The Big Picture - Top Five Movies of 2021. Plus: Denis Villeneuve on ‘Dune’!

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

It's time to talk about the best of the year, so Sean and Amanda are joined by Adam Nayman and Chris Ryan to share their five favorite movies of 2021 (1:00). Then, 'Dune' director Denis Villeneuve comes to the show to talk about his extraordinary adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel (1:17:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Denis Villeneuve, Chris Ryan, and Adam Nayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

60 songs that explain the 90s are back and in their final stretch. The Ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs from the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the best movies of the year. Later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with Denis Villeneuve,

the writer-director of one of the year's best films, Dune. Denis is a favorite of this show, so it was a treat to chat with him about bringing Frank Herbert's novel to the big screen. I hope you'll stick around for that. But first, let's talk about some other movies from 2021. And joining us to do so are our pals Chris Ryan and Adam Naiman. Hello, boys. Did you talk about how much did you talk about Prisoners with him? Didn't come up, surprisingly.

How much did you talk about Enemy with him, the Toronto shot Enemy? Nothing that was recorded, but I spent about six to eight hours just on a one-on-one Zoom call about it. And it turns out I am Denis and Denis is me. It's beautiful. Okay, let's talk about 2021 as quickly as we can. What a weird year for movies that I think has turned out to be a wonderful year for movies, in part because, of course, we went through a difficult pandemic and that has meaningfully affected hollywood 2020 pushed back a lot of movies into 2021 amanda i'll start with you what did you make of this year in movies did you enjoy it yes i mean it was definitely a better

year let's just say 2021 like carrot sign larger than 2020 both movies i'm not actually really ready to say about life but movies yes so it's certainly a better year and I think it was so I think it was a good to great year for movies and maybe like a bad year for movie watchers or maybe it's the reverse I can't really tell our lists are really interesting we're gonna do our top fives And there's a little bit of overlap, but less than usual, I would say. And that's because there were a lot of different movies for a lot of different people. And I feel like I saw some real AmandaCore movies of different genres, different styles, but things speaking to my interests.

And I think pretty much any type of person could have that experience or someone with any type of interest. And I think pretty much any type of person could have that experience or like, you know, someone with any type of interest. On the other hand, it was so damn hard to see so many of these movies. And I feel really bad because a lot of the movies on this list, most people listening to this probably still won't be able to see. And it's the end of December. And, you know, obviously we're still in a pandemic of sorts. And there's the return to movie theater, COVID, yada, yada. But it is just also a tumultuous time in distribution and the movie business. And being able to see stuff or not being able to see stuff is getting really frustrating, I feel like.

So it was a great year if you could actually track this stuff down. Yeah, I think we're obviously in a privileged position on the show. We get to see a lot of things ahead of time and early. There are quite a few more films being released over the course of the next three to four weeks, at least here in the United States. And so some of the films that we'll talk about are movies that people can't see yet or have only been in limited release or only in big cities. I apologize for that. These are the vagaries of doing year-end lists. We always do them in the first or second week of December, but we want to celebrate this stuff and get people excited about seeing it. Chris, does Amanda's point about the kind of balkanized nature of film going and film viewing sound familiar to you?

Yeah, this year felt unlike any other, which obviously 2020, to hear you're going to hear that a lot about a lot of different things but a lot of the times I would watch films on streaming and feel like is that what it was supposed to be is that all there is and then there were times when I went to the movie theater and I was like I wish I could have just seen that at my house you know what I mean so I think that first off I'll just say I'm I'm lunch pail Johnny. Just like I basically have a list of movies that most people in the country could see with one exception. They're either widely available on streaming or they were mass released in the theaters. And this is probably the year that I've seen the least amount of feature movies across the board. I found that partially, maybe this is when the sort of crest of TV became overwhelming

and it really did feel like there were three worthwhile to interesting TV shows per week being released where that used to be. I go to the movies 50 to 70 times a year.

And the kind of movie and the kind of experience I really miss is the, ah, fuck it. I'll just go on a Sunday afternoon movie or like Wednesday afternoon. I'm being a little bit more like, it's important that I see this. I'll just go on a Sunday afternoon movie or Wednesday afternoon.

I'm being a little bit more like, it's important that I see this. I want to see it in the theater. I will create this psychological space to go do that at a mall or whatever or go to a multiplex. And it's been a little bit more challenging. And it's been a lot more like I have to think a lot more about what I'm watching and how I'm watching it. Adam, what about for you? You're obviously effectively working as a full-time critic, which means you need to see a broad variety of things. You've also got two kids at home. You've got a life.

You're teaching. You've got all this stuff going on. How have you found trying to keep up with the world of movies in 2021? Well, this is two years in a row where I've released books. And I don't mean that as self-promotion. I mean, I've had to focus on one filmmaker's work very intently. You dropped this king. Yeah, so in putting out this David Fincher book,

I've spent a lot of my pandemic year watching and re-watching his stuff or watching features or reading interviews, not to the exclusion of the full-time critic job, but between book writing and what I teach at U of T. And a lot of the writing i do for you guys for the site sometimes involves revisiting older things for deeper dives and then i also have this pathological need to keep up with new releases because it's not just like a line on the

resume that you're a critic i mean i define myself as someone who keeps up with movies and i pooched it this year and it's funny that i say that because on the one hand, I probably saw 150 new movies, but I missed some of the ones that I used to because I've just missed some stuff, you know, and I feel like the festival circuit, taste making, a group of film critics that I often read and sometimes like to think that I'm engaged with have kind of lapped me this year because I just missed the stuff. And even at TIFF, I missed some of it because of then what I have to cover for other people. I think by any normal human standards, I saw way too many movies this year, but I'm haunted by the ones that I didn't see. And, you know, to Amanda's point about how movies are made available and what people can see,

I mean, you look at a movie like Memoria, the Apichipong, we're a second film that isn't technically out yet. It's played in New York and Toronto. Some people are putting it on lists. It's now the distributor Neon is claiming they're going to go city by city to show everyone with a movie theater that'll play it, this movie on a big screen with big sound, which I think is heroic and is what a filmmaker like him deserves. On the other hand, it's a kind of a screw you

to people who don't live in a spot that has a theater like that because they're saying it's also not going to come out on DVD or streaming. I don't know if that last thing is true either, but it's like battle lines are kind of being drawn now. And it's not just that the big spectacular blockbuster movies are using big screen as an incentive. It's the high end, high art films too, that are saying we're not going to come to streaming. We're going to eventize ourselves. So I think it's just a

fascinating polarity. That is true in some cases, in some distributors' cases, and not in all, though. The thing that is still kind of fascinating to me about this is the Focus Features, for example, which is owned by Universal Comcast, has a 17-day theatrical window, which means once one of their films has played for two and a half weeks, you can rent it on Apple and that or Amazon or whatever service you use. And that is so radically different from where we were 5, 10, 20 years ago in terms of having to wait 3, 6, 9, 12 months for something to arrive at Blockbuster. And so there is this kind of mass confusion about when you can get something like Memoria versus something like, I don't know, Last Night in

Soho has been on VOD for like six weeks already. It's kind of fascinating. What were you going to say, Amanda? Well, but it still really is transitional and thus like extremely confusing. Sean, you and I spent Thanksgiving together. Thank you for hosting a lovely dinner. And we should tell the story of the third couple who came to Thanksgiving and they had been waiting for over 30 days, it turned out, to watch Dune on HBO Max on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And they were like, great, you know, our schedule to be clear, Dune, we're going to do it. Opened up HBO Max and it was like day 32. And Dune, one of the, you know, most successful Warner Brothers releases of the year, was no longer available to the audience who want to watch.

They were very angry when we told them that. And I also just I feel like this week and I reminded Chris that you've got what, like 10 days to watch King Richard before it's gone. You know, it's everything is different. Everybody is doing it differently. And I understand why. And I don't know if there's anyone particularly to blame, but I feel really behind as well, Adam. And I think everybody does to some extent of things just kind of passing you by or you didn't quite know because it's so chaotic. You know, one thing I'll just mention, because Adam was talking about writing those books and

the three of us have done all these movie drafts and we've appeared on rewatchables is that I never have felt more like film history is my film present than this year. Because whether it's revisiting the movies of 2007 or looking at James Bond movies or watching something for rewatchables and then going on like an Oliver Stone deep dive or something because of that, a lot of my viewing time winds up getting taken up in this way where it's like, we're doing this best of the year list. And typically, so much of my personal life is governed by what I'm going to go see at a movie theater at any given time. And for better or for worse, that has now become this nonlinear question, I guess, or the timeline of my movie watching has now been shattered by this experience

of diving, not always too far into the past, but it kind of reminds me a lot of the way music changed when Spotify and other platforms came in and you were just like, oh, now all music ever is basically at my fingertips. And now that these libraries are kind of up and running in a lot of the streaming services, you never don't have something to watch. It's just not always a new movie. I think one of the other factors in this is that not only that the center of movie culture

has kind of dissipated, but the things that are still at the center. And I'll just give you the 10 highest grossing films at box office this year, because I think it's important for the context of this conversation. Number 10, Ghostbusters Afterlife, a film that adam has a lot to say about later in this episode jungle cruise free guy eternals no time to die a quiet place part two f9 black widow venom let there be carnage and shang chi and the legend of the ten rings now we've talked over many

movie drafts and many times on this show about the dire nature of the films that are atop the box office, especially over the last 10 years. I would argue it's never been as bad as it is this year. And there are a number of reasons for that. Obviously, the pandemic is a significant factor, but it doesn't feel like there is a whole lot

of lasting conversation about those 10 films. And so the way that, you know, Chris, you've spent more time with TV and maybe more time with the significant works of Oliver Stone. Amanda, you were able to spend more time with the books that you care about and the various streaming shows that matter to you. And your JFK rewatchables, which was 80 hours long, but one of the funniest things I've ever listened to in my entire life. Sean was so not ready for the conspiracy theories. I feel good about all the decisions made there. And Adam, you know, you spend time writing a book

and you spend time teaching and doing a number of other things that it does feel like there's something, the target is constantly moving in the course of a conversation like this. And so inevitably what happens is every year on list is a reflection of personal taste and personal, what moment in time you find yourself in.

