The Big Picture - ‘The Woman King’ and 10 Movies to See Now. Plus: The Best and Worst Films at TIFF.

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

After a quiet few weeks, movies are back in theaters in a big way—and none bigger than Gina Prince-Bythewood’s warrior epic ‘The Woman King.’ Sean and Amanda break down the new Viola Davis vehicle and nine more new releases, including a pair of disturbing horror movies, a David Bowie doc, and, um, ‘Pinocchio’ (2:00). Then, Adam Nayman joins Sean to share a report from the Toronto International Film Festival, including word on Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Fabelmans,’ ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,’ and ‘My Policeman’ (56:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Adam Nayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about a whole bunch of new movies. Later in this episode, I'll be chatting with Adam Naiman about the best and not so best movies at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. But first, new stuff. Amanda, we're going to recommend some movies, talk about some recent releases, including the number one

movie at the box office this weekend. I don't know about a surprise being number one, but certainly surprised with $19 million, Gina Prince-Bythewood the woods the woman king very exciting new movie mainstream film on over 3 000 screens in america did you like the woman king i sure did did you like the woman king i did it was uh really straight down the middle mainstream entertainment and i really enjoyed it i was like all right this is a movie that is clearly inspired by braveheart and gladiator and using very familiar dramatic beats. And hell, it worked really, really well. You and I texted each other, I think, just the word movies in all caps, which is possibly the animating spirit of this podcast.

You know, I'm just like, remember when they just made movies. And it did really feel in a lot of ways like, as you said, Gladiator and Braveheart in the 90s, like kind of broad, big budget studio, epic action movies that you and I love. Also with some really notable and welcome updates, including the fact that this is a all black female cast. And as you noted in our outline, there's not a lot of precedent for a movie like this, and certainly not one doing as well as it did, in addition to making $19 million at the box office. A-plus cinema score.

People are loving this movie, which is really fascinating. There are some wrinkles to some of that love, which we'll talk about a bit. For those who are not familiar with this movie, it is a historical epic, like Amanda said. It's about the Agoge, the all-female warrior unit who protected the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa, which is now Benin. It takes place in the 1820s, and it stars the great Viola Davis as a general named Aniska who trains this generation of warriors, of female warriors who protect this kingdom. And so, you know, it is a story about

you know, maternal love and there's some romance, but for the most part it is a war movie. It's a battle movie. And the movie opens with a big and kind of satisfying battle. It predictably ends with a big and kind of satisfying battle.

There's great action in this movie. Certainly the pitch on the film is that this is, you know, this all-female warrior clan, but it doesn't go out of its way to kind of hit you over the head with how special that is. You know, like it's understood that this is unusual that there is an all-female army, but I didn't feel preached to about that concept either. I thought this was a really, really, I keep using the word mainstream, I think, because it just feels kind of simple in a good way. Would you agree with that? Yes. It makes A of the fact that the women warriors are kind of a big deal in the community, but it's just because they're cool.

You know, it's not like doing that, like this is, you know, historical significance, like the first time in cinema. And like, sometimes you even feel that baked into a movie itself. And this is just like, oh yeah, these are very, very cool, successful women that everyone is in the world of the film is interested in and wants to look at and there's that great early scene where um you know i guess the the the townspeople the commoners and i don't know what are we calling the the people who live nearby aren't allowed to actually look at the women warriors but there's like a little boy who like sneaks a peek in a very like you know 80s 90s like almost Spielberg sort of way and then the great Lashana Lynch who

is like fantastic in this film so so good and also playing like no spoilers, but a very recognizable character in a movie like this, who is the sidekick and tough and who you get really attached to. So they're just acknowledging the appeal of it and the characters on its own merits within the world of the film itself, if that makes sense. And I think that kind of what adds to the mainstream or just the familiar nature of this. And that's what's so interesting about this. And I have been thinking a lot about the phrase, they don't make them like they used to anymore, which is something that we say a lot and that we really pine for. I mean, you and I would both watch every version of Gladiator that they made. And in a lot of ways, this is like another version of Gladiator. And I say that as a full

compliment. But, you know, this also updates the way that they made movies for the better in a lot of ways. And I think you referenced some of the complications. It also uses some of the tropes of the way that they used to make movies in terms of alighting historical realities in a way that's complicated. And maybe we don't need to make movies like that anymore. I don't know. Do you want to explain some of the history? Yeah. So I think you're right that it recalls a lot of traditional war epics in that there is a fictionalized approach to the story in some ways to make the story, whether it be more inspirational or easier for a modern audience to understand. But there are definitely inaccuracies in this film. There's an excellent piece in The New Yorker by Julian Lucas, who wrote about and clearly has a deeper understanding of the history of Africa and the transatlantic slave trade. But, you know, the slave trade is a significant part of the story of this film and of the kingdom of Dahomey,

which, you know, was responsible for operating inside of the slave trade. And there's talk about that in the film. John Boyega plays King Gizo. He's the king of this kingdom. And there is this kind of moral quandary in the film where these female warriors are essentially operating to protect their kingdom, but their kingdom is also simultaneously selling off members of its kingdom or other Africans. And the movie at its conclusion, without spoiling too much, kind of valorizes the actions of some of the figures in the kingdom. And that's not necessarily an accurate representation.

It makes for a uplifting conclusion to the film, and it does become very message bound in its final 15 minutes. But, you know, I would encourage people to check out Lucas's piece because it's very, very deft and very, very intelligent and just really informative. This is not like a subject matter that I know a whole lot about. And I think the reason that the piece is really powerful and important is because there is a whole shitposting conservative community out there that wants to take a movie like this and review vomit on Rotten Tomatoes and point out the fact that these inaccuracies are,

you know, mischaracterizations and a miscarriage of the historical justice and um it is interesting that uh in these films it's extremely difficult to accurately portray what actually happened because frankly it will just unsettle people because over the over the arc of history a lot of awful things were done by these very powerful forces so we get a movie that isn't historically accurate. But you know what? Most movies are not historically accurate. And there is a way to enjoy something and to understand it. And then, frankly, to go home and read about it

and have a better understanding of what you just watched and not accept the two-hour war epic as the holy Bible of what happened in our history. So I wouldn't say I was bothered by it, but it actually deepened my understanding of the movie in a history. So I wouldn't say I was bothered by it, but it actually deepened my understanding of the movie in a way, and I appreciated it. Yes, I think I agree that the piece is remarkable, and what the Julian Lucas piece does is kind of guide in a productive way how to think about that complication and the nuance, and it doesn't dismiss the film out of hand. And I think, as you mentioned, has some really great film criticism for what really works about the the film and that it is like really entertaining

and the action sequences are really dynamic and i i think the performances i don't even know if we've mentioned viola davis yet um who is who is the star the main general naniska and she uh you know is viola davis so she's pretty good uh and all the relationships between the goji and um and and also the world that it creates is i think really like energizing and vibrant and it just like looks and feels a lot realer than a lot of movies that get made now. It just, you are immediately dropped into a place. So I think you can, and I certainly did appreciate the experience of watching the film and then felt, as you said, really educated by, and it enhanced kind of my experience of of the film by reading this

piece and and thinking about how we think about these things it's interesting to think about the movie too and gina prince by the woods career she was on the show a few years ago when the old guard her film on netflix starring starring charlie starren came out this movie is i think a lot better than the old guard um ginathewood's been one of the, if not the only, black female filmmaker in Hollywood working in the studio system for about 15 years now. You know, she made Love and Basketball and Beyond the Lights. Really, really good director.

And The Old Guard, to me, it felt like half of a Gina Prince-Bythewood movie and half of a bad Netflix action movie. But what I felt was this seemed like the training wheels for figuring out how to make this movie, which I'm grateful for.

And in a way, if Netflix becomes the place where you learn how to manage a $100 million action budget, that's kind of good if we can get The Woman King

on the other side. And I will say the fact that she got half of a Gina Prince Bythewood movie into a Netflix action flick is more than a lot of directors can do. And you could even feel that in The Old Guard, which I agree didn't work,

but was also charming at times. It was fine, you know, as opposed to being actively bad as most of those movies are. And you're right, if this is the new system of how people get a crack at big budgets and spectacles, and then they go on and make actually like good movies.

