The Big Picture - Top Five War Movies and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan to discuss the dark horse Oscar contender ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and their favorite films about war. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at The Ringer, Off Guard, hosted by me and my guy, Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figured it was time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league. And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA.

Tap into Off Guard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I'm Sean Fennessey.

I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about war. CR is here. Hi, Chris. I'm kind of tired, man. We really did like a very long JMO last night. Yeah. Boba Fett, socialism.

Brady. Tom Brady. Tom. TV 12. Yeah. very long jmo last night yeah boba fett socialism brady tom brady tom tv 12 yeah so like i'm i'm thanks for having me on because i'm kind of cool it's good to have you back thank you and thanks for all your work on jmo today we're talking about a major dark horse oscar contender on the show a film that was released last fall we never got a chance to cover it actually and all quiet on the western front has really emerged it's an adaptation of the celebrated World War I novel. It's distributed by Netflix in the fall, and it really is rising on these short lists. So we felt like we really needed to tackle it in depth.

We've invited Chris here today to talk about war films. He, of course, served in two tours in Vietnam. And we'll also discuss this new adaptation and our favorite war films of all time. So let's start with All Quiet on the Western Front. You know, I'll give some context for it. It's based on this 1928 novel. It is, you know, entirely about the author's experience.

It's sort of a fictionalized account of the author's experience. Eric Maria Remarque. That's his name. A German soldier. And it was very quickly adapted in the United States in 1930 by Lewis Milestone in one of the landmark war films ever made. One best picture. About 50 years later, it was adapted again in the U.S. in a TV movie by Delbert Mann.

And pretty good TV movie, might I add. And that was received, I would say, kind of stiffly because the 1930 film was so critical. And now, like another half century later, we've got yet another version of this film. This is the first time it's being told by a German filmmaker. Of course, it's a German story. It's widely understood to be one of the most brutal but honest accounts of what it was like

to serve in World War I. And the original film, the 1930 film, is widely considered like an act of pacifism across the world. When it was first seen, there were people who thought it deserved the Nobel Prize because it's so powerful and it's so intensely told. And also when you watch it, you'll see that basically every war movie that's happened ever since is culling directly from what Lewis Milestone accomplished.

So this new one, I'll be honest, when it came out, I wasn't racing to my Netflix to check it out. I felt like I had seen, I'd definitely seen the 1930 film. I don't know if I'd ever seen the 1979 film, but the 1930 film, despite some melodramatic acting, I was sort of like, I think we got it. Amanda, did you just see this film? When did you see it? When you asked me to, which I believe was a text message that you sent me on december 23rd and you were like hey but if you've got some time check out all quiet on the western front a two and a half hour like german brutalist war movie i was like cool great great great great um i i did watch it i think that i have a different relationship to

war films than either of the people on this podcast, both in the sense of just like battle scenes and possibly also the role that they play in history and also our political understanding of war. Meaning you're very pro-war. As you know, yeah. This is, again, an audition for JMO. I thought your Zelinsky takes

on the Golden Globes pod were we're really brave thank you so much that's really thank you thank you um just you know me and kevin costner you know we couldn't be in the room but we were there to support um and then i i do think that i i'll be honest i don't think i've read the whole book in translation i don't read german um in college but it is it does also have the the book book in translation. I don't read German in college, but it is, it does also have the book itself in fiction is like a, it's seminal, certainly pacifist.

It was one of the novels that was like banned by the Nazis immediately. So I guess I was like, I don't know whether I need to see another movie version of this, but then, as you said, it became an awards thing and I checked it out. And I, are we, are we given reviews? Do you want to talk about it? Like, well, I then as you said, it became an awards thing and I checked it out. And are we given reviews? Do you want to talk about it?

Well, I want to, Chris, like when did you, were you like, yeah, trench warfare. Like, let me sit down. You like war fiction. You like war movies, Chris. Like you have more of an affinity

for this space or at least appreciate it. I identify you historically with someone who's more interested in Vietnam than in World War II or World War I. But what was your relationship to All Quiet on the Western Front? Really just as like a museum piece. Like I think I saw it in film school and I was like, I get it.

That was definitely like a seminal act of narrative filmmaking. And then probably haven't thought or watched it, thought about it or watched it in like 30 years. So like it was, it was really, I was kind of surprised that this was being remade. Now, obviously, there are,

you know, currents in the world right now that would suggest this is the perfect time to make a film like this. And obviously, I think that it has

a lot to say about like the effect on the populace of combat, both in terms of the soldiers and fighting and the land around it.

But yeah, I was sort of surprised to see this sort of starting to and fighting and the land around it. But yeah, I was sort of surprised to see this sort of starting to tick up and people starting to be like, this should be a Best Picture nomination. This might not just be foreign film, but it might be Best Picture. It seems like if Andrea Risborough was in this movie, it would be like a lock. But yeah, I

went into this kind of like, also just being a little bit suspicious of it being on Netflix, I guess guess for some reason and was for the most part blown away like it's pretty harrowing movie and so I think that there is basically there are war

movies and then there are movies that are set during wartime I think war movies there's really only one way to make them now like you kind of have to make a horrors of war movie that shows people why we shouldn't be doing this. And then there's all sorts of movies that you can make be like wars in the background,

but all sorts of cool shit happens in the foreground, you know? And those are the movies that I think probably we watch over and over again. Whereas then there are a couple of like seminal, like this, just so you know, don't do this, you know? What about you Amanda? What'd you think of All Quiet on the Western Front same I mean I found it both like viscerally effective and impressive and also like hard to watch you noted that the score was the favorite and and particularly

let that like three note motif was your favorite part of the film and I also thought that that was like a stroke of genius um and it is and i also thought that that was like a stroke of genius um and it is shortlisted i immediately went it was like is this shortlisted for score because it should be on it and it is um you know i i it's it definitely works as like hey war is a horror and specifically trench warfare and world war one was just like an absolute like historical um shocking like kind of unthinkable tragedy and as you watch this you're just like how did this happen for so long so so it works um you know i don't thrill to watching two and a half hours of just like completely like gruesome and difficult battle scenes um and i would like to talk a little bit about the balance between the battle stuff and the sort of um the political machinations that are are

kind of woven in which like i guess in some ways you need from a just a narrative watching a movie standpoint, but are not as natural, I would say, and kind of hammering the point home. But Sean, I wanted to ask you, why do you think that this is suddenly such a best picture for a runner? Is it the technical stuff or is it what Chris was referencing, which is like, this is, you know,

the Oscar is always like a movie for the moment. Well, the Oscars always like a movie for the moment. Well, I wonder if it is a movie for the moment. I'm, you know, Edward Berger is the director of the film, German film, very talented German filmmaker.

I think at a minimum, you can say this movie is very impressive. Yeah. He worked on the terror. He's, uh, did Deutschland 83. That's what I would,

the only thing I've seen. Yeah. And I seems this movie is like, at some point, I think there's a podcast in like talking about the absolutely profound influence of Denis Villeneuve on like this generation of filmmakers and how much these movies are starting to look like Dune and Arrival and Sicario and like the crispness of the cinematography and that scope.

It's pretty interesting. But the, so I guess whatever the sort of the relevance is actually, you know, Zelensky and Ukraine and Russia and everything. And so he's, he's been citing that as a, as a kind of a,

a direct meeting of the moment, which I suppose there is something to that. I don't feel like in this country, we're necessarily seeing that warfare the way we have seen warfare on our TV screens over the last 60, 70 years, nearly as much in part because it's not it's not us connected per se um i think it's an oscar contender in part

because there's nothing else like it right now the things that are spectacle are a little bit more fantasy or a little bit more light you know even top Maverick, which is ostensibly a war movie, but really has no enemy, doesn't have a true battle sequence. And, you know, the same goes for the sort of Black Panther, Wakanda Forevers, where they're sort of like, they are about globalist threats, but they're not based in the real world.

And this is a very real story. There's not a war movie, right? The war movies historically do very, very well at the Academy Awards. I do think that the effort to modernize this story somewhat, or at least to reshape it

from Remarque's novel, is interesting. It seems to be the thing that is annoying the purists. You know, there is a lot of criticism of this film as well because it is not faithful to Remarque's novel

or to the 1930 film because it includes, as you said, Amanda, a series of sequences intercut against the lives not faithful to a remarks novel or to the 1930 film, because it includes, as you said, Amanda, these, a series of sequences intercut against the lives of the young German soldiers of essentially the, the negotiation of the armistice and Daniel Bruhl in particular portrays one of these key figures.