But it feels even more so the case this year. Adam is somebody who is sort of like for lack of a better word trying to objectively clarify the state of the art do you feel like it's harder to locate what is quote unquote best i think it's i think it's harder to to locate though it's pretty easy to not locate it as you say in the box office charts right and i mean a couple of the movies that you mentioned are movies that there's at least potentially some interesting historical discourse around i didn't much care for the latest bond movie but it's a fascinating work that is filled with intent towards the series that it is a part of and i didn't and i did not and will not see Eternals, but that's a historically fascinating movie too, because of the way it follows up a director's Oscar winning work

with a big commercial gesture that in some sense succeeds and in another, you know, discourse driven sense kind of really fails. I mean, you know, film history is wherever you look for it, right? But that question of objectively picking best is also always tough because it kind of depends on what audience you're speaking towards. I mean, you know, I don't write in a different voice for CinemaScope than I do for The Ringer, than I do for Sight & Sound or for my books, but there's different readerships, right? And, you know, some movies are easier sells on certain platforms

than they are on others. And, you know, you also have to be selective, you know some some movies are easier sells on certain platforms than they are on others and you know you also have to be selective you know on a site like ringer where i felt an incredible amount of gratitude for the freedom for the kinds of movies that i write about and i mean that sincerely you're still in some cases introducing films to a readership instead of that readership taking some of those films for granted right so you know you you got to be mindful of kind of who you're you're you're writing towards but for granted right so you know you you got to be mindful of kind of who you're you're you're writing towards but i do think that you know trying to keep any kind of tabs on film culture last year what depressed me was the ephemerality of even the movies we

were talking about like they weren't real you know they they're real they're physical flesh and blood things that people made but they only exist on streaming services and everything nominated for oscars last year seemed to have been released just to get oscar nominations this year there's a bit more of a barometer through box office and through audiences of maybe what people felt about stuff which is why tenant is always going to seem to me to be a fake movie and dune is a real movie objectively speaking tenant's not fake and there's good things about tenant but it's always going to feel to me like a hypothetical thing whereas dune is a real movie. Objectively speaking, Tenet's not fake and there's good things about Tenet, but it's always going to feel to me like a hypothetical thing. Whereas Dune is a movie that I know for a fact

people left their house and went and saw and had a good time watching. I thought Dune was fine. It just kind of feels more real. I don't know if I'm sounding too Matrix-y when I say that, but it's just more palpably something that people went and had an experience with well

there is a different kind of a movie that still feels fake to me and i i want to raise it to allow chris to speak about something that is i know is important to him there's a movie that was released about a month ago that we did not discuss on the show that's called red notice and if you are to believe the data offered by netflix red notice starring the Rock and Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds is the most watched movie, most watched new movie of 2021 because the numbers that they shared are staggering. Anyone I know who has watched Red Notice has deeply regretted the time spent. Free Guy is also on this box office list I just mentioned, also starring Ryan Reynolds. Chris, have you been thinking about Ryan Reynolds lately and what he means to movie culture? He might be the antichrist. He might be the actual devil. And I say that as somebody who actually enjoys a couple of

Ryan Reynolds movies, especially the Michael Bay one. But I'm not worried because like i i feel like it's easy like if you're if you start to criticize whether it's like the ipification of a lot of pop culture or you know cash grab movies or whatever like you're just like you don't have to have fun or you know you're being like kind of like too snooty about the what's supposed to be a popular entertainment as well as an art form. But there is a bend that I'm feeling towards this doesn't fucking matter. You know what I mean? I'm here to sell

fucking gin and buy sports clubs and make documentaries about me buying a sports club and the industry is me and I'm trying to have a diverse portfolio of which movies are a part of them. And I just, whether they're good movies or bad movies or die hard or a Paul Verhoeven movie, I take movies really seriously. And I want the biggest people in the space to make cool shit.

And maybe there's people out there who think Red Notice and Free Guy are actually subversive or fun or great in time and they're accessible and all this stuff. And I'm not trying to be like an asshole, but I do wonder whether or not he is Damien sent here to finally bring Hollywood to its knees and just get subsumed by corporate culture. Amanda, agree? Disagree? Now is the time to defend Ryan Reynolds though he seems like a perfectly nice human being according to Stanley Tucci's memoir which if you guys are looking for some light reading but no let me

my thing is I watch Red Notice Red Notice was billed to me as an international art heist movie aka Amanda Dobbins is number one favorite genre maybe even more than rom-com. And there are some alleged rom-com elements in it that whether that chemistry works is a whole other discussion. And then it's all just shot on a freaking soundstage in Atlanta. And The Rock is like

CGI'd like in front of the Coliseum. And I just, why? Like, don't even do it if you're just going to make me watch screensavers of these places. And it is the exact same thing that Chris is talking about. It's just like, we're not even trying. And I understand that the pandemic probably affected some of the filming. But they just don't want to actually try filming on location or making anything look good or actually care. They're just, here's the logline. Like, good luck. We know you guys will click on this.

Coincidentally, Adam, red notice is number one on your list. So now's the chance to speak. I really, I really enjoyed when they were all tweeting at each other about the movie. I thought that felt really off the cuff and spontaneous.

They got some good digs in at each other. You know, I cannot think of a more naturally funny person than Gal Gadot. You know? It's just so blisteringly funny. You know?

You know? The Rock seems more presidential than ever. You literally could not pay me to watch Red Notice unless one of you wants to make that offer on the air as a ringer editor, and I will turn that offer down to be paid to watch that. And it reminds you of that Pauline Kael line where she says, no one I know voted for Nixon. So no one I know has watched Red Notice, which means it's secretly probably like my wife

has watched Red Notice without telling me, but I don't know anyone who's watched red notice and when i find them i'm gonna i'm gonna ask them why let's stay with netflix for a second because a significant film was released by that platform last week uh we haven't had a chance to talk about it on the show yet and though this movie does not appear on any of our top five lists i think it might appear on some of our top 10 lists and we should cover it now because it's going to be a significant player in the awards conversation on this show over the course of the next few months. And also, it's the first film in 13 years from really one of our great living filmmakers, Jane Campion, talking about The Power of the Dog, which is now on Netflix.

This is a film that was adapted from a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. It's sort of an anti-Western, real slow burn film. Fascinating the way that it slowly unravels its plot over time. You may have seen the stars of this movie are Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, and Cody Smith-McPhee. Amanda, I wanted to start with you because I saw this at Telluride

and this is another one of those films where I was like, I wonder what Amanda will make of this movie. And so I've been wondering where you land. So what did you think of The Power of the Dog? Well, my top line review of it is that I thought it was pretty clearly a masterwork that left me not even cold, but slightly alienated. very much the point of the film to create certainly a sense of, of cruelty and discomfort and, and to make you examine your reaction to all of the characters and also the

genre itself. I'll be very honest. I'm kind of a little bit nervous about having this conversation because on the one hand, this is as you said, the kind of a slow burn character study type of film, but also the character study is the film. And I had the movie spoiled for me

in so much as it can be spoiled in September after the Telluride coverage by the New York Times. And it really affected my viewing experience. And so I sat there for a lot of the time, you know, a lot of the reveals and certainly like the interactions between the characters and I think a lot of the questions you're supposed to be asking yourself I didn't have the same experience and it really compromised it which is you know I guess sort of a cop-out of offering a critical review but also going back to

our point about how it's so hard to see all of these movies. And then by the time people can see them, has their experience changed or been diminished? And I kind of felt like mine was a little bit. So I'm going to go back to it now that it's on Netflix at home. I did see it in a theater and try to rewatch it with a more opened analytical mind. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that. Obviously, I had the chance to see it at a festival and I didn't know anything about it. I had never read the novel before and was pretty knocked out specifically, I would say, by the final 30 minutes. I feel like the final 30 minutes is an extraordinary bit of storytelling and pays off a movie that takes its time to deliver its story.

But I tried to watch it on Netflix last night and I found it to be not terribly engaging. And part of that is because of I knew what was happening. And part of it is because of the way that a movie like that was served up. This is a gorgeous movie shot in New Zealand meant to look like Montana in 1925. Incredible vistas, incredible production design and the sets and the costumes and everything is quite luscious and also kind of arid and dry. And it's a really interesting film. Chris, I believe you watched this on Netflix. I did. It's where I watch all my favorite films, yeah.

So after you double shot Red Notice, Power of the Dog to feature, did you know anything about the story heading in? I actually managed to stay almost completely in the dark. What I've been trying to do as when December rolls around is basically go Zero Dark Thirty and not read about any of these movies so that I can have pretty sincere reactions to them.

And once I got over it being extremely online Yellowstone guy, I was like, that is not Montana, sir. Once I got over that, I was like, nobody told me this was an erotic thriller this is this is like basically like closer to the top of the lake than than it is to um want some dove or something like

that so I was uh I was pretty blown away again like you Sean but the last 30 minutes also like Amanda not exactly um in my feelings about it I will just say that Cody Smith McPhee gives one of my favorite performances of the year. I thought he was extraordinary in a role that could have gone sideways in a less capable filmmaker's hands. It could have been way too mannered. It could have been way too played up.

And I thought, yeah, it's just like the final act of this movie is just really, really great. Adam, what about you? I know it's on your top 10 list. What is it that worked for you? I think it's, I think it's very strong movie. I think that there's a difference between filmmakers who know how to shoot beautiful locations and filmmakers who know how to shoot locations beautifully. You know, I think that Campion has made a couple of films at the front end of her

career that I just think are among the most extraordinary movies I've ever seen, like An Angel at My Table and Sweetie. Like, that's the case for the canon for me, for her, and the piano to some extent. So getting back to that kind of compositional mastery and the way that she not just shoots landscapes, but shoots people within landscapes. She makes people's bodies and faces into landscapes. I mean, she's a great filmmaker, you know, and I'm going to be very happy to see her, you know, probably get nominated for an Oscar again and possibly even win, which could be very circumstantial to a lot of things.