I'm okay with it. That's doing a service. Yeah, I agree. I hope she gets a chance to make an even bigger movie and hopefully an original film, you know, your point about this feeling like being dropped

into a real place is really on point there's not if there is a lot of cgi in this movie i couldn't tell yeah um it feels grounded but it i'm constantly on cgi watch and it looked like a lot better i really liked it i i would recommend this to pretty much anybody who likes movies because it is a true night at the movies kind of experience. I went on opening night, a Thursday night, and everyone in my theater started applauding at the end of the movie, which is an experience I haven't had since Top Gun Maverick, which was also an A-plus cinema score. Should we talk about some more movies? Yes. We got a lot of movies on our list. It was a really, really terrible August at the movies.

You were closing out your parental leave in that month. Yeah. I actually took a week off. We were proud of you. From the podcast because there was frankly nothing to watch. But then a whole bunch of stuff just hit in a very small window of time. And again, I would like to address the film studios of America. Sure.

You make fun of me when I address film studios, directors, and other industry luminaries on this podcast because they aren't listening. But now you're just taken to your soapbox? I'd like to address my podcast partner, Amanda Dobbins, who I'm speaking directly with right now. But maybe you can get a message across to those studios. Sure, all my buddies. Carrier Pigeon, or you can text them. Or do you guys still have a CyberDust channel? Are you chatting regularly?

Do you have a Discord with all the studio heads? What did you say before Discord? CyberDust. I don't know what that is. Did that happen while I was gone? It was a messaging service that Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, started about 10 or 15 years ago in which the messages that you send would disappear.

It was a precursor to Snap. Okay. But it was meant to be more of like a secretive communication rather than something that was just ephemeral. Okay. It didn't really catch on. So I take it you were not a CyberDust user. No. Okay.

But I'm glad that you guys all had that experience together in the glory days of the internet i you make it sound like it happened 400 years ago i 10 to 15 years ago that was a long time i never i never had cyberdust i don't even know if cyberdust was publicly available if i'm being totally honest um i mean how illicit were the activities on cyberDust? Because... I don't know. I wasn't there. Okay. We should call Jim CyberDust because it was named after him. And he probably knows where all the bodies are buried there. Nevertheless, I'm addressing you and addressing the movie studios.

Just like, just spread them out. Just spread your movies out. Like, we don't all need to drop them all on the same day. Okay. September 16th, I think that there were eight new releases and five of which were wide, which I'm grateful for. And I would like that to be the case every weekend.

But since we have long stretches where they don't release a bunch of movies, it's very confusing to try to get people excited about going to see a new movie. Now, I guess it does breed habit, but I'm just sick of the studios just treating August like dirt. You know?

Respect August. It's a great month to go to the movies because people want to be in the air conditioning. It does not seem like the grouping strategy really helped them make a lot of money. No, the box office was actually down this weekend, which is bizarre because we had a whole bunch of new releases. And the power of choice is a double-edged sword nevertheless we're going to talk about a few of them um i think i saw i think i've seen almost everything i'm really caught up on the movies right now i'm really feeling good about where i'm at i'm not taking care of myself necessarily and keeping my nearest resolution um no no i watched a movie that is not on our list last night called do revenge are you familiar with

this movie i think i read something about this i i think you should watch it it's a new netflix movie it's a it's a teen comedy starring camilla mendez from um riverdale and starring maya hawk the uh daughter of ethan hawke okay oh i saw i saw a billboard for this as I was driving down Sunset and it just said, do revenge with Maya Hawk and Camila Mendes. And I was like, what does that mean? And then I went about my day. Well, I just said the exact same thing to you. So I guess I'm just a billboard. I thought it was pretty charming, honestly. Mostly because of Maya Hawk, who pretty much just is Uma Thurman. And so we just have another Uma Thurman, which is frankly wonderful. I love Uma Thurman.

She sounds exactly like Uma Thurman. When I saw her in Stranger Things, I was like, oh, I see the vibe. Now she's just her mom, which is interesting. It's kind of like a Heather's-y, clueless-y TikTok update kind of teen comedy. You know, it's Netflix-sized, so it's not quite as,

or not nearly as good as any of those, but it had some charm. Nevertheless, I'm not watching with intention. I'm just firing stuff up. Okay. And that's not good. But a couple of these movies I did watch with intention,

and almost all of them I saw in a movie theater, and almost all the movies we're talking about here are in movie theaters. And so that's part of the reason why the impetus for this conversation was go out to the movie theater. There's a lot of good stuff there. You saw Moon Age Daydream, right?

I did. In a movie theater. In an IMAX. Yeah. Or no, no. In a Dolby. Sorry. But with the sound.

The sound is essential for this for sure. I like this movie a lot. I talked to Brett Morgan, the director behind it, and we'll run that conversation a little later in the week. It actually did pretty good business for a small release for a documentary. But this is really more of an experience than it is a true blue rock doc. It's a very it's a sort of a sonic and visual exploration of the feeling of David Bowie. There's a lot of archival performance and some interview clips, but there's no talking

heads here. There's very little text on screen. It's a movie that is not necessarily terribly interested in explaining the entirety of the life or the musical catalog of David Bowie so much as just being its essence. And for the most part, I thought it was successful. I liked it. I don't think it was perfect, but I like that Brett Morgan is constantly trying to kind of atomize and rebuild the documentary form. He did this with his film about the day of the OJ chase for the 30 for 30 series. He did this for Jane and the Jane Goodall documentary many years ago. He did it for Kurt Cobain and montage

of heck. He's got this long track record of looking at iconic figures or moments and kind of zagging on where you think the direction of the documentary is going to go. So what did you think of it? I think it's best if you think of it, as you said, more as like an art piece and really as like an extension of, you know, David Bowie's prolific visual experimentation, which this really, you know, it is music and sound together at the same time. And he was obviously in a lot of films as an actor, but there was like a cinematic quality to his pop stardom that a lot of people in the pop music space now are like constantly stealing from. So I, you know, it is really interesting, um, just to get to sit there almost like in a museum type way and have like the sound and the images kind of wash over

you for a while. Um, I, I think if you go in expecting like a, a narrative documentary about David Bowie, you might get a little itchy. But it's beautiful to look at. It is beautiful. When I spoke to Brett, he said that there are 36 David Bowie biographies and that there are already several documentary films about him. So he's like, if this is what you want, you can find it out in the world. That is not what I set out to do. I set out to do something different. It is quite beautiful to look at and to listen to. And he described the experience of seeing the movie Bohemian Rhapsody in theaters and being blown away, not necessarily by the movie,

but by the way that the movie sounded. And that that seemed to be a huge part of what he was trying to accomplish here. I don't know if we, have we ever talked about David Bowie on this podcast? Is he a figure of import for you? Yeah, of course. But, and you know, he's also sort of just there in the ether i feel like i inherited the idea of david bowie but i was thinking i think the first time i ever interacted with david bowie's work was in clueless because the you know fashion the like is the first well

it's the second song that plays but it's when they're going she's going through her closet um obviously the david bowie moment in francis ha is uh top 10 movie moments for yours truly i just i find that such like an exuberant happy the running to modern love yeah yeah sorry um i Sorry. Um, I, I realized that's not like a off the top of the head reference to everyone, but for me, it's really just sort of like up there with the Bible. So, um, I guess it's, he's like very movie based for, for me, my experience. And then also Zoolander, duh. He, like a movie figure of fascinating relevance to me. You know, he had a great taste as an actor.

The one thing I would have wanted a little bit more time spent on in the movie, and maybe I just need a documentary about David Bowie in movies, his role in movies is, you know, he's in Twin Peaks Firewalk with me. He's in The Man Who Fell to Earth. He's in Merry Christmas, um, you know, he's in Twin Peaks firewalk with me. He's in the man who fell to earth. He's in Merry Christmas. Uh, uh, Mr.

Lawrence, like he's in a lot of very, very good films. He had a really good taste as a, as a performer, as he obviously did as a songwriter and, and, and concert performer.

