The Big Picture - ‘The Menu,’ ‘Bones and All,’ and 20 Movies We Missed From 2022

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

It’s been a long year at the movies. We’ve covered *almost* everything on the show. But a few titles slipped through the cracks. Sean and Amanda run through a list of recent releases and 2022 titles they missed (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by ‘Bones and All’ director Luca Guadagnino to discuss his new film (1:17:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Luca Guadagnino Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Musa Kwonga and I'm Ryan Hunt and we co-host Stadio, a football podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network Twice a week, Musa and I talk about the goings on in men's and women's football around Europe and sometimes around the world We like to zoom in, we like to zoom out

we like to make some silly references So, if you like soccer or football, make sure you search for Stadio, a football podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts Think we got it? Yep, that was good Make sure you search for Stadio, a football podcast, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Think we got it? Yeah, that's good.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the best movies we missed from 2022. Later in this episode,

I have a conversation with Luca Guadagnino, the director of Bones and All, a romantic, yes, cannibal drama starring Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet, which just saw its debut in theaters last week. Luca is a passionate fellow. I hope you'll stick around for our chat. But first, Amanda, I'm having a crisis about movies. A pretty significant crisis.

A novel situation for you. Yeah, I feel diseased. And I'm not just referring to the stomach bug that my one-year-old gave me over the holiday weekend. Everyone's okay. We're all fine. Everyone's healthy. What's not healthy is the American box office,

the American movie-going institution, the American sense of what is a movie and what is not a movie. So the original intent of this episode was for us to just talk about a bunch of stuff that maybe you missed while you were on your leave earlier this year, or that maybe for whatever reason just slipped through the cracks. And also, you know, take a snapshot of this really noisy Thanksgiving weekend at the box office and in movies in general, because there's so much stuff coming out. We had nothing for all of August and the first couple weeks of September. And now there's this really, this glut of new releases. And we are going to do that. We're going to talk about all that stuff. But Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald had, I thought, a very compelling conversation on The Watch yesterday. And Matthew Bellany has been covering this on the town quite a bit recently. There's a lot of churn and burn happening in the industry at large.

Stock prices are way down. And two movies that I didn't even list in our outline to discuss today have become focal points of conversation. The first of which is Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery, which did actually open in 600 plus movie theaters over the weekend. And the other is this Disney animated film, Strange World. I didn't list that one because I knew you weren't going to see it. Didn't seem like something that we would hit. I thought maybe we'll focus on it on a later episode, but that movie didn't do very well. And the Knives Out film did very well in a kind of quasi-limited release. Now, my crisis is this. I just don't know what movies we're supposed to be talking about on our show and when we're supposed to be talking about them. Because

we're going to talk about some good stuff that came out over the last couple weeks and some stuff that has done decent business. But I don't know when anybody is seeing anything and I don't know how to organize our show anymore. Would it be reasonable to do a Glass Onion episode today? Maybe it would be. Our plan was to wait until the end of the year when it hits Netflix. So what do you think?

Am I wrong to be feeling so crazy about what's happening at the movies right now? No, it's insane. And it's not really even insane. It's pretty simple, which is people don't go to the movies. And yes, Glass Onion did relatively well. That is grading on a curve and people need headlines for their trades over holiday weekends. I mean, it made a lot of money, but it was also a one-week stunt release. A lot of the interest had to do with the fact that theaters allowed Netflix to do that, and it now will be leaving theaters but won't be available on Netflix for another month, which,

to your point on Twitter and your mini breakdown, is like a shorter window but also doesn't feel like a great fit or satisfying anyone's needs. And then there's also this element of, did Glass Onion eat somebody else's Thanksgiving lunch? Specifically, Steven Spielberg's and The Fablemans, which had kind of a similar theater count release and did not do as well. So no one's going to see the movies. Even the number of people who went to see Glass Onion, like I don't think is a large enough amount of people. It's only a success because Netflix didn't have to do it at all.

Do you know what I mean? Right. Like if any other movie that was released wide only made $13 million, which is like the best estimate. Has it gone up a bit since? It looks like it's between 13 and 15 million. I mean, that is a strong number on 600 screens. The question is, is if you had expanded it to 3,000 or 4,000, what would it have done? And would it have had a long shelf life? Obviously, the first film did really, really well. It seems like, you know, if you look at the things that I tend to look at, which is to say conversation online, various social media channels, talk to

your friends, talk to your family, you know, we're in a coastal situation. So there's, you know, Class Onion's playing in a lot of theaters here in LA. It feels like a lot of people saw it. It feels there was a lot of conversation about it over the weekend. Do you know a single person in your life who went to see it? No, but I work in the industry. So like, you know, but I don't either. And I was at a very large Thanksgiving celebration in Philadelphia, 50 people. And there is also a tradition at this Thanksgiving celebration where like the younger generation, which is involves me. So, you know, that's I'm on the older side of the younger generation, but I'm still clinging on goes to see a movie after Thanksgiving dinner. And I didn't get to go this year for child care

reasons, but they all went to see Black Panther, too. You know, like they did not choose to see Glass Ending. Now, I don't really know if it had as wide a release in Philadelphia, because as you noted, it was kind of limited. But I talked to a lot of people about movies this Thanksgiving, honestly, because I'm trying to put together my top five list and I still don't know all the movies that are going to be on it. No one mentioned Glass Onion. So yes, people went to see it relative for its screen release and whatever, but I don't know. I don't know anyone who saw it. and so this gets back to your question of like should we be covering it because like a small more people saw Glass Onion

than saw other movies like I guess so but have our listeners been able to see it I'm not like totally sure I think a lot more people will see it when it's on Netflix will that make money for Netflix in the same way does that help theaters? Does that help the future of cinema? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No. But to your question, should we be talking about it? I don't know. It's a murder mystery and most people haven't seen it.

That would suck. I know. I know you're right. You're 100% right about that fact. And, you know, over the last year, we've moved, I think, away from even just having a lot more conversations like this about the state of the business. I think more generally, we've kind of accepted that things are in a state of transition. I find it a little bit vexing at this time of year and particularly this issue because the movie Strange World did come out on 3000 screens and did very poorly. Children's,

you know, animated films historically have been a stronghold for box office. That may not be the case anymore. It's it's it really depends. If you're a minion, you might be OK. But if you're an original Disney story, you might not be OK. Conversely, I think we're making the show because there's something fun about the communal aspect of movies. Now, in a way, a movie coming out on Netflix can be a communal aspect of movies. A lot of people will have the opportunity to watch it simultaneously. And we like that. We like mainstream movies coming out. And if it's on 4,000 screens and everyone's watching it together, that's a great experience. If it's on a streamer, to me, it's less good together that's a great experience if it's on a streamer to me it's less good but I still enjoy the fact that there's like a lively discourse that there's a lot of passion about whether something worked or

it didn't or yada yada yada so you know we talked about the Fablemans last week and I was like this will be good you know this is a new Spielberg movie it's really exciting and then for whatever reason I think I just missed that it was only opening on like 700 screens I think you're 100% right that the Knives Out audience definitely ate into the Fableman's audience. Now the Fableman's like, how does that movie expand? It's going to be on PVOD in, I think, 12 days. Like, you're going to be able to rent that movie. And more people will than they went to go see it.

I mean, like, here's this. It does feel like a lot of the conversations are like kind of being conflated. And I don't mean to say that I'm happy about the state of movies right now. It like really sucks. But people just like the Fableman's audience doesn't go to the movies anymore. They wait for it at home. They just do. And they will rent it.

Now, does that help movie theaters? No, it does not. Does that like make economic sense long term as we have learned? Like, no, it does not. And does that mean that more Fableman's movies probably won't be made? You know, does that have a trickle down effect? Sure. But like the audience just isn't at theaters for it anymore. And it hasn't been for some time. And that sucks. And I, and i don't think that the way to fix that and get people back to theaters is to just re like wave a magic wand and be like it's 2018 again you know and it's only going to be like you can only see it in theaters for like four months

and then or like or whatever you know i i don't think that's going to incentivize this audience who has gotten used to watching these films at home and who still has interest in them. I don't know. I don't think the PVOD thing really matters. I think that means that more people will be able to see it. And I understand economically that's bad for Hollywood or whatever. But for people who want to see movies and talk about them as you as I do, it's probably better for us once it's available at home. I don't know what to say.

Yeah, no, you're right. It's like a 15-year transition that has been happening. And this, obviously, all of this predated the pandemic. Obviously, many people have identified that the pandemic sped up the slow dissolution of this system. And we're longing for something that is never coming back and we're nostalgic for something. There are, you know, rare cases where it did work. And I think it might be useful

at the end of the year to be like, here are 10 movies that actually did really well at the box office and seem to do well at home. And people like and might have a long shelf life, you know, like Chris and Andy mentioned the movie Dog,

the Channing Tatum movie, which did really good business. The Lost City, also speaking of Channing Tatum, did good business. Barbarian did good business. There Lost City, also speaking of Channing Tatum, did good business. Barbarian did good business. There were a handful of movies where you're like, okay, I see in the outline,

in the broad silhouette of movie release strategy, this can still work. Ticket to Paradise, that movie worked for real. It wasn't a $500 million movie, but it's going to make like 200 million bucks. That's pretty good. So it's not like dead, dead, dead, but you're

right that it has it has shifted significantly we got to wrap our heads around that we got to accept that people are going to see things at different times it even makes a conversation like the one we're about to have a little bit confusing you know like i want to talk to you about bones and all because i i blackmailed you into seeing this film um which is a as i said a cannibal drama from the guy who directed Call Me By Your Name, but nobody else saw it. Yeah, no, I know.

Me and my husband did in Philadelphia on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You're welcome. What a feast. I would have seen it because I like Luca Guadagnino.

