The Press Box - The Summer Movie Awards | The Big Picture (Ep. 516)

Episode Date: August 24, 2018

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan highlight this summer’s movies by awarding the biggest surprises, best independent films, best scenes, the best and worst movie of the summer, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Miller Light. We are in the waning days of summer, and you know what's really good during the summer? It's a nice cold beer. So why not try a Miller Light? With Miller Light, there's only 96 calories and 3.2 grams of carbs. That's fewer calories and half the carbs of Bud Light. So there's really nothing more to talk about. If you're really looking for a beer, check out Miller Light.

I'm Sean Fennacy, editor-in-chief of the Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most elite podcasters in the world. I am joined today by the Pod Uncle. His name is Chris Ryan, and we're here to discuss. Are you going to stick with Pod Uncle? Yeah. Did I come up with that? No, that's my thing.

Okay. Chris, the Pod Uncle and I are here to discuss at season's end, some summer movie awards. And the reason we're doing that is because it's kind of tough times out there in the movie world. What do we got this weekend? We got Papillon. We got the Happy Time murders. We got searching. That's pretty much it.

Searching I'm excited for. Yeah, I'm interested. I've seen the Happy Time murders. We'll get to that later. Chris, let's do some awards. Yeah. But before we do that, just give me your general reflections on summer 2018 as an avid moviegoer. Yeah.

Well, I think honestly, I have to look at my avid moviegoing life in conjunction with my avid TV watching life. And for most people, I think that's the consideration that they make as well. So they're probably saying to themselves, I've X amount of free hours in my life. How am I going to spend it? and did you feel like anything really at the blockbuster, at the movie theater, had the sort of mainstream, perhaps not by numbers or stats, but this kind of mainstream appreciation, both in terms of its critical adoration, but also like the fandom that kind of built up around it, that Succession did,

or that Atlanta did, or that even in some ways Westworld did. This was a summer that I thought TV kind of got pretty good, again after a little bit of a foul period and a couple of new shows popped off like Barry and Killing Eve and Succession so I thought it was like a really nice time to stay home that being said I still saw probably two dozen movies and I have a lot of thoughts on them

it's interesting we find ourselves at this complicated moment where every summer is now just almost entirely sequels and at least from the major studios I read about this a few weeks ago I think nine of the ten highest grossing movies at the box office this year are sequels, even movies like Black Panther, which are ostensibly originals, are part of this larger connected universe. And so you don't, it's hard to say I was really moved and impressed by this thing that surprised me that also was a cultural phenomenon. You know,

we don't get Jerry McGuire anymore for whatever reason. We just don't get movies that make $300 million that are original ideas that star real people and not computer generated figures. You know, I think the closest we've probably had to that was a quiet place, which is technically not the summer. And last year we pointed to get out a lot. And last year we had Dunkirk. We didn't really have anything like that this summer. No, I'm sure we'll get to this in a little bit. But there was a couple of things that were obviously missing from this summer that I think would have changed how we feel about it. That being said, when you get to the end of a summer, sometimes you look back a little bit more fondly on things that came out a little bit closer

to Memorial Day. That's true. I think the interesting thing about this too is that movies are actually doing really well right now. You know, just from a purely financial perspective, the box office is way up over last year. Last year, I remember I was writing about Rotten Tomatoes and the failure of movies like Baywatch and it was a really, really fallow period for the movies. And this year, there was this feeling, it tipped in part by the fact that Black Panther and Avengers Infinity War, which maybe we can start talking about as part of this summer officially, were huge, we're massive, we're among the biggest movies ever made. And those were movies that I felt like had that kind of, that combination of entertainment value,

but also intellectual and conversational stimulation that we kind of look for when we're talking about popular culture where you're coming out of them and you're like, I want to kind of see that again. I want to talk about that with everybody I see at a bar or restaurant and ask them what they thought about it. And it just so happened that over the course of this summer,

I felt like there were more shows that were grabbing that than there were movies. But that being said, like you're saying, you know, the economics of it still are not in question. Let's start doing some awards. Okay. Okay. This is the first award.

It's the biggest surprise of the summer. Now, we just finished talking about how this was kind of a drab year and there were more sequels than ever. I think consensus in our office is that set it up was the great surprise of the year. Yes. Back in the spring, I wrote about Netflix's original movie strategy and how it was kind of a mess and how it's unclear what it actually wanted to accomplish. But we knew that coming down the line, they were leaning towards essentially identifying a bunch of different kinds of films that Hollywood was no longer making. So in a few months, we'll see Outlaw King, which is David McKenzie's portrayal of Scottish rule, Robert the Bruce.

And, you know, we'll see... Hold the Dark. Hold the Dark. Jeremy Salonier's movie, which is sort of a thriller. But Set It Up is also kind of an underrepresented genre, and that's the rom-com. And now both set it up and to all the boys I've loved before in succession have created this kind of like little mini-romcom boom that Netflix is putting together. And if you couple that with Crazy Rich Asians and the success it had last weekend,

all of a sudden you have like three makes a trend piece going on here a little bit. I think set it up stands out to me because I thought that that was kind of the most light and effervescent of the movies and also the funniest. Yes. And that kind of goes a long way from you. I don't know. Did you dig set it up? Yeah, I dug set it up.

I dug to all the boys. And I thought that it was, if you had asked me 18 months ago what I thought Netflix's Stratt was going to be, I would have thought Cloverfield paradox would be like the pinnacle of what they were trying to do, that they want to get into the blockbuster, or the brights of the world. They want to be in the JJ Abrams business. They want to do big moves like, hey, after the Super Bowl, forget whatever the channel that's showing the Super Bowl,

what they have coming up next. Go to Netflix. And that's crazy that that was this year. I know. I mean, Bright was only December. Yeah. So to come now all the way to the end of the summer and be like, they've found a real marketplace for anybody from 12 to 45

who are like, I kind of just want to watch a bad. version when Harry and Matt Sally. Yes. And they're going to probably eventually hit on a one Harry and Mattis Sally one of these days. And they're probably going to keep getting people like, you know, like a Mindy Kaling or Natasha Khan or like whatever, like pitching them stuff. And Kay Cannon or somebody is going to make like a really brilliant rom-com for Netflix that has no shot of getting into the theaters.

