The Big Picture - The WTF Movies of 2019 So Far | The Big Picture

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

You asked and we answered—sort of. In a year dominated by superheroes, it's been hard to find a common theme at the movies for just about anything else. So we share some of the weirdest movies of the year so far, like 'Serenity,' 'Under the Silver Lake,' and 'Wine Country.' Then we break down some of our favorites, including Olivier Assayas's 'Non-Fiction' and Claire Denis's 'High Life.' Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. The NBA playoffs are in full swing, and we have coverage across all of our channels to keep you up to speed as we make our way towards the finals. Make sure to check out the Ringer NBA show for daily coverage of the games from each series, and theringer.com to read Kevin O'Connor, Dan Devine, and the rest of our NBA experts break down every key matchup. And don't forget to tune in every Sunday evening to the Bill Simmons podcast to hear Bill and Ryan Russillo's NBA reactions from the weekend. As always, these can be found on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Sean Fennessy. And I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about movies, I guess, because movies are still happening in the shadow of Game of Thrones. We're having kind of a weird conversation this week. Amanda and I are going to be talking about what I thought was going to be the best movies of the year so far. But as we went down the list and we thought about what we've seen thus far and what we wanted to see, we realized that this has been kind of an odd year for movies. So we asked you guys on Twitter what you wanted to hear us talk about. You gave us a lot of responses.

Some of those films are brilliant. We've talked about some of them on previous episodes. Ash is Purest White, for example, or Transit, or Us. We spent a lot of time on Us. Long Shot, we spent a lot of time on Long Shot. Apollo 11. These are all fascinating, brilliant, beautifully crafted movies. We'll talk a little bit about them here and there as we're going through this. But Amanda, I think it's probably better if we talk

about movies that confounded us, confused us, excited us, and ultimately left us just wanting to talk. Yes. So here we are to talk. I was ultimately inspired by seeing Dragged Across Concrete. Have you seen that movie? I have not because I think everyone in my life has encouraged me not to. I don't think you need to see it. It's directed by a man named S. Craig Zoller. There was some notoriety around it because Zoller's movies have a particular political

bent, a kind of free speechifying that some have perceived as very conservative. It's a movie that stars Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as two police officers who have been suspended and then spend their free time trying to stop a bank robbery. Boy, it's larded with a lot of intellectual and political complications. It's not really worth unpacking here. You know, there's been some really good writing about it on TheRinger.com. I would encourage you to check that out. Chris Ryan and Adam Neiman had a conversation about it on The Watch a couple of months ago. Right, and I think that was part of the reason that they spent an hour talking about it. And at the end, we're like, we cannot endorse this, but also hear all our thoughts about it.

Yes, I walked away ultimately feeling the same way, though less interested, like less excited by what it did. But it does feel like an on-ramp into this conversation because there's a lot of cool stuff in it. It's very well made. Zahler is obviously an artistic person. I do not agree with many of his ideas about humanity. And it left me feeling like I had both wasted my time

and saw something unique. And I think that that's... It's definitely a theme. Perhaps a segue to the movie Serenity. Wow. Yes. So this was maybe... This was among the most requested in the call for submissions. I think it was the number one request.

Why do you think that that was? Should we set up Serenity in any way? Oh gosh, I guess we could try. How do we explain Serenity? Well, it stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, two bonafide movie stars, which is of note. And it begins as a kind of noir-ish or neo-noir-ish situation on an island. And Matthew McConaughey has a white whale of his own called Tuna. And he also has some demons and an ex-wife who needs some help. And that's Anne Hathaway. That's pretty much it. He's a fisherman.

He is, he's got an Ahab-esque pursuit of justice, the tuna that you're referring to. And he's got a first mate in Jimen Honsu. And Anne Hathaway plays that ex-wife. And he's got a kid that we keep hearing about that we don't see. And his ex-wife's got a husband played by Jason Clarke. And this movie is hysterical. And I don't mean it's funny. I mean, it is literally

operating in hysterics. The whole movie is the most pitched up over the top preposterously plotted movie I've seen in a long time. When it came out, Miles Suri wrote on the ringer about all of its absurd, what the fuckness. And I didn't read that piece at the time because I didn't want it spoiled for me. And it took me a couple of months to get around to this. And usually when someone says, you got to see this movie, it is effing insane. I go quickly, but for whatever reason, I didn't get to it. I don't think you did either. No, no, no. I watched it at home, which we'll come back to. So Stephen Knight wrote and directed this movie. Stephen Knight is best known, I think, for creating Peaky Blinders, which is a show on Netflix.

And he's written a handful of movies here and there. And he's thought to be a very well-respected writer, director in Hollywood. I'm just baffled by this movie. I don't understand what he was going for. I mean, let's just say that we have to spoil the movie to talk about this movie so if you haven't seen Serenity and you want to see Serenity

I guess I can sort of recommend it as an ultimate curio and American movie going but it's pretty bad right

it's not I all of the hubbub I thought this was a good what the fuck movie and it does not really deliver it's more just kind of like huh

how did this happen and how did this many people make it this far and think that this all came together? So now we're going to spoil the reveal. Spoil away, Amanda. It's a video game. It's a video game. It's a video game. And the son who is referenced throughout the movie and then shown like 18 times throughout the movie is programming this whole world.