He's probably the most recognizable person in the film to American audiences. And you, you know why it's there. And it's certainly there in part because it's a German production and so there is this effort to make this not just this brutalist anti-war film that is repeating what had come before

but to show a kind of emotional collision between the two Germanys and then everything that happens in the aftermath of the armistice but then that leads to World War II. And then he's like, if we do this piece, the people will hate this treaty

and that's what leads to World War II. And then he's like, if we do this piece, the people will hate this treaty and that's what leads to World War II in some ways. Exactly. But I do think, you know, we're Americans watching this German interpretation of this German text,

which, you know, is clouded a little bit that we already have our own kind of very influential American interpretation of it. But if this were an American text, we would be so irritated

at the part of being like, well, this is like the liberal, like injection to try to like signal politics and sort of thing. We would find it like, absolutely. If they were cutting to Bobby Kennedy being like, we got to bring our boys.

Yeah, exactly. Like, are you kidding? Like, no thanks. Like we get it. We're intelligent.

I think sometimes this is the case with international cinema, especially non-English language cinema there are allowances made for for kind of sentimentality or emotionalism or politics that we would be a little bit more maybe the academy would we would be a little bit more critical of no i think the academy would actually because that's like an interesting thing about the internationalization of the academy is that certainly some of the political american films that we think like this is very reductive or annoying or like very virtue about the internationalization of the Academy is that certainly some of the political American films that we think like this is very reductive

or annoying or like very virtue signaling interpretation of America and international voters are often like, oh, interesting. Oh, that's America. Yeah.

You know, it like goes down a little bit smoother and I do wonder whether the reverse is happening a little bit here. I do wonder. I mean,

one of the bodies that really celebrated this movie was BAFTA. It has the most long list appearances, 15. I'm not totally sure if this movie's going to make the cut. I do think it is a really

interesting example, though, Chris, of what you cited, which is it is like the modernization of war movie making and that post-Villeneuve, post-Christopher Nolan, that slickness,

that sleekness. As I was watching this movie a second time to get ready for our chat, there were times where I felt like I was watching a Nike commercial. And I don't say that to be glib. No, I know. But there's something very clean about the way, even though people are being exploded on screen, and it is very upsetting at times.

So I don't want to reduce what the story is trying to accomplish. Sometimes I wonder whether or not movies look like that because they're on Netflix or Netflix asks the movies that they broadcast to be on. Does it go through like a Netflix filter? I don't know. We've had this discussion before.

When we were doing a draft a few weeks ago, I was re-watching The King, the Timothee Chalamet movie that David Michaud made. It kind of looks exactly like All Choir on the Western Front.

There's something about when it runs through the pipes of Netflix, it kind of comes out with this like, Oh my God, this is like almost like auto motion is on or something is like so clear about this picture that there is almost a lifelessness to it, which I suppose in the case of all choir on the Western front does have its

own effect. It doesn't look like a TV show to me, though. That's one thing I will say for the film. It looks like a film. I haven't seen this film on a big screen. I wish I had, frankly.

But you're right, though, that there is something. I don't understand the film technology, but something about the way that it is digitally compressed and then broadcast on their airwaves

that just feels slightly off and it makes it difficult to elevate something like this. I do think it looks very good. Like the camera work is pretty incredible. The performances are quite good in the film. You know, the original film,

the thing that it gets dinged about now is that it's, you know, it's operating in that 1930 deeply melodramatic, you know, oratorical, intensely speechifying acting style. This is a, a much more naturalistic set of performances.

Felix Kammerer plays Paul, who's the sort of lead, the POV character throughout our story. I think he's very, very good in this movie. He basically has to look terrified for two and a half hours and is very effective at that. And then there's this cast of German actors

across the board. The score itself... The guy who plays Kat's really good. Albrecht Schuch. Yeah. He's sort of Paul's best friend, his cohort in the film. The score is...

The one thing that I felt like was a look-at-me modern flair that worked for me, but I think might be a little bit divisive. You mentioned it's this sort of synth riff. The composer said that this is directly influenced by Led Zeppelin, which sounds sick.

That itself is a bit perverse. What did you think of the music? It reminded me a lot of Denis Villeneuve's scores. And that kind of like... And a lot of Nolan's Hans Zimmer stuff. But obviously used to kind of like, and a lot of like Nolan's Hans Zimmer stuff. But obviously like used to kind of like illustrate or illustrate in an oral way the sort of tactics, the old world tactics that were meeting like new world machinery in World War I.

And how these guys were basically running into chemical weapons, running into high-power machine guns, running into tanks, running into air power. And they were still like, we're going to get up on this trench and blow a whistle, and you're just going to run. That was tactics back then. So the music kind of brings to life the gears of war, the machinations of war. Do you think this film is going to be nominated across the board? How do you think this is going to shake out? It seems certain that it'll get some technical nominations. I don't see it in Best Picture.

I mean, that could be wrong. And there is always one surprise in Best Picture. And there is always one, increasingly one international. I mean, we talked a lot about director in the in our last podcast and how there's always one surprise from the dgas and one international and you like you could see this happening definitely um so i think it will be nominated a lot i i just kind of the way best picture is shaping up it just doesn't seem like this has enough traction or is celebrated enough.

So the argument here is like, this is just the movie that's sneaky, been on Netflix for a while that people have had a chance to watch, right? Well, the Netflix also doesn't necessarily have a strong contender. So there are probably more resources going towards it than would have been

because it's obviously competing in international feature. In fact, it's probably obviously competing in international feature. In fact, it's probably the favorite for international feature right now. So with that in mind, that means they're holding a lot of screenings. That means that they're having a lot of Q&As. It means that the film is being promoted more broadly than it otherwise would have if, say, white noise had popped, but it didn't.

So because all this energy is going behind it, Netflix, very very very good historically like getting attention to its films from the academy so i and like i said there's no other true war film and so there there's some kind of variance there from the fablemans and tar and films that feel somewhat more intimate so i think there's a i think there's a chance it gets in i i i don't believe in the sequel wave. You know, the glass onion Wakanda forever. I don't see that happening. So if that doesn't happen, it means there's going to be some open spots.

You know, a movie like this versus The Whale is kind of like the height of Oscar perversity, right? It's like, could two things have less to do with each other than The Whale and All Quiet on the Western Front, aside from, I guess, like, Annihilation. But I don't know. I do think it will be in cinematography.

I do think it will be in score. I do think it will be in production design. Like, I think it will be in a lot of below-the-line categories. We'll see. You know, there is, there does seem to be

a block of Academy voters who are like, war movies are kind of the pinnacle of our industry. You know, and that like, the hacksaw ridges of the world kind of garner a couple of nominations.

And I don't know whether that voting block has aged out yet, but there does seem to be a silent, maybe minority, that are like, that's a real movie. Yeah, but those people, those are the same voters

who are just like, Elvis, you know? Yeah. So... Well, but so what those two examples have in common, and I think it's a really good point, Chris, is that those are both examples of the maximalist moviemaking,

not just in terms of how you're viewing it or what you're feeling, but every part of the business needs to contribute to make a movie like that happen. Mm-hmm. The costume design has to be on point in All Quiet on the Western Front and in Elvis. The sound design has to be on point in a movie like that happen the costume design has to be on point in all quiet on

the western front and in elvis the sound design has to be on point in a film like that the cinematography um you know just the the direction the performances like it is it is a true kind of collision of everything the academy of course incorporates everybody who works on a film in terms of the voting so there is something to that too where it feels like you get to strike, cast a vote for your end of the spectrum, you know, for the work that you do.

If you're a gaffer, you might be more interested in voting for All Quiet on the Western Front than maybe for The Whale. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of

speculating. You're nervous about The Whale. I know the PGA's threw you off. I don't think it's going to happen. I, good. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate it. It's going to be. I good. Thank you. Yeah.

I appreciate it. Okay. Um, do you, do you, are there war movies that you love? Yeah. I mean, a couple of my lists are some of my favorite movies.

Are they in spite of the war? Um, you, they don't know. They're not, they are to Chris's point, a war is happening and then some and you see a lot of the consequences but also some cool shit happens because a war is the ultimate stakes

right so it elevates you know whether it's romance friendship betrayal treachery like a heist whatever it is it is like real life and death and unthinkable, unimaginable circumstances. So all of my movies are necessitated by... On my list, my top five are necessitated by the war, but basically don't show it. I don't really care about battle scenes. Chris, do I care about battle scenes? Yeah. Yeah, you care about battle scenes. Chris, do I care about battle scenes? Yeah.