It's a unique situation because there's a lot of conversation industry-wide about why these movies don't get made anymore. And the truth is that they probably get made more than we say that they get made. But Netflix is willing to spend just a little bit more to make them. They're willing to give you the extra $5 million in your budget or, you know, there's no back end for any of these participants, but they're willing to go a little bit higher on the front end. And so, yeah, I mean, set it up is actually relatively anonymous people. Zoe Deich is the star. Glenn Powell is the star. You know, the writer and the director both don't have a ton of credits to their name. But I feel like you're right that there's like a kind of a cottage industry coming and more people will lean

towards it. You know, the strategy before, it wasn't just Cloverfield paradox. It was also War Machine and No Boundback movies. And it was prestigey. It was, you know, mudbound. It was this effort towards awards fair. And I think that there will be some awards fair later this year. But that soft middle feels like a really good lane. Yeah, we've been talking about the soft middle. Probably since we started the ringer, we were like, when is somebody going to go out and make Pacific Heights and make these movies, whether they're thrillers or rom-coms from when we were going to the movies

when we were in our late teens and early 20s. And it seems like they've really found that. The other thing I really like about these movies is they are Star Factories. They are actually one of the only places you can go see emerging acting talent get fun roles. Like you can find some, you know,

there's roles out there where it's like, oh, this trenchant portrayal of somebody surviving in a bus somewhere. Shout out to Into the Wild. But to see Glenn Powell get to try to be Tom Cruise is actually pretty fun in this day and age.

And I think we're seeing it this week to all the boys, both Lana Condor and Noah Centennial now, all of a sudden two people I'd never heard of nine days ago are objects of cult affection? There's a weird hybrid it's a hybrid of almost like a social media star and an actor.

Because I feel like all of a sudden it's like, yeah, you don't know about Noah's, Tenney. I was like, no, this movie came out like four days ago, and it's among 55 other things that came out on Netflix on Friday. I didn't have like this dude's Instagram push alerts. Kovinsky Hive is Real Man. Yeah. So speaking of performers, let's do best performance. I've, I kind of struggled with this category a little bit. What don't, why don't you go first? I like your recommendation. So I had problems with Tully, but I've had Charlize on the brain

because we just did Mad Max Fury Road for the rewatchables. And I've been thinking, thinking about her and I was thinking about how much I love Atomic Blonde last year and just what a unique actress she is to be able to do so many different things so well. And in the last 12 months, she's done straight up action. She's done this sort of prestige drama with Jason Reitman and they're continuing this kind of exploration into middle age with Diablo Cody that Reitman Theron and Diablo Cody have been working on with young adult and with Tully. There were issues I have with Tully. This is sort of a strange thing to say, but I don't know if this ever happens to you, but do you ever love a movie

because someone you love loves it? Oh, all the time. And my wife was so deeply, deeply, deeply moved by Tully that I couldn't help but kind of feel it secondhand. And, you know, obviously it speaks to a very specific experience for women, but, and we, I don't, we don't have kids, but like we were still like, I think quite moved as a 40-year-old and thinking about the last 20 years of my life and watching it kind of play out. And, you know, in a way that some people might find to be a little bit of like gimmicky or some people might find quite moving. I found it quite moving.

I thought her performance was like almost as physically like unbelievable as monster. So just really shout out to Charlize. I'm really glad she's around. One of the great movie stars, probably even underrated in some respects, is a really good performance. She's such a match with... Good Bill Simmons guest, too. She was a good Bill Simmons guest. She's such a match with Cody's dialogue, and you're right.

She's so... The lack of vanity and the role... There are obviously some controversial aspects to this story. We don't want to spoil what happens in the movie. I also think McKenzie Davis, who plays Tully, is wonderful in this movie as well. I think it's a little overlooked at this point. And I wonder if it were released in October if it would be less overlooked, because there would be a little bit more of a campaign around it and that performance.

and what she's doing. You know, Jason Reitman has another movie this fall called The Front Runner about Gary Hart, which I'm sure we'll be talking about quite a bit. Tully is also worth pointing out because it is the heavyweight title fight between Eastside Los Angeles

shy retiring middle-aged dudes, Ron Livingston versus Mark Duplass. Who came out on top? It's tough to say the judges may have been bought. I'm riding with Ron Livingston until I die for the swingers' performance on the par three golf course in Los Phyllis. I wrote down Jonah

And don't worry, he won't get far on foot. No one saw this movie. I had Gus Van San on the show. And it's a very strange portrayal of a cartoonist who becomes, who gets into a car accident and becomes a quadriplegic. And Jonah Hill plays essentially his sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. Look, there's just four things. Keep going to meetings.

Read this book. I'm giving you. Don't drink. If you think you're going to drink, call me first, never after. And it's a real transformation. and it's an interesting first step in a big year for Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill is all blonde in this movie. He's a more svelte Jonah.

The fit is right, as they would say, on Grailed. Shout out to your boy, Lawrence Schlossmann. And he does transform. You know, he's kind of amazingly zen and chill and beautiful, but also vinglorious and sad. And he plays like a rich guy looking for purpose. and it's such a tragic but beautiful and great role. And then now later this year we have Maniac

coming from your boy, Carrie Joji Fukenaga, his first foray into series television since True Detective, starring Jonah. And then in October, Jonah's first movie, his directorial debut, mid-90s comes out. Which by all accounts is dope. I'm very excited about that movie. I'm sure we'll be talking about it.

Hopefully we'll have Jonah on the show. I also wrote down a movie that I know you didn't see. Yeah. Jim Cummings and Christopher Robin Jim Cummings is the voice of Winnie the Pooh and has been the voice of Winnie the Pooh for some time Okay Where are you out on Christopher Robin?

You know that thing I said where I'm like Do you ever love something because someone you love loves it? This is your shot. I don't think I could convince you on Christopher Robin. I thought Christopher Robin was good. I didn't think I didn't blow my mind I was ready for it to take over my weekend and it didn't quite do that

But everything Vocal performance is an underrated thing And Jim Cummings, who is a grown man, talking like a childlike bear of some other guy's imagination, somehow transports you into being seven years old again. And that is a unique skill. I've totally cracked. I don't see any cracks. A few wrinkles, maybe.