And everyone else is a fiction of his imagination. And he's doing it to like connect with his fictional dad or something or for a father figure and to avenge his real life stepdad, which we should talk about the problematic aspects of that. But anyway, to your point of what this was trying to do, I thought it was like Matrix gone extremely wrong. Right. I thought that it was trying to engage with the idea of, you know, video games and the capture that they have on culture right now and imagination and that idea of the simulation and what's real and what's not and revenge and the gamification of life. I think that that is my most generous reading of what is going on here.

I do not think it delivers on any of it. And I do find the kind of video game to real life violence aspect a little troubling so i will say as a 12 year old computer genius's evocation of what adult conflict is of what an adult's life is like an adult who lives on an island called plymouth island which is somehow tropical i'm not sure if there is a tropical island called plymouth island um it actually seemed on point because when you're 13 you don't really understand what it's like to be a human adult

and what it's like to have problems and demons you know there's a lot of complicated ideas in the movie Matthew McConaughey's character is a war veteran Anne Hathaway's character

is a survivor of domestic abuse you know there's some really weighty themes here and by the same token like I said the movie is just kind of hysterical. The actors are going so over the top

in every scene. Anne Hathaway, I think, is more or less playing, I would say, Barbara Stanwyck, you know, kind of like 40s, 50s era, kind of bombshell dame who's trying to draw a somewhat innocent man

into an awful plot. It's sort of like The Postman Always Rings Twice, you know, Matthew McConaughey is kind of the John Garfield going, but they're so pitched up and it's also happening on a boat, which is kind of a ridiculous setting. Yes. That I,

I, I was just, just really confused by how actively bad it was. And I know that that seems, seems like a simple criticism, but even if it was a commentary on the way that a 13-year-old sees adults, I still thought something was missing. Does that make sense? It does.

I will also say I watched it at home, as did you, and it really suffered from that. And I would like to talk more about the context in which we receive all of these movies because I think it is increasingly important. But for this one, you really had to pay attention because it was making logical jumps and giving pieces of so-called information that you were... You thought that you were solving a mystery. And I suppose in a way, you were more kind of on a video game quest, which as I'm told requires a lot of focus, which is not what I give to movies so I would I would honestly look away for 10 seconds and then five new characters would be screaming about something and I was like oh shit well I messed up missed something and I had to rewind and then it's not like the 10 seconds that I missed provided any information or insight it was just kind of jumping around. So I actually experienced the real gaps between

the ideas, literally, because I thought that I kept missing something. And then it just was never really there. It's funny. You and I spend a lot of time on this show talking about the movies they don't make anymore. They don't make adult dramas. They don't make thrillers. They don't make rom-coms. All of these categories that we're always talking about lamenting, oh, Hollywood has lost its way, and it's all big tent action set piece movies. This is the kind of movie that we're saying they don't make anymore. Movie stars leaning into a big showy part. It's high concept. It's not based on any IP. And yet, that doesn't automatically make something good.

No, I was just saying to you, sometimes movies just are bad. Sometimes they don't work out. People try. They're trying a performance. They're trying an idea. It doesn't come together. It's a tremendous amount of moving parts. You have a set amount of time to make something work. And sometimes it's not because it was the wrong genre choice or they didn't understand the distribution. Sometimes it just doesn't come together. And I think for us, this did not come together. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that we can't make thrillers or movie stars can't still try. Although, unfortunately, the industry often receives it that way but in

this case i just it did not add up for me personally is this the best cast in a bad movie ever made because we didn't even mention diane lane playing i forgot about diane local um boozy aging i guess widow who pays matthew mcconaughey for mean, one of the more demeaning roles I've ever seen. And I don't, I have no idea why Diane Lane appears in this movie. It is a nice bungalow. Sure. And she has some great kimonos. Maybe it was just to like go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks.

People do make decisions like that to make movies all the time. But honestly, Anne Hathaway, Oscar winner. Matthew McConaughey, Oscar winner. John McHunt, who I believe is an Oscar nominee. Diane Lane, Oscar nominee. Your manonaughey, Oscar winner. John McHunt, who I believe is an Oscar nominee. Diane Lane, Oscar nominee. Your man, Jeremy Strong from Succession. And Jason Clarke, of course,

hamming it up as a cuckolded man, as he often plays a cuckolded man in these movies. He is the only person to me who seems to know what movie he's in because he is so over the top and kind of humorous wearing a lot of pastels and a lot of jewelry and he's in because he is so over the top and kind of humorous wearing, you know, a lot of pastels and a lot of jewelry. And he's really greasy and sweaty and he's evil. And he's a

caricature in a good way, even though his character is obviously an awful person. But man, this is just a lot of talent wasted on a very bad plot. I was totally baffled by it. And this is one of the ones where I'm like, what did those five or six talented people read and connect with that I missed? Well, you just told us a story. I mean, what? Yeah. So my husband saw this movie. My husband's also a journalist and saw it much earlier than I did. And we were talking about it. And about five minutes into our conversation, realized that he had seen, he must've seen a different edit. I should also note he has a completely terrible memory. So I actually don't want to report this as fact because it may just be that he completely forgot. Let's oddly speculate. Yeah, but with that knowledge, everyone, he seems to recall that the version he saw,

the video game aspect of it was not revealed until the very end. And the version that I saw, it was revealed around the 55 minute mark. And I know that because I paused and I was like, huh, seems like there's an hour left here. And I had been told by many people that the what the fuck ending of the movie was part of the appeal, you know, the part of, and I guess what they were referring to ultimately is the child's decision to kill his stepfather, to step away from the game and to literally kill his stepfather, to step away from the game and to literally kill his stepfather and then be arrested. And then the ramifications that has on the video game characters that he created. I didn't find that particularly wild. I felt like

