The Watch - Ep. 99: The Current State of Movies

Episode Date: November 17, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey discuss the year in movies and how to define success for one in 2016 (1:12). They also discuss ‘Arrival’ (18:33), ‘Hell or High Water’ (39:45), and which movies you should be excited to check out (44:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, American Express card members, you do not want to miss this. Now through December 31st, there is a big reason for you to shop small at local stores in your neighborhood. Learn more and enroll in your eligible card today at Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. That's Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. Terms apply. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me for this very special movies episode is Ringer EIC. Sean Fantasy! Yes, Chris, so excited to be here on the world's foremost robot podcast. This is great.

I'm so happy to have Sean back. We really love talking about movies a couple of months ago. And here we are as we wind down towards the end of the year, right, Sean? And we just got out of, at the ringer.com, we did a future of movies package

with some really great pieces from among other people Cameron Collins and Eric Ducker and Sam Donsky and yourself. And you? Notably, man, myself, but whatever. You know, I'm just, it's all about other people. It's all about making sure circulating the ball. Yeah. When we did this pot a couple months ago, we were kind of like, where are we have with

this year in movies? It's kind of bad, but I don't know. And now we're coming towards the end of the year. And I think that this is actually a really useful time to draw a line under the year in so much as typically from right before Thanksgiving to the end of the year, This is where the movies run up the score on us because you get six good ones in two months and you're like, oh, everything's fine.

Yes. Moonlight, loving. It's the post- Thanksgiving feeling when you've eaten too much and you're like, I may never eat again. Rogue One's going to make $500 million. It's going to be pretty good. We're going to fist bump JJ Abrams and just be like, you got this.

A source told us Martin Scorsesies. Best Film Yet is coming this December silence. Irwin Winkler's Barber. But let's look back a lot. little bit. And I don't want to re-hash too much of what we did a couple months ago, but I want to look back because I do think that this has been a bad year for movies. And I do think that two things are in play here. One, I think you're really starting to see just TV is starting to swallow up the part of the movies that people like you and me and I think a lot of our listeners

used to say like, I want to go see sounds and lambs. Like that seems like a good movie. Let's go see it. And you can pick and point and say this there or the other, but I think that you are starting to see the stress of it's either an animated film, a franchise superhero comic book movie, a YAA adaption, or like a kind of high concept comedy. And these are the movies that are basically at the multiplex right now. So if you go back through the year, and specifically, if you go back through 2016's domestic box office, and I wrote about this a couple of days ago when we were doing the statue mugger column, you would be hard pressed to find anything in the top 40.

top grossing domestic movies that you would say, I loved that movie. You and I would definitely feel that way. You and I are not snobs, though. That's the thing. It's like I'm not, I think it's important to note that. Let's just go back a couple years, though, to 2014. Hit me. Top grossing domestic film of the year was American Sniper,

which was I don't necessarily ever want to watch again, but was definitely an interesting movie to watch. Yeah. And is the number one movie of that year. You had competently made franchises like Hunger Games, Guardians of the Galaxy, Winter Soldier, Lego movie. Those are the top four movies of the year. Those are pretty good movies.

I like all those movies. Hobbit Battle of Five Armies, whatever, Age of Extinction and and X-Men Days of Future Pass. You can take or leave. Big Hero 6. Then you get like Donna the Planet of the Apes. Godzilla, interesting to look at. 22 Jump Street. Pretty funny. Interstellar. Original entertainment that was like made by one of the biggest filmmakers in the world. Gone Girl.

You keep going on and on. Lucy. The fault in our stars was like competently made entertainment that had an emotional palette. Okay, so let's interrogate the premise. You're saying that the opportunities created by the ever-growing TV content industry are now, the movie industry is feeling the effects of those growing opportunities in TV. Yes, and I think that when you look at the top 10 of this year, 2016, Finding Dory, Captain American Civil War, Secret Life of Pets, Jungle Book, Deadpool, Zootopia,

Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, Jason Bourne, Dr. Strange. do you love any of those films? I don't, but it's a very tricky thing that we're trying to do, right? Because I think that it actually does mirror that lineup that you read in terms of, you know, what those intellectual properties are, who those filmmakers are, what the strategies of the studios are. It's, you know, animated movie, superhero franchise, big-time blockbuster, derived from a novel. That strategy hasn't changed. What has changed is at least this year, seemingly the quality of the movie.

Yeah. There are fewer movies that people are falling in love with. There are fewer franchises that people are becoming obsessed with. And even though the domestic box office is actually up in 2015 and may even be up this year, depending on what happens in the next six weeks, it doesn't feel like things are moving in the right direction, right? No, it doesn't. And it doesn't feel like, look, let's throw some caveats out there. This is a typical what happens in these, like, there are a couple years where Tarantino won't make a movie.

and Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't make a movie and Steven Spielberg doesn't make a good movie and there are years where you go in these dips RIPBFG Yeah, but you also see Soderberg Mostly Working in Television now. Carrie Fukenaga largely like made Netflix movie Has been in development with a bunch of stuff