So, um, there's like meat on the bone, I guess for a lot of different ideas there, but, uh, it is a beautiful movie. So I,

I recommend people check it out. You didn't see Pearl, right? Nope. I really loved Pearl. That's great. You're making this face like I'm going to make fun of you. Well, I feel very vulnerable. I thought it was really, really great. This is the prequel to X, which is the Thai West horror film, the sort of slasher slash porno kind of satire slash loving homage

that was released earlier this spring. Ty was on the show back then. On the show, he talked about how while he was in New Zealand during the pandemic, preparing to make X, he had a little bit of time

and apparently a little bit of money left over and he was able to convince A24 to let him make two movies at the same time. And so I think they shot, I don't know if Pearl was shot first or second, but Pearl takes place essentially 50, 60 years before the events of X, which takes place in the 70s. And it also stars Mia Goth, who appears in X as the as

both the lead figure Maxine but also the murderous older woman um you've not seen X I I there's something there's I I have this newfound desire for you to see these deeply fucked up horror movies that I love I don't know what's going on with that maybe I'm just looking for more connection with you um X that's a that's a generous and probably false interpretation of what's going on um do you just think that i'm going to be really mad at all of them and that's no no no no no i don't think that's funny at all no i want you to connect with them the way that i do you kind of what you watched a horror movie with me recently that we'll talk about in an upcoming episode it's not really billed as one but uh yeah we can discuss let's just say we watch blonde

together um our blonde podcast is gonna be sick i'm so excited uh we're not talking about blonde yet though um pearl is a movie about a young woman who lives on a farm who imagines a bigger world for herself she wants to be a star and she she has these, some might say, flights of fancy, some might say delusions about how she will elevate out of her life. She also has a disturbing murderous streak. She opens the film murdering animals and things get worse and worse from there. Now, that sounds like pretty typical kind of horror movie fodder. The thing I love about this movie is it's very delicate

nailing of camp kitsch approach and the huge homage to John Waters movies that Ty West is pulling off. And the reason it's working is because Mia Goth is amazing. She's such a great actor. And so like she has always had

this kind of odd, discomforting quality to her performances. She's often shrieking. She appears in a lot of horror and crazy movies. She's very, very effectively used, although very disturbingly used

in A Cure for Wellness, that crazy Gore Verbinski movie that came out five years ago. This movie, even more so than X, though, is the first time where I'm like, this is exactly the kind of thing she should be in.

She should be in a John Waters movie. She should be in these crazy kind of self-aware slashers. She's really, really great in this movie. She has to give a monologue about an hour into the movie that she absolutely crushes. If you like horror movies and you like insane John Waters movies, I highly recommend this one. I know you'll probably never watch it and that makes me sad. Okay. I'll make space for some of these. Do you think that's the one that you would pick? I don't know.

And I don't even know what's the right order to see it in. Because Pearl is very different from X. Like the tone is different. And it's clearly like related, but they're cousins. They're not siblings. So I don't even know if I could recommend. I should think about what is the number one horror movie I want you to watch. I don't think this is number one, but based on the premise, I'm very curious about the next movie on

your list, except I see you've also left a note at the bottom of this that, may I just read it? This is probably the most fucked up movie of the year. Yeah. This is an excellent segue. You should never, under any circumstance, watch this next film that we're going to talk about, or at least I'm going to say things to you about,

which is Speak No Evil. Speak No Evil is one of the only movies that we're talking about that is streaming right now. It's on Shudder. I did talk about it a little bit out of the Sundance Film Festival where it premiered.

It's from Christian Taftrup, who is a Danish filmmaker and this movie is evil. It's disturbing. I was texting with Chris Ryan about it over the weekend and he liked it

quite a bit as well and he noted Brian Bertino's The Strangers, which is a movie that came out about 10 years ago starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, about a young couple who are alone in their home at night, and four masked strangers essentially taunt them. They arrive at their doorstep, they knock on the door, they don't even necessarily terrorize them, but they are present and it is extremely unsettling. So speak no evil.

This movie is your worst nightmare. Can I just say before we get to it, last night, I didn't sleep very well, but it's not because of my son. It's because a possum basically just did what you described. Instead of four masked men, there was a fucking possum outside our bedroom at like midnight and but he was like trying to get in to our bedroom and like knocking on the door and it was the most fucked up thing zach and i were terrified that's a really good premise for a stranger's prequel okay is a possum arrives it's like terrorizes a young couple possum has been living at our house for a year like on this side of it's really he needs to go if anybody has any tips on how to and terrorizes a young couple. I think this possum has been living at our house for a year

like on this side of the... It's really... He needs to go. If anybody has any tips on how to... You know, I guess I would like to be you know, humane or whatever

but fuck this possum. Don't say anything illegal or the ASPCA will come after you. You gotta be careful. I know that's true. Like I said, I would like to do

the right thing but I need this possum to not break into my house. Well, we look forward to your debut film, Possum Heaven. I'm excited about that. Or perhaps Possum Kingdom. And then you could use the great 90s rock song. You're familiar with that one? No, I'm not. Okay. You can fire up Spotify after we finish recording and listen to it. Speak no evil. Here's what this movie is um this danish family goes on vacation and they meet a dutch family while they're on vacation and these these two young couples they hit it off you've made vacation friends before i'm sure where you're like oh we're a young couple you're a young

couple no i never have this what have you of course friends absolutely who have you made how are your vacation i don't know that anymore because I didn't do the thing that this movie does, which is that when you make vacation friends, you're friends for four days and then you never talk again. But these two couples in this film, and frankly, you're way friendlier than I am and so is your husband.

So I'm stunned that you've never made vacation friends. This is alarming. I'm not going on vacation to meet strangers. I'm going on vacation to have time with myself no one's saying that's my goal is to make friends but sometimes you're seated next to someone on a chaise lounge and then all of a sudden bang oh hey where are you from this happens to me all the time at the playground now and that's a whole separate podcast that actually could be a has anyone ever made a horror movie about like you become you know someone at the playground like parents befriend you

and then you get invited to like a weird i don't know i guess i'd be too fucked up if kids were involved i mean it's not so far afield from speak no evil because kids are very much involved because these two young couples they both have small children and so the the the dutch family invites the danish family you know a few months after their vacation to come visit them at their home. And I don't really want to give away too much more, but the Dutch family starts to act very strange while they're hosting. I'll give you an example because this is in the trailer.

The wife in the Danish family is a vegetarian. And the husband in the Dutch family insists, insists in deeply uncomfortable ways that she eat meat that he has prepared. This is very early in the film. It is one of just a series of things that one of these families is pushing onto the other family. The movie gets increasingly horrifying and upsetting.

And the thing that you really hope is not happening, that it starts to become clear is happening, is actually happening. And it is, it's a day ruiner. It's a weekend ruiner.

But like in such an impressive way, it's so amazing to me the way that this filmmaker pulls off this feeling. Two filmmakers in a row on this show have recommended this. This is the last great thing they've seen.

Zach Kreger, who made Barbarian. And if you think, you know, he's quite good at making fucked up movies as well. And Brett Morgan, when I spoke to him, he was like, if you've seen Speak No Evil, it's amazing. So there's something to this movie. Whether or not you think the third act

to the kind of conclusion works, I think is debatable. Chris and I were talking about that a little bit over the weekend. I won't spoil that for listeners but it's available on shutter now to recommend it is it is a dare is a challenge but i'm i'm daring the audience to check it out um and i'm daring you but i don't but i also i don't think you should okay i i just don't really want my day ruined and again i'm not making friends on vacation let alone going to visit

them in another country. So I would just be mad. Yeah, but the Danish and the Dutch, they're pretty close. It's not the same. It'd be like driving to like Texas or not even. No, it'd be like driving to like Nevada to go see somebody. Right. Okay. That you met on a vacation.

All right. I can't believe you don't make friends on vacation. I'm blown away by that. Tell me the name, the first name of any person that you've ever befriended on vacation. I can't do it. Yeah. Okay. That's what I'm saying.

Like, you're some great, you know, Bon Vivant, like, party starter. Well, everyone knows I'm not that. I'm obviously not that. But sometimes, well, I actually, in an act of self-knowingness, I'm way better with strangers and first-time people than I am with people I've known all my life. Define better. You're absolutely mortifying to go to a restaurant with in terms of server small talk. By horrifying, you mean incredibly charismatic and amusing? Your Long Island dad

jumps out so hard the minute, like they're telling you how things are different at this restaurant. You know? It's just... And then I have to hide

under the table. Sometimes you gotta mix it up. You know? You gotta have a little fun out in the open. We haven't been... You and I haven't been to dinner in a long time.