that was just sort of where this thing was going based on the story that they had been telling us about this kid who created a video game. Yeah, I was uncomfortable with it. I'm not sure. It was both where the story was going and was not really explored in any way. And I think that there is a difference in making video game characters do crazy things and kind of making real life characters do things based on video games. Those are things that happen in real life. So I was a little disturbed by the ending, just in terms of, I'm not sure a lot of thought went through it and I don't know what the comment was supposed to be. Well, I don't think we'll ever know. It does feel like

a movie that's been hacked to bits. It certainly is one of the less effective Matthew McConaughey performances I've ever seen. I don't totally know what he was going for. He's very over the top, very loud, also very sweaty. In many ways, it's the mirror image of the Beach Bomb performance. It's like, it's kind of two degrees to the left to unhappiness instead of serenity, actually. Ironically. Yes, Matthew's year at sea.

Yeah. Truly. Anne Hathaway, do you want to use this as an opportunity to talk about Anne Hathaway's latest vehicle as a connection point? Yeah. Anne Hathaway is without question one of my favorite movie actors. I love Anne Hathaway. I certainly recognize some of the criticisms.

She's a theater kid. She's a tryhard, yada, yada. I think those things of the criticisms. She's a theater kid. She's a tryhard, yada, yada. I think those things can be true and you can still be wonderful. And some of the things she does in real life have rankled people over the years. She has also come to terms with those things. It's been written about quite a bit. She's been interviewed about it. She's come to be a very three-dimensional human being, I think, in the public consciousness. I would watch her in anything. However, she's not good in Serenity. She's completely miscast. And I admire that she's going for a kind of, like I said, bombshell Dame 40s thing. She's not cut out for it. And the character is badly written and it is a video

game character. I would also say they just give her the absolutely wrong hair color. And that's often a, you know, hair colors can be used as a statement, but when it's just really bad and doesn't match the person or the setting at all, I often find that that's a signifier of a larger problem in a movie. I'm just saying. That's something you would observe that I wouldn't understand. But, you know, Anne Hathaway, one of the great brunettes of our time, truly an iconic, beautiful woman. Yeah. They've just, you know. Just some Elizabeth Holmes stuff happening. It looks terrible. Roots showing and it's awful. You saw Anne Hathaway in another movie that opened this weekend.

I did. I saw The Hustle, everyone. I haven't seen this movie. So what is The Hustle? So The Hustle is a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Great movie. And it stars Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. And they are two con women fighting over turf in the south of France,

which based on that, it should be Amanda Dobbins' favorite movie. Something tells me it wasn't. Well, you know, I referenced the conversation we were having of some movies just don't work. And this is a movie that just doesn't work. It feels like a dinosaur. I believe it was development started in 2016, and they were kind of trying to do the same Ocean's 8 gender swap studio comedy, we'll have fun in the movies thing, and that it just doesn't come together. I was also thinking a lot about if someone had just thought, what if we made a really good Netflix movie version of this, that I would be having a lot more fun kind of idly watching these people do weird cons and wear

nice clothes. I will say Anne Hathaway has a terrible accent, but is otherwise pretty fun in this. It has shades of Ocean's 8. She doesn't get to be quite as silly, but she's pretty fun. Clothes are amazing. When it's not CGI'd to hell, it's fun interiors and landscapes. And, you know, like I said, it's on the south of France. And there's one genuinely really weird con called The Lord of the Rings where I was like, huh, this, I can't believe they made this. And this is also possibly offensive to Rebel Wilson, but this is also really weird. And I'll remember it.

So it has pieces of a film that can work. You know, it has like the one set piece. It has the visuals, but it does not come together. And it certainly does not come together in terms of things that you go to a movie theater to see. On the one hand, in the elevator pitch, I get it. I get Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with two women. I completely it. I get Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with two women, I completely understand. I do think that that slightly misremembers

what the moral of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was, which is like Glenn Headley wins, kind of? You know, her character outsmarts Steve Martin and Michael Caine

in many ways in the movie. And I don't know if it was like woke or anything, but it was, it was perceptive about the evil that men do.

And, you know, she really is the most cunning of all of them and we learned that i don't know what the gender dynamics of of this movie may i spoil it for you again if you're gonna see the hustle you know hit 15 uh the exact same thing happens in reverse so that's what like why do we need that you know it's it's so interesting and we've talked a bit about long shot it is i am interested in all the ways these gender swaps are happening where women are just being suddenly like the woman's really successful and has to deal with the schlubby guy or the the woman is the con woman and women do things too and so the the man wins it's like there is a lack of anxiety about the gender swap right now in all of these movies that

i find pretty interesting and i'm maybe a little too old to kind of go with the flow, but I think there are people who won't flinch at it. Sure. I don't know. It's impossible for me to know. I'll see the movie. It's interesting that you phrased it as a sort of a Netflix movie because I think there was a Netflix movie that came out this weekend that I found to be largely ineffective. However, I think it does fit neatly into that rubric that you're describing, which is like, you know what? The stakes on this are really low

because I'm not leaving my house. I like these people. It's going to be fine to be around them for 100 minutes. That movie is Wine Country, which I suspect you liked a lot more than I did.

