The Big Picture - The Eddie Murphy Hall of Fame. Plus: Mads Mikkelsen!

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

Sean and Amanda are building a shrine to comedy movie icon Eddie Murphy. Van Lathan joins the show to pick 10 classics for the Hall of Fame and discuss Murphy's new film 'Coming 2 America,' now streaming on Prime Video (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by the writer-director and star of 'Another Round,' Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen. They discuss their new film, the Danish culture of drinking, and the fine art of acting drunk (1:10:09). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Van Lathan, Mads Mikkelsen, and Thomas Vinterberg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Press Box is here to catch you up on the latest media stories. Hosted by Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker, these guys have the insight on the biggest stories you care about. Check out The Press Box on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Eddie Murphy. Later in the show, I'll be joined by writer-director Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen for an interview about their latest film, Another Round, which is about a group of middle-aged men who believe that alcohol may just be the solution to their troubles. Who can relate? I hope you'll stick around for that chat.

But first, we are joined by Van Lathan, the co-host of Higher Learning and an Eddie Murphy expert to break down the career. One of the greats. What up, Van? What up? What up? What up? What's going on with you guys? Hanging in there.

Excited to talk about Eddie. We're going to do a Hall of Fame here. So for the folks out there who have never heard a Hall of Fame episode, I'm going to very briefly break down what we do on these episodes. We have built Halls of Fame for Tom Hanks, Roger Deakins, Nancy Meyers, Toshiro Mifune, monster movies, and most recently, George Clooney. So it's time for Eddie. What we do when we build a hall is 10 films from a career, no more, no less. Eddie's got 40 movies. So we got a lot to talk about here. I'm going to start with this. Amanda, when I say Eddie Murphy, what do you

think? I think of multiple Eddie Murphys. I think of a lot of characters all in one movie. This is going to be interesting. And Van, I'm really excited to talk to you about all of these because I've been listening to, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of rewatchables movies, Eddie Murphy movies on rewatchables. And I was listening to some of them and you were on several of them. And I had that podcast thing where you want to respond to the person, but it's a podcast. So now you're here and it's a privilege to get to talk to you. But for me, Eddie Murphy is a little bit of, I'm a, it's a generational quirk for me because I am just, I think a little bit younger than both of you. And so I became kind of like movie aware,

movie sentient, like mid nineties, 1995, 1996. Right. And I've done a lot of catch up, but if you become aware of movies in the mid nineties, that means that like the first Eddie Murphy you get is the Nettie professor and then Mulan and then Shrek. I saw Shrek in theaters. I'm not above it. So, you know, at that point, he's like the elder statesman of comedy, super established. Like I knew the Beverly Hills Cop theme song and like had a dance to it well before I saw it. But kind of understanding him as like family Eddie Murphy and then catching up on everything else. It's like an interesting chronological or not chronological Eddie Murphy experience for me.

Van, you want to do your history with Eddie? Because I know you've been living with him for a long time. Yes, I have been. So I can't remember what year this was. And I don't want to insult my parents because every time I mention my parents, I get some minor detail wrong and then I have to hear about it in a long two-hour phone call.

Do your parents listen to your pods? Do they listen to all your shows? I wish they wouldn't, but they do. That's nice. Mind your own business. Yeah, I wish they wouldn't, but they do. My father was taking me to see a movie. We were all going to the movies, but this time we were breaking it off.

My father was taking me to see one of the Superman movies movies it's either three or four and my sister my grandmother my mother went to see beverly hills cop 2 and this was my first experience with with with seeing people so jazzed to see a movie because they went this way like we went to because because the Superman franchise had fell off by that point. So we went this way and they go this way. And when they go this way, there are all of these people over there.

And I'm like, daddy, I want to go over here. And he's like, no, that's too old for you. We're going to go watch Superman. And I say that because that's the moment that I actually became movie

sentient. Like that's the start of it. That's like, what are these people into? Before that, I can't tell you when I first kind of became aware of Eddie Murphy because he's like Michael Jackson in the sense that there was never a time I wasn't aware of him. I was born in 1980. So by the time I start getting information downloaded into me, Eddie Murphy's a part of that. He's like a part of that thing. But the first time I realized that this guy isn't just the dude that I see on TV or the guy that he is the biggest thing in the world is when I saw people excited to go for a film. So that's my memory of him. And it's not even necessarily what you might call

one of his mega classics. Like if Beverly Hills Cop 2 was the event that you can remember, that says a lot. And that's 87. That says a lot about where we were with Eddie. He was kind of in the middle of... There are very few movie star runs in the history of movies like the one he had in the 80s, the kind of rise to fame, which obviously starts on TV.

I guess Tom Hanks, you know, Robin Williams, maybe. In terms of just successful movies, maybe you put Will in there, but those movies weren't quite the same as what it is they were talking about. It's really remarkable when you think about it. There's no, like, they're not, like, high concept. Like, with Will, it was like he needed to be punching an alien in the face to get to this level. And, like, the Eddie movies are just, like,

it's, especially in the 80s, it's like Eddie is just running around doing stuff. That's, like, that is what this movie is. He's being hilarious. Whether he's a cop or he's a convict fresh out of jail or if he's a guy off the street who gets taken into a financial institution like it's just it's entirely built around his persona and his sense of humor, which is it's unusual. We don't see that very much these days. I was just going to say, don't underestimate punching an alien in the face. But yes,

it's a different type of because that was important to me in the 90s okay that was like when i grew up but it is a different type of comedy and it is funny to watch i mean these movies are funny and these movies are classics and you know van i relate to you just of like kind of things just being in the atmosphere and having always been there and then you like actually see coming to america or you see trading places and you're like oh okay that's where this comes from but the rhythm of the comedy and the style of the comedy is very different certainly from what we have now and certainly from you know the 90s punching an alien in the face that i grew up on um and you know eddie murphy obviously like invents a lot of things but they're very 80s it's's like a very, very deeply 80s experience.

That is the, when you said, when you say van, when you say what's the first thing you think about when you think of Eddie Murphy? The 80s. Yeah. I think it's 80s in its fearlessness. It's 80s in its political incorrectness.

It's 80s in the look. It's 80s. its political incorrectness. It's 80s in the look. It's 80s. Some of these movies, you know, the artists that define some of these movies musically, musically, like period in time. You know, like if you watch some of these films and you hear the Pointer Sisters, the Pointer Sisters, they are the 80s. That's kind of the that that's the deal so and i think about and just like a gateway i didn't you realize that i only knew as a kid what saturday night live was because that's where he came from well i mean that's he saved the show right that's that's how i learned what it was yeah it's an interesting thing i mean i think his origins are fascinating. He was born in Brooklyn.

He was raised essentially by a single mom with his brother, Charlie. By 19 years old, after a few years on the stand-up circuit, he's cast on SNL in 1980. I've always wanted to live in a house like yours, my friend. Maybe when there's nobody home, I'll break in. And SNL is at this nadir. It's at this low, low, low point. You know, Lorne Michaels has left the show. They desperately need talent.

And in comes Eddie. And he's like a house on fire. Within six months, he has five iconic characters under his belt. And he goes on this run on that show, which then obviously springboards him into a significantly higher level of stand-up comedy fame and also movie fame and and i think in a way his blueprint is different from some of the blueprints of the snl stars who became movie stars after that he um he was more singularly the focus of the movies that he was starring in in a way that like

john belushi kind of needed dan akroyd you know chevyushi kind of needed Dan Aykroyd you know Chevy Chase kind of needed Goldie Hawn in some of those early movies like Eddie give or take a Nick Nolte kind of does it himself and there's something fascinating about that it's also amazing to watch some of these movies and think about how young he was I mean he's like 22 in 48 hours like we that's another thing we just don't see anymore is we may see Noah Centineo come out of nowhere and be a young movie star, but not somebody who is like- It's so depressing. It's like comparison that we live at to settle for, not even settle for Noah Centineo, but it's like Eddie Murphy versus Noah Centineo. I really wish I had been aware in

the 80s. I mean, no shots to Noah Centineo, but it's a little different. And that level of young fame is a little bit different too know? And that level of young fame is a little bit different, too, and where people come from. You don't see people coming out of SNL in the same way as movie stars. Also, we should say that you are a lot groaner at 21 in the 80s than you are now.

You know, then these guys, sometimes I look at these guys, these guys got big, full-ass mustaches, like all the, you know what I mean? They look, oh, you know, you see that picture with Michelle Obama's prom date? I know y'all seen that picture. Yes.

Yeah. That dude look like Danny Glover. You know what I mean? Like, he looks like Lethal Weapon. But, and so, at that point,

I think now, just 21 seems like a baby. And for a studio to give you their whole movie, it's not, and I'm not talking about a young adult yarn or or something like that i'm talking about give you a big time comedy for you to carry i don't know if we'll see that again probably ever in that in that way even 48 hours his first

movie is adult it's a very adult movie you know the themes it's really violent it's like these two guys are really going at each other. The language is crazy. And so he's kind of singular in that way too. He's a great star. He's hilarious. I wanted to ask you guys before we start digging through some of the phases of his career,

whether you think he's actually a good actor because he has been acting in movies for what feels like forever for the three of us. But do you think he has a talent for something beyond movie performance? Well, I think that's a little unfair to comedy as acting. I think we're sort of applying the Oscars standard to who is one of the most talented and successful movie stars of all time. What he can do, and he can do a lot of different things obviously in the literal fact of being like

eight different ridiculous characters in a movie but he's been in rom-coms. He's been an action star. He's been a musician. I will not sing this song but you all know

that we all can. So I think that I know Van is like thank you for not singing it. Should we play party all the time? Bobby, do you want to play party all the time? okay let's just add that in there but i think that he is unbelievably talented do i think that my favorite or the audience's favorite of his performances

are like the serious drama parts? No, not always. But sometimes that's because we are just trained to want like the most from Eddie Murphy all the time. And I think that's a little bit on us and not on him. I asked this question because, you know, he was in Dole of Mine Is My Name in 2019. And that was a kind of a comeback after a couple of comebacks. And he won a lot of plaudits for his performance

in that movie, not just being hilarious as Eddie, but as a performer and an actor. How do you think of him as an actor? Do you think of him as somebody who's riffing on his iconic persona or somebody who's more evolved than that? I think he's somebody who's more evolved than that. By the way, one day, the three of us are going to do a pod and it's going to be all about me defending guys who I think are great actors who nobody else... Like, I'll go to the mats for, like, Schwarzenegger. I think Schwarzenegger is a fine actor.

