The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Howard Bryant breaks down One Battle After Another & Highest 2 Lowest | 10.08

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Bomani Jones is joined by Howard Bryant to break down Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another,’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall & Teyana Taylor. They explore themes of capitalism, character representation, and the role of music in film, while discussing many critiques of the film being litigated on social media. Later, they discuss Spike Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest' starring Denzel Washington. They discuss how it compares to Kurosawa's 'High and Low" and what the movie does and does not say about Black Capitalism. 2:00 - Breaking down "One Battle After Another" 31:50 - Highest 2 Lowest: The High and The Low Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get this podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is that time of week where we have a guest.

Join us. The great Howard Bryant on the mic. What's going on, sir? What's up, Bo? How are we doing? We're good, man. We're going to try something new here. All right?

So I think as most people know, I'm not the biggest movie buff, right? But I do find that if you give me a movie that I find to be interesting, I can have some interesting thoughts and kind of want to discuss it, right? On the other hand, Howard Bryant is on the board of directors at the local snooty movie house in his town in Massachusetts. He is that guy. He does movies. And so I was like, huh, I am curious how the audience would appreciate it.

a little movie talk. And so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about one movie that came out about a month and a half ago, another one that came out about a week and a half ago. And these were, so long and short, is I wound up watching high and low because Howard told me to watch high and low. Or somebody told me to watch high and low. Either way, I watched it, the Kiro Sauer film, which of course is what Spike adapted highest to lowest for. And so watched a couple of those. And then people kept telling me to watch this one battle after another movie. And And one person told me they loved it. One person told me he hated it, and Howard told me it was worth watching.

And so here we are in the Howard world. Now, one battle after another, I figure we can start here. Here's what we're going on spoilers. We're going to do our best to avoid them, if at all possible, on this one. On the movie that came out in 1963, you're on your own. On the movie that came out in August, I'm not that worried about your feelings. On the one that came out last weekend, baby I'm going to do my best. I think that all seems fair, right?

I think it's fair. Okay. I mean, I never know when it comes to the spoiler alert. Some people are like, you know, two weeks. Some people are hardcore. They're like, hey, if you didn't see it opening weekend, that's on you. I'm not willing to wait to DVD, but I think two, three weeks is good. Yeah, like I feel like on something like this,

I would like to give people some context who might be like, oh, I might want to go see this movie. Because I did realize that I think in this day and age, like in a way, is the best way to put this. Something that's interesting about the streaming era that I don't think the youth think much about when it comes to music, for example. You used to have to roll the dice,

spend $12, $15, and then find out if the shit was banging. Right? Like now you get to kind of just tap in there or whatever it was, but you really used to have to take a chance. And so I think that a lot of people, I think people treat reviews of art

the same way they treat reviews on CNET. Hey, that got a bad review. I won't buy that refrigerator. Right? Which is not how this stuff is supposed to go, right? So I have people say something's really good and say something's really bad. I'm like, oh, I'm going to tap in. And so I did one battle for another.

I am curious your thoughts, because I know you enjoyed it, but your top line thoughts after watching. Top line is that I saw it twice. The first time I saw it, I saw it the day after it came out at M or CERC, Cinema, yes, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where I am on the board of directors, because I'm a geek, which is why they asked. And I thought it was, the first time I saw it, I was like, I need to see this again, but I thought it was brilliant.

I thought it was brilliant. And then I took my son to see it a couple days ago. And he immediately went, because he's the music kid, he immediately went to the score. He was like, this is unbelievable. And then in between, I was on the socials. And on the socials, there are people just trashing this movie. There were people praising it that it was the greatest thing that they've ever seen. And I think you're right that this, where we are right now in terms of our communication,

you just get so much input on everything from everybody from all kinds of different, from different sides. Me, my top line was, I thought it was just terrific movie making. And I just love, I love the approach to. movie making that Paul Thomas Anderson takes, right? Same with Spike Lee when we get into that. Give me an original filmmaker and then I'll make up my mind with the rest. So, let me run people through my day on this, right? People kept telling me I need to go see the Paul Thomas Anderson movie like I knew who that was. I had no idea who this person was, right? So let me run this through.

My man Jay hits me, and he says, people kept telling me that I would love this movie, and he didn't tell me what the movie was. I'm starting with no information. He says, people kept telling me I would love this movie, and I hated the movie. And then I found out why I might have hated the movie. And he sends me a clip from the wiki page that said, did the man have faux children with Maya Rudolph? Put a pin in that point. So the next person comes to me, and it's Spencer, and he was like,

you will love this new Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Again, I don't know what this movie is because no one has told me the name of it. Can I stop you right there, Bo? That is a synophile move right there, right? People who love movies, right? When you are, when you're one of those people, they won't even tell you, have you seen the new Scorsese? Have you seen the new Spice? Have you seen the new PTA? Have you seen the new Paul Thomas Anderson? They don't say, have you seen highest to lowest. They didn't say, have you seen Killers of the Flower Moon. They didn't say, have you seen one battle after another? They said, did you see the new Paul Thomas Anderson? Yo, so it's funny because I would refer to Highs to Lowes as the new Spike and Denzel movie because even if you didn't know the title, perhaps you

