The Bill Simmons Podcast - Bill's Best Movies of the Year With Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan (Ep. 312)

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by The Ringer's very own Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan to discuss Bill's top 10 movies of 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's at least for the next couple of weeks, you can read more magical predictions from me, like the own four I put up last week. And don't forget to check out the ringer podcast network for all of our great podcasts. We have a bunch of good ones this week, including a new episode of the rewatchables that I am not on, including one shiny podcast. We have a bunch of good ones this week, including a new episode of the rewatchables that I am not on, including one shiny podcast. This college basketball heats up, including Larry

Wilmore, including cousin Sal, the list, Joe house's house of carbs. The list goes on and on and on. Check that out on the ringer podcast network right now. This is a, this is a conversation I had with Sean fantasy and Chris Ryan today about my top 10 favorite movies as well as some thoughts in this little weird cool period between the Golden Globes and the Oscars. But first, Pearl Jam. I'm here with Sean Fenton and Chris Ryan from The Linger.

Hi, Bill. I'm not going to give you the titles. Okay. Fair enough. All right, you're the editor-in-chief. What are you, executive editor? Yeah, why do you always act like you don't know what I do? I don't care about titles.

I'm not a title guy. I'm a people guy. Easy for you to say, CEO. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm the best title. Chief creative officer. So you guys did a big picture podcast for Channel 33 where you did your best of 2017.

You got cut out of that one. I got cut out of it. It was marred by amanda dobbins naming wonder woman the third best movie of the year chris had a dunkirk take that i just was horrified by sorry yeah um i had not seen enough movies yet to really have an opinion and now i have and i wanted to give out my list because nothing's important than my list of the best of 2017 so this this podcast is you just emergency summoned me and Sean here to listen to your list. I was ready to give you my list. But then I want to talk about the Oscars because you wrote about it this week, Sean.

We're waiting now. We're just anxiously awaiting the Lady Bird backlash. It could go in a variety of ways. I think we all have our guesses. I definitely mind some of your takes for that column. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that first actually because i thought ladybird was the best movie i saw a year was my number one i think chris had it at number one where did you would you have number one shot it's been flipping two and three between get out and ladybird yeah

so i think people feel that way then it won the golden globe best movie which means now it's going to be under attack like it's attack. It's like the computer virus of pre-Oscars hype is going to come at it. And I think the most logical way to come at it that I worry about is that she's been with Noah Baumbach now for a few years. This is her first movie. Somebody is going to leak the really shitty, unproven, unnamed sources, maybe that she didn't do this movie on her own and then they're gonna have to battle that and then the stink of that will hang over it and i could just feel it coming and it bums me out what do you guys think a couple responses to that number one i think that lady bird has more heart than anything bomb back's done since maybe kicking

and screaming so i'm not worried about that first one second of all i think that three billboards and shape of water are going to take a lot of the fire that could have been reserved for ladybird over the next couple of weeks because we were if ladybird was just out and like out and out front runner i would agree with you but people are going to spend so much time and energy shitting on three billboards over the next couple of weeks that they're going to forget all about Lady Bird. And then Lady Bird is going to be the consensus. Actually, we all love that movie. So I actually, I think it comes around.

Interesting. It's a really good shape. I think it's a really good little reminisce in the moonlight last year. Maybe it's never really felt the backlash at all because everybody was too busy having their knives out for La La Land right sean they were i have a theory about why all of this happened though about why the moonlight thing happened and why part of what chris is saying is true but there's now a difference between campaigns and takes there are going to be a lot of takes about three billboards and a lot of takes about the shape of water but the campaign the smear campaign

that we saw for so many years, largely thought to be under Harvey Weinstein, I don't think that's going to be as much the order of the day. There's still going to be politics and grandstanding inside of trying to get awards, but I don't think that you're going to see the kind of swift boating stuff that you saw in years past. You know, the things that

got Shakespeare in Love a Best Picture win over Saving Private Ryan, even though conventionally most people over Saving Private Ryan even though conventionally most people thought Saving Private Ryan was 10 times the movie yeah I don't I haven't gotten the sense that that's something that is really happening with any of these movies now it's a little bit more of a plain ice atmosphere what was the best smear campaign of this decade the best ever was in my opinion was that uh F-Fuckin Damon didn't write their movie oh that's that was like one of the first ones I really remember that I f fucking damon didn't write their movie oh that's that was like one of

the first ones i really remember that i knew nothing and i wasn't in the industry in any way and knew that story it's it's hard to i mean it wasn't necessarily a smear campaign per se but zero dark 30 got dismantled from coming out and i think it was mark harris wrote the first big zero dark 30 piece when it as for New York, before it opened, and he was like, it was a really glowing feature. And I still think of that movie very highly on a technical level,

if not on a moral level. But that movie got dismantled down the stretch run. And it was her coming off of her, Catherine Bigelow coming off of her locker, this huge story, Jessica Chastain giving this powerhouse performance. It was, everything was lined up for that movie and it just got picked apart and not

even, I don't, I don't know whether or not that was a studio backed whisper campaign, but that was one of the ones I remember being like, how did this like, just did it get nominated for stuff? It was, she got nominated.

It was nominated for best picture. what a shame that didn't happen to the artist. Well, often what happens is, is that movies like The Artist are the beneficiaries of campaigns like that. One that I can remember recently was Selma, which I touched on a little bit in what I wrote. That one was very strange because it felt very coordinated. worked for a consulting agency, reached out to a series of LBJ historians and sought to write a series of editorials undermining the factual premise of the movie Selma, in which LBJ doesn't look very good. And there were a lot in the Washington Post,

in the Wall Street Journal, and in a series of other places, people wrote about how this isn't what LBJ was like, this isn't what he did, this movie is unfair to LBJ. And then that cast a little bit of doubt on the movie. And then suddenly Selma, which was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year, is not nominated for Best Picture. And obviously, ever since then, Ava DuVernay has gone

on to be a huge figure in Hollywood. But at the time, that was kind of strange. I mean, that movie kind of got shanked. Can I ask you a question, though, about campaigning in general from what you understand about it? So let's say, for instance, something like Dunkirk, which traditionally, I I think in years past would be something, especially if it had been released later in the year, would be sort of more in the forefront of the awards conversation. It's a solid B minus. Yeah, I agree. I'm with Bill. I'm fine with you guys having that opinion.