Yeah, you care about battle scenes. Sure. But I do kind of wonder whether or not we're... I don't know that... Are we running out of ways to do it? Have we kind of like... Have they sort of technologically perfected about as real as it can feel,

how loud it can feel, how bloody it can look, the blood splatter on the camera lens. We've been kind of in this Saving Private Ryan Blackhawk down zone for a while. And I would say that there are definitely some sequences in Aquaman and the Western Front where I was like, holy shit, I don't know how they did that.

The tanks going over the trenches and stuff. But I think that there's something about the level of technical kind of achievement that filmmaking has now where there's just kind of like, I don't really know how many more ways there is to, to skin a cat. You know what I mean? Well, part of it is also just that we haven't had,

we don't have trench warfare anymore. Really. We'd certainly still have, you know, physical combat, but it's, it doesn't operate in the same way. Maybe that's the thing is that we just can making World War I and World War II movies.

That's what I was going to say. As we've seen, and as I was going through my list of the films that matter to me, the best storytelling I find often happens in one of three 20th century wars. And partly because that is the advent of filmmaking. And so there is the most memory, the most accessibility. There are other examples like Alexander Nevsky or something where you could be like, well, this is set in an ancient century.

But for the most part, what we see and what we think of is in the last 150 years. And so there's just a kind of redundancy to some of the storytelling. There's also just basically one war where we're like, that was easy to figure out. There was good guys and bad guys. And let's just tell tons and tons of stories around World War II.

But for all the other stuff, it's like this was really guys and bad guys and let's just like tell tons and tons of stories around World War II but for all the other stuff it's like this was really kind of morally dubious and a lot of gray area and a lot of fucked up stuff happening

well that raises like the famous canard the Francois Truffaut once said that every war movie ends up being pro-war yeah in part because

there is something you know with your exception Amanda there's a natural thrill to the excitement the dynamism of war filmmaking right that people emotionally and kind of you know viscerally respond to do you do you agree i do agree with it because even in the movies that i um that i chose and that i just gravitate towards like there is a necessary there's the idea of heroism and you know the someone who you're rooting for who

does like larger than life things and the war is like the again the ultimate stakes of that so none of the movies that i chose like portray people like being happy that they're going to war or like being psyched about battles but um it's a little bit like do you believe that like once you give something like the full weight of like cinema you know making that you're not necessarily endorsing it but like the audience can't help but root

for the way that you're framing the story and I do believe that that's true so these aren't pro my examples aren't pro war but there is like a romance to all of them, sometimes literally, that can't, that the war like creates. So, yes. by an American director from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Because that era, in part when a lot of films are being made out of patriotism or

encouraged by the federal government to make films about patriotism or the kind of masculine icons, the John Waynes, the sort of Torah, Torah, Torahs, these very hallowed, dignified stories of victory in the face of Adolf Hitler, for example.

But that's very out of fashion. And even though those films had the kind of technical accomplishment that I think Truffaut was citing, that there was something emotional that you could get wrapped up in. I do think since he said that, and this kind of goes back to what Chris was saying

about the way that war filmmaking has changed because it's gotten so modern and so impressive in a way. Like there is a film on my list that is like one of the most harrowing movies ever made. I think Truffaut would be hard pressed to say that the film that I'm going to say feels pro-war at the end of it. There's like nothing exciting about it. It is only upsetting. And so I toggle back and forth on that idea. I think all battle sequences are. So even the really gruesome ones,

because they're larded with this, even like, Chris, I don't think you're pro-war, by the way, but like you watched All Quiet on the Western Front, and you were just like, holy shit,

like how did they do that? I'm watching like this spectacle. And I think we are trained as like movie watchers to be like spectacle equals like, oh my God, that's something larger than life that like, maybe I don't want to be a part of it. But it's like, that's like, that's like a movie, you know? It's success. It's impressive. Yeah. It's exciting.

Yeah. I don't know. Do you think all war films are pro-war? No, but it's interesting to think about when Truffaut said that and the centrality of movies and culture and the way that movies would have defined how people think about things.

And especially given what he was at the vanguard of, which was this kind of revolution in cinema that then bled over into Hollywood, led to things like Robert Altman and making MASH and stuff like that. I'm almost trying to imagine somebody, what movie could be so debated or what movie could be so central that it would be like, this changed how I feel about war. I think Deer Hunter and Platoon and some other movies

took care of that in the 80s. Just changed the way of the American, as did Vietnam. I think Vietnam really did change everything with the way people were like, oh, body bags. Like, this is terrible, you know? Yeah, but then,

I do think it's telling, as you guys pointed out on the Saving Private Ryan podcast, like, the 80s were all the Vietnam movies and the lessons. And for our generation, who are not around for actual Vietnam and watching the newscast, like that's the movies and Oliver Stone movies are how I understand Vietnam.

And then 96, like that comes Saving Private Ryan and The Greatest Generation. And it's like, okay, we've like learned all those lessons. Let's go back to the like, you know, the easier black and white heroes and villains. Yeah, there's some nuance there, though. By the time we get to that time, and maybe this is an opportunity

to dive into our list because my number five is Saving Private Ryan. And I really debated this with myself. And if you had asked me this to do this prompt, this is our five

kind of favorite. It's odd to have a favorite war movie, but the movies that, you know, still move me. If before we had revisited Saving Private Ryan for that episode of the show,

I would not have had it on my list. I definitely was blown away by it when I saw it as a teenager and I always thought it was very impressive. And then it just kind of became this object of Oscar travesty in my memory where it was like, oh, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan.

And I don't rewatch this movie very often. I don't rewatch war movies very often. I'm a very pacifist person. I'm not emotionally interested in war in the same way that you are, Chris. I don't think like I don't seek out... Like I've heard you talk about Dispatches, the Michael Harrier book. Oh, yeah. One of your favorite books, right? Like I don't...

That's not something I would seek out personally. So, but when we rewatch Saving Private Ryan, I think I, I understood it a lot differently. I think as you get a little bit older, you understand a lot of films like this and you understand the idea of mortality a lot differently. And that collision between that, like nuanced collision that you're talking about,

where there is a kind of blockbuster quality to the way that Steven Spielberg just naturally shoots action. But everything is this is a mistake. Every lesson of the movie is that war is a mistake. All the way through, whether you think the writing is hackneyed or not, this sort of like the ultimate

fate of Hanks' character and the way that he is eventually taken out is because of this idea that like they gave someone forgiveness and that forgiveness is to have a heartless world. Exactly. And so I find the movie incredibly dark and incredibly moving, even if it is in some ways,

I think boosting up that, you know, Tom Brokaw idea of the greatest generation and the sacrifice that this generation made. I mean, they did make that sacrifice. So there's kind of no getting around that. But it's a brutalist movie. And my list is just a series of brutalist movies.

And I feel comfortable with that. Have you seen it recently, Saving Private Ryan? No, I haven't. I need to for other projects that I'm working on. But no, I was flying home yesterday and I did actually watch two films for this list on, on silent, but I don't,

I think saving private Ryan is on Delta right now, but I didn't, I didn't watch it. I watched him on silent. Like you didn't have the audio on it. Yeah. Cause I had a baby, but,

but that is sort of interesting in its own way to watch like modern movies or movies with dialogue, a silent film. And actually the first movie I started was chris's number five and it did not really work as a silent film yeah yeah but um you need the banter yeah but is exactly and i was like okay i'm gonna switch it's a great movie um great segue it's the great escape yeah john sturgis 1963 with steve mcqueen and james coburn and richard attenborough and gosh oh James Garner might forget Charles Bronson every time I do the list of digger yeah the borrower and is a perfect example of I

think the movie that we kind of think of when you're like it's set during wartime yeah but but and is got some aspects of of prisoners of war and guys getting a little fence happy and like, you know, all this stuff and has actually quite a sad ending in a lot of ways. But is basically like these cool guys trying to figure out a way to break out of a prison during World War II for a variety of different reasons in a variety of different ways

and Steve McQueen on a motorcycle. Yeah. I didn't make it that far. And throwing a baseball against the wall and being like, I have an idea. So in some ways, it's just like reverse Ocean's Eleven. Yeah. Obviously, this was like a movie

that I feel like was on for like 60% of my childhood. The music, some of the lines, the making whiskey out of potatoes, I have in my bloodstream. So I just wanted to put one in here that was like, war movies can be pretty fun. Yeah.

The Prisoner of War movie in particular, I didn't put it on my list. I think of them a little bit differently, but they're these great vehicles for different kinds of storytelling in a way that like, All Quiet on the Western Front, you can't do the heist version

of that movie. You know, you have to do it straight. If you don't do it straight, you're disobeying it. But like Stalag 17 is not on any of our lists, but that's another example

of a film that definitely has a relationship to it. Battle of Algiers. Like there are movies that a man escaped, like historically international films that are all kind of

prisoner of war films. And there's a certain kind of like men on a mission, but not in like battles war films. There's like, and there's, there's a certain kind of like, um, men on a mission, but not in like battles. Yeah. World War II, Von Ryan's Express, or he doesn't.