had seen the ads, right? This guy right here, I was just like, oh, I don't know what's going on here. And then I asked you about it and you said that you thought it was really good. And so I went and checked it out. But because people were referring to this man by three names, like, I was supposed to know who he was. I was like, well, damn, let me. me go look up his movies. And I was like, oh, he's the guy who did Boogie Nights, but also I had not seen any of those movies, right? There will be blood. Magnolia. Hadn't seen any of those. I was really broke around then. Like, I was like, like the timing of what my money was like depends on stuff, what the women I was

dating were into. That is going to affect how much I had gone to see movies. And keep in mind, I was raised by a man who believes the movies are tools of propaganda by the ruling regime. Okay. So we put all those things together. I had never seen. And don't forget that point as we keep talking. Yes, that's a big one. That's another one. Put a pin in, right?

So I had never seen boogie nights. So I decided before I go see one battle after another, that I should see boogie nights. Let me tell you what I don't recommend you guys do at 9.30 in the morning if you have not seen boogie nights. That is not really the way to ease yourself into your day. It's not quite like how when I saw the Scarface Tiny Desk first thing in the morning. which was another bad idea for a great piece of work. But anyway, I watch Buggy Nights, I take a break, and then I go to watch one battle after another

because I'm thinking, oh, there'll be some through lines, right? I'll be able to, since this man is just the name, I need to be able to be like, well, you know, in his other films, even though I'm only talking about film, right? Like, I was trying to get my boogey up for purposes of this discussion. Now, if you don't know about this movie, worth noting is the backdrop of it is, I will say for lack of a better term, the revolution.

Exactly what revolution we're talking about is not the point. And to be honest, not really spelled out that well by the movie itself. But it is kind of the amorphous concept of a revolution, which I think is another topic of discussion in terms of the effectiveness of the movie. But it is the idea that Tiana Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio and some other people, they part of a revolution. Tiana Taylor, I don't know, she was dating to Leonardo. Dacrio, she had this thing with Sean Penn.

It's kind of hard to explain all of this, right? But basically, she kind of did the Revolution dirty, and everything kind of goes from there, right? I found this movie had as much to do with Revolution as Boogie Nights had to truly do with the pornography industry, which is to say a pretty cool backdrop around which you can write a script. Right? Like, I didn't feel like there was a...

A thousand percent. Yeah, I didn't feel like... like there was an ethos behind it. I didn't feel like they were giving a proper representation. I mean, look, it's a revolution where password is versus from the revolution will not be televised. I mean, right there on the nose, man, drilled you right on the nose. But it is a thriller. And as a thriller, I would recommend a shorter movie the two hours of 45 minutes, for I ended my day of cinema exhausted by seven o'clock. As a thrill. As a thriller, I would recommend a short of movie, I absolutely found it thrilling.

Like that part I could not divorce myself from, but I did, like, I feel like the idea of the revolution may be a little too important to just make it a reason to have your fun little movie. You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like once again,

and that's the thing about putting a pin in this, like one of the interesting things about where we are right now, and in any point in time, but especially where we are right now, is your time period is going to determine what types of movies you're looking at and what themes that are being beamed at you.

And whether you're thinking about civil war, whether you're thinking about just the 21st century movies, whether you're thinking about the meal, whether you're thinking about Emily the criminal, whether you're thinking about, there's a lot of these movies which are essentially this combination of 21st century anti-capitalism and then also this civil war anti-capitalism. and then also this Civil War anti-Trump nation falling apart theme. And you can tell that directors and writers are trying to tap into this somewhere. They're trying to say something about it. What I liked about this movie was that it was unlike Civil War, which I thought was timid.

And I thought it was, I didn't like it at all because it didn't say, it didn't spell out. okay, there's a civil war, but who are the sides? Who's fighting? And what are they fighting about? The movie didn't want to go there. This movie at the very least, the movie begins with, you know, the immigrant detainment detention camps. So you know that this is essentially an anti-soit immigration and, you know, anti-Trump resistance, right? The way that this country is going, that these are radicals who are going. going against the momentum of the country.

I thought that was enough. That was good, right? If you're expecting them to go two, three, four steps into the philosophy of revolution, the reason why we're here, the actual reasons why the individuals in the film are doing this, then you'll find it very lacking. In fact, that's one of the things that the Tiana Taylor character really does represent in terms of a great splinter in why people online are trash in the film, because it's like, okay, also when it comes to Paul Thomas Anderson, he does not, with the exception really of

Don Sheetal and Boogie Nights, he doesn't have a lot of black characters in his movies. And so this one, now post-Oskers-So White, in the middle of Trump, he's got three black women in the beginning of his movie. And so that in of itself was going to create a lot of response. Yeah, I think part of it with the black women is Can you imagine a world where Maya Rudolph watches the movie and then comes back and it's like, oh, so that's what you really like, huh? Because I can imagine the scenario where Maya Rudolph watches the movie it comes back and be like, oh, that's what you really want, huh?

