The Big Picture - The Top 10 Movie Plot Twists and ‘The Drama.’ Plus: ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Certainly Exists.

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Sean and Amanda open the show by tackling some movie news headlines, including the green-lighting of a ‘Weapons’ prequel at Warner Bros., speculation that ‘The Adventures of Cliff Booth’ could premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and the first trailer for 20-year-old Kane Parsons’s highly anticipated horror film, ‘Backrooms’ (1:07). Then, they cover ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,’ which they found to be creatively and aesthetically bankrupt, and explain why they think it is an “evil movie” (13:56). Next, they unpack Kristoffer Borgli’s untraditional romantic comedy ‘The Drama,’ starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson (33:03). They break down why they anticipate a divided public reception, explain why they found the movie’s flipping of rom-com tropes to be hugely successful, and fully spoil the movie by analyzing its central “twist.” Finally, they share a list of their top 10 favorite movie plot twists of all time (1:08:15). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Drivers wanted. Learn more at https://vw.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Daven. And this is the big picture, a conversation show about drama, mind games, Mario, and Yahoo! On today's show, we will dive into two new releases that could not be farther apart in terms of target audience, craft, and cultural appeal. The first movie I'm talking about is Christopher Borgley's new Doomcom, the drama, which stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple whose relationship takes a twist in the lead-up to their wedding. The second movie is the Super Mario Galaxy movie, which is the sequel to 20. 2003 smash hit Super Mario Brothers movie. One of these movies is for kids.

One of them is for arrested development millennials. One hinges on a twist. The other is without a brain. We're also going to talk about our favorite movie plot twists ever, which is related to one of these two movies. I won't say which. But first we have some movie news to get into right after this. I'm back from a spring break.

Welcome. Thanks. There's been some news. Yeah. There's going to be a weapons prequel. Yeah. Yeah, how logged onto the news were you while on spring break? Not at all, really.

Not at all. To the movie news? I don't know. I mean, I was closely tracking the price of gas in this country, which seems to be a serious issue. Yeah, you're just logging on to that? Well, I don't, I drive an EV, so I don't really follow that. So, you know, it seems to be a real issue. Yeah, the coastal elites with the EVs.

Yeah, it's a nightmare. Evis are spread across this fine country. And frankly, they're going to spread even more based on what's happening here in America. Okay, no, weapons. There's going to be a prequel, Gladys, which I think we understood was going to happen after the breakout success of that movie. It's going to be written by Zach Craigor,

who of course wrote and directed at the original. And Zach Shields. I say Gladys, you say what? Is Amy Madigan involved? Or is it younger Gladys? Maybe in like a bookended way, right? We see her, like, at the beginning of the movie to situate the audience,

and then we see her at the end getting her flesh torn off of her body. Okay. But then in the middle, it is who? Phoebe Dynnever. is said in the 1940s? I believe in Zach Kregger and his imagination and his relationship to the character Gladys

and showing messed up funny things on screen. I'm very pro. Phoebe Divener or Divener in the 1940s, it doesn't on its face jump out to me as like the most exciting idea. What if it goes back to the Salem, Massachusetts and the witch trials? And Gladys is actually hundreds of years old.

Okay. That could be an option. It could. And then we could explore. I mean, anything could happen. Misandry and misogyny across centuries of American existence. Would you be signed up for that? So it's starting in the Salem witch trials and then we're jumping through various gender crises.

The same way that's sort of Vlad the Impaler, Dracula has lived for centuries. But so how does Gladys age is a question I would pose to you in that context? Is it the same? Well, how does she not age is really the question? Right. But she is aged. In weapons. Sure.

She is older. I mean, and if she sprung to life like that, then why can't Amy Madigan be at the Salem Witch Trials? And then, or are you having a young Gladys who then ages progressively but more slowly over time? I think Gladys is in a race against aging. Okay. Aren't we all? Well, I don't care, but some of us do. And I think that what her character is doing is that as each day goes by, she's trying to.

fight back the dawn. She's trying to get a little bit of youth injected back into her system. Right. There is a kind of like ultimate crone that is that is unstoppable. Like she will eventually become

a hundred years old. But she can revert back to a younger form the more souls that she's able to ensnare. So she's got to find various groups of children in peril, like in peril. Yes. Over the time.

Mm-hmm. So I guess Salem Witch Trials is available, but you can really... The Crusades? I was going to say, the plague. The plague, sure. That's a good one. Let's see. What else?

I mean, you know, bad things have happened to children and adults throughout history in all forms. You know, we're on the brink of Easter. You know, Christ has risen. Like, maybe she was there with Punch's pilot. Can I share a take with you unrelated to the films? She but just since you brought it up. I can't believe you even asked if you could. Easter?

Eh, I'm out. I'm like, it's, I just, you know, everyone's real excited and I will come to the Easter egg hunt or whatever, but I guess it was just that Easter wasn't really big in my childhood. I don't really know what you're saying. You mean like in the practice of Christianity? Well, I don't really practice Christianity and I don't super believe in any organized religions. But, um, so that doesn't matter to me. But then the whole fanfare around Easter, you know, we've tried to Christmastise it. Everybody's like, here's a peep, here's an egg hunt. Here's like some, you know, bunnies. Here's like lots I don't really I don't think we've done a good job I'm out I just I'm not into Easter

no thanks Thanks for letting me know Yeah Other things That are happening in the news Cliff Booth Not coming out this summer The Adventures of Cliff Booth

The forthcoming feature From David Fincher And Quentintoe Looking at a fall release Maybe theorized Theatrical release If you just put a number On how many movie theaters

Will the Adventures of Cliff Booth open in In America How many IMAX screens is Greta getting for the magician's nephew, which you bought a copy of. I did over the weekend. I'm old.

I'm going to read it together. I think there are 400 IMAX screens in America, maybe less. I could be completely wrong about that. And she's getting all, but she's getting all of them. All the full run. So when they want to, they can do a broader. But this isn't going to be IMAX.

Let's see. 800? Is that high? Is that low? So that's around the number I've heard that movies like Frankenstein and the Knives Out films have gotten. Okay. Sub 1,000, but still a very hardy amount. I think they got to go over 1,000 for a movie like this. Okay.

Why are you even making a movie like this? It's a Brad Pitt movie. According to Matt Bell and he was paid $40 million to star in this movie. Why are you even doing for a streaming movie? That makes no sense. Anyway, maybe at the Venice Film Festival. We don't know. But Netflix does put a lot of movies there.

Netflix does put a lot of movies there, including David, Fincher's last film, The Killer, and David Fincher was not only there for that premiere, but then he was just walking around in like a cream suit at other premieres, just taking in films. I didn't. I was seen it pretty close to him, and I was just like, oh, cool, that's David Fincher. Well, you guys would have a lot in common. I really appreciate everything I know about him, his filmmaking style, his view of the world, and his aesthetic choices, which include driving around an old Mercedes convertible, which I have,

I've seen him spotted from time to time around L.A. Okay. And you do like a double take and you're like, holy shit, that's David Fincher. Good for him. You should say how to him if, in fact, you go to Venice. I don't really think that David Fincher wants people saying hi to him, which is one of the things I respect about him. Okay. Fair enough.

Did you watch the trailer for Backrooms? No. Okay. Well, it's too late now. Backrooms is a new horror movie for May 24. Okay. Coming out at the end of May. It is directed by Kane Parsons.

Kane Parsons is, how many years old do you think? 20? He's 20. Yeah, I saw this. I saw it alluded to you. I just, I didn't click through. He's 20 years old. This film stars Chitel Ejufour and Renata Reinsva.

It is about seemingly a furniture store that beyond its walls features an infinite number of rooms. It's a very trippy, very Kubrickian, very cube-like mind fuck of a movie. Very good trailer. Genuinely depressing to be 43 years old. see that a 20-year-old man has just created something. So, intriguing. How can I perk you back up? I'm doing great.

We were talking about this before the recording started. I just, I want you to feel happy. I want you to be restored. You were on spring break. And you feel, I feel like you came back with a negative outlook. I can only respond to what's put in front of me. Okay. And so what, maybe that's the problem.

What has been presented to me is my own mortality. No, you know, I'm excited about this movie. Yeah. I'm impressed that a young person has been given this opportunity. I hope this movie's great. I have a lot of plans for horror movie coverage over the next three months because we're at the dawning of a new era. That's great. I'm excited for Chuitel Egyaphor, who is wonderful.