The filmmakers that we like Kelly Reichardt put out a movie But it's not you know necessarily like a mass entertainment Far from it When you look at the movies that aren't this last run of six or seven movies Like for instance everybody is going to be talking about in the next two months moonlight loving Manchester by the sea nocturnal animals rules don't apply lion jackie la la land passengers that those are the movies that we'll probably be talking about silence when you go backwards there's arrival there's hell or high water there's green room

which is still like a it's a tough watch for some people and then there are movies that we like like nice guys and hail caesar but haven't really like stayed in the consciousness it's really hard to derive a lot hope. And I think that when you look at like how much stuff is happening on quote unquote television, whether it's David O. Russell moving to television, whether it's Soderberg where the Netflix show coming out soon, it's, you see where it's going. You see where that kind of entertainment is moving. I think that you're right, but it's impossible to make a diagnosis. You know, I wrote about this in the story that I published on the site a couple of weeks ago. And in doing so, tried to talk to as many people as I could to get a broad understanding of how people feel about the direction

the business is moving. I think until we're dead, there are always going to be movies like Moonlight that are made that are going to be profoundly affecting and thoughtful and well-made and whether they're big or small. And beloved. Yeah. We're going to get good movies. To make sweeping generalizations about how something is over is a false premise.

However, there's no doubt that there's no doubt that the... The resources and the intellectual might is more, it's spread across too many things right now. Too many platforms, too many possibilities of execution. And it's creating a diffuse property where we've lost the silence of the lambs like you're talking about. We haven't lost the Hunger Games now. The New Divergent movie may be worse than the second Hunger Games movie. Sure. And Dr. Strange may be slightly worse than Iron Man too.

Yeah. But that's not really what's at play here. like we have been talking for five to seven years about the loss of the middle ground movie or even like the upper middle ground movie. You know, the upper middle class of filmmaking is now reserved for a select group of people. We're seeing a couple of those movies right now. Mark Harris, when I spoke to him a few weeks ago, very smartly, I thought, identified something in a rival, which had not occurred to me before we spoke. Arrival movie that you and I both love. And we'll talk about that.

Yeah, a filmmaker we love. But that movie occupies this space that studios have identified that is like basically a 50 to 9.000. $90 million budgeted science fiction film starring mid-level to upper-tier movie stars that it's essentially telling a family story on a very grand stage. Right. So just like Interstellar, which you mentioned, just like The Martian, just like gravity three years ago, there are these movies that have, you know, somewhere between modest and big budgets that are trying to accomplish something major, but also want to bring in parents and date night

and curious teenagers and older people who, or, or, or, you. literary folks who have read the Ted Chang short story. It should appeal to a at least decent amount of people. And if you're lucky to be interstellar, $300 million worth of people. But those movies are very, very rare. And Mark smartly identified, like I said, that even that is just a line on a ledger. You know, that is all part of a strategy. And it doesn't feel like there's anything organic happening because Hollywood has been very money-balled. I get it because there is not an, I mean, you could do this, but is there really an arrival expanded universe to be had? Are there really Dr. Ian Donnelly dolls to be sold?

Is the Heptopod really like something that's going to become like a meme? You know what I mean? It's that that is, movies are being asked to be engines now, not just like this is. And I think that that's part of what happens when you collapse all media on top of itself, is that it's expected to sort of resonate in all these different parts of. of our culture and in all these different devices and in all these different ways in our lives. And the things that can do that are things like Rogue One.

So even if Rogue One has gone through reshoots and tinkering and they're not sure if they have the tone right and they're not sure, you know, maybe it's not going to hit because it's not a Skywalker story, it's going to be really successful. They're going to sell a lot of like Felicity Jones dolls. People will like buy the, like they're going to buy into this. This is part of an ongoing involvement that they have

with basically, for lack of a better term, a brand. I think what I was really looking at when I was rattling off all those movies about in the box office list is that there's this divide now that I think you're really starting to see between the films that are critically acclaimed, the films that are frankly, I think generally agreed upon to be pretty good and what people are actually seeing. And that's not a disaster. You know what I mean?

I think that there's actually some value in a certain, circuit of films that are kind of happening outside of the mainstream because that's what we grew up on. We grew up on watching like Jim Jarmosh and Richard Winkler and Spike Lee movies that were happening almost in defiance of mainstream culture. But when you see an almost complete disinterest in it in the mass amount of like American moviegoers, I think you don't have to ask are movies dead. I think you have to ask our American moviegoers dead. Yeah. I mean that is something I've thought about a lot. I think that this year is a real outlier because there are a lot of missing pieces. Now, we don't have a Paul Thomas Anderson movie or a West Anderson movie,

but those movies are not necessarily huge, you know, money drivers. They might as well be merchant ivory movies at this point. But what we also don't have this year is a Quentin Tarantino movie, Alfonso Cuaron movie, even an Inan Ritu movie, you know, people who have proven over the last five to ten years that they actually can draw $200 million worth of box office and then you can, you know, people who fancy themselves kind of middlebrow mid-intellectuals can say, oh yeah, you know, like, I love the new Tarantino and feel like a part of the culture, not just feel like they're observing

a film comment universe. Right. Because those movies are popular. My mom wants to talk about that movie, wants to talk about Inglorious Bastards around Christmas time. There's, aside from Rogue One, which is made by a filmmaker we like, but isn't really prestige at all,

there's not, it doesn't seem like this year we're going to have that popular acclaimed movie. Right. And that's, you're totally right. That is completely strange. Yeah, and there isn't even, I would say, like, there isn't a whiplash. You know, and Whiplash was probably what made $30 million, just something like that ultimately.

But there isn't a movie like that that would have an essay written about it on reverse shot and then also be mentioned by Kobe Bryant and a GQ interview. Right. You know what I mean? Like movies that sort of start to connect with people. And frankly, I think one of my issues is that we haven't had like an edge of tomorrow. We haven't had a really great genre blockbuster where you're just like, that's just how you make them. That's the fugitive right there.