Like, there's a, there is a heavy sister. Yeah, yeah, if I say, you love black girls, don't you. This is a heavy, but it's a heavy sister girl between the Tiana Taylor's character and Jungle Pussy and yes, that is the woman's name I didn't come up with this myself

but in the ways in which they could port themselves it is a I think a very stereotypical portrayal of the women that you may have there. Highly sexualized, that's right. Highly sexualized and again you love white boys, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, I love, you know, all this and it's like, oh! And that's why we put the pit in the had four children with the black woman thing, right? Like there's parts in there throwing in where Leonardo DiCaprio talks about not knowing how to do the daughter's hair, like his black daughter's hair. So it is clearly on my man's mind, right? These black people are not black people in this movie by accident. For whatever reason, they are added as a vessel for whatever the point is that's trying to be made except for the fact that you get to the end and you don't really feel like a point

was actually being made. Yeah, there's a vehicle there. And I think, and I, and to me, and that's where a lot of the criticism of the movies coming from. Like, for me, when, when the movie came out, the first, I have still not heard anybody say this was a poorly made movie. I hear people say it was trash. I've heard people say they didn't like it. I've heard people say it was awful. But from a technical movie making standpoint, Paul Thomas Anderson, just like Clint Eastwood, just like, they know how to make a movie. You may not like the movie, but they know how to make a movie. I mean, that 245 went by a pretty damn fast for a 245. But the anger that I've seen people have toward this film is once again the centering of black people in these films by these white directors. It becomes a very

racialized movie. And to me, what I thought, you know, look, if you go to a movie, my philosophy is very simple. The director is trying to take you on a journey. If you are down with the director's journey, you'll probably enjoy the film, whether you love it or not. It's a different story, but you'll probably go along with it. If you're not down with the journey from the start, you're probably going to hate the movie. And what this film did, I don't have very high expectations when it comes to white directors in how they're going to portray us anyway. I never have. I mean, it's like, and black people love Tarantino movies. And I look at Tarantino in terms of his writing and his dialogue and the whole thing. And I'm like, he thinks that we all. And I'm like,

he thinks that we all either sound like Samuel Jackson or Superfly, right? I mean, that's where his whole, his whole ethos in there is this sort of black exploitation thing. And so pretty daring, pretty bold choice from Paul Thomas Anderson to have the three black women in there now. And I thought that, number one, I didn't see the, I could see the stereotype and I didn't like it. I could see the hypersexualized black woman. I could see the racializing of the sexuality. And it was all, to me, I thought it was very surface.

And I thought that that was, I could see why people would be upset about it. But on the other hand, I also felt like there are bad people in movies. Like I didn't feel like the Tiana Taylor character was inconsistent with her character. Now, you might have disagreed with the, you know, with the fact that was she a revolutionary, was she not? I think one of the things about these movies that I really, really sort of liked and that we don't think about it when you think about historical movements is how young they all are, like how young Asada Shakur was.

In fact, the fact that the movie came out, the week she died, which is not on purpose, was kind of wild. But when you think about MLK and Malcolm X and Stokely Carmich and. Fred Hampton. And Fred Hampton and Abby Hoff. Oh, they're so young. And so to me, I always look at these characters as well, is that they're also just very young people.

And young people just do wild shit, right? And yeah, was it inconsistent to me to see a young person who may be full of ideals, who actually kind of gets off on the violence and gets off on the thrill of the violence? I thought that was completely consistent. And I was like, that didn't throw me. But what I really loved about it was then also then comes the reality of what your movement

also is, like when there's a possibility that you may actually kill somebody. Right. And then people actually come to kill you. And then maybe you are looking at 40 years in prison. And all of a sudden, now the adult reality start to come in and suddenly the violent, you know, the thrill of it is now colliding with the reality of the choice. and also the movement itself. And so I thought that those different themes,

I didn't have a problem with that at all. So I thought the thing I did find interesting about the Taylor character, especially the way she is shot, is I'm trying to figure out how much of that is in sports they call it K-Y-P, and in this case, I mean the personnel being the audience, because if you're absolutely,

they shot her like, you want that, don't you? You want that. Like they shot that to me. If you didn't want that, the way they shot that. Right. They shot her like they want you to feel like, oh, lockjaw,

the Sean Penn character felt like how it could possibly be that she could have him on string just as easy as she did. A string, I'm not even positive that she wanted to have him all, right? Like, that is, they shot that in such a way where when I say, know your personnel, I'm thinking to the personnel in this case is the audience, right?

where I find it to a degree to be a bit offensive the way that is being shot. But this man knows the people that he thinks is watching this movie and has decided that this is the way that we are going to. It was like starring Tiana Taylor

and Tiana Taylor's body. That was the play that they made on that. Now, I wanted to ask you this. This I thought was an interesting question. I felt like in Boogie Nights in this one, in building to these climaxes,

you got to points where it's like, oh, man, somebody got caught up in the air and isn't exactly sure how we're going to land this plane. Like, you know, that scene in Boogie Nights where Don Cheadle pulls up to the donut shop and then everybody gets shot for him. Come on, man, the game cheating. Like, that's not, this isn't going to happen.