It's quite good and believable? Is that, that's... Yes. Okay. Yes. Even though he's a CGI teddy bear? No, absolutely. So I wanted to give a quick shout to Jim Cummings.

Anybody else that you liked? No, I think that that was pretty much it. I mean, obviously, I don't know if you consider first performed a summer movie. Yes, sure. But he will probably, Ethan Hawk will probably get nominated. I hope so. One of the best performances I've seen in a long time. And we are, we're hawkheads.

Yes, true. We're Hawkeyes. So, yeah. Hawk eyes, wow. We need to bring that back at some point. Okay, let's, how about a best that guy performance? Okay. Especially in a year where there aren't a lot of tremendous leading performances.

I wanted to give another shout out to another vocal performance, which is your boy, Brolin. This was the summer of Brolin. Yeah. He was Thanos in Avengers Infinity War. Did you like Thanos? I did, more than I thought I would, way more than I thought I would,

with the three-movie lead-up of him sitting on the moon. Yeah. Were you charmed by him? Yeah, I thought he actually brought some pathos to a world-destroying psychopath. Who's your that guy? I think that I probably go for if we're talking about best performance

in a superhero movie by people we like I think this is kind of like giving Jamal Crawford the Sixth Man Award but I'm gonna go Michael Pena and Man on the Wasp probably the most delightful thing that's come out of the Marvel universe and is the best example of these movies kind of doing what action movies

in the late 90s and early 2000s did when they were like oh we don't need to have Stephen Seagall in it or if we do we can have like Tommy Lee Jones be in it. And it's the same thing where like, Con Air, where there's like, let's have Steve Bushemi be in this movie and John Malkovich. Now that they're just like, let's have really good

actors populate these films. And Pena is just such a blast in Amman of the Wasp. Amiens'A and the Wasp is a crazy cast. It's one of the crazier cast in recent memory. It's Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, obviously Paul Rudd, Michael Pena, Walton Gagins, Bobby Canevalet.

Who else? Is T.I. T.I? T.I. Yes. Great Tip Harris. Judy Greer. Evangeline Lilly, of course. I mean, it's one of the more stacked movies of recent memory. But I agree Pena. Every time he's on screen, he kind of steals it. Yeah. And he has a thing that he is doing.

And even though it's basically the same thing from the first Ant Man, like when he tells the story, it's golden. It's golden. Yeah. I love that. It's a great bit. I wanted to give a shout out to Ebony Ma. Do you know what Ebony Ma is? Is that... Is that an Avengers thing? Yeah, it's an Avengers thing.

Okay, what is it? Ebony Maugh is one of Thanos's sort of right-hand men. Oh, yeah. He's like the intellectual twerp who also has a psychokinetic power. He's played by a guy named Tom Vaughn Lawler. Okay. So I don't know very much about. But he actually goes toe to toe in a scene with three great Oscar-nominated actors,

and I think he wins the scene. And it's early on in the movie. and it's when Iron Man, Bruce Banner, and Dr. Strange confront Ebony Ma and also that other big guy whose name escapes me. And Ebony Ma is doing this sort of almost priest-like but also sort of seer deliverance of Thanos's message of taking over the universe.

You may think this is suffering. No. It is salvation. Universal scales. Tip toward balance because of your sacrifice. Smile. Or even in death, you have become children of Thanos. I really enjoy that speech.

The thing is, it's a reminder of just how silly these movies are because you have this incredible wealth of talent standing against a green screen. And the person who can come away with the scene is essentially like a zonel. zombie alien man. Yeah. I actually liked Infinity War, but it reminded me over and over again. Like, what a silly pursuit all this is. Nothing will bring you back down to Earth after you see one of those movies.

Then when you watch any of the making of clips and they're all acting in front of green screens and they have like ping pong balls all over their face. It just, I know that they're, it means they're doing a great job because it's so involving even though they have to do so much smoke and mirrors to make it work. But there's just something really like that. kind of sad seeing Ruffalo, like, being like, hey, watch out! In front of a piece of carpet. It's like, come on, dude, you're in, you can count on me.

You know, you're like one of the great actors of the 21st century. This is such a weird... You ran over Margaret! We got to get Lonergan and Ruffalo back together again soon. Okay, next category, best sequel. Again, I'll say another movie you're not going to see. It's called Incredibles 2. I had Brad Bird on the show.

I would encourage you to listen to that. It's a wonderful movie. It's a useful sequel. It's low-key one of the most successful movies ever. made. I don't think people realize that I think it is now the biggest animated movie ever, which is a testament to Pixar's power, but also to the unique invention, particularly the action sequences and the character building that they do in these movies. I have a pretty good feeling what your sequel of the year will be, but why don't you tell us? Yeah, I'm going to go

Sicario, Soldato, which is one of those fun movies that you get to come out of. And then when somebody's like, should I go see that? You're like, I don't know, man, it might not be for you. which is a pretty rare thing now these days because they make movies for the most amount of people possible. It's kind of ridiculous that they made this movie. It's so dark. It's so ill-timed. It's so violent.

And it actually takes all the parts of the first movie that people were probably like a little bit uncomfortable with and ups them to almost unbearable levels. But I loved it. I loved it. We did the interview with Stefano Salima and the director. I think that this movie is misunderstood in a lot of ways, both as a, what it's trying to say politically, but also what it's trying to do artistically. And I think it's a remarkable movie. I assume if you're listening to this show, you've probably heard Chris's defense of Solado on the watch. But if you haven't checked it out, one of the great podcast essays of 2018. I thought it was a very insightful and riveting interpretation of this movie, which I will say that I also enjoyed, but have not recommended to anyone.

and probably will not. Speaking of movies that are difficult to recommend, best horror movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, this is actually summer is where we get our scares, right? And this is typically you get a nice clip of about three to four and sometimes upwards of six if you're looking for the on-demand ones of horror movies because they can move these out, the kids are sneaking in, like, let's get this going.

And did you find this to be a good horror summer? No. Okay. Not at all. I'm on the record as loving hereditary. I was pretty swayed by the director Ari Aster's take that it's a little bit more of kind of an adult drama tragedy than a horror movie, even though there are aspects of it, particularly the final 20 minutes that are pure horror. You know, it seems to be leaning towards what will be, I think, a pretty good fall. You know, we have the nun in a couple of weeks.