And it will be worth talking about when we get to the award season trudge next year. You know, I think it's a good movie. I also, like you guys all, I'm actually in agreement that it is late that the storytelling power really kicks in but you know what considering how many movies don't end well at all it's kind of nice to see something that is backloaded you know and i haven't tried watching it a second time on netflix or anywhere else and i sort of suspect that it's not going to reveal more it is one of those movies where the subtext is pretty loud the first time where you don't you you it's pretty loud subtext where

you're kind of like dudes love making ropes yeah you know really dudes dudes rock but no it's it's a it's a it's a good film and I think that again listeners and readers will end up listening to and reading a lot more about it in the new year because it is positioned, especially after a strong showing of the New York Film Critics Circle voting, I think it's positioned as a big award movie. It'll be interesting to see what the general public makes of that because I think it's going to be for someone who is used to a slightly more conventional style of movie watching might kind of quit this movie

after an hour while watching on Netflix. I could see that being fairly common. And I would encourage people who are going to check it out to really let it go to its conclusion. There was actually a really interesting conversation between Mark Maron and Benedict Cumberbatch on Maron's podcast, WTF, about the meaning of the end of that film that you very rarely hear in interview settings with movie stars at this point in which they basically fundamentally disagreed about the meaning of the ending of the movie that I thought was fairly

compelling I would recommend for people to listen to after they've seen the movie who are Phil's guys well we know who he's got one guy Bronco Henry see that guy at the store who's amazing um it's definitely going to be an oscar film uh i think it's almost certainly

in the top three in terms of best picture front runners at the moment i think it's almost guaranteed that campion will be nominated again she was nominated for The Piano many years ago. And that's kind of a funny race right now, the best director race. Some of these films have not been fully released to the wide public. But if I had to guess, Amanda, I'm curious what you think about my prognostication here. But I feel like Campion, Steven Spielberg for West Side Story, Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza, Kenneth Branagh for Belfast, and Denis, our guest on the show today for Dune, is where it probably will end up. Anything you'd suggest there? I mean, you noted here that possible spoilers, I guess, are Joel Cohen, Adam McKay, or Asghar

Farhadi. I still have not seen a hero. I promise I will. But the Asghar Farhadi seems to be kind of bubbling in a possible fifth spot. Yeah, I'm contemplating even during this live podcast swapping in a hero onto my list. The more time I've spent with it, I just watched it for a second time. Very, very, very good film.

We'll see what happens. The Power of the Dog, I think we all would recommend, though, if it's possible to see it on a big screen, perhaps you should consider that if you feel safe doing so. Do you think sean levy gets lifetime achievement the seltzer beaten mill for for free guy um yes i do i do i think did you like seek out free guy i have not seen free guy

no i know i was waiting i was kind of gonna watch it in conjunction with you know whether it's east or redford presenting. Chris, let's do New Year's Eve this year. You come over, just me and you would do Free Guy. Sure. Are you in?

Yeah. On DMT or just like straight? Just straight, but then let's do it on Green Room. Okay. How does that sound? Green Room, watch along,

Free Guy, as the clock strikes midnight. Right. The shattering conclusion. Dressed as the clock strikes midnight. Right. The shattering conclusion of free guy. Dressed as New Year's babies. Yeah. That sounds good. That sounds good.

Get my wife to take some photos of that for us. You guys want to talk about your favorite movies of the year? Yeah. Okay. Let's go to our top fives. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points.

Visit superstore.ca to get started. Amanda, I'm going to start with you. Oh, okay. What's number five? I went with Come On, Come On, the Mike Mills film that Sean and I just really cried about together on this podcast a few weeks ago. And that's, that's my top line summary. It's again, a movie that brings a lot of emotions. This is definitely my favorite of Mike Mills's movies. Um, I, I have admired his work,

but always felt a little kind of like outside the references and the, and the collage aspect and really just felt that he was like squarely making movies for the Sean's of the world which Sean deserves all the movies of the world and I think a couple things opened this up for me I think the Joaquin Phoenix performance is one of my favorites of the year I just think he's tremendous even in Joker the movie that I think is completely evil but in this movie luckily he doesn't have to be evil I think it's you know like thoughtful and sentimental and hitting me in an appropriate time in life but also even the way that he brings

in some of like the documentary work and the other references which is like a thing that mike mills does a lot in his work was more cohesive to me um and i have just found myself thinking tenderly about this movie ever since ever since one of my favorites i don't know that i it's not in my top five i think because i would have felt too much like self-parody but it is in my top 10. Is this like a veil of like, it's in theaters. Yes. To check it out. CR.

I will. Yeah. You know, I mean, I love Mike Mills. I loved a 20th century women's classic. Yeah. And you love Joker too,

right? So Joaquin is back. Always. Yeah. Adam, what's your number five? Well, I'm going to,

I'm going to do a little shuffling because Sean and I are going back and forth on a dueling top 10 list. And if people, God knows if there's anyone out there who's going to listen to this and read that. But sometimes people do that. I've had people do this with my top 10 list. They're like, well, that wasn't in the same place for the same poll. And I'm like, well, it's kind of what I want to talk about, right? Yes. I'm actually going to take my number six film and put it at number five here because maybe there'll be another opportunity on a different pod to talk about the

other film but um my number five film is in nets by leos carax and i think that actually taking this movie on and off the 10 best list or a top five list makes sense because i have very fluctuating feelings about it during it afterwards you know i'm very much in the tank for Léa's Carax. He's an ambitious and inventive and completely fearless filmmaker. On the whole, I always like him. I was very excited for Annette. And then Annette kind of wore me down, like the pop opera Sparks lyrics wore me down. And the incredible artifice of it got grating.

And then it caught me again and especially adam driver's performance he for me is the best actor of the year for this film um you know completely pulled me into this self-destructive uh narcissistic essentially kind of loveless uh father figure who the movie finds a really heartbreaking way to humanize because he's humanized through his sense of consequence and loss and failure towards this daughter and it does an amazing thing in humanizing the character of Annette because here we have a character who's played by a puppet for most of the movie's running time and it's every bit as precious and alienating as it sounds until you see why they made the choice and the moment where that Pinocchio aspect of the movie kicks in, I think lives up to any movie version of Pinocchio that I've seen or lives up

to Spielberg's AI. I found it just heartbreaking. And the first time I watched the ending of Annette, despite all my misgivings or not even misgivings, just despite my frustrations with it, I was in tears, you know, and some of that has to do with where it hits you specifically,

but some of it is just, you know, Carax's artistry. I like a guy like him who makes the movies he wants to make. The fact that Amazon gave him the money to make this particular movie and make it the way he wants and have a kind of splashy can premiere and release, I think is something really worth celebrating. And it is one of those movies too, where when I run across people who say that they hated it, you know, my response is to smile and say, fair enough. I think that something that has that love it or hate it, elasticity to it now is good because so much of what's being made is completely frictionless and completely made to shove down throats of people who know they're going to like it no matter what. So good for Annette for dividing me against myself as a viewer, and for how incredibly good Adam Driver is in it. He is the best actor of the year for me for this film.

Sorry, you said best actor of the year for House of Gucci? Yes, best actor of the year for House of Gucci. Got it. Okay. Adam, I think we talked about this when this film was first released and i think the number one thing working against this film is the fact that there was a sparks brothers documentary in which uh all of the great spark songs were played throughout that that film and it reminded you of how great they could be and i don't think the songs in this film are very good and it really kind of drags the movie down for me despite all the things you're saying which i think make sense in terms of it being a love it or hate it kind of

experience and kind of fearless in its approach. It's worth watching is how I would describe Annette for sure. Chris, number five. I'm going to go with a movie called a cop movie, which is directed by a Mexican director named Alonzo Ruiz Palacios, who I mentioned one of his films on our 2014 draft called Gueros. He's one of my favorite, I guess,

sort of newer within the last 10 years filmmakers. He's in his 40s. And this is kind of like F is for fake, but about cops. This is, quote unquote, a documentary about police in Mexico. But as you go further and further into the film, you realize that what you're seeing is not exactly what you think you're seeing. And sort of the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction get tested and performance is a major subject of this movie. I would say that this would be my kind of self rebuttal about the Red Notice

bit is I think it's just fucking incredibly cool. That is many people who watched red notice could also watch a cop movie with the ease of, of the first. And, um, you know,

maybe there'll be doing this less as years go on and, and who knows how long like Netflix is patronage of international cinema will continue. But to me, this is just fucking really cool that since october this movie has just been been available i would recommend if people enjoy it going through it to try and try and watch it more than once because um especially in the first half of the movie the dialogue is incredibly dense and i was i'm not a spanish speaker so i i spent a lot of the time

the first time through kind of like reading this movie and then the second time watching it. And the second time was pretty magical. So, um, definitely hope people, people check this out. Great recommendation. Uh,

evangelical almost for that filmmaker, Chris. Uh, okay. My number five is a film that Chris and I spoke about on our, our prestige dirt bag episode of the big picture. Um, speaking of course about Paul Schrader's The Card Counter,

which is the movie that I think I was most looking forward to from late 2019, early 2020, when it was announced all the way up until its release. I'd say for the most part, it lived up. I don't think it's the greatest Paul Schrader, God's Lonely Man movie, but I don't think it's the worst either. I think it's amazing that Paul Schrader at 75 years old is still being given money, though in this case, it seems like money

from 100 different production companies to make a movie like this, which is essentially about a man who's traveling around the country, visiting various casinos in small and large cities and trying to win just enough money to kind of amass a livable fortune. And he's also, was formerly a guard at Abu Ghraib at one point and was a witness to and a participant in some brutal torture. And the movie, you know, like all Paul Schrader movies is about this psychologically tortured person working through the traumatic events and also the lives of this country and the kind of loneliness and anxiety and despair that tends to animate most of these guys. Spoiler alert, they're all kind of stand-ins for Paul Schrader himself.