He was just like, I need some way to give this man this money and to get him out of this robbery all at one time. And this is the means for it. And now he gets to get out of the pornography game. I'm like, come on, man. game, cheating. You know what that ain't? He would never make that shot in real life. You know, that can never happen. Well, I felt like so much of the wrap up in the action of this one was like, oh, come on, man, come all, man, you're not even trying. Well, and that's the thing. Anybody who's

ever tried to land a plane, whether you're writing a magazine story, a newspaper story, or a book, you know, it's like, okay, the parachute ain't opened yet. It still hasn't opened yet. And in the Boogie Night scene, the only thing, the false note, now I actually, that scene is wild. Don Chita walks in there with a white suit, right? And there's a bloodbath. The only false note in that scene to me wasn't that he survived because that was a shooting gallery. It's just luck. He just luck.

He just got lucky. The false note in that scene was that whatever in that register was enough for him to start his own business. Yes. that was the piece. I was like, you didn't get enough money out of this. Also, how many fucking dumbed us are they sell it? It's 1983. How many don't want us?

They're moving a lot of don't. I mean, that's a lot of bare claws right there, a lot of eclays. Right? I mean, so that was the piece of it. With this one, I thought that the two things, just to get back to one quick point, I thought that the racial elements of it were so, and maybe I'm just on social media way too much.

The movie's really not only about black people or black women. You could make an argument. It's not really about that at all. I mean, there's, you know, there's Benicio D'Ochoa steals the show. Right. I mean, he's phenomenal. Yeah, I think in terms of the idea of revolution, it is much more in line with the immigration crisis.

With immigration, exactly. And that's not getting talked about as much, probably because of my social media algorithm, right? I mean, it's like, okay, how is this being beam to me and who's doing the talking and where am I getting my information from? But I thought that once again, I thought the Regina Hall character was completely consistent. I thought she was great. I thought she was great because she was the only person in that film between him, between her and the Billy Goat. Right? And I think those two characters were the only two characters in the film that you could see were actually committed to a philosophy.

Right. Like they were committed to, we need to overthrow this system philosophically. But I do love the fact, you know, that there's one scene, you know, later in the movie where one of the revolutionaries goes, you know, I've been tired of this shit for a long time, right? Where you're also recognizing after 15, 16, 20 years, are we making a dent? It reminds me of the scene, the Kurt Russell scene in Tombstone where he's talking about, you know, and I was in Dodge City, I only shot one man and, you know, didn't even make a dent, did I?

I really loved that piece of it because now you are reflecting, what was all this for? Right. Right. And then it does come back. And one of the things that Paul Thomas Anderson does very well, I mean, Boogie Knights is not a movie about the porn industry. Boogie Knights is a story about family. Right. Boogie Nights is a story about being an outcast and can, once you are an outcast, can you ever get back in?

And if you look at every single character in Boogie Nights, each one of them that tries to go straight gets thwarted. They can't. You are a pornographer, right? I'm an actor, right? I mean, that's what this is about. And in this movie, in one battle after another, I thought people sort of got, they got, I think people got so caught up on the hypersexualized black women and they got so caught up on, you know, what Leo DiCaprio is. sort of stage in his career if you take this and you take killers of the flower moon where he's sort of this, you know, aging, bumbling, you know, he's not the cute little kid in Titanic

anymore, right? Mm-hmm. I thought that a lot of this really was also sort of reflecting about movements themselves, about when you get involved in something, are you actually making a dent? He's checked out, right? I mean, the decision to sort of turn this into your earlier point, about camp, how much satire did it deserve, how much of a comedy should it have been, all director's choices. And you either ride with those choices or you don't. Now, I do think,

though, where it is fair to say there is cowardly filmmaking at play to me is the white villains are so two-dimensional. Yeah. Right. Like, this. There is no, there's, for example, there's nothing normal about the Sean Penn character. He's the Terminator. Right, right, right. There's like this, there's, there's nothing. Even him pulling up at our house with the flowers is just weird. Like once you ultimately get to it and realize it, you're like, wait a minute, there was no

relationship here. This is just, this is just insanity. Like he just thought. Well, and transactional on both sides. Right, right. Like, oh, no, no, no. This is nuts. But every white person that's in that movie is cartoon bad.

Like the idea of the right wind. secret society, for example, goes far. And then they, the steps they wish they take to do a bunch of stuff, all of it. Like the idea then we bring in a right-wing militia and all these other things. And then the way that the scripts gets tidied up at various points is just like, oh, damn, we got to get out of here. Right. Like, hey, man, I know what it looks like when you're writing on deadline, baby.

Like, you would just mention that before. Like, hey, man, all right, sweetie's got to wrap it. It's just got to be finished. Exactly. And that's what I mean about the ride the director has taken you on, right? if you, and obviously once again, right, I mean, the revolution will not be televised. You can hear it in the background in one of the scenes, right? You can hear Gil Scott Heron in the background.