We have, of course, the Halloween remake or sequel, I guess, with the... that we're all really looking forward to. But, you know, a quiet place happened very early in the year. And so what we had in the summer was this kind of hodgepodge. We had the first purge, which I thought was effective. We had Truth or Dare, which I was not that into. I thought it was fun. Dark web.

Dark web was good. Yeah. Upgrade was pretty good if you want to consider that horror. That's a little bit more sci-fi. Like a Paul Verrovan movie. I have a couple that I could recommend here. I haven't seen a couple of these. Yeah, so the ritual, I don't know if it falls exactly within the event post-Avangers.

I can't remember exactly when it was up on Netflix. It's a David Brokner movie. He came on the watch. I really like this movie. It stars Rafe Spall. It's set in Scandinavia. It's a bunch of guys who go on a hiking weekend through Scandinavian woods and come across something in the woods.

I won't spoil it beyond that, except to say that 90% of horror movies for me is set up in tone and just caring about the people. Because ultimately what's going to happen to them is pretty pro-formism. like it's like there's only like it's like strikeout or home run there's only a couple of different things that can happen to a person in a horror movie so if you're going to do a kind of

by the numbers horror movie I have to really like enjoy hanging out with the people and then feel for them when they're terrified and Rafe Spall probably has not found the perfect role but is really good at doing lots of little roles he's in the Chris Ryan Hall of Fame yeah he's in the did you see this guy's movie

he was on a great great British crime show called the Shadow Line he was incredible and that I think he was in it. I give it a year, which is a very fun, romantic comedy from a couple years ago. Always really enjoyable,

a good stage actor, and he's really good in the ritual. And then the other one I saw, which again, I wouldn't call quite a horror movie, although it is scary, is this movie ghost stories

that I saw a couple weeks ago that the top line person to know who's in it is Martin Freeman. And it is essentially an anthology story about a mythbuster, a guy who's like, I disprove paranormal activity.

I go around showing that this stuff is fake. And there is a legendary paranormal expert that has disappeared. And this guy, the MythBuster, receives a letter from him mysteriously and goes about sort of trying to disprove several cases that the disappeared guy could never disprove. So it's basically like told him three stories. And it's quite entertaining. Yeah, I really want to see ghost stories.

I missed that. Yeah, it has a little bit of Ben Wheatley to it. A little bit. Not quite as psychedelic, but like kind of a little bit of that dark humor. That's a good recommendation. Let's do Best Indy. There's a bunch of candidates. I wouldn't say it's been a mind-blowing year for Best Indy. I think that the Indies are actually in a complex moment. You know, we have A-24 and Annapurna as the sort of really powerful, bigger than they seem, companies. And then you still obviously have the specialty groups inside of all. You have Fox Searchlight. You have focus. Those are all kind of operating inside the larger studio system. And then you have, you know, these younger companies like neon and bleaker street, and they're trying to release movies. And then you also have streaming services, which are making movies. And I don't know if that can be classified as an indie, but all of these movies that we're going to talk about kind of fall into those realms of distribution. The first one is three identical strangers.

Have you seen that? No, I haven't. It's a hard movie to talk about. And I spoke to the filmmaker for a piece a couple of weeks ago. It's essentially, you know, the logline, if you haven't seen the trailer, is that a man goes to college. and it's his first year in college and he's recognized immediately on campus and someone calls him Peter and his name is John

and they keep calling him Peter and he can't figure out why and it's because Peter matriculated at that school one year prior. That is his long-lost twin brother. They appear in the newspaper come to find out. There's a third brother they get in contact and then the three of them come together. That's the first 12 minutes of the movie

and then everything that happens after that is fascinating and wild and pretty upsetting at times. I would highly recommend people check out three identical strangers. That's a wonderful movie. Mining the Gap is the other one I want to talk about. This is a Hulu film. You can watch this right now. It's also a documentary. It's made by a young filmmaker named Bing Lou. It's essentially, you know, the cheap way to describe it is hoop dreams for skateboarding. I think that's a little bit unfair, but it essentially follows

these three kids in Rockford, Illinois over the course of 10 or 12 years as they come to grips with the difficulties of their life, the complications of living in a kind of a crumbling American in town, a lot of problems with their fathers and what kind of what that means for the future of their lives, what skateboarding means to them, of course. And it is interwoven with this beautiful skateboarding photography and the cinematography is great and it's all very handheld. But it's much more about these kids and kind of what happens to them in a toll that life takes on young people. And I think we have this, even in this office, we have this kind of joking conversation about like millennials and what they don't understand and how they don't work hard or they don't understand the way to get

the top of things, but this is a really sensitive, thoughtful, open-hearted approach to these kids, some of whom don't necessarily deserve it, or they show that there's some sort of lineage in why people make bad choices or do bad things. I was pretty blown away by it. Have you seen that yet? I haven't. No, I'm really excited to see it. You were very highly recommending it. I really, really think it's quite good. Steve James, the Great Hoop Dreams filmmaker, got involved in producing the film a couple of years ago and took Bing Lou under his wing a little bit. can really see the kind of empathy and the sort of incredible structure that his movies tend to have is in this movie.