This movie features a pretty incredible but incredibly interior Oscar Isaac performance, who I think stands up to Ethan Hawking, First Reformed, and Willem Dafoe, and Light Sleeper, and a handful of other men who have tried to get inside of Schrader's brain and make one of these movies. Also has a really interesting performance from Tiffany Haddish, which I think at certain points is incredibly effective and at other times is totally off. And that in and of itself is this unique experiment, putting someone like her in a role like this and asking her to play in a playground that maybe somebody like isaac is a little bit more familiar with um it's a real like keep you on your toes kind of a choice and schrader is well known for doing

things like that also just incredible score on this film an incredible sense of like impending doom i think that's what i like most about his movies is it just it's like it's very honest about the fact that we are fucked yeah and this movie is very very good at locating that and uh it's if you're going in looking for an exciting gambling movie don't because it's not a good gambling movie at all but it is a very very good Paul Schrader film so the card counter is number five you're neglecting the best supporting character of the year which is mr usa that's that's right can you can you explain mr usa in some way yeah well in the card can in the poker circuit there's like people with their little cults of fans and so there's one guy who just keeps chanting usa usa and two guys chant

it with him and trader makes of this supporting character as you were saying a a a nice kind of a a nice little kind of mobile national allegory in the form of this obnoxiously jingoistic uh poker was i laughed every time mr usa showed up i thought he was great in the same way that the subtextual toxic masculinity of power of the dog is not very sub the subtext of this movie is not very sub and i'm frankly excited about that i loved it i thought the car counter was great okay amanda we're up to number four okay so this is my like back to the movies pick like the movie magic after you know a year a year and a half of not being able to be in theaters it was really exciting to go back and see things on the big screen and yeah yeah Venom 2 is that where you're

going still haven't seen it but I'm happy for you and your friend, Paul. And just, so I wanted to capture, you know, that energy. And there are other movies that fall in that bucket as well that aren't quite on my list. And this is also an act of personal accountability because I unwisely have been skepticism many times over the past year and a half over the fact that Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner were choosing to remake a movie. Uh, turns out,

turns out those guys are pretty good at what they do. And so my number four pick is in fact, West side story, which, um, was just, you know, at least until the ending,

a completely joyous experience, um, for me at the movies. And this movie comes out later this week and we're going to talk about it later this week. So I won't spoil too much. If you can spoil a remake of a movie that won 10 Oscars, that was based on a seminal musical that was based on Romeo and Juliet, but we'll talk about just, just, just some notes there for people, but you know, we'll talk a little bit about especially I think like this adaptation adaptation and and the changes that they make in the updates and that's a really interesting

conversation to have but i think this movie is on my list because of it's the the music and the colors and the dancing and the lights and the cinematography and it and steven spielberg understands obviously what it is to to make a music blockbuster. And musicals are my action movies. And so to just be back and watch all of these pieces moving together so beautifully, I think I teared up at pretty much every song or song and dance number.

It was exhilarating. You doubted Ariana DeBose for so long and she was absolutely killer in this movie. She is fantastic. She was not fantastic at the Oscars pre-show and I'm on record in that and I'm on record as saying she's really great in this. I think the cast is pretty excellent across the board. I mean, it's wonderful. We'll talk more about it, but if you get a chance to see this in theaters, I loved it. I liked it a lot too. We'll talk about it on Friday's episode. Okay, let's go to our

next number four, which is Adam. Oh, in the language of poker at the card counter, I'm going to see Sean's 75-year-old guy named Paul. I'm going to raise you an 83-year-old guy named Paul

who's also gaming system and who also, you know, has been doing it for a long time. I bow to no one in my admiration for Paul Verhoeven. I admire his irreverence. And I think that irreverence is in short supply as opposed to just simply cynicism or sort of just simply mean spiritedness. I think he punches up always at institutions. In RoboCop, it's the military industry. It's the police industrial complex and privatized real estate. In Starship

Troopers, it's the US military. And in his film Benedetta, which came out this year, it's not that he's attacking the church. He's attacking institutional dogma and male-dominated systems of control over women's bodies and over women's stories. If you scoop out Starship Troopers, which is kind of a boy movie, and Hollow Man, which isn't very good, you tell me another director of his age that has had many interesting roles for women in a row as Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Black Book, Elle, and Benedetta. Not innocuous roles, not always flattering roles, roles that are on a knife edge of misogyny and exploitation and leering and,

and all his luridness, but like strong, conflicted, complicated, enigmatic, mysterious women. The protagonist of this film played by Virginia Fira claims to have visions of Jesus, which means people will listen to her at a time when women aren't listened to.

It means she gets a private room at her convent, which is great for screwing around with the other hot woman there who she has eyes for. It's really good that they, you know, have the door that they can close so no one can spy on them. You know, it's kind of really about just like power and how you get it and how you keep

it and how terrified men are of, of, of female power. And I think Verhoeven is, as always, right on that line between sleaziness and real kind of profundity. You know, there's a prop in this movie that I would not dare spoil. It's the best prop in any Verhoeven movie since the ice pick and basic instinct. It literally is a two-sided, like, a two-sided icon of the sacred and the profane i guess and he just always makes me smile because he goes there you know and i can't really say that

benedetta is as great as he can be it's not as great a movie as black book is or it's not as great as i think l was but it's close and great as I think Elle was, but it's close. And even him in like high second tier is better than what most filmmakers are capable of at their best. You know, I didn't see West Side Story. I liked Card Counter. I liked Cry Macho. I liked The Last Duel, but my octogenarian auteur pick is going to be Verhoeven with Benedetta. And I just wish in a way that like Schrader, he wasn't so marginalized. So these movies could be more debated. Like I wish he would get picketed and attacked for this movie because it would be like it was the nineties again. This movie has as many logos in front of

it as the card counter. Each international co-production logo is a badge of honor, but it also is like, this guy used to have Hollywood money. This guy used to play with house money. And I kind of admire him for his exile from Hollywood. But man, if he got one last kick at the special effects can, I would be happy. You know, one more. I don't see that coming, but I'm glad we got Benedetta, which I would wholeheartedly recommend and is absolutely wild. If I'm doing anything one-tenth as lord and exciting as this in my 50s i'll be absolutely you'll be arrested yeah uh okay great pick and wholly unsurprising from

he who worships verhoeven adam naiman okay so you're number four i need to learn my lesson because this is now three years in a row for steven soderbergh i'm putting no sudden move here at number four with the laundromat and Let Them All Talk. And now with No Sudden Move, here's what happens. The trailer comes out. I'm like, this is going to be the best movie I've ever seen. The movie comes out. I was like, that was pretty good,

but it wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. Then we get to the end of the year and it's better than all the other movies. So No Sudden Move is his noir crime thriller it uh features probably i i would say in a perfect world an oscar-winning performance from don cheadle i think this is the best maybe i think he's ever been it features my favorite scene in a movie from this year which i i won't spoil in case anybody still wants to dial up the max machine and watch this one but um he just does these middleweight genre movies better than anybody alive you know what I mean

and I I don't know whether or not we'll look back and be like that second half of his career was a lot of filler and not enough killer and and it's interesting to hear you guys talk about Verhoeven and what wishing he had one more shot because Soderbergh's a volume guy. He takes so many shots. But I think that there's a lot of really important work being done in what feels a little bit disposable because he works so fast.

And he's got two movies coming out next year. He did two movies in 2018, I believe. That was High Flying Bird and uh laundromat he's just so prolific but i think it's important sometimes to stop and realize like just how fucking lucky we are that he just cranks these out um so yeah uh no sudden move great pick i didn't even consider it which just goes to show you how much we take him for granted at this point um and yeah we'll have a lot more soda birds to talk about in the future my number four is the only movie on my list that i did not see in a movie theater and the reason i didn't see it in a movie theater is because i

couldn't and and truthfully i could not really technically watch this movie legally but i did watch it and technically it may not even be a movie depending on your definition of whether this is a movie or not but i'm still still talking. Caveats aside. Great work. That being said, I'm an asshole. Episode three of Hawkeye, which I watched on Reddit. No, my number four is called Can't Get You Out of My Head.

It is the mega documentary film series from Adam Curtis that was made for the BBC. This is, gosh, got to be the 15th or 16th film that Curtis has made for the BBC over the last 40 years. And this is the biggest, perhaps the boldest. I think it's the best. I think century of the self and hyper-normalization are the two that kind

of ensnared me in what it is that he's trying to accomplish. Amanda and I recorded an episode with Chuck Klosterman earlier this year about this series, which is so big. It is almost difficult to describe. But it is effectively a cultural history of a time in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, in which identity, individualism, collectivism, artificial intelligence, China's cultural revolution, Tupac, all of these things are kind of pulled apart and stuck back together in an effort to explain who we are and what we are in this world and in our nations and in our daily lives. It is an extraordinary act of archival compression, of music selection, of writing, of voiceover narration. It is a mass theory, big brain galaxy movie. And it's also a movie that for me,

I think will always be representative of a period of time in which I was power watching at home during quarantine. This is an eight hour experience that you could only watch on YouTube if you lived in the United States. And I remember trying to convince my wife to watch this three or four different times

over the course of the eight hours. And every time I think she would look at it for five minutes and just say, leave me alone. And I think it is kind of a great leave me alone movie. It's a movie to be spent almost solitarily and to work through

whether or not you think Curtis is right or has nailed this grand theory or not. There's something so immersive and daring and big about what he's trying to accomplish that I just couldn't get away from this as I was thinking about how I spent my time watching stuff this year. So I thought this would be the best way to recognize that. Can't get you out of my head is what it's called. Search for it on YouTube if you're curious. Just an incredible act of reading, reading the second half of the century and into this new one. And it's just an amazing, amazing filmmaker.