That's seven. That's, you know, that kind of, you know, and I think people had hopes for Jason Bourne, and people have had hopes for movies like that. I think you have identified a lot of differing anxieties, though, right? There's one anxiety that's like, wouldn't it be great to live in a time where the godfather or Rocky is the most popular movie in America, where it's something that is beautiful art, but also populist, and it can be like a communal experience, right? One of the best parts of going to the movies, you know, unfortunately for me, given my age,

my Rocky is like Independence Day. Sure. I remember going Independence Day, I think, in 1996, and the crowd like burst into applause seven times. I can't remember the last time somebody applauded in a movie. Yeah, yeah. So that's one thing. We've lost that feeling.

On top of that, we don't have a way to grade what is and isn't success for anything in the middle. You know, we don't, we just, we, because of what happened after Jaws, we only think about box office. Your inclination and mine, too, is to say, what was successful this year? And the question that I have for you is, based on what you wrote in the statue monger, does it matter that there aren't

four $100 million movies that are going to be nominated for Oscars this year? I think it's bad for the Oscars, for one thing. I think the whole reason for them to have opened it up for the 10 movies in the first place was so that they didn't have another dark night so that they didn't have a situation

where clearly the most beloved and popular film of the year was not represented enough on the Oscars. And Heath Ledger was the only thing, the only person who won anything that night. I think that it's also, I think that you and I probably believe in film, both as an art form,

as a barometer and litemite and sort of lens through which to view popular culture, but also as like a singularly wonderful marriage of the two. Like pop art, you know, and something that can be the Matrix, which is like that blew my mind. It made me look at the world slightly. differently, it completely shaped language and references for 10 years afterwards, Pulp Fiction,

whatever, and we're being a little bit generationally biased here. And then also, like, make a lot of money, and it can be a communal thing that people gather around to watch. And, you know, I think that we're just as the election and a lot of other things, like, there is just a lot more, like, rather than gathering around the bonfire, it's a lot more smaller campfires. Does it matter if Westworld and Stranger Things replace those things? And are they replacing those things?

I definitely think that that is part of it. I definitely think that Game of Thrones is probably the best movie of the year, you know, in that kind of thing. Battle of the Bastards, you know, I'd rather watch Battle of the Bastards than Hacksaw Ridge, probably. What do you think you'll talk with your family about around the holidays? Westworld. Westworld.

Yeah. Don't want to talk about Westworld. Don't want to ask me what I thought of it. And it used to be Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah, I think that we'll talk about arrival.

I don't know, how's arrival doing box office-wise? He made about $25 million in its first weekend, which is good. And it'll be like a word of mouth movie that probably, yeah. But it's also competing against Dr. Strange and there's a Pixar movie coming

and there's a lot of things that are in the atmosphere that it doesn't have a chance to be a $200 million. Right. It's not going to be the Martian. No. Right.

Let's talk a little bit about arrival. Okay. I will say that we'll probably wind up breaking any, like, spoiler embargo here. So if you don't want to hear about it, we'll try to, like, make it clear on the time code. Just bang that 15 second button on your iTunes. Yeah, exactly. In fact, why don't we take a quick break from our sponsors, and then we'll come back and talk about Arrival. Hey, guys, want to tell you a little bit about our sponsor, Sonos.

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slash the watch for 15% off your entire purchase. Original grain.com slash. The Watch. Okay, Sean, so I think one thing you could tell in your piece and one thing that I know from us is that, I mean, this is somewhat have been the year of, we'll just wait till this happens. And I think it was in some ways we were thinking in a lot of ways, like, arrival is going to be a really interesting stress test about where we are with the movie industry because it's this thoughtful film made by one of our best filmmakers, starring two incredible actors based on like an interesting short story. shot by this amazing cinematographer that we all like, Bradford Young, and it's this breathtaking original vision in a year that really desperately needed that.

And we both saw it together. Now, I have to admit, like, the first time we saw it, when we saw it together, I left to like, it was a little bit cold. I remember. I was kind of like, this is like somebody put a little bit of water in my Villanouvre shot. Yeah, you were looking, you were used to,

you know, the director, Denis Villanouv is, a very masculine, visceral, obtuse, but also sort of seemingly like slightly angry and cynical filmmaker. You know, he's like, he has a dark vision of the world. His films take place in hell. Yeah. And that's not completely what this movie is. There are dark aspects of it, but there is a lot of hope on the other side of it.

And I think it did seem like it threw you for a loop a little bit. It did. And then I saw it again. So then I saw it with my wife. And I was absolutely blown away by it. I am reluctant to go too deep into these waters, but I will say we saw this movie before the election together, and you saw it after the election with your wife, and I am not your wife.

I would say that mostly, though, it was about when you know where it's going, and this is also like a great testament to what the movie is about, that like Amy Adams' child's name, it can be read backwards and forwards. So when you see it and you know where Amy Adams' character is going, her performance takes on this huge extra layer of resonance because instead of being sad, she is in fact confused. Instead of being someone who is coping with a loss, she is just someone who's not a particularly happy person.

And it's just such a fascinating way to order the story. As Julia Leibman has pointed out, there is one really tough part in that movie where Jeremy Renner turns to someone says, do you want to make a baby? Yeah, strange stray line of dialogue. in an otherwise very somber film. Yeah, and also just very, like, efficient movie.