It's a B minus. Keep going though. Would promoting Dunkirk necessitate a sort of oppo research campaign on the part of Dunkirk either explicitly or implicitly on movies like Get Out Lady Bird 3 Billboard Shape of Water like if I'm gonna if I let's say I was running the Dunkirk best picture

campaign if you're running that is it better just to be like you know what like if you like it if you want to vote for this movie vote for this movie but I don't want to have my fingerprints on the being the person who is like don't vote for ladybird i think it depends especially this year yeah it really just depends on what kind of movie you're talking about and what it's going up against if it's two very serious movies then often it gets a little bit more intense i remember the campaign around um the imitation game was honor the man was the phrase that they used because it was telling

the story of a you know a gay man who had done something very historic and it was meant like if you give this movie nomination somehow you're doing something dutiful to society which is ultimately it seemed like kind of bullshit and was a weinstein company operation um i think it depends though on what kind of movie you're talking about like what did dunkirk and ladybird have to do with each other? Like, really nothing. Like, you couldn't even create opposition research. You could, but you could create a narrative about these fussy, fusty old movies that are celebrating the greatest generation versus something fresh and new and original that's celebrating, like, more of a contemporary feminine point of view.

Maybe with the Weinsteins out of the picture, this stuff might not happen anyway. The really only old school producer we have in the mix for this stuff is Scott Rudin. There was stuff on Twitter the other day, though, about there possibly being some stuff, not anything negative about Peel and Get Out, but a whisper campaign about Get Out,

about that being not a serious film, about that not really being up to snuff for and in terms of it being you know what happens is when we watch these movies and the way we think people are talking about them there is still a divide despite the voting body getting mixed up a little bit more these these last two years i guess or last year there's still a divide between like what these voters, the demographically who these voters are and what we think the popular conversation about a movie is. Well, and then to pick a pile on that one, what's that movie about?

It's about old white people. And if an old white person watching that who feels a certain way, and I see get out, I'm like, fuck that movie. I'm not voting for that. And one of the most thought to be one of the most political moments of this season so far is when there was some controversy when Get Out was nominated for best musical comedy at the Golden Globes

and people were like this is incredible horse shit this movie is neither a musical nor a comedy and Jordan Peele tweeted about it and said it's a documentary and it's thought that the Hollywood foreign press at the time was offended by him saying that and so the fact that he wasn't nominated for best director and get out, walked away with nothing on Sunday,

led a lot of people to believe that they were kind of like the hell with this guy. Is there anything to how, even if it's just complete, you know, reading between the lines that they did not spend a lot of time on the get out table during the globes. We saw Jordan Peele once at a distance.

Yeah. And that was it. I mean, he's responsible for one of the biggest movie success stories of the year, the third most critically acclaimed movie of the year, a genuinely transgressive popular movie, and he was barely there. I was stunned by that.

I thought Get Out was gonna be like a legit contender. It might still be. It might still be at the Oscars. Well, you give your take on that, how meaningless the Golden Globes are. They're meaningless. I mean, they're voted on by like a shadowy body of foreign journalists who don't really determine nor represent the voting, larger voting body of the Oscars or the BAFTAs or

the SAG Awards or the PGAs or the WGAs or any of these other Guild Awards, which are comprised of people who make movies. And the people who make movies are the people who vote on those awards and you vote you're in the pga you know that you're the screener king now um i am i get all of them you and you've made movies and those are the people that are largely thought to they represent these votes especially the oscars which pulls together everything yeah and the golden globes is just a is a secret society of people that are meeting famous people and talking to them and making connections with them and hoping to be flattered by them in hopes that the HFPA will then give them an award. like, crypto-racist guy who anonymously writes about, like, how Get Out wasn't his kind of movie. And it's sort of like when you get anonymous NBA scouts being like,

our New Orleans has some problems. We all like this movie here, though. I love this movie. We were terrified that movies were going to hell. I know. You think, like, five years ago, when it was, like, The Artist versus The Descendants, and we just couldn't even find five movies.

And you were just bemoaning being able to get out of the blocks with a TV show recently like where you were just like, I just feel like I used to have just such a wealth of options. I mean, you have so many choices. And then Sean said, you're old. But what's that? Sean said, you're old. That's why none of the shows resonate with you.

Well, what I said is you were aging out of the demographic, which is not your old. I don't think that's untrue, but I also think that TV is asking us over and over again, more and more TV, I feel like, is asking us to start from the beginning and that there's so many new shows. There are so many shows that are doing limited runs. You get six, eight, maybe 10 episodes.

You're not really like, hey, this season, I'm just like watching 22 Losts and that's great. So you basically are constantly in the state of starting over, but the way they tell television stories are the same. So the pilots, the first few episodes, slowly setting up the story, that's all happening over and over again. And it's a little bit exhausting. Whereas in movies, you still have that compressed. Hey, when I walk in, when I walk out, that's it. It's over. It's not a little bit exhausting. It's like a chore. And once they pile up on your DVR three episodes in a row and it's like, oh shit, now I got three hours. That's why I love movies

more than I ever have. Movies are in and out. And I like all kinds of movies and I don't judge. Well, so what are your other favorites? What else is on your list now? All right, I'll go through my list and then we can go back to the oscars discussion it's gonna be there it's gonna interweave i think and then so my number two is phantom thread which i saw twice what's your number one is the number one ladybird number two is phantom thread look ladybird was so cool and original and the actress the lead actress whose name i'm not going to attempt to butcher. It's Saoirse Ronan. I'm so afraid to butcher her name. Chris, fellow Irishman. I knew.

We talked about this a little with PTA, but I knew nothing going in. I thought Greta Gerwig was in it. And I was really sad when it was over. I was really invested in the characters. And that was another one of the things I loved about it was it just ended. It's a cool 97 minutes. Yeah, I was like, whoa like whoa are we done i was ready to be here for two hours

and nine minutes for you because you can watch it as a parent or you can watch it my daughter remembering as yourself as a kid yeah yeah and uh it's just really kind of a memorable movie and i think it's gonna 10 years from now when we look back at some of these movies i think get out and ladybird will do really well. I will never think about Dunkirk again. I can promise you that. Sorry, Chris. Sorry, Chris.

So I had Lady Bird 1, Phantom Thread 2. I was confused why it didn't do better at the Golden Globes because it seemed like it was in the Golden Globes wheelhouse. This is a good thing to talk about. Yeah, the rap is that nobody's seeing it. Yeah, people think that it was released too late, that they didn't message it soon enough. And they didn't do screeners?

Well, they started screening the movie November 25th or something like that. So it didn't have the momentum. I mean, it's significantly later than Lady Bird, than Get Out, than Dunkirk, than Three Billboards, than The Shape of Water, than the movies that have really emerged over the last few months. So there's that. There is some history that says in the last five to ten years that the later you release your movie, the less likely you are to get awarded.