I will also say that week and a half when Sean prevailed upon me to watch all of it. And I did, it was like maybe the most unhinged I felt during lockdown. And I mean that as a compliment, but it was just sort of a fever dream and everything that I had been experiencing of kind of, you know, being alone and experiencing everything through screens and questioning, you know, the whole construct of the world around me was brought into just a startling and sort of delirious focus. He will turn you into Dennis Hopper from Podlucks now. When you watch it, you're like, you can't land on a fraction, man.

Like, you just lose it if you watch his movies. It does make you sort of nuts. Whenever I watch him, there's the residue where you talk like him a bit. Sometimes, especially to people that can't answer, like your cat. And then a funny thing happens. Because that's the classic Curtis transition, right? You kind of talk like that for a week and then you're done. Yeah, I'm not necessarily sure I've retained much of what was shared in the film,

which is part of the experience in a way. Okay. From out of that dunk tank and into another what's number three, Amanda. It is Joanna hogs, the souvenir part two. No surprise. True story at my screening.

Someone asked if there was a souvenir part one. And there is. And if you haven't seen it, I really recommend it as well. It was one of my favorite movies. I believe was that 2019? Wow, that feels like a lifetime ago. But Joanna Hogg is a tremendously gifted filmmaker who has started this sort of memoiristic project very late in life. And she is both part one and part two.

There is a, there's a, Julie is the character, but a young character played by Honor Swinburne, who is very much based on her own experiences first in a relationship. And then in part two, in trying to turn that relationship and those lessons into art and really what it means to become an artist. And I find the work that she is doing both really generous and also like very difficult on her younger self in a way that I think is really fascinating. And it's, you know, we get a lot of what does it mean to be an artist? And what does it mean to be a younger person, especially from a lot of men? But this kind of from a woman in her 60s at this point is fascinating to look at.

I just also think she has a tremendous eye. And it's so visually pleasing to look at. She gets tremendous performances. If you haven't read Rachel Tashin, the gq writer on the fashion in the souvenir part two and how just um all of she's using all of the signifiers very consciously to create this world that means a lot to her but she's also questioning i just i love these films and i love joanna hogg happy i don't think you and i discussed this movie but I'd be happy to see it on your list. Part two

is, I think, actually deeper than part one, which is very much focused on this sort of male relationship that she's having. And part two is much more about this realization of how she wants to spend her life, which I think is really, really pretty special.

Okay, Adam, number three. Is this where Ghostbusters Afterlife is going? No, but I will say that other than Ghostbusters Afterlife, there's no film I regret missing this year more than Tuvenir or Souvenir 2. I tried, actually. It's too souv, too near is actually the international title and i'm i'm not shading anybody at the distributor but i just couldn't get the link to work and tried to watch it a couple times with my wife who only saw the first souvenir this past week we thought it'd be really fun to to watch it in close proximity and just couldn't get it to work it's playing now theatrically at tiff and it's on my my weekend

to-do list just to go see it because everything amanda said about joanna hogg as an artist and her project i think is very apt i think the first film is really good and I'm pissed off that I didn't see this one one that I did see I don't know if you guys if any of the other three of you saw it but hopefully you'll take this as a spur to watching it is certainly my discovery of the year is called Azor by Andreas Fontana which is a thriller set in the aftermath of the dirty war in Argentina. It's like an ASMR thriller because it's very quiet and everybody speaks in hushed tones. The title literally kind of translates to a kind of quiet or a gesture about kind of keeping your mouth shut. And this great sinister premise, which is this Swiss banker from Geneva named Yvonne,

is there to ensure all his clients that their money's fine and meanwhile they're like I'm glad to hear my money's fine can I get out of the country can I get out of the country with my money like it's in the aftermath of political upheaval in the country it's very particular to the period particular to the history and this guy who's not particularly likable or heroic in the first place is getting deeper and deeper into this sort of intricate local corruption where the location and the characters all just kind of seem to be rotting. It has the same quality of cinematography you get in certain 70s thrillers where it's like the world is shot to appear rotten.

The world is shot to appear in a very upper-class, luxurious way to be just totally spoiled. And the images in this movie are of a world that is spoiled of a rich class that is spoiled and they're clinging desperately you know to to ill-gotten gains and there's this great terrifying mystery at the heart of it which is like what has happened to his colleague because there's another guy from his bank or from his firm who's got this name which is a great name mr keys. Keys. And everyone says, oh, this guy is so charming and he's friends with everyone and he knows everyone and no one can find

him. And so the protagonist in pursuing this missing colleague plunges deeper into corruption, deeper into danger, deeper into this sort of place where the military seems to be around disappearing everyone. And what he's losing in the process to some extent is a, is a moral compass of any kind. There's a perfectly made movie. There's a perfectly made movie of a kind that I really like, which are sinister contained historical political allegories that just make you absolutely feel like shit.

It's got a brilliant ending. Last scene is absolutely incredible. And, you know, it got really good reviews. And in another time, this would have been the sort of thing that I would have gone out to see on like a Wednesday,

you know, at a local art house and really enjoyed and still would have put it on a 10 best list. But this year it almost feels like that divide between the movies that everyone sees and the movies that self-selecting people see feels pretty wide. So on a list like this, I was thinking, I'm like, well, if I'm going on the podcast, I liked some bigger ticket movies.

Like I liked old very much, the Shyamalan movie and some others that could have made this list. But, you know, let's stump for Azor on the off chance that, you know, through streaming it on movies, some people listening to this, you know, seek it out. It's really, really strong. And I know that it's fairly obscure so i'm hoping to give it a little bit of shine by mentioning it here so from a fairly obscure and small film to really about as big as it gets cr and i share a number three chris what is it turn my fucking

head into a canoe denny villanueva. Let's go. It's Dune. So why Dune, Chris? What'd you love? Spectacle, man. Just like why we go to the movies in the first place is just to be transported almost entirely into another world. And it seems like that's easier than ever with the technology that people can use.

And we all sat there for hours talking about the Snyder Cut. And it just seems like they're completely different art forms. You know what I mean? Like if you watch Dune and you know, no disrespect to, uh, Zack Snyder, who I've dedicated a lot of my life to supporting his work,

but, uh, um, yeah, Dune just was like the most magical experience I had watching a movie this year. Um, I just was like completely transported and I think that he understands scope and spectacle and what the eye can do and what

the ear can do during a movie watching experience unlike any other filmmaker right now. Talked on the show about how I was surprised and a little bit unmoored by... John, there will be a part two. That is what I was going to say. Was not being aware of the fact that we were not going to get to that. But you know, well, one, I've seen the movie a few times now. I think I've seen it three times.

And I was having a conversation with Tommy Oliver, who directed one of the films in our Music Box series. And he said that this was the last great movie that he had seen when we were talking. And he said that the decision to end the film the way that they did, to end part one the way that they did with this sort of one-on-one hand-to-hand battle was really one of the most sophisticated decisions

he'd seen in a blockbuster in a long long time because we're in this moment where all of those movies in that top 10 in the box office all end in these noisy clattering lousy cgi-laden conclusions quote-unquote which then lead to the next serialized story and that dune was interested in something different and that it was kind of bold enough to end its first part in a much more grounded way that was much more focused on the character and i hadn't necessarily thought of it exactly in those terms but it did make the film make even more sense to me about what works about it because i think what the reason it's on my list is what you said chris i think it is like an authentically extraordinary fusion of real world production

values and digital imagery like i it's and denise talked about the work that he did with deacons on blade runner 2049 helped him better understand how to do that so that is what knocks me out but the movie feels more whole now as i think about it in the way that tommy was describing it and it's just really impressive it's just a really especially at this time in history as we're putting all these movies in context it's pretty fucking hard to make a blockbuster that has any kind of integrity or or interesting aspect to it honestly and i think this one does so that's dune we're down to this you were so mad why you were just so mad at the part one of it all i was just confused i was just like i didn't know they were gonna do this this is this is i want to see the

thrilling conclusion to do some marketing lessons um anyhow uh all right let's go let's go fairly quickly through two and one we share some of these amanda what's your number two my number two i did a self audit on all of my top five you know. And I realized that there's always one spot for a documentary that can be classified as like, holy shit, can you believe that they got this on tape and then figured out what to do with it? This year, that selection is obviously Get Back, which holy shit, can you believe that they got all of this on tape? I never will. Like, it's honestly like discovering, you know, like the ninth wonder of the world or some archaeological treasure, to me, at least Beatles nerd. But then also that Peter Docton and his editor knew what to do with it, as certain other people, a.k person who is interested in how great artists and honestly just people with one and once in a lifetime skills actually do the things that they do. And it's a portrait of a time.

It's a portrait of a band. It's a portrait of creativity. You can watch this on Disney Plus if you want to. So if you have not, it's definitely the best eight hours that I spent in November for sure. Wholeheartedly agree. Adam, number two. My number two is Licorice Pizza. I've spent a fair amount of time on Anderson's work because of the book I put out last year and, you know, was, had been hearing bits and pieces about this movie and the supposedly autobiographical aspects of it. I've already written on it for

the site, so I won't go on for a long time, except to say that, you know, I was very curious to see it for various reasons. I was very happy with it when I watched it. And I'm curious to revisit because, you know, in some ways I think its pleasures are very immediate. And that doesn't mean I don't think that it'll have depth. I just don't know yet. You know, one of the reasons I like some of Anderson's recent movies a lot since the 2000s is because I think they reward and necessitate return watches. I am not sure what I will get out of this one on a second, third or fourth viewing beyond

pleasure, but the first viewing was very enjoyable. And he's working in a very free and exciting register, I think. You've spoken quite calmly about something that I don't feel calm about, Adam. CR, this is also your number two. You just saw this movie. Yesterday. The streets have been waiting to hear your reaction and here it is number two on your list.

Yeah, so this is only playing in four theaters, so I will not give away any jokes or anything. What did you think about the Thanos stinger? Did you think that was a good choice? It was surprising that that wound up being Lance, the guy from Under One Roof.