Yeah. I just, I really enjoyed it. There's, like, I think there's, like, an issue where they go into the spaceship a bunch of times and do, like, hand signals, and you're kind of like, this is, like, now the sixth time we've done this. And then finally, one day, it's like she just speaks the language. I think there's, like, in the second act of there, it's, like a little bit, like, yada, yada. And then we learn how to speak Heptapod. That's the thing, yeah. One of my favorite pieces about the movie was Anthony Elyens Review and The New Yorker, and he did, I do.

identify the, you know, we're going to need a montage segment that happens about 65 minutes in, where Jeremy Renner starts explaining everything they accomplished in a two-month span. Yeah, Jeremy Renner, like, reads a Vox piece about it. It's really funny. Yeah, exactly. You know, to be honest with you, I liked that it gave us a little bit more information. It was definitely helpful. It was useful, yeah. And, but it's not like great filmmaking opposite a lot of very breathtaking shots, like you said. And this very philosophical examination of like life and rebirth and the way there's an interconnectedness in the world that maybe we lose sight of sometimes. I really like the movie.

It's definitely not my favorite movie of his, nor is it even really... I'm not sure that I even liked him more than The Martian, which seems weird because the Martian is kind of a frivolous exercise in, like, Matt Damon's stardom. Yeah. I think Arrival has more to say, but I don't know if I liked it as much. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. And I don't think you walk away from a rival being mesmerized by a Brolin or Del Toro performance

or character. I really like Amy Adams a lot. I love Rayner. It's quite good. But it's actually, you're quite, it's quite difficult to remember their character's names. Yeah. You dropped to Dr. Ian Connolly? Is that his name?

Donnelly. Donnelly. I think that's his name. Great poll. Thanks, man. Stoolbark is killing it in there. It's been a year of Stolbar. It has.

We'll do the Stool Pod later. But it's an interesting film. Cameron wrote a really, really good piece about arrival because he talked about this idea of puzzle movies. and I've been thinking about this obviously with Westworld. And one thing that the movies really do do is the way that these things, even if it's, even if you're talking about Deadwood or Lost or something, is that, and I hate to sound like a writer or something, but these characters do, if you get the characters right, that's what you remember.

You remember whether it's Lieutenant Daniel Caffey or Hannibal Lecter or, you know, or Jack from Lost and we have to go back. Like, it's those moments that are actually born out of a character's like story and motivation and desperation and striving to finish a quest or whatever that you actually remember. And a lot of this stuff that's in arrival that I think is like very puzzle oriented. And you're like, wait, way, is this being told backwards or forwards or is it time in a circle or whatever? And that becomes a big part of the movie. But I think that one of the reasons why we maybe reacted to it the way we did was just because like you're just. not going to remember any line of dialogue from that movie, with the exception of, like,

the Chinese generals scene at the end. Or do you want to go make a baby? Yeah, or do you want to go make a baby? So you remember dialogue for the wrong reasons? Can you remember the last movie that you've seen that does feel like you'll be talking about it in 20 years? Not necessarily as a cinematic masterpiece, but as, like, I want the truth. Like, oh, like, character moment that's going to resonate with you when you're 50.

That's a really good question. There hasn't been one this year for me. I do think that Manchester by the Sea, which is coming out this week, I think my feeling is it's Kenneth Lonergan's best movie, the playwright and screenwriter, this is his third film that he's directed. And there are a lot of lines of dialogue, and there are probably two to three scenes that they're certainly not, you can't handle the truth. I'm not even sure we make movies.

like you can't handle the truth. I remember, not to digress, but I remember seeing Steve Jobs, the movie Steve Jobs, which is a divisive movie, and seeing the second act scene where they cut between the Jeff Daniels and Michael Fastbender showdown. The board meeting and then them in the hallway. Cross cutting in time and thinking like, holy shit. Yeah. We got one. Yeah. We got a movie moment and it's just guys yelling at each other and it's interesting filmmaking. And then Steve Jobs came out and everybody was like, this movie kind of sucks. Right. This also isn't what happened in Steve Jobs's life. Like, okay, maybe my radar doesn't even work anymore.

I'm not trying to do with this. But about Manchester by the sea, it's not quite a, like a, how do you like them apples kind of memorable thing going on? But there's so much feeling in that movie, and there's such precision in the way that he draws characters. And Lee Chandler, the character that Casey Affleck plays, is somebody who, there are expressions that he makes in this movie that I will not forget.

Yeah. And maybe when I'm 56, I'll be sitting down with my son, and I'll be like, you know, it was a great movie that came out when I was, whatever, 30? X, let's put this in. Let's use our digital computer hologram screen to watch this movie together. And it'll feel like when my dad was like, you should definitely watch, you know, killing of a Chinese bookie or something like that.

Whereas like, this is a pretty small movie when it came out, but I know that this person has taste and they're showing me something cool. But that's not the same as what you're asking for. Well, because the reason I even thought of the question was because of the Martian, which is another movie where I'm like, I don't necessarily find the Martian to be that. I mean, The Martian was like a very affirmative movie about science and trying really hard. But I actually did think by sheer force of charisma, charisma being a very powerful thing in 2016. But by sheer force of charisma, Matt Damon sold that movie.