And that stuff is so much harder than it looks. So I would highly recommend in the gap. It does seem like over the course of the last, I'd say probably since spring talking to you, that you're a little bit more stimulated by docs right now. I've been thinking about them more. And that they have kind of that, despite the fact that they're obviously as baked into the concept documenting something that's happened. they have a kind of unpredictability and humanity

that maybe a lot of movies are lacking. I think it's a great point. It's probably not a mistake that this is one of the, if not maybe one of the great years, at least one of the loudest years for documentaries, probably since Michael Moore was truly in his heyday and we'll have a Michael Moore movie later this year. But between RBG, Won't You Be My Neighbor,

which we'll talk about a little bit later in the show, Mining the Gap, three identical strangers. You know, you have this, this swathe, well, you know, this wellspring of new movies to talk about, many of whom people are actually going to theaters to see. Yeah, well, I think that when you have such a glut of sequels, those movies are essentially about other movies, whether they're referencing the movies before or after that will come in the franchise, or whether they are essentially doing, like, paying lip service to the thing that came before it, which while I enjoyed Ocean Z8, I thought

essentially that's what it did. But a doc kind of has a little bit more of a relationship to real life. You know, it makes you think about things that are a little bit more tangible and tactile out there. At least right now, I'm sure when the award season comes along, we'll be thinking all about space and the moon and Ryan Gosling, and it'll change it up a little bit. I look forward to that too. I think the thing, too, is that truth is stranger than fiction is one of the worst clichés around. Yeah. But in this time, in this year, it's notable that there are.

are a series of stories, three identical strangers probably more than anything, that is so absurd and seems so ridiculous. And if you wrote the fictionalized version of it, and they are now adapting this movie to be a fictionalized version, you'd be like, this is silly. Yeah. So I'd recommend those. What about you? You got one? Just want to throw a really quick shout out to this movie, Gemini. It actually was screening at, not this year, the past 2017, South by Southwest. I only saw it this past July, or just in July. It is directed by Aaron Katzen, stars Lola Kirk. And it is about, I think the coolest way to describe it would be, it would be like, what if you tried to make the long goodbye in modern day L.A.

It's about celebrity. Lola Kirk plays an assistant to a big, a huge movie actress played by Zoe Kravitz. And there's just a, there's a mystery at the center of it, but there's stuff with like paparazzi and trying to find, you know, find out the truth about this murder mystery. and it has a real interesting way with tone. It can be lynchian, it can be actually quite funny, and then it can just be sort of straightforward dramatic. But I kind of just really like Lola Kirk,

and she's in every scene, and it's just a really, really, really interesting movie, and especially if you live out in L.A., it's really great. I did like it as an L.A. movie. It's also a little Raymond Chandler. Yeah, you know, there's some detective novel aspects to it. Gemini was good. I'll throw a couple others out there for people.

Sure. I'm sure people have heard of Sorry to Bother You, If you haven't, you should see it. It's Boots Riley's anarchic, ludicrous satire, I suppose, of the capitalist system in America as seen through the eyes of one call center employee, played by Lakeith Stanfield. And then Leave No Trace, which kind of sort of came and went and is directed by Deborah Granite who made Winter's Bone that really put Jennifer Lawrence on the map. And it's a very heart-wrenching, difficult story about, a father and a daughter, sort of living off the land,

living on the fringes of society in Oregon. And it stars Ben Foster, who's wonderful in the movie, but the real revelation is Thomas and McKenzie, who maybe we'll talk about a little bit later in the show. But she's really the star of the movie. She's a young actress who's just incredible in this movie. I haven't seen Leave No Trace. When it hits iTunes or one of the streaming services,

I would recommend checking it out. Really good drama. Best scene. Mm-hmm. Are you with me on the bathroom scene in Fallout, Mission Impossible Fallout? dog. What do you, what am I doing here? If I'm not, you should not have me on the spot again. I've seen this movie twice in theaters now. I'd like to see it again. Me too. Yeah, it's a great scene. It's an incredible scene. Actually, it's just one of those things where

you wonder why other filmmakers don't use their brains like this because it's just like, yeah, have an all-white bathroom and smash dudes faces into sinks. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. It's purely visceral. It's just a fight scene. Yeah. I mean, it's Not any different from any fights you'd ever see in a bad straight-to-d-d-d-d-d-D-D movie, but it's beautifully choreographed. The cinematography is amazing. The physicality, the hitting, the connection that happens. It's funny.

It's surprising. It introduces new characters in a smart way. I thought it was just amazing. I loved it. And in a movie that goes out of its way to be like, here's two helicopters are going to crash on a mountain. Yeah. It was just like, here's three guys, like, be the movie.

the crap out of each other in a bathroom for 10 minutes. I'm in, I'm all in. What about you? You got one? I want to throw out, there's a scene in Soldado that is a lot like the border crossing in the first film, but is shot from the perspective of a child, which is absolutely terrifying and harrowing. I wanted to sort of the double cross scene in Soldado.

And almost equally as harrowing, I wanted to put a special shout out to the pool party in eighth grade. Yeah, did you get some waves of recognition there? I just watched it. through my fingers. Like, I was like, I just want this to work out for this person so badly. Yeah. You know, that's a funny thing because you, of course, for longtime listeners of Chris Ryan's

podcast, will know that you were a great swimmer. I was a certified lifeguard. Certified lifeguard. So, no, I wasn't worried about her drowning. I was worried about her socializing. No, that is very, the way that the music scores that scene, it's a sort of like throbbing EDM. Yeah.

And the concept of going into a space where everyone is having fun. but you don't really know what to do is, I don't know if I totally identified with it, but I got it. And that is a great scene. In a series of scenes in a movie that is working hard to make you uncomfortable. That one is particularly good.

And you had Bow on, I've seen, I saw Bo Talk actually after I saw this movie, it sounds like this was probably among the most complicated sequences to shoot in the movie just because it was so many extras and it was water and it was, but you really do feel like you have the geography of that house and all the little places in parties where you have to like walk

up to a group of people and be on the outside and wait for them to accept you. And it just never works out for her that day. And it was just a really, really well done scene, I thought. I think the two hardest times to make friends in life are 12 years old and like 40 years old. You know, I've given this a lot of thought as I age or I'm like, it's a little bit strange to meet a new person as you're moving on in life and say to them like, should you and I be friends? Yeah. So in that respect, I kind of identified with it. But, yeah, 8th grade is a great movie.

I'm very glad you shouted it out. Biggest missed opportunity. Yeah. Now, I don't want to go too long on the Meg because you just did a good job eviscerating it on the watch this week. But I think we were both pretty bummed out. I apologize to Shea Serrano, who I know loved it.

I thought it was pretty cheap. Yeah, I just, I'm not looking for Citizen Kane. You know, I knew what it was. And I actually, like Jason Statham movies, like Shark movies. Those two things, it's like you're two and oh in the count, swing away. And I just thought that they didn't know that this movie was going to be a big deal that people cared about. So they spent like 18 dollars on it.