Maybe when we go to New York for the New York Film Festival. for the new york film festival you can watch me in action yeah okay i mean mortifying but fun okay um next movie confess fletch which we did mention on the 1980s movie draft but that a lot of people seem to see this weekend at least on vod and seem to really enjoy this movie has gotten very good reviews there seems to be strong word of mouth that has entered the zone where it's almost fun to be mad at how the studio misserved or disserved

this movie to the world because there's this sense that like if only it had had better marketing it would have done better and this is what's missing

at the movie theater these days. Did you observe that on the internet at all this weekend? I didn't. And I gotta say isn't part of the appeal of this movie that you fired it up with absolutely no expectations and then it was like better made than you expected and funny and just kind of hit the right note and then you like moved on with your life This is kind of best case for what a streaming movie,

like I wish streaming movies were this good. And they just like made funny, enjoyable movies that, that you could watch and then, you know, go have a normal day. Yeah, I agree with you.

Like I said, on Friday, my lowered expectations were part of what I liked about the movie. I think the movie is, um, it has something that it felt like a lot of 90s comedies had, which was that sensation of while you're watching it,

pointing at the screen and saying like, oh, I like that person. You know, Annie Mumolo just appearing in this movie for 10 minutes and just being very funny. You know, Kyle MacLachlan appearing in the movie for 15 minutes and being very funny. You mentioned Marsha Gay Harden when we talked about the movie last week.

She's hilarious in this movie. Lucy Punch, who's a British actress who I've always really liked. She plays the woman who, you know, when Jon Hamm pretends to be the architectural critic from a newspaper. That scene is great. And she's so funny in that scene. There are a lot of really like small moments like that that are effective. i don't know if the movie totally hangs together perfectly well it's very shaggy but uh i did enjoy it and i would happily watch another fletch movie starring john ham about 50 minutes in i realized that i actually had no idea what the stakes of the case he was investigating were like i was just like there's something about art but i don't who loves an art heist more than me you know or an art crime no one and i had no idea what was going on i was like oh i don't care um also don't forget to mention john slattery who shows up and that is just very funny little madman reunion yeah um confess fletch is fun riotsville usa is another

movie i want to mention very quickly. Another documentary in theaters right now. It hasn't had wide release yet. I encourage people to check it out. It premiered at Sundance. It's directed by Sierra Pettengill. It is very controlled,

interesting archival movie. It's taken from these fake towns that were built as training ground for law enforcement in the 1960s when there was this panic in the government around the idea of rioting and amidst civil action.

I, a movie like this can't be spoiled, but it has like a very particular approach in the narration and in the construction is very clever. It is very biting. That is a little bit chilling. And it's one of those things where it's like, it made me think,

how has there not been a documentary about this before and as far as i know there hasn't so i would encourage people to check that out um see how they run yeah let's talk about it so this is a new movie from 21st century studios um and searchlight i thought it was going straight to streaming on hulu but in fact it only opened in theaters it opened on 2500 screens here's the cast of this movie sam rockwell oscar winner sersha ronan oscar nominee adrian brody oscar winner ruth wilson harris dickinson and david oyele among other luminous brit British stars of stage and screen it's an Agatha Christie parody slash homage and I I I didn't get it I know I didn't I didn't either and if if I

I got it but I felt it was unnecessary and And I don't, unnecessary is different than bad. And I don't think that it's, you know, shoddily made. And as you mentioned, it has a great cast. It's, it is a spoof of the process of adapting The Mousetrap, which is the famous Agatha Christie play. I think it's still running in London. It was the longest running play in the world. And then COVID kind of ruined that. But so it's about someone trying to adapt

the mousetrap into a movie. And so it's kind of an in-joke meta comedy about Agatha Christie plots and stories and also adapting things and particularly adapting this movie itself. And it just has too much in-jokey, you know, structure and meta-ness. Agatha Christie stories are like not quite a parody of themselves already, but they're very knowing. That's sort of the fun of them. And if you're going to try to do a send up or an update, then you probably need to have a little bit more reverence for it. I mean, that is the secret of parody. And I think that's why

Knives Out works so well, which is like the obvious example for this, right? I mean, or not example, but inspiration or inspiration to try to make money. And Brian Johnson really likes those films and books. And so you can tell that even as he's updating and kind of spoofing the genre, that there is a lot of enthusiasm for it. And this is just kind of all all jokes no substance um and that's fine but i was like i don't know what the point of this is there's just a lot of other better versions of this kind of story you know like noises off is a version of like the peter bogdanovich adaptation of that that play is kind of a version of this there are a lot of like putting on a show, films and TV series. There are a lot of

Agatha Christie, both adaptations and homages and spoofs over the years. Right. This is, you know, I guess Agatha Christie

is thriving once again, you know, with Death on the Nile and I know she's kind of always thriving, at least in the minds of you and my wife. Yeah.

The Bible and then Agatha Christie are the like two most selling English translated, you know translated works of literature ever. Yeah, this just felt kind of flat, like literally, it felt two-dimensional in a lot of ways. I mean, it also doesn't help that it's an adaptation of a theater production, which is always when theater and know, theater and films have a very uneasy relationship. I don't know.

They tried. It didn't work. It's the kind of movie that I think, paradoxically to this podcast, if I had just fired it up on streaming, I would have felt fine about it. But if I would have gone out to spend the night at the movies,

I would have been disappointed. We don't usually point that out about films on this show, but this one didn't really live up, in my estimation um but i have a couple more movies that also premiered at sundance that are finally rolling out that i thought were really interesting um god's country is playing in theaters uh ifc picked this up out of sundance it stars tendue newton uh as a woman who moves to a kind of desolate town, I think in Montana, to kind of get away from the world.

And the world comes to her and it unnerves her in a particular way. And it sort of forces her to confront what's happening right in her face and on her property and in this town. I thought this was a really good movie. Really like kind of traditional naturalistic thriller that has some big ideas about modernity and race, but is primarily about, frankly, what happens when people won't get off your property? And what do you really own in the world? And I thought this was a pretty nifty movie. I don't think most people will be able to go out to see it in movie theaters. But as somebody who is an AMC TV Plus subscriber, which I think is a really good

service because it gives you everything on Sundance Now, everything on AMC, everything on Shudder, and everything from IFC all in this streaming service. So anytime they've released anything through any of those portals, you can eventually stream them when they come out. And it's usually two to three months after they've been released. If you're a subscriber to that service, which I like a lot, fire up God's Country. It's really, really well done. And then the other one is on an even smaller streaming service, but that I highly recommend,

which is a highly unusual movie. It's called The Cathedral. It's directed by Ricky D'Ambros, who's from Long Island like myself, who was born in the 80s like myself. It follows a complicated kind of fractured family on Long Island in the 80s and in the 90s. And it's a very, very autobiographical film from Ricky.

But it's told in this deeply literate and novelistic fashion. There is sort of voiceover narration that is very delicately written. The way that the acting is portrayed is really unlike anything I've ever seen. There are some familiar faces. Brian Darcy James, the great stage actor, plays his father in the film. And Monica Barbaro, who played Phoenix in Top Gun Maverick, plays his mother. This is only streaming on Mubi, as far as I know, which not a ton of people have, but is a really good streaming service.

The proposition of that service is one new movie a day, typically an arthouse style film or a foreign film. But every day they add one new movie to their collection. I thought this was a very, very interesting film. There's a really great review of this film by Manola Dargis in the New York Times from a couple of weeks ago. It's hard to describe.

It's hard to make legible what even the purpose of it is, but he's doing something unlike really anybody working in movies right now. So I wanted to give it a shout out. I actually have seen this one. Oh, what did you think? Well, it's on movie. Was that accurate what I described?

Yes, I liked it a lot. I mean, it is really stylistically memorable and rigorous. And the novelistic approach. I mean, certainly the, the narration is written in that way. Um,

and is, is fascinating. And I think mostly works. And there is also a lot of like archival footage of it. Honestly, there was a little bit of a, um, Adam Curtis vibe to it speaking of you know Sean's enthusiasms it was also like a kid born in the 80s on Long Island

is the like who just observes and doesn't like totally say anything that you're just it's an interesting way of communicating kind of close third person novelistic writing in cinematic form, which can be really difficult to do. And we talk about those failures a lot on this podcast. So I thought just that attempt was fascinating and a very Sean movie as well. It is. I probably should know that about myself i think i think it was um manola in the times who pointed out that it's clearly very uh robert bresson influenced to that that lead character not really not really reacting like not having a a personality and being kind

of an observer of his own life is so similar to so many of those bresson protagonists and that was a very purposeful choice that bresson made in his films because it forced the audience to think harder about what was actually happening in the film and what that character was feeling and what we're meant to understand about the filmmakers intentions. I thought it was very impressive in this. I admit there is like a kind of intellectual, emotional interiority that I respond to in movies that may not be for everyone. But there's just not a lot of filmmakers, like you said, who can do that. This kind of this literate kind of world building on screen.