It's like on that, that like peak Hank's tip of like, just put it in front of me and I can read the phone book and people will be engaged. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's in praise of movie stardom, which is a rare thing now. We talk all the time about like there is no movie stars. anymore and they don't know how to develop them and that's something I talked to a lot of people about a couple of weeks ago. But if you just replace Matt Damon with Jeremy Renner in The Martian, that movie is not a hit. It probably does fine, but it's not a hit. Matt Damon sells the hell out of it. So that's meaningful. But it still doesn't give us, why does it always have to be snakes? You know, like I don't, we don't get that. And I think that, so do you think that the issue is,

So like a movie like the nice guys, which is nowhere near as good, but like could maybe be put in a category of midnight run. And then so the nice guys comes out and it makes like $45, $50 million, I think made like $35, $40 million. And it's a really fucking funny movie. And it's like very confusing and it whatever. But that's a classic movie that as soon as that hits HBO, it's just like on for days and days and days. And people are like, yo, you know what I will always watch if it's on is the nice guys. That movie is really good. And then it becomes in three years, people are still asking Ryan Gosling about the nice guys

when he's doing a promotion for another movie. So much has changed, though. So much has changed. The notion of rewatchability has changed a lot. And at least for someone like me, I am so stressed about being able to consume the next thing that the prospect of rewatching something on an idle Saturday afternoon has kind of vanished from my life. You know, the reason that I have this ease with like a few good men is that.

because I gave myself the time to watch it a million times. You would watch it for 10 years. Yeah. I would do that all the time. And I personally do not do that now. Yeah. And it's not because I don't like movies. I'm still like a weird purchaser of many Blu-rays.

Like I have a bad habit in that respect. But I usually will buy a movie that I bought Green Room because I thought it was a really interesting, cool movie and it really well made. And I wanted to understand it a little bit better. So I was like, I'll buy it, I'll watch it again. And then I watch it again. And then I watch it again. And then I put it on a shelf.

And then it's like a nice piece of decoration in my home. Sure. And that's it. Yeah. And I think that, you know, there are a lot of critics out there who are really actually grappling with what does cinema history and cinema scholarship mean in the era of basically, like, indiscreet consumption of movies through streaming and, like, also the erasure of film history with streaming networks. There's like this, it's funny. I mean, I, if we're sharing, like, our annoying habits, like, I have a 16 film, filmstruck watch list. that I have not watched any of.

Not touched. I made the list. I felt very good about my dive into Japanese Yakuza films, but just haven't, you know, I haven't fired them up yet. I've had a very similar experience. I did 30 minutes of Lady Snowblood.

And I was like, I got to go read this blog post. See you later. Yeah, Christops. Yeah, exactly. I think that that is part of the melting of movies down to, like, it's like movies to be a mountain. The mountain is now a pile of sand.

there's lots of other sammed around it. And that's, I think, I think it's a little bittersweet to see that happening. And I wonder, you know, in five years, like, if you're Paul Homess Anderson, and let's just, and if Netflix or Amazon or whatever, the next version of those things is still, like, do you want, do you want $30 million in complete creative control over your movie? And the second you're done with it, everybody in the world can watch it from their home? And, like, do you love film and the new Beverly and the idea of people drinking Dr. Pepper and laughing collectively

enough to not have to deal with either foreign financing or begging Megan Ellison to finance your movie. Well, let me pitch a theory at you. A couple of people mentioned this to me after their brand the story that I wrote. Is it possible that this is just jazz that we lived through the big band era and the 40s and jazz being arguably the most important American art form for a spell.

And then in the 50s, it starts to change and it starts to get a little bit, it's popular, but its identity gets blown up. And then in the 60s, it really transforms, and it becomes much more minimal and small and even more artistic, but it's by far not at the center of the culture anymore. You know, something like rock and roll takes over. Is it possible that movies are actually going to move in a more artistic state but it's just not the state that we're used to it being artistic.

I hope so. I hope that there's a generation of filmmakers coming up behind Colin Trevereaux and behind Ryan Coogler and behind Ava D'Vornae for all the quality that I think that they're capable of putting out there who are like, there's something in the 90-minute to three-hour range of narrative filmmaking that I want to do that I just can't do on Netflix. And for whatever reason, I don't want my movie viewed on a laptop or I don't want my movie watched in eight parts at various times. I want this to be this experience.

But you start to have a harder and harder time making the argument for what a movie is, right? And this is what you're asking me about Westworld and Stranger Things. Stranger Things is just an eight-hour movie. Those are movies, yeah. There's not even really twists at the end of Stranger Things. Right. And you couldn't, I don't think you could have said that about the Sopranos. The Sopranos was a series of novels strung together.

That's kind of a hackneyed way of describing it. But you don't get the impression that David Chase viewed this chronicle of the period of someone's life like it was just one big movie. Because you could see him kind of moving and changing the show as it was going on. Now there's this expectation that you kind of have to have it all figured out and locked up by the time you get to the end of the season. Yeah, and you have to end that there is basically the, I mean, I think for a large, there's a huge part of television right now. now like Westworld and like Stranger Things that is basically like it is mystery box filmmaking that is basically playing on the idea of like audiences racing you to figure out what you're doing and that like I can't really name other than Barb I can't really name the Stranger

Things kids I can like describe them but like they're they're not like is there's a Mikey in there I feel like there's a mickey yeah I'm sure there is there's like a will and a Mikey and whatever but Tommy the little John John the thing you're trying to figure out is what happened to the Not what, oh, I want to spend time with Sean Astin and Corey Feldman and Josh Brolin still. Right. You know. Right. But what's interesting, though, is that the medium that has adopted that we don't know where this is going is movies.

