The Watch - Ep. 63: The Watch Re-up: The Year in Movies

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

Chris Ryan is joined by Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey to talk about the year in movies so far; they discuss the disastrous reception of 'Suicide Squad' and the problem with comic-book universe films (2:30). Later, the two discuss how streaming services may be responsible for this year's poor offerings in theaters (24:00) and offer up their thoughts on some upcoming films (35:00), including 'Manchester by the Sea,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'Silence,' 'Gold,' and 'Passengers.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before we get started with this episode of The Watch, re-up, I just wanted to mention that the Ringer now has merch. So go to Bitley.com slash Ringer Merch, where you can find shirts and hoodies. A portion of the proceeds from each purchase will benefit charity water, a nonprofit organization that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Again, go now to B-I-T-L-Y.com slash Ringer merch. Get the threads. I need sports to have to clear the room.

Stand up and walk. Hello and welcome to the watch. Rieup. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor of Ringer.com. And joining me in the studio is the editor-in-chief of the ringer.com. Sean Fentasy! Thank you so much, Chris.

I may be the editor-in-chief, but today I am the Harley Quinn to your Joker. So excited to be here. Sean, I wanted to have you on Andy is in Philadelphia drinking a black cherry soda, chilling. Lazy. Yeah. Lazy. But we wanted to talk today. a little bit. I mean, we were, we wanted to talk about the year in movies 2016 and do a little

bit of survey because earlier today, you sent a message to me and you were like, I think this might be the worst summer in my adult life for movies. Yeah, that's right. And that sort of led to a larger conversation about the year in movies. And this is all kind of wrapped around this catastrophic last 48 hours for the like for suicide squad, which whether or not you were personally invested in the movie or even interested in it, is just kind of staggering to watch this happen to a multi-hundred million dollar investment by Warner Brothers. So where we're at right now is that despite the fact that,

as of two days ago at least, it was tracking at $140 million for the opening weekend, which is very significant. Yeah, that's big. It has been absolutely savaged by critics by almost everybody who's seen it. It's something at like 32% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. And we come into today with its director,

David Eyre last night, or this morning really, posting a quote from Emiliano Zapata that translated, it was in Spanish, but translated it was, it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. And then he followed that up with Zapata quote is my way of saying, I love the movie and I believe in it, made it for the fans, best experience of my life, heart emoji. What do you think about everything that's happened in the last 48 hours with this film? I think that this is something that could not have happened even five years ago. It's amazing that David Ayer has to send this tweet out two and a half days before the movie is even available to audiences.

Just the enormous amount of expectation that is placed on all these movies is horrifying. It was interesting to watch the torrent of negative reviews come out yesterday morning immediately after the embargo was lifted on reviews because it seemed like the movie critics of America had been sharpening their swords prepared to be. be unhappy about this movie, which is interesting because it has had a very long run-up. You know, there's been a long conversation about the anticipation or lack thereof about Suicide Squad that started, I guess, last year when the first teaser came out and then really got amplified after Batman v. Superman Dawn of Justice. The Zach Snyder film simultaneously made a lot of money, but not enough money, and was also really savaged by critics.

So, Air was unfortunately placed in this situation where the guy who, you know, he was. made Street Kings and Fury and a number of other really dark violent movies. And end of watch and sabotage. Yeah. Who has like a very dystopic and violent and crime-laden, you know, filmography was then forced to brighten up the DC Comics movie universe. Yeah. So there was, you always love a behind the troubled production of blank 12 hours before

your movie comes out to show up in the Hollywood Reporter. That's what happened today. So Suicide Squad had this Hollywood Reporter Exposé in which it was suggested that it would need to make in the neighborhood of $750 million to break even. I don't know how that happens. And that there had basically been, Air had done his version. They started testing that version. It did not satisfy audiences. It did not satisfy the Warner Brothers.

This is also happening at the same time as Batman versus Superman getting pretty roundly. panned by most critics, all critics almost. And then they started working on a newer, like a different version of the movie. And by all accounts, Suicide Squad is basically two or three different movies grafted onto one another, a very dark film. Then there's like a pop art, happy go lucky kind of fun comic book movie in there. And I don't know what else. And then you've got Jared Lido mailing people dead animal hearts. Right. I just can't, I can't imagine what, At what point do you have to cut your losses? I mean, at what point do you, they've already tried giving it to Zach Snyder.