Yeah. And I always think underused. I agree. When I rewatched The Martian, I was like, oh, yeah, he's so great in this. Yeah. Yeah. He was, um, what is his character's name in the Doctor Strange movies? It's like, you're asking the wrong person on that one.

Come on, Jack. You've rewatched. No, no clue. Mordock? Mordow? Morda? Morda? Morda. Mordo. Mordo. Also, just want to let you guys know that Chautel Egya4 is in the 2010 classic salt. Anyone? Jack, you've seen salt yet? We've talked about this. I have not. We need to get a... This should be like what we did with Avatar Way of Water, Watch a Long Pod for salt.

It's pretty good. I honestly have no desire to revisit. I have a great time. And once again, I'm open to salt. too, which they clearly set up and then abandoned. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't either. Bong Joon's next movie, Ally.

We've just seen a first look. It's an animated feature film. There's a cute little squid-like piglet character. Okay. He's good at creatures. Very good at creatures. 2027 animated film.

Your son says what? See you there. So I was very cute when we went to see Super Mario Brothers Galaxy, normal film title, which we'll talk about later. When we got there, I realized he thought he was seeing Project Hill Mary based on remembering

the, like, the interactive, the big poster featuring Ryan Gosling for Project Hill Mary. And he was like, no, I saw the poster when we went to Hoppers and he's going to space and he needs a helmet. And I just thought he was describing Galaxy and Super Mario Brothers, but Ryan Gosling is not wearing a helmet in the Project Hill Mary poster. And so Knox was just worried about safety. So he's engaged. The marketing of Project Hail Mary, which of course has been working stunningly well, is very appealing to young kids, which is interesting.

Like that's Sandy that you're referring to with the local AMC. Yeah, and they don't even get to see Rocky. Like, he would love Rocky. Yeah, yeah. I think it would be a little hard to grasp most of the concepts of Project Hail Mary. Yeah. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it if you're a little kid. We didn't take Alice to see him.

I mean, he's still too little and there's too many dead people and it's also two and a half hours long. Yeah, not ideal. Ally, pumped. Yeah. Pumped for another Bond movie. Next week, at this time, one week from now, we will know the lineup

of the Cannes Film Festival. Okay. And, you know, it appears that the lineup will be relatively light on American filmmakers, which is not shocking, per se,

but there have been more and more in the last five or six years. And this year, it seems like maybe James Gray is going to be there, maybe Jane Schoenbrun is going to be there, maybe the Zellner brothers,

and that might be it, speculation that the, Joel Cohen movie isn't going to be ready. We know that stuff like Disclosure Day and Cliff Booth and all those movies are not going to be going. There will be a great number of international heavyweights, probably among them. Asgar Farhati, Christian Munju, Hamaguchi's new movie was announced. There was a teaser for that this week. All of a sudden, I'm pumped about that.

El Madovar, Pavlokowski, whole bunch of Coriata. Nick Wything Refin? Yeah, I'm excited about Refin. Now, if Refin is there, I will track him down. I will track him down and I'll give him a big hug and try to make him uncomfortable. Any pregame thoughts? We will break it down next week on the show

and it's announced. I feel like this base of predicting what will be at the Cannes lineup is pretty crowded already. So I don't really need to insert my opinions. I'm just listening to the experts because we're new. I'm still excited.

I'm excited to see what it's about. And, you know, obviously, Anora came out of Cannes and some American films do get a boost. But Ken is also typically the place where we, you know, lowly Americans learn about the great international films of the year. So it's fine with me. Me too. I'm curious with the noisy American, maybe Mandalorian Grogu, I'm not sure with the big messy.

I guess John Travolta's directorial debut was just announced as playing at the film festival. How beautiful. Have you been reading about that following along? Were you on set for that? I was. Okay. It's exciting. I'm pumped.

I'm pumped. I'm pumped to find out what they're going to play. I hope there's a couple of surprises. Yeah. There is a very active industry of can predictors. Yeah. In the trades. And there's plenty you can read about them right now.

Shall we talk about Super Mario? Is there anything else that you want to get into? Any other holidays you would like to blaspheme? Just Easter. You know, like I'm happy at spring, but also spring. But he has risen. I really don't care. Okay.

Like, that's cool. But, you know, it's just... Is it his... It's just a metaphor for, you know, the turn of the seasons and every religion has them, and that's nice. I think letting a little God into your life would be powerful. I had plenty of God in my life growing up and look where it got me. You had going to things that were organized around your parents' religion, but what about letting God into your life? Have you considered that?

No, I'm good. I'm in charge. What about Super Mario Galaxy movie? Have you let that into your life? I would like to nominate this movie for the Big Pictures coveted evil movie designation, which is at rarefied air, right? Like it's a free guy, Fast X, Mercy, anything else I'm forgetting. Yeah, we've already had one this year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, evil movies. I took my four-year-old to see this at 9.30 in the morning on opening day for spring break. And we had the time of our lives in that we got to, He was so excited to get to go to the movies. He's really into trailers. I think he's a great movie watcher. It was his first credit sequence, which we almost missed because once again, his mother refuses to acknowledge the existence of credit sequences.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Like the, oh, I'm sorry, the post credits. Post credits. Got it, got it, got it. And so I was glad to have that opportunity. And I don't begrudge anyone who is looking for, like, who takes their child to see this movie. You should. Like I did too.

But I found this experience, I found this like creatively and aesthetically bankrupt in a way that I was kind of bummed to be sitting next to my kid and exposing my kid to it. And I could also watch him kind of power down. He just had that sort of sedated slop face that was going on throughout the movie. And that's, listen,

And there are plenty of different ways and like plenty of kids entertainment to do it. And I also put screens in front of my child to, you know, kill time so I can do the dishes or whatever. But it bummed me out. It bummed me out a little bit more than the first one because it did feel even more. Let's just, you know, combine as many different Super Mario things as we can into it. And, you know, it felt a little more commercial grabby. And I just, I know that it's a technical. achievement or whatever, but I found it so depressing to look at.

I'm pretty much with you. Eileen joined me seeing the movie with Alice yesterday, and as soon as it was over, first of all, Alice had the time of her life. I was delighted. She loved Rosalina, the new princess as voice by Brie Larson, who's very Elsa-coded. I mean, they were even wearing the same colors. She may predate Elsa in the Mario lore. Okay.

I don't really know, to be honest. That can be settled between Nintendo's and Disney's lawyers. She had a great time. She really enjoyed learning that, spoiler alert, Rosalina and Princess Peach are, in fact, related. They're sisters. Nothing my daughter loves more than princesses who are sisters, also very frozen. Yeah. But I turned to Eileen afterwards, and I said, I thought that was quite dire.

And she said that's one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. and that's fascinating because this movie is clearly going to be a mega smash and make a shit ton of money and even dramatically outperform things like Free Guy and FastX at the box office. I actually have a lot of thoughts. These movies tend to bring out a lot of ideas from me

about kind of where movies are and what people want from movies. I think what you're saying is right, which is that this feels like a big agglomeration of a lot of Mario fans' sources, and keys jingling and remember this character from this game and remember when you heard this sound effect and it made you feel like this and I think if you're anywhere from the ages of like four to 11 it's fun it's a lot of fun and if you're like 20 and you have a lot of nostalgia or 30

and have a lot of nostalgia for Mario you you will get something satisfying out of this but it is narratively brutal there are no characters no no no defining traits of any of the characters. I thought it, it is like this very flashy, fast-moving 3D animation style that is increasingly prevalent. Yeah. I don't know if I thought it was ugly so much as I thought it was noisy. I would agree. Like I said, I understand that it is technically accomplished and it doesn't look bad or ugly the way that, you know, the third acts of many Marvel movies look bad. It's just like we ran out of time and we just didn't have the resources required to achieve what was in our heads. I think it was noisy, frenetic.

You know, as we mentioned, there are so many references and, like, they're not even jokes. They're just like sound cues that are supposed to take you back jammed into this movie. But the pace was really, really shocking. So fast. So fast. And the cuts are so. fast and they move from one like quote unquote problem, like even faster than you can move through worlds in a Super Mario game.

Yes. And it really did feel like it was edited in that once, you know, that really nefarious like cocoa melon things that just move so fast on the screen that your child's brain turns off. I totally agree with you. The thing that this had me thinking about is as the primacy of intellectual property shifts from things like superheroes to video games. And those movies are increasingly engineered for children. You have this pretty dramatic shift in what animated movies are.