Or Eagle's Dare is one of my favorites. Monuments men. Yeah. Um, okay. What if my number five were monuments men? That would be depressing. I didn't,

I didn't even finish that. I like really wanted to, I think that could have been like a great, but it was not good. Did the Coens write that? What's the story with that? Isn't there? Yeah, including directed.

Yeah. That's too bad. Yeah. Matt Damon, John Goodman. Yeah. Didn't work. My number five is The English Patient, which is another example of genre

that within a war movie, but also like couldn't happen without a war movie. also like couldn't happen without a war movie this is a this is a romance um this is also a little bit of a ptsd movie and the julia pinoche character and the navi andrews character who like gets a lot more screen time or not screen time i guess page time in the novel but they are um respectively a nurse and um what do you call it when you diffuse a mine you know well he he dismantles minds and they're people kind of finding each other at the end of a very difficult um very difficult being an understatement at d minor a d minor um at the

end of World War II and kind of trying to make some sort of human connection. I think about the Julia Ebenoosh character a lot. But, you know, obviously also Ralph Fiennes, Chris and Scott Thomas,

like lots of, you know, epic shots of planes and desert. And you got some Nazis in in it's a little bit spy it's a little bit romance it's a little bit tragedy um i i i love this movie was thinking again about chris and scott thomas just reciting herodotus with a scarf did you watch you watch slow horses season two right that i honestly was watching i'm we're in the middle of it but i was watching her incredible dress she got some incredible dress.

Oh my God, Chris, this is literally my thought process. I feel so seen and loved right now. I was watching that Navy dress. That's sick. Like the T-length dress. And then I was just like, every decade,

Chris and Scott Thomas is just who I'm trying to be. And that is awesome. Anyway, English Patient, 1996, directed by Anthony Minghella. Great movie. Remember when I got this movie

in the Oscar winner's draft? Right. I had definitely seen it at that point. Great film. My number four is Paths of Glory. As I go through

the list of movies that I picked, it's like all great men making their war movie. Yeah. In this case, Stanley Cooper actually made two he made full metal jacket and he made paths of glory paths of glory his first big production

he was handpicked by um old kirk douglas to the original kd yes adapt another world war one story this is one of the more harrowing anti-war movies ever made uh revolutionary in terms of how it was shot and sort of reverse tracking shots that happen throughout the trenches. And it's also a kind of courtroom drama and I think as I was thinking back like courtroom drama episodes we made, I don't know if I ever mentioned this one, but in particular it's a fascinating

depiction of I think what the new All Quiet on the Western Front is trying to accomplish, which is trying to show the sort of like machinations of war set against the human toll. This movie, it's in part about a colonel who is encouraged to pursue a battle

that in his heart he knows they can't win. There are a few soldiers who essentially abandon and refuse to fight. Those four soldiers are then court-martialed. They're to stand trial. And Kirk Douglas, because he has a measure of guilt about what he has done in forcing these men to go into battle,

decides to defend them during their court-martial. It's an amazing evocation of the crisis of the soldier, and especially a leader who is also a soldier. Adolph Munju in this movie is unbelievable as the evil counterpart

to Kirk Douglas' valiant protector and it sets Kubrick off on this grand scale series of movies this is the movie that gets him Spartacus again picked by Kirk Douglas and then leads to 40 years of incredible filmmaking

based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb from 1935 and just does World War I, for me, better 60 years earlier. There are some intense battle sequences, but that's not the totality of the movie. And so it doesn't just feel like pure punishment. It's this sort of moral quandary movie too. It's really, really effective.

Some war movies are just like, the story of this movie is that it's a war movie, is that there are battles and that this guy who's going to, is going to, loses innocence or whatever. And then there are movies that have like incredible stories

and Paths of Glory is just, obviously, Kubrick's not just going to make a war movie. It's going to have something to it. I thought about putting Dr. Strangelove on here too,

which comes five years later. I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around the war comedy. We don't actually see battle or only a handful of shots of battle, but we'll talk more about it as we get further. I did also, as I was making my list, I did a poll in my home of whether the Cold War movies counted as war movies.

I have to say my husband took a quite literal approach and really smacked... He shut it down. Yeah, he shut it down. I was like, you know, maybe I want to put Hunt for Red October on there. And he was like, no, absolutely not. Yeah. Let's expand the aperture.

Yeah. What about War of the Roses? How about Star Wars? Yeah. I was surprised that you didn't put Troy on here or some shit. I mean, that actually does... My next one kind of is a little bit like that.

So I have Ron directed by Akira Kurosawa on here. It's his adaptation of King Lear. And if you believe that war is an act of like personal psychosis,

this movie very much illustrates that. This movie is breathtaking. So if you haven't seen Ron, please go see Ron. It should be probably in the conversation for the top 50 movies of all time.

So it's sort of weird to put it number four here. It's sort of like when you're Madge Johnson and you've won five titles. It's like your fifth title and everybody's like, oh, cool, you got another one and we don't think about that one as much. Yeah.

And I was watching it the other night for this pod and the battle scenes specifically there's a couple of cavalry scenes that are basically Kurosawa making the movie

that Spike Jonze is making in Babylon where you're like I think seven guys died making this you know but just about like the connection

between the madness of this king and the madness of his family and what it means to the nation state or whatever that he's in charge of and what happens to all these other people because of it, I think is pretty resonant. And I wanted to have a Curacao in there because he has this ability to depict scope. But I wouldn't necessarily say technically it's like this is an obvious war film I think some people

might say it's a Shakespeare movie or it's a you know feudal Japan movie or whatever but I thought about Kagemusha

which is a movie that comes right around the same time which is like a little bit more of a classic war film but I don't think it's as good as Ron

so when I saw that you picked Ron I felt great about that we can talk about Kurosawa also many Kurosawa movies even if they're not about felt great about that. We can talk about Curacao. Also, many Curacao movies, even if they're not about war or about battle.

Yeah. And they're often about showdowns. And so you could have you probably could have picked any Hidden Fortress. You could have picked

Jimbo. You could have picked a number of movies. Okay. Amanda, number four. So you guys did do a lot of new spoilers, but some of the greatest

hits are going to be on this list. So I decided to just use my slap for a movie that I wanted to talk about and that we haven't really, I don't think I talked enough about, which is from 2020 and it's called Kulvadas Aida. Have you seen this?

I haven't. I looked it up when I saw it on your list. So it's directed by a Bosnian director, Jazmila Zvonich, and it is about this Rabeniga massacre. And it is told through the eyes of a un translator um aida is the the character's name who is managing um i guess like the refugee camp and it's it's kind of over the span of most of the movie is over the span of a few days and it has sort of that like tiktok almost like thriller quality um but it's like a thriller

of everything um going completely wrong and you just you kind of know the fate um that is awaiting all of these people and it's like completely gripping and also like horrifying um the final act of violence is not shown but it's for for my money all the more chilling because of the way that it's portrayed uh it it has just really stayed with me and i think it's a really really upsetting movie that I think does all of the war as horror um stuff that some of these battle movies do but um like through the eyes of like of character and family and stakes and it um it's it's an astonishing movie I really recommend it if you haven't seen it it was nominated for international feature two years ago very very very good movie yeah I'm a little bit lost because I think it was just in that COVID time.

Exactly. And it didn't have that. Yeah. But it's definitely worth seeking out. I'm going to make a pivot on my number three. So we can all talk about more movies. Oh, okay. Okay.

My number three was going to be Amanda's number two, but we'll hold that. But I thought that was nice because then you guys also share it. You know, we all shared like one thing. All right, whatever. All of my life's a circle, but not all of my lists are a circle. So for number three, I'll do The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,

which is a Powell and Pressburger movie from the 1940s that... Did you just rewatch this recently? I did. I rewatched it over the weekend. You traitor going back on Letterboxd. I think it's pretty fun. What?

Well, because I pretty much cut Twitter out. Stop posting and start living, okay? I think my reviews pretty fun. What? Well, because I just... I pretty much cut Twitter out. Stop posting and start living. Okay? I think my reviews are fun. I think you've been doing wonderful work on Letterboxd. I support you. I think it's shameful that Amanda used it for one month and abandoned it. But you know what?

That community doesn't want you. Were you doing things? I was kind of logging things. And then I was just like, I already got to do my expenses. I miss blog dominance. You know? I just...