You know, Leo DiCaprio is light in a joint watching the Battle of Algiers, you know? I mean, it's like, okay, we, you know, frying pan hit in the face. We get it, right? We get that point. And so 100% if you're, it's one of those types of films. where they're riding a very fine line between, are we going to do something serious, or is this just camp?

Are we taking a serious subject during a very serious time in the country right now? And are we simply sort of having Hollywood whimsy with it? And I think that's one of the really interesting things in terms of the reaction to the movie is that people are so thirsty for something that says anything that they're in some ways misrepresenting this movie as to be more than what it is.

Yes. And I think that, and that leads to backlash. Because in the end, I realize, I expect, for whatever reason, I expect more for music than I expect for movies. I expect movies to be candy. And if you give me something that I can really sink into, then fantastic.

But I only get mad if you try to act like it's more than it is. Yeah. And I feel like, in this case, I thought it was a cool movie. Yeah, exactly. And that's what it was. And I think that the more times you see it and the more, not that you're going to see it multiple times, but the more time that gets, you know, the more

space we get from the movie, that it's going to reduce itself and be just a movie. It's not a documentary. It's not a revolutionary statement. It's funny, right? There are different movies, you know, they went for the funny. They went. And one of the things that Paul Thomas Anderson does a very, very good job of, whether you're watching, you know, the Alfred Molina scene in boogie nights, or whether you're watching, you know, Daniel Day Lewis and there will be blood or you're even, even, you know, phantom thread to a lesser, it gets a much more muted film. But there's frenzy in it. And in that frenzy, there's comedy.

And he went for the comedy. So I think once again, being able to look at the film for what it is instead of what you needed it to be, there are two different things. And I think that, you know, one of the things that my sister and I always sort of battle on is that I've always said, and especially in today's, you know, where we are the last 15 years, I don't need necessarily black people to be front and center in all these films. I really don't. I never have.

I don't like people. I just need more people to look like me and then to see people look like me on screen. That's a big deal. But to me, it's a bigger deal because I want to see black people working. You know, these are big jobs. That's $140 million budget. If you're Tiana Taylor, you get a chance to be, you know, to be a star. You get more work from this.

But in terms of needing them to portray us in a certain way, we're never going to get portrayed the way that we want to be seen. We have been watching, you know, white Hollywood do white Hollywood things our whole lives. So I've never felt like, oh, I really, really neat. Because then what if you take me, you know, and, you know, and Butterfly McQueen? me? You know, what if you take me and turn me into a caricature every single time? Or like, you know, when you look at, you know, the hypersexual nature of the, of the characters. And by the way, she's the only one. I know her and the jungle pussy character in the bank. But, you know,

do I trust you to represent me or would I rather have me represent me in terms of who gets to make these films? Right. All right. Coming up next, we're going to talk about this Spike Lee movie, but also really, it's Kirozawa is something else. Coming up next. Football is back and so is your shot at big wins. With Draft Kings pick six, the official daily fantasy partner of the NFL, your game day instincts can score you real money fast.

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ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to do. higher. All right. We are back on with Howard Bryant. And okay, so highest to lowest came out in August. Spike Lee, Denzel, Washington, ASAP Rocky. And I was recommended. I believe it was, I can't remember if you told me to watch it. I know you told me to check the Spike one, too. But no, you had mentioned the Kuro Sawa one that you had watched it. It said, sitting at the house. I'm like, okay, I'll put it on max and I will watch high and low, right? And the distinction in the titles is important in this one. Because in high and low, everything fits into this theme of high and low,

but without being, it never felt heavy-handed to me, even though it was very clear what was going on. But plot of the movie is very simple, and we're not really messing nothing up by telling you this. It is a rich Japanese businessman who has just taken out a bunch of money in loans to try to do a leverage buyout of the company that he works for. and then he believes his son has been kidnapped. And so now he has to come up with the ransom to get this child back.

But he has the ransom to get this child back. If he spends the money on the ransom to get the child back, he will lose everything he owns. And he also finds out it's not his child. He also finds out it's not his child. So what do you do? You have to do it. He makes the trade.

And then everything goes from there. Now, what is interesting is that where high and low is a police procedure as much as anything else that is not at all the case. Highest to lowest is about getting to the bottom of it, but the cops don't play nearly the same role in that as they do in high and low. But high and low, also in part of the metaphor is this man lives in a house that's up on high. And keep in mind, this is Japan fewer than 20 years after the end of World War II. And it's overlooking a slum, which is a very important detail.

And there are other places where this idea, like the cops are searching high and low for the child, for example. and there's some other ones that are a bit more plot specific. But it is a staggering statement on capitalism in a bunch of different ways. And it is expressly clear to be that. Spike Lee made highest to lowest, which takes the same theme, except it's Denzel Washington as the owner of the guy in charge of a record company who is trying to do a leverage buyout to get his record company back. And then a similar thing happens.

