The Big Picture - The Top Five Performances of 2024. Plus: The Amy Adams Hall of Fame and ‘Nightbitch.’

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Sean is joined Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney to run through five of their favorite individual performances from the year in acting (1:00) before discussing Marielle Heller’s ‘Nightbitch,’ the story of a stay-at-home mom—played by Amy Adams—who is experiencing the normal stresses of motherhood and life while undergoing a more surreal transformation (43:00). Then, they select which 10 performances they would include if they were tasked with building the Amy Adams Hall of Fame (1:04:00). Finally, Sean is joined by Pablo Larraín to discuss ‘Maria,’ the third film in his recent trilogy about misunderstood and highly successful and famous women (1:54:00). The two discuss Angelina Jolie’s performance at the center of the movie, the unique challenges of portraying something as ineffable as opera singing, and how Larraín decides which moments to home in on when creating these works of historical fiction. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson, and Pablo Larraín Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening? It's Todd McShay, and I'm back with a new home and a new show at The Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year-round with all my NFL draft information. Big boards, mock drafts, and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that'll include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week.

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I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Amy Adams. Later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with Pablo Lorraine. He's the director of Maria, the third installment of his trilogy about influential women in the second half of the 20th century.

His previous two movies, Jackie and Spencer, were major showcases for their star actresses. And Maria, which follows the opera legend Maria Callas, is no different. It's a platform for Angelina Jolie. Lorraine is a fascinating filmmaker.

It's great to chat with him. Please stick around for our talk. But first, today we're talking about another woman, not quite a diva like Maria Callas. I hope not. Seemingly a regular old gal, honestly. I'm here with two other regular old gals, Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson. Hi guys, how you doing? Hey, Sean. This is a podcast for the every woman, I like to think. That's how I feel as well. I'm very excited because, you know, I've been wanting to talk about Amy Adams. She has a very complicated reputation here at The Ringer.

There are some supporters and some not so supporters. I am a supporter. And she has a big new movie out in December called Night Bitch, one of the great titles of 2024 at the movies. And I've been looking forward to this movie quite a bit. And I was thinking about it. And I have some mixed feelings about the movie, and we'll get into it in our discussion.

But I think that her performance in this movie is quite good and it inspired some thoughts about the best performances I've seen at the movies this year we're recording this a little bit earlier in December but you guys see a lot of movies and you have a lot of opinions about movies too many perhaps um Rob we've been podding up a storm this week it's just been a week for takes um honestly it's been a lot of fun and uh so I thought let's just talk about our favorite performances. And I hit you guys up late last night. We fucking filled in the gaps beautifully. So I'm really excited about this.

Any general thoughts? Good movie performance year? Bad year? Was it hard to come up with your list? I think good performance year, kind of weird movie year. I found myself liking a lot of things, not loving a lot of things in terms of the overall movies. This isn't going to be a year that goes down in history for me, but it's going to be one with a lot of things, not loving a lot of things in terms of the overall movies. Like this isn't going to be a year that goes down in history for me,

but it's going to be one with a lot of individual moments and performances that stick with me for a long time. I found this exercise very challenging. A lot of, yeah, a lot of these performances are in despite of, you know, the movie that they're in. Not a lot, but some. Mine as well. Some of mine are like that too. But also narrowing it down to five, getting this assignment last night and narrowing down

a year to five was tough. So for my own purposes, I decided to come up with like five categories. Oh. Love what you're doing. So that's how I went about it. Let's just do it. Let's just do the list. Rob, why don't you give us number five?

My number five five very simple rule if you lick a knife in a movie you are on my list Austin Butler for Dune 2 honestly stole the show

in a movie that's very hard to steal the show in so many heavyweight performances I think there's lots to recommend about Dune 2 overall

I was mesmerized by all of the black and white action overall in the middle of this movie and in particular Austin Butler just being an absolute freak.

Like, not only let him be a freak in more movies, but he needs to embrace being a freak as often as humanly possible. What'd you think of the voice? I mean, clearly I'm pro. I'm into it. Did you not appreciate his vocal stylings? On the spectrum of Austin Butler fans,

it's a ringer. I am on the lower side, personally. But I did like this better than the Elvis voice. Well, sure. What if you did the whole press tour in this voice? I think Stellan Skarsgård would be like, excuse me, that's my voice. Rob, do you remember your immediate review

of Dune II when the lights came up? We did see it together. We saw a screening. What did I say? You said that was sick, Joe. Well, guess what? I was right. I fully agree with that fully agree with that no some people don't stand by their opinions here at the ringer i maintain the dune 2 was fucking i think about that all the time rob mooney that

was sick joe uh okay joe why don't you give us your number five because we haven't talked about this movie at all on this show this year yeah okay um this the category that i invented for myself is sort of newcomer up and comer uh so this is maizey stella and my old ass uh a movie title that is fun to say and a movie i loved that i think really flew under the radar and i think it was people don't know i mean maize Maisie Stella has been in show business her entire life. People might know her from her, you know, musical duo act that she had with her sister when she was younger. She was on Nashville. But this was just like a real leap in quality.

And she holds down this entire movie. They kind of mispackaged it as an Aubrey Plaza film or like a two-hander. And it's really not. Aubrey Plaza is kind of barely in this movie and it is Maisie Stella's movie. And I thought it was wonderful. And she was just really engaging and complicated and at times unlikable, but always root forable

and up for anything and does a whole Justin Bieber fantasy sequence. And I just thought it was like a really good sort of announcement of her talents. I love that pick a lot. I'm a little bit lower on the movie than you are, but I like what it's after. You know,

it's a, it's kind of similar to Night Bitch where I'm like, good idea, good performances. You almost got there with me with what you're going for. But I think also being a 40 something year old man, maybe the movie is not like directly targeted at me. Oh,

is it not? You know, like my 21 year old sister is like, this is the most important movie that's not directly targeted at me. Oh, is it not? You know, like my 21-year-old sister is like, this is the most important movie that's ever been made. So, you know, it's different strokes. How does it feel to have literally one movie that isn't programmed to you? It's the first one, actually, in the history of film.

Guess what, guys? We're about to talk about another one. Well, that is true in some respects, but we can come back to that. Okay, my number five is whenever I make these lists, I always like to find one actor who gives two performances in the same year that I really, really like. In this case, two different kinds of performances.

I think I stole this one from Rob too. Or did I steal it from you too as well, Joe? No, you don't care about this person. You hate this person. I love this person. Lupita Nyong'o, who's an actor who I really love and who has had a relatively muted last few years in Hollywood. She was, of course, in Wakanda forever,

but has not exploded as a star in the way that you might have thought after Us and Black Panther and a couple of other films. But she's in two great movies this year. One, A Quiet Place Day One, where she is the lead figure and is, I thought, fantastic as a woman in hospice at the end of the world. Is the cat not the lead figure of A Quiet Place Day One?

If this were the House of R, then you could say that, but that's not what this is. I had to represent. And then her other performance is in The Wild Robot, which is a movie that I've now seen three times because I have a small child, and my daughter loves this movie. And so I hear her performance, and you know what?

It's not easy to give a robot performance. Robot acting, putting a character to the robot essence is challenging. And she gives a great vocal performance. I think it's one of the hidden arts of moviemaking is being able to act in this format. So I just love her. She has much more color in her performance styles

than I would have guessed when I first saw her. And these are two very nice examples that are very different. I think when she hit the scene in 12 Years a Slave, the Marvel films, like something very showy

about those kinds of movies, something very loud and kind of brash horror movies are also, she's very expressive in us. These are much subtler performances

and I really like them a lot. She's one of the most beautiful people that has ever existed and so the fact that she is so talented as a voice performer because her Maz Kanata

is also iconic. I'm like, Lupita, I always want to gaze at your face, but also you're very, very good at this. She is. Save some for the rest of them a little bit too.

Exactly. A Quiet Place was the one that I really wanted to anoint on this list. That's a franchise that I don't really have that much of a connection to. I liked the first one well enough.

I was really put off by the second one. Was not planning to see the third movie. Until the buzz started kind of building that, oh, it was actually quite good. You're a Sarnoski head, though. You loved Pig. This is what drew me in. I'm like, okay, wait. You're telling me Sarnoski's involved. You're telling me Lupita's here. You're telling me the cat's here. And I

found myself, not unlike Pig, so moved by her performance in this movie like again acting opposite CGI monsters that don't exist that are even then barely in the movie that's a weird way to talk about Joe Quinn okay he's quite good in this movie yeah he is great and covered in dust for a lot of the movie you know fighting with the elements fighting with the urban environment like it is a survival movie in a way that I think leads to impressive performances of a kind, but not the sort that usually get actually awarded.

Exactly what I was thinking when I put them on. You're not going to see these at the Oscars, so it's fun. Some of these names you'll see that we have here will be at the Oscars, but none of those. Okay, Rob, what about number four? Number four for me, David Johnson from Alien Romulus. A performance everyone I think was raving about the day this movie came out. In particular, another like modulating performance, right?

It's not just another person playing a synthetic in an alien movie, which is great. We love those. But the various degradations, the various reprogrammings that go on over the course of the movie, it's a lot that he has to play. And really, it's the defining performance of the movie.

So the fact that he was able to pull all that together, an actor who I think we've seen in other things be very promising, but never quite have this kind of spotlight in a movie this big. And so I love to see it. Great pick. I really like him.

He jumped out in industry right away when I first saw him. I think that's the first time I'd seen him. And it's paired with the Lupita Wild Robot performance you know like humanizing a machine is a challenge. And it's tough I mean following the footsteps of Michael Fassbender doing it

in two Alien movies and doing it so well. Not as many pan flutes this time but to each their own. And that's a note I have. We're trying to get more flutes involved but yeah and ultimately to be a robot, to be a synthetic and to be the beating heart of a movie like that is just a really impressive feat.

I like that pick. Really like your next pick too. This is good for you. Thank you. What's your number four? The category is you really didn't need to go that hard. And it's for Emma Corrin in Deadpool and Wolverine. She plays the villain of this film.

And this film is a film I think that you and I agree that we had a great time watching, but we don't think is very good. But I had a great time watching it. And she's one of the main reasons why. Because she's really went for it in her physicality. She does this really creepy thing where she puts her hand inside people's heads. But there's just like, she's having so much fun. And especially,

I know you guys just talked about Nosferatu, a film that she's like pretty wasted in. She has a lot that she can do. And she just gave it all to Deadpool and Wolverine for some reason. And I loved it. I thought she was amazing. It's kind of fascinating. I think part of it is because Emma Corrin's one of the only people whose face we've not seen before.

We didn't know that character going into that movie. And so it feels new and fresh, but brings something really great to it. So, great pick. My number four is Hugh Grant in Heretic. This is the one you sold for me. Oh, did I? Yeah. Okay, good.

Well, I haven't really had much of a chance to talk about the movie too much on the show, so maybe we can do it a little bit here. But a movie that I think is like two-thirds perfect and then one-third i wish it got there um but he is the primal focus of the first two-thirds and it is i think the culmination of hugh grant leaning into his i'm a piece of shit era um you know this thing that we all kind of felt right underneath the surface of every hugh grant performance that he has in the Paddington time, in the Guy Ritchie collaborations. In Wonka. In Wonka, certainly. Like, he's now like, I'm just a little motherfucker.

Like, I'm just a bastard. Yeah. Ain't I a scamp? Exactly. And in this one in particular, he's a quite evil scamp. Yeah. And quite, he's a podcaster. You know, like, he is really, his character is, he, he's a podcaster, you know,

like he is really, his character is, he's not actually a podcaster, but you know, that's sort of like the self-regard, the overwhelming, unnecessary amount of information

to explain simple things, the certainty about impossible to understand ideas. This is what we do, guys. This is who, this is who we are. That's fair.

Do I see a little bit of self-reflection in the Inheritance? But he is just having an absolute blast with this script and it's really fun and it's really fun

to see him bouncing off of two actors who I think could be really big stars in Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. I really like both of them a lot. I love Sophie Thatcher.

Yeah, yeah. And the energy that they bring. You know, the setup of the film is very much like chamber drama. It feels like a stage play in many ways. There's really only two locations for a long stretch of time. But he makes the absolute most of it. So what did you think of Heretic?

Oh, I really, I mean, I agree with you. It's not a perfect movie. But I think what's really interesting, I don't know if you saw the bit he did. I think it was on Seth Meyers where, or maybe Fallon, where they asked him to read a line in his rom-com guys, his like fumbling rom-com guys, and then make the same line menacing. And it was really fun. And he had a great time with it. And I love in this movie, when he's sort of luring the girls into his home in the first place, he is doing the Aw Shucks bumbling Hugh Grant thing.

And it's so, and knowing where this is going, it's so fun to see him do this thing that we watched him start his career with and then transition into the absolute chilling new persona. It's a very thin line between the stalking in a horror movie and the stalking in a rom-com. But it's almost like an active commentary on how transparently

kind of full of shit he was in like nine months. You know what I mean? Or you're like, are you really happy to be in this movie? Like you're not happy to be in this movie.

We know who you are, truly. I'm going to preserve my innocence around Four Weddings and the Funeral. Absolutely. But the rest, we can toss on the fire. Yeah.

You haven't seen Heretic yet? Not yet. Okay. I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah, you will't seen Heretic yet? Not yet. Okay. I think you will enjoy it. Yeah, you will. All right, Rob. What's your number three? My number three is

Joan Chen and Dee Dee. Yes. Playing the mom in a coming-of-age story is maybe the most thankless job in Hollywood. Unless you win an Oscar. Unless you win.

Which does happen from time to time. Granted, I think Joan Chen is unbelievable in this movie. And the degree to which they let her be the mom who's trying from time to time, granted, I think Jun-Jin is unbelievable in this movie. And the degree to which they let her be the mom who's trying

to wrest control of her family in basically a situation in which she's kind of left alone by her husband to do this by herself or with her mother-in-law in this case, but also be incredibly funny,

also like undercutting her kid in the process while trying to prop him up. It's such a delicate dance. And this movie hit me very directly in a lot of specific time-oriented ways. This is a movie of my generation. But this performance, I just think, of that particular genre and form, it's hard to ask for much better than what Joan Chen's delivering. Great pick. The scene in particular where Dee Dee and his new crew of skater friends are all hanging out around his computer and his mom enters the room and sort of demythologizes Dee Dee's world that he has created for these cool older kids is like punishingly real.