I was like, one more thing that people do my expenses you know like I just I was like one more thing that people that I had to do yeah I have a lot of logistics in my life okay you know I gotta be managing a lot of you work at UPS on the side but like you would be surprised how much allergen monitoring happens in my home really daily but well you know you gotta introduce things I mean, Sean knows what I'm talking about. I do. So at the end of the day,

I don't want to be... I'm logging on the Allergen app. I don't need to log on the movie app also. Gotcha. That's what the... This podcast is my version of Letterboxd.

Okay? I did wonder about that. Like, do you want to... What do you save for the pod versus save for Letterboxd? I'm just trying to watch as much as I can before I die. So if I can just get some shots up,

this weekend I got a couple of Powell and Pressburger shots up just to revisit for this conversation. So I got Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and I got A Matter of Life. Yeah. He's introducing the Powell and Pressburger allergen.

What happened to Movies with Intention? That was only new films. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Well, there's no downside. That's an incredible, crazy caveat. There's no downside to revisiting a Powell and Pressburger movie. I agree with you.

I haven't seen a lot of these movies in a long time. I definitely hadn't seen Colonel Blimp since I was in college. And it is... What happened? It didn't be... Well, I said I was going back on it. I mean, last year I tried. I got from 800 to 650.

It's January 17th. Well, wait till Sundance starts. When virtual Sundance mean, last year I tried. I got from 800 to 650. It's January 17th. Well, wait till Sundance starts. When virtual Sundance starts, it's going to be four or five a day. You said you weren't going to be crazy. You promised me when I signed up that you weren't going to be crazy. I am who I am.

When you signed up for what? Sundance. Oh. I was like, I'll do this. If you promise me. I mean, I keep talking about stuff that is her job as if it's like such a huge burden, like watching movies for Sundance. What a gift.

What a gift to get to listen to me talk about. Would you like to watch The Sixers? I do. God damn it. I even have to watch the halftime show because Zach won't turn it off. And just like a lot of people bouncing rings on their head. You promised me that you would be responsible. For Sundance and in 2023.

It's a push-pull that we have going on here. Here are my responsibilities in order. Child, wife, watching movies. That's my top three. The Holy Trinity. God has abandoned you, but Michael Powell is in his place.

Life and Death of Colonel Blim is the only movie I can think of that traverses three wars. Seen through the eyes of sort of inspired by this British satirical comic, but it is actually a much more serious and emotional

story about life and love and mortality. Through the eyes of this British military leader figure as he moves through the borough war into world war one and then into world war two and as he's going you know he starts out as a soldier then he becomes more of a leader and then he becomes kind of like almost like a politician and he keeps crossing paths with a woman who he knows he should be spending more of his time in

his life with but that he keeps passing over for duty or for honor or for the idea of fealty to his men or to the ideas of the country. And it's a memory piece. And it's a movie that when you're 19, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And then when you get to be a little bit older, it makes a lot more sense. And there are battle sequences,

but that is not the primary driving aspect of the story. It's like all Powell and Pressburger war movies. It is like, not really about the wars about the primary driving aspect of the story. Like all Powell and Pressburger war movies, it is not really about the wars, it's about the people that are in the war. But those guys can make the fucking shit out of some war movies. Well, they're beautiful, you know, and there's kind of like a glistening technicolor quality to all of their movies, but especially

to these films. But like, 49th Parallel, I know where I'm going. Absolutely, yeah. Either black or white or color. I rewatched A Matter of Life and Death too because it's also a war movie. It's about an airman

who crash lands and then enters a kind of like trial for his future and it's unclear if he's alive or dead and they do this incredible,

make this incredible choice to make the heavenly experience black and white and the experience on earth in technicolor. And it's just one of those things where Pal and Pressburger

make a couple of choices every movie where you're like, God, they're so creative. When I saw that you had Colonel Blimp in there, I was curious whether you would consider Lawrence of Arabia a war movie.

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think our lists are paradigmatic, right? I think they're for a reason, but just to mix it up, I thought it would be a chance to talk about Pal and Pressburger.

It'd be just fun. Okay. Chris, number three. Dunkirk. Had to. Yeah. This one, I mean, I wanted to have something that was recent.

And also, I think this is what was in my mind when I was watching All Choir on the Western Front was how influential Dunkirk probably was in this film too. But this was on TV the other day. So I rewatched

the dogfight scene. And it's still the most amazing thing that happened this decade. Or like in the last 10 years. And I just was... I really thought that this was like

after doing rewatchables kind of like burrowed into my brain where I was like, I that this was like after doing rewatchables kind of like burrowed into my brain where I was like I think this is a really important movie his manipulation of time I think is like

probably a take it or leave it thing for some viewers but in terms of the scale and the hopelessness or hope of a any given situation

in a war this is a pretty amazing depiction of it. Good double feature with Colonel Blimp about British honor and the wars. I was just thinking,

I had two unrelated thoughts. First of all, as soon as you said, it's, you know, the manipulation of time. I just started thinking of like Cate Blanchett. You cannot start

without me. I really need to like, I need to like memorize that whole speech. And then I have an unrelated Tom Hardy factoid for you. If you would like, he shows up in Prince Harry's memoir spare because Prince Harry needed to go to a Halloween costume.

And so he called his quote friend, Tom Hardy to borrow his Mad Max costume. And Tom Hardy was like all of it. And Prince Harry was like, yeah. And so then he went to a Halloween party as Mad Max, courtesy of Tom Hardy. I still think that we as a society probably deserve the Dunkirk sequel of Tom Hardy being in The Great Escape. Yes, we do.

That Christopher Nolan directs. I don't know what we did to not get that, but I want it. You got to take that up with the overlord of Taboo Island. I mean, he's been on a journey. He really has.

Okay. Number three, Amanda. Oh, I'm going now? Chris just gave his number three. Oh, okay. Great. Born on the 4th of July.

We've entered the Oliver Stone portion of this podcast. The Stone Zone. Yeah. One of my favorite recurring segments on JMO is the Stone Zone.

We did a six-hour episode about Stone and Fidel Castro last week. You say that like you and I didn't do. Honestly, the pilot episode of JMO, which was when you made me read Oliver Stone's autobiography and then play Fuck, Marry, Kill

with Oliver Stone movies. I'd like to follow that up. So before we played Fuck, Marry, Kill with Oliver Stone's movies, I asked Oliver Stone to be on the show and his publicist took a little bit longer than I would have liked to confirm. And then in that interim, we had to record the episode and we played Fuck, Marry, Kill with his movies. And then I was like, I can't honestly

ask Oliver Stone to come on this show after having done that. But I just want to say I love many of the films of Oliver Stone, including this one. Speaking of JMO guests, you could lock that right down. You're a crush. I sort of think this is where we really came

together on that podcast. I think obviously there was another example of an Oliver Stone film that may or may not be discussed later on that podcast i think you know obviously there is another example of an oliver stone film that may or may not be discussed later on this podcast um that is i probably like the seminal vietnam movie but this to me obviously the tom cruise performance is i think one of his best and it's maybe a bit more literal in terms of oliver stone's project um and the re-examining the vietnam war and his own role in it and how we as americans understand it but i think the the literalness actually really serves his project in in this particular it's you know

like everything is is aligned uh in a very memorable way. So, born on the 4th of July. It's a great pick. Ron Kovic looms large in my life. He was raised in Massapequa on Long Island. He came and spoke in my high school when I was in high school. Obviously, an incredibly brave and thoughtful person and somebody who really shed an amazing and important light

on really the horrors of what happens to people who enlist, especially when their country puts them in a situation that they can't get out of. And say what you will about Oliver Stone, and we have and probably will continue to, but these movies, at least, and the late 80s movies certainly are how I learned about Vietnam and how I learned about the idea of being anti-war and pacifism and everything that is contained within them.

So, I mean, and I think an entire generation feels the same way. Yeah, it's also, like for the purposes of this podcast, it felt like portraying a warrior or a veteran was a kind of rite of passage

to a certain movie star too and this felt like Tom Cruise kind of like I made Top Gun but I can also make War on the Fourth of July. You know what I mean? It's not just blockbusters. This is also the time period of when he's still like on a nuts and bolts level just like an incredible filmmaker.

Stone. Yeah. It's like a really really really good screenwriter who's got like a real visual flair. Yeah the like kind of rioting sequence near the end of the film when everything is going haywire and Kovic is trapped in his wheelchair and you don't know where he is is amazing stuff.