This is, of course, Amy Poehler's directorial debut. I mentioned context. I watched this movie while eating key lime pie out of the pie tin while my husband had already

gone to bed. So you know what? And thank you. The things we do for podcasts. But like also that was great. I had a great time. And sometimes I need to eat pie out of the tin and watch something that I want to watch for myself. And so do a lot of people. And for some people that may be like a ridiculously violent action movie. And for some people, that may be the eighth season of a fantasy series. And for some people, that may be wine country, which I really enjoyed. I think it is somewhere between the TV and the movie. It is like a third emerging, not even like medium, which the 100-minute movie hang. And I think the performances are pretty funny. The jokes themselves, all of the Airbnb stuff is very funny. All of this stuff

about wine tasting and people trying to talk to you about wine- That part is excellent. Is excellent and spot on. And I hope the wine community sees this and tones it down. I mean, notably, we are residents of California. We've done some wine tasting in our day. This is obviously speaking to a very specific portion of the universe. Now, of course, if you haven't traveled to Napa and had a girls weekend and stayed in an Airbnb, you can probably follow along with what's happening here. But I think if you've experienced it, it makes a lot more sense. But they're also like, you have never been on a trip with six women, but let me tell you.

Are you sure about that? Well, solo. Can you confirm it? No, I can't. You can't confirm it. The dynamics that it gets about, you know, like the one person with the goddamn itinerary and the six people trying to rekindle some magic. And, you know, every time two people are off solo, they start bitching about everyone else.

It does capture all of those tensions, like really lovingly and spot on. And that's a pretty universal. Women go on trips together, whether they go to Napa or not. And all the women who star in this movie are clearly all friends who've all worked together for years.

It's basically this murderer's row of SNL alumni. Let's see if I can name all of them off the top of my head. Of course, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, who plays the Airbnb host and owner, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Anna Gasteyer, Emily Spivey, Paula Pell. Yes. Is that the whole team? That's the main team. Okay.

And then, of course, my favorite part of this movie was Maya Erskine, who is the star of a TV show called Pen15 that I watched, didn't like, and then was told by enough people to try again. And I tried again and now I love it. And I think Maya Erskine is very, very, very funny in this movie. She's great in this. She plays the, she's kind of like the millennial waitress slash artist. And there is a great scene where the elder women, they're celebrating a 50th birthday. So there's an intergenerational thing where they're confronting a bunch of millennials in an art show.

And I think they do the confusion in a self-effacing, funny way that's like both teams are being made fun of. You also forgot Cherry Jones, the tarot card reader. Oh, she's fantastic. An elite three minutes. Oh my God.

She's actually, I will say, you know, I thought the movie was fine. I liked it well enough. I think a 100 minute movie hang is a very funny way to describe it because it is totally a hang. But Cherry Jones is coming in with like a different level of greatness as an actor. And she just fucking owns this movie for three minutes. She's so funny. But you'll remember that and that'll kind of stand out. And that's kind of what you need in these movies. You need one or two things where you're like, oh, remember this scene or oh, remember this kind of stand out. And that's kind of what you need in these movies. You need one or two things where you're like, oh, remember this scene or oh, remember this kind of plot line. And that's what, I mean, that's kind of what has made a lot of rom-coms work throughout the ages. Like there

are one or two things that you hang on an otherwise pretty predictable plot. Let me ask you a question. Were you familiar with the cult of Brene Brown before this? Oh, yeah. I worked at a women's magazine. That's right. Okay. So on the one hand, I felt like this was fairly brutal and overt product placement for Netflix because Brene Brown, of course, has a special on Netflix in which she is essentially giving her TED Talk, I feel like. I was not familiar with her work at all. So there was a scene when they're in a restaurant together celebrating their 50th birthday where

they spot Brene Brown having dinner and then they go confront her. Yeah, and they ask all the questions and the ridiculous Brene Brown speak. And... Like, what the hell was happening? When that was happening,

I was like, what is this? Brene Brown is featured on Oprah and Super Soul Conversations. It's kind of like an empowering self-help type thing. But, you know, even the kicker to that whole scene is, to be generous, you have to establish boundaries.

And then it's just like boundaries, boundaries, and sends them all away, which I found like a very funny send-up of therapy speak and TED Talk speak. Credit to Brene Brown for kind of being in on the joke. Yeah, it's funny. On the one hand, you can be cynical about it. On the other hand, it was interesting.

It's just a movie full of left turns. You know, like it's just. On the one hand, you can be cynical about it. On the other hand, it was an interesting, it's just a movie full of left turns. You know, like it's just not really going anywhere ultimately. I guess the hill tumbling scene was also kind of charming. Yeah, there's like a, we're going to spoil it again. Fast forward. This isn't exactly Game of Thrones here. That's true. But there is a Braca gene plotline, has become fairly common in uh women-focused stories right

now which I I don't think it it handles it particularly well if you're looking so the BRCA gene yeah it's a gene that is very common um it's an indicator for breast cancer and other types of other types of female cancer um that's carried by a lot of people and so you can test the gene early and then um kind of take more preventative steps if you would wish to. But it's become increasingly common. And I don't—Maya Rudolph is kind of waiting on the test results. I don't think they handle that particularly well. There's not a lot of medical information around it, which, you know, don't play fast and loose with actual medical things.