And now Jeff Johns, who is sort of a big DC comics guy, is in charge of a lot of this. It's sort of fascinating to watch. Like, I don't really know what you do. This is why Sony dropped Spider-Man entirely. I mean, they had like a six-movie plan for the Spider-Man universe. And it was such a bad investment that they were just like, we'll give up one of the most valuable comic book properties there is. Yeah. You know, last time you and I talked on this show, we talked about,

Civil War, the latest Captain America movie. And, you know, I think you felt like it was fine. And Jason Concepcion and I were like, this is actually really good. And the bar between those two things is closer than it seems. And the fact that DC can't even get close to it really makes you appreciate what the Marvel Comics movie universe is able to do. You know, it seems a little bit road at this point. And as we wait for Thor Ragnarok or Dr. Strange or all these movies that seem inessential but are somehow part of this grander story that they're trying to tell, D.C. really can't get a toehold on how to serve the audience. Yeah.

They thought they were going to go, they thought they were going to zag where Marvel had zigged. And America seemed, and maybe the world seemed to think like we prefer the zigging. You know, we're not super into the zagging. Yeah. So it's a tough spot for Suicide Squad. It's a tough spot for Warner Bros. It's a tough spot for this entire DC plan. You know, obviously two weeks ago after Comic-Con,

we were looking at the trailers for Wonder Woman and we were looking at the trailer, the T's trailer for Justice League, and thought, oh, you know, maybe they've figured a couple of things out, and now they've just driven head-on into another roadblock. And it comes on the heels of, I mean, we all had a lot of fun observing the disaster that befell Fantastic Four. I mean, not a lot of fun,

because I think we all wanted that movie to be cool, and we like Miles Teller and Michael P. Jordan, And we're like Chronicles. We wanted Josh Trank to have a career. Yeah, we wanted it to be good. And that kind of fell apart. And there's been a couple of weeks, Andy and I've talked about this a lot recently of talk about Rogue One reshoots and how they were, you know, also the Star Wars stuff.

I mean, Josh Trank was supposed to be the director of a Star, I don't know if it was going to be Rogue One, but it was supposed to be another. I believe it was episode nine. Oh, okay. Right, the one that Trevor O got. Yeah. Okay. So it seems like,

either they, studios can't control the product they're making or they really can't control the way people talk about it anymore. Well, it's an interesting thing. I think that historically in the 120 years of American movie making, it's only in the last 10 to 15 that audience expectation has been a part of the equation that the studios have to consider. In the past, a studio could announce, we're making a movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark about a character named

Indiana Jones. And Americans would be like, I don't know who that is. Right. And then they would see a trailer and they would be like, that looks so fun. And then their friend would see it on Friday night and they would say, you have to see Raiders. I'll go see it again with you. Yes.

And then they didn't know what to expect. And they'd be like, what's on television and they'd be like nothing because I have three channels. Exactly. And so now in this era of fan service, in this era of expanded universes, in this era of all of this IP that you and Andy are always talking about, we have to find a way to reconcile what we want from these movies. We didn't used to have to do that. We didn't used to have to care about whether a movie about which we were sort of somewhat familiar with the original material was going to live up to some standard.

You haven't read any Suicide Squad comic books, have you? No. I've read maybe one when I was 15. Like it's not really a thing to me, but for some reason. I had never heard of Guardians of the Galaxy. Exactly. Nevertheless, there is this weight placed upon these movies that the studios obviously are having a really hard time reconciling. It forces them then to rely, I think, more aggressively on market testing and on audience research, which,

as we know sometimes can be valuable, but for the most part, tends to screw movies up. I mean, really, that's what gets you into the situation that it sounds like Air has found himself in, which is he made Oceans 11, and he also made Fury 2. Yeah, and he made the, like, the Brad Pitt part of Inglorious Bastards without any of the, like, wit and also has a crocodile face guy. Definitely has the baseball bat, though. Yeah. Okay, there's two different tracks I want to go on.

Let me throw a theory at you first, though. part of the reason why the critique around suicide squad and the ill will towards it is so extreme is because the media industrial complex is access to filmmakers and films and actors has become so wrote and locked in where it's like you can talk to will smith for 35 seconds at a junket and they actually did do onset puff pieces for suicide squad as they have for i think um i don't if they did it for don't know if they did it for don't justice but they're doing them for justice There were several journalists who were on the set of Justice League and Ben Affleck was spending time with them and charming them in an effort to kind of turn the ship around on this one. So, I mean, there's still are, there's still plenty of actor profiles.