When we were growing up, they were kind of in the third phase of Disney adapting great works of literature, fairy tales, stories from around the world, and recontextualizing them, sometimes whitewashing them, sometimes stripping them of some of their shepherding them. sharper edges and reducing the stories down to very simple ideas, but they were at least based in a certain kind of a work that had some archetypal and cultural value. The last 25 years, things have changed a little bit. The introduction of Pixar, the introduction of 3D animation, has changed, I think, the tone of a lot of these movies, that they have gotten a lot more smart-allicky,

they've gotten a lot more adult sensibility forward. But the stories themselves, there's always been a kind of gentle quality, I would say, to the bulk of children's animated movies. Sure. You're learning about yourself. Yes. They're like emotional.

They're, um, internal. They're often very moral. They have like, they have a kind of like a, an idea about family or an idea about the self or an idea about how you participate in a society. Like, the movies are not perfect. I'm not trying to valorize them at the expense of this other stuff

because there's always been junk and crap for kids. But what making movies around video games does is it makes these movies action movies. Because video games are action. They are driven by avoiding obstacles, defeating villains,

eluding capture. And so that pace that you're talking about is right on. And part of the reason that it's right on is because it's mimicking what it's like to play a video game

where you're in a constant state of movement going from one thing to the next. So now what we're doing is like we're training, and I don't think I'm over intellectualizing this. We're training five-year-olds or nine-year-olds

to expect action in a discreet and consistent way in these kinds of movies. This isn't the first movie that ever did this. Like, it has been happening slowly. How to Train Your Dragon is like this, that they introduced fantasy movies in animated form. Kung Fu Panda introduced martial arts movies in animated form. The bad guys, those are heist movies. The Lego Batman movie is a superhero movie.

So it's not like Super Mario bears the weight of this responsibility. But it does feel like a culmination of 15 or 20 years of animated movies used to be the sanctity of a princess or a prince or someone who's attempting to um has a great journey of self discovery and now this is a movie about like five different characters in five different places at the same time and they all are having like a crazy adventure and then they're all going to converge on each other and there's going to be a big fight and that's what superhero movies are too you know that's kind of what most action that's what the fast franchise does they split the big groups up and they bring everybody together and so it feels like very formulaic and it also is like

training us to enjoy a certain kind of a story structure at a very young age. I'm making this anthropological because I'm very interested in animation and what it does for kids and how they understand stories. But I do think that this is like kind of the bottom of the barrel version of this kind of thing. Like the bad guys, those movies are fine. They're not that bad. They have real characters. They have like fun performances.

The scripts are not that bad. They're iterative, but they're a good way to kill time. I agree with you. I felt something more insidious here. I mean, I think you're right. Fast X is probably the fast movies or fast X is most apt comparison because that is also the bottom of the barrel of that execution of that idea. But it is that the only point of this movie is to watch things go really fast and then explode. And whether it explodes via some purple goo or whether there's like another spaceship, the really intense movement and the more, more, more, more,

the palate is the point. I asked my son afterwards what Super Mario Brothers Galaxy was about, and he said a ship that shoots lasers, which I think is a little bit the only thing that he could really like glom on to in his mind because he, you know, recognized a ship that shoots lasers. He did also understand that Princess Peach had a sister, Rosalina. So he understood siblings and ships that shoot lasers. But that, he's not wrong. That's what it was about.

There were many different ships that shot lasers. I kind of got bored. I was like, well, which ship is this? And what are you doing now? Because there's not enough to grab onto. And I did. I was sitting there next to my kid. And I was like, I'm being a little bit of a Goldilocks because we came out of hoppers.

And we've been talking about like the later stage Pixar movies in particular and saying these are starting to feel like more like for adults than for children. Or, you know, all children's entertainment has now. has to have this second layer of like winking reference for the adults to keep them entertained. But you've, you're starting to like see the strings on that. And now I'm saying that this just has absolutely this children's entertainment has nothing for me to grab onto. And so, you know, what will make me happy? I guess what would make me happy is like a good movie that my children and I could relate to that doesn't feel completely bankrupt of, all like ideas and

human emotion. But that's just me. I don't think it's an unreasonable request. I think it's the movie exists for obvious reasons. It actually is shocking how long it took Nintendo to adapt an animated Super Mario Brothers movie

for wide audiences. And the first movie being a big success was not shocking. There wasn't a whole lot to say about that movie because they were introducing the key characters. You had a handful of very famous people supplying the voices. this is a sequel, as with all sequels,

there needs to be more, more, more, right? There needs to be an expansion of the universe, more characters. I remember laughing more at the first. It seemed like a more modest film, maybe, too. And so in that way, like, it just was trying to spin fewer plates. It felt very tightly focused on. There's Mario and Luigi, and then there's Princess Peach.

She is the princess of this land that she doesn't even totally understand. She doesn't know where her family is. But, you know, they need to basically protect her from Bowser who wants to marry her. and kidnap her. That was the whole movie. And that's basically how we understand the Super Mario Brothers video game franchise. That doesn't encompass Mario Tennis

and Super Mario Kart and all the Donkey Kong storylines and Mario Paint and Dr. Mario and the myriad Mario games that have come out since I was playing video games in the 80s and 90s. So this movie is trying to have a lot of those things.

It's trying to squeeze in a lot of those things. My dumb brain, my lizard brain, as it were, enjoyed Yoshi, enjoyed seeing Yoshi in the movie. Alice got a huge kick out of Yoshi, just doing the egg thing, you know, eating somebody. Yeah. You know, dropping an egg. That person that Yoshi ate was inside the egg.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. But to do that for like 90 minutes. It also happened so quickly because this, I mean, this entire movie is on like 3X fast forward. Yeah. And I didn't, it rushed the joke. Like the joke was almost stepped on. So there's no room to breathe.

There's not a lot of room to laugh. It did feel very, felt very Michael Bay. You put that in the spreadsheet and, you know, it's, you see Michael Bay everywhere, but I think that this is, I think this is correct. Well, Michael Bay is usually doing things visually that seem impossible with humans on set. And sometimes they're dangerous. This is animation, so it's just not impressive. It's just sort of like, it's just a lot going on fast and loud. The mourness and just like how much can we do?

And also perhaps a disregard for emotion or like moral concerns of any kind. Yes. Does track with Michael Bay. I definitely see it. I think that Michael Bay makes more, if not beautiful, memorable images. I agree. What's your take on Bowser Jr.? you know, happy for for Benny to get that check.

And so did Bowser Senior or Bowser Jr. put on the puppet show? I was, I believe it was Bowser Senior did the puppet show. For Bowser Jr. who was a, you know, a wonderful audience member. I thought that was a lovely puppet show. And there is another moment. And it's a completely different animation style, right? And then there's another moment when Star Fox, who I didn't know about, but Zach was like very solemnly, yes, Star Fox.

He's very important. Voice by Glenn Powell, who I thought did a great job, you know, being Star Fox on solo, yeah. But his introduction is done in like an illustrated hand-drawn animation style.

Yeah, old school style, which I thought was very compelling. But, you know, both of those instances took me out of the movie because I was like, oh, you can do something visually interesting. You're just choosing this Slop. Yeah, but that is the lingua franca of the contemporary animation.

I wonder if that will change. I wonder what the next phase of that even is, because we've seen these various evolutions in style or de-evolutions as it were. I don't know. I'm curious to see. I think this movie is quite poor. Yeah. Any conversation after the movie in your home? We hit on the same issue.

As I mentioned, the sister relationship was very impactful and I think made the movie feel a little more coherent. very clear that Bowser and Bowser Jr. are trouble. They're not good. I was doing bedtime last night and Alice said, Dad, I think you might be a cupa. Which is not good. You don't want to be that. You don't want to be a minion in service of Bowser.

That's problematic for me. What did Alice think of the minions trailer for minions? God and Monsters? Is that what we're calling it? Minions and monsters. Menyers and monsters is a Bill Condon film about the late filmmaker James Whale as portrayed by Ian McKellen. Okay.

It was a 1990s Oscar Bate film. You can have it all in the big picture. You certainly can. This is what we bring to the table. Manorning Grogo trailer is pure crack. It is like the rock star eyes exploding when that comes on. Minions, captive audience, you know what we saw. And it was my first time seeing it.