If you're looking for a more responsible exploration of the Bracagin plotline, check out The Bold Type on Freeform, everyone's favorite show. Interesting. Okay. I've never seen that show either. Yeah, but it really, this show, this movie's references are extremely spot on for its audience. It really knows what it's doing and is like well thought out, even to Jason Schwartzman being the paella guy, which, and all of the,

and then the extended jokes about the soundtrack and the vent, because he comes with the house. So he does paella and driving. And I thought all the soundtrack jokes were very funny, especially when he's suggesting all the boy bands for like three minutes. And everyone's like, no, we don't want to hear Sublime or Third Eye Blind or any of your shit. Just like play the bangles. Yes, Sublime is back.

And you can read about that on TheRinger.com. You can. Sublime is back thanks to Jason Schwartzman and Lana Del Rey and everybody who was born in the year 1982.

You know I never left the Bengals. I mean, Maya Rudolph doing Eternal Flame is just like, well, this is one of my favorite movies. I'll tell you what is one of my favorite movies

of the year though. I think this is a controversial take is Under the Silver Lake. You asked that we discuss this movie. Yeah, speaking of references to a certain demographic. Certainly. This is, maybe, perhaps this is my wine country. Perhaps this is my hundred minute hang that is actually two and a half hours.

I had Andrew Garfield on the show a couple weeks ago. Great guest. So charming and thoughtful. Very smart. Great storyteller. A fellow Leo. A fellow Leo. That's right. All three of us are Leos. And he's really good in this movie. Lovely guy. Very smart. Great storyteller. A fellow Leo. A fellow Leo. That's right.

All three of us are Leos. And he's really good in this movie. He's a good actor. This movie has gone through a fascinating life cycle. When you said you wanted to talk about it, you said you wanted to ask me questions about it. How do we set up Under the Silver Lake? Well, I think we should just give the plot, which is that it's... I don't understand the plot. I think that's sort of the point.

I mean, okay, so essentially... Well, but it's also really straightforward. It's like a long goodbye homage and it's Andrew Garfield is a loser who likes movies and just, and becomes obsessed with his neighbor and is trying to solve her disappearance. That's it. You did a great job. It is a movie that exists to comment upon movies and obsession, right? It is a movie that is a reflection of the weird riddles we see and the things that we love and our attempt to answer them and our ultimate and desirous dissatisfaction with the culture of consumption.

You know, everything that we want to spend all of our time with, we don't fully understand. And so the quest to understand it becomes more important than the thing itself. I think that's the thesis of the movie. Now, when the movie first came out, it premiered at Cannes about a year ago, this time, and it got a very divisive reaction.

Half the people who saw it loved it, half the people who saw it hated it. The people who hated it thought it was misogynistic, they thought it was way too long, they thought it was way too pleased with itself. People who loved it thought it was misogynistic. They thought it was way too long. They thought it was way too pleased with itself. People who loved it saw commentary on... I'm not so sure about that. Maybe. Perhaps.

Perhaps. But I think that they did see somebody trying to go for something. And David Robert Mitchell, the writer and director of this movie, clearly had a vision. He wanted to do something specifically different from It Follows, which was his previous movie, the horror movie. He fought hard

to get this movie made. He fought hard to let it run at the length it runs at. I will say that I know many people who feel that this movie would have been much more effective about 20 to 25 minutes shorter.

I think that's probably true. Though, who am I to cast those versions? What do you want to know? Because I feel like if you don't like it, you don't like it, and that's it. You know, I actually, it's not that I dislike it. I saw it kind of after the first hype cycle and kind of with this dutiful, like, all right, I got to see

this movie because people are tearing their hair out about it. And in the same way that it was very easy for me to recap the plot of the movie, it very clearly has a vision and I get what it's doing. And I think that there are parts of it that are, if not effective, then interesting. And, you know, I like my summary of it more or less is that I was what's the frequency kind of starts playing and Andrew Garfield is dancing around. And I was like, oh, I love this song and I get this reference and this is pretty charming. So, oh, I love this song and I get this reference and this is pretty charming. So, oh, I'm enjoying this. And I do think that there is that element of there. It is so reference heavy and so targeted to a specific person and worldview that I think that that is probably there's danger. And then that's the way it's being received is that the people who are receiving it

are the people who it's targeted to, if that makes sense. So it's possible that Mitchell has affection for that song and for that kind of thing, but I just think he's making fun of that. I think he's making fun of that exact feeling that you're describing. If not making fun, it's satirizing it, pointing out how silly it is that just because you know a song doesn't mean it's a valuable experience. And like we really trade in nostalgia here at The Ringer. I have a pretty clear and coherent relationship to what is sort of nostalgia porn and what is something that has a bigger idea. I think he has a little bit more on his mind in the movie

and it took a second viewing to get to that point. But obviously, you know, you described the movie very quickly and very well. That is the quote unquote plot of the film. But what happens in the movie is this circuitous, ridiculous puzzle, construction, deconstruction, where Andrew Garfield's character is kind of taking clues and finding them in places where they seem unlikely on cereal boxes or at a party or at a movie screening. And thinking that they mean something when, in fact, they clearly don't mean anything.

And the cryptology that goes into the movie is actually pretty entertaining. And it's sort of like it's a post-lost, you know, post-cinema studies kind of approach to moviemaking. Yeah, it is. I mean, I was thinking about it. It is. And I think that the issue here is that you really can't control the way in which satire and commentary are received. And you can think that you are making a certain commentary and someone can receive it very differently. And I watched this as satire that is protecting the values rather than questioning or challenging them. I think there's a lot of affection baked into this. And that was kind of the limit of the movie for me. I didn't see that the second time.