It's disappointing. But like I said, they will obviously be a sequel. And I have a feeling they'll probably be like, we should probably make the sequel better than this, right? I hope so. Yeah. Are you in the John Turtle Tob hive? Unfortunately. Not after the Meg.

That's too bad. I was working on a dissertation on him until then. Cancelled. Yeah. Oceans 8. You mentioned this. I didn't think that it worked. It was modestly successful.

I think when the trailer first hit, however many months ago that was, nine or 12 months ago, there was an expectation that this was going to be an event because the cast was wonderful and we were ready for another Oceans movie. And there was obviously something clever and fun about the inversion of an all-female cast. It's kind of inert. It's not funny. It's not a great heist. and so if you don't have any of those things

why does this movie exist? I don't know. Did you see Ocean Zay? I did. Yeah. I thought that they really didn't use Sandra Bullock well enough. They seemed like they tied her like one hand behind her back

in terms of she's like a really charming person and I thought that they were adhering too hard to like be like you're the guy version of Clooney and like everything is just, you're just cool in every situation. she's kind of like a good animated person and there's no reason why

Danny Ocean's sister couldn't be slightly different than him. I totally agree. I thought Hathaway was incredible. I think that Steven Soderberg is pretty important to these movies and I would have loved to have seen the Ocean's 8 that he directed.

I'm with you. I'm also putting down skyscraper which I really wanted to be good and I really wanted to be my dumb summer movie and I didn't think it was good. Could you go rock overall for this? It has been a tough summer for him. Rampage was also disappointing

He's in a curious spot right now He Jumanji was obviously a huge hit Bill talked about this a little bit with Shea I don't think he's necessarily in trouble No movies are making a lot of money I'm also like I don't actually even like Fast and Furious movies but like Hobbs and Shaw Seems like it's it's gonna be awesome

That's actually more for me and you than the Fast and the Furious movies are I think Statham and the Rock is more of a point of interest to me than Vin Diesel so I'm down for that And Kirby right Is Vanessa Kirby in that? I think so. Okay, we're going to get to her in a minute.

But yeah, skyscraper, it just, you know, it was die hard in a super building. It was the easiest sell for me of all time. And it's just, it doesn't work very well. So that was too bad. You know, you suggested this category, this next one, and I thought it was really smart. It's called things that were missing from this summer. Tell me what you were thinking about when you pitched this. There was a heartbeat of quality to last summer.

And even if the movies had, you're, even if your mom, mileage varied on the movies. I thought that there were enough cool, like, low stakes, but high reward movies that gave us something to think and talk about throughout the summer. And we missed that this summer because it was either like it was docs or it was blockbusters or it was rom-coms that were on Netflix, but there was not a baby driver. There was not a war for the planet of the apes. There was not that feeling of movie that you're just like, yeah, you know, like, that was pretty good. I would even see that again. You know what you mean? And I think that you could break those down into their microcategories of what we were missing. But there was a general absence there,

I felt like from Edgar Wright type directors who were like, I know how to make a good smart version of a summer movie. Yeah, I think part of that is because you have more and more good filmmakers making comic book movies. Like I, you know, Brad Bird and Peyton Reed were both on this show. And they both made sequels this summer that were a superhero movies. And I really would want to see a cool Brad Bird thriller, and I'd really want to see a great Peyton Reed comedy. And I kind of saw them, but they were Incredibles to an Ant Man and the Wasse. Yeah.

And so I didn't have that. And that's increasingly an issue in Hollywood in terms of movies that you go see in the theater. So I completely agree with that. There also wasn't a Dunkirk, which I noted before. And there was no real kind of play to the back seats, this kind of like big, dramatic, serious film that also was prestigious and award. but also was kind of a, there's just no Nolan, you know, there was no,

and I have a complicated relationship to the movies of Christopher Nolan, but there was no interstellar, you know, there was no dark night. There was no, there's no, there's always an event. And I agree with you, I think that that was really missing. And I don't even think we necessarily have one coming in the fall either, which is too bad. Yeah, it's worth noting. It's like, 2017 David Leach made Atomic Blonde and 2018 made Deadpool 2. Great point.

Let's talk about Deadpool 2 very briefly. I think it's good. Okay. I don't think it's bad. I mean, it's just Deadpool. I think it's okay to push the limits of what we think a movie should be. Yes. And I think it does that.

It doesn't do that in necessarily any kind of technical way. But it does that in terms of what a movie script should be. And I don't think it's impressive to break the fourth wall. But I do think it's impressive to break the fourth wall for 120 minutes. You're probably thinking this was a superhero movie, but that guy in the suit just turned that other guy into a fucking kebab. Surprise. This is a different kind of story.

superhero story. And the relentlessness of that movie has actually oddly stuck with me, and I'm looking forward to watching it again, even though I don't think it's not a story I care about. There are not human beings I care about in it. I don't even think the action is that good, but the slavish commitment to the bit is weirdly impressive. Like, Hollywood movies are hard to make for a variety of reasons. One of which is people note them to death and they tell them, well, you need to give the audience a chance to catch up here. This guy needs a win. Yeah. That movie doesn't do any. of that? I think Deadpool is exactly the kind of movie that is viewed within the context of the

movies that are around it. If Deadpool 2 is one of the best movies that came out in the summer, we have a problem. If Deadpool is just one of like 10 cool movies that came out in the summer, yeah, absolutely. I have no problem with it. Let's talk about something that is actually great that happened this summer. Sure. This category is called Rookie of the Summer, and we have seven nominees, all of which are women, all of which most people haven't seen before, all of which I think could be movie stars. That's pretty wild. It's awesome. So I'm gonna, I'll run down the list and we can kind of pick and choose which ones we actually want to focus on. The first one without question is Vanessa Kirby. I was not a crown watcher. I didn't know about her. I saw her in fallout and I was

both in love and and fascinated by her performance. She's beautiful. She's got incredible style. She's going toe to toe with Tom Cruise in her first big movie. It was mind-blowing awesome first big moment for her. Aquafina obviously has the the the double the double shot of Crazy Rich Asians in Oceans 8. Elsie Fisher in 8th grade, which we've talked about. Thomas and McKenzie and Leave No Trace, which I mentioned. I wanted to give a quick shout out to Helen Howard. Yeah.