I really do. And in some times where it's really tough... And I think that Eddie Murphy proved something that most comedians that are on his level, on his level, are naturally good actors. Now, every once in a while, you get a Chris Rock, a guy who just can't do it, right? For whatever reason. He can be okay, but he just normally, he just can't do it but for eddie i think because the way i look at you know i'm when i think about being a great actor i don't think but you have to be gary oldman

and transform into a pimp and we don't even know who you are than me we're arguing that's not gary oldman then we have to check the credits you know what i mean i'm not talking about that necessarily i'm talking about can you slip in and out of a role and like ground us into what's happening and make us forget that you're our favorite comedy star and i think that he does that and i think that he's done done that in all different types of roles right uh he's never tackled anything you know that that really had him that ripped him out of himself but you have performances like dream girls performances like dolomite and i would even point to performances like uh boomerang which is a very muted version of the eddie murphy

that we had come to know in the 90s he was a suave uh sort of more measured performance and he he pulled it off so i think he's a i think he's not just a good actor i think he's a really good actor yeah i think so too i mean it's just a prompt to kind of draw out like what are the different kinds of work that he does in addition to being a mega movie star and also a good actor and also somebody who dabbles in different genres. He does two things that very few people

have been able to pull off. And he cited Peter Sellers as his acting hero in the past. And he really has modeled a lot of his work after Peter Sellers, which is that he plays multiple characters in a lot of movies. Now, on the one hand, some of these movies are real goofy.

And so it's easy to dismiss them. On the other hand, when I was 14 and The Nutty Professor came out, I was like, Eddie Murphy, maybe the single most talented person who has ever lived. I don't know that I can imagine someone being funnier or better at something than playing five. And I was like, I don't know how they did this someone being funnier or better at something than playing. And I was like, I don't know how they did this.

It was a special effect to me. He was like a living special effect. I think he's probably the most certainly of his generation, but celebrate a person who was able to do that. And even if it's in Norbit and you're like, this movie sucks, there's still something kind of impressive about being able to capture three to four characters in any given movie yeah for a second there mike myers looked like he might be able to get it off because you know uh there was such a good era in movies in the early 90s and kids aren't going to remember it but when a movie used to drop in the early 90s mtv would do like a little mini half hour special on it i remember that you remember those mtv would do like a little mini half hour special on it i remember that you remember those mtv would do like a mini little half hour special on it and they would and like it was like the

coolest little thing right and when you saw mike myers he played like he had coming out so i married an axe murderer and then he was remember that joint and then he was he was playing the dad in there and stuff like that and i by the way that was a hilarious character and uh you look like an orange on a toothpick yeah he was singing a rod stewart song and stuff like that i thought he was gonna go that way for a while but then he did so other than other than him i can't think of too many people who really nailed that well i think it's a slippery slope right because the same thing that happened to mike myers in some respects happened to eddie too where you can go too far you can do one do one that doesn't work like the love guru didn't work right so mike myers was like i'm kind of not making movies anymore i'm not going to do this

where i try to portray two or three characters in a movie but it worked really well in austin powers likewise for eddie the nutty professor movies are big hits they're amanda that's where she fell in love with eddie um but then you get a little older and you make a couple more of these and then all of a sudden you're a 50 year old man playing an 80 year old woman in a movie and you're like is this a good way to spend my time and also like your other major bread winning franchise is shrek which is an animated movie and he and he's fantastic in those like i didn't realize there had been four of them um but there have apparently and they've made him a lot of money there was a great be and he and he's fantastic in those like i didn't realize there had been four of them um

but there have apparently and they've made him a lot of money there was a great joke at the golden globes last night like a couple nights ago about um introducing the animation category or how eddie murphy has five houses um but that is like being the donkey and shrek and the nutty professor is just very different just in terms of the pop cultural sphere than his run in the 80s. And in a way, that's impressive. It's a total reinvention. But if that's how you meet him, then you go back and you watch all the early 80s movies or you see Raw, which I did. I think that was honestly like the first adult Eddie Murphy movie that I saw before any of the comedies. And I was like, oh, okay.

So this person has lived several lives. Right. You know what I never understood about this? By the way, just want to let you know something. I'm pretty sure people that are listening to this are going to catch this.

Austin Powers just jumped out of my mind. For some reason, I went from So I Married an Axe Murderer to Mike Myers Did Nothing then to Shrek. I don't know why because Austin Powers even makes that point bettere Murderer to Mike Myers Did Nothing than to Shrek. I don't know why because Austin Powers

even makes that point better because that's what Mike Myers was doing in Austin Powers. I love those movies. I forgot about them. But this is one thing I never understood about Eddie Murphy.

Normally, if you do Shrek, right, and you know you can cash that check whenever you want, then what actors do is they go do some $3 million Gus Van Zandt movie

where, you know, you're driving across the country with your dying father and he's trying to see three monuments and that's what you're doing. You're doing that

and then you're... That sounds like a good film. Should we write that film? Shy. What three monuments? Right. What do we monument? Right. What are they? The movie would be called,

well, I would say, I always had, I used to have an idea for this. Whatever. We'll talk later. It can't be called Monuments, man. They've already made that movie. It wasn't going to become,

though it was called Monuments when I wrote the treatment in the 12th grade. But then they came out with a Rushmore. Anyway. But no, but that's not what he did. He doubled down on the silly.

He made Shrek and Norbit. He does Shrek and me, Dave. The old Eddie Murphy just evaporated. And I still wonder why. One thing that Eddie did a lot in those first 10 years is he worked with a lot of really, really good directors. He worked with Walter Hill. He worked with John Landis.

He worked with Tony Scott. He worked with Michael Ritchie. He worked with Robert Townsend and Reginald Hudlin, guys who've made a lot of good films. And then if you look at the names attached to the movies that he makes, basically from 1993 forward, not a lot of Hall of Fame candidates there. And I can't figure out why he stopped doing that.

I have a theory. I was just listening, as I said, to the Boomerang rewatchables. And Van, I feel about that movie the way you do, I think. I love that movie. But the rewatchables talks a lot about the reception that Boomerang received, and that was 1992. And it was not a positive reception. People were very racist about this rom-com and also did not like Eddie's performance.

And, you know, you can't get into someone's psyche, but I do always wonder with movies like that where someone tries something and it's really not well-received, they're just like, okay, screw it. I'll just go do this other thing that definitely happens especially to big hollywood stars like that because a lot of those people they let the the tail wag the dog they try something this is what they want to do and if it doesn't work they they definitely pivot we we could talk about countless actors and actresses who have done that i think something else happened with eddie too and

it's interesting in uh in his discussions with like uh in the talks with john landis because we did um coming to america and john landis talks about what it was like working with Eddie Murphy on Coming to America versus what it was like working with Eddie Murphy on Trading Places. Now, this isn't... I have no dog in the fight. Bria, don't kill me. I have no dog in the fight.

I don't know who's right, okay? I don't know who's right. But there's a chance that the Eddie Murphy that sort of existed, and they worked together again, but there's a chance that the Eddie Murphy

that existed towards the end of that decade moving on simply couldn't be directed. That he no longer wanted to, because he no longer wanted to go back and forth with guys like that. And there are other actors who have done that.

And typically comedic actors who have movies that are completely centered around their talent, they got to give it in every single scene. A lot comes with that. So that could be another deal to where all of these things are Eddie Murphy and forget who directed the movie. It doesn't matter. We're going to put in the guy who wants to let me get off the way I want to get off. Yeah, I think, I mean, I do think that that is ultimately what happened is, is that Eddie not only had to be the star, but the kind of creative focus of the film. And a lot of times, obviously the filmmaker is usually the creative focus of the movie, but even still, I mean, even the, the Jim Carrey's, the Mike Myers, the Will Ferrell's,

these guys do that thing that you talked about, which is they do the $3 million movie with an auteur and they let them push them emotionally. And Eddie has done a couple of roles like this,

like Mr. Church with Bruce Beresford, which I don't think is a good movie or successful, but it seemed like he was trying to do something a little bit in that range.