Because as I said, I was not really following the news while I was on vacation. Is the Supergirl trailer. And Alice saw that and she was like, who's that? That's my new best friend. Oh, good, okay, that's good. We found the audience for the Super Girl trailer. Not me, but Alice. I think Knox kind of perked up.

He liked the music cues in the Supergirl trailer. But, you know, I've never been prouder than when my child just started absolutely cracking up as soon as the Minions did anything. The exact same, like, physical comedy that speaks to me about the Minions speaks to him. That's wonderful. Yeah. You guys can see that together. Maybe I'll skip it.

This movie's going to make... Knox did want to come to a podcast. I will do my own podcast with Alice. It's going to be about space. And then maybe also Minions God and Monsters and he can sit in that chair. That's really exciting.

Alice and I did once record a podcast and by record I mean she sat in that chair and we didn't record anything. It was about the last unicorn. Okay. Wonderful animated film featuring voice work from Angela Lansberry. It is about the last unicorn.

Oh, okay. If you want to show that to Knox and do a follow-up, I'm sure that they would do great together. She also is fond of referring to Bill, who is my boss. Yeah. Our boss.

And when we were making the podcast, she kept turning to the booth and kept saying, Bill, is that good? Where did she learn this behavior, actually? I don't know. I think she probably just heard me talking to Eileen and being like, oh, Bill's calling or whatever, you know. And then she was like, Dad, who's Bill? So, sorry, Jack, but I think she thinks that Bill, in addition to being the boss, also produces the show. She does also know about Jack, though. Oh, good.

And she does have questions about Jack and what Jack is doing. Well, Jack met both of our children at the K-pop Demon Hunter's video screening. That's why she was asking. Yeah, yeah. And I think... Do you loom large? Yeah. That's great.

I think it's a good question. What does he do? We don't exactly know. We don't know. We just does stuff. I'll never know. Okay. How do we pivot out of Supermarital?

$300 million this weekend? $500 million? $10 billion? That's... Made $3. 34 and a half million domestic on a Wednesday. Like, we were there, you know? And 9.30 am was not the first showing.

I think it was maybe the third showing. Well, I believe there were Tuesday night midnight screenings. Okay. Very cool. Yeah, very normal stuff. Yes. Yeah, it's going to do very well. That's fine.

Listen, everybody needs something to do during spring break. They certainly do. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day to day. but our favorite films with stories that make us change the way we think that weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the world pass by.

This is your sign that you shouldn't either. From us, from VW, and the other drivers out there, grab the wheel. Do what you love, even if it means taking the road less traveled. Learn more at VW.com. Let's pivot to the drama. Yeah. This is our Super Mario Brothers Galaxy movie.

It absolutely is. Before you say another word, I'm going straight to camera. for this one. Do not listen to this until you have seen the drama. I'm serious. It's not even, like, it's not because I don't want to be yelled at. It's because I want you to experience the movie without spoilers.

Turn it off. I mean it. And come back when you've seen the movie. Thank you. You're absolutely right to set it up that way. This is the new movie written and directed by Christopher Borgley. He was a guest on this show a few years ago for his film Dream scenario. It's his fourth feature film.

He's a Norwegian director. It stars Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamadu Athi, Alana Haim, Haleigh-Ga-Him, Haley Gates, and Zoe Winters. The plot synopsis is as follows days before their wedding. A couple's relationship is shaken when one partner discovers unsettling truths about the other. There is a kind of a plot twist in this movie, and that's why you're setting the table in the way that you are. Yeah. But it is really more sort of like a piece of information that is shared. A reveal.

A reveal that influences the actions of the characters throughout the rest of the movie. And it comes, remind me, about half an hour into the movie, somewhere in that vicinity. So I'll start with what did you think of the drama? Absolutely. And on this, I loved it. It is, as you said, a Doomcom and it is not what has been portrayed in or suggested in the press tour that has been very heavily wedding-focused. And there was the fake announcement in the Boston Globe and Zendaya's been wearing like something borrowed something blue. They've been doing like wedding, romantic comedy.

Very materialist 2.0 marketing. Exactly. Which we'll talk about. But so it is, it takes a different turn. But in many ways it is also kind of a classical romantic comedy. It knows the beats and it knows what it is working against, not just the audience's expectations, but also of what happens in the movies, but the actual form, the beats, the set pieces. I think it's very smart. This is my kind of my kind of Scandy perspective, you know? Like sometimes I, sometimes I have a block, but I'm really

in line with this view of the world. And I think it pulls it off. I know many people will not think that. I understand that this is going to be a hot button issue, but I think it totally works. I thought it worked too. I told you that I saw it a long time ago. I think I saw it maybe six months ago, five months ago. And so I was seeing it very cold and quite enjoyed myself. I have a real affinity for Borgley's court jester.

Yeah. A little stinker attitude towards humanity. It is something that is like fairly consistent, I think, with some other A24 filmmakers and he gets lumped in with them. There's a little bit of Ariaster. I mean, Ariaster is a producer on this film. And that makes a lot of sense. Yes. There is a sense of like most people are very vulnerable, fallible, insecure, and bumbling, and stupid.

Yeah. And this movie is an interesting exploration of that from both perspectives. The movie leans more towards Robert Pattinson's character. It does. Despite Zendaya being such a big star and such a big part of that marketing that you're describing. We could talk about the utility or lack of utility around that and whether or not this is. really a movie about humanity or just an exercise. As an active entertainment and kind of like provocation, I think it's very successful.

And these are the kinds of worlds that you and I have walked in. You know, we've lived in cities in America. We've worked these kind of like white collar computer jobs. You know, we have nice furniture. With like creative gilding, but, you know, they are still just emails and performance reviews. Right. You can, you trick yourself into thinking that you have some. sort of creative soul, but in fact you are

a cog and a broader machine and, you know, Borgly's very incisive and insightful about the vanity of these people, the frivolity of these people, and also that there is like a real genuine human frailty that

everyone's trying to understand about themselves but that once you hear about someone else's frailty, it's how quick you are to judge them. Yeah. So I think it's pretty clever. I think I could see it being like an amazing script to receive and be like, holy shit while reading it, not knowing anything. The movie is wrong footing and the audience somewhat.

And I'm quite curious to see how they respond to it. But I also think his filmmaking style and his command of tone is very specific and very strong. His observations, like it is very tightly written, like recognizable, both script and like the production design, all of the details are when they want to be indict. writing very much are. This movie is also set in Boston, quote unquote, and like, I don't, I don't think this, I know they filmed in Boston, but like has Christoph or Borgly like ever been to Boston? I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't have the character of Boston, I would say. Yeah. Like it's, you know, when it wants to attack something or, um, investigate an idea or do an exercise, it's really, really spot on. And then it does leave some other things totally to the wayside. Yeah. Do you think, do you want to? say more things about what works so well before getting into that critical piece of information that is revealed to us? Yeah, well, I mean, as you mentioned, it ultimately is a movie about Charlie, the Robert Pattinson character. And some of that is because of the structure and the reveal.

And it is the Zendaya character, Emma, who has this shocking bit of information. And then, so you, the audience, are put in the perspective, both like, structurally, but in terms of the story of the movie, into Charlie's point of view of what is he going to do? Or how is he going to handle this? So

it's a Pattinson movie, more than it's a Indyton movie. And I think weird, bungling Pattinson, like, who's still kind of hot, is amazing. And I think he's wonderfully used and really funny in this. Yeah, agreed. And someone

who was more or less confident would not be able to pull this off. Also, I think notably he's not playing an American. Like, he's obviously not an American in real life, but he does get a little bit of distance from the more America-coded aspects of what's going on in this film, which is definitely not an accident.

I never would have guessed that his most favorite screen persona would be Hugh Grant meets Albert Brooks. But like that's sort of where he's going with these kinds of characters. There's a little bit of that

in Mickey 17. There's certainly a lot of that in this movie. That's not obviously not his Bruce Wayne but it feels closest to the personality he shows us in the world too. He's a little bit

dopey, a little silly. But also very insightful. Did you watch any of the clips of another of A24's great marketing gimmicks was that they had the four main actors so that it is Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamaduati, and Alana Heim, like, do a relationship hotline?