So that's a really interesting movie. So there were a couple of other movies that were released in the last week that I think we should address before we get to Adam Neiman. The first one I'll just say, this was supposed to be a Clerks 3 episode. It was supposed to be a Kevin Smith episode. Ciara and I have been plotting this in your presence

for the better part of five years. And Kevin had to reschedule. So this isn't a Clerks episode. This isn't a Kevin Smith episode. I'm sure the millions and millions of people who are anticipating that are disappointed. That would be incredible after like 45 minutes of us talking about like weird ass horror movies and possums you were like and now kevin smith that would be weird uh hopefully kevin will be coming on the show next month maybe in november

but we're definitely gonna do a view a skewniverse thing clerks three is also not rolling out wide he's doing a more roadshow style. So it's literally traveling city to city. So I have a lot of feelings about Clerks 3. Okay. And Clerks 3 has a lot of feelings about mortality.

So think about that, Amanda. You know? Okay. It really just feels like you and Chris and my text chain just got made into a movie and I'm just sitting here being like, uh-huh.

Just like I am on the text chain. Well, we're not going to be texting about Pinocchio. We're going to be discussing it right now on this podcast. Pinocchio is a film that was released on Disney Plus last week. It is directed by one of the great living filmmakers. His name is Robert Zemeckis. It stars one of the great movie stars we have tom hanks it's based on one of the most uh beloved disney animated films of all time 1940s pinocchio and it is absolutely uh terrible um you watched this movie what'd you think yeah i hate you i'm really mad at you as

i texted you while i was watching it on a Sunday afternoon while my child was, you know, living his life and doing amazing things. And I sequestered myself to watch a fucking non-live action, live action version of Pinocchio, which is awful. And I also found just like really emotionally upsetting because it's about, you know, this old man's love, longing for family and his love of his fake son who becomes a real boy. And I realized that whenever my husband and I are talking about our son, like looking grown up, you know, or, you know, achieving some new phase of his development, we're just like, oh, he's like a real boy today. And that's just like a thing that we've been saying to each other. And then I just had to watch them talk about this in this terrible movie. And I was very angry.

And I remain angry. Robert Zemeckis has spent the better part of the last two decades reanimating stories we already know. Beowulf, the Polar Express, Christmas Carol. He's turned his attention to Pinocchio for reasons that are still mysterious to me. This movie did not originate with him. A couple of other filmmakers were on board. And Disney is obviously also more than 10 years

into this journey. I think they've made 20 now live action remakes of their animated classics. I want to proffer a theory to you. None of them are good. Not a single one. Not a single live action Disney remake is good. You can say, oh, what about the Jungle Book? Or what about David Lowery's Pete's Dragon? I love David Lowery. That movie is very sweet. It's not necessary. The Jungle Book remake is not necessary. Certainly Aladdin is disastrous. Cinderella is boring.

Dumbo was wildly disappointing despite being from Tim Burton. This movie is, I mean, it's just so unnecessary. We talked about this. We have the original. It's great. Are there some cultural flaws? Are there things that are not aging well in some of those original animated films? Certainly. That's true of most movies that are made in well in some of those original animated films? Certainly.

That's true of most movies that are made in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. All these movies are bad and I know that they make money, but this one went straight to Disney Plus. I think in part

because the studio got a look at it and they knew they had a real dog on their hands. And I just, I just want them to stop. Like, I just want them to just reinvest

in their animation studio and continue to put the same energy, time, resources, star power, all of those things back into the animated films because that's what their legacy is. The original Pinocchio is a deeply fascinating movie. It's an adaptation of an Italian story from the 1800s, but it is almost psychedelic in how strange

and how daring it is the way that that story is told it's beautifully animated the songs are good that's when you wish upon a star is is from pinocchio you know like they're also by the way when next time i see your son i'm gonna sing i've got no strings to him um in full okay which i think he really likes singing right now and music that's great so he'll just stare up with you with kind of like large Pinocchio type eyes being like, wow. But then I'm going to take him to a pleasure Island and put him to work,

you know, 12 shows a day. Okay. Okay. Um, we can discuss that and we can discuss my cut. Um, I have,

so I don't think we mentioned that Tom Hanks is in this movie, which is, I mean, I guess Tom Hanks wanted to do something nice for his friend. And so he is in this movie, which is Geppetto. I mean, I guess Tom Hanks wanted to do something nice for his friend. And so he was in this movie, but I don't really get it. But then Joseph Gordon-Levitt is apparently voicing Jiminy Cricket. Yeah. And he's doing...

How would you describe the voice that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is doing as Jiminy Cricket? Disturbing? Yeah. I mean, it sounds nothing like him. And there's sort of a country twang to it or something. Like he's being a cowboy. What is going on? I was so angry.

It's not good. Also, you know, the animation, the CG, whatever it is, it looks like complete garbage. And it really is like Tom Hanks is doing a SNL skit of himself in a, you know, boat in a sea creature or whatever. Very, it just disgraceful.

How did this happen? I know that sometimes great people come together, brilliantly talented people and whatever they make is a mess. Um, but this is, this is, uh, Oh,

I remember what I wanted to tell you about this since you've been talking about your son this is technically the first movie that alice has ever watched um she watched the live action pinocchio with you she watched 25 minutes and then the next day she watched 25 minutes and then the next day she watched 25 minutes and you strung this out over three days i did i did well because i turned it on because we were having one of those afternoons where I was like, this afternoon is very long. Yeah. This is going on a long, you know, those days where you're like, wow, it's only 2.13 p.m. Yes.

So I have five hours before this child will go to sleep. And we don't really watch a whole lot of TV, as I've talked about on this show. But, you know, if we're having a long afternoon, we'll fire something up. So we fired this up. And I don't know that she was in love with the film, but she was paying attention to it. And then the next day, we tried it again, and it worked. And we tried it again, and it worked. And so, you know, I wouldn't say I was paying as close attention to the film as I would have if I was sitting alone in my garage at 10 p.m. watching Pinocchio like a serial killer. But I'm grateful for that experience um i'm grateful that i'm able to share some of these things with alice i do feel a bit of shame

that this is how she starts out into the world of yeah cinephilia that's pretty bad i specifically watched it in a different room so that nox like would not be a part of it yeah i have to pay some penance what's something that i can show her that will be good like i mean she did watch some of ponyo but she only made it like 35 minutes into ponyo okay that's i can still claim that that's pretty good for a one-year-old yeah yeah well we're mostly on the mr rogers diet that's where she that's that's where she lives these days a little bit of sesame street a little bit of sesame street i think that perhaps perhaps you should consider kind of revising your standards of what counts as having watched a film for your one-year-old daughter and maybe 35 minutes is good enough for a checkmark on the spreadsheet at this age. And then as she gets older, you can kind of extend that watch time.

I think tonight we'll start Kieslowski's The decalogue and try to see how far into 10 hours we can get what do you think okay that seems good great our movie's back i don't know we had a nice time with it well i mean i don't know what to tell you we started off strong the woman king fascinating that was a good exhilarating really recommend going to the movies if you didn't go to the movies and see it. And I would say that things sort of declined from there as far as this podcast goes. So they're like sort of back. You and I have been seeing a lot of movies that have not yet been released that are exciting. We had like several.

Well, I guess we had like one and a half text message conversations this weekend like about movies that we've both seen and when was the last time that happened i think it will be an interesting fall yeah i think september has some notable releases and then october is starting to load up with some good releases um i don't mind sharing that i i very much look forward to our conversation about blonde i very much look forward to our conversation about Blonde. I very much look forward to our conversation about Don't Worry Darling, which is our next episode this week. A film that you've still not seen. Yeah. And

I wonder why they won't show it to you. And I look forward to our conversation about Tar. Those are all coming out in the next couple of weeks. So we've got in addition to bros, Nicholas Stiller's bros. So movies are coming back. The Woman King has kicked the door back open, which is a great thing.

Any closing thoughts? Movies, all caps. I'm still pro. Okay. Let's talk about more movies with Adam. Name it now. Adam Neyman is back on the show. He's in Toronto.