I would love to move past the body horror phase of his career, but yeah, nobody saw it. I don't know what to tell you people see things at different at times now and and i think what you and i can do in relationship to the show but also i think what hollywood needs to do and people in the industry need to do is to figure out how to make the at home release a noisier more event communal type thing because

people don't know that they can see things at home. And what we're missing a lot with the theater experience, obviously, you like movies more when you see them, the communal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But also the sense of everyone's seeing this at the same time. We all went to go see this thing and it was event. And that's actually more possible at home. It's just that none of the marketing and infrastructure around it is available. So I guess we have to figure out how to make a more of event of something being available to a lot of people, which when you say it like that, it shouldn't be that hard.

But also, I think the people selling the movies have to. Well, I think the studios are actually doing the opposite. They're sort of downplaying when the PVOD release is coming because they're like, hopefully you'll still also show up in theaters so we can have things both ways. Yeah, well, good luck to you. I know. It's evident that long-term

that's not really going to work. You know, I thought it was interesting that, well, I mean, The Fablements is still the best. That's still the best example. That movie is a movie that is designed to play for four months in movie theaters to have a limited, limited release all the way up until December, and then to go wide, and then to hope when the Golden Globes comes around and awards noise happens. It's an old school playbook, but because

of the introduction of the 17-day window that Universal has, that's over. Bones and All, I don't know when Bones and All will be available for people on PVOD. When it comes around, I would recommend going to see it. I thought it was really good. I mean, I, you know, it's a, it's a story set in the 1980s.

It's, it's based on a novel, um, by Camille DeAngelis. It's a very sensual, passionate movie featuring two young promising movie stars and Taylor Russell and Timothy Chalamet. It does have a body horror element.

There is, it is a true blue cannibal movie, but I would say having seen quite a few cannibal movies in my life, it's a pretty tasteful approach on that kind of story. It's like elevated genre. And it has all of the things that you're looking for in a Luca Guadagnino movie in terms of just like the beauty, like the set dressing and the style and the you know beautiful landscapes and and environment and you know the sense of wistfulness and that it was very hard to be in love in the 1980s uh which is when this is set which you know i'm i'm sure that it was uh it remains hard to be in love as a teenager

anytime so i i really like his style of movie making, and I responded to all of that. And I was able to sort of, you know, look down and to the left during the more horror-y aspects of it. And as you had warned me, like the first 30 minutes, they go for it, and then it becomes less physical. So if you're squeamish like me, you can still do it. And, you know, Timothee Chalamet just a really magnetic presence. And Luca Guadagnino clearly understands that. So it's fun to watch from a

movie star perspective. I agree. I like them together. I like the idea of them going on and making more and more films together. He taps into a real quality of desperation that Chalamet is so good at conveying. And, you know, as you said, it's certainly a movie about being young and in love in the 80s i think there are a lot of different kind of metaphorical readings you can apply to it you know i think there's clearly like a queer identity reading there is a uh a drug addiction reading that you can apply to

it you know all cannibal movies are these great and just like zombie movies and vampire movies are these great you know little um interpretation machines where you can say, we have a lot of different theories about what this film is potentially about. Guadagnino has kind of defied all of those interpretations, but I think they definitely apply. The book is obviously written as a kind of allegory about Reagan's America. Movie is beautifully shot. It really is such a great road trip movie, real Badlands vibes on the movie. I think it's pretty good i mean i don't know if it's like one of the 10 best films of the year but i quite enjoyed it i was quite disappointed to see that people didn't show up for it i hope people do get a chance to check it out but like respectfully

that's not a 3 000 screams like thanksgiving release like what are we doing here i i really enjoyed it even so did my husband zach who's even more squeamish than i am we were just like sure that was it was lovely well so an interesting pairing i think if you were going to do a double feature in in theaters right now would be to go see the menu another kind of feast film what an amazing segue sean really elegant thank you very much um i think the menu is ostensibly a much more commercial enterprise, which is to say it is a true blue thriller. It's a thriller set in a familiar world of kind of high stakes restaurant making,

which is something that as a culture, we've become much more familiar with in the last 20 years as the kind of chef's table style Netflix show becomes more and more popular. And we have a better understanding of the celebrity chef. This movie has actually been, I would say, say a solid hit it has done pretty good business and this is the kind of movie when i mentioned dog in the lost city that i'm pointing to and i'm saying like hey there is a business here you know and this is definitely a movie that will play at home for

people when it comes to whatever streamer it's going to land i believe it'll ultimately be on hbo um i also like this movie quite a bit i was forewarned by a couple people that I wouldn't like it in part because it has a kind of overly simplified kind of intellectual allegorical approach to eat the rich which is something that we've seen in movies over and over and over again and I acknowledge that

it is not the best movie I've ever seen about the idea of ignorant wealthy people destroying our society but as a thriller I thought it was a lot of fun what'd you think yeah I would agree that the payoff is not totally there but well observed has a lot of DNA with movies that seem to be doing very well at the box office right now, which is like, it's not full annoying horror, but it has horror elements. It's got movie stars. It's well-observed. It's directed by Mark Milad, who directs many episodes of Succession. So it has that kind of, it does eat the rich well, even if that's a bit obvious. A lot of it rests on just absolutely being in love with

Anya Taylor-Joy, which I know that many people are. And you can sell that in a cinema experience, but it is really selling that. But yeah, I wanted to know what happened, which is all I can say about a thriller. It was successful. Yeah, I think that's a good way of framing it. It's just I wanted to finish this as quickly as possible. And that's a really good sign. It's also not the best movie of the year. I mean, just as a brief snapshot of the story, it's about a young couple who goes to one of these restaurants, this sort of, you know, like one of these fancy Norwegian restaurants. And it's on a remote island. It's an exclusive destination. The young couple is played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas

Holt. And when they arrive, there are a few other high falutin restaurant attendees, some wealthy people, some famous people, really great cast in this film. Janet McTeer, John Leguizamo, Hong Chao, throwing 100 miles an hour, really enjoyed her in this. Amazing. Yeah, she's very good.

And Ray Fiennes as the celebrity chef of Nook. My king. You're really into these kinds very good. And Ray Fiennes as the celebrity chef of Nook. My king. You're really into these kinds of restaurants. So funny that you say that. So I was. I truly was. I had that bout in my late 20s and early 30s where I was, you know, you know, but I grew up real middle class and never went to restaurants as a kid. And my family doesn't have a huge appreciation of the external food experience. So when Eileen and I started making some money, we were like, let's treat ourselves. We have no children. Let's get invested in these worlds.

This coincided neatly with the rise of Top Chef and Anthony Bourdain's fame and all these things that we were closely tracking and interested in. And so we did go to a lot of restaurants like this between the ages of about 28 and 35. Let me tell you, having a child, no more. That will never happen again. It will be a long time before I go to an 11 Madison Park or a... Gosh, what's the restaurant on Lummi Island that we went to in Seattle? Oh my God. I don't know why I wasn't invited, but that sounded nice.

I think it's the Willow's Inn, which was just absolutely remarkable. If you haven't, let me just make sure it's the Willow's Inn. It is the Willow's Inn on Lemion. It's up for sale. Oh no, it's closed permanently. This was announced today, 21 minutes ago. The story was posted. Oh shit.

After a series of lawsuits, the Willow's Inn is closed permanently. Its chef has faced allegations of sexual harassment and racist bullying. Okay, so that's perfect. Okay, but also, go back to the menu. There you go. Yes, that is perfect. So we went to this restaurant many years ago. We had an incredible dining experience. It was the same thing. It was an all-day experience. It was on a remote island. Is it surprising at all that there was untoward behavior because of the meticulousness of the execution? Not really really the cult-like nature of these restaurants can be insidious and that's part of the idea of the movie and i think that that idea is more resonant than the idea of oh the bourgeois

the class that is destroying all the classes beneath them like that's something that i think we know and understand and is handled less deftly than the actual restaurant culture satire. Really liked the menu. Again, I feel two for two at the moment. Did you get a chance to see the film Devotion? I saw it with you. I was sitting next to you. Devotion? No, you didn't.

Did you? Oh, you did. Yes, I did. What's wrong with you? I forgot because you originally were not going to come with me. So I had blanked in my mind. At the last minute, I showed up.

I was about three minutes late because I got to tell you, it was just an hour plus drive across the city to this screening. But you and I made it. And we saw our guys, Glenn Powell and Jonathan Majors, do 1950s Top Gun. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable way of describing it. It's based on a true story. It's about the U.S. Navy's most celebrated wingman during the Korean War, particularly Ensign Jesse Brown, who

was the first African-American aviator to complete the U.S. Navy's basic flight training program. He was also a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross. That's who Majors plays. Powell plays his buddy, his partner in the sky. Pretty conventional flyboy drama that is fine. I thought it was like perhaps the most average movie I've seen this year.

To me, it was like ultimately the median of all movies. It had a couple of stirring scenes, some interesting set pieces, some very leaden dialogue. I thought the portrayal of brown as not your standard wounded like african-american hero i appreciated that there was a kind of psychological aspect to majors this performance that we don't usually see in these films and very like internal and the film tries to give you like a window into that and to sort of like the the inner conflict of what's going on with this character which i liked a lot it did make for sort of a i i really appreciated it but it also made it sort of like a tonally wild ride if that

makes any sense that and i don't mean that in like a great way of there were these deserved like pretty solemn and upsetting elements but then you're supposed to be like yeah yeehaw like we got the I don't even know what the were they called migs still somehow or am I just trans that's that's what they call them in the film so I assume yeah they were called like we got migs which was just sort of like confusing based on all of the top knowledge that you have. I thought that the chemistry between Glenn Powell and Jonathan Majors was

fantastic. Agree. And you know, that becomes a situation where you're longing for a bit more of like Mav and Goose interplay. And the movie does it to its credit almost, doesn't really give it to you, but also you're a human being, so you're still longing for it i will say at one point you turned to

me after a set piece and we're like i've never seen that before that's cool tell you what's really bad about that is i don't remember what i said that about and that's really that's really the problem with the film yeah um there there are a couple of impressive... Was it the landing sequence on the aircraft carrier? Yeah. Not the aircraft carrier. It was another landing. Oh, the other landing sequence. Yes.