And something else that is experiencing that same problem is the post, which has not been the juggernaut that a lot of people thought it was going to be. The post is going wide January 12th, and Phantom Threat's going wide January 19th. That's pretty late. Can I ask you this? Because we've talked about this in the office a lot.

I am probably the most vocal person about being vexed by... 19th so let's can i ask you this because we've talked about this in the office a lot we i i am probably the most vocal person about being vexed by so this movie is open in 200 theaters or maybe even less than that you know it's only in new york and la and maybe chicago or something like that it's not going to be most of america's not gonna be able to see this movie for six more weeks or another month yet we have fired off every single piece of content we could possibly think of about this movie already which one are we talking about the post but you could say this for phantom thread as well or any movie that has this staggered slow release where as far as we're concerned it's come and gone and it hasn't even reached other places yet yeah and you're just kind of like well are we

are we're not really working in concert with each other anymore there's not a the conversation is only happening among a select few cities a select few amount of people who can go see this movie is it possible that we've always overrated our impact on that conversation anyway i don't think for awards that's not the case though i don't i think for awards i think it became a phenomenon and once you get into that zone of hey have you seen get out yet oh you got to see Get Out. And people are at cocktail parties and dinner and whatever. I don't think Phantom Thread's ever going to be that movie. I don't know.

I think it would have been easier if everybody could have seen Phantom Thread the day it came out. Well, that's true. I agree with that. I say this with all the love and respect in the world of Phantom Thread, which is my favorite movie of the year. It's a really weird movie. And it's going to be difficult for some people to get through. And it's going to be difficult for them to understand certain parts of it and paul thomas anderson's films are eccentric by nature and so it's not a slam dunk even though daniel day lewis is more accessible than the master

though i agree i agree but people will also bring a lot of expectation of that too and people in the industry you know like paul thomas anderson is not one of best picture even though he is widely considered by many people to be the best in his field. He's in a very similar spot to someone like Scorsese in the early 80s, where you're like, this guy knocks it out of the park every time, but his movies are very specifically him. They're a little weird,

and it's not a guaranteed box office success, and he's way overdue for an Oscar, but he hasn't gotten it yet. This one's a lot weird. It's funny, because Phoenix in The Master and then Dana Day-Lewis in this movie, they inhabited the character. Not to sound too film school nerdy, but Daniel Day-Lewis's body in this movie

and just the physicality of it and the little subtle stuff he did, I was mesmerized. I watched it a second time because I was like, I think this might be the best movie he's made, Daniel Day-Lewis, for a performance, which is probably not true. But I left that movie thinking nobody else could have played that. He is the one person on the earth who would have made that movie work to a way that I would have wanted to watch it twice. And when we talked to PTA, he talked about how they basically wrote the movie together.

Yeah. And they came up with the idea together. He would show him the script and then he would send him notes. I mean, that's really unusual. Like movie stars have a lot of power and what they get to say and not say in movies a lot of the time. But when you have somebody like PTA,

who's so thought to be such a serious artist, you very rarely hear about like that crazy collaboration. And I think one of the reasons it feels like only he could do it is because he kind of invented it he's so reclusive and he makes he works so sparingly you know at least in terms of his how how many movies he makes but in some ways he's the quintessential movie star because he makes movies where i'm like i wouldn't see this if it was anybody i wouldn't go see i definitely would have gone to see that yeah you know i mean i guess i would have been curious about it if it was russell crowe but if russell crowe and wouldley scott made there will be blood yeah you know exactly what it would be you know it would be sort of like a weird western that had a lot more betrayal and violence

in a way that's what the movie a good year is about right yeah exactly but but when when he's in lincoln you're like this isn't going to be like j edgar this isn't going to be like any other historical biography film this is going to be an incredible representation of this guy and and that's what it is what else is on your list so phantom threat 2 i had the defiant ones at at three. My list, I include documentaries. Some people get snobby and they don't. I just feel like it's as hard to make the Defiant Ones as it is to make the Phantom Threat, if you do it correctly.

Why is that though? Just explain that. Because I think people will look at that and be like, oh, it's Bill Simmons. It's an HBO doc. It's four hours long. It's part of it as a commercial. But like, what did you think was masterful about it?

So the amount of time and money they spent on that thing is so unconventional for a documentary he probably spent five years i can't even imagine how many million dollars they spent he had an unlimited music library of some of the best songs that say that that can never happen unless you either are doing a documentary about Jimmy Iovine or you're doing a documentary with a massive uh publishing company it was a great story I learned stuff from it I learned things I didn't know and I thought the third episode was probably the best 50 minutes of a documentary I've seen in a while that's the east versus west yeah just the whole the way it was laid out some of the filmmaking choices he made I I thought were really, for a documentary,

just like a whole other level of how people are doing them. And like when you first see Tupac for the first time and he's coming around the corner and it's in slow motion and he's taking footage that he had. I just thought the touches of it were awesome. And I've watched it multiple times and it comes on and I get sucked in and that doesn't happen with documentaries, really. That's really cool um I thought it was 40 minutes too

long probably if if I probably would have gone three parts instead of four and the infomercial stuff was you know the the one big deterrent on it there's a lot of beats yeah it probably could end it a half hour before it did but for for the most part, I just thought it was spectacular. My number four was Get Out. A couple things that have been lost now that it's been a few months. How many months? Eight, nine months. What a great theater experience it was.

Phenomenal. And how rare that is to just be in a theater that's really into it, and especially in L. in la when people sometimes will get into it but for the most part are too cool for school and in this one it was like the theater's into it and he's getting out and people are cheering and it was like being at rocky you know it was a big factor in that chris always talks about being maddened by the amount of information he gets about movies before they come out i remember him saying in like april that we felt like we already knew everything we were going to know about call me by your name even though it wasn't coming out until november get out caught a lot of people by

surprise yeah it came out at the beginning of the year it was a serious movie directed by the guy from key and p it had a strange trailer which was like is this yeah should i make fun of this trailer or is this trailer making fun of itself what is this and what i'm saying is almost and it's almost an indictment i don't mean it's not an indictment of calling me by your name or anything like that but when you think about and you wrote about the 50 great movie moments of the year yeah and there were a lot you could have had 10 get out moments in there oh yeah you know what i mean and that was one of the things that the reason why i think get out sustained over the course of the year beyond its resonance was the fact that you could be at any bar you could be at dinner you could be at dinner six months after you'd seen it and you could be talking about moments from that movie

like you could be talking about the gardener running at him you could be talking about her with the keys you could be talking about any number of things from that movie in a way that you really couldn't from most movies this year you know you you there and i thought that was what was coolest about your piece is because you really start to atomize it and i think that those kinds of things have gotten cheap because we meme them and become they become twitter things but those are the things that you remember about jaws and those are the things that you remember about jurassic park is like someone looking up or like the guys throwing chum in the water and it's like those are the things that last for decades i thought I talked to Jordan in March and I, it was right when the sunken place started to become a meme on Twitter.