There's still plenty of, but the kind of thing where you see DT Max gets to spend months with Tony Gilroy really only happens in the New Yorker like once a year, twice a year. Do you think that our lack of access or understanding of Hollywood contributes to our hostility? towards it. If you knew more about the people who were making decisions or how a movie like this got made, do you think you would have more sympathy or empathy for like the final product? Or are you just like, this is shit. They wouldn't let us see it until Thursday. Well, for me personally, I try to be empathetic about all artists trying to make things. And I very rarely will say this is shit unless I'm talking about Russell Westbrook's perimeter game. You know, like there are certain things that I'm very defined about. It's hard. It's really, really hard to

make a movie. If you've read any number of books over the years, Devil's Candy, down in dirty pictures, you know that it's like every movie making experience is a passion affair that also feels like a war. And I think if people did understand that more, they would have some more empathy, but frankly, when you're making, like I said, these fan service movies, people don't care about the people involved in making the movie. All they care about is that you know, endorphin you get from a really enjoyable sequence that feels like what it felt like when you were 14 and reading a comic book or the first time you saw Star Wars when you were seven.

This is just such an unfair standard to hold people to. People feel that way about music. They feel that way about sports. You know, as people get older and they watch sports, they get cranky because the game isn't the way that they remember it. Sure. It's an ongoing story of American consumption. But I think it's really interesting in this case

because it is fair to say that these DC movies so far have not been very good. And I don't say that to mock Zach Snyder openly. it's just even in the realm of an average or above average Marvel movie, DC can't, they can't crack the code. So even if we, even if D.T. Max or, you know, Tad Friend had spent a year on the set of Dawn of Justice, I don't think people would be more willing to forget it. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't any more interested in Noah because they did a Darren Aronovsky feature in the New Yorker.

I guess I'm trying to get at. I was more interested in Aronovsky, but not that movie. Yeah. try to get more at like this idea I guess it's not even how you sell it to people because I think a lot of people are still going to see suicide squad and a lot of people still want DC Comics movies to exist. What it

seems like is that DC Comics so desperately needs to be past their great we have the Avengers. So we have the rock on which to build everything off of and now we get to do an Ant Man and now we get to do a Doctor Strange and we get to do a Black Panther. We get to like experiment and have fun

and try different things. But they're still so desperate to get 35 characters on the board so that they can start building out the way Marvel has. I mean, it's kind of absurd when you think about they're making a Defender show

and they're making a Luke Cage show. They're like so far ahead in the world building that pretty soon they're going to go back and do a different team-up movie with all the new people that they've come up with, you know? And it's like DC is still trying to be like

Batman and Superman. Yeah, like I said, because they can't crack the code, they can't really get started. It's going to be particularly pernicious for them, I think, when they try to make an Aquaman movie and a Flash movie and a Cyborg movie, all of whom are characters that people largely do not care about. I don't think very many regular moviegoing citizens know what Cyborg is. That's a second-tier DC character, and the star of that movie is someone people have never heard of. Right.

So they're in a really difficult position in that respect. That movies get put in a turnaround all the time. But I think the reason that in this particular case of Suicide Squad, we have so much conversation building around it is because of what you said at the top of the show. This has been a horrendous summer. People are not happy about the movies. They had then put a lot of their eggs into the Suicide Squad basket. We've talked about it even in the offices of the website.

You know, like, well, we think Suicide Squad's going to be a big deal. Let's prepare for that. Let's assign three, four, five pieces around it. And now with word that it's bad, we have to start reflecting on. on the fact that we can't never count on these movies to be interesting. And so we have this lazy kind of overfed summer that is full of movies that no one loves. All right. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to talk a little bit more generally about the year in movies.

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Sean, let's, we're going to talk a little bit about this year in movies 2016. I'm looking at the domestic gross champs for the year. Finding Dory, number one. Delightful. Sure. Captain America Civil War, sure. Deadpool. Okay.

It's shocking, but okay. That's a fascinating story in and of itself. Oh, yeah. I mean, both of these, the next two movies here, Deadpool and Jungle Book. I'm like, wow. You know, like, I don't, I didn't know that. I mean, John Favro, like, typically. makes pretty popular stuff.

Deadpool's a shock. Zootopia. So that's one, two, three, basically children's movies and five films that are either children's movies or comic books. Batman, Superman, Secret Life of Pets, X-Men, Kung Fu Panda, Central Intelligence.

That's the top 10. So the thing that's interesting to me about that, and I'm curious what you think about it, I don't think that that's terribly different from the last 10 summers we've had. Sure. Sequels, comic book movies, animated films, movies that can get in a large number of people at a time,

movies that people want to see again and again so that they can ramp up ticket sales, movies that are better experienced, I think, in a group setting or on a big screen, than they are at home. I think you'd probably rather watch Deadpool with a thousand Deadpool fans than you would in your basement. Maybe not. Sure. The real tricky thing about this is I don't know if anybody loves any of those movies,

with the exception of Deadpool. I don't know if anybody is really, really going to bat for them and will think this has to be in my Blu-ray collection or I have to show my son this movie 20 years from now. And that's a... As time goes by, I find that more and more summers are like that. And we talked about summer 2015, right? Yeah.

