woo but's again, it's that mixing of tones between kind of epic and drama and romance and even kind of documentary. I think it's just peerless. And another thing that I think listeners, if they seek out, they might be kind of surprised, especially by Jaws standards, how accessible this one is. I think you liked it too, right? I think we talked about it. I did. I liked it quite a bit. And I saw a Touch of Sin, but I'm not as familiar with his work. And I was just particularly blown away by the performance of his leading lady. Oh, she's amazing.

Just an incredible, incredible performer. And yeah, it's absolutely worth recommending this. That's three Chinese films for you and counting. Yeah, no more. Okay, no more. My number two, I was wondering if it would be on your list and i suspect that it is not but i am eager to discuss it with you because you wrote about it just a bit on the ringer earlier this week in a piece with miles sorry about the best movie moments and it's under the silver lake and oh wow this movie has gone through an

interesting life cycle for me i've now seen it three times, admired it more every time. I don't know if you'll ever see it three times. I suspect that you are somewhat suspicious of it while also appreciating some of its moves. You wrote particularly about the scene with the songwriter, which, you know, I don't want to spoil the movie too much with anybody, but I thought your deconstruction of that scene was very smart. And Under the Silver Lake is a movie that is about people's obsession with things like lists about movies. And it's a little bit of a cautionary tale, a little bit, I think you called it a flex. It's definitely a flex and it's not entirely successful. And its failures are actually very interesting to me. And this movie

is too long. And I, I, I'm not really in the business of telling filmmakers that their movie is too long, but this movie is too long. And the performances are a little bit scattered and the, the visual choices are, um, quite on the nose. It's, it's riffing on all, all sorts of Hitchcockian and Robert Altman and 90s era sort of Miramaxian tropes. And yet, as an Angeleno and as an Andrew Garfield Stan and as an admirer of It Follows and as a person that is in many ways guilty of some of the tropes that this movie is zeroing in on, I find myself continually drawn into it and thinking about it and interested in it and interested in understanding why I'm maybe not the best person in the world.

And I think that it's a little bit more accusatory than it was originally perceived when it premiered at Cannes last year. And of course, the movie has had this very complicated rollout where it was originally going to come out, I think, last summer and then last fall. And then it was pushed to this spring and it was in theaters for a week and then it was on iTunes. I think it's possible that it's been seen by more people than it would have been seen by now because of the way they did it. I think it's already on Amazon Prime at this stage. But it is a fascinating, I'd love to kind of go behind the

scenes of this movie and talk to everybody who worked on it, kind of from stem to stick, just to understand how this happened. Because as I said, I'm so interested in also that aspect of moviemaking. And this movie slots right into that. It slots right into what happens when a cool company and a cool filmmaker and a cool actor make something that seems cool, but doesn't quite get there. And then the rest of the world doesn't know what to do with it and i don't know i'm curious sort of more broadly what you think about it well i'll say two things the the short thing i'll say because i kind of got into this with with chris last week when we talked about the ref and is the about too old to die young in a year that's been as weak as this i have found myself more compelled by films that I suspect on some level don't fully work,

but have stuff in them, like Dragged Across Concrete, like Brian De Palma's Domino, and Under the Silver Lake, which I like less than either of those movies. But still, there's definitely stuff in here. And some of it is toting up the references and illusions that David Robert Mitchell is working with. And that's a kind of game that I think you're right. The movie is encouraging us to play while cautioning us against what that means, both culturally and in terms of a certain kind of psychology, a very male psychology. I would also just shout out a piece that Vikram Murthy wrote for a reverse shot on the film, which is the most convincing case that I've read for it from beginning to end as a movie kind of about semiotics and signs and

symbology and how it's sort of about, you know, like, what is scarier? Is it scarier that the universe really is trying to tell you something or is it scarier that it's just not? And we invest all these things with with with with so much meaning that even though the universe isn't trying to tell us something about conspiracy about why a girl doesn't want to date us about where she went instead of calling us back the next day uh if we invest it with that much meaning it becomes its own reality i think that there's something a little dubious about a movie that is criticizing a kind of leering macho sexism while participating in it to the degree that the movie does. It's a choice.