That's why I haven't seen Heretic. I've seen enough horror movies in the middle of Dee Dee. It was Dee Dee. It's so good. Yeah, and I think similar to like Patricia Arquette who you just like referenced, Joan Chen is someone who we haven't seen for a little while. Yeah. And it was really nice to see her do what she can do. She's great.

Number three for you, Joanna. I'm calling this a scene stealer. And it's Yura Borisov from Anora, which we've talked, you and I have talked about. But... Which scene? All of... i told you i did a past an entire past this movie where i was basically just watching him yeah and um we were talking about this we were talking about the way in which sean baker did this like really generous cut of this movie where uh there's the cameras is constantly lingering on this character. Him watching her. Him watching her.

And so we're like watching the movie through his eyes in a lot of ways. But he has not, I mean, he's significantly in the movie, but he doesn't have like a ton of dialogue. And so what he can do magnetically with just the camera on him and the way that Sean Baker knows that this is what this actor who is a very popular actor in Russia can do was I think a revelation and I would love to see him in everything. Awesome performance would love to see this nominated I feel like that would be a fitting thing and I think Karen Karagulian as well as the sort of pastor figure is also really really fun and funny in this movie and is in a lot of Sean Baker's films as well. They're like antic comedy that spins off in the middle of this movie. I think just kind of takes the whole thing away and obviously a new and exciting directions for the plot. But yeah,

having semi-qualified muscle be a point of view character is a new one for me, but one that I really loved. Yeah, it's a great twist. Okay, my number three is Marianne Jean Baptiste. Have either of you seen Heart Traits yet? No, not yet. The other one he stole from me. Oh, really? Yeah. She's a thief. Another performance I'm rooting for during awards season. Hugely. This is her reunion with Mike Lee.

I believe they last worked together in Secrets and Lies, which is 20 years ago at this point. And she plays a bitter and sad and frustrated woman in her, I guess, late fifties, um, in living in a kind of middle-class, lower middle-class England. And it's a very tightly focused character study of this small family, um,

of kind of Caribbean English heritage. And it's very rare to see an actor be so fearlessly angry and unkind and utterly like emotionally destroyed for the entirety of a film. There's like a sustained quality to it that is so powerful. You're watching that movie waiting for the turn and then the turn doesn't come. He doesn't give it to you. It's like, oh, but at the same time, she's so horrible oh but at the same time she's so horrible and at the same time i feel for her so much and that comes down to the filmmaking but the performance

is you know it's a it's a real high wire of how do you keep us engaged in this story while watching you know there's a particular particularly a sequence in the movie where she goes shopping for a couch she's wandering around a furniture store and she's just absolutely heinous to the woman who's working in the store and as you're watching the movie you're like what the fuck is this woman's problem and yet she manages to kind of pull you back 20 minutes later and giving like creating empathy for a person who otherwise seems incapable of receiving it without redeeming her right yeah yeah very deep movie very interesting portrait like this movie famously was rejected from Cannes and Venice. And I think some of the suspicion is that this is the first time Mike Lee's worked with an all-black cast.

I don't know if that's the reason why, but it's a movie that more people should see when it comes out. So it's a shout out to Hard Truths. Okay, Rob, number two. I mean, if Yura Borisov is watching Anora the entire movie, It's because we are watching Anora the entire movie. Like, I don't want to get too cute about this. Like, Mikey Madison is one of the performances

of the year. It's incredible. It's transformative. It's the kind of performance that probably in the hands of a lesser actor would get very tiring over the runtime

of an entire movie. Like, granted that character's circumstances are interesting, but it's a character that can be kind of difficult or could be kind of grating if pitched like a slightly different way. And I think the combination of

how absolutely relentless she is, how defiant she is, like the way she fights back over the course of this movie. And of course, the kind of first act swept up, like high arcing feeling of the beginning of this movie works because she works and works because you are along for the ride with her

and believing in the things that she wants to believe in or at least has like talked herself into believing in so I did not have a lot of exposure to Mikey Madison before this movie I am now I am fully signed up like take me along for the ride whatever she wants to do do you watch the Scream movies? I'm not a

big Scream guy so I've seen most of what she has done in her career. I watched Better Things. I've seen the Scream movie. I've seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I probably have another movie

or two in there that I've seen as well. And it's fair to say that I never would have guessed that she could do this particular kind of a performance because I think I just

wasn't thinking of her as a person who would lead a Sean Baker movie or really any movie. She seemed like a very amusing and at times electrifying

like supporting figure. So now when I think about this movie I'm like what is she going to do next? Like there's obviously this like pretty woman esque narrativizing.

I think there's a very very good chance that she wins Best Actress this year at the Oscars. So now it's like is she in rom-coms?

Is she in dark or tourist features? Is she, will she ever be given a chance quite like this again? It's an interesting turning point. We've seen this a lot of times where ingenues kind of arrive seemingly out of nowhere.

It's happened to Jennifer Lawrence. It happened to Brie Larson. And then like, what they do next is so picked over and then they get sort of like, I'm sure I'm guilty of this as well just like overly criticized for the decisions that they make or take a paycheck for 10 million dollars to go make a franchise movie I have heard her in interviews

say like I'm just gonna take a minute and figure out what I want to do and I'm not gonna rush to the next thing which you never hear from people who are in the middle of an awards race so I'm very very curious to see what kind of actor she becomes. I think part of the reason that conversation is interesting is because, I mean, she's giving a physical performance as a dancer in this movie.

There's clearly an athleticism there that could probably translate to a lot of different physical roles. She also has the bantery dialogue style where, again, not to prop one ingenue up while tearing down another, but if you put her in the Sidney Sweeney part in Anyone But You,

I would think that's probably a movie that like clicks a little bit better that like has has the pacing that you need because she can deliver like comedy in a different way yeah yeah that's blasphemy at the ringer.com um rob mahoney that's not my favorite sydney sweeney movie for the record what is what is your favorite sy Sidney Sweeney movie? What was Michael Mohan's movie before Immaculate? The erotic thriller. That one worked pretty well.

What was that movie called? The Voyeurs. Sure. That was pretty good. I'll take your word for it. Okay.

No reason to fire it up on Amazon Prime. Yeah. I mean the thing is is that and that's relevant to what I'm saying about Mikey Madison too is anyone but saying about Mikey Madison too,

is anyone but you with Mikey Madison and Glenn Powell would not have made $300 million. No. So how does she retain her Mikey Madison-ness and if she wants to become a bigger star? I think speaking of Glenn Powell, like a good comp is Daisy Edgar Jones, who is having a really hard time,

I think, channeling what she, the lightning in a bottle that was normal people into what she does next or similarly tough year for the normal people high school but I think that with Mikey it's so interesting

that she's saying that because I was just watching an interview with Jenna Ortega where she was talking about like regretting not going to college but she didn't go to college

because she was told like you're hot right now you're a teen who knows when this is gonna go away it's not too late Jenna Ortega

you can go to college she's like 21 she's not Kwame Brown out there I don't think she said like I don't think she said like wrote

deepest regret ever but she was just sort of like I wanna go I this industry moves so fast like it can go away at any moment

and so the fact that Mikey Madison is like I'll wait I'll wait and see, you know, it is very cool. Um, I'd like to go back to college. That would be nice.

Yeah. What do you want to study? Um, voyeuristic movies. Yeah. I think a major in erotic thrillers with a minor in Sydney Sweeney is what I'm thinking. It sounds like every college student in America right now.

Uh, okay. Where do we go next? Joanna? Yeah. Yeah. You do we go next? Joanna? Yeah. Yeah, you're up. My number two is a good old-fashioned movie star, Denzel Washington in Gladiator 2.

And again, like it's, you know, maybe an obvious pick. Everyone has praised his performance. But in the vein of despite everything that's happening around him, he somehow holds the center of despite everything that's happening around him he sometimes somehow holds the center of gladiator 2 um i did not have a great time at that movie um i had a great time with every single thing that he did and having over on uh the trial by content podcast that he did we spent several weeks watching denzel watching the movie so i've been sort of studying him for weeks and all the different modes that he has

this is some like very different from anything he's ever done I couldn't think of anything

I couldn't like studying like I think you have to see him do Shakespeare on stage which he's done many times

to maybe find something similar to this also on panel shows like he'll go on Graham Norton and just like rip through monologues

just to show that he can it's amazing yeah but just that like really that combination of that shakespearean um kind of stentorian affectation that he has in the film but also this like uh uh wiliness and yeah yeah and sort of like the obviously the sort of sexual fluidity that is sort of right underneath the surface of the movie too like he there's i couldn't think of anything that he had done you have to put a bunch of things in the blender like you'd have to put some training day in the blender with like some

glory actually with some right and like with my to do about yeah it's like the some of the goofier stuff he did early in his career i feel like we don't see actors this late in their career do that sort of synthesis yeah it's all like once you get to a certain point, it's like, I'm playing the hits, but I'm playing this hit and then that hit and then that hit. And he did, I mean, he's done plenty of that.

He does that a lot. For sure. But to be able to pull things together and create something new out of all of the elements that make a Denzel performance, that's art to me.

I just thought he was incredible in this movie. It's so fun. I mean, it completely saves the movie. Yeah. He's phenomenal. Great pick.

My number two is A Real Discovery for me an actor that I don't remember ever seeing before I didn't watch Servant and she is one of the stars of the television

series Servant she was on Game of Thrones was she in Game of Thrones? you'll have to tell me who she was I'm talking about Nell Tiger Free who was the star

of the first Omen who was she in Game of Thrones? she was the original Princess Marcella before they replaced her you're going to have to tell me who that is who is Princess Marcella? I think she's the're going to have to tell me who that is. Who is Princess Marcella?

I think she's the original unless she's the replacement. Don't fire me, Mallory. But she's one of the princesses, Marcella. She's like... What land does she live in? She's Cersei's daughter. One of the Lannister Blondes.

The royal children. And she gets poisoned and dies gruesomely. But I do think that was my second. You're referring to something that I experienced several lifetimes ago. It's insane how far I have to reach back to find that poisoning. Wow. That was Nell Tiger Free?

Yeah. Okay, well. At least one of them. Shout out to one of the lives she led. Yeah, one of the princesses, Marcella. In this film, she plays a nun. A nun who has been selected for a very important job um by some powerful forces and you know a lot of it is a this movie is a testimony to a a director with an incredibly

strong vision a vision i've not seen before specifically especially in a horror movie quite like this and an actor being on the exact same page and willing to go the lengths that the film needs to sell it uh this film actually very similar to Heretic to me, where the first two thirds, I'm like, is this my favorite movie of the year? Is this my favorite movie of the decade? I was so taken with what Arkasha Stevenson was up to in this movie, which is ostensibly a prequel to a 70s horror classic.

And honestly, a horror classic that I don't really care about that much. I'm not a big Omen person. It doesn't really mean a whole lot to me. So I wasn't entering it with really any expectations. It's not in your toddler canon that we're going to talk about later? Well, perhaps. You know, Damien is not quite a toddler. You know, he's more of a seven

year old. So he's kind of exited that era, but we'll get there. But Nell Tiger Free is just jaw-droppingly mesmerizing in this movie as a nun who is slowly becoming possessed, I guess for lack of a better word by the church

and by a higher calling so I really really really like this movie I'm very excited to see what Stevenson does next and to see what Nell Tiger Free

does next and I'll have to you know my wife is a big Game of Thrones fan so I'm going to have to be like we should watch this again because Princess Myrcella is in it

before she was poisoned no no no the first one the first and or second one. One of them. Okay, let's do number ones. Rob? This was pretty easy for me, to be honest with you.

My favorite performance in one of my favorite movies of the year, Josh O'Connor in Challengers. Has an actor ever done so much with a smirk and or a thigh? And or a sweat. Whichever one you prefer. Whatever your mode is, he's delivering in this movie. Just like a perfect cat, a perfect shit heel,

a perfect like dirtbag guy you kind of know. You have known someone like this, if not half this charming and half this. It's like, it really is like an undeniable performance. It's completely irrepressible. No matter what room, no matter how far you try to put him from Zendaya, it doesn't matter.

Like it just just it clicks i think um loving josh o'connor in god's own country and then in the crown and then seeing him do this yeah very different mode cements for me that he can do anything so versatile i know this is an amazing performance the scene in the alleyway in which he confronts her is like oh my of my favorite scenes of the year. Just the gall of him asking her to be his coach. It's like, it's an amazing writing. I could watch that movie over and over and over again. I tried to watch it on a flight and they cut out.

It's not like, honestly, I mean, mild spoilers for Challengers, I guess, if you haven't seen it. It's not like overt sexuality in Challengers. It's like suggestion and buildup. On this flight flight for example the famous threesome scene that's in the trailer

Zendaya sits down on the bed and then immediately stands up and leaves really? what? I don't know I'm like

what did you need to cut? were you flying like Russia or something? where were you going? I don't even want to get into it okay alright that's very unfortunate perhaps we should present

our number ones together what do you think? I think that sounds right so what did you choose? Coleman Domingo the lead of Sing Sing I chose Clarence Macklin who is technically

the supporting character though I would say the co-lead of Sing Sing yeah I guess we talked about a little bit on an Oscar episode but not too much this movie

which is a wonderful movie I loved this movie yeah you're in the hive yeah yeah yeah it's in my top five for the year is it?

yeah absolutely well then talk about Coleman so Sing Sing you'll talk about Clarence in terms of the fact that in Sing Sing, they used a lot of non-professional actors. So Coleman Domingo is surrounded by a lot of non-professional actors. So he is holding down the center of this movie. As a man who is in prison, as a man who is sort of the leader of a community and then has a crisis of faith

and you watch him inside of a prison film where you're so used to watching people break. This is one of the hardest breaks I've ever had to watch. There's also a lot of business done with a small glimpse of the outside, a small window to the outside that is something that he reflects on at a number of different stages in this movie that I think about over and over and over again. Colman Domingo is, I think, one of our great actors currently working. And I think it's amazing that he did this project like the way that his star has been rising, you know, he could do anything and he did this.

And I think he's just stunning in it. I loved him. I agree. The movie doesn't work without him, but it also doesn't work without Macklin and the other actors, many of whom were actually incarcerated and participated in the rehabilitation

through the arts program. Macklin's story is really centered because Coleman Domingo's character essentially cons program. Macklin's story is really centered because Coleman Domingo's character essentially conscripts Macklin's character, Divine Eye, to participate in RTA and to become a performer and to find a new pathway through his life by doing this work.