And some of the movies that we saw then that we really loved, there are a couple of sort of top-line movies. Like we talked about Mad Max Fury Road. We do not have a Mad Max Fury Road this summer. No, we don't have... We don't have a rogue nation. Right. We don't have a movie

that's even vaguely pointed towards people outside of the age of 13 to 18. It's true. You know what I mean? In 2015, the top films box office were Force Awakens, obviously, Jurassic World, Age of Ultron, inside out, Furious Seven minions, Hunger Games,

which seems like all the president's fucking men compared to these. The Martian, Cinderella, Spector, Mission Impossible, pitch perfect, Revenant, Antman. that's kind of different. That's a different vibe.

And maybe it'll level out as the year goes on. But we were looking at the movies that we've actually seen this year, which is actually pretty short for where I should be in terms of, I just, there's not as many movies being made in the theater that I go to. I mean, there's a lot of on-demand stuff. There's weird horror and- We've been busy launching a website.

There's that. There's that. But, you know, I'm looking at what we've got here. And you've initialed your, like, this list so that you have the things. There's like cool stuff. Everybody wants some.

The green room lobster. There's interesting Hollywood stuff that kind of got dumped like 13 hours. The nice guys. Nice guys. Conjuring too. Shallows kind of came and went. I think that people were hoping that that might be a weird taken or the gray kind of hit. It did fairly well, but it came and went.

Right. What do you think is behind the apathy? I don't want to be reductive, but it's a podcast. It just seems like these movies are not very interesting. A lot of them are born out of recycled ideas, and a lot of them are made seemingly dispassionately. You know, they seem to be made as part of a corporate strategy and not by dint of inspiration. But, you know, I think a movie like The Nice Guys is one that you and I talked about a lot before it came out. We were very excited for it, both the huge shame black fans,

were both huge Ryan Gosling fans. It was about the 70s. It's a detective story. It hit a lot of, hit a lot of, ticked a lot of boxes for us. And I actually was a little disappointed by it, even though I think it's good.

Yeah. But relative to the rest of the movies that we've seen this year, it feels like, it's the kind of disappointment that would be great. Yeah. Right.

Do you think that there's anything to the idea that the, the middle, that middle class. The kind of movies that would have been the nice guys

what the nice guys winds up being which is ultimately like a kind of a failure because it set itself up to be like a big summer movie but one of just kind of being like this like that was really enjoyable but also completely convoluted

and nonsense. That that is now the realm of television that Stranger Things would have been a movie 15 years ago that something like Fargo would have been that Sam Esmail would have been making movies

that Richard Price and Steve Zalian should be making movies that Eng Lee or whatever he directed like an episode of Tyron he's got Billy Lee coming later this year or Billy Flint Billy Lynn's long half time But like that a lot of these filmmakers And a lot of the actors who you would normally see like a David Harbour Who's in Black Mass and in a couple of things

You would see him He's in he's starring in a show rather than like improving a movie I think there is a little bit of a brain drain, but it's not so deep that there shouldn't be more of a good movies. You know, there have been some here and there. I mean, you mentioned Green Room and everybody wants some. Those movies are released within a week of each other. I keep a running list of every movie I've seen every year and have a very specific star system that I use. Those are by far the two highest rated that I have.

There's also, there have been some good popcorn movies that also kind of come and go and you can be okay with that. I thought 10 Cloverfield Lane did a nice job. of just being an excuse to hang out on a Saturday before going to dinner, you know? And it was fun to talk about for an hour and then you can just move on with your life. But there have been probably not enough 10 Cloverfield lanes is part of the problem. So setting aside, there's not a Fury Road. I don't know. What are some of the other movies that you saw this year that you really loved?

Is there anything of an order like that? I thought that there's been a couple of like weird thriller or horror movies like The Invitation. The Wave isn't really a horror movie. It's more of a disaster movie, but that was really cool. Um, the witch was interesting. Triple nine was kind of morbid, but I was like, I'm into it. I'm into Kate Winslet as like a Russian crime lord. I liked nice guys.