And I would just ask him about it casually. And he was like, this is the best thing that could have ever happened to the movie. This is awesome because now it's in the culture. Really? Like people really know what the sunken place means that matters. I would say it was the most pop culture accessible movie, not just this year, but in a couple of years, like even I've made sunken place jokes. You look at GIFs, you have the no, no, no lady.

Betty Gabriel, who's amazing in it. The Gardner running. There are all these little moments. The tea. And let's not underrate the fact that- It's so rewatchable. It actually is a good horror movie. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Aside, we talk about what genre it is. It came from Blumhouse. I kind of expected it to be even more horrifying like i was kind of ready for it to be more slashery in places but it had elements of it that were you know it wasn't quite a thriller it wasn't quite a horror movie it's like whatever in the middle that is and it took takes you back to that 80s vibe of it had without being explicitly 80s it had certain like a feel like poltergeist like

those movies that you kind of grew up watching where you're like oh yeah this is like terrifying but real and i feel grounded and i believe everything that's happening and also had really legitimately funny moments and uh and had a social kind of underbelly meaning thing that, I don't know, if that movie won the Best Picture, I wouldn't be shocked and I wouldn't be bummed out either. I don't know if that wasn't the Best Picture. It would be worthy. There is really no precedent for a movie like that winning Best Picture. I'd be shocked. It's a guy with a comedy background and a horror movie which are the two categories that the academy respects the least now it's possible that everything that's happened with the way that

they've the fact that they've added hundreds of new members over the course of the last couple years means that it could tip the scales a little bit towards something that's you know a little bit different and a little bit more progressive but man i think it's gonna have that movie have had a better shot if it had come out on halloween don't think so. Just because of what it is. I think in many ways it's been helped by having a year of box office success. I gotta say, I think it's been helped from the HBO run. Yeah. You can just see it.

And stuff like that. It's exceedingly rewatchable. My fifth one. So when I do these lists, most people do the list and it's always certain types of movies. I always feel like did the movie accomplish whatever the goal of whatever that genre is, whatever. I love John Wick 2.

I love that they took a movie that worked, that was kind of a lower budget action movie that probably I'm sure they didn't have giant hopes for. And then they were basically like, all right, let's spend real money on this and blow it out and make it awesome. I thought the middle like 30 minutes of it from when he goes to kill her and she commits suicide in the bathtub all the way through when they end up at the Continental, him and Common is one of the best like 25 minute stretches

I've ever seen in an action movie. And there's so many little twists and turns and everybody turning into a spy and then the way it ends and then him being on his own setting up the third movie all that's so hard to do well and he did it just was great i just loved it i had such a good time at that movie it's a really good action movie it's it's not as good as the first one because the first one i feel like had the harder job of being like we're gonna create everything yeah i agree and that movie weirdly completely under everyone's nose created a whole world where you walked out of john wick and you're like holy shit when are

they gonna make john wick too yeah which is taken was like i gotta be honest taken was like that for me yeah but the the immediacy with which went all john wick that guy. Yeah, yeah. Became part of like the vernacular. Became another pop culture movie. Yeah. So I just, I thought it accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. And the same thing I feel about It, which I had at six.

I thought It was incredible for what it was trying to do. I feel similarly. And for how many Stephen King films failed. My kids love it. Maybe my son shouldn't be watching yet, but he's seen it 12 times. And it just like, they identify with the kids. It was nostalgic in all the right ways.

It was legit scary. The opening scene, I think, is one of the better opening scenes we've had, as you pointed out in your piece. Suggested by Chris Ryan. The child actors all stood out in some way. My son was talking about potentially for Halloween, they would all go as different kids from it.

And he wanted to be the stuttering kid. Yeah, Finn Wolfhard's on a real like Sean Astin 1986 run right now. Yeah, it's between this and Stranger Things. And I think it's really hard to do to be the relevant, nostalgic, awesome, whatever movie. I was just really surprised it was that good. I knew my son liked it. I'm like, oh, whatever. And then you had told me

you liked it. But other than that, I didn't know that much. I walked out of a screening and I was pretty shocked. I was like, wow, that was really well made. Yeah.

Like movies like that just usually, even though I love horror movies and see every horror movie, I think all three of us really love horror movies and see every horror movie. You're usually willing

to accept a level of mediocrity in certain parts of those movies. Oh, yeah. And I think specifically finding good young actors is hard. It's hard to get all those parts right. And it especially is like really burned into the brains of people from either they've read the book or they saw the Tim Curry miniseries in the 80s. And they were like, so they have a lot of preconceived notions of what would make it good. And I just I thought that they did a great job and it also it should have been it should have been a disaster because it was a movie that was going to be directed by uh dr fukanaga dr uh true

detective karen fukanaga it's been in purgatory for so long and you see something like dark tower come out dark tower could have been i mean it's its ceiling was game of thrones i mean dark tower you could have made 10 of those they screwed it up and now like that whole thing needs to go away for 10 years it they could make a sequel to it they've not they're making that castle rock show on hulu like you can feel that everybody kind of wants to be a part of the steven king universe and the guy who oversees horror movies at warner brothers who oversaw all of this it stuff and probably would have been the villain if the movie was bad and carrie f Fukunaga could have said my creative decisions

were the way to go just got elevated to run all the DC movies now Warner Brothers yeah now that needs to be fixed and they need somebody who's a hit maker I thought it's either one of the best 10 horror movies of all time or one of the best 12 I'd have to really make that's pretty strong list and go through but for me like just thought it was the best in a couple years I'd have to really make the list and go through but for me I just thought it was the best in a couple years I'd have a hard time getting it that high as a horror movie but I really enjoyed it I think it's hard to scare people these days

that's true you look at the stuff that's working now we've already done all the derivatives of all the different types of and now it's just like haunted house movies home invasion. The serial killer movie is basically gone. I'm gonna kill as many people as I can in an hour.

That's more on TV now. That's just gone. And it's really, I think the genre needed something that was a little different. And I thought this was it. Let's take a quick break to talk about our friends at Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans.

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licensed in all 50 states, NMLS, consumeraccess.org, number 3030. Number seven, I love Jim and Andy. Yeah, me too. Documentary. I don't know if it's on Netflix anymore. It is, yeah. Is it?