I'd be curious if you saw that the second time, because I think it's very evident that Andrew Garfield's character is a buffoon, that he is an asshole and he is not to be idolized. He is not even meant to be related to. Now, I really like Strange Currencies by R.E.M., but that doesn't mean that I really see any of myself in that character. And I understand that. I think that the, I could see that the filmmaker thought that. I also thought a lot about Vice, the film during this movie, because here's the thing.

Andrew Garfield is so charming and has so much charisma and you want to empathize with him. That's kind of his power as an actor. So when you put him in that movie, even if he's trying to be a dickhead, it's still Andrew Garfield in the center of the movie. And there is a thing when you make someone a protagonist in the movie, you are borrowing on audiences' expectations that people just receive the center of the movie in a certain way, no matter. And it's very hard to position the protagonist of a movie in a different way so that people root against it or receive it in the way that you attend. And I don't know that this totally succeeds. And I think part of it is

because Andrew Garfield is really likable. They push the limits really hard, though. I mean, this character literally gets sprayed by a skunk. And then we're meant to believe that a beautiful young woman would still want to spend time with him. Like that is a, that's a joke about characters who are terrible. And for some reason, beautiful women are drawn to them. Yeah. I mean, we should talk about the women characters in this because I think the part where everyone's like, this is a commentary on misogyny is I don't buy that. I think that there are a few too many of them. And I think there's like, this movie is two and a half hours. So you could fit in the ninth and 10th and 11th and 12th naked woman. And like, I understand that that's a comment on like,

oh, this would never happen in real life. This is so extra. But you are also putting the ninth and 10th and 11th and 12th and 13th naked woman on the screen. One counterpoint. Sure. This character, unlikable and terrible as he is, as you just stated, does look like Andrew Garfield. So in a... I don't want to like be depressing or talk about real dating life too much, but it's when you were like, it's ridiculous that a beautiful woman would come watch like a

guy like Andrew Garfield bathe in tomato juice. I'm just like, go date in your 20s in a major metropolitan area. Like, I don't know what to say to you. It's kind of like the... I skipped that part of my life. Like, it's like the Jamie and Brienne thing all over again.

It's just like, don't fuck a hot guy or like terrible things happen. Well, that might be a lesson of the movie. Sure, but I think that that's not... That's not a comment

on misogyny. You know what I mean? I hear you. I think it is totally eye of the beholder, this movie. And I certainly don't hold it against anybody who finds this to be unpleasant or slow or boring or pleased with itself. I think you can make that case for all that stuff. I do think artistically,

Mitchell, great eye. Yeah, of course. And I think like the piano scene, I was like, oh, wow, there are ideas here. And this is interesting and ridiculous. And to that point of, if you can achieve one scene that is memorable visually and has ideas and it transcends the thing that I think is another problem with the movie where characters exist just to like spot the themes of the movie throughout. Like, shout out to Tobey Maguire. But that achieved the synthesis of art and commentary. And I thought an interesting way. And, you know, so and I followed the. And I thought an interesting way. And, you know, so,

and, and I followed the plot and I like Andrew Garfield and it's cool to be like, Oh, I know where in LA they are. I had fun. There's a lot of that. Now that,

that was the one part of the movie that, that I just, that appealed to me that in a way that like, it wouldn't appeal to somebody who lives in Wisconsin or was just like, this movie just takes place in my neighborhood. So everywhere they go, I'm following along closely and that's frivolous, but was it was fun it made it fun i i'm really interested to see what he does next because there's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a complication around the

filmmaker's reputation now and this movie was not a success and a24 kind of moved the release date around quite a bit and they moved to vod very quickly you watch this movie on vod right now if you want to get a closer look at what we're talking about there's already been a lot of good writing about the movie some of which is very critical, some of which is very accepting, I would say. Where should we go next? What do you want to talk about?

There's so many movies on our long list here. We got 25 movies, some of which are authentically good. You know, The Souvenir comes out on Friday. I know. And I've been taunting you for weeks.

I'm so excited. And I saw the trailer this week and I'm looking forward to it. It's like I'm going to go to the movies and have a movie experience. It's a very interesting film. It's Joanna Hogg's fourth film. Joanna is a British filmmaker who focuses almost primarily on people who work in the arts in England. And she has this very still, almost antiseptic and mysterious style to her movies and her characters.

This movie is no exception. I think it's the best thing she's done. I've now caught up with all of her movies. You can watch all of her movies on the Criterion channel right now if you're interested. I would particularly highlight Exhibition from 2013. Fantastic movie. This movie stars Honor Byrne Swinton, who is Tilda Swinton's daughter. She's got great genes and she's a very talented performer.

Let's talk about it when you've seen it. Yeah. Speaking of films that focus primarily on people who work in the arts. Yeah. Can we talk about nonfiction for a moment? Of course. I haven't seen it. Which I saw this weekend. It is the new film directed by Olivier Assas, who does focus on a lot on people who work in the arts, more in France. This is about a group of people who work in French media, so publishing and the internet. You wonder why I went to see it. It stars Guillaume Kenne, Juliette Binoche.

So this is just French the bold type? It's like French the bold type, but emphasis on French. So it's hyper intellectual. Everyone is either having sex or like yelling about digital technology philosophy. Sounds like the ringer. And, you know, everyone was like impossibly stylish. There isn't a bad interior. And it is, it's playing with all of these ideas. It is about a group of people who are very involved in themselves and their art and

the significance of like the culture and trying to grapple with change that the culture is that it's facing. I thought a lot about it. I was like, we should, you know, in many ways, like they would have a podcast if it were. And it doesn't totally reflect well on them. I think it's like it uses those ideas really just to talk about people who and whether and relationships and how people do or don't change. I was I really enjoyed it and thought a lot about it. And like if you're listening to this podcast, then probably it's worth your time. Yeah, I wonder if Aseas could make a film about this podcast. Would that be a good film?