You know, Macklin is not a professional actor, but he's a fucking good actor. He's great. And the two of them and the sort of the mannered stiffness of Domingo and the sort of actorliness of Domingo up against what feels like, it's kind of stupid to use words like authentic,

but there is a kind of realness, like a texture to the sense of his own life and his own personality, which evolves and they become like this double helix in the movie where they sort of like are swapping places and swapping feelings about the world and swapping futures that is like such a great piece of storytelling um and the the sequences between them at the end of the movie are so powerful um it's a very very very good movie it is a like sundance weepy and you know like

inspiring in some ways and a story about the resilience of the human spirit, but like in the best way possible. I was ready. I was braced for this to be incredibly like saccharine or clapping itself on the back for having made itself or any of that. And I just found it incredibly authentic and genuine, like earnest, but not too earnest. Agreed. You want to do some supporting? I loved making my honorable mentions here. You want to do some supporting? I loved making my honorable mentions here.

What do you got? Stanley Tucci and Conclave. I loved both of the leads in Hidden Man, Glenn Powell and Audrey Arjona. Josh Hutcherson and The Beekeeper. Incredible poll. Love this. Really good one. Just the worst possible son you could have. It's literally Hunter

Biden and Don Jr. together. Legit. You've brought up The Beekeeper a number of times. Is this like a big movie for you this year? It's a fun movie.

Amanda just put it on her best movies of the year list. I love it. Apparently so. Love it. It was very, very fun. Willem Dafoe and Nosferatu, who honestly,

we didn't talk about enough on the forthcoming Nosferatu pod. He kind of is just doing Willem Dafoe at this point in these movies where he's like, there's a beast!

But that's exactly what I want all the time. Saturday night as well. That's very true. He's kind of the just doing Willem Dafoe at this point in these movies where he's like there's a beast but that's exactly what I want all the time Saturday night as well he's kind of the Nosferatu of Saturday night but yeah Hunter Schaefer and Cuckoo who I was really impressed by

like a more restrained kind of scream queen-y like anxious performance that I really liked Dennis Quaid in The Substance who is eating shrimp like nobody's fucking disgusting

absolutely gross Kirsten Dunst in Civil War and the Megalon in Megalopolis is quaint in the substance who is eating shrimp like nobody's fucking disgusting. Absolutely gross. Kirsten Dunst in Civil War and the Megalon in Megalopolis. Tell me it's not important. Tell me it didn't change your life. Did either of you guys like Megalopolis? What is like?

What is like? Tell me. I had a great time watching it. Did you? I would recommend that people see it and I will never be watching it again. That's how I feel.

It was quite the experience. I'm glad we saw it again. Okay. That's how I feel. It was quite the experience. I'm glad we saw it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Got it. What are your also rants, your honorable mentions?

I've got Boyd Holbrook and a complete unknown as Johnny Cash. So technically this movie will not be out yet when this episode is coming out. But I texted Chris after I saw the movie

Chris the the largest holder shareholder of Boyd Holbrook stock no that's you no we share okay you share

oh okay and I just said huge winners of a complete unknown colon Boyd Holbrook and then I stopped sending messages

but that's not actually how I feel but for his purposes he was like I saw this movie I saw this movie it was me and then I stopped sending messages but that's not actually how I feel but for his purposes he was like I saw this movie I saw this movie it was me and then it was

Mallory Rubin and then it was Chris Ryan and then his lovely wife Phoebe and every time Boyd Holbrook came on screen

Mallory elbowed both of us with like extreme enthusiasm he's great and especially like since we Joaquin Phoenix

so famously played Johnny Cash for James Mangold, it's like a lot to have to live up to. I thought it was wonderful. It's a very different Cash. Yeah. Yeah.

Carol Kane, In Between Two Temples, which is getting Oscar buzz now. New York Film Critics Circle supporting actress winner. It's starting and I feel like it could go. That would be cool. I love this movie. Yeah.

I talked to the filmmaker and Jason Schwartzman on the pod That would be cool. I love this movie. Yeah, I talked to the filmmaker and Jason Schwartzman on the pod. Yeah. To be more in the substance, again, sometimes you just have to state the obvious.

Fred Hechinger in Hechinger, I always mispronounce his name, in both Gladiator 2 and Thelma. I love this kid. I love him.

He's also a scamp. I watched him in a Q&A after Gladiator 2 with, it was Connie Nielsen and Paul Meskel being very restrained I love him he's also a scamp I watched him in a Q&A after Gladiator 2 with it was Connie Nielsen and Paul Meskel

being very restrained and professional Denzel Washington trying to say as few words as possible and Fred Hechinger

just being like this was fucking crazy dude I was out there with Ridley Scott and Denzel Washington we were hanging out I got a monkey on my shoulder

it was great I really liked him in Thelma too Nick Holt in Nosferatu despite hanging out. I got a monkey on my shoulder. He was great. I really liked him in Thelma too. Nick Holt in Nosferatu despite Sean's feelings about that. What do you mean? I don't know. I like him.

He's good. He's a cock. He's the Earth cock. He is what he is. That's okay. We all have roles to play in life. We do. Gabriel LaBelle in Saturday Night.

Saturday Night, not a film that i loved but i really loved his performance as lauren michaels at the center of it um ali cravalho from mean girls famously moana but renee rap is really the person who like walked out of mean girls with but ali was fantastic she's great uh in that film and her song i thought was like the best part of that she's seen moana too i have not seen moana too did it change your life i mean it will once once hits disney plus it'll be changing your life yeah it'll change the way i spend my time uh yeah the soundtrack is going

super hard in the house so alice was on board so ali is is the star of the show a lot got it dev patel monkey man that's our guy dev patel I like that he tried. I don't think that it's a good movie. I think that his performance is good in it. He is good. And I like that he nearly broke his whole entire body trying to make that movie. You know what he's giving me is Warren Beatty right now. Where he's like I can do

it myself. Yeah. And I I'm not sure if that is how it will continue to go. But you know classically handsome guy. Has accomplished a lot at a young age. Is often around good projects. And then at a certain point early in his career, he's like, let me take control.

We'll see how it works out. Monkey Man. Not great. Wasn't quite what I wanted it to be. Yeah. A lot of promise. And then it was sort of whelming. And then Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

I came a hair from putting him on my team. Oh, I like that. This was such a good part. What's funny is, we're going to talk about Amy Adams. I literally watched Nocturnal Animals this morning. That's a vibe. And it was a bad idea. But in watching it, I was reminded, because he's kind of doing McConaughey in that too. I was reminded of how good he is in his McConaughey impression in Fall Guy.

He's wonderful in that movie. We were admiring his arch-hamminess on the Nosferatu conversation as well. Haminess, his mutton chops. I mean, the mutton chops are great. Do you feel like they used him the way they should have in Nosferatu? I mean, I feel like he's selectively deployed. He's really the ultimate wife guy in that movie.

I guess I just like Aaron Taylor Johnson can do so much in a way that again to repeat with Lupita someone that handsome should not be able to do. Someone with that many abs should not also have

that many roles. You know what was a big revelation to me about him in Nosferatu is that he's a short guy. Yeah. Well Nick Holt is also extremely tall. Is he in Nosferatu is that he's a short guy. Yeah. Well Nick Holt is also extremely tall.

Is he quite tall? Okay so maybe that's what it was. Maybe he's just average height. But Nick Holt is towering over him and there are a lot

of shots of them in the frame where we've got an entire Holt head over Aaron Taylor Johnson. I like him quite a bit and like I found Bullet Train almost

unwatchable but I loved him in it. He's so good. He's so good in that movie. Yeah. So, okay. Those are good picks. I'll give you some supporting picks that I enjoyed as well.

I think all of, I think my idea here was only supporting characters, maybe with one exception. Sergio Castellito in Conclave, who is the Italian Cardinal who vapes. He's great. That's my guy. I love that guy.

That's when we, when I remake Conclave in 20 years, CR will be playing that role. Jesse Plemons in Civil War, one of the most electrifying movie scenes of the year. Further confirmation, he can do anything

and be quite scary. Landry being scary is just so fascinating that this is where we are in our culture. We were just talking about him on Breaking Bad. Yeah, perfect psycho

in that show. That's right. Of course, Todd was terrifying, but in a different way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The glasses game isn't as strong. No, no, no. The glasses game isn't as strong for her. No, no, no.

I should have worn those red ones for this conversation. Dan Stevens times three. Let's fucking go. Dan Stevens, Godzilla, X-Kong,

The New Empire. He's playing, I think, an Australian monster dentist. I believe that's what his role is. You would have to tell me because despite my love

for Dan Stevens, I did not see Godzilla X-Kong. This is a bridge you couldn't follow. No, I couldn't. couldn't follow ridiculous film he is introduced in the movie swinging on a giant crane removing a tooth from king kong's mouth yep uh so super cool there did you see godzilla i did not i've only seen the original or i guess the pre the prequel um he's having a ball he's having an absolute ball he's's also having a ball on Abigail where he's basically like in a Michael Mann movie

that happens to have vampires in it. Yeah. Did you see Abigail? There's a perfect world where it is the Michael Mann movie and we think it's the Michael Mann movie and we show up and it's the vampire movie. That would have been so amazing.

We didn't get that. We didn't get that. I enjoyed him. And Cuckoo, you mentioned Hunter Schaefer. He's also having so much fun as an evil German doctor in Cuckoo. Like an absolute riot. This is what Dan Stevens should be doing at all times.

And it often makes the choice to do that. And then sometimes makes the Beauty and the Beast. Yeah. But he should be doing this. Oh, yeah. He's mostly a nasty little freak. And I respect it. We stan our nasty little freaks.

Nasty little freaks is correct for Dan Stevens. Cuck is incorrect for Nicholas Holmes well we'll see the casting directors of America think differently speaking of Nasty Little Freaks I also have Jeremy Strong

from The Apprentice a movie that I'm kind of mixed on even though the two performances in the middle of it I think are awesome Jeremy Strong in particular as Roy Cohn

one of the singular freaks of the 20th century certainly Vicky Krapes in The Dead Don't Hurt which is a movie that I like quite a bit

that was a little bit underplayed she's technically the star but she doesn't quite get the same billing that her co-star gets I just wanted to give

that movie a shout out I have another Aubrey Plaza movie that I want to give some love to Megalopolis Wow Platinum she's amazing

movie's kind of a car crash but she's so fun you simply have to, Wow Platinum. She's amazing. The movie's kind of a car crash, but she's so fun. You simply have to say Wow Platinum as much as humanly possible. And then my last one is another both physical

and vocal performance that we never see this actor's face. It's Kevin Durant, who's also in Abigail in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. He plays Proximus Caesar, who is the big bad

of this movie. Another movie that I was very mixed on. I had high hopes for and didn't love, but I love what he did and as we know as anti-circus fans if you can elevate the mocap performance style it's something to give a shout to that's a lot of performances i'm sure we left some stuff out i don't know i don't really care at this point uh no i think we got it i think we did it all yeah i don't think there's anyone yelling at this podcast right now about anything

we made the big picture no would never yell at that. Let's talk about Night Pitch. So, you know, this episode's coming out a couple weeks after the movie is released. I don't think this movie's going to burn up the box office. Nope. What makes you think that? Well, two reasons. One, it's about a middle-aged woman.

Yeah. Two, it's being presented as a kind of genre movie and it is ultimately not really that. It is a bit of a bait and switch, wrong footing and I think it has been that

for a long period of time. When we first heard about the movie, I hadn't read the Rachel Yoder novel but I thought it was going to be like a universal classics

monster movie with a mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's not at all what this movie is. It stars Amy Adams and Scoot McN yeah and that's not at all what this movie is um it stars amy adams and scoot mcnary and and it's it's a movie essentially about a woman coping and managing her life in the face of living almost entirely with a two-year-old and it's complicated because

as i said i really love amy adams and i'm in the exact same phase of my life that this character is in. Obviously, I'm not a woman. My wife did watch this movie, and I can share her thoughts about it as we go through it. I want to hear them. But I'll start with you, Joanna. What did you think of Night Bitch? I think I'm a lot higher on it than you guys are, and that is okay. I love Mariel Heller in general as a filmmaker. I don't

think her Mr. Rogers movie was okay, but everything else she's made has been I think a masterpiece. I don't have kids. You have kids. I'm glad you're here to represent the parents on this podcast, but some of the people that I feel closest to in my life, I have watched them

go through motherhood is a weird way to put it, but like especially early motherhood and the alienation of it and the loneliness of it and the way in which you feel like your entire life is been taken from you in a way, even though there's so much joy and all the other things that come with it. So I really recognize this as something I have tried my best to understand happening for women I feel very close to in my life. And I love to see this. A film that it made me think of immediately was Tully, the Charlize Theron movie.

And that's a similar, like both of these movies were really educational for me in terms of like as much as I can try to understand someone explaining it to me. Having the experience of sitting in a dark theater and being put immediately in this POV. That's what film can do. That's what fiction can do. And I just, I love that this film exists I do agree that like some of the you know either marketing or you know similar to what you said with My Old Ass like I don't think you necessarily need some of the genre

stuff that's in here to sell the story that you're selling but I might argue you don't need them at all yeah and that ultimately is like the signature flaw of the movie for me I just think that like the idea of like, I feel like a literal monster is something that's interesting and worth exploring.

It is. Well, what did you think, Rob? Because I think we should dig into that concept. Right. I do think it has an interesting perspective and thing to say about motherhood. I just think it has the one thing to say and it wants to say it over and over and over

in a way that felt, because of all those weird genre trimmings, like a little ham fist. In the end, based on the total concoction of what it was, I felt like Amy Adams is going for it. And this movie is like almost scared to go for it to the extent that she is. It felt like really pulled back. Where I want more of the titular night bitch or none of the titular night bitch. I want this movie to be like a little smarter or much, much dumber. And I feel like we ended up in

a weird middle ground with it. So I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a director and we both have children that are three years old. And I think we were both having maybe a particularly challenging week with our kid. And we often talk about movies. And I was like, what are the... There are no movies about this. There are no movies about the... Certainly, this movie is tightly focused on motherhood. But just the experience of parenting through what is typically a fairly traumatic era of

a young person's life. Because invariably, especially with kids in certain kinds of households, this is an artistic household in this movie. There's an encouragement of like expression and being open with your feelings. And also like a, like a level of intelligence that is bred because of the way that the child is fortunate enough to be raised in where they ha they can communicate really well and they're sophisticated in some ways but they have no ability to modulate their feelings and i think me and my friend were both going through this period where it's like this is really really hard and i was like how is why is why are there no movies about this like

it's for millions of people they go through this and people will there are a billion movies about falling in love and fewer but still a lot of movies about falling out of love and breaking up and there are movies about being parents there are lots of movies about being parents there are lots of movies about other people's parents and people dying all these like essential life experiences i've not seen a lot of movies about what it's like to have a two or three year old in your house all day long and like a week later i saw night bitch and i was like this is the movie this is exact and so the thing that i've been kind of toggling with through this is with the understanding that like i can't really relate to the motherhood aspect and some of the that alienation that you're

describing it gets it so much of this so right the the profound repetition the monotony montage at the beginning like that that stuff always works. And it's so right. They're just like you're hitting the same pre-packaged breakfast in the pan every morning. Like she just nails that stuff.