No. And they had people call in and ask questions. And Robert Pattinson is the only person speaking any sense throughout the whole. And he's also sort of confronting the one question that's posed is, like, I'm supposed to be bridesmaid in a couple weeks. And I don't really like this person. Like, what should I do? I don't want to be in the wedding. And the other three people are like, well, you need to have a conversation.

you need to be up front, you shouldn't do it. And Pattinson is like, you want to cancel this, you want to tell this person two weeks before we're just getting married, I don't like you? Just say you're sick. 100% the right answer, but... It's obviously not what I would do. What would you do? I would obviously just do it and accept it and pretend to perform and just be like, this is fine.

Well, sure. But I think what we can all agree is that having like an emotional heart to heart. Yes, no, that's not a good idea. But I thought it was telling in the context of the film itself and what. what is considered like correct social and emotional values versus what actually happens in life, what, you know, what you're valuing, what you, how you should conduct yourself. And Pattinson is kind of on the outside both in this, in, in these videos and in the movie. That's the right way to tee up the revelation too in the movie. So in the film, Zendaya and Pattinson's characters are getting, are about to get married and they're going through the steps of potential marriage.

Yeah. which is, you know, they're preparing with photographers and they're, you know, they've picked out a venue and they're doing food and wine tasting. Yeah. And they've invited friends to go along to do these tastings. And the quartet of people are taking their sweet time at the tasting. And they're asking for, is it, one more glass of skin contact? Yeah. Could we have another bottle of the skin contact? I haven't made up my mind.

Right. That's sort of the, you know, petty bourgeois, you know, city dweller. I think skin contact is finally out, by the way, and I'm so happy. It's finally out. That's another thing I was never on, but like no Easter and no skin contact wine. That's sort of related, right? Like the blood of Christ. I don't know if that was skin contact or not, as I recall.

Yeah. When the transfiguration happened. Transubstantiation, that's what it was. So they're getting drunk and they're hanging out, and there's a woman who's looking after them as they're trying these wines. And as is often the case, when you're in social settings like this, people start creating these sort of like idea games to keep the conversation going. And I believe it's Alana Heme's character says, let's go around the table and say,

what's the worst thing any of us has ever done? She teased it up, but she's also looking for, what she does, actually, is that she makes her now husband tell everyone the worst thing that he's ever done because she's drunk. And she explains that they did this before the wedding. but really she just wants it out on the table. Yes, she's a toxic character. She is.

And so they go around and they tell various... I don't remember what the worst thing he has ever done is. I remember what she did. She locked a boy who was disabled in a, like, a shack? He used his girlfriend as a human shield against a dog that was about to attack them. That's right. Yeah. Well, you know.

Not ideal. No, it's not good, but it's also just sort of, it's... The blame there is with the dog and the dog owner, really. Okay. Well, they said he was a street dog. He didn't have an owner. We're not attacking dogs right now. I don't attack dogs.

I just attack dog owners that don't take responsibility for their dogs. They go around the table, it stops at Zendaya's character. Yeah. And she reveals the worst thing that she's ever done. Yes. Which is actually not doing anything. Yes. Once again, we're spoiling.

So, you know, do your thing. She reveals that she imagined, dreamed and planned a school shooting when she was a teenager in high school in Louisiana. And she did not go through with it, but that she did spend a lot of time thinking about it, scheming on it, fantasizing about it. Mm-hmm.

And the tenor of the drinks dramatically changes when this happens. Because this is a, even though the two previous or three previous stories that have been shared are like a little scandalous or a little like, oh, you shouldn't have done that and moralizing about it. Like putting people in harm's way. Mm-hmm.

Varing degrees. There is obviously a taboo quality, a taboo aspect. Yes. To school shootings and that level of violence. And anyone who's been associated with that kind of violence in our society. And so obviously the two friends are shocked. Alana Heim's character is very offended. And Robert Pattinson's character is in this unusual position in which the person that he is about to agree to spend the rest of his life with,

considered engineering of violent mass murder when she was a teenager. didn't do it, but she considered it. Yeah. So the possibility, theoretically, is there lurking in this person, or is it? Now, there's a natural human drama of this revelation, right, about what's going to happen. Should these people stay together? How is he feeling in the aftermath of this? And the movie then does spend about 40 minutes, kind of like getting close to his skin and, like,

trying to understand how he feels and how he's coping with this information and what he should do and whether or not he sees this person in the same light. the movie is also simultaneously doing something and I find movies are very don't usually do very well which is forcing you to think in real time about a moral paradox while a story is unfolding.

And it's sort of like, well, how would I feel and what would I do have plunged into this situation? So I ask you. And even what should these characters do and how are you like are you rooting who are you rooting for in this and what are you rooting for to happen?

Like, what do you think the outcome should be? And how does that shift based on the new information that you learn? Because as you mentioned, the first night, she reveals, you know, the basic fact. But there are a lot of unanswered questions. And then she just vomits spectacularly. There's a lot of projectile vomiting in this film, which I enjoy. And underused, I think, as a visual gag. Well, keep that in mind.

Get some recommendations going for you. And then the next 40 minutes, he is trying to figure out what to do, but his first instinct is, like, I need to learn more. So I need to learn, like, what do you really, what do you mean when you say you planned, like, a school shooting? And then, like, why didn't you do it? And what were the, like, what are the circumstances? And then the film, like, really digs in in all of them. It uses both, like, flashbacks and hallucinations. and I thought like an impressive and like pretty fluid way

and you could also tell they spent a lot of time and money on the dream scenarios, forgive me. And the flashbacks, which some movies don't, you know. But so they show you in what I thought was like pretty surprising detail. They cast a teenage actor to be the teenage Emma character. She just has a rifle that she is using in the woods. She is, she's the whole, you are, you're seeing. a lot of it. You are watching her do like several takes of a pre-recorded like manifesto that she is doing. So it's not just like a cute premise or a shocking premise that they toss off and then get into psychological. So if you do have to live with the planning of the school shooting and the reality of it in a, in a way that I was surprised by as I think I was intended to be, right? Like they, it is.

is a provocation, but they commit to the provocation? Totally. I think also the style of filmmaking changes pretty dramatically. Again, it's been sometimes since I've seen it, but I seem to recall the kind of tone and texture of the sequences when she is a teenager being a little bit grittier and feeling almost more handheld. His filmmaking has this kind of like airy, smooth quality to it, a very Scandinavian touch in terms of the grace with which he moves through these kind of anxious comedies that he writes.

But in those sequences in particular, they felt certainly more period. And they're set in the South instead of in the East. Yes. And the environment that he's shooting in, a lot of exteriors, her car bedroom, which is this kind of safe haven, even the school that she's in. And then there's like a thornyness to that, that aspect of the story that I would say is not fully explored, but maybe it's appropriate that it's not. Which is that this young girl is a black teenager in a school and she feels very out. Right. And seemingly one of the key motivations for her planning a school shooting is that she wants to seek revenge on the people who have outcast her.

And we see over time, we learn through these flashbacks and through Zendaya talking through the experience that not only does she not go through with the school shooting, but that she actually finds community amongst a group of people who are anti-violence and anti-school shootings. And that there's a sort of like a group. and one assumes this is in the early 2000s in a post-Columbine America where there's like a much more of a consciousness in high schools about this. And she pivots away from being this disaffected person

with no friends to finding community and improving her life and maybe having a clearer head about some of these ideas. And also becoming an anti-gun activist. Yeah. Which the Pattinson character does say

like, didn't you feel a little bit hypocritical, which is kind of one of the only instances I remember in the script of someone actually trying to like push another, push judgment or emotion on another person, which I thought was notable because, you know, I think the criticisms, in addition to it being essentially race blind is I think the way that it just doesn't, as you say, explore any of the American consequences, like the consequences of this being an American black teenage girl in the South having this high school experience and responding to it in this way or, you know, then flipping and what puts her into it and what puts her out of it.

But then it's, it doesn't explore that. And it does not take school shootings or anti-gun activism seriously in the way that we Americans do. And there is even another line when Robert Pattinson is speaking to the two friends and, you know, trying to work through his feelings. And he says something to the effect of like, but this is sort of an American thing, right? Like this is something that like you guys are like very touchy about, but the rest of us, you know, just understand. And he's trying to like extract himself from all of the sociopolitical implications, which is definitely the approach that this movie takes.