Okay. That was pretty good. There are a couple of moments. So this movie is directed by J.D. Dillard, who actually was one of the very first guests on this show, who made a very small indie with Blumhouse called Slight. He's definitely a talented guy. There's definitely something there. um, who made a very small indie with Blumhouse called slight, uh, who had, he's definitely a talented guy.

There's definitely something there. I think the script fails him a couple of times here. And there is just something too familiar about this movie. Certainly the top gun comparisons will be made, but you know, um, this has like a, gosh, what is the name of the HBO original movie about the boys who dropped bombs out of planes

from the 1990s? I can't even remember the name of this movie. It just feels like- It's like a whole genre. We've been in this world before. We've seen this kind of story before. There's an inevitability to what's going to happen to Brown's character when you're watching the movie.

Forget about if you know anything about it. It knocks the air out of the balloon a little bit but um it's not bad it also similarly did not do very well if this feels like a movie that in 1995 would have been a rock solid performer at the box office so it feels like a little bit of a casualty of the of these times yeah so i was trying to plan out my thanksgiving viewing schedule and there was a window where i was going to take my father-in-law to see this in Philadelphia because I was like I'll be in Philly I need to see some movies this I think would be up his alley just a David McCullough super fan my father-in-law and then for a number

of just like logistical life reasons I decided no it's easier just for me to knock it out of the way we're not going to go and I feel like that's sort of telling that just kind of the Thanksgiving intergenerational movie ritual, we don't have time for it anymore. That's so sad. It is really sad. Can I, can I take our mood up a bit with, I just like to share our guy, Glenn Powell, um, a recent tweet that he, he put out out there which is can some talented editor give the world a trailer cut where Maverick is recruited to be Santa Claus and he has to train a bunch of young cocky reindeer to trust their instincts to fly Mach 25 to deliver every kid their presence in one night Glenn Powell works for the ringer I guess like Jason Gallagher might

have cooked up for sure exactly I was just like this we did it the ringer has its first like homegrown movie star thank you Glenn Powell did we make a mistake by not asking Glenn to come on the 35 under 35 episode because he won't be back on that list you know oh shit maybe maybe we could just have him come for some like top ground oscar uh oh that would be fun oscar content glenn's great in this movie he's really great invitation yeah uh okay so i mentioned strange world we're not gonna get into strange world uh i'll just say that it's worth seeing for a variety of reasons and is one of the smarter disney movies i've seen in a while andy was singing its praises on the watch.

Yeah, but Andy liked Frozen 2. I agree. Andy has a lower bar, I would say, on Disney fare, but he has two young girls that he's seen these movies with that they might like them even more than he does. So I'm seeing that influence start to creep into my life. So I get it. But I will talk about it. I think later this year, me and Charles Holmes

will do an animated Movies of 2022 episode, so we'll probably dig into it then. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. I don't want to talk about this too much

because it's not out officially, officially. It's in a very, very limited release at the moment. I think it's expanding this weekend. This is the new documentary from Laura Poitras.

I think Laura will be a guest on the show later this week or early next week. It is a sort of portrait in parallel of Nan Golden, the widely celebrated photographer and artist and also activist in a way. And she spent a lot of time in recent years kind of shining a light on the opioid epidemic and exposing the Sackler family.

And then in parallel with her history and life, you know, growing up and developing her artistic identity. What did you think of this? I thought it was a pretty extraordinary document about Nan Golden. And we talk a lot about biopics and also documentaries that follow people and how to tell the story of someone's life on screen. And I thought this was a, pardon the pun, artful, but a very effective and moving document of Nan Golden as both a person and an artist and her development as an activist. But it's kind of the whole package together that makes it powerful.

Yeah, it starts out, I thought, very conventionally. And I was surprised because Laura Poitras is far from a conventional documentarian. You know, this is the person who made Citizen 4 and has been making kind of scintillating documentary for the last 20 years. And it reveals itself, you know, when it shows its structure and what story it's really trying to tell. I was blown away by this. This is like right on the outside, maybe even getting into my top five of the year. I thought this was like really one of the amazing achievements of the year for movies. So if people have a chance to see this, I know it's in very, very limited release right now, but I highly, highly recommend it. The Inspection. Did you get around to The Inspection?

I did. Okay. So The Inspection is Elegance Bratton's directorial debut. He was a young man who um the inspection did you get around to the inspection i did okay so the inspection is elegance bratton's uh directorial debut he was um a young man who enlisted in the marines a gay man who was seeking a kind of structure and escape from his life and this is a purely i think autobiographical telling of his escape uh jeremy pope plays elegance's uh stand-in and the movie is produced and co-starring Gabrielle Union. And this was a big, I think the closing night film at the New York Film Festival. So it's a debut.

What'd you think of this one? I liked the full metal jacket parts a lot. I thought they were really effective. Yeah, the basic training, which is kind of the majority of the film. And it does that smart thing. There's a limited time frame to follow this character. And so I thought its portrayal of boot camp and through the perspective of the Jeremy Pope as the actor. I can't remember the character's name because they're not allowed to use.

They just call each other this recruit throughout. So anyway, I thought that that was like pretty visceral and engaging and illuminating. I think it's very cool that Gabrielle Union is in this movie and produced it. And I don't know that that arc, not even that character, but that, that arc was given like the full, um, exploration that I would have liked.

Uh, I, I, I don't know. Do you, do you disagree? No, I agree.

I agree. I thought this movie was half successful. I think it's clear that Bratton has some skills as a filmmaker. And I do think that we've never seen a basic training story through the eyes of a gay enlistee. It felt like the opening segment of the film and the closing

segment of the film were about a different thing. And I couldn't really, to your point, make sense of how they fit together. I don't think a person just going into basic training is enough for a movie. And so it felt like a little bit of scaffolding around what Bratton had the most to say about

in the way that he portrayed it. I think he's also very, very helped by having Bokeem Woodbine and Raul Castillo as the two sort of like leaders of the group. And they're like, those are two really, really good actors. Castillo was um cha-cha real smooth earlier this year i thought maybe the best part of cha-cha real smooth as the sort of boyfriend of dakota johnson's character and bokeem woodbine of course fucking legend love bokeem and he plays the arlie ermie style you

know hard ass drill sergeant they're all very very good um it's interesting i mean under again like let's go back to 1995 in 1995 if this was a sundance film and it wasn't didn't have a big distributor it wasn't an a24 movie which this is and it was sort of a discovery i think you might have been like oh there's something here yeah but this movie arrived weirdly with a lot of pomp and circumstance at least in our you know very small corner of the world and so it creates it creates an expectation vortex that I think is not good for something like this, where it's like, I saw it at a really fancy CAA screening, you know, with like lots of famous people were in attendance and it was good. And there is a kind of uplifting quality to some of the story, but it isn't that good. You know what I mean? Like there was something a little disappointing about it by the end.

And so that's really more a function of the way that these films are framed sometimes in the films themselves. film and i again i i think that's wonderful but then you see her in it and i guess that made me more fixated on her performance which i think is excellent just she doesn't doesn't get to do that much um so i my expectations were similarly like slightly different than than what i found but i really it you're right. He does have something. Yeah. I look forward to whatever he's going to do next. Yeah.

Let me tell you about EO. Okay. EO is a donkey. Okay. Boy. He's a donkey wandering around Europe. He's meeting people.

He's having experiences. Okay. He's going into the slipstream of the forest. He's traveling all over the country. He's having encounters the slipstream of the forest. He's traveling all over the country. He's having encounters, having experiences. He's the product of the 87-year-old writer and director,

Yerzi Skolomowski. This is basically a remake of Robert Bresson's Oh Hazard, Balthazar. What a beautiful movie. What an incredible 85 minute journey through the eyes of an animal so I saw a movie

last year at Telluride called Cow there's a documentary that Andrea Arnold directed that is about a cow's life

probably the single most punishing film I've seen in the last five years just truly and deeply sad it actually does have quite a bit

in common with EO but has none of the sort of like winsome verve that this movie has this is probably gonna be it's in the conversation for best international in common with EO, but has none of the sort of like winsome verve that this movie has.

This is probably going to be, it's in the conversation for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards this year. Skolomowski has made many movies in the last 50 years that, you know, had Hollywood stars and had a kind of acclaim,

but he took a huge break from making films in the 90s and 2000s. He probably is best known to American audiences as Lukov in the Avengers film. He occasionally acts in American movies. He was in Mars Attacks. He was in White Nights.

He usually plays like a Russian colonel or something. But this movie is very, very sweet. And it's not a movie I would say you have to race out to the movie theater to see. It's not a documentary. It's a scripted film that is almost entirely through the eyes of a donkey. And I liked it. Will you watch EO? If it's going to be in the Oscar race, I will.

I don't mind when some movies about animals is, I guess I can't ask you a spoiler question right now. We can emotionally prepare off the screen. Let me ask you a related question. Why do we spend so much time teaching children? What sounds animals make? Like, why are,

like, why aren't we just teaching them real words? You know, I'm glad you asked this. I'm obviously at a critical stage for this very issue with my child. My child, I think if a dog and a cat could raise her instead of her mother and her father,

she would significantly prefer that. She has a true blue obsession right now. She has spent the last two months struggling to make the sound meow. She can't do that. Right. Until about a week ago. Oh, she broke through. She broke through and she was able to make it. So she can't she can't do that right um until about a week ago oh she broke through she broke through and she was able to make it so before when she would do

it she would just mouth the sound of meow you've seen this in person i have yeah it's it's incredibly cute but i'm just like is that because she want we want to teach her to communicate with the cat is the cat receiving that is so language the purpose of eo is the same purpose as what you're describing which is to say and and and eileen and i went to the zoo uh over the weekend as well and and brought alice and it's about empathy that's why we do it animals make different sounds just like humans make different sounds but we are all in a way creatures of this earth and deserve to be respected and i think that it's about the idea of communication. And even if you don't have words that you can relate and you can bond.