No, I obviously was thrilled to see this. I got to see it in Westwood where it's playing, the one theater it's playing in Los Angeles. And it wasn't what I thought it was going to be in some ways. You know what I mean? I think I thought it was going to be much more, I don't know, much more sentimental and it while it's incredibly sweet i thought it was just a really really provocative interesting movie in a lot of places but it still is like

very funny and very um very warm and the music is perfect and i would just say that uh usually at this time of the year a lot of the movies that we're talking about tend to be the ones that are the heaviest or the most tragic or the most, you know, the awards worthy movies tend to have like a little bit of heaviness to them. And the, the apparent lightness of licorice pizza was actually like incredibly refreshing. Although I think watching it over and over again, and as I think more and more about some of the characters in it, it's actually heavier than maybe it seems at first blanch. It has a sense of there's no authority, right?

And that evocation of this weird, not lawless exactly, but this weird sort of parent-free zone is very exhilarating and also a little worrisome. And then I think there's anxieties that bleed through part of it especially about hollywood and what's left of hollywood in the 70s and these old representatives of the entertainment establishment are so kind of disgusting like this is what i mean on repeat viewings i think as you're saying some of that heaviness is gonna accrue but the first time i watched it i just felt it was weightless it was just so enjoyable uh i've seen this twice and the second time this is a dangerous movie in a lot of ways and you'll feel that a little bit

more uh the second time you watch it because you know what's coming and no one is there to stop them to your point about where is everyone's parents and family and like I I don't that and that is obviously an honest representation of life in the 1970s especially in the valley well. Well, again, we'll talk about the movie a lot more in the future. This is by far my favorite movie of the year. Unsurprisingly, I did have the same reaction as you, Chris, which was not quite what I was expecting. I think I was expecting something a little bit goofier, actually. I thought I was dazed.

You know, I thought it was going to be like something like Dazed or Diner or something like that, which I guess, you know, those movies themselves probably, the quote-unquote version of those movies are different than the actual article now. You know, like when you refer to Dazed and Confused,

you just think of smoking pot for two hours and it's not that. But this movie was so, in a lot of ways, like complicated. Like it's a pretty dense narrative.

There's a lot of stuff that's missing that you put together midway through the next vignette that's there. But like I said, you know, it's like part of the joy of his movies is going in somewhat blind.

So my number two is Amanda's number one. And I feel like I called my shot here. I saw this movie and again, I was like, Amanda Dobbins. And this is, and I was going to say this, like you immediately told me you need to go see this movie and I sought it out and it felt like coming home and i felt very seen that you knew this would be just peak amanda so what is the movie it's the worst person in the world um which is in a lot of ways like my licorice pizza i just want to say licorice pizza is definitely on my top 10 and i've loved it

and i decided just put in amanda versions of licorice pizza on my list just to have more movies to talk about um but so this is I think we'll call it like a romantic dramedy if you will um by Joachim Trier and it is about a young woman in Oslo. She's turning 30 and she's just figuring stuff out. And that's like the simplest way of putting it together. But it plays with a lot of romantic comedy tropes. And it has a lot of, a little bit of coming of age, but it's turning all of these very recognizable film moments on their head a little bit and putting it together in just like a very natural and exhilarating way it to me was sort of Norwegian Francis Ha

which is the highest compliment that I can pay anything and also Sean I think why you liked it as well I was surprised by it and I I also found it very generous. I do find like the more coming of age stories and especially like we are getting more and more stories about like young women who don't totally have it together and they're trying to figure it out. And that's great. But sometimes that not having a together aspect of a character is not fully explored or is played a little screwball or a little just annoying and I find myself getting frustrated and this is about a character who definitely doesn't have it together and is not making great decisions but always you're always watching her with some empathy. And I think the film has like a real understanding and makes you remember

what it was like to be that, even if you weren't a specific young woman in, you know, Oslo. So I just, it's, and it has like some great set pieces that I don't want to spoil. There's a lot of like formal invention.

That's really delightful. But yeah, I just, I loved it. You were right. Thank you you this is a tricky one because this movie i don't think is going to be released until february of 2022 which is doing the same thing as like portrait of a lady where it's like it's going to be nominated for best international feature at the oscars but then you won't be able to see it until it's very annoying i mean on the one hand it's smart because we're talking about it here and we're getting people excited about it and making them aware of it.

It's just a terrific movie. I think Chris has talked about Trier on this show a few times. This is the third in the Oslo trilogy and the first two are two of my favorite movies of the century. This one is, I find is a little bit different

in terms of tone than those other two films. This one is a little bit more, a little bit more antic and you mentioned formerly inventive, Amanda. There's something lighter about it, but it also is incredibly dark at times and treer is incredibly empathetic to this character who keeps making bad decisions and i probably spend too much time in my life thinking about trying to make the right decision and that doesn't always work out and

it's okay to not always have the exact right strategic choice but also i think when you are of a certain generation perhaps our generation or maybe one just slightly younger than us you've been told if you make the wrong decision everything could go haywire and this is a movie that is a little bit more free around that idea it's a very very good film i think we'd be remiss if we did not uh call out ren Rensve, who is the star of the movie, who is amazing. I thought this was the best performance I saw this year. I thought she was so, so good in this movie. Highly recommend it.

I hope people can see it sooner than February, but I don't think they really will be able to. It's the worst person in the world. Okay, so now we're down to number ones for Adam and CR. Adam, what is your number one? My number one is, you guessed it, Frank Stallone. No. All right. are. Adam, what is your number one? My number one is, you guessed it, Frank Stallone. No. I think that for number one, it's a bit of a cheat because Ryosuke Hamaguchi directed two

films this year that both came out, Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. I think Drive My Car is the better of the two films. So if we're not allowing ties, I'll pick Drive My Car. But really, it's a kind of threefer for this guy because he wrote another movie on my top 10 list called Wife of a Spy by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, which is a World War II spy thriller. And it's very moving. Kurosawa is one of the great masters of world cinema,

one of the best horror movie directors of all time. And Ryosuke Hamaguchi is his student. So he writes a movie for his teacher, who happens to be one of the greatest Japanese directors of the last 30 years. Then he goes and writes and directs two films that are these perfectly shaped, literate, romantic dramas. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is three 40-minute vignettes

that each relate to the idea of loss and coincidence and time. And then Drive My Car is this very oddly linear three-hour film about someone staging an experimental version of Chekhov on an island in Japan as a way of processing grief and trauma. These films have been hugely acclaimed. In some ways, it's a bit of a film cultural cliche to pick them. People have been saying Hamaguchi is the 2021 MVP, you know, since the beginning of the year, like it's his year. But, you know, sometimes the prevailing wisdom is sort of just correct. You know, this is a guy, you can compare him to certain filmmakers. People have compared him to Eric Romare. People have compared him to Hong

Sang-soo, but he really is his own thing. These scripts are so intelligent and literate and sophisticated. He has such belief in the power of dialogue. He has such belief in theater and drama, what he does with Chekhov's Anko Vanya and Drive My Car, making it into part of the text as it's being performed and being performed in different languages, including sign language and differently experimental contexts. And underpinning all of it is one of the things I at least go to the movies for,

which is humane and universal emotion, even though it's given very specific and in some cases, almost kind of finicky expression through the way that he makes movies. I don't know if it's a big tent movie, but on the other hand, New York film critics just gave it best film, which then leads to the great day on Twitter, where half of my feed is like, oh, good. And the other half is what is this? And it's a good moment, I think, when what is this can sort of prompt people's curiosity. It's a good thing that critics can do, which is put light on worthy and deserving movies and maybe for every couple people who are going to see drive my car because of this and say well that was long and strange and and not for me there are people who are going to be pulled towards this movie that they wouldn't have otherwise seen it's like a mini version maybe of what happened with parasite i

don't think it's got quite the commercial prospects of a parasite because it's not a genre movie, but it's skillful and intelligent and in its way, Drive My Car is actually quite accessible. So I'm hoping that it does well. It would be a good note for this film year to end on if this goes from a kind of niche hit into something that crosses over a little bit. And I don't think that it's impossible. So while Wife of a Spy and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy are part of this equation at putting Hamaguchi and his work at number one, I think Drive My Car is the official pick. I think in the same way that the worst person in the world will be contending for Best International Feature and will be in the conversation over a period of time,

this will be too. This is at a small release in theaters and will be seen by more and more people. What Red Notice fans make of this film? I think and will be seen by more and more people. What Red Notice fans make of this film? I think it will be interesting, but Drive My Car, it's not inaccessible. It's just long. The story itself, I think, is actually quite accessible and it's quite melodramatic in many ways, in a way that I think is

very involving. So it's not like this odd foreign object. Even Memoria, which is like a much more challenging film relative to this i think people will like it we'll watch it and like it so um it's great it's on my top 10 list as well i highly recommend it and maybe people will discover asako one and two and all the other films that that um that hamaguchi has made in the last 10 years okay we're down to the final one chris ryan uh well it's uh velvet underground Todd Haynes' film about Velvet Underground

that came out on Apple a little bit earlier this year. This is, I guess in some ways, this is kind of like my get back. Although get back's pretty high up there for me as well. But this is probably the most rewarding and deepest experience I have with a movie this year. So I've watched it a few times and it kind of, the first time you go through it's an

experience and it's not unlike what it must have been like to see the velvet underground live in the 60s when they first got together where it was a little bit more of like about the act of going to see them and being in their world than it was really maybe on processing and understanding exactly what it was that they were saying and doing and then you watch it again and for anybody who doesn't know it it's on Apple. But essentially, Todd Haynes does this bifurcated screen where on one side of the screen for most of the film, there's a talking head interview.