And so, like, you asked earlier, is it like an exploration or an exercise? I think exercise is too dismissive, but it is using, it is not exploring the ramifications of race in America or school shootings as something that is like a particular specific blight of this country and something we need to deal with. Yeah, I think it's short of treating them like chest pieces, but also short of really drilling down into them. But one thing I liked about the movie, and I think some critical. will completely disagree with this. It didn't go out of its way to have that character give a big monologue about how she was mistreated and this is why she is the way that she is.

Because that isn't always how people think of themselves and often those are dramatic devices that are created in movies so that we can fully understand the psychological mapping of a certain character. And this movie is being a little bit more elusive about that and why I think that's powerful is because this is a movie about a confused teenager.

She's grown up and she's about to get a... married, but it's about the psychology of a confused teenager and what the choices that she made and how they impacted the rest of her life. And nobody knows anything when they're teenagers. And you think you know everything, but you don't know anything. And whether or not you should be held accountable for the feelings and the ideas that you had as a teenager is kind of the psychological crux of the movie. Right.

And the other psychological crux of the movie is from Charlie's side, which is, you know, the simpler, what can you know or not know about anyone? Yeah. And it's about the terror of getting married in many ways. And it is the most provocative situation. I was going through other lists of horrible things that I could imagine that someone did or not did. Is it a list you keep on the regular? No, it's not.

But there's no particular permutation where, you know, because if someone does something like truly horrible, like kills someone or something, then there's no gray area. and but if it's something with too much gray area then you're not going to be as like drawn in and as stressed out about what should you do should you forgive this person it's impossible to be definitive yeah

yeah they're like literally not knowing what to do and knowing that as an audience member as well as the character on screen so I you know I agree that the ethics or the morality of the topics involved are not super like explored.

Neither really are the characters. Like these are all if not archetypes, then chess pieces is unfair because that would suggest that they're not scripted out. They're not serving their purpose. But I think everybody is moving around

these issues in sort of like a flat, you know, tense way. I think it's very consistent with the two previous Borgly movies, with Sick of Myself, which is a Scandinavian film. It is very funny and very dark. Dream scenario in this movie. And all three of those movies, I think, have this underlying idea that most people going through life are kind of performing. you know, that like the real self,

and this is Borgley's point of view, I suspect, that you're doing things that you think are expected of you, whether that's society's pressures or individual pressures or how you were raised in the way in which that is kind of impeding upon your true self and that very few people are able to kind of live comfortably and specifically the way that they want to live. There's like a kind of stymied quality to a lot of his characters. And I, you could,

couldn't really tell a movie with Borgly's sensibility through the eyes of Zendaya's character because it would necessitate a little bit more vulnerability and understanding of what was happening there. Charlie is the person who is like, well, shit, what do I do now? And how does this affect me in my performance of my perfect life? And the movie starts so interestingly. Even though I've seen it a while ago, I can't forget. It's that moment where he's observing her in a coffee shop and he's like looking at her and waiting for his inn to go make a move because he's drawn to her. Right.

Because she's Zendaya. She looks like Zendaya. She looks like the kind of person here like, now that's the kind of person I should be married to. And his anxiety and his concern and his kind of overthinking of having the right social experience, like that defines the tone of the movie. Yes.

And then ultimately what he does is looks up the tile of her book and lies about having read it. Hence the performance. Yeah. Now, what's interesting is that character, or then reveals the pretense pretty quickly on the first dates. So there is, you know, how much people are willing to perform is sort of an inverse ratio into how much Borgley values them or likes them in the film, which I relate to.

But this is another, this is another reason why a wedding is such a perfect, perfect choice for the setting of this movie. And it really is more of a wedding movie. then the whole school shooting of it breaks my rule would it does break your rule but I guess it starts like the Tuesday like the week of the wedding so it does technically start with a wedding and it ends after the wedding does so in that sense it could barely hold on to your role which is weddings that's movies that start with a wedding are good and movies that end with a wedding are bad movies very rarely end with weddings this disastrous. That's true.

But they're so funny. But everything in the lead-up to the wedding about the wedding itself and the performance of the wedding and the people in the industry. It's one of the great wedding bullshit movies. There's like a dance instructor who is just so mean to them. And also why are they learning a dance to perform at their wedding? I know it's a thing that people do. A lot of this stuff is very true, though. Of course it is.

This is a very sharp satire about this world. The shot list that Zoe Winters plays the wedding photographer. That scene is absolutely incredible. The tasting menu you mentioned, there's a wedding DJ who shows up because the original wedding DJ gets fired because she was doing heroin on the street. I love that bit. That side bit was so good when they're watching. But that was that there are a number of moments like this where how we judge other people

that we don't know very well is one of the central. conceits of the film and that one in particular is so interesting and the idea of that woman who denies it denies that she is doing what it was so clear to them that she was doing and the idea of like everyone kind of trying to protect something and not being comfortable being who they are is like the subtext of the entire movie but the wedding stuff is the inversion of that because it is the most public act it's the place where you invite all of your loved ones everyone who really knows you to see you do something that everyone believes you should all do to be truly happy in this society.

And invariably, it's like the people who are in this industry are just like the biggest ghouls in the world, which is clever. I didn't have that experience. I had a perfectly nice wedding. But, you know, I know you have some conflicted feelings. I thought that this was extremely well observed. And then there is a structural element where for the first part of the movie, the Patinson character is trying to write his perfect wedding speech.

and like what would be the performed ideal version of his declaration of love for this person. And then, you know, it kind of gets ruined several times over. But also the most performative and the worst person in the movie is the Alanaheim character, who ultimately gives one of the great nightmare made of honor wedding toasts, which I think we should just, and I can say this, because I'm a woman, though I've never been a maid of honor, we should outlaw these. It's, it just, it honestly, it goes very badly most of the time. Have you ever given a toast at a wedding? Yeah. Well, the rehearsal dinner. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yes, but yes. And I did a great job. But, good for you. Yeah, don't worry about it.

You did too when you gave one at our wedding. Yeah, I've given a few. In general, I, you know, know, unless you're really ready to give the toast, as my sister-in-law, Ruthie Barron was at our wedding, like, you know, don't do it. You know, come with the goods or just say, I love you and go home. But this one purposefully for the, for the film, is just an absolutely cringy nightmare. And she is putting on the performance of being outraged that people, like, aren't being honest, even though she's doing it in a wedding speech, it's great stuff. It's really good.

It's just another nice little snapshot of an idea, too, which is that the thin line between beloved eternal friendship and mortal enemy is very thin. And that one simple revelation can also fracture that relationship profoundly. You know, it does make you wonder why Alanaheim is even at that wedding. You know, like why she's continued to participate in that friendship in any meaningful. It's a little confusing.

Right. But, you know, I think the movie has like three different sets and tones. One is what seems to be a kind of frothy rom-com at the beginning. Very quickly pivots to almost like a social thriller with some kind of anxiety ammo baked inside. And then the final third of the movie is like borderline slapstick comedy. I mean, the wedding in particular is very outsized and big in a way that the first half of the movie isn't. And it starts with Patinson pursuing in a bungling fashion this kind of impromptu office affair with Haley, Ben Gates' character, which I thought was so funny and so strange and so off kilter in the way that some of the best stuff in this movie is, which then culminates in like a big thrashing moment in the finale. The movie seems to lose a little bit of interest, I think, in some of that, like, provocation and like, who are we really idea as it goes into the final third?

saying that's necessarily a bad thing because I think of the movie. I think Dream scenario had a hard time tying up its loose ends. And this movie seems more tightly focused on making sure that we get to the end of this movie in a clean way, perhaps too clean. I don't know. What do you think about that? I mean, I appreciated the very classical romantic comedy ending turned on its head, which is satisfying in that real puzzle sense of we get to where we're going and you

as soon as it starts the callback, you're like, oh, I see you put the piece here and you put the piece here and there is something both soothing about that as a viewer and then also because this entire movie has been a rejection of not just romantic comedies

but also, you know, the idea of love and marriage and weddings and the ability to know someone else. it works because it's tied in a bow but also is it at all. And then you wonder, you know, what's going to happen next? And it's a neat ending that is also not neat. And I appreciate that.

I agree that it completely just drops the ethics of the school shooting of it all. And if there are people who watch this and are just like very offended by that segment of the film and don't think that it's addressed appropriately or, you know, you know, born out respectfully. I completely understand that. I don't agree. Yeah, that level of piousness doesn't necessarily appeal to me in terms of a movie like this.