Mariel Heller has two young kids. Like she is clearly pulling from some personal experience to kind of visualize and literalize these ideas. And as I'm watching the movie and I'm kind of toggling as a huge genre fan with like her inability I think to really execute on the genre ideas. And as I'm watching the movie and I'm kind of toggling as a huge genre fan with like her

inability, I think, to really execute on the genre ideas, but the stunning way that she accurately represents some of the things I saw my wife go through, some friends go through over the years. But wondering like whether or not that makes for a good movie. And maybe that's one of the reasons why there are just not a lot of movies about this. I think some of it is because people try to like memory hole this period because then your kid turns four and five and six and you're like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me because everything is like fun. But this tight corridor of two to three and a half where everything is so challenging all the time, I think people are like, get me out of here a little bit. On the one hand, yeah. But on the

other hand, I think because for decades, this was considered a woman's struggle that people were uninterested in it it's a great point and I think you know increasingly hopefully parenting feels like a a joint group project and there's I think this movie I mean were you telling me that you thought the the the characterization of Scoot's character was like cartoonish to you. He's got one thing to do and it's like talk down to Amy Adams at every single turn of this movie and be passive aggressive until he's finally confronted with the...

It felt like a character that was being preached at the entire movie to me. What's so funny to me, Rob, and is that when I watched this, I was like, I actually think this movie is being very nice to this archetype.

Really? I think I have seen in my life way worse versions of this. And, I was like, I actually think this movie is being very nice to this archetype. Really? I think I have seen in my life way worse versions of this. And so I was like, I actually think she's being kind of gentle. Oh, no, I think the character is being gentle. No, no, no. Do you think the overall treatment of the movie? Yeah. Because like, and I like that about you that you're like, this is the worst.

And I'm like, this is actually kind of medium. And that's like kind of what's the worst about it is that he's like he's not a villain he's just clueless uh or can't possibly quite understand or they've made decisions about who gets to leave the house and and make money in along a gender line that it's usually drawn in our particular uh culture and i i don't know i thought that was really interesting. I was like, I feel like Mari Heller was like, let's tone it down a little around Scoot's character. I think that might be because she is a working mother

and so is her partner, Jorma Taccone, who's also in the arts. I think you're both right. I think that there are some aspects of the way that that character is characterized. And you can imagine the level of self-identification, guilt, pain, trauma, sadness that I felt watching that character. Some of it, I think, is a little bit broad. Some of it, I think, is frankly more generous than maybe I have even been in my own life.

So it was like a challenging movie to talk to my wife about because I am a person that like has the job where I go into work every day and I'm out many nights and I travel for work and she doesn't do that. She still has her career. She hasn't given up her career

the way that the Amy Adams character has. But there's a very vitriolic fight that they have that leads to a real fissure in their relationship kind of in the second half of the movie. We haven't had that fight, but I think it was close enough to fights that we've had

where she was just like, this is tough, man. This is tough to be in this experience with these people. And I think the movie lets that intensity off the hook a little bit at the end. And it gives it a little bit of like a rounded edge. The big speech that he delivers at the end of this movie is like cringy. Like I think it's genuinely like undercut so much. Like that big conflict in the kitchen to me,

there's some truth in there in the gray area, in the like, why didn't you convince me to fight for my own life kind of mess that any any family any couple any pairing of people can get into where we get by the end of it for not a lot of discernible nudge beyond that point um i get like how spoilery are we being with this discussion i guess i if you don't want to hear any of the plot details of Night Witch which is not the plottiest movie of all time it's mostly a woman

and a two year old hanging out for long stretches but go ahead fire away there's this big speech he gives about like I am in awe of you

that I understand why there are women and mothers in the world who want that character to say that thing in that moment I get it but seeing it on screen

after this movie I was just like why are we doing that? Like, why is that the end point for this? I think it's because I, and I'm curious what you think, but I think because it's so relentlessly straightforward about the challenges of the

experience at certain times when you're raising a kid that it felt like an odd, it's like she spit the bit at the end of the fight a little bit. Yeah, I think you guys are saying slightly different things and I think I more agree with you. Just selling me

right out. It's good to disagree about something like this though. And I also think there's something more complicated going on here than because she's an artist as well. And so I think we watch so many movies about men and their art. And, you know, we can talk about the brutalists for like three hours.

Why not? You know, and often in those movies, those artists are praised for being massive geniuses. And like, can I tell you something? Rob gave me an amazing idea on the last recording we did, which is that I should make the brutalist episode of this show the same length as the film. With a blessed 15-minute intermission? Well, I think it will just be me singing the score in that 15 minutes.

But you're right that we bend over backwards to praise these great men. There are so many stories about men feeling disconnected from their art and reconnecting with their art. And these are like award-winning, the most important movies of the year, blah, blah. And this is about a woman who is a mother and also an artist. And it's about her reconnecting with her art. And I also love the way that her struggle is triangulated via these two groups. She's got the moms at the library. Yeah, at both babies.

Who she initially sneers at and then finds common cause with they are her pack in a sense and she finds um things to connect with them about whereas before she was like sort of sneeringly their intellectual superior she believed and then she's got uh her friends at what i will call the kale salad dinner scene and that was that was hard for me to watch because as much as i've tried to understand And then she's got her friends at what I will call the kale salad dinner scene. And that was hard for me to watch because as much as I've tried to understand friends who have gone through this, I am sure I have been the shitty person at the kale salad dinner. I doubt it. You know?

I doubt you were even close to any of those people in that sequence. But, like, unintentionally. It's so easy to just sort of, like like not know what you're bumbling into. And so, yes, at the end of this movie where people literally turn into dogs, there is some fantasy elements of I can have it all. I can be an artist. I can be a mom. I can have my husband come and tell me. I can be a dog.

Tell me. I can have my old friends come and see that I'm amazing. I can have my new mom come and see that I'm amazing. I can have my new mom friends feel seen by my art. There's a lot of like you know fantasy at the end of it.

It tightens the bow quite a bit on top of the present. She grabbed a piece of meat off of another person's table and gnawed it on her way out of the kale salad dinner

or maybe didn't I don't know. But then all of those people showed up at her art gallery in which there are a bunch of bones from animals that she, the human woman, may have just murdered. Well, you're getting into the genre aspect of it, which is the stuff that just doesn't work for me.

As a metaphor, it's an amazing device. It's a good metaphor. But here's my question about the Brutalist. The Brutalist ends with… This is way too soon. Way too soon. I have not seen this movie. Cut this.

Cut that. Way too soon for that. not seen this movie. Cut this. Cut that. Way too soon for that. I will say it more vaguely. Okay. I will say, we're talking about The Brutalist. The Brutalist has a very similar end point,

I would say. There is a big metaphorical device in that film as well. And a Laurel, giving laurels to the artist in that as well. Without question. I'm not saying this is...

We could argue which is more clever or more effective. The Brutalist is better at it. I'm not saying this is as elevated as the Brutalist is. I'm not trying to put them on the exact same level. But I think we often dismiss women's versions of stories that we celebrate men's versions of stories for. It's fair. I think that that

ultimate point is 100% right. I just think that there's simultaneously too much and not enough going on in this movie. That there is like

a tight psychological focus that is carried by I would genuinely say a brave performance by Amy Adams who is willing to be frankly haggard by the standards of a movie star and not in the like, Nicole Kidman wears a prosthetic nose way.

Where just like Amy Adams just gained like some weight and wore no makeup and let her hair get a little bit stringy and unbrushed the way that you might be if you are raising a toddler and stuck in the house all day. She hasn't showered. You know, you can tell. Because you literally don't have time for a shower.

It's like one of those things where if you don't have kids, you don't realize. You're like, you can't go anywhere. You can't go to the bathroom. Like, you just can't go to the bathroom because you can't leave them alone because they're two. And they could walk into the street. It's a very obvious, simple thing. And every parent that's listening is like, absolutely. And everybody who doesn't have kids

is like, I didn't really think that I will never be free for three years. But it is true. And so I think that all of that stuff is so genuinely deep

and honest. And the other stuff is movie making device work. Like I feel like that scene at the end happens in part because they're like, we got to end this movie. What we can't,

this, this can't be an ongoing portrait of a woman experiencing this phase of her life. If this were 1986, you might have like a, um, a series of films that would be tracking a woman at the state. You could,

you could imagine Chantal Ackerman doing a series of films about a woman at various stages of motherhood. But this is like a Fox Searchlight movie with a big movie star. And so they're like, how are we going to wrap this thing up? How about an art show? So I don't know. I didn't love that. And I didn't love the animal murdering dog aspect to it.

But I don't know. Oh, yeah. I will say the actual footage of the night bitch or night bitches if you prefer depending on what you think of the other moms at book babies running through the streets

majestic absolutely majestic dog footage in this movie how much of your discomfort with this movie is because of you're a dog guy

I mean I wish there were more dog okay but there's like some tough dog stuff there's some tough dog stuff but look there's also a lot of there's a cat who has a tough time there's like some tough dog stuff. There's some tough dog stuff. But look, there's also a lot of

there's a cat who has a tough time. There's a lot of rodents and perhaps possums who meet unfortunate ends. There's also like it is a Fox movie with a movie star.

It's also like a movie with like a bunch of big pussing wounds in it. Yeah. You're not a puss guy? Only in the substance. Like once a year. Oh, okay.

One pussing back wound a year what about Nosferatu's exposed spaces that's just who he is though yeah that's true that's not a state thing

this is who Amy Adams is in this film yeah what else can we say I mean I don't I will say as a genre body horror is not my favorite

so there are I'm not gonna lie to you there are moments in this film that I was having, struggling through. But I just, I don't know. I just like, I love that Amy Adams exec produced this. I saw it at the Mill Valley Film Festival where she came and talked about it beforehand and talked about how much it meant for her to be able to tell this story as a mom

and Mari Heller as a mom to be able to tell this story, a story that they feel is really underrepresented and I really agree with it is it 100% successful in every regard no I'm not gonna lie to you I think that there are things

that feel shaggy not to put in unintentional I really regret it I regret it as it was coming out I regretted it but

but I'm just really glad it exists I think the response we needed there was woof woof yeah one other thing I'd just like to cite very. I think the response we needed there was woof. Woof. Yeah.

One other thing I'd just like to say very quickly about this movie is that this child is too nice. That this is a fairly well-behaved two-year-old boy. And that's just not how it is. That kid wants two things. To sleep in his parents' bed and to eat hash browns every morning. That's it. That's really it. I mean, and paint on the walls.

He does a few things that you're like, this be very stressful parents have been there before but like his demeanor is very kind wait can i and that's not that's just not how it is all the time it's just not if you in a parallel situation sean would you encourage your daughter to sleep in a dog bed no my my daughter sleeps in a real bed and it's wonderful and I don't want anything to change about that so but like that's a real obviously sleep is a real struggle in general for all parents and the movie

goes out of its way to be like this is hard the fight that she has with him about their sleep like I was like this is journalism like what they're doing here is so sincere and accurate the

shot of him on the couch playing PlayStation talking about nitro boosters I'm like oh no yeah that didn't you knew that wasn going to go in a good direction. What is a dog bed if not just a beanbag with a rim? It looks pretty comfortable. I think that's fine.

I think it's fine to let your kids sleep in a dog bed in case you were curious about our tips. I want to go back to your... So your wife said it was tough to watch some of the fight stuff, but how did she of overall in terms of the depiction of motherhood so she watched it on monday monday night what did i go do i'm sure i was out seeing a film she has access to the pga screener portal so she's been powering through award season as well so you were trying to give her the most authentic experience by being out of the house while she has to watch don't worry later said, don't worry, later in the week, I will babysit my own child. What did I do? I mean, I did that plenty over the last few days. I had a dinner. I had a dinner with a friend,

actually a rare non-screening night for me. So she fired up. It was her choice. Actually, when I saw the film, I was like, caution. Yeah. This might not be the best experience. You might not have a lot of fun. Perhaps you should try Sing Sing.

She said, we talked about it afterwards, but she texted me when she started watching and she said i started night bitch and i'm depressed about how sweet this kid is and then she wrote this movie is so rough lol i'm turning it off um she did eventually finish it and i think she found some merit and meaning in the movie it's hard not to it's very it's it's a well-made movie even if you don't necessarily love where it goes but i think it's hard i think and i think for some parents will watch the movie and feel that swell of identification and power and some will watch it and be like i got enough of this at home i'm good yeah you know i got enough of that alienation and that evacuation of my own humanity at home that i don't really want to spend more time

in the off hours engaging in it but i bet it's's like, if you have a 10-year-old, it's probably a good movie. Because you're like, I remember that, and then we're out of there. But in a distant way. Yeah. Let's talk about Amy Adams. and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Let's talk about Amy Adams.

So, you know what? We just have not done very many halls of fame for actresses on the show. And so I'm endeavoring to change that as much as possible. And you brought Rob, the speaker for The Every Woman. This is what I'm here for. To tell you about motherhood, to speak for The Every Woman. As I said, my two,

well, what I wanted was a prestige TV kind of semi-reunion on this pod, but we're also, we're representing femininity. You know, it's just. Also, Amanda does not like Mariel Heller's movies, so this is probably a relief for her

to not have to participate in this. I love to help Amanda out. Amy Adams. Is she good? And if so, why? Come on. Come on. I'm a big fan.

The way she is talked about at TheRinger.com. Disrespectful. Incred Come on. Come on. I'm a big fan. The way she has talked about at TheRinger.com. Disrespectful. Incredibly disrespectful. I agree. I have tried to defend her over the years. I think her,

some of the projects she's been in more recently have not always been as successful. I've not always hit for me. I think Night Bitch among them. But overall, in terms of the body of work, incredible supporting work.

I think some of the, for me, like one of the defining lead performances of the last 20 or 25 years or so. Like I think she of the, for me, like one of the defining lead performances of the last 20 or 25 years or so. Like I think she has some real home run stuff. And to talk about her

as if she's just like strikes and gutters, that's just not the reality of the situation. She's often, if she's in a bad movie or one that doesn't quite work for you, still one of the best parts of it.