And also it's like the development of language. I'm giving you like a very serious answer to a very funny podcast question. I think this is all really valid. I'm going to be really pissed if my son says woof before he says mom. I just, I am, but you know, that's fine. That would be tough. That would, I don't think that will happen. You just have to say mom like a bajillion times. I am. And now he's just moved on to yum and ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

And I'm just like, I'm right here. What, what's, fuck the sheep. Let's talk about me. Technically, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba and yum are not words. So you can still be word one. Okay. I think yum actually is word because he does it when eating so in the dictionary whatever we need a white ruling on that he

knows that it means food my son's a genius just let's move on um let me tell you about a movie that i absolutely hated uh it's called the sun you just texted me, really angrily after you saw this film. Yeah, and the message I sent to you was one that I don't often send to you, which was do not see this film. When the film was bought... Sony Pictures Classic, once again, is not going to let me. So don't worry about it. And they're not going to let anybody because they actually...

This movie was originally planned to open in November with a wider release in December. And then for some confusing reason, they pushed it all the way to a January release. It had a one-week qualifying release this week. I don't want to be rude to artists who are trying to make something good, but I thought this was

really bad and it reminded me of why I really didn't like The Father very much, which I felt like I was on an island on that one. I think you were a little. I thought it was effective. I think most people did. And obviously, I'm not taking anything away from the extraordinary performance that Anthony Hopkins gave in that film in which he won an Oscar for, which was a drama seen through the eyes of a man at the end of his life experiencing dementia. And it had a kind of multidimensionality to it where the actual

experience of reality was morphing as the film went on. There was something artful about the way that it was made, but I thought it was deeply manipulative and deeply reductive about the struggles of dementia. I have experienced the struggles of dementia in my family. I know that there were many people who saw this movie who have had the same and felt like it was very powerful. And I also don't want to take anything away from them. But watching The Sun confirmed for me why I felt the way I felt about the first film. This movie is similarly about mental health. It's about a young man named Nicholas and his parents who have gone through a divorce in recent years. Peter and Kate were played by Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern. Peter has remarried to a woman named Beth. They have a young child. Their son is, I guess he's about 16 or 17 years old,

and he is experiencing serious depression and and suicidal thoughts and i thought that this movie handled those issues so irresponsibly and did not i had no idea all the all the smart and talented people who are involved in this movie i have no idea how this got made and how this was a celebrated play and florian zeller who is the writer and director of the father and the son like i know he means well, there's a, he had a real life experience with a young boy in his life who suffered from something similar.

But my God, I thought this was the most tone deaf, like just like awful. I walked out feeling like, fuck this man. And you know me, maybe one movie a year makes me feel that way. I was so disappointed by this.

And this is like such a significant issue right now. I know teenagers. I have a young sister who's a teenager. This is kind of an epidemic in our culture at the moment with young kids who don't know how to relate to people and who feel very alienated from the world. I don't want to be on a soapbox, but I just was upset. I'm kind of upset talking about it. No, I know. I have nothing to... I support you. I'm not going to be sarcastic about this yeah so I just thought this was a real drag and I'm I'm just really disappointed and Hugh Grant who I really excuse me Hugh Jackman who I really really like a lot Vanessa Kirby who I like a lot obviously Laura Dern phenomenal actress really gifted Zen McGrath who plays the teenager Nicholas is not good in this movie and he's

miscast. And that makes it even worse because there's like a real loss of empathy for the character. The film is not seen through his eyes, which is a mystifying decision to tell the story largely through the eyes of two parents. But even then, we don't really understand their perspective. Anyway, man, this is the rare like do not see this movie anti-recommendation for me. That's all I'm going to say okay I won't did you watch The Wonder

I did okay this is a new film starring Florence Pugh directed by Sebastian Lelio very gifted filmmaker what do you think I think this would make a good pairing with Banshees of Inishirin good call set in Ireland

about 60 years earlier I believe it's like 1860s or something it's it's after the famine um but a movie set in a time of ireland's history where the history is meant to interplay with the story itself this one one is told from a women's perspective and both shows its hand a bit more and also doesn't show its hands in ways that I don't think, I mean, I think Banshees is the more accomplished script certainly. And at film, there's something a little,

honestly, just like dark about and and gross about the final aspects of the wonder it's based on a book written by emma dominic who also wrote the is it the room or room room um room and she worked on the screenplay adaptation and it's it's you can tell it's of a piece. It's the same author. Similar for sure. Yes. But I, the Florence Pugh performance is exceptional.

I think she's just so good. She can just walk on a screen. It's like another experience this week of just watching a like full blown movie star. Um, and she's not even like doing that much, which I found really refreshing. Um, and the the the performance is she's meant to be

the well kind of the reality-based person in a sort of mystical setting and she just does it so plainly and but uh with presence I don't know so i thought she was great i thought the younger actress who is keela lord cassidy i hope i pronounced that correctly was also very good and she and florence pew had a real thing going so i would recommend it also i just like it it looked very good and was clearly like a quality movie that I watched on Netflix, which, you know, at some point I'm just recommended those. Right. Some of the choices I didn't totally agree with, but whatever. It's a yes.

It's a watch. Yeah, I think it's a watch just strictly because, as we mentioned when we talked about Don't Worry Darling,orence pew can just carry the weight of any movie on her shoulders this movie is i think more effective than don't worry darling it's obviously a very different kind of film um this is the first movie of all the movies we've talked about thus far that is available on a streamer it's on netflix right now every other movie we talked about thus far is only in theaters and it's interesting i i it would be cool if this was the bailiwick of the netflix movie this is kind of a mid-tier period piece which is another somewhat casualty and you know they you know they recently made a persuasion adaptation which we didn't think

was that successful but it's another example of like an understatement there is a there is a lane that netflix can fill i don't think this movie has been radically successful by any means, but Sebastian Lelio, who made A Fantastic Woman, and who made Gloria, and then Gloria Bell, and Disobedience. Very accomplished director. Real kind of elevated art house, saintly figure. I believe he's from chile uh he he has a handle on this kind of like reserved angst and this kind of ambient fear that is very effective

in general the movie is really grim i mean the story is really really grim yeah it is kind of like this also would be a really interesting bones and all pairing because it's about a fasting girl a fasting young person in a world in which they've been told that they're there's something wrong with them and i guess the menu all at once yeah so honestly looking back on this we should have just we should have moved the fableman's conversation back and we should have just done a whole feast episode, best food movies ahead of Thanksgiving. I fucked this all up, Amanda.

I'm so sorry. It's not like anyone could have seen the movies in time for the episode. It's too bad. The Wonder is a soft recommend sounds like for both of us. Definitely some accomplished stuff happened. Yeah, I mean, what's nice about this movie is that it definitely feels like that well-mademade if not totally essential like end of year art house fair that like you used

to go see if you lived in new york like on like at lincoln center on like a a sunday afternoon or something and i like take real comfort in those types of movies. And I think they're interesting and worth the time spent. And it's, it's cool to see that movie like provided on Netflix as opposed to what Netflix normally provides in terms of films. But yeah, it's not like life-changing.

Let's spin the wheel on the final three. Did you see any of these movies? I'm scrolling. No, I didn't. Okay. You know what? Let's just skip them. We'll talk about them another time. Let? I'm scrolling. No, I didn't. Okay. You know what? Let's just skip them.

We'll talk about them another time. Let's go to 2022 misses, okay? Okay. Every movie that we just mentioned basically came out in the last 10 days, which is too many movies. They should release more movies

across the calendar year, spread them out, give them the proper marketing and promotion that they deserve, and let people see them. And if they see them at home, so be it. We are starting to accept this brutal reality. But there were some that we just... Are we? Are you? No, I'm not. Of course I'm not. You know what I'll say? Here's a couple of things we're not talking about. I mentioned that we're not talking about Glass Onion. I think we'll talk about Glass

Onion on probably the December 23rd or 26th episode. Let people dig in. I think we're going to have Ryan on the show to talk about the movie, which should be fun. And let people sink into it. I'll say we both liked it. There's a lot to recommend about it, obviously. One of the things that is sad is that people have been saying

it is a great movie-going experience, because there's laughs in it and there's reveals. Those kinds of movies are fun in movie theaters, but I think it will still play really well at home Lady Chatterley's Lover is a movie that has been talked about for a while and is technically in theaters right now but is not coming to

Netflix till December 2nd likewise for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio that's not on Netflix until December 9th likewise for Bardo False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths which we will talk about with Adam Neiman on this podcast we will bring probably some swords to that on this podcast we will bring a probably some swords to that pod that is out in theaters now but not out on netflix until december 16th there's

a film net should i go see it in a theater i still haven't seen it i would fucking love that you want me to go see it in a theater and i would text you angrily well you're you're you know your viewing time is precious and I respect that. And, but, but you're getting down to the end here and so am I. So if you have three, I think the film is ultimately the runtime is about 17 hours. So do you have a 17 hour screening window? Well, I have two more 17 hour movies that I have to watch before the end of the year. So it's, yeah.