This is a movie that is certainly talking about serious subjects, but it's attempting to have fun with individual human foibles, which is something that I enjoy. I think it's really good. I think it's impressive. Totally agree. Hold of a certain kind of tone. I have to talk about the apartment for a little.

I mean, I just, and you mentioned like, the slick Scandy quality. And I suppose there is a Scandy mid-century modern element to the design of the apartment. But it is, it's so knowing. It was like Sophia Coppola level of detail. Like there are like 14 different Akari lamps, you know, in each structure. It's really, really funny. Like the zealage tile in the kitchen. Obviously the spiral staircase. They just

everything that Zendaya is wearing, the details are playing into the film and spot on and tell a story all their own. I was very amused. Yeah, I get the impression he walks through these worlds pretty consistently.

And I think he's also kind of an atore for our times insofar as we live in a time when people will fight online about the dumbest bullshit for hours and hours and hours. but when something genuinely, culturally, socially,

dangerous or scary comes up, everybody's like, fuck. Like, I don't know what to do. Like, in person, I don't even know how to have this conversation without either hectoring someone about it or completely turning off. And that there's no middle ground,

there's no ability to kind of talk about our feelings about things or mistakes that we've made in a productive way, which is a very European sensibility to bring to an American setting. And I think he's very good at it. I like this movie. Now, I don't know if this movie's going to be a hit.

I think it's cool that Zendaya and Patton are throwing their weight behind stuff like this. I think this is what you're supposed to do. You can make Batman and you can make Dune and you should also make these kinds of movies. If it's successful, it's going to be entirely on their shoulders, right? That's like we want to spend time with them for two hours in a movie theater. And also the A-24, you know, hide-the-ball strategy, which you invoked materialists. And this is maybe not the same week, but the same time of the year, last year that materialists got its release. Yes.

And many people felt that they were getting or expected a romantic comedy and instead got, you know, a man shortening his legs. A leg shortening farce. Yeah. And didn't respond. And there was a mismatch between the marketing and what audiences got that they. Purposeful. purposeful and people still went to see the materialists. Yeah, materialists, you know, we had a ball talking about it on the show.

I think we both thought it was very, very mixed bag of stuff. I think this movie is a little bit more successful creatively and will be a little bit less successful culturally because I do think you have more people who are going to be like, what the fuck is that about this movie? Yeah. Whereas materialist was sort of like, huh, that was weird. Totally. But not in a way that could offend, really, unless you're really short. I guess. In this movie...

Zoe Winters also had a questionable plotline in that film as well. She's really become a kind of... Yeah, she's amazing. Sixth Man of the Year for A-24. In all of them. In some ways, I think you're right that this is more of a... Like, what this is not what I was promised. In other ways, I do actually think...

It is a romantic comedy. It's just a completely upside-down one. You're right. You're totally right. Do you think this is a big twist? Because certainly this is available to people out there, and some people have had it spoiled for them. Yeah. I think the way that you set this up is right, which is the movie just does not really work as well if you know what the twist is. And you didn't know, going in.

I was, you know, going through the list of like all-time classic movie plot twists. And almost all of these twists happen in the final 30 minutes of the movie. And this one happens in the first 30 minutes. Yeah. And so this is a little different than your standard fare. But we haven't really talked about plot twists that much on the show over time. Do you have a favorite? You know, I'll always remember being 12, no, 15 and seeing 6 cents.

And I made it to 6 cents without knowing what was going on. Yeah. Yeah, that's brutal. But that was incredible. And I was also the right age. I mean, historically, I am not a very smart. movie watcher in that I will just kind of go along with it and then give myself over and be surprised. But that one I really, I obviously didn't know what was going to happen.

Yeah, that really ruined a great movie for me in some ways. You can go back and watch it and enjoy the film in different ways now. The usual suspects, I think, was the big keyhole for me, the one where I was like, oh, you can, you can do this in a movie. And I thought very cleverly showed us flashing images that had been presented throughout the movie as all the little clues. summing up the Kaiser Sozay revelation about Kevin Spacey's character of verbal kint. You know, there's a couple of like all-time classics, a few all-time classics that we can talk about. There's psycho and the idea of Mrs. Bates, Norman's mother actually being dead and learning that Norman is in fact the killer. You cited Casablanca, which I would not have thought as a movie plot twist.

Well, this is, well, you know, Victor Lasso is my husband and was even when we knew each other in Paris, which is, like I call this the Jane Eyre but the like in all romantic dramas like the oops actually I'm married yeah there's a there's a secret spouse somewhere else and this comes that comes fairly early uh

Planet of the Apes is one that was spoiled for me by attendant cultural media you know if you just watch the Simpsons you could have a lot of movies spoiled for you as a kid growing up but that one and also just remember my dad saying Soylent Green is people which is the big revelation of the Charlton of the Charlton Heston movie Soiling Green from the 70s.

But we've gotten a lot in recent years. I've noticed that a lot of recent movie history is defined by oh shit moments in movies. Old boy has a few of them, but the one in particular that's the most upsetting is when we learn that DeSu has been tricked into sleeping with his own daughter.

Not ideal. No. Not what you want. No. Park Jam Wook, what a little freak. Arrival. I had not read that short story before I saw the film. Yeah, nor had I.

And very devastating revelation at the end. If people haven't seen these movies, they're going to be really mad at the... Hope you've turned the pot off by now. We're talking about movie plot twists here. Crazy stupid love, if you Google movie plot twist, this is one of the most cited plot twists in recent movie times. Do you feel that this is a plot twist? When do we learn? Is it really just at the barbecue at the end?

I think, yeah, I think it's more than an hour into the movie that Ryan Gosling is. in fact dating Steve Corel's daughter who's played by Emma Stone and that this suave. Don't they learn that, but we don't know. Like, we don't see Emma Stone talking to Steve Correll beforehand. I don't think it's, I think it's what Sean's saying. I think it's closer to around the hour mark. It's not like right at the end of the movie. And then, but the barbecue at the end is when they all find out and they do the fireman.

Exactly. Yep. Yes. Okay. Listen, whatever the younger generation needs. I like that movie. I like it when they do the dirty dance. lifting Lyft. Yeah, it's a good film. Yeah. The prestige. Yeah. They're twins. Yep. You're just, you're just naming them all off. Sorry, if you haven't seen the prestige or old boy or a rival in crazy stupid love.

It's a weird podcast to be listening to, one and a half hours in. The others is one that I like quite a bit. You see that one? That's an M-night, Shama-Lah? No, which one is that? That's Alejandro Amanabar. No. Spanish filmmaker. Nicole Kidman is the star of this film? You haven't seen this film. Oh my God, don't even look at what I've written down. Then you should, I don't want to spoil this for you. Well, I already read it. Have I not seen this? Oh, it's a very good film.

Oh, no, I've seen this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen it. I just didn't remember. Yeah, of course. We did, because we did Kidman Hall of Fame. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

That is a great twist there. Primal Fear was one year after the usual suspects. Yeah. And it's good. Good for you, Marty. You know, the revelation that Aaron Stampler is not a split personality, but it is in fact a sociopath. and knowing murder. There's a whole...

This also, though, primal fear then ruined a lot of crime fiction afterwards. How so? Because he's a sociopath, or he's a psychopath, or she's a psychopath, is only a satisfying reveal once, you know?

Okay. And then it's only like, oh my gosh, in primal fear. And then the next time it's like, well, there's actually no rhyme or reason to what's happened here because this person was just a psychopath. Okay.

I didn't know that. I don't read a lot of contemporary crime fiction. I get mad when it's, you know, every writer does it once, you know, but when you're in the book and you realize like, oh, this is the psychopath novel, it's just not very satisfying. I don't think I quite realize that this was David Fincher's stock and trade purely for a period of time. Seven doesn't have a twist so much as a shocking revelation at the end of it, but the game and Fight Club are both pure twist movies. And Gone Girl is also a pure twist movie. Yeah. And I mean, based on a book with a twist, but.

Yes, of course. I mean, so is Fight Club. The game and fight club, we don't learn the twist until the very end of the movie. But Gone Girl, we learn, is it less than an hour into the movie that we learn that this is all a scheme? Yeah, or maybe the halfway mark. I mean, it's kind of bifurcated. The first half is Affleck and then the second half is... I don't remember her name, Rosman Pike. Amy. Amazing Amy. Yes. The cool girl. The crying game? Yeah. How do you think that's aging?