I don't know. I mean, something like Keanu, it's like I liked Keanu a lot, but I, that was actually one of the reasons why I wrote that trailers thing the other day, whereas like there's a lot of Keanu that's funny is in the Keanu trailer or in the accumulated Keanu trailers. If you watched them more than once. You made an interesting point to me too. which is that we I don't think there's a single movie that you could earmark as a quote unquote Oscar movie this far this year. No, it's really weird. Except maybe for one movie, which we did not

put on our list and we have not talked about ahead of time. But I think the best movie of the year is O.J. Made in America. And that ran on television. Yeah. And in the same way that you talked about Fargo and you talked about Stranger Things, even though OJ. Made in America ran on a few screens and people saw it in movie theaters, it's best experienced from the comfort of your own home where you can really like you know pour over it and if you need to pause it you can and go get a snack that's a movie that

feels like it's bucking against the conventions of contemporary movie making in an effort to tell a better story and TV does the same same exact thing and that's what people have been getting excited about me Andy and I were talking about that on Monday was that night of and stranger things didn't feel like episodic television right but they didn't feel like an endless movie yeah Sam Adams

on slate today wrote a piece in praise of the eight episode season for a TV show. You know, I think that the core idea there is I'm always willing to go a little bit deeper into the lives of characters I care about in a two-hour movie, but I don't need 13 episodes of their lives. Yes. And so now I'll be curious to see if we continue to see the evolution of the six to eight episode season, you know, more of the British style of sitcom and drama that you and I enjoy.

I don't know what that means for movie going, though. I think that's kind of a slippery slope to, you know, to. to have essentially a generation of people who grow up on Netflix and are used to consuming things in bulk and in a way are disappointed if something is only two hours. That's unique. You know, for us, we grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and Star Wars and then we'd wait three years

for another Star Wars movie. Yeah. The levels of consumption are so different now that it probably will transform a lot of this. Or you would go see films, and I think that piracy does have something to do with this, because I think you would go see movies in the theater because that would be the only chance you had to see them for the nine months

before they came out on video or DVD or hit HBO or whatever. But now, if something is on direct TV or if something, some stuff that's even, you know, in festivals but just hasn't gotten to the theaters yet, it's usually findable online. And it's usually findable in a fairly decent quality. And I like, I don't like the variation in that quality,

so I just like go get it through the normal channels or I like going to the movies, but it doesn't, I can just see, like, if you think a kid likes working up, like watching movies on Netflix, I guarantee you that person probably has like four or five sites they're going to where they're just like watching whatever is advertised on the front page of that site.

Yeah, it's interesting that you put it in those terms too. Two quick personal anecdotes. Let's do it. That's what a podcast are for. I recently celebrated a birthday. A gift I received was a digital projector from my home that is the smaller than a Rubik's cube. And it sits on a mini tripod,

and it's a tiny little box, and you plug in an HTML cable into your computer, and any movie you want to watch can be projected right onto your living room wall. It's a beautiful invention. It made me feel like I don't have to leave my house ever again, even though going to the movies is one of my favorite things. Right, but if I offer you that $50 ticket

to watch Suicide Squad on Friday night in your house... Would I do it? Yeah. I would certainly consider it. Here's the second anecdote. I was looking at an open house this weekend. The open house was very nice. It was way out of our price range.

However, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a fourth room, a screening room. And it was designed in the staging area as a screening room. It was painted all black. It was filled with DVDs and film books. And there was a projector in the room running Citizen Kane. Are you serious? And so you walk into the open house. And there was a ton of foot traffic in this open house.

Did Warren Beatty then walk into the room? It was like, hey, kid. Inevitably, my wife and I were talking about how this must be an industry person because it was such a savvy move. And everybody that, you know, when she and I were sitting in the room, just watching the movie and kind of taking it all in and imagining our lives with a screening room. Yeah. Another woman who we didn't know walked into the room and said, are you part of the staging?

Because we looked like a wrapped audience, you know. Although that would be pretty creepy if it was like, and this house comes with a white couple? Like, you know. It did, yeah, it did feel like we were being profiled in a particular way. But my point is just that this is where movie watching and TV watching is going, right? It's just, it's only going to get better at home. It's something people have been talking about for 30 years. The onset or the onslaught of home entertainment options, the number of streaming services that are growing every day is remarkable.

We were talking recently earlier this week about the news of the executive at ABC who was responsible for developing blackish going it yeah and uh fresh off the boat as making a move to awesomeness tv which is now developing its own streaming platform that's a verizon company right yes okay and so that's yeah that's where we are in 2016 nobody wants to leave the house and if they do they have to be really big fans and know the source material does that bother you i mean not really i wish the movies were better i'm not even looking forward to that are you looking forward to a lot of movies this fall it seems like no but i feel like i've said that a lot like i've been surprised i think i've like there's no Paul Thomas Anderson movie this year.

Like you look at the, first let me, let's finish the, the where we watch before it's like, what are we going to watch? Okay. I, I am interested in this idea because I think that I have such an incredibly tactile and important relationship to video stores and independent movie theaters where you find your tribe and you're kind of like, oh, there's other people. who care about X out here.