About Jim Carrey just losing his mind. I've always been fascinated by the subject of fame and what it does to people. And this was really good. And he's fucking bat shit crazy in this. He's just crazy. I had no idea he was this crazy. And I was riveted

and affected by it. It's a little bit of the opposite of the Defiant Ones where it really hinges on one long conversation with Jim Carrey. They have all this great footage. There's nobody else who's interviewed. But he's the only person who's interviewed in present day and he is revealing. I wrote about that

movie in this piece that we're talking about and I also wrote about Jim Carrey after I saw him on Kimmel over the summer. I was like, oh boy, something's going on with Jim Carrey that doesn't seem right. I think it was going on after, from the moment he did Man on the Moon, he was never the same. You look at his IMDb and the next five

years it's basically weird movies and then he made one, it wasn't Liar Liar, it was like one of those. He made Bruce Almighty. But he never really got it back and that was it he was this comet for six years and he's a fascinating person he's a person who would just be impossible now like movies don't work that way where a guy can just kind of take over for four years at a time especially in comedy i think that people's tastes just are too short-lived for that when you think back it's like um somebody like tom hanks who started in largely comic films you know what i

mean and was in bachelor party and and uh very consciously made a just move towards increasingly dramatic movies over the course of his career to get out on the money pit yeah money made a lot of those he made like nine of those turner and hooch yeah a lot of those guys are like that even michael keaton was in a bunch of comedies when he was oh yeah it was hanks versus keaton for 10 years yeah my eighth one was uh girls trip because for a few reasons one it's hilarious uh two tiffany haddish is like becomes a legit star in it which i just don't think happens very often anymore. When's the last time you've seen somebody you're just watching? You're like, wow, you're gonna be a star.

You're watching a comedy, you're just like, oh yeah. I was trying to think if it was like, was Will Ferrell, was old school before Anchorman? No, it couldn't be because that happened to him on SNL. Doesn't happen with somebody in a movie.

Ace Ventura, Jim Carrey is like, I mean, there are examples, examples but just even then he was on in living color yeah and he had people in the history of them she really came out of nowhere for a lot of people i mean obviously she's been a stand-up for a long time and she was really good in keanu yeah she's in keanu she had some looks yeah i had a really good experience with that movie where i saw it i saw it once by myself at my house which was a mistake that's like not that's not how you're supposed to watch that movie. Definitely not.

And I watched it on Christmas morning with my whole family. My siblings, their partners, my mom, we're all watching it together. And my mom and my sister are very Queens, New York, and they're very like, they laugh loud. And they were rolling during the movie. And that's the way to experience it. It's a movie for theaters or a movie for groups. you really like sense her power when you see it in that setting i don't probably shouldn't have shown it to my daughter um she laughed easily the hardest i've ever heard her laugh during a movie and it's i'm glad she saw it was like what davin said it's

it's a female bonding movie yeah it's ultimately what it is and it's really well done and it's a movie that's been made poorly a shitload of times and nobody has ever done that movie correctly and uh i just i thought it was awesome my last two are tied for nine shot caller and good time i can't wait to talk to you about shot caller you know i love prison movies uh you know i've always loved jamie lannister uh i i thought it was in that too yeah it's that the actors are good it's just a good in the grain prison movie it's a great b movie it's the story is jamie lannister nikolai costa waldhouse dui murder has. DUI murder. Has a DUI murder. He's a businessman. And he goes to prison for like three years on a...

And just gets hard. He gets hard. He has to do what it takes to survive and then kind of likes it. It's like Breaking Bad in two hours, basically. He grows a handlebar mustache. Yeah, it's phenomenal. He gets a lot of tattoos. He joins a white power gang inside the prison.

Yeah. And then becomes a crime ward. This move yeah in two hours in two hours it's great uh does he get redemption in a manner of speaking yeah i would encourage you to check it out chris yeah chris i thought i made you see shot collar not yet i saw riot and cell block i didn't see shot collar yet yet. Good Time also. I don't know if I would ever watch Good Time again. That's why you're still the one. Which one? The fact that you love Good Time is just like why you're still my guy.

Thank you. Well, it was Bob Mays' number one movie. Was it really? Bobcat Mays. Wow, the bangle. It's one of those movies you never see twice. I couldn't believe how good Robert Pattinson was. Had no idea that movie is the my favorite section of you're talking about that john wick but pretty much when

it starts to be like it starts to unravel after hours of them just being trying to figure this the situation out is so incredible it's really good yeah shout out to the safty brothers i think those guys are gonna to make amazing movies. So should we talk about, they're going to, they're doing 48 Hours, which we just did on the rewatchables. And I support it. You know my theory, if you're remaking something,

it's got to have a new bent. It can't just be a remake. We'll see what they do. These guys will make it gritty. Honorable mention for me, I thought I, Tanya, was really good. Complicated. Complicated movie. Complicated movie. Allison Janney's great. honorable mention for me i thought itania was really good complicated complicated movie

complicated movie alice and janie's great margot robbie's great i love the fact that they were able to cgi sports stuff now make her do quadruple axles it was i'm glad we're using that technology for sports i think it opens up a lot of doors for us with hoops where you could basically you know teen wolf's a different movie yeah do you think do you think of it as a sports movie i tanya no but i i think it's it's basically where we are now as sports movies where this is now a sports movie i thought it was interesting that allison jannie said when she won a golden globe she was like we made a movie about disenfranchisement because what happens a lot when these movies go into the awards circuit yeah sausage maker is your movie has to be something more than what it was or has to be something a little bit more altruistic or widescreen than what it was and i liked the idea

of like the goodfellas of figure skating that was like a good pitch for that movie but now it's like about the the 99 um i think that's going to break Three Billboards too. Three Billboards is just a very screwed up black comedy in a lot of ways. It's also about vengeance and forgiveness and all these other things. But when that movie gets interrogated as like, what does this movie mean? It's not going to stand up to it. Or if it does, it'll do so with a lot of uh hurt feelings along the way i

don't think it should be nominated for an oscar i tanya no for best film yeah i tanya yeah i think alice and janie is going to get nominated and i think there's a chance margot robbie gets nominated the actors it took a story that i already knew and had heard a million times and had just been involved in a documentary about it four years ago and actually made it interesting. That's a movie, though, that I think if it had more momentum could very easily fall to some of the backlash stuff we talked about. No question. There's a lot of information that is fuzzily arranged. Oh, my God.