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Terms apply. Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's. My number two is Come and See, which I also rewatched last night. I made the critical error

of rewatching this film and then watching All Quiet on the Western Front again. And that made me feel even stronger about Come and See, which is a movie that i think in the last few years has been restored and i think it was in theaters in 2020 um it's lm klimov's uh the soviet filmmakers 1985 movie about belarus and the sort of invasion the nazi invasion and the resistance fighters and is widely considered one of the most realistic,

harrowing, upsetting portrayals of war seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy who enlists in this resistance fight. And then it has this, and like a lot of these movies, it has a sort of episodic journey through the terrors of war

over the course of a couple of weeks. And I challenge anyone to watch this movie and think of that true faux quote and see if it still holds true because it is a how did they do that kind of a movie it's also a movie that uses the subjective point of view to look right into the eyes of the people who are experiencing war klimov you know lived through this his family lived through this he is a really interesting figure in movie history. He's somebody who made largely comedies

and normal adult dramas in the Soviet Union in the run-up to this. He was married to a woman named Larissa Shpeko, also one of the great filmmakers who made a great war movie about this very same battle, these battles in Belarus in the 40s. She died in a car accident in 1979.

He was kind of changed forever after that. And he completed one of her films in the late 70s and early 80s. And then he embarked on making this movie, which took almost a decade to make. It took him a long time to let the Soviet Union let him complete this film because it is such an anti-war story.

And it is like a bit unsparing on both sides about what soldiers do and did but i i will put like a i don't know if a trigger warning is right but there's some things in this movie that you can't unsee if you see them but it is to the point of all quiet on the western front this does that and more yeah so i would recommend people check where is it available first i believe it's on the criterion channel right now. Okay. They just issued an addition last year.

Um, I saw it in a movie theater. I must've been in school. I can't imagine. I saw it. I don't think I didn't pay to see this like at a rep theater or anything like that, but,

um, just an amazingly powerful piece of filmmaking. That's number two, number two, Chris, uh, platoon, which is basically the,

the brother film for Born on the Fourth of July. It's like precursor to that. When I saw this, which I think I was probably like 10 or 11, it came out in 86, but I don't think I saw it in the movie theater or anything like that,

even though my dad was crazy about stuff like that. I know that when I saw it, in my mind, war was either fun World War II movies like Guns of Navarone or stuff that it in my mind, war was either fun. World war two movies like guns of Navarone or stuff that was in my history books. And I didn't know that it could be people like me or people like people I saw in Philadelphia,

you know, guys got off the street and didn't know how awful and chaotic and, um, obviously violent, but just sort of a waste of life it was. And so I don't know if Platoon has aged great. I rewatched it recently, and there are some things that are very, very heavy-handed about it. And then there are some things about it that are fucking incredible still.

The performances, I think, uniformly are pretty amazing. Keith David really leapt out at me this time around watching it, but Barringer and Defoe are just absolutely titanic performances in this. And Charlie Sheen's pretty good. He definitely does his job. Did you guys talk about this when you did Stone?

Yeah. We did, yeah. I think he does. I think Sheen is great because he is sort of like a pretty boy and Stone when he went to war you know he was like

a Yale kid who enlisted you know there's a funny what if because Depp's in the movie and you kind of wonder what would have happened

if like somebody was like a little bit better at acting than Charlie Sheen no disrespect you know like Charlie Sheen's fine but it's pretty

it's pretty, it's pretty amazing still. And it just, I think this is more of like, if war movies are supposed to basically, like, have a profound effect on the viewer to make them not ever

want to do that and do everything they can to stop them from happening, this movie probably had that effect on me. Did you read Chasing the Light? Yellowstone?

I didn't. You missed out. Well, one of the cool things about it is that it's his entire life all the way up to the moment when Platoon wins Best Picture. And then it ends. And so we're waiting for Chasing the Light 2.

You're fucking kidding me. Yeah. Are you serious? Yeah. We don't even... Yeah. Is it like to be continued at the end? Yes.

More or less. Yeah. He's just like this... I was perfect. And then... And then Vietnam happened. So he hasn't made a movie yet. Yeah, but I think the focus of the next book is all about the making of U-Turn,

which is one of the best movies. No, no, no. It's when he wins Best Picture for Platoon. Oh, I thought it was like, this is like Swan's Way. No, no, no. And we're getting all the way up to Vietnam. No, no, no.

Okay. Okay. That would be kind of a bummer if you were like, I can't wait to read this Oliver Stone memoir. It's just like part one until I was 17. There is a lot about his various homes in Los Angeles and

some really inexplicable but seemingly great finances. I don't know. I'm just remembering way more about interior design than I thought I would find in part one of the Oliver Stone book. Interesting. He's a very elegant man. He is. Number two, Amanda. This is a movie that was

on my list but I thought for the sake of expanding our list, I would let you have it. Thank you so much. It's Inglourious Bastards. Yeah. This would also, on a different day, be my number one. Whatever. Well, well so sean you alluded to it it it definitely is a comedy it is it is a war comedy but i think it is also i re-watched it um on the plane yesterday and and it does work as a silent film it helps it helps if um because all the french is and the german is subtitled and also i've seen this movie a thousand times but then you couldn't hear gorlami that's true but i will say

something like really funny and pretty alarming i was flying with my family and so um any time christoph waltz showed up on the screen like in close-up doing some some hans land the stuff uh my son let out a shriek of like pure glee just like the loudest but did he also get very excited about it and he did but it was like only when christoph waltz was on the screen he was just like yes my guy like incredibly loud even though he just loves character actors I guess so yeah the power of the power of cinema gotta show him Jack Warden one of these days

anyway it is a it's a comedy and it's like sort of a heist well not really a heist but it's a spy movie and it is also about like the making of movies and the making

of war movies and um and propaganda and i think it's like really conscious of and commenting all of that stuff while also being funny on its own way and also um being like very chilling every once in a while i'll be leaving my house and i want to be like oh shoshanna and then i'm like no that's a really fucked up thing to say like that is a really harrowing uh it's so so fucked up but it is also like how could you not be like oh it's so perfect me and livin when we first started doing that at the grantland offices i was like this isn't probably it's like really... It's really dark and every time you say it, you can see

like every... That entire scene because that scene is so like tense and powerful and has like all of the stakes of the war movies

that we're talking about while also like having Christoph Waltz being like, I compliment you and your cows on the milk, you know?

It's like... So there's something in that portrayal of londa that and tarantino's talked about this many many times but that glee that he has which also you know you see in come and see there's a sequence in come and see where nazis burn a church and they're the shot the look on their face is so joyful and sort of like maniacally happy and you see this in a lot of World War II movies in this portrayal of their version of fascism

was this sort of like celebratory mania. Yeah. And it's really effective. And in the form of Waltz, he's so charismatic as a performer and he was such a discovery for those of us who had never seen him before that you felt like he was kind of beamed down from history.

You know, it didn't seem like a performance. It just seemed seemed like he was londa so it makes a movie like that that much more effective and it makes making a war movie fun is complicated yeah especially in the way that tarantino does it where there's sort of like tongue planted firmly in cheek but also he wants it to be a rollicking adventure at the same time he's sort of like admiring of these 70s war movies that are about America, but made in Italy. But he's also admiring of like these 60s movies that Clint Eastwood is making. Don Siegel movies or whatever. Yeah.

So it's this amazing collision of everything that had come before and also something that feels totally original. Yeah. The hallmark of the Tarantino movie, obviously. Great guy. Just one of the all-time best. Yeah. One of my faves.

On any given day, it might be my favorite of his. Yeah. Okay. So now number one. Chris and I share number one. I actually changed mine. What? No, it's Captain America,

the first Avenger. Because I wanted to get three brules in today's pod. Wow. What a pod for brule. Yeah. Red Skull. Better or worse than Hitler.

In your opinion. Who is... Brule is Zemo? Yeah. And then he shows back up in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. What are you on Zemo? I mean, he's broken good. Now he's like, he's charming. He's going to be in the Thunderbolts. Why is he as old as

he is? Does he also have like the Captain America juice that makes... Amanda, you're the expert. How is Zemo still kicking? Oh, wait. No, Zemo doesn't show up until later, right? He's not in the first one. I think Canon and Zemo are 600 years old. That's what I'm reading here.

Those guys are so lucky. They get to see so much cool shit happen. You know? I don't know how you can be pro-smoking but also pro-600 years old. There's a real there's a contrast there. Chris and I our number one movie is Apocalypse Now.

Yeah. Francis Ford Coppola's film. What do you think Chris? Apocalypse Now. What would you say? It's kind of the megalopolis of Vietnam. Yeah.

Back in the news. I believe in Francis. As do I. Okay. If you waver on Coppola, you are failing. Yeah. That's my take.