I see intention in it. It's a choice that I think is a little bit phony to me. But I've thought about the movie more than I thought I would after seeing it. I didn't enjoy watching it. I didn't think I was going to think about it. I was texting with a friend immediately after seeing it saying, well, that was a disaster. But I keep coming enjoy watching it. I didn't think I was going to think about it. I was texting with a friend immediately after seeing it saying, well, that was a disaster. But I keep coming back to it. And everything you were talking about, it's kind of weird rollout and the way that it was released makes me think it's going to end up as a kind of cult item.

Because that kind of botched release or that polarization is absolutely what makes cult items kind of endure. So I do not think that film culture is necessarily done with, with under, with, with, with under the silver Lake. I think it's going to keep kind of bobbing to the surface over the next couple of years when people talk about things that were misunderstood or

miss underestimate, miss underestimated or need to be looked at again. Yeah. And I think it's honestly a self-styled cult classic in its design. I think it absolutely wants to be that. And if you had told me as a sort of conspiratorial type that this rollout was all purposeful in an effort to get it to this cult classic status, I might believe you. This is the kind of movie that would have an idea like that baked inside of it. So it's an interesting artifact of modern movie times. And there's just plenty of actual

filmmaking in it that I dig. So that's my number two. Number one, do we have the same number one? I'm not sure. What's your number one? My number one is High Life. Oh, so we do not. That's good. So speak on High Life. High Life is, again, a film that it's so funny how one of the things that we keep talking about here is this idea of reception and release and where do films fit. And so High Life is the English language debut of the French director Claire Denis, who is sort of an absolute icon to one section of film culture, let's say film festival culture or a tourist cinephilia. And she's never really broken through commercially in the States.

And here she is working with genre. She's working with an actor in Robert Pattinson, who has kind of now become the patron saint of, of kind of difficult, you know, difficult quasi mainstream genre films. He lent his name to the Safdie brothers film. Good time.

He's worked with David Cronenberg and now he's working with Claire Denis. And it's a film that I think was promoted very heavily. It was memed to death on Twitter. Denis traveled and did screenings with it. It got really good reviews. And from what I've read, it still didn't do that well. And I see that as a testament to really how challenging and difficult and uncompromised it is like this is not claire denise crossover move the crossover move is happening irrespective of what she actually put in the movie which is this harsh tough alienating sort of meditation or or or or treatise on on human nature and you know the further you get away from Earth

and moving into the future, it's set on a spaceship. We don't transcend our problems and our hangups and our humanity. We're kind of trapped with them. And it's incredibly violent and it's tough to watch at times. I think it has a great tenderness to it,

but it's a tenderness that is underneath this harsh surface. And I just think, again, she's a great artist and we're lucky to have her. And every time she makes a movie, it's an event, but it didn't make the imprint that maybe its distributor was hoping for. Yes. Also an interesting test case, the same studio that released Under the Silver Lake. I believe this film was acquired. And Jim you know, Jim Jarmusch was on the show a couple of weeks ago. You and I had dinner over the weekend and I was telling you this story

and he was talking about the film. And of course, he has a longstanding relationship with Claire Denis. They've worked together. And the only word he used to describe this movie, I believe, was strange. And for Jim Jarmusch to describe a movie as strange must mean it's quite strange. And the truth is, it's quite strange. It's beautiful. And it is sort of rapturous in its way. But I can't imagine watching it on a TV. I saw it on a very big screen at a film festival. And it feels like that's where it belongs, which is a pat thing to say in 2019. I think if you can see a movie like High Life, see it wherever you can see it. It's utterly unique and sui generis. But I don't, gosh, it is almost impenetrably strange at times for me. So that's kind of why it's right on the outskirts of my list.

No, and I think that that's fair enough. One of those things where if we're going to look at one kind of movie that comes out this year is being kind of quality controlled studio product that doesn't leave much to the audience beyond pleasure and satisfaction. And that can be Marvel and that can be something else. It's so fun to get on a podcast like this and talk about a movie like High Life where it's not just a question of where it ranks numerically or even whether it's good or bad, but just that there's stuff in it. Because that's what film culture is dependent on, is movies that you can actually talk about instead of just nod, you know? I completely agree. We talked a bit about Midsommar earlier in this conversation. I think this movie would make for an interesting double feature. My number one is Her Smell.