Very purposefully. That's the story. Katie Baker wrote a really good piece about the movie months ago. It's got a lot of issues in that front. But it's really complicated. Plus, there's just some tone stuff. Me, personally, I don't mean to sound like I'm soft-hearted about this, but they make a choice to have a lot of visceral reflections

of domestic violence. Yeah. And right after that, they'll do, like, beat and then a joke. Yeah. And that is the movie that they made. They specifically tried to do that. That's, of course, easy, too. It is.

That's the way, like, if you try to ape the goodfellas thing it's like guy gets his head blown off and then paul sorvino makes a joke about it you know what i mean and he's making pasta in the next yeah exactly the post i thought i told this to you already but i it's a b plus it's fine yeah i like it it's good it's well acted um it's there's some stuff i think it's got a finally polished first five minutes and last five minutes i that feels very spielbergian where it's like we got to tell the people about vietnam and then we got to tell them make sure they understand the weight of this we don't need this people are smart yeah tell the story take us to the post right now i thought that what what what i took from it was meryl streep and just i

didn't know with katie graham i didn't know know that she was kind of that irrelevant and that helpless when she was in charge of the paper. And eventually, I had always known her as Ben Bradley's boss and all the president's men. I always thought, in my head, I always thought it was different. I didn't realize. I learned stuff in it. I liked the post. I think that there's something about the Hanks performance that stops me from... That was my biggest issue.

He doesn't... If he gets nominated, I'm going to have an issue. I feel like Meryl Streep is in that movie and is completely immersed in it, and Tom Hanks has got a wig on and is doing a Boston accent. Yeah. He's got a tough job there because...

Fantasy is more pro-Hanks in that movie than either of us. He's just got the ghost of Robards over his shoulder. I know for all three of us, that Robards performance is a big deal. It's the best. We really love that Ben Bradley. It's a big, big deal. And that movie Robards, I know for all three of us that Robards performance is a big deal. It's the best. We really love that Ben Bradley.

It's a big, big deal. And that movie is so great and so iconic. And Kate Graham is not in All the Presidents of England. Right. She's a historical figure

but she's not in it. She's on the phone two or three times. That's right. And Ben Bradley is that movie almost as much as Robert Redford

and Dustin Hoffman. Sure. So I'm willing to give him a little bit of a break. Also I love, love all the supporting people in it. Even if that movie doesn't always hold together,

you've got the great Odenkirk stuff. You know, you've got the great Michael... Carrie Coon. Yeah. Matthew Rhys stuff, Carrie Coon, Tracy Letts.

Half the cast of Veeps and Jesse Clemons. I kind of wanted a little more from the Daniel Ellsberg performance. I think that there's a whole other Ellsberg movie that they could just make. The Nathan For You final I thought was awesome.

I'm counting it as a movie. We're just doing stuff we liked. It's fantastic. It's a movie. It was two hours. Errol Morris' favorite movie of the year. I really enjoyed Happy Death Day. I think it's really hard to just make a really entertaining fun horror movie.

I thought that was really entertaining. I thought Stronger was the movie that got lost in the shuffle, and I'm not really sure why, whether it came out too early or people are just tired of the actor who's going through some sort of thing. I just watched the trailer for Trust, which is the Danny Boyle directed show on FX. It's the same story as All the Money in the World. And it looks awesome. And even though nobody saw All the Money in the World, I'm almost just just like i don't know even though like just getting through this getty like i'm gonna definitely watch it and it looks really much more up my alley than all the money in the world but when they do these like

here's a somewhat obscure story that we're gonna tell twice in nine months and it's you know the boston bombing was not the prefontaine yeah yeah prefontaine they do two marathon stories they're doing they do two getty stories it's weird Gyllenhaal's great in that movie he won't get nominated and it's a shame I'm with you I'm not just saying that because he was on the BS pod

I thought he was really good in that movie it's a really good David Gordon Green movie and Tom Hanks probably has a better chance of getting nominated than he does

and then I can't believe I'm saying this but I really like Battle of the Sexes the more I've been thinking about it and I don't think Emma Stone was cast correctly

it took it was a much more interesting story than I was prepared for. I just thought it was gonna be a story about the match. And I didn't realize it was about, you know, basically somebody coming out and hiding it from her husband and hiding it from the tour.

And it went all these directions I didn't expect. And I thought it was the best sports movie of the year easily, which I don't know what the competition was, but it was very well done. And the biggest mistake it made was not really going into whether he threw the match or not, which some people are pretty adamant that he did. I was more into it as like a love story than I was as a sports movie. I don't think it's a very successful sports movie. It's not, but there are no sports movies anymore. Yeah, maybe I know that story too well. I think Don Van Natta did

a great story about that match three, four years ago. And also, and I thought Carell was great. I think Emma Stone's fine. And Andrea Risborough is really good as the woman who she has an affair with. But I there's something like not

triumphant enough about it. Like I feel like if you're going to make a movie like that, it's almost like overse triumphant enough about it. Like, I feel like if you're going to make a movie like that, it's almost like oversell me on it. Like trick, like make it miracle. I really like when a movie is like, screw it.

We're just sentimental. Yeah. It didn't know what it was, which is why I was frustrating. I just, for me, it's sports movie of the year. I just wanted to mention the honorable mention.

I didn't think it was a great movie. I want to watch it again. I do want to ask you, hearing you talk about battle of the sexes and like the sort of wasted potential of that movie in some ways, I wanted to ask you guys, what was the movie that you felt like had all the pieces and couldn't put it together?

And that in, if two or three things had gone differently, it would have just been, cause for me, that's Molly's game. Uh, it's about a topic that I'm deeply interested in, written by a guy who I generally and genuinely adore watching his stuff.

And if it had been directed by Danny Boyle or David Fincher, I think would have been a phenomenal movie. I know that you have some casting issues with it, but is there another movie out there, if not that, that you were like, man man if they had just done two three things differently or if this movie had come out a little later or a little earlier just i would have just said this is the one of the best two or three best movies of the year just for 2017 yeah i i think it's the one you said yeah i still enjoyed it i can't believe the poker scenes

weren't better and more captivating interesting it was like even my wife believe the poker scenes weren't better and more captivating. Interesting. It was like, even my wife who hates poker scenes and hates that I watch rounders too much. Even she was annoyed by the poker scenes. And, and, and then Michael, Sarah is just an abomination. It's one of the worst performances. I actually really liked that.

Oh my God. He's terrible. It's like career ending. He's just really bad. And that's a, if you're supposed to be Tobey Maguire, you've got to be cool. You've got to be, I've got to feel like you're a Hollywood star.