It's the Marvel universe. Or it's, I was just reading the Fantastic Beast franchise, which is also coming out on Friday, is going to be a five-part film series starring Eddie Redmayton. And Johnny Depp. Do they know what the fifth film is going to be? I think they're trying to connect it to Harry Potter. Like that just, it's like the long... But is it all sketched out? Apparently.

It's like apparently she's got it all mapped out. It's five movies. I don't know. Do you want that? I mean, I'm indifferent. Yeah. You know, I mean, I guess... I'm indifferent to a lot of it.

I think that I'm like open to it, but like I am finding... This is what's going to happen to me. It's just like, I don't know if I care about Marvel that much anymore. You know, and I don't know if I care about like some of the franchises anymore. Here's what I'll say. I'm more of a Marvel. Apologist than you are, which seems like a weird thing to say after a jack about how great Manchester by the scene is. But I do like those movies somewhat. And I actually think that

they're a little bit more unpredictable than we might seem. Now, the actual movie that we watch is fairly predictable, especially the first in a series is like, oh, is that origin story that you and Andy talked about recently. That is kind of dull at this point, programmatic. But I think if Benedict Cumberbatch had not come on board, they might not have made Doctor Strange the new centerpiece of that universe. And we didn't know that that was going to happen up until 18 months ago. So there is something kind of interesting to me about the fact that those chess pieces are always moving in that world.

And Guardians of the Galaxy, they had no idea that it would have become one of the most important films in this universe that they've created. It's actually kind of interesting that that stuff can still happen. Now, obviously, Marvel is primarily like a cash driver for Disney. You know, that is how it's thought of. There are people who love the movies, and then corporately there's an identity for those. Delos Westworld kind of thing. Very much, very much.

But I still think that there is a way to analyze what happens inside of that space that is about creativity, that is about the unexpected that happens when you're making good movies. And I think we get exasperated by intellectual property and like, oh, we're doing this again, Captain America 4, Iron Man 4, how are they going to phase out Robert Downey Jr? That's not very cool. But neat things can grow inside of those things. Absolutely. And there's also like movie stars can get born out of there.

and they'll give people lots of money to try stuff out. And that's exciting. I guess I just, you know, one of the funniest little things that I got from Cooper Samuelson and Blumhouse when we were talking about the model that they used to make movies, which is basically this like $5 million ceiling with like a slight, it can go up if you're working with a preexisting property like Ouija, which was made for $9 million. $5 million is the ceiling that if you put that out and it says from the producer, of insidious and paranormal activity, it'll make its money back.

And usually pretty easily. We were talking about that. And he was just like, my biggest issue now that there are, the movies are fewer and bigger, is that directors don't get enough reps to go from good to great. And that, you know, Robert Wise and Robert Aldrich and these people from the 50s and the 60s who are just like, I make a movie every 15 months, pretty much. they don't really get those kinds of reps anymore. And you can see it now where it's like,

I wish Ryan Cuegler had made five movies by now. You know, I wish, or was working on his fifth movie. And that's one of the reasons why I think Villanueva is on the trajectory that he's on is because he just keeps rocking movies out. Yeah, although it's tricky because Villanoov is almost 50 years old and he's made seven movies. Before that, yeah. So he's had a lot of success.

I think one thing that has changed is that, you know, Robert Altman and Sidney Lumet and Steven Spielberg and any number of people, they graduated from television into movies. Now you graduate out of movies into television. In some ways, it's a better experience to get a chance to do an eight-hour story and take your time. And you may not have as much money to spend, but you might have more creative freedom. And you may have that blank check mentality that I think that Netflix and Amazon in particular have encouraged for now.

Right. Because they're building a library and they're trying to say, look at all these options we have, subscribe to our service. Right. They may scale that down at some point soon once they figure out how to make everything. Or if they're just like, you know what? Right now we've decided that the only growth market is China. We've decided to make films or movies or shows that specifically appeal to that audience.

And that's like it could happen. You know what you mean? Like they could find that like everybody in America who's going to get Netflix got it. And now we have to start concentrating on other territories. Yeah, it's a little bit. It's very cynical. But I think the story of American art is compression. You know, we figure out how to make something great.

And then how does it shrink down again? If grunge music takes off, inevitably it's going to shrink again. If Steven Spielberg is the most important filmmaker in America for 10 years, he's eventually going to become not that. And the same is going to be true of the way Netflix funds its business, the same is going to be true of Amazon. People learn more about how to do their business. I'm not sure where we go from here.

I think that next year has a lot of stuff that I'm really excited about, from Paul Thomas Anderson's 50s fashion film of Daniel Day Lewis, to Spielberg's Mark Rylance movie. that I think is based on a David Grand story. There's lots of stuff coming out, and I do think that I'm fine with the sort of crossover where it's like Soderberg-Soderberg makes Lucky Logan or Logan Lucky, and then he's also making godless for Netflix.

And this stuff is all going to kind of be there. I just do really sort of miss the, I miss personally having three choices at a multiplex. And I'm not snobby. Like I really would go see three other nice guys over the course of a weekend. It's just, it's tough to find that stuff. I think that there's also,

there are other places to look for these things. Not everything is going to be either a beautiful, cherished, A-24-produced, O-Tor film. You know, not everything can be moonlight. But I watched our kind of traitor last night, which is a small espionage thriller based on a John LaCarré novel,

starring Ewan McGregor, that like, I don't even really know when that came out. I was like, I think it was like late summer or midsummer. I just, I happen to get it on Netflix, and I watched it, and I was like, this is purely enjoyable. Yeah.