He visited Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival. Is the Toronto of your life the same as TIFF as an experience? The Toronto of my life exists about 25 minutes east of TIFF. So, you know, I i mean i've been covering the toronto film festival now i realized this year would be like 22 years including the weird covid covid tiffs uh and obviously you know piece i did for the ringer was semi about what it was like to have it back in uh in person with the the throngs. Because they shut what is considered our downtown entertainment district. They shut the streetcar off for about three days.

So drivers do not like it, but it's nice foot traffic. How was the festival this year? Was it great? Was it fun? Was it emotionally illuminating? It was celebrity infested. Okay. And not the people who are famous for making movies necessarily.

The famous people who are tangentially related now to filmmaking. Okay. This was a year where TIFF gave an acting prize to Harry Styles as part of the ensemble of a film called My Policeman. They had Oprah Winfrey. They had noted a tour, Hillary Clinton and a press release citing Taylor Swift for being an interesting visual filmmaker while she showed all too well. Even, even a really good filmmaker like Jordan Peele, he was technically there for the movie.

He was co-directing with Henry Selleck, but of course they got him to show nope at the, at what's called the sinosphere here, which is this big gigantic screen at Ontario Place. This all felt very back-ended. This was all like the festival's programming is locked, but now we need some famous people to drum up kind of more mainstream, more mainstream interest. That was palpable this year.

Tell me more about Harry Styles' acting prize. Was it for acting? It was for acting as part of the ensemble of a film called My Policeman, which is a film that takes place in two time periods, only one of which features Harry Styles. He probably would have deserved the award for acting if he had been in old age makeup as his older character. But it's one of those films that is, while trying to both be fair and not be too snarky, but the right level of snark, it's one of those films that tells an audience in 2022 that in England in the 50s or 60s, it would have been very bad to be closeted gay, right? So it's one of those films that makes you feel stuff for characters in the past by imposing a kind of contemporary pity on it or a sort of contemporary sadness. So it's based on the life of E.M. Forster and the author of Maurice and Stiles plays not E.M. Forster, but his male lover who, you know, in the film is a policeman who is obviously at odds with some of the brutal particulars of his job and obviously much

more hesitant to embrace his, his sexuality than the older man, the, the, the, the writer in the museum curator who seduces him. I actually don't think Harry Styles is bad in this movie at all. I think he's kind of let down by the actor who plays him as an older guy. He does not match up well with Linus Roche. They should have done something audacious, like had Robbie Williams play his old self or like Morrissey would have been amazing. Sure. Why not Paul McCartney?

Sure. Or, or, or, or, or Paul McCartney. But, uh,

I will say that walking by the premiere of my policeman where Harry Styles, I believe was there. I mean, I saw him, but at a distance through literally tens of, you know, hundreds of people screaming, uh, you know, I saw him, but at a distance through literally tens of, you know, hundreds of people screaming. You know, he had a lot of charisma while being photographed, you know.

And it's just so funny that this is happening at the same time as Venice. It's like these two alternate universes where, you know, the Venice movie, Don't Worry Darling, exists. And then people like Florence Pugh and Harry Styles have movies at TIFF, but there are other movies that really the world at large does not care about. And you were at a festival of your own. You were at Telluride. It's interesting how these different festival ecosystems work because there is crossover, but Venice really was like the big heavy duty auteur festival this fall. You're in your retus and your Schraders

and your Luca Guadaguinos. And it's not like there weren't good filmmakers at TIFF, but it was a big split. Those people were not in Toronto. Perhaps with one significant exception, which I think it's,

we should probably discuss the Steven Spielberg in the room. I mean, he, of course, is the one of the signature auteurs of any time, frankly. And his long-awaited diaristic, memoiristic portrait of his young life, The Fablemans, not only premiered at TIFF, but was roundly celebrated and also just won the audience prize at the festival, which is, you know, usually a, I don't know if it's a harbinger of things to come, but it's, it's, it's certainly a signal of something coming in, at least in the award season. Yeah. I mean, you know, he, he won the TIFF audience award, narrowly edging out to Albert Serra's pacifiction in the Wavelengths program.

I'm kidding. I think the runners up were Women Talking and The Banshees of Inishere, which are three movies that played in the biggest theaters at the festival. The Audience Choice Award, you know, is not rigged, but it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? The biggest movies that sell the most tickets with the most buzz, you know,

often have a chance of winning that award. I don't think it's been won by anything really surprising or obscure in a long time. You're quite right to say it's an Oscar, uh, Harbinger or an Oscar omen. And, uh, you know, it's a film that I already wrote about as a kind of extended first look for, for ringer. It's a hard movie to write about in a hurry because it's very dense, you know? And i think that as the award season goes on there's going to be lots of different ways in and out of that movie but certainly you know having steven spielberg at a festival is is rare because not counting ceremonial appearances or

indiana jones being at can or whatever i do not think he has been in part of a festival's program since the sugarland express which was was at Cannes in 1974. He said in Toronto he never had been. He's also forgiven for forgetting 50 years ago, right? I mean, the Sugarland Express, I believe, was at Cannes in part of its selection. But like, that's it. It's pretty fascinating that they went with Tiff. Not that Tiff went with Spielberg.

Of course, Tiff's going to take Steven Spielberg. But I think that they really do have this positioned as an award season movie. I don't think Tiff has really had the same sway or stroke with awards in the last couple of years as usual because for a lot of reasons, COVID and whatever

else, though Nomadland was at Tiff. So yeah, I think that a somewhat non-commercial, non-genre Spielberg movie and TIFF on the rebound after two years of not so many in-person screenings, they're kind of perfect for each other. Yeah, it's interesting because the Fableman's premiere rounds out this sort of quartet of highly personal stories from, I guess, big name filmmakers,

for lack of a better phrase. You've got Empire of Life from Sam Mendes. You've got Bardo from Inuitu, who you mentioned, and you've got James Gray's Armageddon Time. And it's interesting, the idea of Spielberg making a decision to go with not just a festival he'd never visited, but any festival at all. And I'm not sure what that says. I wonder if that says more about contemporary movie culture that there needs to be some sort of apparatus that gets the world excited about a very personal story from probably our best known living filmmaker. I remember back, come with me back in time, if you will, to Lincoln, which is still late spielberg but is

like several paradigm shifts ago in terms of the film industry and you know when lincoln came out in 2012 you know as a kind of disguised obama re-election movie and very much a film that you know spielberg and kushner put their whole weight into you know they said they had to because like we barely got this made you know i mean there's a little bit of a little bit of an eye roll you do there where it's like yeah you guys are really up against the wall with daniel day lewis and a cast of thousands there but the idea you know i think that these you know somewhat historical grown-up films their audience is is waning as it grows older anyone with a long enough memory for a movie like Bridge of Spies,

you know, they need to be driven to the theater. You know, Spielberg belongs generationally to another time, and he's the most successful filmmaker of all time, but it's not like he's been padding his stats in the last 10 years commercially. You know, I mean, at the risk of bringing up a bizarre argument, you know,

this is what Armin White wrote about him in that book makes Spielberg great again, leaving the political craziness of Armin White aside. He's like the great populist filmmaker of all time. The great popular American filmmaker of all time is somewhat cut off from what constitutes the American popular cinema now, not to his discredit, by the way. Right. You know, it's funny thatielberg helped to invent the modern idea of the blockbuster even he talks about the marvel stuff like whoa whoa you know like let's not oversaturate the marketplace the fabelmints is not exactly a broad demographic monster of a movie right i mean you've seen it it's not exactly oh that's right oh that's right you haven't i'm not

with you in toronto so I've not seen the film. That's right. That's right. It wasn't until you're right. No, he, he, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's not a movie that's going to pick up a bunch of, you know, 18, 19 year old stragglers just because, you know, and I mean, ready player one is sort of the one real, like facing the marketplace movie Spielberg's directed in the last little while. And even that, beyond the fact that it's a very odd movie and kind of a critique of all that, that didn't exactly set the world on fire commercially either. So I think that TIFF makes a lot of sense to couch this as a prestige movie and make that clearly what the narrative is here. It's not going to make $200 million, but maybe it'll,

you know, maybe he could start chasing, you know, John Ford, you know, by, by, by,

by, by winning another directing Oscar. And he can, you know, you know, polish his, uh, polish his position on Mount Rushmore in that sense.