You're referring of course to Babylon and Avatar the Way of Water which I have seen neither and I'm so so excited for both of them the early Babylon reviews is cocaine to me I'm so excited is this where you're oh my god

so this is gonna be your shtick I like I should've if I like it if I like it the takeaways of people being like it's too much

he tried to do too much it's over stuff I'm like good good do it go Damien I feel such dread about this too much. He tried to do too much. It's over stuff. I'm like, good, good. Do it. Go Damien. I feel such dread about this.

Like I, and I think part of it is because I know you're going to do your, like, it's the, you know, he's like seeing the board, like the whole thing. And I have to like commit 45 hours of my life to Brad Pitt just being extra, which I love.

But it has real, real Amsterdam vibes for me. And I... Well, it does. And I'm dreading it. I'm not going to go with you on Saturday. Just FYI. I can't get my Saturday night to that. So I'm already putting myself in a position where it's like the last possible minute

that I can see this movie is when I'm going to get to see it, which is bad. It's a bad mindset to be in, but I don't know, man. I don't know. Maybe I'll be surprised. Maybe this is what I need.

And maybe I'll hate it. You know, you never know. You never know. I think we know a little bit. I'm going to work on my attitude. Thank you. You better work on your avatar,

the way of water attitude too. That's all I'm saying. Get ready for big Jim. Listen, I, my husband, Zach Barron profiled big Jim for a GQ magazine. Like I'm biased but the most fun i've had in 2022 in a movie related experience was like reading big jim's quotes what a what an insane lord

how ridiculous i i'm i'm pro i'm it got me in the right headspace so sure you know give me some 3d glasses and a healing underwater experience or whatever here's how hard i'm prepping for that conversation last night i watched piranha 2 colon the spawning okay which is the piranha sequel that is jim cameron's directorial debut which he has also completely disowned and apparently only shot half of but i watched the film in full the film opens of course with an underwater sequence because jim loves to be in the water yeah i cannot wait for the way of water i'm gonna rock out in the theater 3d glasses it's gonna be so good uh the other movie that was released technically and there

was a lot of fanfare about though very few people have seen is white noise which we mentioned briefly after we went to the near film festival again i think like glass onion we will just do a big episode about that film when it comes to Netflix which is on December 30th so let's do like a little bit of a speed round through some 2022 stuff that we didn't talk

about I feel like we had glancing observations on death of the Nile and deep water right like we we kind of mentioned like you really didn't like death on the Nile yeah you never cleared

out for me to just like stand on a soapbox and go ahead it's your time so first of all if you've not seen the original death on the nile adaptation from the 1970s one of my favorite murder mystery films um filmed like on location in egypt it's ridiculous but beautiful all-star cast like Angela Lansbury, Betty Davis, like just get in the mix. This was filmed. I think like on,

not even just like on set stages, but like on one set stage, I think they got like maybe 50 square feet of room and like one CGI person. And they were like, good luck to you. Make a movie. It looks so offensively bad so stupid I I just what are we doing why what's the point I think it's just easier for

them to make a movie like that that way I agree it does not look good it looks tremendously fake how about that just don't make it what about as a christy adaptation did you enjoy that no i was so mad i mean and part of the christy adaptation appeal for me since i know how it ends and in fact have watched it and many times is like in the the experience and the the observations and i just the comedy wasn't there like the the cast wasn't, you know, it's not their fault because they were on a green screen. But like, did they make this film by Zoom?

Like, I honestly don't know. Sucked. I wonder if that was part of the reason why it was made that way was because of COVID. That feels like a possibility. I'm not really sure. Thumbs down.

Yeah, it's a bummer. I didn't really enjoy it either, even though it has an all-star cast. The one thing, and I think we mentioned her recently, I did think Emma Mackey was really good. Yes, she was. I Googled her halfway through to be like, who is this person? She's got it, right? And it's been noted that she resembles Margot Robbie a bit. And in fact, they're riffing on that joke in Barbie because she is going to be one of the Barbies, which I think is very clever. But she's not enough to recommend it.

I think, do we need to say anything else about Deepwater? The much maligned Adrian Lyne film starring Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck, the attempt to revive the erotic thriller? I would like the person who directed the last 30 minutes to reveal themselves and apologize. But otherwise, great time. Yeah, I guess I don't have much more to say.

Did you ever end up watching Uncharted? No, I didn't. So Uncharted is actually one of those movies that I'm referring to that is not necessarily an original film because it's based on a video game. It is a video game that people have been trying to make for a very long time into a movie and have struggled.

Finally, Ruben Fleischer, who made Zombieland, did get a chance to make it. This film stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, two of the very few movie stars in America and or on Earth. This movie made $400 million at the box office, which is a lot. It came out this year and made $400 million.

Did your sister go see it? I'm certain that she did. I have not spoken with her. Okay, yeah. It's the Tom Holland effect. And the Wahlberg effect, I i guess though he has plenty of movies that i feel like people don't go see in theaters anymore and they just click yes on netflix when it shows up this is also an amazing movie genre which is the treasure hunter genre you know that's a movie that that's like an ind Jones style film. And we have a young treasure hunter

in Nate Drake, who is the Holland character, and Sully Sullivan, who's the Wahlberg character. Of course. And fortune hunting is fucking fun in a movie structure. There's a super...

Not when they do it on a backstage. That's the problem with this movie. This is on a... It's all CGI. It looks like shit. Why does it look this bad this the script is is is weak and it feels like nine different people worked on it but you could get away with it if you had incredible set pieces there is one airplane set piece that is really good but um i'm kind of amazed that this movie did as well as it did i know holland has a really strong fan base and this video game has a following, but it was not successful to me.

What about, did you ever end up watching Dog? I didn't just because it was right when Knox was born and then I never got to catch up. And like, I've been doing a catch up, but it's always like fourth on the list of things I need to catch up with. And so like last night, for example,

I watched a different movie that I hadn't seen that I'll tell you later. Cause it's on our list. Um, okay. I, I did, I think I did mention dog when I did a recommendations episode while you were out.

You did. It might've been one of my crazy solo episodes. Um, I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was like, I thought it was like a real three-star film. I was like, this is a movie Burt Reynolds would have made in 1978, and I would have enjoyed it then if I were alive.

And I enjoyed this one now. And it was a reminder that Channing Tatum is a fucking movie star and that Magic Mike's Last Dance is coming out in three months. How are you feeling? I saw this trailer in Philadelphia before Bones and All, and it was just like the only person clapping in the theaters. Granted, there were two other people in the theater, but they didn't join me. I did, though. Is Magic Mike's Last Dance in theaters?

Yeah. It's not going straight to HBO Max? No. Believe it or not, Zaslav got rid of that one. That's so exciting. I'm excited about this movie. Steven Soderbergh, man. Coming back.

Yeah, I'm a fan. The Lost City. Did you see that one? I did. We never talked about this. No. I guess it was successful. Here's my thing.

And this involves some spoilers on two movies. And maybe I already said this when we talked about Bullet Train, but why couldn't Sandra Bullock and Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum just make a movie together? Why couldn't I just have that part of the movie as a full movie, as opposed to divided between two mediocre movies? It's a great call.

Which style of movie would you have preferred? A romancing the stone style epic or a contained thriller like Bullet Train? I'm more of a romancing the stone type person. And I thought that, well, Sandra Bullock definitely had more to do in that one. Like that was funny. And I do like that sort of Arch Brad Pitt comedy style. Like, you know, it's very burnt after reading, but meets Fabio,

which is funny to me. So I would have voted for that one, but I don't know. I would do category three. It's just like, if you guys would like to have some fun together,

make that movie instead of two other movies that were fine. Can you guess how old Sandra Bullock is? She's over 50. She, it's, it like keeps me up at night.

She looks fantastic. Guess how old she is. Like 54. She's over 50. It keeps me up at night. She looks fantastic. Guess how old she is. Like 54. She's 58. 58? 58. She looks like she's 30 in the lost city. I'm not kidding.

She's obviously beautiful and has been a movie star for a long time, but it's psychotic how good she looks. I mean, then she knows it and wears that pink jumpsuit throughout, which just absolutely credit to her. That's awesome. She's nailing it. 58? That's fucking crazy, man. That's wild. I would love to know everything.

She's fantastic. Make more movies with Sandra Bullock. There's another tip for you, Hollywood. There's something about that movie in particular where I'm like, I agree almost entirely with what you were saying at the top of the show but the lost city i'm like this is these this movie is like just a fun night out and sometimes people do want a fun night out there's no big metaphor in this movie there's no cultural resonance it's just a fun it's a date movie that has adventure elements it has stuff for

guys stuff for girls like it's it's very traditional and it worked. It's very Ticket to Paradise, which is have a margarita at the mall with your friends at 5 p.m. before you go see this enjoyable, silly movie. And you and I had a great time with that. I have gotten texts from a lot of people who then watched Ticket to Paradise at home. And most people were like, oh, this was fun. So it can even be replicated at home. I watched Lost City at home and I was like, okay, I'm having a decent time.

Give us movie stars, I guess. I think that's a huge part of it. I mean, now granted, we're talking about three movie stars in Brad Pitt, Channing Tatum, and Sandra Bullock, who are, you know, on in years. Even Channing Tatum,

I think he's in his 40s at this point. I mean, these are not young rising stars. They're not Tom Holland-esque figures, but I agree with you. Build projects around them. Sandra Bullock, I think she produced this film. She developed it. She pushed forward on it. She picked the filmmakers. It's a skill. It's a talent. They just got to make those movies. What's in this McDonald's bag?

The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. You gonna let Alice watch Paw Patrol? Fuck no. Okay. What do you think my cop dad would say

if I said that Paw Patrol was copaganda? You think he would laugh? You think you'd be like, you need to get your life right? You left the communist? We're not starting that conversation this deep in the podcast. That can be for after hours.

How do you think we do with my dad on the pod? Great. I think our dads honestly would tear up this podcast. Dad episode? Yeah, it would be like so weird and probably might get us all fired, but it would be hilarious. My dad has takes.