So I'm here for Amy Adams. I think she has pretty incredible range. I know we're going to talk through the entirety of it, but I love the variety of what she can put on screen. I think it's interesting. So I agree in terms of variety, but I think I was really considering this

because I do love Amy Adams. I do not want to knock her in any way. I will say, I don't think she can do everything. No, no. She's not one of those actors who can do everything. But the wide swing between the two things that she does really well is so stark that you can kind of convince yourself she can do anything so that sort of like wide-eyed innocent

bubbly thing that she does so well and she did a lot more early in her career and then um the the hardened grief um or trauma that she's done in a number of projects. And then somewhere in the middle there is this sort of like sex kitten through the lens of the bubbly innocent thing. And so that's just like, it's really only like three notes that I can triangulate on her performances. But they are so, again, so different. And she modulates the timbre of her voice. When she does that, she lowers the register of her voice when she does that she lowers the

register of her voice for certain performances um or pitches it higher for certain performances in a way that is just like she's not a chameleon at all she's always amy adams in fact and this is one of my this is one of the most i don't know it's very interesting to me she dyed her head her hair red early in her career. She says it changed her career because it changed the kind of roles that she was being offered. She was blonde. She was like a strawberry blonde.

And so she's famous for being this redhead and it's just not who she is. It's a performance in and of itself. And I just love that all all and she's not a celebrity she's someone that does not like to put her business out there and so all of her is what we're getting is just this manufactured amy adams thing and i think that's fascinating it is really interesting i think one of the reasons why she's come under fire here, so to speak, though not by me, is because she had a very,

like an incredibly successful 15-year window in a window when a lot of actresses do, which is roughly 25 to 45. And she was in franchise films. She was in lots and lots of prestige films. She's worked with some of the most celebrated directors of her time. She basically was one of those performers who you were like, she's never bad.

You know, she was like John C. Reilly, where you're like, thank God they're there. You know, and she, six Oscar nominations in like a 12-year window. She's just a very reliable performer until she wasn't. And she's in this very intense five-year rut now, which I think Night Bitch kind of pulls her out of, to be honest, because I think she's very good in this film. And even though I know you like it more,

I'm still ultimately pro the movie. But she's made some tough choices, and she got caught up in some really bad franchise stuff on the DC side that sucked out a couple of years of her career. And she's 50 now, which is crazy to think of because she has always seemed, like you say,

the girl from Junebug, the upbeat, innocent-seeming young woman. And she's not. And she's now entered the phase of a career that Hollywood is often very hard on because they have really nothing for you to do between 50 and 65 until you're grandma. And so it'll be interesting to see how she navigates it because she does have this reputation as like, God, we got to get this person an Oscar. Like we keep like dangling it in front of her face and we're not giving it to her. And so she's taken on parts that it seems like she's going for it for some reason,

even though the projects are bad. And then, you know, she's like, she's in the J.D. Vance movie, you know? And that's like, for some people, unrecoverable. And it puts a real cast of pallor on this conversation it puts a real... We can't. It casts a pallor on this conversation. We can't. We can't. I mean, we have to throw Glenn Close on the fire if we're going to do that. Are we doing that to Glenn Close?

I mean, I've been doing it for years as somebody who's been making jokes about the wife. Yes. And I think Glenn Close is weirdly like an echo of what could happen to Amy Adams. Glenn Close is still a great actress and occasionally is in movies I like, but not often.

So, anyway, that's a kind of unkind way to present it because a lot of times if you're like, if you're Bradley Cooper and you're 50, you're like,

you're just getting started, buddy. Good luck to you. You're going to win 10 Oscars and now with someone like Amy Adams, we don't see her in the same light collectively. It's sort of why

I wanted to bring up the fact that she produced Night Bitch because she was, you know, if you look at some of the films she's done in the last couple years, Dear Evan Hansen

or The Woman in the Window, Hillbilly Elegy you mentioned, a lot of them genuinely do make sense on the page of like, this is a very popular bestseller or this is a huge smash musical

or this, that, and the other thing. It's not like, it's not like I don't get why she said yes to some of these things. Who says no to playing Lois Lane even if if you're playing it for Jax Nightmare? Well, when she was cast, I was like, that's genius.

But I think her moving into sort of her producer era, which seems to be true for a lot of her upcoming projects as well, is an attempt similar to the way that like, you know, the women in the Big Little Lies universe like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are trying to sort of like carve out a path for themselves that Hollywood says doesn't exist. One of my favorite Amy Adams performances in the last decade is Sharp Objects, a TV show that not enough people talk about. But I think it's maybe my we're not going to talk about it when we make the movies. I mean, it's a question of should we be including things like that? Because frankly, it will be an interesting challenge to get to 10 here.

I will make a strong case for the episode of Buffy she appears in, if that's what you would like me to do. I have not seen that, so I can't weigh in. She's a witch bigot, basically. A witch bigot. Anti-witch bigot. Yeah. Oh my goodness. It's true.

It's tough. Unforgivable. But I mean like Sharp Objects is I think a really good example of something that, you know, 2018 is a few years ago, but like a role you can find for yourself if you're Amy Adams and you have the pull and the ability to create projects that are of interest to you. Night Bitch being one of them. I think that's potentially very exciting. Nicole Kidman is a very good model. Obviously, Amy Adams isn't as glamorous as Nicole Kidman, but Nicole Kidman has had this fascinating balance between super commercial,

kind of almost schlocky stuff, and working with serious filmmakers and making this serious bid to work with more female filmmakers. And you could see a similar arc over the next 10 years for her, but you got to pick good stuff and you got to work all more female filmmakers and you know that like you could see a similar arc over the next 10 years for her but you got to pick good stuff and you got to work all the time too that's the other thing is you gotta you gotta like make the projects happen so we'll see what she does let's let's talk about her films let's start picking our 10 okay um she's got a long

filmography took her quite a while to really establish herself as something beyond a supporting actor um i dropped it gorgeous i believe is the first part she's ever been she's in a fairly really establish herself as something beyond a supporting actor. Drop Dead Gorgeous, I believe, is the first part she's ever been in. She's in a fairly small role in that movie, which is a pretty fun movie.

She's great in it. I don't know if that feels quite like... Probably not media enough a part. Yeah. I'm usually interested in the breakout, but the breakout takes

a long time for her. Is the question, and I know, I just always have this question when you do this segment. Is it the best movie or is it the best Amy Adams

performance inside of a movie? The answer is yes. Okay, great. And also the most important and also the highest grossing and also the awards bid. I think we should consider

Drop Dead Gorgeous but not firmly put it on. That sounds like a yellow to me. 2000 Psycho Beach Party. Funny movie. Haven't seen this in a long time.

It's kind of a satire of beach blanket bingo style films. That's literally the name I have written down. Psycho Beach Party. Did you watch all of these movies, Rob? No, no, no, no, no. How many Amy Adams movies

do you think you watched? I'm not at liberty to say, but I did watch Hillbilly Elegy. For science. Thank you. I watched it on the day of the election when it was released.

Okay. Four years ago not this year. I don't think Psycho Beach Party is in even though this is blonde era Amy Adams. Many of these movies

are blonde era Amy Adams. Cruel Intentions 2 from 2000. I was shocked to learn that this is actually a prequel and that Amy Adams is playing Catherine.

The Sarah Michelle Gellar. She's playing Sarah Michelle Gellar in this movie. I haven't seen this. Okay. Did you watch it? I watched clips. Let's just say it doesn't work. Okay.

So Cruel Intentions 2 is red as well. Yeah. The Slaughter Rule, haven't seen it. Don't know what this is. Also another very small part. Okay. Red. 2002 Pumpkin.

I remember this Christina Ricci vehicle quite well. I don't think there's enough for her here. I agree with you. I would say the same is true for Serving Sarah, which is a real time capsule comedy of my college years. It does introduce a certain Amy Adams archetype that she tried, which is hot mess Amy Adams for a while. Again, doesn't really work.

Pretty small part. Don't see it for this. Yeah, there's a group of actresses at this time, what I'll call the American pie class. Tara Reid, Mina Suvari, Shannon Elizabeth, Alison Hannigan. Yeah. There's a whole, Rebecca Gayhart is in this conversation.

There's a whole bunch of actresses and they all kind of had to choose. They had to say, I'm a bombshell or I'm the girl next door. And it was very bifurcated at that time. And she kind of doesn't choose. She says, why not both? Yes. And I think that's one of the reasons why she has persisted. She's also

just a better, I mean, Tara Reid is not, is no Amy Adams. No. Wow, Rebecca Gayhart catching strays. I like her work to this day. Will there be no rest for the Noxema girls? Only one of Amy Adams and Rebecca Gayhart are in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'll have you know. That's true.

2002 Catch Me If You Can. This is a yes for me. I think this is green as well. Yeah. Now this is a very, very small part but she is unmistakable in this movie.

Yes, Brenda who pops off the screen. Show me a better performance in Braces, honestly. Is this the only time she and Leo have worked together? I think so. Because they got something

cooking between them. I would like to see them again. She's phenomenal in this movie. A movie that I love. And she's wonderful in it. I do too. I think this is our first green. 2004, the last run.

Can't say I've seen it. No. 2005, the wedding date. Haven't seen it. I have. She plays a shitty sister. A thoughtless, hot girl. She's done that many times before. She's trying to pull herself

out of supporting bitch, basically. That's a part she keeps getting cast in, I guess because of her presentation. 2005, the wedding date. Haven't seen. Standing still, haven't seen. I assume these are red. And then we get Junebug in 2005.

This is as auto- green as it gets. Auto green, major breakthrough is Ashley, the sweet, innocent, I guess is she the sister-in-law

of M. Beth David's character who comes to stay with her husband's family in the South. Yeah. In Tennessee? I can't recall which state they're in.

Married to Ryan from the OC. Good pull. Inried to Ryan from the O.C. Good pull. In the film. Yeah. Pregnant. She's amazing in the film. Charming.

Yes. Interesting that she's so known for being I think she waited a little later in life to actually have children but portrayed a expecting mother. This is kind of Night Bitch

closes the loop. Wow. On the Amy Adams arc. I hadn't thought about that. I really like this movie quite a bit. And I think she's magnificent in it. She's wonderful in it. Very funny and very sweet.

2006, Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I just completely forgotten she was in this movie. It's a classic comedy. I'm not sure if it really represents her at her best. No.

Here's the thing. Sometimes, I kind of disagree that Amy Adams is great in everything because sometimes she's just there. And I'll of disagree that Amy Adams is great and everything because sometimes she's just there. And I'll get to one of those films that I rewatched. I was like, she's just aggressively there.

Okay. And they had nothing for her. This sounds like a Bill Simmons critique. This is kind of one of his takes. He's like, what does she do? No, she does things, but not in every movie. She's not always given things to do. That was also a Bill Simmons-ism.

She does things. She does things. She did the things. Okay. Talladega Nights Simmons-ism. She does things. She does things. She did the things. Okay. Talladega Nights, we'll say, is red. She plays the character

of gorgeous woman in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. Fun movie. Not going in the Hall of Fame, of course. 2006 is the X.

Remind me which movie this is. I cannot. What is this? Because after this movie, things, business really picks up. Yeah.

The Amy Adams, of course, I remember this now. This is the up. Yeah. The Amy Adams, of course I remember this now. This is the Zach Braff, Amanda Peet, Jason Bateman comedy. Of course you remember it. I saw this movie in movie theaters. That movie doesn't exist.

I'm afraid to tell you. When his lawyer wife, Sophia, becomes pregnant, chronic underachiever, Tom, must take a job at his father-in-law's

advertising firm. Tom has to adjust to the demands of a very high power job. And he finds himself in an increasingly hostile office rivalry with Chip, Sophia's paraplegic former lover. Those are words. Okay. The X is not going in. So you say things pop off after this,

which is true. It's because she gets nominated for June, but like this is all within the same year. Talladega, nice, tenacious D the X is all, and she's nominated for june but like this is all within the same year talladega nice and asius d the x is all and she's nominated for june bug you know for the 2006 oscars uh loses to racial vice and the constant gardener and uh reasonable loss it is a reasonable loss um but like that that was like her major interest because she won an award at sundance when it premiered at sundance and then then she got the Oscar nom.

And people are like, who is this girl? So do you think she got these jobs after the nom? She probably got it all before. I think she did these before. And then Enchanted is what she did after. So let's talk about Enchanted. I'd never seen it until a couple of weeks ago. Really?

Even though it was a hugely successful movie. You know, I was 25 years old when this movie was released. And not going to see Disney Princess movies? Didn't go to see Enchanted. I did watch it with my daughter, who was utterly mesmerized. Yes. And now is in a canon of her own. I like this movie.

It is indisputably in the Hall of Fame. No question. Yes. It's one of her biggest hits. It is entirely built on her charm. Yes. And you can see how they saw her in June it is entirely built on her charm yes and you can see how they saw her in Junebug

and built this for her the naivety engine of Amy Adams is like in full effect but also Marsden almost steals it it's Marsden

it's kind of Marsden's movie he's really really good Marsden's so good in this movie the question is as we're zooming out on like the ripple effects of these things

if we look at the state of live action Disney movies and I'm like kind of bummed that this is the way it went like she's the first live-action disney princess in a lot of ways not from harnessed ip but like if you look at the reason a live-action beauty and the beast movie exists you could probably trace it back it's an interesting point i think that uh obviously it's quite depressing that this was an original movie that is almost like an active satire of all of the Disney movies that came before it. And, you know, the sort of like what if a Disney princess was made manifest in our world is the whole concept of the movie. But they don't do original live action movies like this anymore over there.

So that's a real shame. I think the original sin for live action Disney is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. That's where it all went real bad for everything. We're on the precipice of Mufasa, Cole, and the Lion King, which is,

I guess. Your most anticipated movie of the year? We're talking about it soon. We'll talk about it on the pod. Yeah. I invited Van to that pod. Are you okay with that?

That's perfect. Okay. 2008, Charlie Wilson's War. This is the one that I rewatched. I like Charlie Wilson's War. I rewatched I rewatched I like Charlie Wilson's War I rewatched it and I was like

Amy Adams sure is in this here in this movie they don't do anything with her what what is her part I've seen this movie like 10 times she plays

she plays his assistant right Charlie Wilson's so he's got a bunch of hot girls in his office and she is the hot girl who is

played by an Oscar nominated actress okay I remember Emily Blunt being very alluring in this film yeah she sure is salute to her She is the hot girl who is played by an Oscar-nominated actress. Okay. I remember Emily Blunt being very alluring in this film. Yeah, she sure is. Salute to her. There's a sequence on a veranda of some kind that I recall. Yes. Correct.