And I mentioned John Ford for a reason because John Ford's, uh, spirit. And as people have probably discerned from Twitter, his actual presence in the film are sort of important. You can feel Spielberg really clarifying where he thinks he came from and who he thinks helped him along the way. And the American filmmaker he sort of settles on as his North Star in this movie is John Ford. Tell me about the rest of the festival. You mentioned the Banshees of Inisharen. That

didn't premiere at TIFF, but it played. What were some of the premieres that were meaningful or exciting or wildly disappointing? Honestly, I'm curious. Or wildly disappointing. TIFF's a Toronto festival. It kind of load-bearing mechanism for the canadian film industry is a place where movies debut i mean i'm caught between wanting to trumpet the virtues of some kind of really exciting youngish canadian cinema and not wanting to be caught in a conflict of interest because well i had nothing to do with the making of films like the maiden or concrete valley or i like movies which are all interesting movies. They're made by friends and colleagues, right? I mean, Toronto's not like a backwater or a small little burg or whatever,

but you know people, right? But I think that in terms of films that premiered or where people were getting a, I mean, more or less getting a first look at them, I mean, what's really the difference between something showing in Venice on a Tuesday and Toronto on a Thursday, right? That stuff has always felt a bit like hair splitting to me. The things that I saw here that I wouldn't have been able to see anywhere else first and that were very exciting were first two episodes of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom Exodus, which is a long, delayed, and in some corners, very feverishly awaited continuation of von Trier's 90s TV show. Kudos to him for somehow making it look on screen like it's 1994 again, and for being, as usual, just kind of crazy and, and uncategorizable.

Like that was the thing I saw here where it was like, anything could happen at any time, uh, watching this movie. Uh, I did not get into a movie that premiered at TIFF that everyone else seemed to enjoy and which would make a great double bill with the fablements, which is the weird owl biopic,

right? Well, you know, the Spielberg movie kind of feels a bit like you're watching a greatest highlights reel of Spielberg movies, and it sort of incidentally happens to be about him, and the Weird Al movie supposedly plays fast and loose and amusingly with the conventions of biopics. Movie I saw here, not a world premiere, but it's kind of getting its fall launch, and which I think you saw as

well which i think is absolutely wonderful is charlotte wells's after sun uh father daughter film uh set in a resort on in in turkey where paul maskell plays a dad playing his taking his pre-teen daughter on vacation and that just absolutely wrecked me i'm sure you'll have a cause to talk about that movie later on on the pod and certainly if you know we're all around at the end of the year doing best of lists i can't imagine that that won't be on on on mine and then in terms of disappointments i mean this is where you have to be a little bit coy because i tend to be kind of mean about these things and there were a lot of movies.

You're the mean pod guy. How are you feeling about that? All the choices I've made in my life have led me to this point where I can be futilely mean about movies that seem to work for other people. There was a movie that's going to be in the New York Film Festival called The Inspection by Elegance Bratton, which I was underwhelmed by. I leave it to others to have enjoyed it more than I did. Although thematically, it's an interesting mix with My Policeman because it's about a closeted Marine in this case and a movie that kind of what's good about it and also maybe

what's a little sloppy about it both derive from the fact that it's a filmmaker telling what is literally his own story. Like there's no distance between this, this, this director and his own, uh, experiences. It sort of plays a little bit like full metal jacket on shuffle,

but you know, at least he's seen full metal jacket, um, did not like the whale, uh, which is obviously going to be a big awards season conversation piece.

No disrespect to Brendan Fraser, who's the best thing about it. He also got an acting award in Toronto. You know, some sort of tribute. But again, I mean, we're talking about tributes in Toronto. They also gave Michelle Yeoh

something for a movie that wasn't at TIFF. And again again nothing wrong with giving michelle yo an award it just feels like there's this divide between here's the movies we've programmed to show to our audience and here's the people who are picking up prizes at a at a dinner right it was kind of a way of retroactively grouping everything everywhere all at once kind of with this fall crop of movies you know putting everything everywhere all at once kind of with this fall crop of movies you know putting everything everywhere all at once kind of in conversation with those movies you know so you have empire of light getting a directing award and my policeman getting an acting award and there's

michelle yo getting i think it was called like a trailblazer award or a boundary break breaker award and the effect obviously which the distributor would have liked is that now everything everywhere all at once looks like a fall awards movie too. Yeah, you know, Michelle Yeoh was also a Telluride when I was there, I guess, in theory for the 20th anniversary of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And she was there with the folks from Sony Pictures Classics. And Michelle Yeoh is a global treasure. And so I certainly had no issue with her being present. But it does make you think that everything everywhere all at once, which was released in March and will now be operating inside of this awards machine for the next six months. That's an entire year of Michelle Yeoh's life that will be somewhat dedicated to campaigning.

Because that's really why she was in Toronto. She was campaigning on behalf of herself and the film and spreading the word about a movie that she worked on, which, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. But it does shine a light on the, I guess, necessary fusion of the awards machine and what, you know, is an artistic showcase for filmmakers. Sure. And I mean, I mean, to some extent, anyone who presents movie anywhere is, I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're kind of campaigning and if they're not campaigning, they're anti-campaigning and campaigning doesn't just have to be for awards, right? It can be for attention. It can be, you know, as a, as a forum or a platform. I mean, one of the things about TIFF, I've always tried to convey this while writing about it for the

ringer. I feel grateful that I get to write about TIiff for The Ringer because I'm here in Canada and Tiff is not a big part of everyone's life if they're American readers. But I do try and say that there is something novel about this festival, which is how public facing it is. No one lives in Cannes. I mean, I know people live there, but it's not a bustling metropolis of civilians going to movies. No one lives in Venice either. People certainly live in New York with the New York Film Festival is an elite event and so on. TIFF is an attempt to sort of be all things to all people. They want to have competitions and awards that mean something,

but they also want to be a festival with an audience choice award where the people dictate what's important and they want to plunge red carpet premieres and incredibly famous people into the middle of downtown Toronto. I was at the world premiere of a very bad movie called The Menu by Mark Milad, who directs very well, lots of episodes of succession. The Menu should not take away what a good comedy director he is, just not in this movie. And not only is it a red carpet, but they're giving out cheeseburgers out front as a kind of like Neil William Castle promotional stunt and all of King Street is blocked off so that they

can give cheeseburgers to people walking out of this movie. So I mean, that's TIFF, right? It's a red carpet with cheeseburgers on it. It's a mix of all these different approaches. I think that the days of the festival maybe having close to 300 features will never quite come back. It did feel more manageable and navigable this year. I don't have a number in front of me, but it was less, but certainly more than in the last two years where for obvious reasons, the size of the program was totally cut down and there were little if any famous people here this felt more like old times not just experientially but like curatorially but still sort of smaller and the sort of smaller is not terrible i have to say right i want to i want to ask you about a couple of more titles yeah that you wrote about so first and foremost I think you also saw women talking which is a film that we'll talk about

quite a bit as we head toward its release which is not until December 2nd but has been pretty clearly earmarked for an awards run as well this is Sarah Polly's first movie in a long time what did you think of this? I think a lot of people who saw it in Venice thought it was great. And then on the ground in Toronto, just sort of being man on the street, ear to the ground, I could feel the takes and the reactions shifting a little bit from visitors because locals are kind of on board. I mean, Sarah Polly is one of the, the, the major figures of, you know, Canadian and specifically Toronto film. I mean, it's a film that is trying to do some things that are very challenging. It's essentially trying to be a

rhetorical, uh, it's a rhetorical intervention of a movie. It's a thought experiment. It's a, you know, what should the women in this small isolated community, which is a kind of fact-based thing that happened in Mennonite community, I believe in Bolivia, that Miriam Taze wrote her novel about the idea that after a series of attacks and assaults on the female population of this Mennonite colony, the women sort of decide, should they stay or should they go? There was years ago, a Canadian reality show called the week the women went. We're in a very staged reality show environment. I think in these small town,

these women pack up and leave. I couldn't help, but think of that while watching the movie, not because it's deliberately evoked, but because, you know, I live here in Canada. It's a movie that,

that so it tries to function as a kind of thought experiment. Like these, these, these characters played variably by some very famous to our listeners, actresses. Your Jessie Buckleys and Claire Foyes and Rooney Maras, and then some

Canadian actors of renown, like Sheila McCarthy, who was the star of Patricia Rosamond's I've Heard the Mermaid Singing. I like that she gets cast to kind of preside over the ensemble. They sort of decide what they should do. And so intellectual debate is very exciting. Static conversation can be a little bit paralytic as drama.