He thinks his son has been kidnapped, but his son hasn't really been kidnapped. And then we go from there. There are some major changes that were made between the two movies that I find to be somewhat indefensible, right? It's in some ways, my buddy Jason, I talk about Jason Anglin. He wrote something for a defector

about the changes that Corey Jefferson made from Eurasia by Percival Everett in order to make American fiction. And yeah, in some of those change, once you make those changes, you're turning this into something completely different. You're making a different film. Right. And so I know that you have said the Spike has said that he reimagined

high and low, but one could argue he de-imagined high and low. Because High and Low was a fairly entertaining movie with all the Spike Lee Hallmarks, by the way, put a pin in that point. But, man, high and low is throwing fastball after, fastball after, fastball. Yeah, it's a beast. And in 1963, I think that the thing about, and that's the other thing too, right, how much Kurosawa do you know? I only knew Kurosawa from the samurai Kurosawa. This was the first Kurosawa that I had seen that wasn't seven, you know, seven samurai or Roshaman, or you know, or Yorimbo, right? And I ended up going down the Kurosawa non-Samurai rabbit hole.

I've watched a curro and stray dog and whoa. This man, I mean, no wonder, right? It's like, oh. And I think one of the reasons why it's important to watch some of these films is that you can see where all the, where today's directors are getting a lot of their stuff, right? It's called, it's foundational. And I thought that when I saw highest to lowest, I thought the biggest thing in that film, you know, you could see that you could definitely see the different metaphors. But you also know that Japan in 1963, in Japan now is a homogenous society. In 1963, clearly there was a trust in society that does not exist in the United States

and certainly doesn't exist now. You know damn well that in 2025 there was no possible way that Spike Lee was going to do a police procedural and have the police essentially solve the crime. That was not happening. So now what do you do, you know, in terms of that landing the plane thing? who's going to land the plane. It's going to be 70-year-old Denzel Washington, running the streets like he's, you know,

like he's McCall and the equalizer. And so that piece of it sort of, once again, changes the shift. It shifts the film. And also I thought that the choice that in high and low, the kidnappers kidnap little kids, Those are grade school kids. They're what, nine years old, nine or ten years old.

And this one, they kidnapped teenagers, which may have just been a way to get, you know, to get Rod Strickland and Rick Fox in a basketball camp to get them in the movie, right? But that changed everything because I think you have somewhat less sympathy for the teenagers because they're more grown, so it's not as tense. But I also felt like Spike,

I was surprised that in the 21st century, the land of billionaires, where even the Milwaukee bucks are worth $4 billion, right, that Kurosawa hit capitalism harder than Spike did. And my theory on that, and I don't have necessarily a problem with it because I get it, it reminded me a little bit of Jordan Peel and get out, like, are we really going to get kicked in the gut at the end of this movie? Are we going to make it comedy, right? I don't know if Spike really wanted to go after black capitalism as hard as Kurosawa went after capitalism.

And it was surprising because the thing about high and low, the other high and low metaphor was that he was high and then he was low. Mr. Gondo, he lost everything. Yeah. But the thing is, Spike is rich, right? Like Spike's like, hey, man, the rich people ain't all that bad. And right, right, right. It also becomes interesting because your kidnapping movie now has to be so much more sophisticated plot-wise.

Because one thing that stood out to be in watching Kiro Sawa was, wow, it was a lot easier to get away with a kidnapping than it used to be. Right. No technology. Yeah, like you see the people go pick up the buddy off the ground and everything. And then run away. Yeah, yeah. You see all the things and they still try to figure it out. I thought another important change that was made that I think made the movie less compelling was

there was a clear, higherarchical relationship between Mr. Gondo and the chauffeur in high and low, where the chauffeur in highest to lowest is his man's from the block. And it changes the calculus completely on the decision of whether or not you spend the money. And which he still didn't want to. I mean, I took my boy to see that movie. We walked out of there and as I was telling you last week, it was the first movie, he's 21 now, and it's the first movie where he's starting to get into, you know, because we watch Marvel movies and we watch little kid movies and now he's grown.

And it's the first movie where he's realizing that your protagonist may not be a hero. And he walked out of that and he's like, I don't know. I don't think I liked himself in this movie. I don't know if Denzel's heroic. I said he's not. He's not heroic. There are layers to this character. And I think that, like, once again, we talk about courageous filmmakers.

I still like Tyos to Lois because Spike Lee is a brilliant filmmaker. Despite their holes in the film, sure. People hate the way Spike, you know, his portrayal of women, the way he writes female characters. I mean, there are so many things about Spike. But you know what you're getting when you're getting Spike and you're going to get touches. I thought that the kidnapping chase scene was classic Spike brilliance. I thought that, you know, you're going to get the Spike Lee Dolly shot. Spike Lee's not Spike Lee if I don't get a dolly shot, right?

And I felt like I thought that, you know, what Spike was also doing was that Spike, the thing about Spike Lee films is that Spike makes movies in a lot of ways as though I got one shot. I got one shot to say all the things I want to say. So he crams everything. He makes gumbo. You know what I mean? He puts all the ingredients in the movie.

This is an anti-Trump movie. This is an anti-Trump vision movie. This is a, you know, I'm living in a time where this is your vision of America, where whiteness is your vision of America. And Spike is in New York at the Puerto Rican Day parade. That is his response to this. It's his response to where we are right now as a culture. And so you're trying to juggle all these things. And you still have this plot, this movie that you also still have to follow.