And that kind of is disturbing if that never happens for people anymore. Although I think that people probably find that online now, I would hope. Reddit, yeah. And I also hope that if that's true and people start making the move to, look, the movies are just another, another like slot on my remote control is what is in the, quote, unquote, in the theaters feature length films. I do hope that there is an explosion of like, independent movies again

because I do feel like you know a lot of it is there's a lot of art films out there and some of like I probably don't see as much as I probably would have when I was in my 20s but it does feel like the focus features level movie

around there is more often than not still targeted at a very specific demo like the Florence Foster Jenkins like we've got to get 65 year old white women to come to a movie yeah mom core yeah no I I think that that's definitely true, although even that has been gutted a bit over the last 10 years. It's interesting.

I've been reading a lot of interviews with James Seamus, who directed Indignation's Philip Roth adaptation. And he used to run Focus Features. He ran Focus Features for 13 years. He got fired a few years ago. And it was interesting to hear him reflect on the difficulties of trying to finance a Philip Roth adaptation, his first, his directorial debut. Sounded hard. It sounded like they got 17 companies to kick in money for a small movie set in the 50s starring Logan Lerner. and Sarah Gadden.

You know, this is not, this is not Star Wars. Producing those films is probably going to become like putting out Harper's or putting out the Paris Review. That's right. Basically, you have to have a philanthropist. I read that there is a back and forth between Peter Bart, Mike Fleming, semi-regularly on deadline. And they were talking about how they've noticed that agents have taken a backseat in

putting together movies and that movies need champions. Is there, there's the philosophy behind like they were talking. about I can't remember what movie I was referring to but anyway they were saying basically you used to have an agent a super agent who would get the director and the star and the screenwriter and the producer and they're all together and everybody's

rowing the same direction and they just power that movie through the studio they basically power it through this process all the Brian Lord type who says I have Julia Roberts and I have Roberts Amecas and now more often than not you're seeing agencies that are like we're going to buy MMA and we're going to buy an

e-sports company and a soft drink. Yes. And an energy drink or whatever. And that that's, they're so diversified that just even if you thought that agents pre-packaging movies was a bad thing for your conception of otorism or something, it still was effective in getting a Julia Roberts movie made or a Denzel Washington movie made. And now that's just not happening. Yeah, I wish there were more movies specifically like The Girl on the Train, which I don't know if that movie is going to be a hit or not. It's obviously based on a bestseller, a huge bestseller, but it feels somewhere in between that blockbuster, we have to make X hundred millions of dollars to break even, and the middle ground

movie that has always lamented. It's kind of in the middle. It's like a refined blockbuster in some ways, you know, big cast and a talented director. And they're selling it basically as gongrel meets 50 shades. Exactly. Yeah. There's just not a lot of movies like that anymore. And A lot of the time, if they're not good, it seems like executives use it as an excuse to say, well, this doesn't work. We need to go buy another MMA. Right. Which is frustrating as a fan of two and a half star movies.

You know, there's like a whole industry that we're talking about of movies that you're like, that was pretty good. It's one of the reasons why I'm kind of into 824 when they're just like, we're just going to put out son of a gun. You know, we're going to put out like a weird Ewan McGregor thriller. Yeah. I mean, I think that they're on VOD and like you, you know. Yeah, their strategy is. really interesting. Like they have obviously phenomenal taste, but they also take a lot of

chances. And if, you know, they put Morris from America, which is a big Sundance hit on VOD, a month before it was in theaters. And if you have direct TV, you can watch it. And if not, don't. And it's, you know, and it doesn't seem to really hurt their bottom line, doesn't really seem to hurt any of their credibility. Um, but those small companies with, with great taste are fewer and farther between than they were 10, 15 years ago. Um, let's take a look at what's coming out this year. What are we excited about? I think that there's a lot of biopic stuff that seems kind of bad. Okay.

Sully, Snowden. You know, it's, that's, that stuff is not inspiring me. Inferno. Is that, Jack Reacher too? Something about. I wish Jack Reacher was about a generation of filmmakers that maybe need to chill. Like, do we, do you wish that everything that went into Sully was being given to? I mean, this is the problem is that Clint.

Clint Eastwood is making bad movies. Mm-hmm. And Colin Trevorow is making franchise movies. Right. I mean, he's got, I know he has like something else coming out, but he's doing basically whatever Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy tell him to do, it seems like. Yeah, I think he has to, he also is forced to live up to a lot of expectation. I think you have a generation of directors who are older and still very powerful.