And there's lots of boxes that the film seems to check above and beyond the text of the movie in terms of, for me, and this is going to sound a little harsh, though not as harsh as some non-Torontonian critics were putting it, it flatters the audience, right? In a different way than a movie like My Police, but it flatters the audience. It never really stops cornering its own argument, and it never really stops confronting you with easy choices to me to make as an audience. The choices the characters make are difficult. As an audience, the filmmaking keeps signaling how you should feel and how long you should feel it and why.

And that kind of manipulation or that kind of pushiness can work in a movie. And she's a skilled director. But I think about halfway through, however much it had me, it, it, it, it lost me.

And there's some visual choices in it too, that I know people had really mixed feelings about because it's almost unfathomably ugly to look at, which is a choice because Luc Montpellier is a really gifted cinematographer. And so the desaturated palette, the grayness, and then the little flickers of color that sort of come in as the movie goes on very,

very deliberate, but it's somewhat, uh, somewhat owner onerous and somewhat, uh, arduous, especially when there's also this like magic hour Maliki stuff that I think is laid on thick.

I think that's thick. I think the score is thick. But I will say some of the actors are very good. And Jessie Buckley continues to me to be someone who just doesn't hit false notes in what she does. So yeah, mixed feelings. Do I think that this is a movie that's going to be at the center of a lot of discourse

and award season discussion? Absolutely. And the think pieces on movies with the titles, Women Talking and She Said, basically write themselves, right? People are already about to write those. Yeah. I look forward to not writing any of those pieces personally, as a he said. Um, a couple of more. You seemed a little bit disappointed by Glass Onion, the new Knives Out mystery from Rian Johnson, which got simultaneously rapturous and, oh, I'm somewhat disappointed by this review. So I felt like based on what I'd seen,

I've not yet seen this film. And of course, people will desperately have you not spoil anything because of the nature of the whodunits. But you were a little bit disappointed. I was, but then, you know, I'm mean, right? I mean, if you compare that movie to The Menu, which it is similar to, right down to the sociological subtext, eat the rich. I mean, that's much more literal, you know, getting a bunch of rich, spoiled, majorly contemporary 2022 figures together on an island and then like taking them to task or holding them to account to their shittiness for their shittiness sort of constitutes satire. And if you compare the two movies, of course, Kn the glass onion is superior right and to give

credit where it's due there's some really nicely directed passages just in terms of like you know reframing and shooting through objects and shooting architecture but then the fact that it's accomplished and sort of fluid i'm like well i would hope so it cost a fortune and it's part of this huge Netflix deal that that Johnson has and as I put in the piece for the ringer that that largesse that gets the movie financed when it's directed to a plot this is not a narrative spoiler for anyone who's going to yell about this it's more of a kind of just thematic observation you're going to put this big budget and this big cast towards a movie with this message that's essentially like you got to smash the system and be a disruptor and give, you know, the front runners what they deserve. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance there.

There are good intentions. But, you know, again, good satire and the menu is like really bad but well. And I don't think that, you know, Glass Onion isn't trying to be been well and i don't think that you know glass onion isn't trying to be been well exactly but you know like good good good satire and good intentions are sometimes at odds with each other i didn't like the ways that glass onion kept turning to me a little bit under its breath or these little asides which are sort of like you know you're a good person or or or you know these are kind of bad people i mean look the dan the Daniel Craig character is a very enjoyable creation. He's been an enjoyable creation two years running. And, you know, I want to leave the best things for that actor because he's very charming and very talented. And I like when he gets to be goofy. I liked him in Logan Lucky. And, you know i i like him in this so i probably was in all honesty trying a little too hard to no sell the jokes in these in this movie there is one joke in this movie about the

pronunciation of a writer's name if anyone involved with the movie is listening to this it's a great joke it's a fantastic joke because it took me a long time to realize it wasn't just sloppy writing on the movie's behalf, but a really nice conceptual joke tied into something we know about one of the characters. Kudos for that joke. It's very funny. Last thing I want to ask you about is there's a movie that was an acquisition at the festival that you wrote about that I had heard about actually a few weeks ago. Someone tipped me off to it and said, this is going to turn out to be one of the best movies of the year if it's actually released, which is How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which is from a filmmaker named Daniel Goldhaber. What is this movie and what'd you think of it? So this is an adaptation of a non-fictional,

again, kind of thought experiment-ish book by a guy named andreas malm it's a dramatization of this idea of well how to blow up a pipeline and it is a very granular forensically driven you know i a lot of the reviews i forget if it was daniel goldhaber himself but you know some of the reviews invoked films like sorcerer by william friedkin not because that's about eco-terrorism or about taking down oh actually this semi about taking down an oil company sorcerer. But, you know, through a fictionalized narrative, and obviously these are actors, including Sasha Lane from

American Honey, a tremendously attractive group of activists, I must say. Aren't they always, though? No, they're not. It's a very, a very, a very close up worthy male and female group of activists, but it sort of shows this group, you know, coming together, coming together on an ideological level and the little micro gradations and the differences about why they want to do this, but, you know, in a kind of heist movie way or in a ticking clock thriller way, you way, it sort of shows them

coming together for an act of what you would consider radical praxis. And it's a movie that slots very interestingly alongside something like Night Moves by Kelly Reichardt, which I think is a great film, which is much more anguished and ambivalent. This movie has a certain amount of suspense and anxiety, but from the title on down, it's not ambivalent about This movie has a certain amount of suspense and anxiety, but from the title on down, it's not ambivalent about the necessity of this. And this is where I think it's titled for success because it's a provocation, right? The second you present yourself as a how-to and you're not going to be hand-wringing over whether blowing up oil company property is a good or bad thing, and for the movie, it's unequivocally a good thing.

And I will say that there are other people who like the movie even more than I do. I think it's a strong film. I will say that it's very telling that even good American independent cinema, what we might consider a tour-driven American independent cinema, movies I know you like, or have talked about on this show, they do tend to shy away from this somewhat. So even to make a comparison, that's not fair, like to something like glass onion, and there's no world where these movies should be compared,

except for the fact that they're both at the same film festival. There is a difference between a movie like glass onion that makes a thematic point of disruption and smashing the system. And then a movie like how to blow up a pipeline, point of disruption and smashing the system and then a movie like How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which while not a documentary is basically saying, oh no, this should be done and unapologetically so. And I think for Toronto to be the place where that movie premieres makes sense because it's like America once removed, you know? And I think that picking up this movie, it was Neon, right? I don't want to get that wrong, but it was Neon who picked it up. You know, you're nodding. I think that picking up this movie, it was neon, right? I don't want to get that wrong, but it was neon who picked it up.

You know, there, there you're, you're nodding. I think I'm right. It is neon. It's neon. You know, there's going to be a lot of media training that's going to have to go for everybody into talking about this movie. And it's a movie that if the, you know, if a certain conservative news constituency ever hears about it, because movies go back to what we're saying about Spielberg. I mean, who watches movies anymore?

But, you know, if they hear about it, it'll be a bit of a lightning rod. And to me, things that are lightning rods on purpose, it's to their credit, because a lot of things just tend to be very passive, you know, or they talk a big game. They don't put, you know, any kind of money where their mouth is. And so in that sense, I think how to blow a pipeline is a movie that the filmmaker and his collaborators, you know,

should be, should be, should be proud of. Certainly it was a movie that a lot, I heard a lot of people talking about, you know, this, this,

this, this weekend in Toronto. And maybe it'll take some people by surprise uh take some people by surprise this fall adam i want to thank you for all the media training that you've done you know to be the the mean guy on pod you know it's really a it's a it's a pleasure frankly to have you in this role no it's good because every time i i i come on i talk to you one of my favorite people to talk to about movies someone who knows what he's talking about. I love coming on here and then always finding out I don't know what I'm talking about.

It's good because the rest of the time in my little life and all the work I do in books and writing, I feel like I do. And then whenever I come on the big picture, I find out on Twitter that unequivocally I have no idea what I'm talking about. It's good. It's a good, humbling reminder that we are all of us, you know, stupid. We are all stupid, except for you, Adam. Thank you. I appreciate you.

Thanks, Sean. Thanks to Adam. Thanks to Amanda. Thanks to Bobby Wagner for his production work on this episode. Like I said, later this week, Amanda and I will be talking about the highly controversial new film from director Olivia Wilde, Don't Worry Darling. We'll see you then.