And I thought that where Spike decided to go with his highest to lowest metaphor, for was really in the relationship between Denzel and Jeffrey Wright, that Spike, that Denzel had respectable black rich money and Jeffrey Wright's the ex-con. So the treatment, the way he gets treated by the, the way Jeffrey Wright gets treated by the police, the way, I think that was Spike, Spike went his high and low there, whereas Kurosawa went high and low in terms of just raw capitalism. Yeah. And Kurosawa did this in like eight years. different ways. It was a much more extended metaphor

and gets all the way to, and look, I really recommend all the Carosile movies are on Max. If you have Max, it is worth seeing high and low, if only for dope alley. That's right. Dope Alley is at the end of the film, and I was just like, oh, look at him

into the movie with a dollop of anti-blackness. But it is very intriguing anti-blackness. Anti-Americanism, anti-modernism. That's the thing. It's actually really, more anti-American is probably fair, but it involved a dollop of the black and them Japanese ladies had beehives. Like, that's where I was just like, oh, I mean, they had black woman hair dudes. Like, it was very much so, uh, I see you saying, I see you. And modern, you know, and

modernity is coming. And I think it's important to remember once again, you have to have, if you don't have institutional memory and none of us do, because we only live for a certain period of time on this earth. So you have institutional memory for your moment on earth. I wasn't alive in 1963. But imagine what Japan was like from 1945 on knowing that you were being occupied by the United States. So yeah, we get showyotani. We get Japanese baseball. You had American influence all over that country coming out of the war. And it was ruthless in a lot of ways because they were the defeated foe. And so when you're looking at a director like Kurosawa, look at the different ways that he is depicting what that must have felt like having Americanism in your very isolated

Japanese culture. And then to throw the jazz music in there and to throw the GIs in there and to really zoom in on the black faces interacting with the Japanese women, even though we know that the majority of that relationship was white Asian, when white Japanese interracial. He was saying something. He was saying something about the culture. And what he was saying, though, was not really that different in some ways

to what black people in the 20s and 30s were saying about ourselves when it came to jazz in the influence of the music and what it was doing to the culture. But this was much more raw, especially when you add heroin to it. There was a lie. Yeah, boy.

Yeah, yeah. They brought all the worst of the jazz into it. They treated jazz like playmakers treated the NFL when it came on, right? Like, the jazz was jamming, too. I do want to throw that part out there. I would also say this somehow I had never considered that there was a time when Japan looked like Pittsburgh. Yeah. That was the first movie.

And that includes Godzilla. That includes the 1954 Godzilla. and even Godzilla minus one, which is brilliant. It's the first movie where Japan does not look pristine, where you're looking at post-war Japan, and that place is wrecked, and the people are wrecked, and they don't have jobs, and you're like, oh, the only thing I ever heard about Japan was that it was so clean,

you could eat off the streets. That place looks awful, and the people look awful, and they look beaten, and they look hopeless. and there's not a whole lot going on. And in a lot of ways, that backdrop in of itself explains why high and low works so well, because, of course, Mr. Gondos is a target. He's got air conditioning, you know, Mr. Rich guy, right? And that's the – Kurosawa does a phenomenal job in that because everybody else is walking around

with fans and towels dabbing themselves. It must have been hot. And here's this man up there and his nice, cool air conditioning. house up on the hill and people hate you for that. They hate you for that to the point where am I willing to kill because I hate you? Maybe. You know? And I thought that in highest to lowest, that was a very interesting relationship because they're trying to create that same resentment with ASAP Rocky toward Denzel. And you could feel, and some of it I thought was believable and some of it I wasn't quite sure because it was so personal, because they took the, because they made the

decision to have Denzel solve his own crime. So that really personalized the relationship between those two, whereas in high and low, the, you know, the kidnapper, the villain in the movie really saw Mr. Gondo, saw the rich guy as more of a metaphor. He didn't know him. Right. These guys, he just synced him. He just synced.

And that's all he needed to see. All he needed to see was. is that you got something I don't have. Right. And I hate you for it. Right. Whereas high as the lowest, he just wanted a record deal.

And I'm going to be honest with you, man. In this day and age, you can't get it yourself. I feel like it's your fault. That's on you. Yeah, it was a little more difficult. Also, A.S. Brackie did an okay job.

But the kidnapper at high and low, man, you know, where he changed the whole ending just because the dude had gone so hard and has sold the idea so strong in the end. And if you came here thinking that I'm sorry, I'm not. You know, I mean, and that's what I mean about it. And it really does also go back, you know, to switch gears a tiny bit. It also goes back to one battle after another where as a movie go, or you have to ask yourself,

what questions do I need answered? What questions do I need answered for myself? What questions do I need the director to answer for me? and what questions do I want to just let my imagination answer? For example, right? What happens to those revolutionaries? I asked my son this, do you think they went to prison or did they just get offed? Right?

What happened to the Billy Goat? Is he rotten in some jail right now? Or did they just end him, right? I mean, like the scene where, you know, like, you know, sorry, spoiler alert, you know, jungle pussy. Oh, no more pussy. Right? I mean, it's like, so do you need those questions answered for you?