I didn't feel like he was a Hollywood star. I don't know who the right person in cast would have been, but it was not Michael Cera. I have a lot of complicated feelings. Costner, it's 25 minutes too long. There's a whole dad story that it's just beating us over the it's really it's just the poker i lost this business and then i saved my life movie i didn't even think i really needed the dad stuff i i felt like it was a very strange and telling choice that a movie that was

meant to be about a woman becoming fiercely independent essentially hinges on a lot of men explaining things to her or for her like yeah i just between idris elba's character and kevin costner's character and michael cera's character and like we're meant to believe that molly is this fierce thoughtful winner person who won't take no for an answer and we'll get whatever she wants and it just kind of turns on a lot of big speeches by guys being like but here's the thing about Molly. But the four or five times that movie is clicking, you're like, yes. Listen, when are we all not in when it's the things are going great,

but they're going a little too well? It's always like, uh-oh. Yeah, there's some good like- There's a knock at the door, don't answer it. Yeah, Jeremy Strong in that movie. Yeah, it's really like- Yeah, Bill Camp and Chris o'dowd there's all the guys who are at the games those guys are great but it doesn't totally come together the

movie for me that is like this is a movie that i like and it's hard to talk about and it's downsizing which everybody has decided is a piece of garbage and i find that really interesting yeah the poor lady the uh hong chao yeah At the Golden Globes got like tepid applause. Yeah, and I think that we can set aside the criticism of the movie altogether. I just want to say that it's cool when a big filmmaker like Alexander Payne gets a studio to give him $75 million to be like, I've got a big idea. Like that turns out great movies. The story of The Godfather is Francis Ford Coppola pleading and fighting and begging the studio

and his producer Robert Evans for more money, more time, bigger stars. I need Brando. Give me Brando. It has to be Brando. That is the story of great movies happening. The minute you're like, downsizing is trash and it's racist and it wasn't funny enough, studios hear that and they're like was pain like no more

downsizing i don't know who he really went to bat for um but i i just i really don't want to lose the world where we don't get the original movies that are a little that's the same thing with blade runner which is like blade runner 2049 which is now sort of retroactively been dragged through the mud by ridley Scott and a little bit, and generally was not well received. It's still to me, like if you're going to give Denny Villeneuve, I want to live in a world where Denny Villeneuve has that budget to make

that kind of movie and has that kind of vision. And I just, I thought I actually thought it was incredible. I think it's a really underrated movie. I wish they would do a director's cut the other way where it's like Blade Runner 2049 the one hour 50 minute version. Yeah. When they got the professional editor

into Fix It. Couple others just to mention. I didn't love the Florida project. It just kind of bummed me out. Congratulations how they made it. It's very well acted. The little girl's awesome. It's just one of those kind of sad glimpses

at this American underbelly, basically. Didn't mean I enjoyed it. I respected it. Sean Baker's movies, I think, hit people in two ways. They either are just absolutely destroyed by them and feel compelled and connected to them, or they're like, this is either a little too bleak or a little too real or a little too specific

for me to really latch on to. It was super duper bleak. He's really talented, though. To get a performance like he got out of Brooklyn Prince who'd never acted before is high-level stuff. It was worth seeing. I just wouldn't quite put it on our bonemesh. He wanted Brando for that role.

Yeah, well, you can't get everything. Call me by your name. It's fine. I'm going to move on. Noted bill. It's fine. It's great. Let's go on another bike ride. That was the original title.

Call me by your bike ride. Let's let's go hey you want to get off and lie on the hill for a second all right let's get back on our bikes uh the the fish fucking movie the name of it is the shape of water yeah did you see it it's fine um chris has a very strong take on that do you want to hear it he's shared it on the watch. Okay, let's hear it. I won't be seeing any film about beasts. Okay. I like... The Big Sick is good. It's almost... That one got forgotten in the awards. It got lost in the shuffle.

They'll probably get screenplay, right? I don't know. I'm not sure. I compared it to like... It's a much lesser James L. Brooks movie to me. Yeah, that's the thing. It's another one. it's a much lesser james l brooks movie to me yeah that's the thing it's it's another one it's a b plus or b yeah it's a nice movie and it made people happy and it did good business and it probably made kumail a big star so like that's that's cool that's good it's a win we won we won with that movie and then uh the beguiled was the other one that i thought was interesting. And nothing really happened.

Great performances. Good performances. The only reason I bring it up is, you know how Chris and I feel about Colin Farrell. Yeah. Yeah, you guys love the movie Miami Vice. Which he's like basically going through drug rehab as he's filming it. Even maybe in the scenes. And his blood alcohol level is rum and oxy the entire time.

And you can feel it. Yeah. Especially in the Blu-ray, you feel it. But he's in that movie and then he's in the Sick of Deer movie. Yes. And it's a totally different performance. And we've had this kind of belated Colin Farrell is actually a really good actor moment. And he's kind of taken the Russell Crowe spot

that I thought Russell Crowe could have had for years. And then he just got too weird too fast. It's like an American gangster. It looked like Russell Crowe was just going to be the guy who's going to show up and be solid for Colin Farrell market correction yeah oh yeah belated but like if they remade proof of life which

don't touch that that's an American treasure brothers get at us but if they ever did that like Colin Farrell be the proof of life guy right that if they remake proof of life they need to have Caruso in it like yes yeah I really feel like I'm on the Bill Simmons podcast proof of life they need to have Caruso in it. Yes. I really feel like I'm on the Bill Simmons podcast right now. Proof of life.

We're remaking proof of life. But what I like about Colin Farrell is he's... David Caruso never makes eye contact with anybody in that movie when he's acting with them. It's so amazing. He comes in the hottest. Nobody's ever been hotter in a movie. It's a heat check.

He gets off 25 threes in 10 minutes. He makes Dion Waiters look like andre roberson that's great when we do uh the kidnap rewatchables week that'll be a great one but my point is i like that somebody has filled the sad russell crowe void that i miss i miss russell crowe russell crowe is an important actor russell crowe is somewhere right now being like mate i did like 40 movies this year but like it it went off a cliff with the leo movie in 2008 which is still unbelievable that movie didn't yeah it's it didn't make a lot of money it's disappointing i don't watch it when it's on and it's just like right there russ it was over for russell krepp

the problem with body of lies and the prop problem with what he was doing at that time period i can't believe we're really gonna spend how many times do you think you started a sentence the problem with body of lies very rarely because i only i don't find that many problems of it so he plays basically his insider character as a cia agent but just not like a morally conscious person he didn't have a lot of moves russell crowe i think that was part of the problem i thought you couldn't put him in a rom-com we we hold that against him what do you think what would have happened to daniel day lewis if he made three movies a year right we don't know you know what i mean like he made five movies in 10 years and he thinks he's a genius russell crowe's out here making the donuts every morning and we're bored

with him it's all that's a fair point that's how you get to be the greatest actor of your generation not making good choices all right russell crowe could only be in certain types of movies like the proof of life part was like a classic russell crowe part and i'm glad that colin farrell is like is like a guy who was most of his use was like it's like a basketball player who was like all about speed and once he lost a step his game goes out the window crowe once he lost the gladiator body and the looks yeah it kind of it's it's it's a tough beat it turns out you just shouldn't drink every day for excessively i think it has some ramifications sort of an alan iverson figure yeah yeah go for it but it was i would say for

russell crowe if you're doing sports analogies it's like tmac oh interesting like 2000 to 2005 you're buying all the tmacMac stock and this is it. He's going to be one of the guys. Was his Yao Ming. But for 2018. We're already off to a great start, man. Well, we had this January month of action movies. The platter is here.