And then that does lead to Dolomite, which had been a passion project for him forever. But even in Dolomite, which I think is well-made and good. Amanda and I talked about it when it came out. We liked it. But it's like it's Craig Brewer. That movie isn't made by Paul Thomas Anderson or something. It's only going to be so good. And I wonder if that is Eddie knowing like, hey, I've made 40 movies. I've been the biggest star in the universe. I know more than anybody about how to do this stuff well. I need to retain a kind of creative control so the director can't

have a lot of power now i'm speculating but that does kind of feel like what's going on here yeah it's happened to other guys right it happened to kevin costner or you know it like it it sometimes it happens you know and sometimes you're just fucking awesome enough to pull it off. And don't get me, Eddie Murphy is the biggest, to me, comedic star of all time. Despite everything that we're saying. But, you know, his career definitely took a turn. And when he stepped into the family role for Amanda's generation, he stayed there. Yeah, and that's the thing like you could argue that dream girls is like maybe him stepping outside that lane a little bit i mean the role is him having fun but he's not in super

control of it and he was nominated for an oscar but then you know the apocryphal story is that norbit came out in the beginning of 2007 as people were voting for Oscars and lost him the award. And so again, it's like, well, he tries Dreamgirls. He almost makes it to the Oscar. Then once again, it's like, this isn't worth it. And goes back to just doing Eddie stuff. Yeah. On the one hand, we can like concern troll about whether or not Eddie has done a good job.

On the other hand, like, I don't know shit. You know, like, Eddie has dominated culture for a long, long time. And so he is free to run his career as he sees fit. I just think it's interesting because I would have liked

to have seen him try a couple of the kinds of movies that you're talking about there because he is a singular presence in movies. You know, I think he still will. And I've always thought this. The Dreamgirls thing

was interesting because I remember at that particular time, my roommate, Brett, into little miss sunshine he was like we gotta go see little miss sunshine we gotta go see little miss sunshine so we went over to the arc light we saw a little miss sunshine i was like hey it's cool i don't understand not that it was whack it's cool it's cool it was cool it was a fun time at the movies and it was really well made and all of that stuff like that. But Eddie was livid when he lost.

Yes. He was. And if anybody who's listening to me right now, go back and watch it. For some reason, like they got the close up on Eddie. He thought he was going to win. He won the Globe and the SAG award that year. Yeah. And he still lost the Oscar. He thought he was going to win. He won the Globe and the SAG Award that year, and he still lost the Oscar. He thought he was going to win.

Sometimes, when situations like that happen, I almost expected a career low after that because I think that took a lot of the wind out of his sails. You know what's funny, though? I think about this all the time when we talk about Oscars on the show, Van. Alan Arkin's first nomination for an Oscar was 1967 and he had to wait he had to wait 40 years until

Little Miss Sunshine to win is Little Miss Sunshine Alan Arkin's best work in a movie no not even close but he lived long enough and continued to make enough good projects and be a constant presence in our movie going life that they were like it's time it is time for alan arkin to be celebrated and at the expense of eddie murphy giving a superior performance in a more interesting movie or what have you and eddie if he keeps at it for another 20 years is gonna get the same thing they're just gonna do that when he's 75 years old they're gonna be like okay you were all right in this fake prestige movie it's time to give you an oscar because that's just the game well Well, I wouldn't know anything about that, Sean. The first short that I produced

is on the short list right now for the Academy Awards for Best Live Action Short. I had a feeling this was going to come up. Go ahead. We might just get nominated. So I don't know anything about having to wait.

The geniuses. If you want a cape for your movie, go ahead. I'm not about to. I'm not going to. I'm just saying what you're saying is completely right. And sometimes I think it will happen for him. But what I wonder now is does he even have – does he even care? Because it's obvious that guys like Bill Murray, that they want that, right?

They made a, and I'm not saying Bill is thirsty for it, but he's completely shifted his career. Yeah. And that seems like a big sort of notch on the belt.

I wonder if Eddie Murphy will still even go for it. Because the Dolomite, people thought Dolomite might make a little bit more award season noise. Yeah, it didn't. And I'm not totally sure why it didn't.

That might have been just a matter of circumstance with the other nominees. This is like an opportunity maybe just to talk very briefly about Coming to America. You know, Amanda and I have had a chance to see it. Not the original, the coming numeral to America. Coming to America 2. Coming to America 2. Thank you. To America. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Coming to America 2. Coming to America 2. Thank you. To America.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. I'm with it. I'm with it. It was crazy, wily, clever. Yeah.

This movie's okay. This actually, I wish it was better, obviously, as I wish all sequels to movies are better, especially sequels that come some

30 plus years after the original. Amanda, what'd you think of it? Yeah, it just really feels like, okay, we're all in 2021 and we're old, but we had a great time. So we'll remake it for 2021.

And it's awkward. There are some funny jokes. It's nice to have everyone there. There are a lot of new faces, but like it's a girl dad movie. And I just don't know really what to, that's not what I was expecting when I sat down to watch it. Yeah.

I think one of the best parts of Dolomite is my name is the site of Eddie and Wesley Snipes together. And Craig Brewer directed that movie. And he also directed coming to America. Wesley Snipes was my favorite part of. Yes. Craig Brewer did coming to interesting. The new one.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think he had such a good experience on dolomite is my name with eddie that they brought him back for that so you know it's interesting it's it's it's the new one is well made but to me it's like when wesley slices on the screen favor can y'all do me a favor please yeah can y'all just fucking keep it real did you did you like i see we all love eddie murphy if y'all like the a favor, please? Yeah. Can y'all just fucking keep it real? Did you, did you, like, I see, we all love Eddie Murphy. Did y'all like the movie or not?

It's just okay. It's not horrible. It's not horrible. I wasn't mad. I chuckled at some things. Like, you know, it was, it just, I was like, damn, everybody's old. Honestly, that's what I felt. Like, everybody's old.

And, like, the jokes are kind of old. And, like, I'm old. And, you know, like, what are we going to's old and like the jokes are kind of old and like I'm old and you know like what are we gonna do here's a quick the first one's a very very much a perfect comedy to me

even if it's a little too long yeah question for you guys because I haven't seen it yet should this movie have been made no

um the reason it was the reason it was made is because everything is IP you know it's like Zamunda is IP in a way and I've seen Eddie talk about this on the press tour i don't know if you've seen this much amanda but there's a lot of like so eddie you actually invented black panther before

black panther and he's kind of like getting his due there for a lot of what the original film did and then that has given eddie a chance to talk about the fact that coming to america is basically the only all-black cast film that has done well around the world and he likes to talk about that like in every in most countries in the in the world that film was successful and it introduced a kind of storytelling that was just uncommon and that i think is reason alone to understand why the ip was valuable why Amazon eventually bought the movie during COVID and why they're rolling it out while also rolling out a bunch of the movies that we'll talk about here for the hall of fame on their service to stream, which is great.

I got to watch Harlem Harlem nights, which I thought was not very good, but I did get a chance to watch it on Amazon prime. Um, so, you know, coming to America, coming to America,

the number two, um, it didn't, that's like the funniest part that we just can't, can know, coming to America, coming to America, the number two, um, it didn't, that's like the funniest part that we just can't, can't say it. It's not built for a podcasting, unfortunately, but, um, I'm Van, I'm curious what you think, you know, I think it's fun to be around those characters again, but also, you know, maybe just revisit the original if you want to have a truly great time. Look, this is what, what what like uh i only i only believe in sequels if there's more story i really do it that's the only time i ever believe in a

sequel at the end of john wick i remember i got up and i was like okay well i can't wait two years come back do it again because there's obviously more story you know what i mean but sometimes it just isn't more story and whenever you have to invent more story like the hangover 2 i know they're going to make that movie but it's gonna what it's gonna be whack because there's no more story to that you've run out of story you know when a sequel is like a remake where the second one is just kind of the first one over again right yeah this is kind of like that this is like there's a a lot of the sequences are very similar to the original. It's like,

remember that joke? Here's this joke. Yes. Right. You know. Nevertheless, you guys want to build this Hall of Fame? Yeah.

Let's do it. So this is an opportunity to basically provide any commentary you want on all of the movies that he has made. I'm going to run through every single movie

and you can speak on it. You're going to read all 41 of them? Yeah, because we got to say, is it in or is it out? So if it's like, you're not going to like do it. You're not just going to read us a list of, I'm going to read all 41 of them? Yeah, because we got to say, is it in or is it out? So if it's like... But you're not going to like do it.

You're not just going to read us a list of... I'm going to read the movie's title and then read every word on its Wikipedia entry. And you guys will sit there quietly. Does that sound good to us? This is really fun. It's really good podcasting. No, I mean, with Meet Dave, we don't have to have a 40-minute convo about Meet Dave. We could just be like, is it not in?

That period. No, I just thought you were going to literally just read all the lists right now. No, no, no, no, no. We'll go one at a time and just say. So basically, we'll build like a long. Where do you have to be? I don't know if you know, but the arc light's closed. Like, you know, I can't go to the bar tonight.

Like, what are you doing? He just reads me the spreadsheets every week, man. Every week. It's just more lists and I got to protect us. That has more to do with she and I doing too many pods together, man. Every week. It's just more lists and I got to protect us. Yeah. That has more to do with she and I doing too many pods together, honestly.

All right. I'll read some movie titles. You say yay or nay. And frankly, I want to know what you think about them. So 48 Hours is the first feature length film he makes. I assume this one's a yay.

Yeah. 48 Hours is a weird one. Not aging that great in terms of the political correctness that you mentioned earlier van there's some stuff in it especially the way that jack cates and uh and eddie's character talk to each other um right i like that though you know why because the world kept spinning bruh it's true i gotta be honest with you like i'm not interested in going going back and revisiting that because you

know like obviously uh their things are tougher the farther you go back the worse it is for the guys that look like van but i will tell you this they made 48 hours and like nobody died like they said a whole bunch of ill shit and it was still cool i so that that's i'm not saying that anybody shoot their mouth a van you know how i am i'm not doing but i'm just saying so sometimes when you watch that movie you go you cut your pearls then you go i look around am i supposed to be watching this no it's okay they made the film it was a different time that's the way it goes are you defending it because you're producing even more 48 hours the third film in the 48 hours uh franchise can't you don't understand how badly i would want to do that movie i want to be so close to nolte nolte i want to be so close

to nolte i want to be as close to nolte as a human being possibly can be i don't care what it is. I'll remake what's the Prince of Tides. I'll do that joint again. Yeah. I love Nolte. I love what Nolte has become. You, Barbara, and Nolte together, I think that is a very big movie. Sign me up. Okay, 1983 Trading Places. Yes. Yes. Gotta be yes.