Really, really great, I'm sure. Yeah, I haven't seen it. I've never seen the movie. I remember my parents talking about this. It was a flashpoint for movie discussion. There are a great many examples of this in horror movies over the years that have shocking revelations. I just wrote down a handful that popped into my mind as I was thinking about them last night. But saw is one.

There have been 10 saw movies now, and I think they're kind of like, you know, not taken very seriously. But the first saw was shocking. I think the first saw played Sunday. as an independent horror release from James Wan and was shocking to people. The Mist was an adaptation of a Stephen King story, but that has a crazy twist in the film adaptation. Sleepaway Camp, that's another wild one.

Orphan, Cabin in the Woods. Have you seen 10 Cloverfield Lane? Do you know about that one? That's not the average... No, it's the second Cloverfield movie. Yeah, no. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman. They're going to spoil it for me now?

No, no. They're trapped in like a subterfell. Iranian space during what we think is possibly a post-apocalyptic moment but we don't know. The John Goodman character is very paranoid. Okay. Maybe schizophrenic.

Check it out. I think it's really worth watching. Okay. I think it's darn good. Barbarian? Yeah? You know about that because we spoiled it for you on this podcast. Malignant. Another James Wan movie. Parasite? It's a good one. It also comes about an hour in, right? Maybe a little... Well, the third family revelation to me is the big twist of the movie.

That's the like... In the basement. Yeah. And that amazing shot of the husband coming up the stairs. Yes. Yeah, maybe you're right that it's only... That it's like an hour 15 or something. But then there's a while of...

Because they banish her. And then they all work their way in. And then... Or they've all worked their way in. But I don't know. There's at least another 30 minutes when you know. So it's not the very end. Yeah, you're right.

There's a lot of incident after that. Do you want to speak about your personal trauma? Sure. Sure. So I was recently at home watching Return of the Jedi with my son, with both my children. You should hear size say yub, yub. It's quite cute. And I'm sitting there.

Zach's in the other room and knocks my older son out of nowhere goes, Hey, Mama, did you know that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's dad? And that is true, and I did know it. But what I knew is that my son had not seen Empire Strikes Back because my husband decided to skip from a new hope to return of the Jedi because he thought Empire Strikes Back is too scary. And then I learned that my son, he told my son, He was like, well, he needed to know for plot purposes.

He needed to understand Return of the Jedi. He needs to know what happens and Empire Strikes Back. So I told him. I'm still so angry. I cannot believe this. My son doesn't understand. My son thought that the Super Mario movie was about like a ship, guys. Like he doesn't need to know.

He can just watch the movie. And when the time is right, we'll show him Empire Strikes Back. Why are you ruining this perfect moment? really, really angry about it. Well, that's just something that wouldn't happen in my household. I'm very sorry. And I didn't have anything to say about Zach made the executive decision that we were going to go, a new hope, and then return of the Jedi.

And I, you know, it's fine. You have to, you have to let both parents parent, you know? So I was like, that is fine. I'm not going to get involved. But Knox says this out of nowhere. And I was like, who told you? Like, how did you... Were you on Wikipedia?

He was like, Dad. Dad told me. Yeah. That's just... That's just a very sad story. It's a very sad story about snatching wonder from the mind of a child.

He maintains that he did the right thing. And then... Now, I will say Empire Strikes Back is scary. And, you know, it was not an issue in our home, but I have heard many parents that I've talked to about this, especially because when we were watching the Star Wars movies, I was telling a lot of parents.

Like, okay, we're doing the Star Wars movies. And some were... like, oh, it's great, this, this works, this doesn't work. And some were like, we did a new hope. I tried to do Empire and they couldn't do it because it was too intense. So I understand the motivation. The spoiling couldn't be me. That's not something I would do. He stands by it. And then as like a rejoinder, he keeps throwing back the fact that I allegedly told Knox that it's a grown-up in the Mickey Mouse suit, which, first of all, I don't remember saying that. And I don't think that that's true. And second of all, I think that that is really different. You should tell him as a grown-up,

but that it's always Uncle Chris. That would be the way to make that okay, I think. And Zach thinks that is worse than spoiling Empire Strikes Back. I just, I couldn't disagree more. This is a fundamental issue in our marriage. Well, you know, life is tough, you know, and you've got to learn the hard way

that you're not going to get things exactly the way that you want them all the time. You're learning it now as you parent. Knox is learning it now as he has the magical wonder of the Empire Strikes Back, one of the greatest moments in movie Revelation history taken from him cruelly. One day he'll be able to come here

and do a podcast with Alice about how his father ruined his life. Now he can't ever have that. It's a real shame. Yeah. But that is among the greatest plot twist of all time. That is. Is learning that Anakin's Cavalcourt.

You know, I'll be curious to see if as Knox gets into the prequels, if you guys allow him to see the prequels, if he develops the same affection and interest in Anakin as my daughter has, because I think Anakin might now be one of her, if not her favorite characters. She really feels like he's misunderstood.

And we watched Rogue One the other day, which is really not for kids at all. But at the end of Rogue One, Darth Vader shows up. Yeah. And he just wrecked shot. He's got his red lightsaber and he's just going to town trying to get the map to the Death Star that leads into a New Hope, right? That movie ends right where New Hope takes off. And she was like kind of pumped that he was kicking ass And killing rebel soldiers

So you know We understand these things differently When when we were kids where Darth Vader Was the ultimate embodiment of evil But it's a little cool He's kind of a sad kid That's no That's that's a millennial shit right there

Yeah There's a historic Pat and Oswald bit about that But when you watch the movies as a young person And you have all this context and backstory It changes your definition of it But your son will never really understand. He had it taken from him. It's too bad.

At least he has Mickey Mouse. I told him that that was wrong, that it really is Mickey Mouse. And he was like, and he has a tummy and everything. So. Good question. Yeah, we all do. Why does the Mandalorian wear a helmet? It's a part of the ancient religion that he follows,

that you always have to have your head covered. Okay. That is a sign of respect. Okay. I think that's right. Thank you. I can be completely wrong. Okay.

You want to, well, I mean, maybe Easter would be a good time to talk to him about ancient religions. I'm going to like you do that? I would be happy to. Yeah. And we know, we know that you love to explain. I do. Complicated things to small children. Yeah.

Well, it's one of my skills, you know. I've been doing it here on the show for years. As we've learned, this is what happens when I let other people parent, you know, is that Empire Strikes Back gets killed and suddenly, you know. Well, you can trust me with all things, Star Wars. Other stuff, very debatable. That's not, may not be my true skill. I think that's it for us.

Okay. How the Mets doing? Good, bad. Whoa. It could be better. Okay. Well, it can be better. I just recorded in a segment of Metz Corner this morning.

I saw that, but to be candid, won't listen to that. With all respect to Zachlo, who I also love and admire. Okay. You won't listen. Why? I don't have that kind of time, you know? I see. But I'm watching, I'm doing the Meryl Streep tape, you know? I know, me too.

I'm really digging in. So I just wanted to check in with you. They're three and three. Okay. They are 29th in the league with runners in scoring position batting average-wise. Right. Okay. That's not good.

Some struggles. Yeah. But we're going to bounce back. Okay. It's going to be okay. Next week on the show, speaking of statistics and data. Yeah. We're going back to 35 under 35.

Our patented movie star ranking, we've been doing this for many years. I think this will be our fourth 35 under 35. Wow. Yeah, because when we started it, I was 35. and I wanted to be eligible and you said no. Well, that's sad. Those days are long gone.

Nope. You're eligible for 35 over 35 now, but we're not doing that. We're doing 35 under. I thought we were going to be short on some names because we have had a lot of people graduate. But then I've discovered a great many new names that have been added since the last time we did it.

So this will be a fun exercise. We haven't even started yet. I know. Well, we had to do this. We get cracking. Thanks to Jack Sanders for us to work on this episode. Did we spoil any movies for you? for Lucas?

Not really. I don't think so. Lucas? He's never seen crazy stupid love. Okay, well, so Ryan Gosling is friends with Steve Carell

and then dating his daughter and they don't know. I'm sorry. Amazing playing movie. Great playing movie. Good call. Speaking of Lucas, thanks to Lucas

for his support on this episode. And we'll be back Monday with this ranking, which I think will be received very well. People are always kind, supportive. They listen.

I would say listening comprehension very high among our audience. They have respect. Yeah. And a sophistication. And they are committed to this project like we are. And I love them. Yeah.

See you next time.