It's great. I love January. It's always my favorite movie month. But I'd like to see... Does Leo have something this year or what? I don't think he has a project on that. I really worry about Leo, that he won that Oscar and we're never going to see him again. I believe that he is supposed

to be in The Cartel, which we'll be shooting soon, the Ridley Scott adaption of Don Winslow's novel. Your guy, Don Winslow? Yeah, I think he is. I am not positive. What about your guy, Damien Chazelle? He has a great movie, a very exciting movie coming out called First Man,

which is about... Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong. And stars Claire Foy. And who plays Neil Armstrong? Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling. Oh, there you go.

I'd like to see Cruise follow up on what we talked about with PTA. Or Cruise work with PTA. Cruise has Mission Impossible 6. Stop making young guy movies, Cruz. It's time. Age. Age with your demo. You're 55. Didn't PTA say don't count out Cruz?

He did. I think he bought into our theory that he should do a Netflix show. The big thing we learned from PTA is that he's dying to work with Leo and he's dying to work with Cruz again. And he loves those guys. And that was it.

Oh, Cruz is also doing Top Gun 2, but I don't think that's coming out this year. I don't know if that's real. I don't know if I can support that. I would have been more excited for Top Gun 2. You withdraw your support for Top Gun 2? I might withdraw my support for it. So just quickly, and then we'll go. Oscar, what do you think wins Best Picture? Lady Bird. What do you think wins best picture lady bird what do you

think i'm not ready to share that yet i honestly don't know i'll probably be writing about that a lot this month um yeah but it's gonna what your final prediction will be different than how you feel right now the story today on this day when we're recording this podcast is that the new front runner is three billboards outside ebbing missouri that seems that'll get picked apart really strange when do people vote? That'll get picked apart. The voting is happening right now. It's over the course of a week or so.

And they're announced on the 23rd. Oh, I was going to mention this to you guys, because I do think this has happened with NBA awards. And I think it's happening with the Oscars, too, is the consensus, people going on the internet and kind of finding out what to do, I think has become one of the weird things that's happened this decade.

Because it's definitely changed NBA awards. You don't have NBA awards fuck-ups anymore. It's like... As I sit here with two people who would like to revoke Russell Westbrook's NBA... One established company that are fighting against each other in these scenarios. This year, if it's Lady Bird,

is one of the frontrunners, that's A24. It's a five-year-old company they've had amazing success they also produced moonlight the other company is fox searchlight they produced both or distributed both the shape of water and three billboards the shape of water strikes me as the kind of movie with enough energy around it and enough support in other categories like costumes and visual effects and sound editing and all these other it's the kind of movie that could have 14 nominations and when movie when stuff like that happens that narrative really takes hold so you basically have fox searchlight which really knows how to campaign

and knows how to get a lot of awards supporting two movies you've got a24 with with ladybird i don't know which movie fox searchlight throws more weight behind i don't know which movie Fox Searchlight throws more weight behind. I don't know which movie's gonna resonate more with the Academy. I don't know if the voting body has changed enough that a movie like Lady Bird makes way more sense or Get Out makes more sense or Dunkirk or Post.

Who did Get Out? Get Out is Blumhouse and Universal, which is really a classic movie studio. So I think Get Out, I think it comes down to Get Out, Lady Bird, and then one of those two movies you mentioned. It's possible. Whichever one they throw this heart down, I think it comes down to Get Out, Lady Bird, and then one of those two movies you mentioned. It's possible.

I find it hard to believe that Dunkirk and The Post are done. The Post isn't done. I think Dunkirk's done. The Post was not recognized at the Baptist, which shares a lot of voters

with the Academy. The Baptist is the British Awards. I think he was not nominated for a single award, which is staggering given the cast lot of voters with with the academy the baftas of the british awards yeah it was i don't think he was not nominated for a single award which is staggering given the cast and the people that are involved i'll say right now in my mind the shape of water is the front runner wow because there's a lot there's a lot of dots that connect guillermo del toro winning at the globes is the kind of thing that signals to people that this is a movie made by a master. And the Academy likes to award masters.

And he's also in this trio of Mexican filmmakers with Alfonso Cuaron and Inarritu who have been rewarded quite a bit in the last couple of years. And that trifecta coming together makes a lot of sense. Cuaron won the year that 12 years won. That's right. Well, this could be fun if there's four or five with the... It's the most unpredictable. If there's eight movies to vote for or whatever, that could be fun. Yeah, it definitely makes for a more entertaining debate for the next six weeks.

Because I think that the La La Land Moonlight thing felt like slamming your head against the wall after a while. It was like at a certain point, you either prefer one movie to the other. And then there is the, there is like the kind of weird sick, sickly feeling of to like Moonlight, you need to denigrate La La Land or vice versa. And that's actually easier to, it's easier to have a multiplicity of opinions

if you're talking about three, four, five movies all competing. So I like it for sure. This is the number one year where I'd like to see the voting numbers. I'd like to know how many votes. We say that every year though. Yeah. Because I think it has a chance to be razor thin margins. No chance of Phantom Thread creeping in? I hope so. I hope so. I mean, that's focus features. I can't wait for the ads. We're like two weeks away from the

odds and all that stuff. Yeah. And the odds will for sure. The one thing we learn every year that sound, I actually going to remember this year to bet on is the front. There's maybe the six major categories. There's the front runner skew way, way overboard as favorites in the six categories. And like three of them don't win. And you just cherry pick whoever is underneath. Cause it never,

it never holds in January all the the way through especially this year it's march 4th this year the oscars yeah it's really late yeah there's so much time to change minds and pick apart and i think it's because of the olympics yeah so anyway chris ryan sean fantasy this was fun thank you sean big picture podcast big picture podcast fr Fridays on Channel 33 Chris the Watch Mondays and Thursdays give me your own feed we do have our own feed

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