This is my favorite of the Eddie movies, honestly. I think this is him at his absolute funniest. I was with the him at his absolute funniest. I was with the Green Beret, Special Unit Battalion's Commando Airborne Tactics, Specialist Tactics Unit Battalion. Yeah, it was real hush-hush. I was Agent Orange.

That was my name, Agent Orange. Special Agent Orange. That was me. Airborne, huh? Slightly before he's infected by a mega fame. So it still feels like, it's almost like he doesn't know how funny he is in this movie. Yeah, there's a sense of discovery. Yeah.

1984's Best Defense, in which he plays Lieutenant T.M. Landry. You guys know the story of this movie? No. No. So this is a, I believe this is a Dudley Moore comedy that was shot in full.

And they screened the movie and they were like this movie does not work we need to add some stuff and what they added was Eddie Murphy they shot a bunch of scenes that are not related to the movie otherwise that just feature Eddie Murphy and they grafted him into the film and they tried to sell it as a Dudley Moore meets Eddie Murphy movie and it didn't work and it's really bad same year Beverly Cop. My name is Axel Foley. And what is pertaining? I don't understand what you said. Pertaining, what it's meaning, regarding. Oh, what's it regarding?

I'm an old acquaintance of hers. Don't I? Have you heard of it? One moment. Yes. Yes, I've heard of that. So we've named four movies. Three of them, technically, we think are going into the Hall of Fame. This why this is seems really hard right now it's gonna get a little easier as we

keep going the next movie man i think i heard you talk about this once the golden child 1986 i seem to recall you being a big fan of this movie absolutely okay make your case because this is not one of my favorites okay so the case for me the golden child is remember this is the same time that young van is his his mind is being taken over by superheroes right like everything is about superheroes i wouldn't wake up out of my bed and my dad would be like hey van superman's at the door oh then i go over there and he'd be like you're too too slow superman flew away this worked on me until i was 19 but but but but but no so around this so i'm looking at eddie murphy and it's eddie murphy versus the forces of evil it was like a quirky weird off the beaten path but he still managed to be hysterical in that movie

he still managed to get off i i i i i want the knife you know and all of that and it was just it was different for him and he got to be physical and he got to kind of have the beautiful female love interest. And so I think it's an integral part of him taking that next leap to stardom because they all do a movie like that. They all do a movie where they kind of just, it's really not, I mean Charles Dance, but there's really not

any other super super notable people in the film. And it's weird. A kid's oatmeal with blood in the end of it and there's the occult and there's all of this stuff and he starts off with a very very funny scene but in a serious performance he's less goofy a little more serious i think it's it's one of my favorite eddie murphy movies really it would be top five so i oh wow this is specifically wanted to talk to you about this because i i came to this movie

a little bit later and it sounds like you saw it at a young age amanda yeah i don't know when you saw it you must you're probably in your 20s when you saw it amanda 30s okay um so it's not an ideal movie to watch for the first time if you're say 38 or 39 years old right it was made in 1986 the effects are a little bit rough it was a little, but I can see your point that it kind of like, it captures your imagination at a young age. I, again, there's only 10 movies allowed in here.

So you're saying that this movie has to go into the hall of fame. No, I'm not saying it has to, I'm saying it's in my hall of fame. And by the way, in, I have 10 movies written down right here. Wow.

And I have an asterisk by golden child. And it's because I knew that you guys would fight me asterisk by golden child and it's because i knew that you guys would fight me on this okay no it's no it's fighting yeah i think what we can do in the process no no like so it's important to van and also it's like if it's a flex point in his career a little bit or just kind of this person exploring something else sometimes we include those so we can do an asterisk or like a revisit you know because at the end they're going to be too many right and then we have to kind of barter and come to like an agreement and we can be supportive in that pursuit or we can be cruel to each other but tbd gotcha so yeah let's ask

yeah when you just heard amanda's exasperation with me about spreadsheets it was basically because of stuff like this where i'm like here's what you don't understand about the movie rango and why it matters to society um okay 1987 beverly hills cop 2 which is obviously big one for you van you talked about your experience um low-key great action movie tony scott in the prime of his powers yeah uh I like it a lot I do always struggle a little bit with putting sequels to you know effectively superior originals on a list what do you think Amanda you're shaking your head well I was just thinking about Oceans 12 again Van where are you on Oceans 12 just while we're on the topic of sequels I dig it thank you so much thank you

I just I feel supported you looked much. Thank you. I just, I feel supported. You looked like you were in a hostage video there. That was like, don't say you don't like Ocean's 12 in front of Amanda. No, it wasn't that like, if I,

if I can remember Ocean's 12 is the one where the guy is doing like, he does all the crazy things. And at the end, the night Fox, the night, the night Fox. Yeah. I dig it.

Okay. Thank you. I think I dig it. Okay, thank you. I think I dig it though just because when I sat down, I was like, there's no way that they're going to be able to do this. And then they kind of did it. You know what I mean?

I dig it though. Plus, God damn, they're so cool. They're so cool. Just everything you said, I agree with a thousand percent and it's really nice to hear someone else say it on this podcast i can't remember what hall of fame we did and whether oceans 12 was allowed in it i think it was george clooney and it was not allowed but there was a reason for that because

it's really more oceans 12 is more of the brad pitt rusty characters movie so i amanda you're down the ocean small rabbit hole again just like this just going to say, if there's precedent for including the sequel, if it's worthwhile. We've done it before. I brought it back. I see. I'm going to make it a maybe for now along with The Golden Child. We can revisit, okay? Next one is interesting.

So, Eddie Murphy Raw. This is a stand-up comedy movie. It's a 90-minute film, and it is the single most successful stand-up comedy film of all time at the box office. Whether it's the best or not, I think it's kind of an interesting

conversation to have. I would probably go prior live on the Sunset Strip, but it's really good. It's similarly fraught because so much of the stuff that is said in it is tough now.

But he was doing something so indelible as a stand-up at that time. I feel like it has to go in. What do you guys think? I agree. It's the same thing. I didn't see it till later,

but in that specific like Bill Cosby segment, I've just been like, oh my God, I didn't know that you could do any of this. And, you know, that's another fraught thing. But what he's doing in terms of stand up, like, so important to me, that's Kobe's.

That's his Kobe 81 point game. Yeah, that's the best I'm ever going to be. It's my night. You cannot stop me. You know, that's that's that's what it is. So, yeah, I agree i agree okay so we're putting in raw and now we come to coming coming to america not coming to numeral america but coming to america the original which has to go in have to right yeah so guys we have we're out of

the golden period not the golden child the golden we've got one, two, three, four, five yeses. This guy's got 35 more movies to go. So we're in a tough spot here. I think that's okay. I had to assume that maybe part of the reason we're not doing top fives is because it's hard not to include all or most of those in the top five. Like this was like just, I mean, it's one of the greatest movie star runs ever. So that's acknowledged.

We have to be smart. We can get weird in the second half or the last 30. Okay, I'm counting on it. 1989 Harlem Nights. This is Eddie Murphy's directorial debut. Van, you said you like it. Why do you like it? Love it. So this is like it? I love it.

So this is what I'm going to say about this particular movie. It's probably not going to make his top 10, but it did make mine. So there's two reasons why. Number one, this film is, there's an emotional reason behind it. I think the movie is funny.

I think it's maybe the movie where Eddie is the least funny in almost in his entire career because he's almost totally playing it straight. I mean, there's some moments, but he's almost totally playing it straight.

It's him feeling himself. It's a big star vehicle. But it was also a movie made with a purpose for him to say thank you to Pryor and to Redd Foxx It's him feeling himself. It's a big star vehicle. But it was also a movie made with a purpose, for him to say thank you to Pryor and to Redd Foxx and to so many other guys. I think Robin Harris is in there. So many other guys that really had inspired him. And in that way, the movie is very meaningful. You know? Also, it's a film about a black entrepreneur going up against the system in Harlem.

It means something to me because I would watch a movie like that and I'd ask my mom, I'd be like, yo, what is Harlem? And my mother would be like, Harlem is like black people's heaven. She'd be like, it's like what South Baton Rouge used to be. It's like where we had all these amazing shops and we had all this stuff and it's in New York and blah, blah, blah. So that's probably what it is more than anything. You go back and you watch the movie and it's got some classic Eddie Murphy moments, some classic movie moments, period. Where I'm from, South Baton Rouge, Louisiana, everybody going crazy over Hollow Nights.

Leela Rashan pops up in this movie as Sunshine. Still something that if you talk about this in black culture, everybody knows what it means when you start talking about Sunshine. Everybody, you know, I tell you, put your mom on the phone. Tell her I ain't never coming home again. You know what I mean? Like all of that.

The shooting of the pinky toe. So it's a big time movie to me. I could see why in the totality of his career, why some people might not have it in there. Well, it's an interesting movie because, you know,

with Raw, he has Robert Townsend direct that movie. And then with Coming to America, the first thing you see is an Eddie Murphy production. And then with this movie, he becomes a director. He's paying homage to these generations of performers before him i was

thinking re-watching it i was like this della reese shit is also just bizarre like him like fighting her in the alleyway like it's a very odd film but see once again even that that right there that my dad brings stuff up that like that my dad the most politically incorrect you know i'm gonna leave him out of it because I don't even want to say some of this stuff. Let's move on. We talked about this already.