And then on the other side, it's this collage of archival photographs and film that he's working through, sometimes to illustrate what the person is talking about, sometimes to juxtapose with what the person is talking about. Sometimes it's to give almost subliminal messages about what was meant by what the person was talking about. But the more I thought about obviously very labored over, next to these first-person accounts of what it was like to be in and around Andy Warhol's factory and knowing and working with Lou Reed and John Cale and Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison around the time of this incredibly fertile creative period. It mostly focuses on the first two records. So it's not like a complete picture of the Velvet Underground as a band. If you don't know who the Velvet Underground is, I think you'll learn more about what it was like to be in New York in the

sixties than you will to know about like what was important about loaded the last Velvet Underground album. But I think that this is the movie that I'm going to keep returning to from this year. And this is the movie that I'm going to keep returning to from this year and this is the movie that gave me the most. Well, that does it. A lot of good picks. Really great movie year.

Thank you guys for sharing all of your thoughts and if you want to hear a little bit more about one of the movies that we talked about here, you can now listen to my conversation with Denis Villeneuve. Denis, thank you so much for being on the show. It's an honor to chat with you. All the privilege is mine.

I want to open with this. So you've talked about adapting Frank Herbert's story since, you know, you were a teenager. You aspire to this. I'm wondering talked about adapting Frank Herbert's story since, you know, you were a teenager, you aspire to this. I'm wondering if there was one image or sequence from that book, particularly that you couldn't get out of your mind as you were growing up.

Yeah. I will say that there were, there was, there were two scenes that were very kind of clear. There was the gum jab bar, the very opening of the book where paul is is uh doing a test a kind of a mental test where we will suffer a tremendous amount of pain and there was something there that the atmosphere the hypnotic quality of the scene the nightmarish

quality the the link between the conscious and the subconscious. It's something that, and this awakening into Paul, where he will be for the very first time in contact with something that was hidden inside himself, very ancient force hidden inside himself. That's something that stayed with me through the years i will say also that um the first contact paul's first contact with the desert um him embracing uh for the first time this new space that feels strangely like home to him that That is something that was very fresh in my mind and of course at the end when he meets for the first time the Fremen in the desert. The Fremen in the desert. It's a desert. It's something that this encounter with Shani and with Stilgar in the middle of the night is something that had vivid dimensions in my mind.

And what Greg Fraser, the cinematographer, and I did out there in the desert, I think is pretty close to what I envisioned when I read the book as a teen. As a filmmaker, sometimes I assume you get a script or you have a concept that you want to work through, but the lifespan of that brainstorming, that creativity is probably what, a maximum of five years, maybe 10 years. But in this case, you've got something in your head for four decades. Were there any things that you envisioned that you found more difficult to pull off than you expected was there something that capturing it and creating it and making it tactile and real was a struggle well the thing is uh i would say of course that uh i didn't dream for 40 years to make that film

because of course for most a big part of my life that dream was just a fantasy. It was something out of reach. It became more tangible, more closer to my reach when I started to work here in Los Angeles. But I will say that it was not bringing back visions from my earlier readings. The most difficult thing really was the adaptation, the screenwriting, to try to stay

as faithful as possible to the book and at the same time to bring the story to the screen so it will be the audience who knew nothing about the book will feel welcome. That balance between the Dune expert and the people that knew nothing about the book would feel welcome. That balance between the Dune expert

and the people that knew nothing about the book is that find that equilibrium was quite difficult. And that was the biggest challenge to create the visions or to bring that was a fun part. The older you've gotten, has your relationship to Paul's story changed

in the way that you see it? Of course. Of course, it's a way that you see it? Of course. Of course, it's a book that you can revisit and read different things the more as you evolve. As a human being, there's something about Paul's relationship. I would say more precisely the Bene Gesserit relationship, the sisterhood, that are able to channel the voice of their ancestors and to create something to bring a power out of this, of these,

of that heritage. It's something that instead of being, becoming neurotic, they are able to channel this force and create something strong out of it. That's something that spoke to me more as I was becoming an adult than when I was a kid, of course, where I was just like totally glued to Paul's perspective. I'm curious about the process of convincing people to let you make a film like this. Can you tell me a little bit about what goes into sitting down and saying,

here is my vision for this story that, it has been adapted is still described as unadaptable that costs hundreds of millions of dollars that requires tons of physical sets like what what is that like in the room when you're explaining your vision well my answer will be very disappointing because it's not the way to happen actually the. The truth is, Mary Perrins from Legendary got the rights. It took her years to get the rights. And when she got the rights, she looked for a filmmaker. And as she looked for a filmmaker,

that morning she got the rights. She opened the newspaper and read in the newspaper that it was one of my biggest dreams, if not my biggest dream, to bring Dudes to the screen. So she just called me and we had a 45-second meeting. I mean, it's like, why?

Because Mary Parent has the best reputation here as a producer. She was highly recommended by Alejandro I mine alejandro united who had just did the revenant with her and and uh i knew i would be in safe hands with mary and she was looking for a filmmaker and she happened to love my work so it really we just met shook hands let's do this together there was no such thing as a pitch or or um um there were early conversations of course how I will see them but it was more about what the book meant to me and the way we want to approach it as an immersive experience focusing on Paul's perspective and but there was no honestly it wasn't no such. L'Engendierie had fought for the rights for a long time. So they were convinced that there was a strong project there.

And I just made myself loud and clear that I wanted to do it. So it's like just like, et cetera, DPD. Can you explain how you were feeling after that 45 second meeting? The truth is the excitement, the idea to have finally the chance, because I was dreaming to do that since, again, a long time. I got deeply excited when I knew that I would have that meeting. And the way it happened, it was so natural, so fast, so clear. Then I went outside, walked, and then I called my wife. And then I felt for, at that precise moment, as I told her, I think my next project could be doomed.

And then I felt the pressure on my shoulder but the excitement to do it is it was bigger than the fear honestly it's like there's something that is linked so far away inside me that I just had to focus on the my love for the book and I that was I was okay. Who is the first person from a professional perspective that you call after you decide you're going to do this? Hans Zimmer.

Because I was like, at the time I was like working on the score of Blade Runner with Hans and Ben Wallfish. And Hans, I remember having a chat with him about just because he asked me what I was doing next or something. And I said something like that.

I don't recall exactly the nature of the conversation, but I remember asking him if he knew about doing the book. And Hans then told me that it was one of his favorite books of all time. And that it was one of his biggest one of the biggest dream to uh to score uh an adaptation of this book so uh my first uh discussion were with hans uh my first uh conversations and hans is probably the the artist around me that knew the most the book is he know yeah like me read the book several times so we had like a lot of uh uh direct and and uh in-depth discussion about uh discussion in depth about about the book so um yeah and i remember one of our first time we had a dinner together, he looked at me in the eyes and he said,

but is it a good idea? Because to tackle, to try to bring to life when you're of your child, not childhood, but teenage dreams, you know, when you're of your oldest dream, should it just stay a dream?

It's like, are you bound to disappoint yourself and to kill something? And that is beautiful. And I took a risk. That was the biggest risk for me with this adaptation was to kill one of my oldest dreams. So that was one of the biggest pressures I had, I think, artistically,

I would say. I want to ask you a little bit more about Hans' score, but before that, it seems like, for the most part, since Polytechnique, you have upped the stakes and the scale and the scope of your films you've had some occasionally you'll go you'll make an enemy in a short period of time but for the most part it feels bigger and

bigger and bigger is that a conscious decision is it something is an ambition that you have it's it's it's uh i don't have a career plan but definitely i like to uh challenge myself with a project that i know that i can handle, that I can technically, I know that I have enough technical knowledge to do. I would have never dared to try to bring Dune to the screen 10 years ago. But saying this, I will say that the movies are technically more difficult. But talking about Polytechnique, that, I will say, that project that you're talking about that I shot, I don't know, 12 years ago or something like that, that was pressure. That was like approaching a real event, a school massacre, and it was a very, very, very delicate subject matter. It was very controversial at home.

It's a taboo, you know, it's a very painful event that occurred in Montreal at the end of the 80s. And that was pressure to deal with reality, to deal with like that. So when I do a project like Dune, it's pressure, but it's artistic pressure. It's not the same as when you do know real life people around you so the novel is getting quite old now you know 60 almost 60 years old i'm curious about because the film feels very modern and the themes feel very modern and i'm wondering about the conversations maybe you had with the screenwriters and as you conceived it how you attempted to modernize some of the the shape of the story without sacrificing what makes it special.

I will say this, the novel aged beautifully, I mean, or sadly beautifully. I mean, it's more relevant than it used to be when it was written. I think it's like it feels that what Herbert wrote when inspired by the main currents of the 20th century, in fact, he foresaw main currents of the 20th century. And in fact, he foresaw what will be the 21st century about the blend between the region and politics.

There always had been a blend, a cocktail, that dangerous cocktail of blending religion and politics, but it's more present than it used to be at the time. And internationally, the idea of, of course, the pressure of the climate, the overexploitation of natural resources, I mean, all this,

the impact of colonialism, it's all things that are still relevant or even more relevant today. The thing I think that I enhance or focus on in this adaptation is the seed of feminism that was present in the novel. A very masculine world. But Herbert had in his writing some kind of sensibility toward femininity and the relationship between women and power

that I thought was really relevant and promising. And it's something that has been present in my work in the past that linked with feminism that I thought will be the best door to open this adaptation. The key to open this adaptation for me was women. Putting in the foreground Lady Jessica and the congregation of the Bene Gesserit and focusing on Paul's relationship with his mother.