This movie is one of my favorite movies ever made. I rewatched it recently. And this is like, I think, my white whale for rewatchables. Yep. The one that's like left over. We were promised this film. We were?

We were promised that it would happen at some point. Yeah. I don't know when. Okay. Wow. Could you have picked it for 40th birthday? I could have. Yeah.

I feel good about what I picked. I feel like you had to give a couple. I did have it on my long list, as I recall. Okay. In part because I think it's always been a big one for me and you. It definitely came up in the early conversations when we first met. It's not just a war movie, but it is in many ways the ultimate war movie.

I always think about how Apocalypse Now is sort of the end point of this thread that goes from Homer through Joseph Conrad to this movie where it's like there's just one story. There's just this guy going up the river to find Kurtz.

There's five or six sequences in this movie that are better than 99.9% of any sequence ever. I love the lead performance. I love all the character actors in it. It's just, it looks incredible. Vittorio Storaro in his fucking bag. One thing I like about it is a lot of war films have this very sort of generic hero's journey

where they start out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, much like Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front. And over time, they become disillusioned. But he starts out completely shot. He has already been evacuated. And in some ways, it's for that reason that he's selected.

He is this kind of dead-eyed, disembodied, disillusioned person who's right for this job to go hunt down Kurtz, you know, in the heart of the jungle. And so you don't have to like, it dispenses with some of the vigories of a lot of war movies,

and it lets you just see the atrocities over and over again through his eyes in different landscapes and different experiences. But, you know, part of the reason that this movie is as legendary as this is because of the challenges of the production and the way that Coppola extended himself financially, extended himself physically,

nearly died making this movie. And so it, it adds to its legend, but even if that didn't exist, it's hard to disentangle those. Yes. But even if it didn't exist, it would be hard to not be completely blown away.

Wowed by it. When are, when are we going to see it on big screen again? Oh, I can't wait. Hopefully there will be a little bit of a rep theater run on Coppola. For Megalopolis. Coming out this year, yeah. And if Megalopolis is

2024, I don't know if they'll finish it this year, but if it's 2024, isn't that then the 45th anniversary of Apocalypse Now? I believe so. Yeah. Chris, what local theater will you go to, to introduce megalopolis and or apocalypse now in a,

in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, just, you know, like the lock and yada regal. Yeah. Okay. Amanda,

number one. Yeah. This one goes out to Bobby Wagner. It's a, it's a film called casablanca uh wax you seen casablanca not yet i was supposed to i think i'm supposed to save it for the for content now right oh yeah that's yeah right we gotta do a three-way swap yeah yeah um don't spoil all your casablanca thoughts i mean a lot of ways cas Casablanca is like taking back every single thing that I have said on this podcast about the role of movies in terms of showing the realities of war or, you know, and anti-war or whatever. This is made in 1942 in the heat of the American, well, of World War II, but also after America had joined World War II and is very much like a patriotic, almost

like propaganda-esque film. And, you know, to your point, Sean, about it does start with someone disillusioned, then kind of coming around his way to joining the war effort, as it were. But it has simple heroes and villains, though it also has, you know, more shade than I think maybe we give it credit for in terms of the supporting characters. And it's a love story. It is a story of, you know, I guess about patriotism and countries and, you know, the Marseilles scene in a movie is like people just singing the french national anthem which has its own like complicated back history

like as loud as it can be and i find it moving every single time uh that i watch it one of the like great scripts of all time the most quotable movie of probably like i think i probably use it more than anything else and And most people do. I don't know. It's Casablanca. Perfect combination of sincerity and cynicism. Yeah. You know, like that is, it is an incredible romance. It is also an amazing story about being disenfranchised from your own country and what's happening around you in the world and trying to, you know, something that I, you know, I like to recede. I like to vanish inside of my little garage

and not have to deal with what's going on in the outside world sometimes. And Rick is kind of like that. You know, Rick is sort of like trying to exit. He's trying to do what's good for him. It's about personal expediency over national or global expediency. And so there's something fascinating

to watch those two things smash together. Yeah, it is... If you were ever going to teach the ordinary people And so there's something fascinating to watch those two things smash together. Yeah, it is. It is. If you were ever going to teach the ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances idea, just show them to Casplica. It's an incredible segue because before we go today, I do want to tell Amanda about our journey to see the film Skin of Meringue. Oh my God.

Speaking of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Let's do this very quickly, Chris. People have been asking us to talk about Skin and Meringue and I can't wait to tell Amanda about it. Chris Ryan and I, we had a date on Saturday. That's so nice.

Which theater did you end up going to? Well, I'll get to that. Okay. Oh, sorry. The date started at a sports bar. Oh, that's sweet. You missed, for the most part, one of the most awful weather weekends

in Los Angeles history. I do know that and I'm really psyched. It was okay, but we were out in it. It was awful. It was raining quite hard on Saturday after what had been previously six or seven straight days of rain, more or less. Shout out to the Greyhound and Mateo at the Greyhound. We went to the Greyhound and had some drinks.

We went to go watch the Jaguars Chargers game. Which we anticipated being a duel. I did watch this game. Yes. So we were excited. Herbert Lawrence, some exciting stuff. By the time I arrived at the bar, Chris was sitting there ready to order some wings and it was already 10-0 Chargers. Sure.

Now our movie ticket was for 10.15pm. The game started at 5.10pm. So we were going to hang out for five hours before we went and saw this movie. Yes. Now Chris and I love each other, but do we love each other that much? Interesting question. Nevertheless... How'd you get a hall pass but do we love each other that much? Interesting question. Nevertheless. How'd you get a hall pass at 5 p.m.? My wife's sister was in town,

which was wonderful. Wow. I'd like to shout out Ellen. My sister loves her. Ellen! Ellen is the best. Nevertheless, I met up with Chris.

We started watching the movie, 10-0 by the time I got there. Then all of a sudden, it was 17-0. Then all of a sudden, there was another Trevor Lawrence interception and it was 24-0. And we had had a tequila shot.

Yes. You guys took a tequila shot? Well, thanks to Mateo, the wonderful owner of the Greyhound. Okay. Who clocked us. What can we do here? Where is the Greyhound? I want to go.

It's in Highland Park. Okay. Good wings. Wonderful bar. Okay. So Lawrence proceeds to throw four interceptions in the first half, and it's 27-0. At which point I turn to Chris and I say,

Hey, this is like the blowout we feared. Should we move our 10-15 ticket to a 7-45 ticket? Oh, no. And so we did. Oh, no. And we got in the car and we drove to the AMC Burbank 16. Yeah. I'm just mad because I didn't get to go and have a tequila shot.

Can we get someone at the Capri Club to start listening to the Big Bang? That's up to you. I've never been there. I know. Any of my Occidental student friends, just pass it along.

You know what I'm saying? So we go to the AMC and it's very difficult to park there. So a lot of time is transpiring. In fact, it feels like we're going to miss the start of the movie. And in the time

from when we left the bar to get to the, to get to Burbank, I had 12 text messages, all of which were about how things were starting to fall apart for the Chargers.

Yeah. When Chris arrived at the movie theater and we entered the theater, it was 30 to 20. The Chargers were beating the Jaguars. Yeah, it happened fast. And I turned to Chris before we went in

and I was like, this would be brutal. We had talked about this at the bar. This would be brutal if we missed one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history. Oh, no. Because we set out.

And you guys still went to the movie? And we sat. Well, we had arrived at the movie theater. Not only did we go to this movie, which was packed in the middle of an atmospheric river in LA to watch essentially an hour and 40 minute Maya Deren movie about sleep paralysis.

Okay. Jesus Christ. Well, let's explain what Skin of Marenka is. So Skin of Marenka is kind of a horror, micro indie horror phenomenon right now. It opened in 600 movie theaters over the weekend, which is remarkable for this film because it is very handmade with a

very small crew. Kyle Edward Ball is the name of the filmmaker and he shot it in his childhood home. And here's the premise of the movie. Two children, I guess maybe ages six and four wake up in the middle of the night. Their father who is looking after them is nowhere to be found. And all of the windows and doors in their home are gone.

Okay. So they are trapped in this gigantic house box. The film is shot... Oh, so it's not like the... I thought you meant the windows and doors had been removed, and so it was just like a lot of open... No. You know, they're exposed to the elements. It wasn't an open floor plan. No, so it's just like a closed...

Oliver Stone comes in and completely redesigns the house. And so what transpires is this film that is shot in the darkness, largely, with this overwhelming sound design that is sort of like this echoing effect. It's meant to be quite haunting.