Yeah, let's get out of it. Let's leave it. No. So I'm going to give you a maybe on Harlem Nights. It does seem like he kind of also to the point Amanda

was making about Boomerang is like, it seemed like he was going in a direction towards sort of seizing a kind of power and control over the production of all of his movies and then changes how he uses that power and control.

But 1990, another 48 hours. It's kind of a cash in. It's not great. Not bad. Feel like it's just obligatory in a lot of ways. Doesn't seem like it's Hall of Fame material to me. I would agree. I would agree with you, too.

Okay. Boomerang. So I think it was, was it you Wesleyan bill who talked about it on, on the show? Wesleyan bill. Yeah. Um,

I thought you guys did a really nice job of people haven't listened to that episode of putting it in context. Cause it's a movie that kind of seems like, of course now when you look back, but at the time was very unlikely given what Holly was trying to do. And as Amanda pointed out, it was not very well received. Um, I think it's weirdly one of the most watchable of any murphy's movies it's a real like it's a good one to stumble on and you never feel like you're lost it has a couple like the john

witherspoon shit is so it's like the funniest thing that ever happened but also you're kind of involved in the story and you're connected to the characters feel it's very well made um so to me it felt like a no-brainer when i was doing my list but amanda being the rom-com expert i assume you're you're into it yeah of course i mean i love a romantic comedy and some of that accessibility is it is it's not a classic rom-com in a lot of ways it's subverting some of the things before you know it's doing the gender switch before you get to my best friend's wedding and it has or what women want, like which come after.

But it has a lot of the familiar tropes. And I like watching all of those people. I think it also just like a great supporting cast, a lot of young people like Halle Berry, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock, all in those films. And I like it a lot. I thought I was going to have to fight harder for it, but if I don't, amazing. It's in for me.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I genuinely think it's one of his best movies. I agree. Okay, so Boomerang is in. Now we're into a little bit of a fallow period. The Distinguished Gentleman. I haven't seen this in a long time when i did see it it was on hbo a lot and so i've probably seen it 10 or 15 times but i don't remember thinking this movie is important fan what do you think of distinguished gentleman i still don't have any clue why it was made like even then it was a movie that people just kind of

it almost didn't seem like if it were made today it would be one of the way I've talked about these movies before if it were made today it would be one of those movies that you'd be flipping through Amazon and you'd be like oh my god

Clive Owen, Anthony Hopkins, and Morgan Freeman this didn't get a theatrical release you ever see those weird movies like that and you're like what the hell when did they do this one this didn't get a theatrical release you ever see those weird movies like that yes like and and you're like what the hell when did they do this one because it just doesn't like no one ever ever ever ever says yo bro remember this part in the distinguished gentleman ever so it's like a weird thing i wonder how that movie happened or like what. What the story behind it is. But no, I don't think it's on there. It's amazing that this was Jonathan Lin's second movie of 1992.

Released eight months earlier. Does anybody know what movie it was? I do not. Comedy classic, My Cousin Vinny. Oh, wow. Jonathan Lin directed My Cousin Vinny and the Distinguished Gentleman in the same year, but it's not going in our Hall of Fame. Beverly Hills Cop 3, as I recall, is hot trash.

So I don't think we need to spend any time on that. That was a very disappointing movie for me. That was like right around when my mom was starting to let me go to movies by myself. And I was like, it's time for me to now have my Beverly Hills Cop movie going experience and bad break. Vampire in Brooklyn. Another movie that when I was 13 I thought was going to be great. I love Wes Craven. Amanda, you're a big fan. You talked about your love

for Nightmare on Elm Street recently on a podcast. She does not love it, man. Vampire in Brooklyn is a movie that didn't work for me either. Do you have any sort of defense for it, fan? I liked the movie,

but it was not one of his 10 best. Yeah, I agree. It's just like a fun thursday night movie where there's a weird acc game on that you don't want to watch you can watch that yeah it's cool that he tried it but it doesn't work it doesn't work 1996 nutty professor mega smash i have already stated i think we have to mean, it's just like a shorthand for an entire phase of his career and an entire type of movie that he does. Sure. 1997, Metro.

You guys remember Metro? I do. Michael Rappaport. Yes. Apparently, Eddie played a character named Inspector Scott Roper. Yeah. Can't say I remember this movie being very good good but i have not seen it in a long time i liked it but it's definitely not gonna go i like metro but it's not gonna go up there

was the take there that it was like a a grittier slightly more adult crime comedy they were trying to go a little bit more serious he was still gonna be funny but i'm interested to know who directed metro i can't remember off the top of my, but they're trying to go a little bit more serious. They're trying to get a little sleek with it. It's in that Bad Boys era, so they're trying to get that type of tone off a little bit. Which, to me, Bad Boys was the closest thing to a Beverly Hills cop that we had had. I'm glad you asked about the director. His name is Thomas Carter.

He has an amazing filmography. Let me read the movies that he has directed. Swing Kids. Oh, I love that joint. Oh my God. That is my joint. Great movie.

Metro, not great. Save the Last Dance. Okay, wow, yeah. Wow, okay. Coach Carter. Oh, this dude's in his bag. Okay, this next one is elite. Gifted Hands, this dude's in his bag. Okay. Okay. This next one is elite.

Gifted Hands, colon, the Ben Carson story. Oh. Okay. Do you remember this? When Cuba played Ben Carson before Ben Carson was considered a problematic figure? I know. I remember that because I read that book when I was obsessed with Ben Carson in eighth grade. I read the book.

I read Gifted Hands, the book. Yeah. Amazing. And then he directed a film in 2014 called When the Game Stands Tall starring Jim Caviezel that looks like a football drama that I've never seen. Oh, yeah. I never saw that. Michael Chickliss is in this. I might have to check that out. Okay. So we're not doing Metro. No.

Mulan's a tricky one. Last year on the show, I revealed that I had never seen mulan before have you seen it since hell no are you not a disney animated person every once in a while like it to me they started dropping too much shit bro they started they disney was like dis Disney was like a SoundCloud rapper. They was dropping too often. It was like Disney was dropping, bruh. Like Disney was putting shit out.

I remember I was like, Disney came out. Didn't they come out with like the Lion King part one and a half or some shit like that? Those were direct to video. Yeah. I know, but they was just dropping back to back to back I liked it when they did one because my era was like Hunchback and then it was what was the next joint after Hunchback it was Hunchback

and then it was Lion King but there was another one like Aladdin right I think your chronology is way off Hunchback is later I was amazed that that was your first pull what I'm saying is they were coming out with these big movies and it was cool. Yeah, totally.

And it was an event. Then it started to hit you with like The Prince of Egypt, Titan AE. Those movies, those are not Disney movies. Well, Titan AE, The Prince of Egypt is Disney, is it not? Is it? I thought those were both Don Bluth movies. I don't know. Anyway, I put them in Disney category.

But it was too much. And I just, I jumped out of it. By the time Mulan came, this is the point. it was too much and I just I jumped out of it by the time Mulan came this is the point by the time Mulan came I was out of it embarrassing embarrassing the admission

I didn't even see the princess and the frog in theaters I was out I was out I didn't either I think Mulan was the last one

for me man and I know what you're talking about about they flooded the zone and I just also I think I was was the last one for me, Van. And I know what you're talking about, about they flooded the zone. And I just also, I think I was like 12, 13 when... Oh, Prince of Egypt is DreamWorks. My bad, DreamWorks. I always gave that one to Disney.

I'm sure DreamWorks appreciates the apology. My bad, DreamWorks. Okay, so go ahead. But this right below me generationally, Mulan's like the 1998 Mulan's a really big deal. And it's not for me. And I went back and rewatched it. And it does not have,

it doesn't hit for me the same way that some of the early Disney classics does. But I do think that it was huge for the for its target audience i'm not going to advocate for it because i'm going to advocate for the other one yeah but my case for it being out is that if shrek never happened we could say okay this is eddie's huge like this is how kids connected to eddie and mooshu the dragon and frankly the remake or the new the live action version of mulan which was not very good at all was really missing a kind of like Mushu style like light-hearted character um but I'm gonna say out and if if we catch some hate but it is what it is Dr. Doolittle I remember

hating this movie now I might have just been an angsty 16 year old at this time but I don't I didn't like it you don't like any iterations of the do little franchise they're pure trash i think it's so stupid me too i think it's so amanda you like no i don't like them i just it's like you know it's amazing what actually sparks ire you know and also like sean you like animals right oh i love animals yeah so i would have thought i think you like animals more than i do honestly so it's just always surprising van we also just had like a really one of the last movies that sean and i saw in theaters was the new do little starring robert downey jr and that was a

really negative experience for us and and you know and that's all we have had to cling to theater wise for one of my last days pre-covid was sitting with amanda two adults on a wednesday night watching fucking do little yeah so not come back to the mcu bobby that's not gonna do i love you to death bobby come back to the mcu that's not gonna do right there no i don't i don't like any i'm not about to watch that i'm not about to look at that like watch him just talk to animals for like two hours i'm not i don't i'm not about to watch that. I'm not about to look at that. Like watch him just talk to animals for like two hours. I'm not looking at that. I'm delighted we're all on the same page. Dr. Doolittle is out.