He definitely has started listening to this show here and there, which worries me a little bit for a variety of reasons. Oh, really? Hi, Sean's dad. I doubt he's made it this far into the show unless he's extremely bored over the holidays uh why don't you pick a movie out of this list that i made that of something you've seen that you want to get into sure i'm gonna add the movie that i added to the list i had one movie which was

down abby a new era oh yeah which i have to be, my second best movie watching experience of 2022. I fucking loved it. Yes. It was so. So I, but I watched it at home. I was, I went during leave. I took my son back to Atlanta. I was staying with my mom, spent 20 minutes setting up the various routers, getting the peacock installed.

But then it wasn't installed. Then we have airplay. You guys know me. You like, you understand we've all been there. And then she and I finally just watched down Nabi a new era together. Mom loved it. I loved it. Abs so much better than the first down Nabi movie, completely enjoyable. And when we finished, I literally said I would watch one of those every week if they made them. And then I realized that that's what a TV show is and that they used to do that. And that's okay.

It was wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, it was a TV movie. I mean, it was a really, really good TV movie. But that was absolutely perfect for what I needed in that moment. And I would take more of those. I had a very similar experience. I went to a screening.

I actually sat in the front first row of a screening because I got there late. And it was a real last minute, like, I guess I'll go see this. And I think as we've talked about, like, I'm a fan of Downton Abbey. I think you recapped it, didn't you? Back in the day at Vulture?

Yeah, I did. And, you know, it's not dissimilar from The Lost City. It's kind of breezy. You go into a world for a little while. Sure, it has some ideas,

but that's not really the most important part of it. In this case, this was a movie about making movies, which, of course, I love. And I had a nice time with it. It was not the mega smash

box office hit that the last one was. The last Downton Abbey movie was a nice time with it. It was not the mega smash box office hit that the last one was. The last one, the last Downton Abbey movie was a big ass hit. There was a really funny moment I saw on Twitter last night that at the Gothams. Right, yes. You saw this Todd Field and James Gray, who both released films with Focus this year. Downton Abbey films are also Focus Features films. Noted that their films were not successful at the box office financially.

So that hopefully the Downton Abbey, colon, again and again and again, will be able to float their work for the future. It was a good bet. Todd Field and James Gray hanging out, something I would like to observe. Yeah, I should also say that

Tar was probably my second movie going and Downton Abbey was three. Okay. But, you know, that's a top three for you so pretty solid um yeah it was i i'm with you it was good i if you like down abby you will like it and if you don't don't watch it that's all i can say uh when are we going to talk about where the crawdads sing did you see it yeah i saw it okay what the fuck absolute garbage what the fuck garbage like one of the worst experiences I've ever had watching a movie.

I got a compliment from my wife after the final half hour when I didn't say anything while we were watching it. Because she was like, I can't believe your restraint as we got to the end of that. Okay. Did you see the ending coming? I saw a version of the ending coming. Right. But they did kind of get me with the ending coming? I saw a version of the ending coming. Right. But they did kind of get me with the ending.

Because I was like, wait, I can't believe that this is actually what you did. Even though, like, obviously they were setting it up. I don't know what to tell you.

Oh my God. Of course it was dumb. Okay, so I think that the ending is one of the reasons why the film was a success and it was a success. Another one of these movies,

literary adaptation, we used to get this stuff all the time, of the Delia Owens novel. Okay. And also we should just note that this novel is one of the most insanely selling novels. It was like an unbelievable phenomenon that sort of defies logic. Like it's not up there with the Bible, but it's remarkable how big a deal this book was. I haven't read it. It was optioned by Reese Witherspoon. Sony released this movie over the summer and it did really good

business. It stars Daisy Edgar Jones, who I like quite a bit, who of course people probably recognize from normal people, and Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson. And for some godforsaken reason, David Strathairn. I have no idea why he agreed to be in this movie. I love him. He's always good. He was good in this, but he he's so out of like he's he's literally doing Colonel Sanders. He's even wearing the white suit. That was so funny when he delivered final arguments wearing the white suit. That was insane. I was shocked.

Well, he didn't have the beard and the mustache. He didn't have all that. I mean, it was close enough. Also, like I had not read the book, so I really didn't have all that i mean it was close enough also like i i had not read the book so i really didn't know anything about the setup but that this is a movie about how it's hard to be like a a you know a socially different white girl in the south in the 50s like that's what we're doing who thought that that was a? But, but do you know about the real life parallels? I do.

I do. Let me read the description of the film for anybody who hasn't seen it. And then if you haven't seen it, you should probably turn the pot off at this point because we need to talk about the ending a little bit too. So abandoned by her family, Kaya raises herself all alone in the marshes of her small town. When her former boyfriend is found dead, Kaya is instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.

She is known throughout the film as, quote, marsh girl, which is absurd. So tell us the Delia Owens story. Sure. So Delia Owens, for many years, was a conservationist. And she worked with her husband in like in Africa provide I think protecting like and working against poachers is I think the primary thing so at some point they were kicked out because her husband and I believe son were implicated in or not implicated.

I'm sorry. I should say for legal reasons. I believe they are persons of interest in the murder of a poacher. And they have basically been in exile since. And there was an extensive New Yorker piece about their case and about their work and to some extent about the moral justification of murder or death that was written like 10 years before this novel was released. But anyway, spoiler alert, major spoiler alert. This is a novel about whether you can be morally justified in killing an abuser.

Which, at the end of the film, it is revealed that the Daisy Edgar Jonesgar jones character did in fact do okay so here's the crazy thing about that about what here's here's an even crazier thing about that so obviously if this is ultimately a metaphor for her own real life experience the major flaw of the film among many flaws is that none of the murder is dramatized at all. We see nothing. We don't understand how it played out. We don't understand how she executed on this remarkable murder. We don't understand how she hid evidence. We don't understand anything.

But then at the end, they give you a little gotcha moment where they're like, boom, she did it. And we don't find out until her husband finds out 50 years, 60 years later after they've had this wonderful life together, which is the whole sequence is fucking appalling to me. I hated it.

But the fact that that is not dramatized, I guess I could forgive it, or maybe I'm even angrier than I think I am, about the fact that we obviously can't see what happened during the murder of this potential poacher in her real life. So is she sort of saying

you can never really know what happened, but it did happen. And I was justified. Like that's insane, narcissistic, obsessive, compulsive, sociopathic behavior.

Like what, what are you saying? Then became like a completely like known bestseller. Like all of this information was publicly available my head hurts i like i cannot believe i in addition to the fact that like everyone in the film is miscast wildly like do you see now i was like daisy edgar jones cannot be on our 35 movie stars like it's like a hard no i don't remember who the two boys are like who play her well one of them is harris rickinson who is right from triangle of sadness who's yes and who, like who play her. Well, one of them is Harris Dickinson, who is from Triangle of Sadness,

who's, I think is a good actor. Yes, and who's much better in it. And I spent most of Triangle of Sadness being like, where do I know him from? Because frankly, they're both such drips in this movie. It's just so generic. It looks so clean. It's supposed to be about like living in the dirt,

you know, living in obscurity. Living in the marsh, to be honest, but. But still, it's like, if you live in the swamp there you're disgusting all the time you're like stepping in wet mud water all the time yeah that's and she's wearing like elegant sulfur dresses and her hair is perfectly coiffed and it's it's absurd it's it is like actively offensive how bad it is i know but also i had a pretty fun time seeing it but like a bit just because you can't believe that any of these things are real. I just, I was just astonished.

Okay. Let's move on. I'm, I, we got a couple more things we got to hit. I'm going to tell you about Terrifier 2. Okay. Okay.

Great. Gotten a lot of calls from the horror heads about this. I waited a long time to see this. This is a movie that was started out as a crowdfunding project damian leone is the writer and director of this series his first film came out i think four or five years ago the original terrifier film it revolves around a character named arc the clown who is a murderous clown when i tell you you can't watch this movie this is the strongest non-recommendation I've ever made for you. Not for Terrifier,

but for Terrifier 2. Even more than... What's the Danish horror movie? Even more than Speak No Evil. Speak No Evil? Yeah, because you won't

appreciate anything about this. Not a single thing. Speak No Evil, you'd at least be like, oh wow, they ratcheted the tension really well. I get it.

Terrifier 2 is um comes in a long line of splattercore movies like deeply violent almost absurdist often funny gore movies it's about this clown that is just on a murderous rampage that's basically the sum total of the story there's not a lot of motivation the movie is designed almost entirely for its absurd and lavish kills. Let me tell you, its kills, especially one kill that takes

place in a bedroom, some of the best shit I've ever seen in a Splattercore movie. Like, some of the most creative, disgusting, like when I put my head on the

pillow the last three nights since I saw it, I can see that stuff in my head and I don't scare ever. I don't scare over anything in movies. But the images from

the movie are burned into my mind. As a movie, it wasn't terribly effective. Part of the reason is that it's a two hour and 15 minute movie. Two hours and 15 minutes for a slasher is criminal. That should not be that long. But I understand why it is that long. This is a passion project. All this guy thinks about is making this movie. He put everything he had into this movie. All the ideas, all the energy, all the time. And for what it's trying to do, it is like a 100 out of 100. What it's trying to do, I think, has a very small audience.

However, this movie is like the independent cinema sensation of the year. This movie has outgrossed Armageddon Time and Tar and The Fablemans and all these other movies. It's creeping towards $10 million at the domestic box office. It is an authentic indie smash. And I'm kind of amazed. And I got to doff my cap to the guy,

even though he's made some truly depraved material because it's not easy to do this in 2022. It's like, this is kind of the capstone on this conversation that we're having in this episode where he found his audience. And I think that that is really ultimately what it's about is about finding your audience and super serving them, giving them exactly what they want in a maximalist capacity.