We never see any character's face throughout the entire film. There are cartoons playing in the background as these two children characters' face throughout the entire film. There are cartoons playing in the background as these two children who are up in the middle of the night are trying to sort of

figure out what to do and what's going on. What kind of cartoons? Old cartoons that are in like the public domain. So it's like a lot of like 1950s

like a cat getting hit with a frying pan kind of stuff. Okay. I mean, you act... What? What's wrong with Looney Tunes? I believe it's because they needed some theory. Sure, I know. But I mean, you act, what's wrong with Looney Tunes? I believe it's because

they need to speak very, it's like Canadian Looney Tunes. Sure, I know, but I'm just, okay, all right. Well, you don't need to, you're missing the point.

Yes. Which is essentially that these two kids for an hour and 40 minutes are like, did you see something in there? And then the other kid's like, I didn't see anything in there.

You only hear this. You never see them talking to each other. Yeah. And then the other kid's like, I never did go in there. You only hear this. You never see them talking to each other. Yeah. And some of it is subtitled and some of it isn't. And I don't want to give away too much stuff,

but it's, I think suffice to say, this director is known, he has a YouTube channel where he sometimes makes films out of people's nightmares.

They write in their nightmare and he makes it. And I, I respected this film. I think now knowing films out of people's nightmares. They write in their nightmare and he makes it. And I respected this film. I think now knowing that it is much more in the tradition of experimental filmmaking, I would have

adjusted my expectations going into it. I could have done that for you, but I didn't. I did. You did a little bit. I said to you, this is a bit like watching a broken screensaver for an hour and a half. I think that what's interesting is, it was a packed movie theater in Burbank on a Saturday night. Those people thought they were going to go see Blair Witch.

Yes. Multiple walkouts in this movie. I had already seen the movie. I watched it once before. I got a link to it. What's wrong with you? What do you mean? You had a date with Chris.

But I wanted to see it with him because I wanted to see his reaction because this is something Chris and I were into these kinds of movies. Why didn't you just wait and watch it with Chris? Because he didn't have the date when he saw the movie. It didn't even have a release date when I saw it. And then Shudder bought it and they're putting it out. It was a kind of viral horror

sensation, which is why it's being released in so many theaters, despite being a very experimental film. When we first looked up, one of the reasons why we bought the 10-15 ticket is that was the only one that was available. And then because it clearly

has gotten successful over this weekend. When I watched it, I watched it on my laptop alone in a garage. It was very effective, very immersive, very scary, very immersive, very scary, very upsetting.

I thought it was really, really well done. Now, it requires a huge modicum of patience because it's kind of boring at times. There are long stretches

where you're just looking at like Legos and waiting to hear something. I'm just like, I don't have to pay to do that. No, I legitimately am still stuck on like, why are you in the ADU with that giant screen watching something on your laptop?

Oh, it's on a weird site. It was, yeah. You can't screen? I couldn't mirror it. You couldn't mirror it? Okay. I couldn't mirror it on my TV. And so...

I'm sorry. That's really where I was stuck. It's like a creepypasta come to life and that's what this filmmaker kind of specializes in it's like it is this very and also there was a sense of like excitement and community around the film by the time Chris saw it when I saw it I was like I don't know what this is I've never heard of this I saw one person had logged it on Letterboxd and I was like I gotta

get to the bottom of this and it was a huge mistake because. It was like 1030 at night and I freaked myself out. Seeing it again on a big screen with Chris. One, I was like, I could see Chris kind of like, you know, nuzzling in his seat. And he was like a little uncomfortable. He was like, this is kind of boring. And I'm annoyed. God, is it like, there's like an adjective like that?

But also, it's when you can hear people coughing and eating their popcorn and getting up to leave because they hate the movie, it completely takes you out of what has been designed. And so it was surprisingly ineffective on a big screen. It's a movie that is. And in some ways, it's very modern because it should almost be watched on your laptop instead of on a big screen. I mean, you can almost imagine somebody watching it on their phone in their bedroom at night. You know what I mean? And it being just as effective.

It was, you know. Right.? And it being just as effective. Right. And so then you guys completely missed the second half. The film ended. I opened up my phone 3130 Jaguars. So what did Chris and I do? You missed an incredible Doug Peterson performance with the visor and the giant printout of all of his plays and just looking. It was

nostalgic. It was really beautiful. So we went to Buffalo Wild Wings. We literally went to Buffalo Wild Wings next door. Quite a vibe in that Buffalo Wild Wings. First of all, it was brighter than the sun. Yeah. I mean, it was lit like a fucking Baz Luhrmann movie in there. It was so bright.

So bright! At 1030 at night in a bar. Also, the music. There are 300 televisions in the Buffalo Wild Wings, but they're blaring. Yeah. Blaring Harry Styles. Yeah.

And then we ordered chicken nachos and they came out instantaneously, which is kind of disturbing when you think about it. Well, but... But were they good? Not really. They were fine,

but let me tell you this. In Buffalo Wild Wings' favor, Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap. Wow. That is pretty good. I mean, what? Blue Ribbon on tap. Wow. Yeah. That is pretty good. I mean, what? Wow.

That's incredible. That's beautiful. We just had a night at some of LA's best establishments. Okay. Yeah, I guess so. From the Greyhound

to the AMC Burbank to Buffalo Wild Wings with a little bit of experimental horror mixed in between. That's nice. And also, we watched Skin and Meringue.

Experimental horror was a football game. So it was a weird night. Did you have fun? Did you have... I had a blast. I feel really close to my friend, Sean.

I thought it was a really fun... It was a fun adventure. It was a really fun night. And, you know... I would like to be a part of the first half of this. Mm-hmm. Really, everything

except for, number one, the decision to go in when it's 30-20. If I were there, I would have been like, no, no, no, no, no. We need to go back. Should we have gone back

to the bar we were at? No, you should have gone to Buffalo Wild Wings before. And watched the game? Yeah. And then gone to the 10-15. That's actually very logical. Yeah.

If I were there, that could have happened. It was really like a bang-bang situation because it was so hard to park that once I ran upstairs, it was like the movie's starting. Right.

Okay. That's tough. The parking there, not to revisit the LA visitor parking lot situation, but it's... Episode coming soon. Yeah, it's not...

It's not... I went to a Lakers game the other night, Lakers Sixers, and it was boring because it's Los Angeles and that's apparently what it does here.

And I was parking in a lot where it was on the roof. It was not inexpensive to park there. And they were like, oh, you got to park on the roof today. I'm like, okay. And I went up there and it was completely flooded. And I was like, this is just... The city just doesn't have... Yeah.

The infrastructure is not there yet. Or the know-how where they're just like, go park outside. And it's like, fuck you. This is $70. Did you see Megan? Yeah. Did you like it?

Megan! Yeah. I thought it... I think I'm... Do you think he would have had more fun if we'd seen it together? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Phoebe loved it. Yeah. She really enjoyed it. It was really fun. I want...

What's the next Megan? Because I'll go... I'll go see it with you guys and we can have tequila shots beforehand. I'm so glad you asked. Is it 80 for Brady? No, it's... It's the fun. What's the next Megan? Because I'll go see it with you guys. And we can have tequila shots beforehand. I'm so glad you asked. Is it 80 for Brady? No, it's the new Scream.

Come on. Yeah, it is probably the new Scream. I'm going to be really honest. I've seen more trailers for the M. Night Shyamalan movie. And it looks really good. And I also don't know whether I can handle it. I think it's going to be intense. Yeah.

Yeah, because like all the... I mean, I'm sorry to be like, my baby, but the kid stuff, it's very upsetting. So I'd like to, but I don't know. Let's do Scream NYC. That'll be good. Yeah. Yeah. Because like all the, I mean, I'm sorry to be like my baby, but the child stuff is like, it's very upsetting. So I'd like to, but I don't know. Let's do scream and moister. That'll be good.

Okay. Great. And then in the wasp quantum mania sitting right there, sitting right there. Okay. Great. Okay. Uh,

what an, what an odd way to end this podcast, but I'm, I'm, I'm grateful to you both. Chris, thanks for going to see skin and Marine with me. I'm sorry that it confused you and upset you as it did.

I honestly didn't think it confused me that much. Okay. That was maybe the problem. We have to... JMO episode 13, 22, I think will be about your interpretation of

what Skin and Meringue was about. Thanks to Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Bobby! Chris will actually be back on this show later this week because we're holding

the very first movie auction of 2023. In person. Yes. It's only drafting Brule stuff. The very first Brule draft. The other thing I've asked Chris to do, Amanda, is to provide his first ever CR's Oscar predictions.

So Chris will be predicting the Oscar nominations as well. Look forward to that. We'll see you then.