Holy Man? No. This, this... You about to make a case for it, man? No, I'm not. I'm looking at these Disney movies. So it's Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King,

Pocahontas, The Hunchback, and then Hercules. And I think at that point, I'm out. They was dropping too much. It was like, and those movies were all huge, huge, fucking huge, gigantic deals. I needed a break. But Holy Man.

Emperor's New Groove is underrated. I would recommend it. Word. Okay, I'll check that out. Holy Man is a cool film to watch, but it's not in any, plus I love Jeff Goldblum, but it's not in any movie type. What about Life? See?

I'm about to piss off the community. Didn't like it? I don't fuck with that movie like that. It has a stronger reputation than a lot of these 90s Eddie movies. It is a staple in the community. And there's so many, the gun line, Jang-a-lang,

the upper room, and all of that. There's so many the gun line jangling uh the upper room and all of that there's so many memorable moments i've never liked it that much though never had do you guys ride for bowfinger you know i rewatched it this week thinking i and i had fonder memories of it than the experience of it i think eddie murphy is the bright spot in it and he's kind of of not in it enough. But it's a little strange, and you have to wait too long for him to show up. When you say, I enjoy meeting you, Cliff, then you push the guy right over the cliff. That's too much for the audience to have to think about. They have to know that the guy's name is Cliff, and that he's on a cliff, and that a cliff and a cliff is the same.

It's too cerebral. We're trying to make a movie. Yeah. Bowfinger is good, but I don't know. I never saw what people saw in Bowfinger. They would be like, oh, Bowfinger is good but i don't know i never saw what people saw in bowfinger they would be like oh bowfinger is really good i never really saw it but bowfinger it's cool it's okay both life and bowfinger have pretty solid reputations um i like bowfinger a lot more because i'm kind of a sucker for movies about making movies and eddie does do a couple of bratty movie star moments,

especially the beginning of the movie when we're introduced to Kit, where he's kind of railing on his agent about the choices he gets. It's like my favorite scene in the movie. I'm going to make it yellow because I might want to fight for Bowfinger later. But I don't think I'm going to have enough space, unfortunately. Nutty Professor 2, The Clumps. I say this is out, even though I do remember this movie also being a mega event. I mean, I

just think that this phase every year, again, every year was like a huge event, but I don't really need Nutty Professor 2 in there. One's enough. Yeah, big time, big time soundtrack. I think Janet Jackson's in that one. It was a big movie, but I wouldn't put it in the top

two. Is this the Busta Janet song? Is this what that's from is it i don't think so that might have been on busta's album i don't know i have to look back i remember watching sean you ought to know that i just recently i just recently knew about i didn't know that sean sean i never knew that you used to be a writer for vibe yeah yeah i worked at vibe Vibe for years. John 1.0. 1.0, yeah. I never knew that. My head looked different back then. Would you have a whole John B. vibe going on? I wish.

I wish I could tap into John B.'s energy. No, I was... I had short, shaved hair. My jeans were baggier, but that's about it. Okay, so Nutty Professor 2 is out. Shrek's got to be in. That's uncomplicated. I don't have any friends.

And I'm not going out there by myself. Hey, wait a minute. I got a great idea. I'll stick with you. You a mean green fighting machine. Together we'll scare the spit out of anybody that crosses us. I like Shrek. I don't know.

Is it okay to like Shrek? Perfect animated film. Very good. Yeah, I agree.rek. I don't know. Is it okay to like Shrek? Perfect animated film. Very good. Yeah. Agree. Dr. Dolittle 2 is terrible. Let's just say some more

rude things about animals, I guess. So this run here, like this, in a very, very short period of time, Eddie makes these movies. Showtime,

The Adventures of Pluto Nash, I Spy, Daddy Daycare, and The Haunted Mansion. This is like 18 months worth of movies. And we get those five films, all of which I would say are not even worth discussing. But if there's any of them that either of you guys think is worthy of breakdown, let me know. Which one was Showtime? That was Robert De Niro's in that?

Yes. Okay, yeah. But you know what I remember about these movies? Is that I desperately wanted to like all of them. Like, I really did. Like, I tried. I went and saw all of these movies. And it

was just like, yo, this sucks. They weren't good. I wanted to like all of them. Especially I Spy. I thought there was no way I Spy could not work. I really thought it was going to work. Was his partner Owen Wilson in that? Owen Wilson.

Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, even like the guy who directed Showtime, which I never could have, I never would have known if I didn't look it up, is a guy named Tom Day. The movie that Tom Day made before Showtime is Shanghai Noon, which is a fun movie.

Yeah, it's pretty good, yeah. And the movie he made after that is Failure to Launch and then he made Marmaduke. So like Tom Day is another like replacement level filmmaker who is coming off of a bigger success

that Eddie works with and that doesn't really translate. And that's a pretty consistent theme throughout his career. So I'm just going to take those five movies and I'm going to take Shrek 2 and say that

none of these movies qualify. You guys okay with that? Yeah. I'm good with that. Dreamgirls. I have it in there. Amanda? He was nominated for an Oscar for it. I think that's important. It's also after the run that

you just highlighted and eliminated. Rewatched it last night. He's very good. He's not in it as much as everything else as everyone else obviously it's a supporting actor but i think you kind of have to just in terms of career significance yeah i agree with that do you guys wish he did more supporting roles because that's one thing is he is almost always the star uh yeah because i think that uh i think that that's actually a way...

I think it takes a little bit of pressure off. It lets you explore things and characters in a different way when you take a supporting role. And the audience automatically expects less of you, so it dials your performance up. And not a lot of guys know how to play that game. And it was just cool to see Eddie kind of in that. And it really worked

at Dreamgirls. He's not on the screen that much, but when he is, he's perfect. Yeah, I agree with that. Shortly after Dreamgirls, I think, Van,

you put it perfectly that the dip seemed to be informed by his loss. And so we've got a bunch of movies that I think we can cross out very quickly. Here are those movies.

Norbit. Shrek the Third. Meet Dave. Imagine that, Shrek Forever After, Tower Heist, A Thousand Words, and Mr. Church. Is there any case for any of those movies? Uh-uh. A Thousand Words is the worst movie I've ever seen in the theater. Oh, my God. That's the thing with Eddie. That's why it's such an interesting conversation

is he has the absolute highest highs and the lowest lows, which is so, I mean, I guess it's a credit to having a career with that much longevity,

but it's fascinating because the quality control is all over the place. So all of those movies go out. That leaves us with two more. Coming to America, the new one, I think we can safely cross out because it's,

you know, I'm sure it's going to be a huge success for Amazon prime, but, and bam, you can tell us over the weekend, whether you thought it was good or not, but it's okay. Dolomite is my name.

I don't really know how to feel about this. Is this a hall of fame, Eddie Murphy thing? Uh, I was, you know what, you know, it's funny is I was,

this was one of the ones where i was looking kind of towards you guys to see what you thought about it because i have it with like a big question mark yeah me too because here's the thing about dolomite is my name on i would sooner include like beverly hills cop 2 uh before like dolomite is my name. But I feel like Dolomite's a bigger deal for Eddie Murphy for some reason. It's more significant. That's kind of how I feel. What do you think, Amanda?

Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit about the narrative that we are crafting with the list. Sorry to be nerdy. But it is significant in terms of his comeback. I think it is a great performance. I was thinking a little bit about what Van said in terms of is Eddie Murphy a great actor? And like the softer parts of this performance and like the emotions that he makes you feel in this,

in addition to being really funny, I think it's a pretty accomplished performance. And it would also be weird if our last Eddie Murphy movie in the Hall of Fame was in 2006. At the same time, that's probably pretty reflective, at least of the quality aspect of his career. So I could see it going either way. You guys both have, because we have nine right now, I think. With the maybes as well?

No, without the maybes. So we have nine musts. So we have one spot left. And you guys both have some maybes as well no without the maybes so we have nine musts so we have one spot left and you guys both have some maybes right and i think this would be the time to like make a case for a maybe over dolomite is my name or whether we want to like try to be comprehensive so let's like work backwards my one thing with dolomite is My Name Is. I think it's a good performance. Obviously telling Rudy Ray Moore's story is cool and important and it's fascinating

that that happened. Right. And that Netflix paid for that given, you know, what he means to a whole generation of moviegoers. But to me,

the best thing that came out of it for me personally was that Eddie went back on SNL and did Gumby. And I was like, I just needed this in my life. I remember specifically

being in New York, being at my dad's house when Eddie was on SNL. I don't know. I guess it was right around the holidays. It must have been the week right before Christmas. He was so fun. I mean, the whole episode is great. He was great the whole time. He won an Emmy for his work on that one episode of SNL,

but the movie itself, I won't be returning to it anytime soon. The other argument in favor of it. I mean, he said on the press tour that like he thought of Dolomite is as like his comeback and he's like way back into doing coming to America too and doing SNL. And hopefully like if we ever get out of this mess doing like a standup tour

and kind of so that's that's important in terms of having him back but there are also some other movies on here that you guys really like okay let me put it let me put it to you man you want to talk about the five maybes let's talk about the five maybes the the maybes that we have right now are the golden child beverly hills cop 2 harlem knights bowfinger and dolomite is my name of those which jumps out to you okay first of all i just want to let you guys both know that this is the most fun that one can have doing something like this this is so weird this is why we do this show there's a lot of fun uh so here's the deal any one of those movies

i would i would put the golden child in before I would certainly put Harlan Knight in it before. And I think that most people that see another phase of Eddie Murphy's career. And Dolomite is more significant to that phase of his career than some of those movies are to that part of his career because everything else was so huge. So I think I put it into the top 10, but for reasons of significance and not necessarily how that movie stacks up to the other ones. Look at how many movies we axed out from 2001. I know I make fun of Sean's list and spreadsheets, but like, this is like a visualization tool that is, it's pretty remarkable.