Quality work from Nichols. Thank you, sir. This is a great Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle. He's never ever sick at sea, I've heard. But like Amy Adams, there's a part where they you know are visiting a war zone essentially and she has this you know a moment with some and i was like oh is this this is this why you put amy adams in this role turns out no there's no reason for them to have swung up with uh with that particular not so much okay thank you for reminding me so that's gonna be that's gonna be a red on

charlie wilson's war you war. It's a fun movie. Speaking of Emily Blunt, I believe she's in this film as well. Is she not? Sunshine Cleaning, which was a Sundance breakout and was very well reviewed at the time and I think was one of those movies that had like a $10 million acquisition price and then nobody went and

saw. No, not so much. Oh, I saw it. What'd you think? I love it. This is yellow. It's a yellow. Are you arguing green or do you think i love it is this is this this is yellow it's a yellow are you are you arguing green or do you think yellow yellow is fine okay but i love this movie this is a movie about two women do they own or work at a cleaning company star one their sisters yeah and and emily blount's like the fuck up sister right right now and this is so archetypal sundance yeah um but but i remember liking it at the time too I've definitely not

revisited it in 15 years we'll yellow that out Miss Pettigrew lives for a day green green green wow so green so green

go to bat go for it maybe as charming as she's ever been in a movie had you seen this movie before? I hadn't

this was a new one for me I almost pitched it the other day for our World War II pod because it's like low key Nazis in the background kind of movie this for one may have been a new one for me. I almost pitched it the other day for our World War II pod because it's like low-key Nazis in the background kind of movie.

For one, may have been the singular moment in time that Lee Pace imprinted on a generation of interested parties. Correct.

But Amy Adams is so good and just like a bolt of energy through this entire movie. It's mostly a two-hander with her and Francis McDormand. They're both great

in their own ways, but she's asked to be the live wire and she's asked to be the sort of like incorrigible flirt throughout this entire movie. And she's so, so good at it.

She's so good. She plays, her character's name is Delicia LaFosse. And she is a film ingenue. Yes. A wannabe film ingenue. A wannabe film ingenue

and a nightclub singer and has sort of betrayed her true love and like her true self for fame. Yeah. And so she's just coming across as this like bubbly confection of a girl and Frances McDormand is here to teach you the true meaning of Christmas

and by true meaning of Christmas I mean the anti-bubbly confection. Which of the three boys you should choose. Yeah, yeah yeah but just sort of she's just yeah bubbly and but she's so good in this I gotta say we're further along

in the Hall of Fame than I would have thought at this stage of her career so that's encouraging 2008 Doubt yeah is it though? really?

well I'm not sure wow to Joanna's point about what does she do yeah I'm not sure that she's really given enough to do.

I mean, Viola Davis has one scene and she has Viola Davis crushing it. Viola, Meryl, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And Hoffman, and then Amy Adams, in that order. Yeah. I don't disagree. I think her role in that movie structurally is really important, right?

Like, if it is just the point counterpoint of investigating Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl, I think that works. You need someone to be, like be looking to sweep shit under the rug at first opportunity. And this is her playing naivety mode yet again, but as a nun. I think she just fills a role that the movie needs really well and pitches it at a really, really high level relative to what that role can be. I think that's generous. I'm going to yellow it. I have the same reservations that Joanna has. You have such doubts.

Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian, which I think is the second of the Night at the Museum movies. I'm not going to agree on this, but I just need to tell you she's actually great at this movie. She's good? Yeah, she's really good. I haven't seen this movie. She plays Emilio Earhart with a lot of moxie and it's just quite fun. But full disclosure, I watched all of the Night at the Museum movies on a plane.

On a really long plane ride. Had a great time. Did they make the Ringer's plane movie list? I didn't even see. I don't think they did. But I put it on my long list. Okay. Good for you.

I'm going to read it with no disrespect to you or Amelia Earhart. I just wanted to mark that she did more with this than she needed to. So this movie just came up in a conversation we were having the other day on the pod. Julie and Julia. Which is a, I would say complicatedly remembered Nora Ephron film that is one part historical drama

and one part coming of age dramedy smashed together. I believe you were referring to the Julia Child aspect as being the good half i think that's universally accepted there is literally online a cut of this movie that is just the julia part the child cut yeah because julie powell with love and respect to her uh is an intolerable character um and i hate that part of the movie okay Okay, so that means red? I would red this.

Yeah, her part doesn't work. Doesn't work at all. Is it Adrian Grenier? Is he the... It's Messina, isn't it? Is it Messina? It's the part of Messina. Okay, what movie am I thinking of?

The Intern? Devil Wears Prada. Devil Wears Prada, thank you. Yeah, I tend to get those confused. Your Merrill's. My Merrill movies, yeah. 2009 Moonlight Serenade. What is this movie?

Are we sure it exists? I'm not sure it exists. I'm going to look up the description. I love to read the description. Well, that's not, that's the Glenn Miller song Moonlight Serenade. That's not what we're referring to.

Moonlight Serenade is a 2009 musical romance film directed by Jean Carlo Tayarko that stars Amy Adams as Chloe. A piano player discovers that the girl at the co-check of a jazz club is a talented singer. She persuades him to form a musical act together. What is this movie? Who's the him? Alec Newman? Oh, no.

Was this movie made in 1999 and then released 10 years later? I have no idea terribly confusing released by Magnolia that's red that's not going in no 2010 leap year

it was all there on the page like Amy Adams Matthew Goode Irish countryside attempting to go to that

Hugh Grant place attempting my yeah and yet my friend calls this movie, Amy Adams is going to fuck a stranger. We have for years called this movie that.

Yeah, it's a no-go. Leap Year is definitively red. I know there are some people who really like it as a piece of cheese, but that's all that it is. It's a piece of cheese. Another one of these very weird movies that I've never seen.

This is a direct-to-video movie from 2010 called love and trust that stars excuse me love and distrust get it right that stars listen to this cast are you ready robert pattinson after twilight amy adams sam worthington after avatar robert downey Jr. and James Franco in the peak of his Franco-Rogan-ness. Yeah. And a post-Iron Man Downey. Now I feel bad for not watching this movie. This is an anthological movie with directed segments by six different filmmakers, including Lorraine Bracco.

This is that era. A lot of anthologies going around. What the fuck is this movie? Which is her segment and what happens in it? Let's find out. Amy Adams plays Charlotte Brown in Pennies. Charlotte Brown is a waitress and young single mother who will do anything for her daughter, Jenny.

And when push comes to shove, she does. With a menacing figure on the other end of the phone and a time limit of two hours, she must raise enough money to ensure that she sees the smiling face of her child again. We have that movie. It's called Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell.

Is this is this in the like Parisian time era like. Yes. Yeah. OK. So that movie is out love and distrust

2010 The Fighter. It's got to be green right. I think it's got to go in now. She's Oscar nominated for this portrayal. I think this was like a big eye opener for in now she's oscar nominated for this portrayal i think this

was like a big eye-opener for people because she'd never done anything like this um i don't scrappy when you go back and look at it do you think this is a great performance it's a little cartoonish it's a good performance it's an accent performance yeah performance but in terms of i was trying to analyze the case of why am Adams doesn't have an Oscar. And I'm not agreeing with Bill that she doesn't do anything. No, she does things. We know that. She does do things.

I mean, she wails on the sisters. That's what I'm saying. I think this is the closest she got. But Melissa Leo, unfortunately, staged a tremendous campaign that year. But an infamous campaign that year. But this an infamous campaign that year. But this is the closer she got to having a reel that you could play at the Oscars

where you're like, I get it. Because usually her performances, even like the bubbly, flirty ones, but those are the ones that are not usually

getting nominated, are pretty understated. That's sort of her vibe. And so you don't have something for the reel. Whereas, in this one, when she punches

the shit out of a woman for calling her a skank on her porch, play it on the reel for the Osc whereas in this one when she punches the shit out of a woman for calling her a skank on her porch play it on the reel for the audience. Great sequence. Isn't it Conan O'Brien's sister who she punches I think?

Yeah Conan O'Brien's sister famously one of the sisters in this movie. I think she and Wahlberg have genuine heat too between them. I think they're very good together. I think the movie is

okay. It's a very very traditional sports movie in a way that I find kind of bland but anyway. It's also more of a B sports movie in a way that I find kind of bland. But anyway. It's also more of a Bale movie than an Amy Adams movie

for sure. It worries me. Like, this is a pretty good era for her overall, but it is a bit of a wives and girlfriends era of roles.

We're going through some of those right now. The Muppets, which is the James Bobin directed, Jason Segel authored Muppets reimagining in which she plays a girlfriend named Mary. And you get why,

because like why not get Amy Adams from Enchanted to do the Muppets movie? We're bringing the Muppet back. Good idea. We're bringing it back. This movie doesn't matter in the grand scheme of Muppetry. Anything with a Muppet in it matters.

I mean, has an Oscar, Muppets matter so much this movie doesn't it might be outside the top 10 all time Muppets movies though which is like

maybe an episode I should be doing honestly well one Christmas Carol we know it it does the people are saying it I'm with you

original Muppet movie Muppet Take Manhattan The Great Muppet Caper all better for me are all above all better than Carol I didn't even hear Muppet Treasure Island, so this is fucked. Okay. This is like really the very narrow space of age difference between us. Sean and I are the same age. I feel

betrayed in this moment. I think Muppet Christmas Carol and Treasure Island and In Space and all those movies are all fun and good. Fine. This okay um and i i really love seagull and i seagull after forgetting sarah marshall and the dracula musical i was like this will be the best film ever made yeah this guy who gets puppets like this guy and he he's gonna bring him back and then he didn't but burt mckenzie did win an oscar so there's always that's true that's a good it's also tough from an ab adams perspective like her literal role in the movie is that she gets forgotten so how could we possibly put it there okay we're writing

the Muppets what about On the Road have you seen this I have this is the Walter Salas adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel

yes which I remember being a lot better than I was told it was going to be am I crazy it is it just doesn't

have anything for Amy Adams it doesn't no but it is better than... I just Googled on the road like a fucking idiot. Like, of course, I'm not going to get the movie on the road. When Lights Are Nate is a song.

Yeah. I remember there being like some amazing sequences with Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart in this movie. That's all. Like, that's what my memory is. But there's nothing for Amy Adams. Nothing for Amy Adams. Okay. So that's read for Amy Adams on the road.

2012, The Master. Have you guys heard of The Master? Yeah, briefly. Have you heard the good word? Vanishingly. Yeah. If you're interested in The Brutalist, I would watch The Master first,

think about The Master and how maybe these things are correlated to each other. She plays Peggy Dodd. It is a wife part. Sure. But I would say she's doing significantly more with it and is showing us a version of Amy Adams that I like to see.

Yes. Um, a woman in control at times overwhelmingly in control. Yeah. Uh, and a woman with a defined

point of view about how the world should work amongst men. Would you like to expand on this at all? Um, no. Are you going to minor in this?

no. A woman who can just sit in the side of a frame and like control a sequence. Have ownership of it yeah I do

because I do like to play what if on the Oscars right we talked about Doubt which she gets nominated for Penelope Cruz wins for Vicky Cristina Barcelona we talked about of course

Melissa Leo winning for The Fighter the Master year she lost to Annie Hathaway and Les Miserables I will not be taking an Academy Award

away from my beloved Anne Hathaway I also will not take it also she's cooking she's wonderful in Les Miserables. I will not be taking an Academy Award away from my beloved Anne Hathaway. I also will not take it. Also, she's cooking in that movie. She's wonderful in Les Miserables. I would never. This is tough. I didn't find, other than Melissa Leo, which I'm just...

Right, did she deserve to win anywhere else? Right. Yeah, that's an interesting question that maybe we can get into. I mean, the thing is that she's not nominated for a movie that's coming very soon that she should have won for, in my opinion. But we'll get there. Spoiler, were we misled by Chris Ryan? Chris prepared us to have to fight for a movie that's coming very soon that she should have won for, in my opinion. But we'll get there. Spoiler, were we misled by Chris Ryan? Chris prepared us to have to fight for that movie.

We'll find out. Definitely not. No, that's just an order of magnitude in terms of importance to those folks. The Master is Green. Trouble with the Curve. Straight up a terrible movie that I watched for the first time for this podcast.

Directed by Robert Lorenz, who is Clint Eastwood's longtime producing partner, stepping behind the camera in Clint's stead, more or less, to make a baseball movie. Is it Ryan Phillippe? Who's the male lead?

Justin Timberlake. He rolls up in a convertible listening to The Walkman. It is so bad. That's red. Man of Steel, I think is an absolute fucking abomination. And I'm sorry to say,

I hate that movie. I will not allow it in the Hall of Fame. I was going to maybe argue yellow just based off of like career importance. In that it helped to torpedo her career. I mean, if you're telling the story of Amy Adams' career, the DC project is part of it.

It is. I think we should yellow it and come back to it. We'll yellow it and come back to it, but I will not be letting it in. I'm sorry to say. That's great. 2013, Her. Kind of a weird nothing part.

Again, there are a number of great films that have nothing for Amy Adams in it. Bill's not right, but... But not wrong? But not wrong. Hear me out.

Joaquin Phoenix interacts with very few actual humans in this movie one of them is how dare you you know the movie's one of the points of the movie

is obviously like simultaneously open to the idea of falling in love with something that is not human form but also like hey have you noticed

that there's like a really cool normal woman who lives next door to you who's interested in you and she represents that and I represents that.

And I think that that's often her role in a lot of movies. It's like, Amy Adams is quite beautiful and striking, but she's like, she's regular. Achievable? Yes. Yes.

I wasn't going to say it, but you said it. Yeah, a woman said it. It's okay. The eye can lock that down of famous female actresses. Not that I can, but that's what I think the movie is trying to show you.

Sure. So Her, I think, is red, even though it is an excellent movie, in my opinion. Now, American Hustle is a movie I really don't like, but I would say it's automatically green for Her.

Automatically. Wow, you're upset about the Her duration? You don't like American Hustle. This movie barely exists. Like, if you ask someone on the street who had seen this movie when it came out to try to recount literally any details of the plot of American Hustle. It kind of doesn't matter.