Or do you want your imagination to do the talking for you? Well, hold on. The question that I need answered is, how did jungle pussy know that important piece of information? Do you need to know that? Exactly. Or maybe they just, you know, they were talking one day in the van. I don't know. I mean, do you need to know that?

Is it something that is germane? And I think that the one thing, you know, the one thing I do also want to get out too was I thought that the score in one battle after another was brilliant. The music that carried that from the highway chase scene at the end was brilliant, but also the very thelonious monk flavored Benetio. It was all off-time in keys. It was great. And I was like, and that just kept you going in of itself.

And the one thing that Paul Thomas Anderson does a really good job of is chaos, you know. And I think that when you look at the juxtaposition of the labyrinthian way that these movements, not movements themselves, but the way these sort of underground networks, look at all the different mazes that the white supremacists have underneath these houses and stuff to get to these secret locations. And then, of course, look at the different mazes that Benetio del Toro has to sort of get the migrants to safety. it's all this sort of underground sort of under the surface thing that's taking place. I thought the choreography on the rooftop and the skateboarders were great. It was all. And of course, also the message there too is if you're going to be like revolutionary, it's good to be young.

So you can jump rooftops. Yes. But I thought that all of that just made for really, really, really good movie making. But to your point, your point also about landing the plane, now you've got the Native American bounty hunter has to make a choice that may not have been completely consistent with his life choices. And so it did make you wonder, all right, why did you do what you did? And so once again, that gets to plot hole territory. Exactly. That's when you were talking about the filmmaking piece about, okay, the parachute hasn't

opened yet. Yeah, like that part has, gets to where it's like, oh, I think it's fair to ask if this is a mistake. Another device that I noticed in Buggy Nights that he seemed to employ at the end here, and I don't know if it's the rest of his, but one way for landing the plane is to have events happen in geographic proximity so that you're going to

have a car leave one event and drive you pass where the next event is going. And in Boogie Nights as a in terms of the way it was shot, it's a lot, Boogie Nights had a lot more long shots that start you here with these people and then the one person walks and then it leads you. Kurosawa did

a lot of this in high and low also. That's right. That's right. That's right. You could be on the same shot for 10 or 15 minutes. Yeah. It's a Pulpiction Tarantino touch. Yeah. Yeah. Another movie I haven't seen. Don't tell nobody. Um, that it takes, that is taking people from place to place. And he does that at the, and he does this with the ending of one battle after another, which leads to a lot of highly implausible things. Like, just like, I don't, I don't understand how this all played out in the way it did other than they told you this movie. can't be longer than two hours and 45 minutes, so you need to figure out how to wrap this shit up. Well, and that is the question. Once again, what is the number one thing that you have

to decide when you watch a movie? How much suspension of disbelief am I willing to put up with? Yes. Right? I mean, you can't watch a superhero movie without suspension of disbelief. It's all suspension of disbelief. And so some of this, it's like, there is no way when you're watching this that those events could take place in the time that they did in time for them to happen as they did, but they happened because he was making a movie. And so some of that's his explanation for everything. It's a goddamn movie. Exactly. It's just a movie, right? So, but I really, like I said, I think there's also another piece of this very, very quickly that I think is interesting. And that is our reaction to it because of how we're receiving information. The way that people

shit on that movie stunned me. But this is where we are right now, right? In terms of like, for me, when I go to watch a movie, I don't want any reviews. I just want to see it. I don't want to know anything about it. I will watch a trailer to decide if I'm going to go see it. But after that, I'll read the New Yorker in the New York Times and the letterboxed reviews. I'll read all that stuff afterward. But this movie, because I think it hit during this cultural moment and also because we've got so much noise on the socials, you couldn't escape it. People were talking about this,

and I just felt like, you know, I got it. I understood why there were some of the characters were considered to be problematic, but I also thought it was a very, very good movie. Ladies and gentlemen, that is Howard Bryan. Check him out at a movie theater near you. Wow, that almost sounded creepy.

But you know what I'm saying? He likes movies. That's all. I appreciate your brother. Amen. Thank you. And you know what? I think maybe it would be a good idea to see pole fiction.

I knew you were going to say that. I thought about keeping that to myself. And I'm not even a Tarantino guy. You know what? Maybe I'll watch it sometime this week, but I knew that he was going to... Maybe I'll watch it by the time these people would get him... You see Pulp Fiction? No, I haven't.

I just told you I hadn't seen the goddamn movie. All right. And by the way, last thing, Beau, when people say shit like that, that's part of the reason I haven't seen it. Don't tell me what I need to go see. I'll see it when I feel like seeing it. That's what I'm... It comes up when it comes up.

That's all I'm saying. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. Really, let us know what you thought about this. This is something I'm trying to do. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work. But I'm asking you for your feedback. I am making myself vulnerable to you.

I care what you think. Man, if your audience don't like movies, come on. Hey, look, man. They might not want to hear you. hear me talk about it is all I'm saying. I have to humble myself in that regard. You know, maybe you just need to do it without me. But Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.

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