Just the volume. I mean, he has kept working with some pauses. And so you kind of want to reflect that and honor the, the comeback in 2019. And as Van said, I like, I do think hopefully more to come.

So I'm comfortable with it. I think it's like a, a fuller list. Okay. So I'm going to read you guys the 10 right now. So we have a clear counting of what we've done here. And so when people holler, Van,

what's your Twitter handle? They can tweet you. Van Lathan. let's do it. You can pick those fights. Here are our 10. 48 Hours, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy Raw,

Coming to America, Boomerang, The Nutty Professor, Shrek, Dreamgirls, and Dolomite is my name. I feel pretty good about that. I do too.

I think the omission, I think the biggest thing is going to be the omission of too i think the the omission i think the biggest thing is going to be the omission of life i think the omission of life the omission of life that sounds like a good movie title yeah there you go the sequel to monuments yeah yes the monuments yeah i think the omission of life is going to bother just a shit ton of people i know but by the way the hits and misses of eddie's careers misses of Eddie's career and the lulls is very typical for a comedic actor. Yeah, that's true.

It's not like anything special. It happened to Carrie. You know what I mean? It happened to Sandler. It happened to... Now, Sandler's able to give you a punch-junk love and an uncut gem. But he does what Eddie doesn't do.

That's the thing. Yeah, right. He does what Eddie doesn't do. And I wish that i mean could you imagine eddie with with the safties i mean that would be fucking unbelievable easy that would be unbelievable so anyway um i i agree with you it's not uncommon for people to take we just did a um 35 over 35 actors list on the show movie stars list eddie didn't make the list, but neither did like Will Ferrell didn't make the list. 10 years ago, Will Ferrell was the center of movie culture.

So it changes for everybody. Eddie is definitely back though. Coming to America is available on Amazon prime van. Where can people hear and find you higher learning on the ringer networks? Love it. At Van Latham, Instagram and Twitter. Whatever smoke you got, come to me.

Whatever smoke you got, I want to hear it. Somewhere about right now, my sister's like, hey, put life on the list. Come because let's talk about it. You might also meet the meet Dave hive. You know, you don't want to run into them in a dark alley. All right. Yeah. Amanda, where can we find you on social media?

At Sean Fennessey. Just send it right on over. Thank you, Van. Thank you, Amanda. Now let's go to my conversation with Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen. Gentlemen, thank you for being on the show. How are you today, Thomas? I'm good.

I'm good. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. And Mads, how are you? I'm good as well. And Dino, thanks for having us. So guys, another round feels like it is very much

in partnership with the last film that you made together The Hunt and I'm curious about what happened after The Hunt if you decided we definitely want to make

another film together we have a we have a union here that we want to keep going or if time went by and you didn't really discuss it we did want to do something together

it was for me at least it was a game changer um and uh and well thomas can answer that himself uh so i think that thomas was looking for things that was would be a path for us to go exactly you know i felt having done the hunt together and by the way having always wanted to work with Mads, but having done that, I felt we could come really far. So I thought about Mads from the get-go of writing Another Round. Even before there was a story, and in the years of trying to find the story of Another Round, Mads was on my mind. So Thomas, tell me about that. Where did this movie come from for you? Were you experiencing

a midlife crisis of some kind? Why'd you start writing it? Not really, actually. My life was okay, but a lot of children and a lot of Coca-Cola zero and not enough drinking and maybe a little bit of a yearning for my, my former life, but no, no, I had a great life, but I was and do have a lovely and happy marriage and some beautiful children. So, but I looked at world history and I realized how many great and fantastic accomplishments that have been done by people who are drunk. And then I thought about Mads. And then I called Mads and said, I want to do something about, you know, I want to do a celebration of alcohol,

which was sort of the beginning of this journey. And then things developed. We very quickly realized that we have to explore the dark side of alcoholism as well. And quite early in the process, we also realized that this movie is about much more than just alcohol. It's a life, it it's an attempt at least to make a life-affirming film about living inspired uh so things developed over time and mads what about for you did you have a a big relationship to to drinking when you first heard this idea from thomas what did what did you have a big relationship to drinking when you first heard this idea from Thomas?

What did you think about exploring it? Danish. So that will answer it, right? Yeah. I mean, we, at least my generation, we were not unaccustomed to the fact that we will be dragged to a bar by our older brother and we will start playing billiards when we're about 13 years old and and the waiter will serve us a beer with the promise of course that the older brother will take us home uh so so yes it's it's scandinavian thing it's it's an early start um luckily it

seems to in scandinavia you know to to like that the curve starts breaking when you're becoming a little older. But when it comes to youth, I think we hold the world record of drinking. So yes, it's part of our genetics, I guess. The story, well, it's

a funny pitch and it's a pitch we can all relate to. I think that even for Americans or Italians, we know what happens when we drink two glasses of wine. We know that the conversations are lifting. We know that you might be brave enough to pick up that phone and make that phone call you wish you could do when you were sober. It's been around for six,

7,000 years either to get closer to the gods or the spirits or to inspire you. There is something heavenly about it, but of course, there is a big difference between two glasses of wine and two bottles of wine. This is what the film also touches upon.

I'm Irish, so I have some understanding of the cultural baggage that comes with this as well. You know, in America, we have the Lost Weekend and we have Days of Wine and Roses and Leaving Las Vegas. There is a tradition of films about alcohol, alcoholism, what it means, the highs and the lows. In Denmark, is this a topic that has been covered in the cinema before? Absolutely. And to a masterly degree, I mean, we have a plethora of films that have dealt with alcoholism

as a moral thing in a masterful way, as I said, numerous films since the 30s and 40s all the way up to now. So I think that Thomas and Tobias who wrote the script, it was never going to be that. It was never going to be a moral film. It wanted to touch upon both sides of the coin,

but it also wanted to look at the bright side, remembering when you were 15 years old and being in love and you had your first beer and how great the world was and you were 15 years old and being in love and you had your first beer and how great the world was and you were just immortal. So I wanted to touch upon both sides. It's interesting because both Mads and I are old enough to have grown up in a world where there was a beer everywhere. You know, when the window cleaner came, he would have three beers, you know, at every house. And then he would climb outside the house and start window cleaning. At the television, you know, everywhere, there was an enormous intake of beer, which suddenly disappeared in the 80s.

This movie here is probably more a reaction against the opposite, the super-measured, just, reasonable, and slightly fearful behavior that is surrounding us right now. This film is a battle for the uncontrollable, for the inspired, for the things that you cannot measure, for the things that you cannot buy on the internet or find in the gym. You know, my daughters, they go to school, they have to map out their entire future at a very young age, and they have to appear on social media 40 times a day. And they'll get grades both on the social media and at school all the time.

And the iPhones that we're carrying around will measure how many steps we take. Everything is measured. If you were a journalist for a newspaper, it'll count how many clicks your article will get and how long people will stay. And there's just some things in life that cannot be controlled and should not be controlled. And that's what this movie is trying to capture. It's about togetherness, about love, about inspiration, and about being willing to take a chance and be at risk in your life. I love that idea of essentially turning the clock off while thinking,

while experiencing your life. But did you, did you, before production began, did you experiment at all? Did you rekindle your relationship to alcohol? Either of you? Well,

we did a booze bootcamp to train alcohol acting, which was a very entertaining session. Mads, what was that like? I was challenging these four fantastic actors. They had to be drunk at very specific levels and be touching and be funny and

crying and dancing and so forth. So this just had to work. So we worked on that. But as Mads have said before, or touched upon before, we have a long life of preparation for a movie like this. Having said that, we're both busy people, and we don't really have time to drink enough.

It's not like we're living an alcoholic life. Mads, can you break down the booze bootcamp? I'm curious about what Thomas put you through there. Yeah, between the four of us and Thomas and Tobias, the writer, we have plenty of experience of what it is to be drunk, but that was not the the aim of the boot camp the the aim of the boot camp was to be as specific as the characters are in the film and they uh you know they agree on 0.05 and then they lift it to 0.08 and so forth and we wanted to see is there a

measurable difference between those different levels and so we picked out a few scenes where we teach the kids and we did the scenes under the influence very specifically with these little things you blow in and for us no not a big deal we're just together and we've all been drinking and it was like yeah couldn't tell the difference the next day when you watch the the tapes it's like oh i can see the difference now very obvious little little details they're very refined little details and they were just it was it was a way for us to go up and down on the volume to know exactly when thomas said let's go to 0.08 because this is not working it's not fun and then we knew exactly what that took. So for us, it was

to be as specific as the characters. And a good excuse to get drunk. We didn't get drunk. It was just like it was just tipsy. Thomas, can you talk about actually building an arc for the character that Mads plays? Because obviously

you get this chance to explore the experience of getting drunk and maybe taking you know, turning those measurements off your life but, you know, making a story out of this seems like it could have been challenging. So what did you determine you wanted Martin to kind of accomplish and go through in the story?

First of all, I want to say it was challenging. This script and this entire movie always wanted to run in all sorts of different directions. And every time we tried to constrain it or curate it, as you normally do in a script process, it became a bit of a castration. So it had to be this untamable beast. In terms of Mads' development, it was clear to me that he should be paralyzed by life, by the repetitiousness and boredom of a mediocre life. And he should be surrounded by sharks, meaning the students that could smell the insecurity and the weakness of the teacher and they were sort of ready to execute him, to get him fired.