I don't know. I mean, he managed to make people sitting in rooms talking about far too heady stuff exciting. He once made a movie about Kristen Stewart looking at her phone. Fascinating. Personal shopper if you haven't seen it. So he could pretty much do anything. I'll tell you what I would love for him to design our podcast studio.

Oh, that would probably look quite good. Maybe he should shop for us as well. Do our wardrobes. That would be great. You should check out Guillaume Canet's look in nonfiction. Okay. I'll take the recommendation. Where to next? I don't even, I mean, you know, there are a lot of different kinds of things we've talked about. And we talked about political documentaries last week. Rob Harville and I talked about Fire and Fire Fraud. I feel like these are the movies that have oddly defined 2019 in the non-superhero Detective Pikachu category.

What about High Life? Have you seen High Life? I have. So, you know, we didn't spend very much time discussing it on this show. This is Claire Denis' new movie from one French icon

to another, I suppose. This is a science fiction movie sort of yeah um it's a a bit of a a sexual torture story it is it's about how humans are animals uh in all senses of the word i was really moved by it i found it like i i'm surprised i don't i didn't think you would connect with this you know it was one of those things where I don't know if I enjoyed every aspect of it. You know, it's long and difficult and also makes you reflect on, I suppose, human nature and your own human nature. But that was what I connected to and was really moved about it from, you know, it's like, it's just humans are gross and it's just like fluids and, you know, sexual urges and finding some sort of like higher meaning in that and how we organize

what a human life is and what it's worth. I thought a lot about that during the course of the movie and I had time to, cause it does kind of like float around and you're just looking at beautiful things but I it was very thoughtful and I you know you can also tell that it's a like woman thinking about it which I really just don't especially all of the this stuff about creating life and how that all happens and the animal versus like the spiritual aspects of it it's been about eight months since I've seen it. Yeah. I saw it at the New York Film Festival in the fall of 2018. And I don't know necessarily, I don't know quite what the legacy is going to be in my

mind. I feel like I need to see it again. I mean, it's an unspoilable movie, but it essentially takes place in a space colony for prisoners who are being, having tests. They were on death row and instead of being executed, they're sent on a ship into space to learn whether humans can reproduce in space. Yeah, and they become guinea pigs for Julia Pinocha's character. Julia Pinocha again, yeah.

Who is a doctor. And it is absolutely beautiful and disgusting at the same time. Some really strong performances, I think, is one of the best things Robert Pattinson has done. Absolutely. Very still, very quiet,

very pained. Great baby performance also. A wonderful baby. A slight misuse of Andre 3000 I thought. I wanted a little bit more for him in this movie. Very good performance.

Very good use of Mia Goth who I think is an actress who sometimes can overwhelm a movie with her weirdness and nothing could overwhelm this movie's weirdness. True.

And so I enjoyed what she had to do. And, you know, Julia Binoche is just a genius. And an extremely memorable Julia Binoche scene in the sex cubicle.

Yes. I was wondering if that's where you were going with this. Yeah. Whatever saddle strap-on situation she was riding vigorously.

Yeah. Which is just like a visual image that will stay with you. And sometimes that is what movies are supposed to be. That's very well put. I mean, what else is going to stay with you from the year 2019? Oh, gosh. I wanted to...

Can we go really lowbrow? Of course. I'd like to talk about Isn't It Romantic? I haven't seen it. You're really on a Rebel Wilson kick. Well, it's... Everybody is like a... I saw two Anne Hathaway movies. I saw two Matthew McConaughey movies. I saw two Juliette Binoche movies. I saw a Rebel Wilson kick. Well, it's everybody is like, I saw two Anne Hathaway movies.

I saw two Matthew McConaughey movies. I saw two Juliette Binoche movies. I saw two Rebel Wilson movies. The reason that I sought out Isn't It Romantic, in addition to the fact that I do try to stay on top of the romantic comedy landscape in general, is that one of its writers is Katie Silberman, who wrote Set It Up and who wrote the upcoming Booksmart, which we will talk a lot about. Certainly will. And I think Katie Silberman is really smart. And I just wanted to understand what was going on with

her. And I'll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by Isn't It Romantic. The premise of Isn't It Romantic is that Rebel Wilson is an architect, which is step one that you know you're in a comment on romantic comedies because architects, it's like the man is always an architect, which is step one that you know you're in a comment on romantic comedies because architects, it's like the man is always an architect in a romantic comedy. Mindy Kaling has a great bit about this. It's like the glamorous job that a handsome man would have. But it's Rebel Wilson, and she is an architect, and she is pretty unhappy in her life. And there's a scene that opens it where she is watching Pretty Woman and her mother teaches you, you know, romantic comedies, they're never real and they're not for women like us. Fast forward, she somehow gets hit in the head and she wakes up in a romantic comedy.