And, and knowing where they are. Yes. Yes. And in this case, in the month of October, they were in the movie theater. Yeah.

Horror, horror fans are allegiant. You know, we saw it with Smile, another movie that I saw recently that I, you know, we saw it with Barbarian. We saw it with Halloween Ends. We saw it with all of these movies

are working in movie theaters right now. Totally. And then the audience for The Fablemans or Tar is just not at movie theaters. They're not. It's, and forget about all the hand-wringing around that.

I'm kind of, I'm really impressed by the gumption and the, the, like, insane commitment to making something

this fucked and making people come along for the ride. You know, like, I really admire that. I would love to try to make something like that one day.

Maybe it is this show. I don't know. But, um, it is, it is, it was, it was, it's a. Maybe it is this show. I don't know. But it's a remarkable achievement unto itself. I don't know. Are there any other movies here that you want to talk about?

I watched Emily the Criminal last night. Oh, well, you're not a huge Aubrey Plaza person. So what do you think about that? But I thought she was very good in this. She is. She's really good. And it's sort of like a 2022 update on like a 70s-esque like person goes bad to yeah it's like a Dustin Hoffman in straight time or something exactly yeah social issues or whatever but I thought it was like pretty deft in its handling of the like 2022-ness of it and the tension was wonderful um i i did really like aubrey plaza in this

though you know she looked i mean her makeup and an outfit and everything was just always glammed up exactly yeah exactly that's fine and then um theo rossi who plays yusef who's kind of her is fantastic in this not really her sidekick but sort of like the person who her partner for lack of a better word so yeah I liked it also like a tight 90 minutes watch it at home

good stuff good thriller yeah I saw it at Sundance and it's probably the first student debt thriller we've ever seen but it's probably the first student debt thriller we've ever seen um but it's effective huge year for aubrey plaza yes she's she's she's the bell of the ball with the white lotus right now yeah um i thought that this indicated and a potentially exciting career for her as a dramatic actor you know that's not something she's been given the chance to do very much she's always kind of playing the eye-rolling aubrey plaza character

and even the shades of it in the white lotus although the last couple episodes have shown i think some amazing range i've always really liked her um i think i know she's kind of like off putting in the world almost seemingly by on purpose but she's another person who i'm like i think you could put like a dramatic movie in her hands and let her run with it maybe she's not florence pew but there's not a lot of people like her in the industry right now. So I'm glad you watched that. Okay, let's just wrap it up because there's like

a billion other movies that we could talk about, but I'm just really glad I got to shit on Where the Crawdads Sing because that movie is absolutely dreadful. It was astonishing.

Wait, can we share some breaking Oscars news that happened while you were talking about the murderous clown? What happened? Well, they are officially going to air all 23 categories. Good. Good. good there you go let's add 10 more okay i mean honestly at this point let's do it i'm with you uh speaking of the oscars great segue later this week we're gonna do the first

best picture power rankings of the season we had the gothams last night uh in new york city and so that was the first official award show of the season. Everything Everywhere All at Once won. So where will that film, for example, land in the Oscar race? Maybe high, maybe not. You excited about that? Am I excited about the Oscars or about Everything Everywhere All at Once being in my life for another five to six months? Pick your poison.

I love the Oscars. I like things that that bring me unhappiness apparently so let's do it again okay well we'll do that later this week now let's go to my conversation with luca guadagnino delighted to have luca guadagnino back on the show. Sir, thank you for being here. Very happy to be here. I was hoping we could start with this.

When did you first come across Camille D'Angelo's book, Bones and All? Certainly in the back of my mind, much earlier than I thought, because I'm very close friend with Dave Kajanek the writer of this script and I had been told by him that he was working on something based on what he referred to as the eaters

it must have been around the time in which I was working on We Are Who We Are but I didn't honestly I didn't, honestly, I didn't put much attention to this. I knew that he was working on this movie, on this script,

and that I knew that he was from this novel. And I knew he was working with Antonio Campos. Those were the things that I knew. Then, one day, this was September of 2020, I got a call and they told me, you know, do you remember the movie about eaters, people that eat other people? And he had a lot of

like, how can I say, cheekily childish enjoyment in referring to the movie like that. I was working with Antonio Campos, but I'm not working with it anymore because Antonio wants to do something else. Would you consider it? And I said, no, I wouldn't because I am working on so many things that I don't want to add another. Neither I want to

drag you into my process of letting you wait and wait for me. But he insisted and I said, okay, I'll read it because I want to read you. I want to read the way you write. And I stepped into the script on the same, it was September, I was being driven from San Sebastian when I had just spent my time doing, being the president of the jury of the festival there.

So I read the script on the car drive. And it was fantastic. And after I started reading the script, I started to be invested in what was it. And so that's how when I started to be knowledgeable about Camille's novel. So some people who got turned on to your films after Call Me By Your Name, I think have maybe been a little surprised by the turn to what they might perceive as genre films and even

body horror films. But I see some of the commonalities in these stories, and I'm hoping you can talk about what draws you to them as your filmography gets longer. You know what's the disconnection here? It's between who you think you are because you know yourself and you've been in your skin for so long and who people think who you are and what people think you are. Like,

in my imagination, I work by plans of action. I'm never random. I'm very strategic. And since I was a kid, I knew what I wanted and I knew where I wanted to go. So I knew I wanted to make Suspiria. I knew I wanted to create a cinema

that could really shake the audience for it and get them into a state that was heightened. I knew that I was really open to every kind of textures and genres and every kind of filmic adventures I could get through. So when people think like, oh, well, he's doing genre, we didn't expect that from him. It's a little bit lazy. It comes from a lazy point of view it's the laziness of making the part for the home where you make like two movies back to back set in the summer biggest splash you call me by your name so now you think you're like the the the singer of italian, which is ridiculous.

Because if the same people who think that would know what I did in the past, they would know that I made many documentaries, I made films about the colonialism of Italy in Ethiopia. I made so many things that are so different from one another. So they would, basically, the only concrete and, how can I i say appropriate assessment that they can be made if someone has to make an assessment about me is that i'm very eclectic and i don't

give myself any boundaries and i don't want to be given boundaries by others to be honest do you so that's interesting that you see yourself as a strategic decision maker with your work. Do you feel that you're reactive to people's expectations and trying to defy them when you're thinking about what's next for you? No, because should I care for which people's expectation? Who? I'm lucky enough not to be on social media. I'm lucky enough not to be someone who surfaces a socialite life. I'm quite private and I'm quite

modest in the way I live. So I work and I only want to surprise myself in the first place. And then that's my motivation to be able to surprise myself, encourage my collaborators to give the best they can in order to create the best craft they can out of what we do. After David gave you that script and you read it in San Sebastian,

what did you think that you could bring to it? And that would surprise yourself? I thought I could make a cruel tale of youth, to quote my friend, my mentor, ideal mentor, Nagisa Oshima. I thought I could have made my first step into America as a filmmaker from the perspective of people that I love, like Nick Ray or William Eggleston, those were my ambitions. A pure love story, something very touching about America and in America. Tell me about scouting America and figuring out what you wanted America to look like in this movie I'm fascinated by where you shot most of the story set not most much a lot of the story set

in Ohio in general is in the Midwest as we know Kentucky and Ohio are like twin neighborhood like Dave comes from Ohio and there is even a brief sequence set in Ohio, in Suspiria.

And Susie Banyan comes from Ohio. She says it. I'm from Ohio. So it's a very dear place to me. And it's been an ideal place in the first place because it was the country, the part of the country from where Dave was coming. I'm very close to him.

And, you know, when Dave came to me, he came to my place. I never went to his place. So I thought it was a beautiful way to homage a friend. So I went to the Midwest in advance to shooting. And I said to myself, I am going to understand it, even though I know already in a way of it because of David, by just doing nothing but going adrift. So I took a month off. I took a car, a few people a car a few people and we drove

drove, drove, stopped, eat slept, drove and we did that all the way from the Midwest to Nebraska, from Nebraska to Minnesota and back to New York and then we went back to Italy and we started

prepping the movie in Italy, there was a COVID so there was we needed the visa, all of this And then we went back to Italy and we started prepping the movie in Italy. There was a COVID. So we needed the visa, all of this. And in the time in which all the bureaucracy was worked out, we started prepping the movie in Italy. And then I went back to America. And that is when I started prepping, prepping, like scouting and all that stuff. Take me back to that month-long drive. What did you learn about America during that trip?

I am guest of America right now. I'm in Los Angeles and I'm grateful for what America has given me. The attention to my work, the passion for my work. Honestly, I'm a very significant upgrade

in my career. So what I'm saying, it's coming from a place of passion and respect. Given that, I must say that I saw a lot of the false promises of your capital in America. I saw a lot of the reasons why we live in a very divided society in America. I've seen so many people left behind on the ground of what's called meritocracy

or the power of making it, becoming, which is a false illusion. I'm old school. I would say I'm an old social democrat. I do believe in the welfare state. I do believe in the welfare state. I do believe in the state. So to see the disenfranchisement as a sort of currency and to see the friction between the wealth at display

and the lack of care for society was quite touching. I also seen a beautiful sense of community for all its lack of a social embrace. America has a beautiful sense of community. And I saw the beautiful, maybe filled with illusions, but still fantastic sense of believing that everyone has the rights to happiness,

even if they've been failed by the modernity of how society is worked out through capitalism and ultra-liberalism in America. So it's a bittersweet situation set in this vast and magnificent country. In a way, I could be experiencing in real life the disenfranchisement of Marilyn Lee. I sensed that. I sensed that there's a little bit of recognition in the characters in the film.

And obviously, it's a period piece. Remember, I come from Sicily. Sicily is the south of Italy. And if there is a place in Italy where we are disenfranchised and left behind, it's Sicily.