She's cooking in this movie. She's fine. I will say that I'm sorry we didn't record it. Rob and I had a really fun time trying to remember the plot of American Hustle. Anything at all. I was like, Jennifer Lawrence definitely starts a fire in an electric oven. This was the year that Cate Blanchett won for Blue Jasmine. So that's a pointless win.

She already had an Oscar. Blue Jasmine is fine. This is where I would put it. I would definitely put it for that film you alluded to that she should have been nominated for and won. Yeah. But I would definitely say Cate does not need her Blue Jasmine Oscar, and I would give it

to Amy Adams. I mean, look at this roster of people that year in 14. It's Cate Blanchett wins, Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock in Gravity, which is fine, but she's in the spacesuit the whole time. Judi Dench in Philomena, which is a complete Harvey Weinstein concoction. Weinstein, good dog, yeah. And Meryl Streep in August Osage County. Which is like, it's, again, okay. And like,

kind of ruined source material in my opinion. So, I don't know. It's very silly. I agree. I think you might have to be right

because this is also one of the most financially successful like, non-franchise movies she's ever been in. Like, it was a smash hit. David O. Russell really was running a con

on everyone for a while, I have to say. It was was a smash hit. David O. Russell really was running a con on everyone for a while I have to say. It was the most nominated movie of that year. It had 10 Oscar nominations one each in all four acting categories. And she is doing like the part within a part within a part thing

layering lots of accents in. Like I respect the overall bit of that character. I just I really am not fond of this movie. Well. But I think, I think it has to at least

get yellow and not green. Out of respect for Man of Steel, we'll yellow this as well, but I'm almost certain we're going to come back to green again. I think we may.

I think also if you're nominated for an Academy Award for a movie, it's kind, in most cases, it has to be a green. 2014 Lullaby, don't know what this is.

Nor do I. How can that be? What is, what is Lullaby i'm this is the most i've ever had to google it's like a tiny little indie i think okay i guess that's fascinating that she's been doing that in that time um yeah she's got a very small part in this movie directed by andrew levitas which i think it's saying it's like a tv movie it feels like a favor um it does feel like a favor so the lullaby is out. Let's talk about

Big Eyes briefly. Guys, I watched it for the first time for this. I don't understand the appeal of this film or her performance in it. Was there a lot of appeal? Like, is this a movie that's super highly regarded? She was nominated for Golden Globe at the

very least. It was relatively well-reviewed, I would say. It was a thing. It was, thank God, Tim Burton has put the toys away to make a real person's movie again. And it is a movie about an artist. And it's a movie about someone who's been alienated from an artistic community that is very much in keeping with the Edward Scissorhands-style film that Burton was quite famous for.

I don't know. 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's not even like a good... 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's not even a good Christoph Waltz performance. It's just a little cartoony at times. I think we have to yellow it

out of respect for its awards affectations. Yeah. That's tough. Okay. You can yellow it but I refuse to let big eyes into this.

I mean, we're running out of titles, guys and we don't have a ton of locks left. So let's keep going through it. 2016 Batman vs. Superman Dawn of Justice. That is a red. If Man of Steel is not getting in, nothing else can. That is the reddest red you can be.

I fucking hate those movies. 2016 Arrival. Let's look at the 2017 Academy Awards. Do you have that pulled up already? Yeah. Who was nominated in Best Actress that year? It was, so Emma Stone won for La La Land. Okay, good win.

Isabelle Huppert in Elle. Ruth Nega in Loving. Natalie Portman in Jackie. And here's the kicker. Oh, no. Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins. Yeah, an absolute joke. An absolute calamity.

Yeah. How did this happen? I honestly don't know. Again, I wouldn't take an Oscar for Emma Stone, though if I had to take her Oscar and she could get it, you know, a little later on, which she does, then I'd give it to, Amy Adams should have been nominated and won for Arrival.

End of story. Why did Ciara tell us we were going to have to fight you for Arrival? Because Amanda and Chris are obsessed with Arrival and think it is like a five-star all-time classic in the conversation

with like 2001 or whatever. And I'm like, it isn't that. It's a very, very, very good movie that I like a lot and I liked a lot when it came out.

But I just don't have the same level of adoration for it. But in the context of Amy Adams' career, it might be the best movie she's made it's the number one so clearly the number one

so I have no issue whatsoever with automatically greening it that's a pretty competitive Oscars best actress not bad group of performances there

still she should have gotten in there she's acting opposite a fucking window I know she's great in that movie again a weird way to talk about

Jeremy Renner but okay but I think that Meryl nomination is just so embarrassing. It's a joke. I hope Meryl's embarrassed. I think part of it is that this would have been six nominations in nine years for her. And I think people were a little like, ugh, her again. Well, it's also the genre bias.

You're right. For sure. Science fiction movie, absolutely. But now we're going to look back on that movie and be like, this is kind of where it starts for Denis because of the direction he's taken in his career

like Sicario is the breakthrough but this is really the one that shows us who he wants to be yeah so I think you're going to look back on that movie in 15 years

and be like you know what maybe it was 2001 no I mean if 2001 is a 5 then I would put this as like a 4.8 or 4.9 like it's I don't think it's like quite I don't think but maybe in 10 years I'll make it a 5 I would put this as like a 4.8 or 4.9. Like, I don't think it's like quite, I don't think

but maybe in 10 years I'll make it a five. I would say not right now I wouldn't make it a five. I think it's one of the best movies of the last decade. I think this is one of the best performances of the last decade. And it is 80% her and an octopus behind a piece of glass. Like, that's crazy. But how good was that octopus? The octopus was great.

If you want to do Octopus Hall of Fame, I'm here for it. But like it is a hugely emotionally powerful movie because of her. Inkblot Hall of Fame. I'd show up. We have seven greens and one, two, three, four, five yellows right now. We're going to make it. Yeah, I'm not worried about it. We're definitely going to make it.

2016 Nocturnal Animals. I would love to hear the Joe take about this movie. Oh, well, the problem is this. I love Tom Ford. Yep. And I love Jake Gyllenhaal in sicko mode. This movie is bad.

What? Yeah. This movie is bad. I think it's pretty bad too. Bad. Yeah. I think it's very entertaining because you're like,

look at all of these incredibly skilled actors debasing themselves in this trash and it's a kind of knowing trash Michael Shannon got nominated for this movie

I know right Aaron Taylor Johnson I believe sometimes justice Aaron Taylor Johnson one of the gold lobes yeah

so it was a big deal at the time it was Ford you know famous clothing designer coming off of A Single Man which is a very good movie

I love A Single Man and he's like I'm gonna dig my teeth into like basically a Daniel Steele novel famous clothing designer coming off of A Single Man, which is a very good movie. I love A Single Man. And he's like, I'm going to dig my teeth into basically a Daniel Steele novel on steroids. And she's okay. She's basically miscast. She's basically just reading

the whole movie. She's reading and taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose. I don't want to run through her importance in this entire movie, but her reading is pretty critical to the whole exercise of what we're doing here. That's true.

That is true. I really respect how fucking mean this movie is. If you're talking about Jake, I might say yes. I think Jake's great in it. I just really respect that it sinks its teeth in, that it doesn't pull punches, that it terrifies me.

I think about this movie all the time. Do you? I cannot drive down a dark county road without thinking of this. Is this a Texas thing? This is a thing.

Y'all haven't been on enough farm-to-market roads to know. I just got hit with a y'all. Y'all, come on. We did, we did. It's a Texas thing. Okay.

This is also, and I just want to represent my pal Mallory Rubin here, just a critical debut for the Aaron Taylor-Johnson six-pack in this film. I believe there's a long sequence in which he's taking a shit in this movie. Yeah, he's just naked on, he doesn't have a shirt on, he's just naked on a toilet.

Very cool. So green, very cool. It's a yellow that's going to be a red. Correct. 2017 Justice League, should be in jail, that's red. 2018 Vice. Are you going to go back on what you just said

about Oscar nominations should automatically I am going to break my rule and say that this movie is not going in her hole get it out of here she plays Dick Cheney's wife and

terrible honestly not even that well no so I don't know Lynn Cheney the fact that she was kind of an odd nomination

I feel like she was nominated because they were like sorry we fucked up with the rival it does it is a bit of a makeup call yeah yeah by the way just in case you care Regina King won for

if Beale Street could talk that year so even if she were great in that movie I would not take Regina King's Oscar yeah I'm a I am a fan of Adam McKay's movies and I spoke to him on

the show for this movie I think this movie is an interesting I like experiment and ultimately only half successful I didn't have the same like political confusion where I was like why are we creating empathy for Dick Cheney that wasn't really my concern it's just like it's a movie that kind of can't decide on the tone that it wants to take and I think it's an interesting representation of the way that McKay has kind of twisted himself in knots as an artist

to try to figure out like how serious he wants to be versus how much fun he wants to have. And like Sam Rockwell is just having like way too much fun

in this movie about something that isn't that funny to me. So it's just kind of a mess. It's a really tough like here are some things that happened movie. You know what I mean?

And that's just like it didn't have I guess clarity I thought it didn't have it. I guess clarity is what I thought it didn't have anything to say. You're saying it was maybe trying to say too many things at once, I suppose. But like either way, it doesn't work. I watched this movie resentfully because I knew it was going to be in the awards conversation. And I had a bad time with it.

We haven't really talked about her like bail thing. Like she's in opposite him in a bunch time with it. We haven't really talked about her like Bale thing. Like she's opposite him in a bunch of different movies. I mean not usually as a charged couple necessarily. She's also opposite Batman a few times too. Also opposite Batman

a few times. Like mostly just like yelling at Christian Bale across various movie properties. And I think she does that well but this is... She does it really well in The Fighter.

Very well in The Fighter. To her greatest possible effect. Yeah. And in American Hustle they're great together there are things that happen in that movie that's for sure it's so funny I really don't like David O. Russell

so it feels odd to be defending that movie but you know what sometimes these are the positions we put ourselves in I'm going to deliver to you guys a quintet of films that are coming in the immediate aftermath of her Academy Award nomination for Vice that are I would argue catastrophic um and again 2018 vice and sharp objects i just needed to like put it in maybe that's what she got her oscar nomination for was her performance in sharp objects hillbilly elegy in 2020 yeah zach snyder's justice league which was released during covid and

we recorded a four-hour podcast watch alongalong. The Woman in the Window, an adaptation of a bestseller that was like relentlessly worked over and re-shot and mangled. Dear Evan Hansen, which is just nightmare fuel for me as a movie. And 2022's Disenchanted, which is a sequel to the beloved classic Enchanted

that like is a perfectly fine sequel, but nobody- No, it's so bad. Okay, so bad. Disenchanted was so bad that I could not even bring myself to consider the Hocus Pocus

sequel because I was just like if they did that with Disenchanted I'm uninterested in what they did with Hocus Pocus they did do one thing

which is they rectified the fact that in the original they casted Dina Menzel and then didn't let her sing in a musical which is a choice that you can make

as a filmmaker one could do that one could do that one could do that they rectified that but it doesn't work at all would you put Night Bitch in well that's what

I wanted to say so I think all five of those movies are automatically read without conversation the movies are not good and I would argue that her

performance particularly in The Woman in the Window which is a movie that on paper Chris described a movie yesterday as Fincher Methadone, which I loved.

What movie was he referring to? I can't even remember. Maybe it was Red Rooms. Red Rooms. Thanks, Jack. Which was just an awesome CR turn of phrase. And this movie could have been that as well. And it's just so deeply not that.

And part of it is because she's not able to give you the performance that you need in the movie, among many other problems. That movie was, that book was so popular and for why. So, yeah. And it was at the same, roughly the same period as The Girl on the Train,

which is another mangled literary adaptation. Correct. Starring an Academy Award nominated actress who I almost always like, that like the movie didn't work at all. Anyhow, they're all red. Nightbitch, I just think it's one of her best performances.

So it should be in the conversation. The movie, you know, we may end up having a bunch of movies and maybe we don't even like that much, but they go into her hall of fame. So to answer your question earlier about what is this exercise, it's kind of everything, you know? How many greens do we have? Let's do the math. We're going to yellow Night Bitch for the sake of conversation, Jack.

And then that's going to mean that we have one, two, three, four, three four five six seven yellows and two four six seven greens so what we need to do is green three of the yellows and we're going to green american hustle well i'll read the yellows i'll read the greens catch me if you can june bug enchanted pedigree lives for a day the fighter the master and arrival as you know i love to rattle off the names of films on this podcast the yellows are drop dead gorgeous which is not going in so we can read that okay you think it should be no okay 2008 doubt i'm not sold on doubt no i'm not Man of Steel. I'm not sold on Man of Steel. I can't even put my heart in it.

American Hustle is definitely going to be green. Fine. Out of respect for you, Rob, we yell at it, but if it were just Joanna and I sitting here, it would have been an auto-green. Well, then you better agree Nocturnal Animals. That's all I have to say about that. I would be willing to give you that. I agree. So that takes us to nine. For you and the state of Texas.

I'm so moved. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Now we have one more nine for you and the state of Texas I'm so moved yes yeah thank you now we have one more to go and I kind of sort of think it's Night Bitch I think it's Night Bitch

we're going Night Bitch over Doubt yes she's just I really thought you both were going to come crawling back to me on Doubt well

there is no movie without her in Night Bitch that's true in Doubt it's like that could have been Anne Hathaway. It would have been fine. She does go absolutely feral on a meatloaf. And like, again, she's, the commitment of the performance is unquestionable.

It does all hang on her. She's looking straight down the barrel of the lens, delivering a lot of Night Bitch. And again, in the sort of representative of her career, this idea of the producer era i'm gonna fine i'll do it myself uh amy adams yeah her thanos era she's in her thanos era where does that bring us back to her back to night bitch so right now on variety's prediction of best actresses yeah where do you think amy ad Adams sits for her performance in Night Bitch? Out of the top 20.

Oh, based on the response to the screening I went to, I would say, and this is Clayton Davis putting this together, right? Clayton,

where would Clayton put her? In the tens? Yeah, I was thinking teens. I'm going to say 14. She does not appear in the top 20. Not appear. That's tough I'm going to say 14. She does not appear in the top 20. Not appear. That's tough.

Well, is that because the movie's not out yet? I don't think so because there's plenty of movies like Baby Girl that are not out yet in the room next door. I mean, this is just a

look at the top 10. Right now, Cynthia Erivo is in the first position which is not accurate. Angelina Jolie is number two. Mikey Madison is number three. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is four. Carla Sofia Gascon is five.