Clint Eastwood, Ron Howard, Stephen Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, who are still active. and if they had made these movies, if they were between the ages of 35 and 45, they probably would have been better movies. I'm willing to bet Oliver Stone Snowden whatever iteration of that made when he was 40 years old would have been a house on fire. But now the expectation is like,

what is Joseph Gordon-Levin doing with his voice? And like, I'm ready to make fun of this already. I'm resting this. Yeah, Shailene Woodley's wearing a wig. Yeah. This is so goofy. It's just harder to take that stuff seriously, I guess, unless you really, really, really do it well,

which as we know is difficult. Ben Wheely has another movie coming out this year. I should mention that I think high rise is incredibly flawed, but was at the very least, like, kept my attention. There's interesting stuff in the entire time. He's got a movie called Free Fire coming out, which is a shoot-em-up set in Boston, I think. You're right.

There's a lot of biopics. There's a lot of Patriots Day. Mark Wahlberg, J.K. Simmons for Peter Berg. Yeah, Dr. Strange. I mean, quiet as kept, bleed for this. I'm not mad at you. I'm not mad at you for bringing it up. Miles Teller.

I respect you for looking to me in the eye when you said it. He just, he's playing Vinnie Paz. He looks great. He's in a cheetah themed thong. Yeah. He's crushing it to Billy Squire. He's got Eckhart. Yeah.

Eckhart with the ball. Method acting with his hairline. Yeah, that's big. It's bad though. I mean, you know, I think obviously we're still interested in Rogue One. I think there are going to be a couple of prestige pictures that look interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

The year goes on. Manchester by the sea, supposed to be incredible. Kenneth Longerun hasn't made a movie since Margaret. Can't wait for that. But likewise, like Magnificent Seven. I'm in. Go, go ahead. Explain.

Fukuqua, first of all. Yeah. Antoine Fuku. If you put Sarsgard, Denzel, and Ethan Hawke in a movie, I will see it. And I'm excited for it. Pratt looks good in this. I think it's going to be really stupid, but I'm excited. It's basically like, what if unforgiving?

was an action movie. I mean, I know it's also, what if we remade the Magnificson 7? That's why they called it Magnificson 7. Some other movies that are coming out that I'm excited for. I will see silence the Martin Scorsese movie because I see Martin Scorsese movies.

I am excited for Stephen Gagin's gold. I don't know anything about that. It's Matthew McConaughey as a modern day treasure hunter. And Stephen Gagan hasn't made a movie since Siriana. I saw that movie. It's called National Treasure. Stars Nicholas Cage. What was the other, what was the Dirk's, like, the Sahara when he was like, who does he play in that movie?

I'm a man looking for a treasure. It's like famously failed movie that had a huge court battle. Also say, this is a, it has been a bad summer. Dirk Pitt. That's the name of the character. Dirk pit. Yeah. Okay.

That does, that sounds like a, like one of the people, BoJack Horseman runs against the Oscars. I look forward to. you publishing all your pieces on the ringer under the name Dirk Pitt. Yeah. Otherwise, it's disheartening. I'm sure that some things will come across that we're really excited about. You've seen a couple of the good docs this year. You've seen Weiner and De Palma.

Yeah, they're good. There'll be some more stuff like that. Birth of a Nation is going to be a thing. Yeah, we'll have to be prepared to grapple with that. David Mischo's War Machine with Brad Pitt as General Stanley McChrystal. I'm excited for that. Emery Cohen is in that. Yeah, he's a big guy.

for us. Emery Cohen is massive. Yeah. I'm excited for Billy Flynn because I think it'll just be interesting to see. I'm excited for Denzel Washington's fences. We don't get serious, like keeping it 100 throwing 90 miles per hour, Denzel very often. Yeah. Have we ever gotten August Wilson on screen?

No. So that's fascinating in and of itself. I'm excited for... Assassin's Creed, maybe? Sure. I mean, I'll... I'll mess with that. Video game character.

I'm excited for La La Land? Yeah, I think actually one of the biggest ones in the the onslaught has not started for this, but Passengers starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, who directed that? Who directed sci-fi movie? I want to say it's the guy who directed Morton Tildon. Oh, yeah, imitation game filmmaker. But that's a movie that is a big deal for Sony that was much talked about in the Sony hacks,

you know, it was a huge budget. I think Amy Pascal started shepherding it before. She was deposed. She's never wrong. Have we talked about this? Well, you know, Ghostbusters, which is a movie we have not talked about, slightly reoriented that conversation. True.

Because Ghostbusters has been a big topic of conversation for many months, particularly among our staff for the last couple of days. Yeah. About its relative merits and demerits and also its box office kind of middling success. The perception of its box office, too. Yeah. The fact that it was spent $150 million to make it, that the market. budget was no doubt X millions of dollars that we can't calculate.

It's another film that even if it didn't have a lot of, at least if there was any, we don't know about it, like meddling. It's another film that had a very troubled lead up because it was very unfairly criticized without anybody actually having seen it. And then some of that was played into by the studio by saying like, do you know who's in Ghostbusters, but isn't Ghostbusters is Carvello Anthony, basketball fans? And it was just like really, really weird choices every step of the way. Yeah, that effort to try to draw in people they perceive to be angry male fans who are rejecting the concept of female Ghostbusters, which is so absurd in its own sense.