And it was also clear to me that he should end amongst those students as an elevated person, able to fly, basically, weightless, as the youngsters, as you feel when you're 16 and in love and slightly tipsy, and it's springtime and it's early morning so the journey was quite clear from the beginning what wasn't so clear was if we dare to have him dance at the end and how do we get through that journey and does it really work to have a main character fall apart in 19th minute of the movie and start crying already was that supposed to be a climactic scene and you know and then the work begins and it took some time it's really interesting i mean i'm definitely going to ask you mads about your dancing but but um before that i think that there is something very similar here to the hunt as well which is

that there is this kind of suffocating panic that happens fairly early in the movie. There's like an impending doom surrounding this character in a weird way. This one isn't necessarily as criminal, but you create this sense of anxiety very early on in the film. Can you guys talk about how you build a character like that and build a film like that, which is ostensibly about exaltation, but also, I think the viewer knows that there's something wrong here. This isn't necessarily the path to total release. Unlike The Hunt, I would say that this character, Martin, in Another Round, has in upon himself the catastrophe. In The Hunt, it's obviously something that happened, something is claimed, and he is playing absolutely no part in that.

Here, he is the main character of his own disaster. It's up to him whether he wants to go that way or that way. So, yeah, the claustrophobic feeling starts, is it 19 minutes into the film? I don't know. Maybe it is. It feels like 10 minutes. But we barely know the character, and he has a smaller breakdown within 19 minutes,

which is an extremely rare and bold move for a film because you will place that an hour and a half into the film. Thomas wanted it to be, instead of us knowing the character and then understanding why he had the breakdown, he wanted the people to understand the character through his breakdown. It's a strange approach, and I loved it when I read it. And it is irrational for a film, but it's not irrational for life. This is how life is.

All of a sudden, it dawns on him that he hasn't achieved anything, right there in that situation. He didn't think about it yesterday, right there he thinks about it. And I think that's the uncontrollable and irrational part of the film, that it's making it beautiful. I remember doing the hunt. Our specific challenge was to make sure that

Mads did not look guilty, look like a pedophile, basically. So when the glasses were sort of falling down his nose and steaming up a little bit, suddenly he looked like a pedophile and we had to reshoot. But this movie, it was more difficult because what we had to make sure was that Mads did not have a specific problem.

It's not a marriage problem or work problem or solely that he's about to get fired. It's life. It's his entire life that he's about to get fired. It's life. It's his entire life that has come to a standstill. And that was a delicate balance. And I think Mads played that very, very beautifully. And I actually pointed that out quite early in one of the early drafts. So I actually wanted to ask you both about this, because I noticed this in both films as well.

Mads, you have this incredible ability to portray ambiguity, to get us to think about what you're thinking. And when you guys are making a film, do you have to do multiple takes to say, you know, you squinted your eyes just a little too much there, or you blinked at a moment when you shouldn't have?

Talk about the control that you have to put into a performance like this. It takes two and sometimes three people to tango. I think you're right. I might have an ability to do that, but if nobody catches up on that, it's not coming across. So Thomas exploits that and the camera exploits that.

So, for instance, the scene we talked about when he has a smaller breakdown was written specifically as the camera approaches Martin more and more throughout the scene. Everything, he's in a bubble. You can hear the sounds. You can feel his friends. But we're entering him. And so I'm glad that you think that I do portray certain things. Other people will say I'm not. But you can't do it unless the camera and the director insist on it. And it was written specifically like that.

It becomes a bubble, a vacuum, and all of a sudden we enter this character and we don't leave him for the rest of the film. That is something you can't do by yourself. You need to have everybody on board. I have to add something here. You're listening to a very, very humble Dave who's trying to share the credit with his surroundings, which is also fair enough,

but you're also listening to a very, very, very precise and super finely tuned instrument who could do the most subtle things. And it's a difficult thing that I'm asking Mads to do because there's a choir talking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then there's a break and silence. And you have to tell a lot of stories in that silence and mads knows how to do that how to do that and knows how to do it with incredible depth

and there's not a lot of people who can do this um thomas i want to ask you first about the ending which is my favorite film ending of 2020 uh can you talk about where the concept came from to have this explosion of joy and physical expression? And then Mads, I'd love to hear about your life as a dancer, honestly. Well, it comes from Mads' life because I knew he used to be a professional dancer for nine years. And I wrote the script for Mads and I also wrote the script for the three other guys. That's how I prefer to work, right, for specific actors. And I knew that this was something that Mads could pull off, and I was super curious to see it. And I thought it fitted emotionally, fitted greatly into the film we were doing,

because I wanted this to be a cathartic moment where he actually succeeds with alcohol. And I thought that's the best physical way to express it. And after a little bit of persuasion and rewrites and discussions and stuff, Matt just pulled it off beautifully with no extras or doubles or anything else. It was pure Mads. Mads, I think given some of the roles you've had in the States,

people would be surprised to learn that you were a trained dancer. Can you just talk about that experience and bringing that to this role at this point in your life it's interesting because i've actually done a lot of things like stunt things in my american career and i think the base of that is maybe the dancer or i was a gymnast before that so so maybe it's not so surprising when they hear it but um it, but it was some grueling two days. I was reluctantly going along with dancing. Not that I don't want to dance. It's just that not only me, but also Thomas and Tobias, we were a little worried that it could come across pretentious that in a realistic film that

somebody just starts dancing so i had a really good solution for that which was like let's make it a magical situation let's make it a drunken man's fantasy like take it out of the film somehow but that seemed even more weird because we haven't done that throughout the film either um so eventually just landed on the table of thomas's idea like you're just dancing there shut up there and and don't regret it at all i mean um it was a two rough days uh i haven't been doing it for 30 years the character has not been doing it for 30 years. The character has not been doing it for 30 years. So it's okay that he's rusty. But there was a tiny bit of me, you know, that became a little ambitious on my former craft.

And I was like, didn't I jump much higher? Wasn't I much more flexible? And so be it. The dance is not about aesthetics. It's about the character has just lost somebody he loves. And he's just regained someone that he loves within an hour. And so we wanted it to be an inner journey as the rest of the film. And the aesthetic of the dance was just a hat we were carrying.

Thomas, do you see the movie as hopeful? Yes. A lot of people see this movie very differently because we have this open ending either he flies or he falls so a lot of people have watched it it's the film I've made that has made the best box office

in my entire career in Denmark because of that because there's so many ways of interpreting this movie. Tobias and I insisted to stay away from being moralistic and also we did not want to make an alcohol advertisement. So I guess it's an investigation of how this life is of these

four drunk men. But to me, the film that I'm watching, Mads is flying at the end and there's hope for him. And he's getting another round with his wife. And yes, he lost his friend. So, but there's hope. I see the ending as someone said in an old film called Sorba the Greek, the older audience will know that one. Yeah, the Anthony Quinn film. Exactly. I see this ending as a beautiful catastrophe, which in fact, describes both the ending of the film and my life at that time. So, so, so yes, I think that was hope. One thing that struck me about both of your careers is,

you know, you both have made a number of Danish projects over the years, but you have kind of dipped your toes in English productions and Hollywood productions. And Mads, you've spent a lot of time making Hollywood productions in the last five or six years. What is your relationship to the Danish film industry and your identity as,

as Danes making movies at this point in your careers? I will say for both of us, it's our base. This is where we grew up. These are our stories. And for me, it's also my language. So there's no way you can turn your back on that ever. You will always come home and you will always feel freer in a degree when you work in Denmark

than you would anywhere else in the world. That doesn't mean that you can't be free and have great times and do things you love abroad. But being home is just being home. And most importantly, those are my stories. You know, making a movie abroad is something I really enjoy.

You set yourself up in a different way when you meet foreign people. But you're always a guest. And it'll always be a tiny bit more general what you do. Whereas when you make your own movies and stick your hands into the soil of your backyard, it becomes more specific into the details. And that specificity and that essential detail, I guess, makes it even more universal. I'm speaking more as a director and a writer.

So there is a challenge when you go abroad, but it's still something that I enjoy a lot. Gentlemen, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen. Have you guys seen anything that you've liked lately? I re-saw something.

Okay, you go first. I'm watching the Academy Award shortlisted movies, and I'm impressed with them. I'm moved by them. And so I'm watching quite a bit of great movies these days. Anything in particular jumping out to you that you want to shout out? A film that really moved me,

well, a couple of films that really moved me was the Norwegian film called Hope, which I thought was really great. And a film from Mexico called I'm No Longer Here, which I thought was a beautifully heartbreaking film. But, you know, there's a bunch of them. Just watch the shortlisted movies. Mads, what about for you? What have you seen lately that you dig? Well, I'm old school, as I said. I went back and re-watched something I saw 25 odd years ago. It's Kieslowski's Decalogue.

Yes. And because I have a lot of time on my hand here, I just wanted to see if it was still, if it was still holding up. And my God, it's a masterpiece. It's the direction, the way of telling the story and the actors are just, I've never seen them since.

And they are just so persuasive. It's insane to watch that. Decalogue, go and watch it. That is a fabulous recommendation. Speaking of priceless music Decalogue is like well, amazing. I feel like

another round would be a nice nightcap on the Decalogue actually. It would be. The 11th commandment. Thomas Matz, thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate it. And congrats on another round. Thanks for having us.

Thank you to Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Vinterberg, Van Lathan, Amanda Dobbins, Bobby Wagner, the whole crew making this big episode today. Thank you for listening. Please come back next week. We got a whole lot to talk about. We got Oscars, we got WandaVision, and a whole lot more.