And I have no expectation larded inside of it. I just want to watch this movie because I like the people in it, and I like the storytelling. Let's talk a little bit about a movie that we, a lot of people last time we did the podcast, strangely, to the extent that I was wondering if it was a secret viral marketing. I know. I've been asking about hell or high water, which is something we both just saw recently. It's on iTunes now. And you watch that movie, and it is like, you can tell, first of all, it's.

It gets 100% gets made because it's Captain Kirk and Jeff Bridges are in it. Absolutely. Explain the story a little bit. Yeah, so it's a film by David McKenzie, written by Taylor Sheridan, who wrote Sicario. It stars Chris Pine, Ben Foster, as two brothers who own, who have inherited a ranch from their mother, which is like a really dilapidated piece of ground, but happens to be on an oil claim. And Chevron wants to buy it. There's a back taxes that they have to pay off, and they have like a week to pay it off. and what Chris Pine the good brother wants to do

is give this ranch and that money so that his kids never have to work again and get them out from under the basic like poverty for lack of a better term that they're experiencing is set in Midlands, Texas. It is expertly directed. They basically have West Texas to play with as a blank canvas

because there's just like nobody there. And they just do a great job of making this compressed character study that has like clear overtones of not even overtones like clear messages about class and and poor people in America it's excellently made it is exactly the kind of thing that I do not want to watch a television season about right it is exactly the kind of like put a bow on it and send it off down the river at the end of it it's got a genuinely great ending that is without giving anything away slightly ambiguous yeah just ever so slightly ambiguous and you actually can't do

that on TV no no that would be the end of season one maybe and then it would be like rectified it would be like two more seasons of wondering how can we solve this how can we tie the knot on this one right does this guy really dead you know and um I think that why do you think people really wanted us to talk about it I mean I had the same experience it was weird because it was cool I think it was cool I it's it's crazy now to watch it after the election I think it that goes without saying that

there's just a lot of stuff in there that is being talked about now um in terms of people's just utter um lack of faith in institutions and in anything that can come and help them. But I think that it's just a really cool genre movie that actually has no fat and no bad parts. Like it's a little on the nose, but like there's really nothing bad to say about that movie. And it's just an excellent 90-minute movie. Yeah. When I spoke to Mark Harris, he pinpointed that movie as one of the best of the year.

setting aside all parameters, you know, box office, stardom, any of those things. And then when I spoke to the novelist, Brett Easton Ellis, about it, he was like, that's the most overrated movie of the year. Interesting. What? Do you say why? No. I mean, Brett has a very specific and often very loaded read on things and is very quick to, although not dishonestly kind of put a pin in things, kind of deflate the hype around stuff. I mean, I think that I know that it's easy to be like, oh, Armand White or bread or whatever, but it's, there's something sometimes kind of refreshing with somebody who's

just been like, that shit. I enjoy it. Well, it at least makes me interrogate why I liked it. Yeah, exactly. He quite frankly dismissed moonlight, which I find a little hard to grapple with because I responded to it the way that most people who have seen it responded to it. I was really, I was moved and excited about it. Yeah.

But it does make you kind of wonder why. Is it like your liberal guilt impulses acting on your feelings? Is it, are you really a. Appreciating the artistic achievement that is happening here or was it just a sensitive time in your life? What is the what do you really like about these things? Heller Highwater is very similar. Everything you said, I think about some of the themes of the movie and what it means now Never even occurred to me. Yeah, I was like this is just a great bank robbery movie. Yeah, it's a good bank robber movie. It's two really good like Like three really good performances. It's just you get it's really hard to have Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges in a movie and Chris Pine is obviously just like I make money over here and then I do my other shit over here. I've been team pine for years and It's nice to see him do something great.

Let's wrap up by saying this. If you could tell our listeners one movie that's coming out in the next few weeks that they should be really excited about. I'm going to let you take this one because you've seen a lot more of the awards fodder than I have. Even if it's something that you haven't seen, but you're just like, you just can't go wrong with this. And tell our listeners one movie that they might have missed over the course of the year that they should check out. Yeah, sure. La La Land is a no-brainer. It's Damien Chazel's third film.

It's a second bigger picture after Whiplash. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. It's a musical. I think Whiplash is probably the last movie. That's actually the answer to the question you asked earlier, which is like, not my tempo is the you can't handle the truth. You know, the scenes in that movie and the interplay between those two characters was as gripping and intense and I think rewatchable, for lack of a better word.

Probably intentionally so. As anything I've seen in the last couple years. I loved, loved, loved that movie. I felt like I really understood that movie in a very specific way. And La Land, I suspect, will be completely different. I have not seen it yet. But he very quickly just became a filmmaker who I have to see what he does next. Yes.

And there are not a lot of people like that. And Damien Chazelle is very young. I mean, I think he's 29 or 30 or 31. And that's pretty exciting. You know, it's, there's people have had some anxiety about, say, Ryan Coogler using his talent to elevate from Fruitvale Station to Creed to Creed now to Black Panther because they want to see him tell more personal stories right you know you can make an argument that Black Panther can be a very personal story I think I mean he claims it it's his most personal movie and I would argue that

a guy Cougler I have no qualms about what Cougar's doing like I would love it if Cooleur made 10 other movies before he made a blockbuster like that if that was the world we lived in but he is trying to get the biggest possible audience to see his art and like I I I I I I get that, totally. I'll make one more. This is coming soon, and you should see it, pitch. It's 20th century women. It's coming out on Christmas.