Who is in this film called Madeline's Madeline, which is a very strange, interesting experimental film about a young woman taking an acting class who also has some personal struggles with mental health and how those two things collide in her life. Very cool movie. Manuel Alazzo, wrote about it on The Ringer. I would recommend you check that out.

then you have two more on here too Geraldine Viswanathan who is the star of blockers Despite John Cena May not know that but she was She definitely owns the movie And Lana Condor from To All the Boys we've mentioned

Now we can go to any one of these you want to talk about But all seven of them I was like Who's that? When you're the funniest person In a cast of like nine funny people Who are all doing Maximum bits and you're like Not dunking on Ike Berenholz

But you're holding your own and then you're like, people come out and they Google you, that's great. She's going to be in this movie Bad Education with Hugh Jackman, which is apparently like kind of an election riff and beat out a lot of competition to get that. And I just think she has like a very specific vibe that I really, really like that could go a bunch of different ways. And then Lana Conner, like, I thought that performance was kind of awesome. Like, I think based on the office we work in, we hear a lot about the two guys in that movie. but I thought she was actually delightful. She's great. She's in every scene.

Yeah. And that Meg Ryan role is hard to do because you are both the audience avatar but also you have to have like a real character. And that actually, her character into all the boys is like pretty specific. She's like trapped inside of her own mind. But she's not like straight up a prude.

She's just like this stuff is hard for me. And I thought that. that the success of that movie was the specificity of the characters, and more so the success of the movie was the specificity of her performance, which was delightful, but also like, idiosyncratic. I completely agree. I love those recommendations. We're going to do some more categories, but first let's take a break to hear a word from our

sponsor. This week's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by The Ringer and movies. The Ringer loves to cover movies. If you're a fan of movies and also television, I would recommend you check out The Watch. This week, Chris and Andy talked a little bit about Black Clans. and the Meg and Crazy Rich Asians, so look, check that out. And I appeared also on the rewatchables podcast. If you're not listening to The Rewatchables, check that out.

This week's episode was pretty great. We covered Mad Max Fury Road. It was me, Chris, Jason Concepcion, Micah Peters, unlocking the secrets of that 2015 action movie masterpiece. And also, if you're looking for more on movies, check out the ringer.com. Miles Surrey compiled a very helpful fall movie preview for you. If you're looking forward to Oscar Fair or Disney movies or maybe even some action movies this fall, I'll check that out.

That's on the ringer.com. Now back to my conversation with Chris Ryan about summer movie awards. Okay, we are back on the big picture. Just a few more categories to go. Summer movie awards. Chris, this is called Best What Happened Here. Yeah. And it's for Solo a Star Wars story, which is a movie that came out.

It's a movie that was released. It's a Star Wars movie that seemingly no one liked, which is the first time that's ever happened in the history of time. Uh-huh. What happened here? they didn't know how somehow they didn't know how to release a movie about one of the most popular

fictional characters of the last 50 years. Tough beat. Yeah. I think we'll look back and just be kind of staggered by this in the years to come. It'll look like how did you guys not know how to... And they don't. They don't know how to put out a Batman movie now,

but we'll look back and be like, you guys screwed up Batman, you guys screwed up Superman, you guys screwed up Spider-Man here. Like this was the layup. you should have had a trilogy of movies that you could have done that led up to New Hope and you messed it up. It's interesting to watch what's happening with Danny Boyle leaving Bond and to see this keep happening over and over again where these franchises and these major movie events are looking for like fresh individual voices to come in and then they're like, you're fired. Yeah, there was so much panic in 2014 and 2015 around this wave of kind of, I don't know, white.

male directors who didn't have a lot of experience kind of getting a big shot that people felt they hadn't deserved. But I think you could make the case with people like, you know, Ryan Coogler and Tycho Waititi and Peyton Reed and Patty Jenkins. Patty Jenkins, people who have only made a few

films are actually much more well suited to making these movies than extremely successful filmmakers in their 50s who've made a lot of films already. You know, Ron Howard, quote unquote, saving solo didn't work out. Danny Boyle probably not ultimately a fit for the James Bond that the

Broccoli family really wants to make. And that friction, that tension is so interesting to me. I think that there's also something in solo that was just kind of all wrong in the conception of the movie. I think that they needed to find an origin story that wasn't an origin story. They needed to find, it needed to be more, it needed to be smaller and more of like a pure chase movie of some kind. It needs to be more like the fugitive and less like, let's hit every dot along the solo. Let's do the run here, the Kessel run. Yeah. Like, the more of that stuff they did, the less interested I was in the movie.

Yeah, there's also a lesson to be learned here about the pitfalls involved in trying to develop a 24-7 news cycle around the production of a movie. Because sometimes things go wrong. And they had a very public casting process for Alden Air and Reich. they had a very public falling out with Lord and Miller. There is almost public speculation about who wrote what and who directed what and who got cut out of the movie and whose role was bigger and not and tonally how it changed. And if everything goes right and it's all the memes and look at Captain America showed up at a hospital to surprise some kids, that's great. If you have a mess on your hands, you kind of want to do it a little bit undercovered darkness. They tried to have it both ways with this one where they at once didn't show us enough of this movie

early enough to get us excited about it. So all we did was speculate about what's wrong with it. And then when they did show it to us, we were like, that's it? That's what you guys came up with, with Han Solo? And you came up with this. It's disappointing. It's really...

But... Here we go. I will say that at the end of this summer, after watching what came after it, Solo does not seem that bad. we have arrived three full months later at the, are we sure it's bad? I wouldn't,

I don't know what short list it would make of best movies of the summer, but when I was, I've gone over the list of movies I've seen three or four times now. And I can't say that it's not in the top 10. That's the notable thing about this is it's not bad. It's definitely not bad. Yeah. It's just not good.

The train robbery is pretty cool. And Phoebe Wallerbridge is pretty funny. And I think Aaron Reich is fine. and Harrelson is fun and there's a bunch of stuff happening in it that is okay but if you're 40 and you've been waiting for this your entire life it's a little disappointing

it's a little bit like Carlos Beltran's contract with the Mets you know that's the closest parallel I can make where he was a pretty good met you know he had a couple of really good seasons he couldn't stay healthy he couldn't finish out his contract in the way I wanted he was the highest paid player in franchise history it was pretty good

will you one day host the big picture as Francesa I would love to. The more photos of... What's fun how we're doing out there! It's a disgrace! Next category. The worst movie of the summer. I just saw it. It's called the Happy Time Murders. It is not good.