So I know what I'm talking about in terms of like seeing that kind of friction and fracture in society. So all I said, I'm not coming here to lecture anybody. Certainly, I'm not coming here to lecture anybody. Certainly, I'm not coming here

to lecture the country that it's giving me host right now. I'm answering your question in the hopefully most delicate way and respectful way. Tell me a little bit about Taylor and Timothy

as the stars of your film. Obviously, you and Timothy have a partnership now and have worked together in the past. When did you first see Taylor? How did she come to you? I saw Wade's Trey Schultz movie. I went to see the movie because

I heard about it and also I was already a fan of Calvin Harrison Jr. Such a great actor. And once the movie shifts gear from him to Taylor Russell, which you feel as a presence in the movie up until she becomes the lead of the movie,

I was really blown away by her. I was like, oh, wow, she's amazing. And once I started to put my head onto the project, you know, once the movie became real to me, it is when I started to think of her in waves and I asked her to meet her online and we did meet. And I found a steely,

like a, like a steel will into a beautifully soft presence. She has these Bambi eyes, I like to say, and yet, and yet she's so powerful that it was, she was unavoidably, uh, the lead of this movie so i i offered the movie to

her without any doubts i i love waves as well i'm happy to hear you say that and i feel like when the film shifts it's a great movie very powerful it is um tell me about i may have even asked you this when we spoke about suspiria but you there's obviously a boldness in telling the very nature of the story like the viscera and the the inherent gore of a story about cannibalism did you have a lot of people saying to you like you really want to do it this way do you really want to like what kind of uh like exchange do you have because you're obviously making a very artful piece of work and a dramatic story but when you introduce some of these elements i think people kind of crane their head a little bit what is it like when you introduce some of these elements i think people kind of crane their head a little bit what is it like when you're saying like no we are doing it we are doing

it for real now that now after one month of screenings from venezia onward i can tell you that it's surprising to see how people are not really squeamish about the actual facts that this character do because they see that that's something that deals with their nature. But the real thing about this movie is their love story. Like, I think it's more like a prejudice

than a real judgment on the movie. I think it's like, you know, we approach the actual violence in the movie in a very, I think,

matter-of-fact way and as brief as the sequence needed it to be. But eventually, it's all about the nature of these people, who they are, what they do, why they do it, how they can resist doing it, and if they cannot resist it, how they feel after they do it. And what this means and implicates

in their relationships they have with one another and how they can survive this impossibility of not wanting to be who they are but but unavoidably being what they are um with that in mind i want to hear about um mark rylance and working with him because he brings a very specific flavor to this film and an incredible ominousness. And he's making big choices as an actor. Like what kind of conversations do you have with him before that?

Or is that something that he is doing and you're seeing it for the first time when you're rolling? No, it's not like that. You talk about the character, you talk about the ambition you have for it. Our ambition was that Sully could have been understood from, we could have seen the story from his perspective the character, you talk about the ambition you have for it. Our ambition was that Sully could

have been understood from, we could have seen the story from his perspective and understand it. He's alone, it's like these people are doomed to become loners, these people are doomed to become living at the extreme margin of society and when he meets Maren and when he smells Mara in the first place, he might have felt like finally I might not be alone anymore. So there is something sad about this willfulness to find the companionship

and at the same time not being able to understand that he cannot have that companionship with that person. In a way it's another illusion at play here. And if you see the movie from that perspective, then you are like rooting for him somehow. It's always great, as Jonathan Demme told all of us,

to make the villain sympathetic so that you can really root for him as much as you root for your hero. And so you create a sort of moral landscape that is not predictable and actually is very engaging. So that's what we tried to do. How did working with Trent Reznor

and Atticus Ross come to be? It's a very inspired choice. They are gold. They are actual gold. They are a beautiful and valuable metal who basically becomes the terms of Paragon for us all. I have just pure admiration for these two and an affection that is quite surprising

because we know each other now for a year and a half, but the way in which they've been showing trust and devotion to this movie has made me feeling deep feelings for these two beautiful human beings and to see how they kind of have been able to go deep into the music they created for this movie and how they've been able to showcase a range of romanticism through their music to the degree that the final song that they composed and that Trent Reznor sings is so terminal in its terrible beauty, like terrifying beauty.

It's a testament, and I love them, and I will love them forever. And I'm glad that they are in my life, and now they're working on the new score of mine for challengers you you seem like a really beautiful fit and it feels like the right time given some of the work that they've done in the past to be writing something like this and maybe they would not have been able to write what they did 10 years ago but the time you feel can you tell me like what is the process you have with a composer do you show them everything do you just say write something for me and we'll talk?

I worked only with two composers in my life. One was, what's the name? Tom York, the wonderful Tom York for Suspiria, and then Trenton Atticus. Those are the people I worked with. I don't have a rule.

When I told Trenton Atticus, I said, we need hyper-romanticism and longingly romantically melancholic music that should become, in a way, iconically Americana. And I suggest them to look for guitar. And that's it. And the rest, they did it.

Did you look at any films set during this period before you started making the movie? Not really. I thought a lot about They Live By Night. Ah, yes. I said to the actor to watch a couple of movies, particularly I asked them to look at Vagabond.

Is that Nick Ray? Nick Ray? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I proposed the actors to look at movies like Vagabond by Agnes Varda Chantal Ackerman's Jean Dillemand and

I proposed them to look at The Man Escaped by Bresson those were my three suggestions for the actors do you give them

cues for why that's the case or just say watch this and tell me how you feel about it no I mean it's beautiful to tell them to for why that's the case or just say watch this and tell me how you feel about it? No, I mean it's beautiful to tell them to watch and that's it, right?

How did you land on your director of photography in this movie, Arseny Kachaturan, who is someone I was not familiar with. It seems like it's their biggest project thus far. Going back to San Sebastian, I had left the festival

awarding four awards out of seven we had in our hands to this movie called Beginning by Dea Columbe Gashvili in which the cinematography was astonishing and was made by Arseny Kachaturan

so we we connected and I astonishing and was made by Arseny Kachaturan. So we, we, we connected and I offered him the movie. That's simple. Absolutely. I'm always like that. If I know that I want something,

I do, I go for it. Can you tell me what it's like collaborating with a, for the first time with the director of photography? What do you, what do you talk about? What are the references? You should ask him. I know thinking about it. I know, thinking about it,

I think I'm quite tough. And I think I'm quite demanding and challenging. But the best way is to go for the ride with me and have fun. And I think he went for the ride and we had a lot of fun. Can you talk more about being demanding and challenging and what that means?

How does that manifest? I want the best out of people. So I make them do the best. Can you talk more about being demanding and challenging and what that means? How does that manifest? I want the best out of people. So I make them do the best, but I also demand a lot from people. And sometimes people, they can't understand why you want them to be giving you everything in order to achieve what you're doing. I don't know other ways. So, but Arseny was up for the job because Teakulun Begashuli is as demanding as me,

to be honest, if not more. You said earlier that you were strategic about your decisions. What led you from going from this to Challengers? How did you decide that that was the right move? Well, I think it was a movie that... I hate when people want to expect things from me. I hate that was a movie that I hate when people want to expect things from me I hate that

I hate that I mean so and showmanship like we we make show business

so we should be people that entertain people like and when people think oh he's gonna give us again and again and again the same thing no

I wanna I wanna I wanna surprise people and it's such a beautiful script And it's such a beautiful script and it's such a fun script and it's a comedy and it's a comedy of manners. It couldn't be more different than this one. So I was like, okay.

And then it was beautiful to work with this amazing cast, Zendaya, Divine, and then Joshua O'Connor and Mike Feist, the best, and with Amy Pascal, which I always wanted to work with. She's a legend in her own right.

What is she bringing to the table as a producer for you? She is infatigable. She works even more than I do, and she is never going to give up. I think my motto and her motto is the same, which is, it's not over until it's over.

And, uh, she knows how to make the best out of it, of people. And we became buddies. We have a little romance, chastised, but the romance.

We, you mentioned the, the free show business. Um, I'm curious how you're feeling about the, the, the business of theatrical movies these days and the idea of putting a film like Bones and All into a number of theaters and viewing habits. How are you feeling about the state of cinema? I've been a kid when I was 13 and watching movies since I was very young.

And I was reading books about cinema. And since then then and even before people were saying cinema is dead, cinema is over. What can I say? We here we are. We're talking about movies to get me in. It's still going. It's still going

on. Make a good movie. People will see it one way or another. Are you going to make more TV? Depends. I want to. What does it depend on? The right project? Yeah, of course. And absolute control.

Absolute control? Yeah. Can you tell me about that? I will not do anything if I'm not in total control of what I'm doing. So TV is a process where it's about the showrunner,

da-da-da-da-da-da. So that's not exactly my, it's not up my sleeve. So it's, you know, like you have to find the right project where you don't have to deal with this kind of approach.

Luca, you've been at a lot of festivals recently. I ask filmmakers at the end of these conversations, what's the last great thing they've seen? I imagine you've seen some films as you've been touring the world.

I watched a beautiful masterpiece that touched me so deeply and made me cry and made me laugh. And that made me think a lot about the person who made it in a really darling way that is Armageddon Time by my dear friend James Gray. I love that movie. It's probably my favorite film of the year. It's very, very wonderful. Luca, thank you so much for being on the show. Always appreciate you.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you. I hope that the second favorite is Bonsignor. It is right up there, I promise you. Otherwise, we Sean. Thank you. I hope there's a second Faberity sponsor now. It is right up there. I promise you. Otherwise, we would not be speaking. I know. I was teasing you.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you so much. Thanks to Luca. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Later this week, Amanda and I will, as we said, talk about the Academy Awards. We're going to power rank the contenders on the show.

We'll see you then.