And Her Smell is, of course, made by a friend of the podcast and movie culture and font terrible, Alex Ross-Perry. It is a five-act structure depiction of a, I believe you described her as a Courtney Love Monk named Becky something, played by Elizabeth Moss in what is for me most definitely the performance of the year. And it is a loud, messy, complicated, extraordinarily melodramatic film that is also by terms quite beautiful and sensitive and very much operating on its own terms. I think that if there's one thing that all of the movies that we have named here, these 10, these, I guess, nine films in total are doing, they are operating on their own terms and they are not bound by the

conventions of expanded universes. They are not bound even by, I think, the vagaries of the business. Her Smell, another movie that the second time I watched it, I found much more to enjoy about it and much more to dive into from the production design, the sort of posters, the songwriting that went into it, the creation of a world in a way, the sort of expanded universe of this band and this woman and the artistic life that she has over the course of, I don't know, maybe it's taking place over 10 or 20 years. I was just really, really impressed by the level that Perry took this film to. And I'm not totally sure. I thought he had a movie with not necessarily this tonality, but this kind of scope because his previous films obviously are

always very centered on these sort of toxic figures who have a lot of big ideas about their art and who are quite unafraid to be disruptive and rude to people. but they're small and they're often very interior. And this movie had a kind of big reach that I really, really enjoyed. You also, I believe you wrote about this as well. Well, I wrote about the scene again, it's hard because you don't want to spoil and it's not the climax of the movie, but it's later on. It's a scene where the Elizabeth Moss character covers a Brian Adams song for her, for her, for her daughter, which is a really well-chosen song. I mean, one of the things I'm interested about in Her Smell, and it came up as a kind of weird common denominator in some of the movies we talked about. It's very much present in Us and definitely in Silver Lake, is this idea of – and The Souvenir, too – this of like nostalgia as film culture moves forward and time moves forward.

Now we have movies that are nostalgic and recreating the 80s and the 90s, right? Which have become almost kind of deep past, you know, that like grunge is a period piece. Like when Cameron Crowe made singles in 1991, that's a snapshot of something that's going on and Perry is reaching back to that or a little later than that. So it made perfect sense to me that a movie, but a rock star who's coming of age in the 90s, you know,, the pastiches of kind of hole and bikini kill songs that you hear, and that suggestion of the business, a business where like live shows and record sales actually meant something and streaming and downloading didn't exist. I mean, that stuff's all pretty irresistible about it. And when you talk about Elizabeth Moss, I mean, that is definitely a performance that at the end of the year, if you're talking about tour de force and if you're talking about carrying and holding an entire movie just with your face, with your body, with your presence, even in moments of silence, hopefully that consideration will come her way. I think the whole ensemble of that film is really, really strong. There's really well,

really well executed ensemble acting kind of across the board. And it's also interesting to have cinematic it is because the camera never stops moving. And the cutting by, by Robert green is, you know, is, is, is,

is really ragged and exciting, but there's also something quite theatrical about it. It's kind of like watching five, short one-act plays, you know? Yeah, so that's definitely the design of it for sure. The design of it. So the ambition of all the different things that Perry is doing go well beyond the previous, you know, three or four movies that he's made

and certainly show a kind of an upward trajectory in terms of production value and resource from something like The Color Wheel, which is like the smallest movie that you will ever see. And now he's, again, to use a word we've used a few times, it's kind of a flex. And it's truly a flex. I'm going to flex a couple of more titles that I like this year that did not make my list. If there's any more you want to add, feel free to do so.