But I think the fact that that movie has not necessarily been the mega success that some people wanted to be, particularly in this age of intellectual property, has caused this sort of false panic among can we have, can we do this gender swapping with old school roles? You know, there's a lot of news earlier this week about Chris Hemsworth, or excuse me, Channing Tatum, taking over the splash roll. The splash roll from Darrell Hanna, which is, you know, fun. I'm sure it will be fun and funny, and Gillian Bell is playing the Tom Hanks role, which is great. It's just, there's no solution. Like, everything is not a referendum on whether we should let women hold machines that kill ghosts. Like, that's not just because a movie didn't make too high. $120 million.

Yeah. Doesn't mean we can't do another movie like that. But that's the, that is how the industry makes us think. If you, what's your confidence level that you and I could do a podcast in January and be like, that was a pretty good year for movies? Very low.

Very low. I wrote a column at our old job a few years ago about rap and the year and rap. And things were going very poorly. And the piece was basically like, we are in a bit of a crisis moment. And I read that. recently and I felt like I had made some reasonable points and that it bore out at the end of the year that it was not a very good year in rap. No.

And I don't think it was necessarily a genre crisis. Sometimes you just have a bad year. I feel like this is just one of those bad years. There are things that are hurting the industry that are making, they're kind of squeezing average consumers. You and I as two people who love movies perhaps more than anybody really should, I think that there are things that we know about as like the meta narrative around movies. that are seemingly deteriorating a little bit. I was thinking about this a lot. Like, who are filmmakers?

Are there filmmakers that are competing with each other? Are there filmmakers the way that we grew up understanding that in the 70s people were competing with each other and that PTA and Quentin Tarantinoe compete with each other and that I want to know if people are watching a Denis Villeneuve movie and then saying like, I want to have topped that. I think to go back to the conversation that you guys have all the time on the watch, the people who are competing with each other

are Damon Lindelof and Sam S. Mail and Noah Hawley and the people who are in control of shows, you know, Shonda Rhymes and, you know, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, people who are in control of TV shows that have in rabid fan bases and are often doing things that are unexpected. That is the new competition. That is the new Soderberg, Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino generation, you know, like those five to 12 filmmakers. But two of those people are already making television more than they make movies. Exactly. Fincher made House of Cards.

Fincher had several television projects in the works and is now making Mind Hunter for Netflix. Soderberg did the Nick, executive produced The girlfriend Experience. I know he's going back to theatrical filmmaking, but it wouldn't surprise me if in two years there's another Soderberg show on there. And this is just where people want to go if they want to push things forward, I guess. Let me ask you this. should we cancel movies. We have the power to do so right now on this show.

I don't know if we should cancel movies, but I would hate to think that it makes me sad to consider movies falling out of an essential part of like American discourse. It sucks that there, more than this being a bad list of movies and maybe like these movies aren't as good as movies that I remember. There's not a single movie on here that I feel like I've had like a conversation with that lasted more than a, day or two in in conversation time.

Okay, let's close the loop on this then. I think actually what's happening with Suicide Squad is good for movies. And it may not seem that way because I think a lot of people are not going to like this movie. But Michael Chimino, the great filmmaker, died earlier this year. His greatest, the thing he's most remembered for, not beyond even the deer hunter, one of his masterpieces, is his biggest failure, Heaven's Gate. People talked about Heaven's Gate all week the week after he died.

and how it's secretly a masterpiece and what it really cost the studio and how it killed the age of the 70s filmmaking rebel. Killed United Artists. Yeah, it ruined so many things, but there are still a lot of people who really admire the movie. And it burnished mythology in the minds of movie lovers. You know, it created this whole new complexity to what movies can do. Suicide Squad is probably less of an artistic achievement than Heaven's Gate,

and its ambition is probably not as high. However, for the last 48 hours, all we've seen is people talk about a movie. That's nice. We don't get that anymore. It's interesting. I'll be fascinated to see the box office this weekend, but more importantly, the box office in a week or two. Right. And whether or not this was just like all the people who were waiting a year for suicide squad to come out,

and frankly, there's nothing else to see. I mean, if Jason Bourne makes $20 million next weekend, I'll be really surprised. I think there are a few other things to see. For example, Little Men, Iris Saxes, new film starring Greg Keneer. Consider that, Chris. Consider the Keneer. All right, that's as good as place as any to stop. Thanks so much for joining me this week, Sean.

It's always so fun to talk about movies with you. Thanks so much for having me, Chris. All right, man. Take care.