It's Mike Mills' second, third film after beginners. Stars Annette Benning and El Fanning and The God, Billy Cruttup and Greta Gerwig. It's a story about a teenager growing up in the 70s, living with his mother and some hangers on, so to speak, and how they raise him together. It's a very complex but small but big movie about relationships that, you know, also probably won't make more than $10 million.

Right. But is beautiful and probably will be an Oscar contender, so to speak. As far as something I've seen that people may not be aware of, you know, there's a lot. I just watched something that was pretty small, but I thought was pretty affecting, which is the Norman Lear documentary, just another version of you.

Oh, cool. which I thought, again, it's impossible to not say had some real resonance about the way that we think about people in our lives and the people that we don't know out in the world. And Norman Lear's TV shows in the 70s really made a conscious effort to try to understand how... And confront that. Yeah, yeah, how people were feeling

and how they talk to each other and what the pressure points of society were. And TV doesn't do that a lot now. We get a lot of puzzle shows and we get a lot of sitcoms and we get a lot of IP. It's like drug Carmichael. couple of things. There's some shows that try to do it, but it's, I mean,

all in the family had 35 to 60 million viewers every week. There was an episode about Archie Bunker, gets stuck in an elevator with a woman giving birth, and that episode had like 70 million viewers. And there's an episode of Maude, in which Maude, who is a 60-year-old woman, somehow miraculously gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion, and that it's 70 million viewers.

And, like, we don't have culture, like that, right? So just setting aside that you get that kind of perspective on the world, you know, Norman Lear is 91 years old and alive and sharp and is telling the story of his life and all the experiences he had. And it is pretty profound. I mean, it's an American Masters. It's a PBS documentary, but it's really, really, really well done. That's really cool. I think that my movie that I'm looking forward to, there's a bunch of obvious ones, you know, whether it's Jackie or whatever that I think I'll be curious about in terms of like how they're received over the course of the year. I really want to see gold too. But the one that

I'm kind of most curious about is live by night. So for Ben Affleck's first directed film since Argo, he has routinely in these in this sort of affleccasance of the last 10 years, made just like super solid crime movies. And he is working with Robert Richardson, who shot Goodfellas and is one of like the great cinematographers. And it's based on a Dennis Lehane novel, Lehman Rhyne Rhymeistic River. he worked on the wire.

It's a great cast of Chris Cooper and Sienna Miller and L. Fanning and Brendan Gleason. And it looks goofy. It's not a good trailer. There's way too much like black keys in it. But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I like the town. I liked Argo. I mean, I don't necessarily think either of those movies should have been like best pictures.

But I really, really enjoyed them. And I'm excited to see what he does. You know, this is what we're talking about Chris Pine does. We're talking about like take some of this money. and go do your own thing with it. Warner Brothers is like if you play Batman, you can make all of the movie. You can make a movie every 18 months

that you want to make. I think he really prizes what you're talking about. I mean, he prizes a literary adaptation that can make $100 million. You know, Ben Affleck wants to do those movies. He wants to do straight ahead Hollywood star pictures that a lot of people want to see. That's rare.

I'm less excited about Live By Night, but I'm willing to see what he does. The movie that I would recommend if people missed, and I'm sure they did, it's on iTunes. It's called Nerve. And it's a movie with Dave Franco and Emma Roberts. And it's going to sound like you're just going to be like, what are you talking about? But it is about an online game where basically people dare you to do things and pay you to accomplish tasks. And Emma Roberts starts playing, and it basically is like some crazy version of like Adventures in Babysitting meets like an action film.

but, you know, a couple of years ago, people were trying to make very self-consciously, like, 80s-style romp, like, adventure romps, you know, and, like, whether it was, like, Pineapple Express or something like that, where it was like, we really want to bring back the vibe of action comedies from the 80s. That was, like, the movies we grew up on, and I think a lot of those, the meta quality of that actually dragged it down. This movie is not particularly funny, but it is super entertaining. It's, uh, it's just really well done. And if you're looking for, like, a movie that, like, Exactly what we're talking about with Hell or High Water. This is a much more lighter film. It's just like in and out. They should not make this into a television show. This didn't need to be any longer or any more thoughtful than it is. And it's got a bunch of good performances and a bunch of good set pieces and a bunch of nice moments. I really liked Nerve.

That's a good one. Chris, our movie's dead? No, they're fine. They're going to be okay. Well, we'll be fine. We'll talk about this probably before Christmas again. And we'll just sort of figure out where we're at after we've seen, after we've seen Martin Scorsese's best film. I can't wait to see it.

that, Chris. All right, man, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. Hey, guys, just want to say thanks again to Sonos for sponsoring us today. I love Sonos. It is the smart speaker system that streams all your favorite music music to any room or every room. You can control your music with one simple app and fill your home with pure immersive sound. If you want to pause, do you don't even have to pull out the app. You can just walk up to the speaker, hit pause. It's one simple application that brings together all your favorite music service. You can use Spotify, tune in radio, Apple Music, and it lets you control everything from the songs to where you're playing it, to how loud it is. It's fantastic.

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