I'm just going to let you cook. I have nothing that can match this. You know, I'm writing about it on the ringer.com this week. I don't want to say too much. This is the dirty puppet movie. This is from Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson. It is clearly a riff on the Muppets. It's sort of like, what if the Muppets fucked? That's the short line on it. And it's just not very funny.

there's a surprising amount of talented people involved in this movie Melissa McCarthy is both the star and a co-producer of the movie Maya Rudolph is in quite a bit of the film Elizabeth Banks is in this movie the the puppeteering is good you know it's actually quite clever at times all of that stuff actually works well it's just it's just sort of painfully unfunny and the jokes aren't good and the setups aren't good and everyone is like you can tell in the closing credits when they show the kind of behind the scenes making up stuff that everybody was having a blast making this

that it seemed delightful to be surrounded by puppets all the time. And there is some invention in it, but oh my God. Yeah. I mean, it's just not fun. And I thought of you often when I was watching because I was like, for somebody who really hates kid stuff, once you try to put the kid stuff in the adult stuff, it's rough. Yeah, I don't really care about that. I mean, I also think that, like, comedians need to try harder. Yeah.

Yeah, I get what they were going for. But it's just, it was a failure. But like, when you watch Tag, you're just kind of like, come on, man. Like, put a little bit more into this. And there's like funny parts of tag, but like, come on, dog. Yeah, and that's part of what I'm writing about is just this incredibly strange moment for comedies that we have right now. I don't know if you know this, but this is, we're on pace for the first summer in, I think, 25 years in which a comedy will not make $100 million. Oh, wow.

And comedies, quote unquote, represent only 8% of the movie market share right now, which is more than less than half of what it has represented over. the years. Last year was the first time it was at 8% and this year is also 8%. It's pretty weird. Comedy, comedy's in a weird spot where no one can kind of agree on what they want. And you can see some of that in some of the conversation around recent Netflix specials, you know, Dave Chappelle's special versus, say, Hannah Gadsby's special. And what is a successful sitcom? What is a successful streaming comedy show? There's obviously this, it's never been more fractured, but it's interesting to look at the movies and say, there is no, there's something about Mary. There is no, the hangover. There is no, not even a Ghostbusters. You know, three years ago, two years ago,

Ghostbusters was considered a huge failure. But that movie made a lot of money. A lot of people saw it. I think that there's also, Ghostbusters is a good example because I was going to bring up some of those 80s comedies, which actually had screenplays and were written through and not just like, what if we did this? And then we had a bunch of really funny talented people show up and do a bunch of takes and just kind of pick the best parts. Game nights, the closest thing I've seen to this year, where they actually had at least. about two-thirds of a movie written out. Good script.

Yeah, like it gets a little bit hairy at the end, but for the most part, it's like, probably actually thought about who each of these characters are. I agree. And I think Game Night and Blockers are clearly the two that emerged and had solid performances at the box office,

and people like those movies. The people who saw them are like, I'm into that. But they were not huge. And why they weren't huge, I'm still trying to figure out. Two more categories. Best Oscar hopeful.

I wrote down, Won't You Be My Neighbor, which is just a, beautiful movie about Mr. Rogers. The only time I wept in theaters this year, I'm not afraid to say it. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers and I thought Morgan Neville's, I don't know, sort of, it's more of a tribute than it is a biopic to the ethic and the thoughtfulness that he tried to put into the world.

It's just a really, really well-made, straight ahead, uncomplicated, excellent, enjoyable movie to watch. I would recommend everybody see it. don't know if there's really that much more. There's been some conversation around Black Klansman, which I know you were not a very big fan of. I wasn't that crazy about it either. Yeah, I mean, like there's talk about Crazy Rich Asians for popular film. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens there. I wonder what the threshold will be for popular film. Yeah. Will it be financial in any significant way? Will it be cinema score? We still don't know how they'll measure that necessarily. And Crazy Rich Asians, you know, related to that comedy

conversation has kind of an outside chance to make cross that $100 million barrier. I don't think that will happen, but that movie is an unmitigated success. Is there anything? whether it's Elsie from from eighth grade or some, is there anything you would be like not shocked if this happened? I mean you mentioned Ethan Hawk. Yeah. Beyond that

you know, Black Panther was in the winter and I don't see it. Now maybe if there's a real dearth of great films coming in the fall and I think it will be a little bit of a wonky season. It'll be like the way we're talking about solo where we're like going back and be like, you know what? Eighth grade

best picture? Who knows? Yeah. Maybe the first purge? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Best movie. This is easy. I think we agree on this one. Yeah, let's fallout.

Fall out. How many times has Hunt's government betrayed him, disavowed him, cast him aside. How long before a man like that has had enough? It's like anything, it's pretty much everything you would want for a summer movie. I loved it. I think probably the most interesting conversation I had with the director this year was when Chris McQuarrie came in to talk about it. He's got a real handle on how to make cool movies like this. understands the spirit of a summer movie. I mean, he really, he checked all the boxes for me.

Great movie star, great set pieces. Fun story that doesn't really isn't very meaningful, phenomenal supporting characters all around and genuine tension that you're, that kind of thrills you in the theater. It's also its own thing. It's not a superhero movie just without capes. There's actually like a completely different physics to this movie. And it understands what you need in the course of an experience of starting at one point and ending at another and having the stakes expand as you go forward. So like we're saying, like, it opens up with classic mission impossible sort of double cross.

There's a really good fight scene in a bathroom. And then it's car chase, helicopter chase. You know, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger as it goes along. And it's one of the only movies that I find has rewatchability this summer. And that's kind of like what built summer blockbusters was people being like, I'll go see that movie four times this summer, you know? And you don't have to do that anymore because there's so much. much stuff to do, but I would go see this a third time. This podcast got bigger and bigger and

bigger as it went along. Chris Ryan, thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for having me. See you next week on The Big Picture.