That was technically the angle where we focused right at the beginning with Eric Rapp when he did attack the adaptation. And so when you embark on building out a world like this, where do you begin? You mentioned Greg Frazier being a big part of this, obviously,

but the thing that blew me away about the film is I feel like it is the truest collaboration of tactile physical production and digital effects that I've ever seen. It's the clearest, most seamless, most fully realized that I've ever seen. And I still can't really figure out how you did that. So like,

maybe you can kind of hold my hand through some of the steps that you took to make that legible to audiences and realistic. First of all, I'll start with trying to go back to what the book meant to me. And one of the things was this relationship with nature. In the book, the religion is biology, and God is nature, and Mother Nature nature and there was something i wanted the audience to feel that the landscape the world that they were seeing was felt dangerously familiar i didn't want to create

exoticism i wanted to bring the world close to them as much as possible to feel as immersive and that whole journey would feel uh uh strangely it meant that the movie would be more impactful. I thought this was just an intuition. And for that, I insisted that we'll try to use as much as possible natural light. I defined at the beginning with my storyboard artist, the spirit of the frames and the cinematic language that would be used, trying to increase isolation, the feeling of isolation, bring a melancholia that I thought was very important, a romantic melancholia that was very present in the book. And then worked on the light from the artwork, working with Dick Ferrand,

an artist from Montreal that lives in LA now, working on what the light, the quality of the light would be to bring those emotions and bring the feeling of realism. And then there was a work with, I choose Greg Fraser as a cinematographer because he has that strong ability to work with the natural light,

to bring a strong realism, but still keeping it very cinematic, of course, using sunlight. And so I almost have a kind of, like we're doing a documentary on the future. It's like it's that spirit. And so I think that the realism you were talking about with the VFX,

and it comes from, I didn't invent nothing. I mean, it's like technically, we just shoot as much as possible on camera and trying to use as much natural light as possible. I mean, we built set outside to use natural light. We shoot as much on location as possible. I mean, it's really to...

And I work with the fantastic VFX supervisor, Paul Lambert. I mean, it's really to, and I work with the fantastic VFX supervisor, Paul Lambert. I will say this, having done Blade Runner 2049 with

Roger Dickens, I spent a year listening to Roger's instructions to the VFX department on Blade Runner.

I learned so much. I learned so much about how to lit VFX with Roger. I learned so much. I learned so much about how to lit VFX with Roger. I think that at one point, it has to

pay off. I learned a lot. With Paul, we really worked hard to try to, again, try to bring as much... At the end of the day it's all about light

and I try to follow Roger's advices There's a narrative trick of this film which ultimately ends but doesn't necessarily have a conclusion and I was wondering what went into figuring out how to make a film like that propulsive and engaging

and satisfying for audiences because obviously you're making a film for a mass audience knowing that part two is not guaranteed at this stage necessarily even though everyone is hoping that it's going to happen what goes into crafting a movie that you hope can stand on its own even though it needs to be concluded at some point yeah Yeah, it's a very good question. The thing is that John Spade and I, at that point, I was working with John on that part of the... It was different. Eric had brought the story a bit later, and John

brought it a bit earlier. Me, I was finishing the story much earlier. We had three different theories about that, and there was a lot of discussion because at the end of the day, it's like the problem we had three different theories about that and there was a lot of discussion because at the end of the day it's like the problem we had is that once Paul and Jessica were

about to meet the Fremen and meeting the Fremen and going through the process of being accepted by the Fremen, that felt like the beginning of a new story, of a new chapter and it was kind of unbearable at the end of two hours and a half to start to have the feeling that you were about to start something new it was like really uh uh it felt really

abrasive and not right and then i was looking for a propulsive conclusion as you rightly said and the uh so technically we just focus on paul paul's journey as that goes from a young teenager, from an old teenager to a young adult, you know, and it's like, I feel deeply that it's the right way to stop where you feel that Paul has completed his arc as a grown up, but then the story will move forward in a new direction in the next chapter of their lives.

I mean, it's like it felt like right to stop there. And it's not something that was done over a weekend. It required a lot of brainstorming and thinking to get there. And it's John that found the right incarnation, I think, by moving that duel between James and Paul. That duel in the story

is supposed to happen a little bit later. Moving it closer to them felt very authentic, natural, and dramatic, and completed Paul's arc. What was the energy like at the end of the production? Was it like,

we'll see you in two years, thanks for everything? How did you guys depart at the end of this massive production that maybe wasn't completed? It was very moving because the crew, we had that huge crew

in Hungary and Jordan that got smaller as we went to shoot in abu dhabi and went there with a smaller unit to achieve what we had to do in the deep desert and then we went to norway where we were like just a pocket of people like very few people with timothy by the ocean so we finished in a very intimate way at sunset, not knowing if the sun will rise later on a new story or it will be the end of this journey. And I was at peace with that because it was the deal that I had made with the studio. My dream was to shoot. I was responsible for this idea of shooting in two parts,

making a two-part movie. That's my idea. But I wanted to shoot both parts simultaneously, one after the other, which was declined. This idea was declined. It was not accepted because it was too expensive. But I'm grateful that it happened this way

because, frankly, when I'm talking that it happened this way because frankly, when I'm talking about that moment on the shore of Norway, we were all incredibly exhausted. And I feel that it was time just to go back in the editing room and make sense of what we had shot and try to make the best movie as possible and pray for the best.

I mean, it's like it was a bet that I was and I wasn't. I had put enough of the old images that I had in my mind that I kept saying to myself, if ever there's not such a thing as a part two, if ever that's the end of it, at least some of my dream will have reached the screen and and so i was kind of uh i was really uh i'm not talking for you ask the question about the other people everybody were praying for a part two i mean but uh me on my side talking just for me I was at peace with the idea that it could be the end of the journey. What'd you learn making part one that's going to help you make part two,

having been inside of this world? That's so many things about, again, about, it would be too long to say, but I learned, first of all, I would say that it's a movie that, on the screen, there was a tag tagline it was adapt or die and and and um i i put that that phrase that sentence on on the door of my office production office adapt or die it's something that kept resonated inside me as a mantra

to the whole making of this movie because we shot this film in a context that we had a lot of money but not all the money in the world. It was like a very ambitious project for the resources

and it meant that we had to find ways to approach this, to be very creative project for the resources. And it meant that we had to find ways to approach this, to be very creative, how to approach this in order to protect the scope, the strength of the story. But I had to find tons of strategies and I learned a lot. I had to change my ways of doing things as well. I'd never in the past. I'm someone who loves to work with a single camera,

one angle work, one, one shot at a time. And for this one, I had to change my ways of doing things for some scenes because otherwise I would, I would still be shooting right now. I mean, it was like the amount of work that was required uh it was so that the first

first time that i was going i went honestly full hollywood style with multiple units that i was supervising from afar always in the same area but still i never had worked like that. It really crushed my brain. But luckily, I was able to work. My cinematographer, Greg Fraser, is used to work this way. So I used Greg's power to help me to go through this. And I had allies, I had special allies that helped me, like Daniela Point, my partner in life, and that was a producer,

helped me to manage all those. It was a crazy time. It's very ordinary for most of the directors here in Los Angeles. For them, it's everyday life. It's easy for them. I'm very monomaniac. I'm used to focus on one thing at a time.

I'm very old school in my ways of doing things. I'm a synth. Well, it's working. There was quite a bit of drama thing at the time so it was um i'm very old school in my ways of doing things i must say well it's working um you know there was there was quite a bit of drama around the release plan for the film but it does seem like it has kind of defied all of the expectations around that it's successful at the box office it does also feel like a lot of people who maybe might not have tried it maybe had a chance to try it in their home how are you feeling about how all that has shaken out now that we're past the release of the first part?

The thing is that the one thing that is a big victory for me right now at the beginning of December is that the movie is going back in IMAX. When we dream about this film, it was the first time that I was really dreaming about the format, about that wide format of IMAX that I thought was the perfect technical approach to create that project. And Greg Fraser and I, we dreamed that same to ourselves, that needs to be seen as a kind of IMAX event. It's just the way we dream about it. And the fact that the movie, the theatrical experience prevailed

at the end of the day, after all that happened, now that it's only in theaters everywhere and it's going back in several territories, actually in Europe and here in the US, going back in the IMAX theaters because for the IMAX theaters because that's for the IMAX owners I think it was a great experience

it was like a nice success and I mean that sounds like victory you know you waited out the plan and you got what you wanted and I met a lot of people saying that they started to try to watch it on TV and stopped and went to the theater because it makes no sense to watch a movie on TV.

Saying this, I am aware that we are in a pandemic and that it's not everywhere, that it's safe to go to theaters. And I respect that. And I'm not crazy. And myself, I discovered several masterpieces when I was young on television. It's just that when you watch 2001 A Space Odyssey on TV, it's not the same experience as when we watch it on 70mm in a theater. It's like you realize when you go into a theater that you just had 35% of the experience by watching it on television. It's like Dune is an immersive movie

that has been designed as a theatrical experience. Denis, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing

that they have seen? Have you seen anything great lately? Lately? What is the last? I think that I have to go back to last summer when I saw Tenet.

Not last summer, but a while ago. I mean, why Tenet? Because for me, it's a movie that the ambition and the level of the mise-en-scene, it's so sophisticated um i was blown away by internet that's the last time that's my last vivid experience cinematic experience that i saw in a theater uh uh in hungary it's like uh that's my last uh great cinematic experience in the theater since yeah what did you what did you respond to in Nolan's film? For me, filmmakers that are able to approach that sensation of vertigo

because they put yourself in front of the unknown, like 2001 A Space Odyssey, when you reach that level where you feel that you are in a zone where you feel that you are like stepping into a space or a landscape where or i'm talking about the mantle landscape where you feel that it has not been seen before and create a feeling of a deep vertigo i think it's linked with the notion of distorting the time that I felt was frankly new. And there's something there that were intellectually so challenging that I just deeply loved it. I love to be challenged like that when you can reach that

level of intellectual challenge linked with pure emotion and cinematic excitement, I mean, it's a treat. And it doesn't happen very often in theaters, in cinema. And Christopher Nolan has that capacity to create that very unique emotion, which is the most exciting. You have it as well. Congrats on part one. I can't wait to see what you do with part two. Thank you for doing the show today.

Thank you very much. Okay, thank you to Denis Villeneuve, Chris, Amanda, Adam, and of course, our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Later this week on The Big Picture, we're going to be talking about our favorite movie soundtracks of all time. We will see you then.