And then the next five are Nicole Kidman and Baby Girl, Fernanda Torres and I'm Still Here, which I just saw. I'll talk about that later on the show. Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door, Saoirse Ronan for The Outrun, and Demi Moore for The Substance. With love and respect to Variety and Clayton, sometimes those lists are...

A little wonky. A little wonky. I don't think she's getting nominated but I wouldn't be shocked if she got nominated I would certainly not be shocked if she got nominated

for the Globes yeah would this go into comedy yeah this would go into comedy and she would get nominated for the Globes we're gonna be talking about that

very soon we are but and if if that Globes nomination starts a different conversation, that's the thing that the Globes can do because of your double actor nominations. Someone starts being in the conversation who wasn't in the conversation before.

Okay. Well, this is turning into an epic episode of this show. And it's because I put more on your plates than I needed to. I think I'm... So it's between Doubt, Big Eyes and Night Bitch. It's not Big Eyes. I think it's Night Bitch.

Look, you were both so charitable with Nocturnal Animals that I'm willing to I'm willing to play ball here. Okay, then here is the Amy Adams Hall of Fame. It's Catch Me If You Can,

Junebug, Enchanted, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, The Fighter, The Master, American Hustle, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals, and Night Bitch. I would ask you to show that to Bill and ask him, would you not say that Amy Adams

has done something? That's a body of work right there. That's an incredible body of work. There's no doubt about it. She does things. She does do things. You guys have done great things on this podcast.

Thank you so much. Really enjoy potting with you as always. Let's go now to my conversation with Pablo Lorraine. Very happy to have Pablo Lorraine here to talk about Maria and his work um Pablo you know you've obviously been working on this accidental trilogy of films but I'm curious about your relationship to Maria Callas is this someone that you have been interested in for a very long time how did how did she become the the final piece of the trilogy puzzle oh well i think it's um i'm an opera fan i i grew up going to the opera with with my with

my mom mostly as i grew up and that there was always this kind of mystical you know figure maria callas and her voice and her life her work her impact in culture impact in society her impact in music he probably changed the history of opera forever. And for some odd reason that I don't completely understand, there are very few movies about opera, given that there's so much in common. So I thought to try to do it, to find an angle where we could almost make an opera and shoot it,

and make a movie that feels operatic, not in the dramatic way, but in the real operatic meaning, and bring those two elements together and try to understand a little bit more about her figure and how and why it became so, so relevant for the history of music and particularly for the second half of the last century. Can you talk about what that meant to you to make a film feel operatic? What decisions you make to render that? Yeah, I say that there's a distinction because it's often that people that you know people could describe or a critical review could describe a movie as being operatic meaning that it has a lot of ideas and it's by rock in its intentions i'm i'm using that that term because i i think that what we're doing here it's a movie that it's an opera but in in movement in motion it's a moving proscen, it's a movie that is an opera, but in movement, in motion.

It's a moving proscenium, it's a moving stage that we are capturing with our camera, capturing with our point of view. And it's a movie about about a singer that has become the sum of the tragedies that she played on stage for so many years. And all those characters as are somehow um inhabiting her simultaneously um up to the point that this is also a tragedy um but at the same time it's a celebration of a life and work so it's all combined. And I think we want to be in her perception of reality.

And that's how we can let the music get in and the opera get into the story. So unlike Jackie and Princess Diana, Callas is an artist. And so capturing an artist at work is complicated. And obviously, you've got an actor who's got to portray someone who's extremely one of the most famous people of the 20th century and who is an incredible performer. So what do you do? How do you make that feel viable, real, you know, accessible,

textural with the actor and with the sort of moving proscenium that you're describing? Well, I don't think I have a very clear answer to that it's a good question i i i think that probably um obviously the actress uh the actress very very important obviously it defines they they carry the the movie on the on their shoulders um um but i but i'm I'm fascinated by them,

by each of them. And as you well said, this is the story of an artist and I think that I was very lucky because I am very into music. I really love music and I think I'd likely probably know more about music than cinema, I think.

And so there was an opportunity to express myself with something that I truly, truly love and to film the life of someone that I admired for many, many years. So it was a little bit less of a research, you know, like in the case of Jackie and Spencer with Prince Diana. It was more a movie that I have in my bloodstream since many many years so it was a little bit easier for me um to to to recreate it um but but i guess the biggest challenge is to to understand or try to understand her ghosts you know what what's going inside of her why she's so mysterious why there's nothing that you could really do to

completely understand her and and why music can really um explain something or express something about her that is completely indescribable with words you can use music and and moving images i think um and that is just a very interesting advice. You know, it's a good thing to have that. It's just wonderful materials to work with. Angelina Jolie, of course, is also a world-famous, incredibly glamorous person, like the person she's portraying. And so I like that self-reflexive quality.

Is that something that you had all talked about when you talked about doing the part with her, that she could connect to this character in any particular way given her experiences? Well, I don't think you need to

talk to her about it. It's so lifestyle. But again, look, we were just talking about it.

I think there's something incredible that I've read a lot of biographies about her, you know, seen documentaries, all of her interviews on the internet and read and studied a number of things over the years and made this movie. And I'm not entirely sure who she was.

And I think that's something that also happened with Angelina, I think, maybe because she's so well known as being the spotlight for so many years, other people might assume that they really know her. And I don't think that's real. Once you really wonder what people might think about Angelina, that it's likely to be very far from who she is, you know, and not that I do know, by the way, but I think that is sort of the enigma that they carry. That combination of enigma and magnetism that could find in someone like Angelina, you could also find her in Maria. So I thought it was a good match. It was something that Angelina could do to carry that weight of something that at some point you get to understand and know and feel because she's somehow sharing with you.

But then when she doesn't want it, you could be completely disconnected. And that is a beautiful exercise where the audience becomes very active, I think. You make this bold choice to very early on in the film show a performance of Ave Maria and to show Angelina in close-up. I was wondering if you could talk about why you wanted to start there. Yeah, it was something that I've been thinking for years, even before

we had a script and I mentioned to Angelina, to Steve Knight, everyone involved, this is how we're starting. I wanted to defeat, not just for the audience, but also for us, the ghost, this idea of, oh, it's Angelina, so well-known, she's not an opera singer, she's going to play an opera singer, she's going to sing, when is she going to sing, how is she going to sing, what is she going to sing, why is she singing, and all that is going to be successful. It will be believable. It's going to be like a karaoke session.

What is this? So I was like, okay, let's just train really hard, especially her, and do an excellent and magnificent job. And let me film you in a close-up. You will be looking at the camera on a tight shot. Your face is going to be on a very large screen. And we will see you singing. And people will look at your lips,

will look at your face, will look at your eyes and see how it's going. And we're going to defeat the problem in the first minute of the movie. And I think we do. I think she succeeds in that. And I think she do. I think she succeeds on that. And I think she becomes callous and I think we drop

quickly Angelina out of the equation. She's the actor, she's the character that she's representing. It was bold, but I felt it was necessary. And also I think it's very important for the movie because, and this is probably the most important thing of

everything, is that it's an elegy, you know, it's like a prayer, it's like she's singing Ave Maria that comes from Othello, from opera's Verdi Othello, and she's praying and asking for help,

for protection, for some sort of spiritual connection to something that's bigger than her at the beginning of the film, with such a beautiful melody. It's a very moving melody. And as we're singing, we go and kind of see fragments of her life to introduce the character to everybody. So I think it works in multiple layers, but I really love that we did it,

and I love how it works in the film. I wanted to ask you about the structure in relationship to Jackie and Spencer as well. None of the three films are standard biopics in any way, and they all are these kind of, these memorable figures captured at a very important, critical stage of their life. But this one is the most expansive

in terms of how much of the figure's life that you show, whether it through flashback or them talking to this character that Cody Smith-McPhee plays. You know, I'm curious, like, what the conversations were like with you and Stephen Knight

and why the decision to kind of capture so much of her life, but also not do your kind of standard cradle to grave approach to that story. Well, first of all, I think biopics are a culture of fantasy. I don't think you could actually call a movie or anything a biopic. I don't think you can actually capture anyone up to the point that you go out to the world and say, look, this is who this person was, with responsibility. And the only way to do that, it's probably with the person itself. But however, I think this, yeah, it's true, this movie, this movie shows the very last week of her life. And it's the moment when she decides to conduct her life by herself and for herself.

And in that exercise, we thought it was important to look back at how did she get there? Why and how? And so the fragments, I think, this is a movie about perception and we try to inhabit her reality with perception and with her own memory and kind of, you know, in an angle, in a perspective that I would like to call it a poetic memory,

we could uh travel with her through the music to different moments and and and different fragments of certain ideas that can be more abstract some of them some of them are more concrete and more specific but they're all building a character that is celebrating her own tragedy. And I think that's where we would try to lay our energy, especially when having such a beautiful and, you know, out of this world music that she sang for us. I love this intersection of Onassis and Kennedy and the fact that you have this sort of expanded

Pablo Lorraine cinematic universe happening now too. And the fact that these tendrils of history are all starting to touch each other in a way. Is that something that is appealing to you about telling these kinds of stories? Well, I'm really into the multiverse of these people. But I will say that it's a generation

and I think there's more people involved that if you keep digging you will get to a number of people of that generation that happen to be in certain cities like you know or certain countries mostly in Europe, England I would say new york where

people related to certain families royal families powerful families wealthy people obviously artists they all got together and and and sort of somehow um reorganized culture and society in certain elements of socialite, you know, and that happened in between the 50s and the 90s, I would say, where all these people knew each other, where they interact with each other in a world that, you know, that wasn't very responsible. They were just living the life, taking care of the family, of their business, and interacting with each other. And there's a number of people who were close to each other,

and this is just one of the other cases, one of them. And that's something very interesting, I think. Do you feel like that's impossible now? because of the way that famous people well-known people are expected to live? I think it's very different I think I think that world is over

I think that idea of style, fashion certain cultural connections to art, cinema, theater, literature, with an idea of grandiose kind of glamour, and it's gone. I don't think that, and if it ever comes back, it'll come back in a different uh form um but that combination of uh people art culture money politics uh i don't think it'll ever be back again and i think it's just interesting because um we look back at them uh towards mostly fashion and culture in many ways nowadays. And I was interested in these three women that somehow were able to be who they were, no matter to which family they were related to, which man, which fortune, with whatever.

And they were able to stand by themselves and leave a huge footprint in culture throughout their own identity and inner strength, which is just beautiful and fascinating. of almost like touchability of Calus, just dining at a cafe and being someone you could just see in the world and walk up to and speak to. And even though she has this kind of defiant presence, that she still was a person living in the world, not somebody who was just locked away all the time too. That also feels like out of time in some ways. It's an era where certain people like to be connected with their fans in a physical connection. Nowadays, everything happens through a screen. You know, Kalas was singing, they were on the street, they were on theaters. There are a number of things that are happening, you know, very, where there's a lot of human interaction.

Nowadays, our, you know, the people that has, you know, the people listens to Spotify podcast and they go to Instagram and see the people that they admire and the interactions and we have influencers and whatever's going on today but it's I think it's a it's a more abstract kind of communication it's different and I think back then everything happened more face to face but at the same time there was media they were paparazzis they were you know probably Maria Callas and also Jackie Kennedy and for sure Diana Spencer. Prince Diana

was likely to be the most photographed woman of the 20th century. So there were also media icons, but they were more tangible. And I think there's a big difference.

I really love what you and Ed Lackman have been up to on the last two films. I so admire Ed Elkande as well and was wondering if you could just talk to me about how you guys came together and maybe like what was the same and what was different about

working on that film and this film. Of course, El is a master. I wanted to work with him for many many years and we had the opportunity to work first in El Conde and then now. They're very different movies. El Conde is a black and white kind of gothic expressionist kind of photography and cinema. And this is more like a movie that we wanted to make it look like it was shot in the 70s. It is someone that works throughout color. It's very unusual. I think most photographers work throughout lighting texture and lighting color temperature.

I think Ed is someone that is very determined to work throughout color and to light, in a movie like this, to light in the way that they used to light the film sets in the period. It's someone that is fascinating, has an incredible amount of good stories to tell and has a gorgeous sense of the aesthetics and how to truly look for the characters and their emotions.

She's trying to capture that emotion and the and the truth of the soul that we're picturing with with the lighting so he's part of the overall process as it should be um i think that is very important on a movie set some people could be surprised that maybe it's not that it should be like that but i don't think you should take that for granted. It happens often. There's people that are just caring about their own duty, their own craft,

and they're not necessarily connecting with what everyone else is doing. And I think it's in the center of that idea, and I really appreciate that. When you say he works through color, does that mean the costumes and the production design, or is there something else? No, because it's a i don't want to bore anyone but but it's um we shot on film so when you shoot on film you could probably um combine certain colors that would have a very like live color that as you're lighting that would since because of that combination it would create a different color result once it's shot and filmed because the film

would react differently to those colors combination so it's really beautiful and weird because you're on a set you're seeing something that is leading in a way, you see through the camera, and then after you shot it, it's processed, and you go and see it, and it looks different. He's messing with the negative. He's seeing the reality through what a negative can do. He's been doing it for 50 years, so he knows what he's doing. it's just very interesting how he can

create a world where the colors are only created through a film, a cinematic process. And that's what I mean by it. If it makes any sense. It does. It's incredible results. Pablo, we end every episode of this show

by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Have you seen anything that you've liked recently? Well, I haven't seen much because I am doing what I'm doing. I'm traveling a lot. But from this year, I really, really love Anora. I think Sean's movie, it's beautiful.

I thought it was very moving. I think Mickey does a beautiful work. I've been, I know Sean for many, many years. And I love when someone is just like stays on the track of what they do and then eventually gets a lot of recognition but I'm sure Sean's gonna keep doing what he does you know and he's been doing this for many

years in many movies and now he made a movie that is not only very beautiful but it's also getting a lot of recognition by a lot of people who want to pound door and can and I think it's gonna getting a lot of recognition by a lot of people who want the Palme d'Or in Cannes. And I think it's going to have a beautiful award season. And I'm very happy for him.

I think it's a beautiful, beautiful movie. If you guys have not seen it, please go on and see that movie. Hopefully you could find it on a big screen because it's very beautiful. And it's a cool interesting funny crazily funny film very moving and very well made so that's

also my two cents it's a great recommendation Pablo thank you so much I'm such a demir thanks for doing the show thank you thank you for the invitation have a good one

you too thanks to Joanna and Rob. Thanks to Pablo Lorraine. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, as well. Later this week, we're digging into the most underseen and underappreciated movies of 2024. We'll see you then.