And everything that was going wrong in her life is suddenly, you know, her apartment is suddenly literally double the size and has been like recently renovated, which is a funny comment on the fact that movies and romantic comedies are always twice as large as like they ever plausibly would be and all of the men are in love with her and her career is going fabulously and you know they're in like random karaoke dance scenes like break out of nowhere it is that it becomes a commentary on romantic comedies and you know ultimately the, ultimately the reveal is that, you know, you don't need a romantic comedy to like be a happy life or whatever. And she learns how to apply the lessons, blah, blah, blah. But the comment on the genre was just like smart and it really worked. I thought it made the best use of Rebel Wilson that I have seen.

It was like the least demeaning of any roles, even though she does tend to lean into that. And it also makes great use of Liam's Hemsworth. We got to talk about the Hemsworth brothers as a comedy duo. Like they both have the power, Chris and Liam. And people just need to put them in something together. That's what I have to say. I don't really get Liam. I've never gotten Liam. Chris has won me over in profound ways in the last five years. But I think if you watch this, you would see the DNA and it would be repeated. He's very, very funny in this, in addition to being extremely handsome. And he is sending up the role of being the handsome douchebag in a romantic comedy.

It's pretty good. And it was nice to see that there are people who are thinking about these conventions and how to update them. Again, it is a really interesting time. Long shot. And isn't it romantic? All of these movies that are trying to turn the very fucked up politics of romantic comedies on their head a bit and update them. And still it's like a whole generation of women like me trying to make sense of all of the romantic comedies that

we grew up on and update them. And I don't know that it always works, but it's interesting to watch it happen. I wish I had a lowbrow counter to Isn't It Romantic? I think I'm going to recommend The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. I don't know if anybody hasn't seen that movie. It probably has a pretty limited audience. You can find it on iTunes right now. It's about five militia men who meet up in the middle of the night after a terrible shooting at a police funeral in which several police officers are murdered. Now, we don't see any of this. All we see is these five men meeting in a hangar in the middle of the night. And because they are members of a militia and it is reported that a militia man is responsible for these killings, there is a sort of cat and mouse game where these five men need to figure out who is responsible for these deaths.

Is it one of them in the group? I'm not going to spoil anything about this movie. Now, we learn, I think the film takes place in Michigan. I could be wrong about that. Forgive me if I've got it wrong. We learn that there are many militias throughout this state and another militia could be responsible but there is a there are a series of interrogations that happen in the movie extraordinarily tense incredibly well acted precise you could see that they made it in a very short period of time for very little money but it is one of those movies that has a cast full of oh yeah that person's

all male these are the actors james badgedale who is is I think first ballot hall famer in the Chris Ryan all stars our pal Brian Garrity who plays his brother Patrick Fishler who also appears in Under the Silver

Lake and is best known as the creepy guy from David Lynch's Mulholland Drive Happy Anderson Robert Armaio Gene Jones

and Chris Mulkey shadowy dark very complicated about what drives people to do things and what they actually believe

in versus why they find themselves joining things. It's an interesting movie about why we seek refuge in people with bad ideas. And man, it's got style. It's just a really, really smart, slick, small movie. It's made by a guy named Henry Dunham. Chris recommended it to me months ago, and it took me a little while to get around to it. I guess it is lowbrow in a kind of way. It is similar. You know, Serenity is kind of the bad version of like, let's do like a noir-y invention. This is something different.

This also is a real, it's a thriller. And James Badgedale could have been, his character could have been played by Matthew McConaughey, but instead it's just a series of character actors doing their very best. And they're really going for it. It's a really smart, really small movie. That's it. That's all I want, really small movie. That's it.

That's all I want to say about it. Should we do one more? Is there something we can agree on? Well, so let's talk about Everybody Knows because I had mentioned it, but I think that you hadn't seen it. I still haven't seen it. Sean!

I know. Okay, sorry. I saw it on here and it was like in bold and I was so excited. No, it's my one sin for the year. It's the one thing I haven't gotten around to. It's one of those where you'll watch it and you'll have a nice time. I know. I really want to get there.

It's well-made, but there's a certain pleasure in that, right? Of it just being a thing that is waiting for you that is smart and well-executed and not urgent. Maybe even tonight. This is Asghar Farhadi's, I guess also kind of a thriller, kind of a high-level drama, the Iranian director, and it stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. So how could you go wrong? I will get around to it eventually.

Any lasting recommendations? Anything you just want to throw out? Anything you're desperate to see that you haven't yet caught up with? I mean, The Souvenir, which we talked about. Yeah. And...

You seen Endgame? Yeah, believe it or not, I have. You know, one thing that I missed and that I would really like to see is Gloria Bell. Beautiful film. Yeah. I had Sebastian Lelio, the director, on. It's an interesting thing because it's a remake of his own movie. And so he made a movie in 2013 called Gloria that is about a middle-aged woman in the aftermath of a relationship trying to find as a single woman, what's next for her, trying to meet someone, trying to have an exciting life, trying to hold her family life and her professional life together. But it's very subtle. It doesn't have that like manic, everything's falling down around

me feeling. Julianne moore plays the new version of gloria in the movie and you know obviously julianne moore just just brilliant actor but there's something i'd never seen before in the 13 version and the 19 version in her character in a movie because i i'll be curious to know what you think about this because i was it's a man telling this woman's story but there is a level of sensitivity and clarity about what it means to be older and confident that i thought was really fascinating and not not shriekish and not maudlin funny but not ridiculous that was really powerful maybe we'll talk about that at the end of the year pair it with wine country i mean honestly they have all they have a lot in common. They really do have

a lot in common. Amanda, we didn't have a ton in common in this podcast, but we strive to in the future. Thanks for doing it. Thanks, Todd. you