You know, High Flying Bird is not on either of our lists. It would be an honorable mention for me. It is an honorable mention for me too. And I worry that the time of year when it was released and the mode of distribution in which it was released will have people holding it back. Not to mention that Steven Soderbergh has another film coming out later this year. But there is a lot of greatness in High Flying Bird. And I don't know if at the end of the movie, I felt like it was a great film, but man, it's got style and it's got a great script and it's a very uniquely entertaining movie. And I just wanted to give that one a quick shout out. Anything you want to add about that? I would just say it will certainly win the 2019 award for the

most ringer movie of the year. Well, I wouldn't be so sure if I'm being perfectly honest, there's a movie coming out called Uncut Gems, which might be the most ringer movie of the year well i wouldn't be so sure if i'm being perfectly honest there's a movie coming out called uncut gems which might be the most ringer movie ever that's true because that will have nba cameos in it truly but but but high flying bird like as a movie about sports and about sports business and about sort of like streaming culture you know and just given the fact that it's soderbergh and written by tarrell Alvin McCraney, who did Moonlight, I remembered thinking when it came out, like, how am I going to write about this? There's like 10 writers on this site who will have interesting stuff to say about it. And yeah, I think it's a very honorable movie. And I think it's one of Soderbergh's umpteenth recent self-portraits that are kind of about gaming the system or aligning against institutions

in a way. It's very pleasurable and enjoyable. I liked it a lot. No doubt. I think that's very wise too to note that it's part of this continuum of stories that are essentially all about Steven Soderbergh. A couple others, Toy Story 4. If you listen to this show, you know that it's a terrific Pixar movie and it's doing all the things that a movie like that needs to do. I gotta give some love for Triple Frontier. We were talking about the high middle before. I think one thing that's also gone is the low middle.

I love the low middle and Triple Frontier is true low middle. It is a man on a mission with bad nicknames, just trying to do one last heist kind of movie in the best way. You know, Miles wrote about the Metallica needle drop. Legitimately, one of the most ecstatic moments I had in a movie theater this year was when for whom the bell tolls dropped.

It is not the most sophisticated opinion, but it is a feeling that I love. And I dug Triple Frontier and I'm not afraid to say it. Have you seen that movie? I have. And I wrote about it for publication in the the uk not unadmiringly and let's just say i'm very into the idea of like mid to late affleck studies yes you know yes like he already he has had the career role he is never going to improve on the way he was cast in gone girl it's the best like one of the best pieces of casting of the century but now affleck kind of standing in for kind of like middle-aged malaise and this kind of like sense of failure.

It's a really interesting route for him to take. I like his casting in Triple Frontier. I won't spoil anything about the character or what happens to him, but it's a good performance. I'm also just going to shout out Apollo 11, which is a very good documentary that is entirely archival that I think premiered on television on CNN over the weekend and that you can find much more easily now that chronicles essentially from beginning to end the Apollo 11 mission. And it's just, it is uncomplicated, but gorgeously shot, and it uncovers a lot of new footage from those events and i think ably tells that story in a new way which is impressive because there is nothing more

covered than the american space missions and i still found a lot to enjoy about that you want to give us one more honorable mention yeah i'll i'll i'll say two super fast one i wrote about for the site i think it's the most memorable thing I've seen all year is Brian De Palma's Domino. I won't go into it. You can read what I wrote, but he's a major filmmaker in his dotage, hopefully not his Twilight, and it's just an incredible mess and a mess with incredible things in it. I want to shout out a movie that's going to come out later in the year. I think it has American distribution by a Toronto filmmaker, but about America, which is called The Hottest August, which is a documentary by Brett Story. It showed at festivals earlier this year,

and it's a series of interviews with residents of New York that kind of point towards climate change and kind of point towards different kinds of accelerationism and what's happening to the country and the economy. It's very much a movie about how people are feeling in this moment of extreme polarization. And I think that it's going to be a really, really strong document of the moment that it was made. So that might be a movie we end up talking about in the second half of the year, because it got a lot of attention at American festivals back in January and February and I think it's going to get more when it when it comes out the hottest August we'll have to remember that I'm reminded of two other somewhat music oriented films I talked about Rolling Thunder review a Bob Dylan story on this podcast quite a bit also on

Chris Ryan's podcast also Finding Neverland which is a fascinating document of history in its own way and I'm not sure if it is a brilliantly made film, but it certainly feels like an important film. And so it feels important to note that right here. Any final thoughts, Adam? No, not at all. I'll just once again, not take offense to the Raptors asterisk comment and thank you for having me on the show because I always have such a good time. Adam, I appreciate you and I wish you all the luck in the world retaining Kawhi Leonard. Talk to you soon. Bye. you