The Watch - ‘Widows’ Is a Different Type of Heist Movie and the 1975 Is a Different Type of Rock Band | The Watch (Ep. 310)

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

The 1975’s new album, ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships,’ is 2018’s version of a rock album (2:11). With ‘Widows,’ Steve McQueen created a unique kind of heist movie (27:34). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Read Lindsay Zoladz on the 1975’s new album here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Dell, the Dell XPS 13 with an Intel core I7 processor, is the laptop for people who never say no to one more episode. Sounds like watch listeners. With lifelike color, brilliant sound clarity, and smooth streaming, Dell Cinema technology makes whatever you love to watch even better. Call 800 buy Dell to learn more or visit Dell.com slash cinema. 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 editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. He likes America and America likes him. It's Andy Greenwald. Hey, buddy. Hi, how are you? I'm good. You know, I just feel like we're having some real talk here in the studio and maybe we should just record that.

Well, Andy, I feel like you tried to checkmate me a little bit today because I do my quarterly. I get fired up about a record thing. and I'm really into a brief inquiry into online relationships. I'm also into the 1975, if you know what you mean? I'm really into this 1975 album. It's Thursday afternoon on the West Coast, so by the time people hear this, they'll be in touching distance of this album

actually officially being released, though. One might suggest that it is somewhat available at the moment. Kaya, are you allowed to say that? Say what? That this album leaked. Just be like it's about to be out. It's about to be out. This album is about.

to be out, but we've heard it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I thought, this is the kind of thing. See, like, Andy and I, like, we grew up together, essentially. Mm-hmm. And a lot of our, like, first 10 years of knowing one another, very much bound together by music.

Very much. But we really bonded over, like, a shared adoration of a lot of, like, these really big Brit pop bands. And also the idea that, like, you could be, like, transported by these Brit Pop bands and, like, kind of, like, have this, like, incredibly involved, like, fantastical life, you know, overseas. You're not helping me out at all today. I'm listening.

So what do you think of this? This record seems like it's like shot from that era. Listen, first of all, if you had Chris and Andy are going to talk about music because Andy still hasn't watched anything in your office pool, congratulations. I don't know why you've been so candid. Because this is who I am now.

I'm all about being honest on a mic. Radical transparency? Listen, as someone recently tweeted, this is the podcasting's moment, right? Like, this is like an experimental film in the 70s. recently tweeted that? Okay, Rebecca Mead? No, Leon, what's his name? Yeah. Anyway, I want to set the scene here.

I think I like this record. I might even really, really like this record a lot. What the people don't understand is that your boy here was just having a cup of chicken noodle soup over at the commissary when Chris left his office to make sure I knew how to download a zip file, which, full disclosure, I don't.

You did not. You were like, the files you have sent me do not play up my laptop. I looked at my laptop, Like, it's the same laptop, so I'm pretty sure it works. So young grandpa over here needed some help. But then he was just like, here are the six 45-second segments of this album that I find particularly uplifting. I'm going to sit here across from you and watch you as you hear them. But isn't that like, you know, don't you have to sit across from your child when you're like, go clean your room?

I'm going to watch you do it. That's weird parenting. So wait, let me set this straight. Wait, so you live in a world where you can just trust and they'll just go clean their way. Well, they have to learn to do it themselves, Chris. You can't helicopter parent me. So I can't helicopter music fan you either. Listen, there was, and I'm sure people want to hear this, there was a day I remember well

when I invited you over to my apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and invited you into this sort of partition that was an office and said, in my hand I hold an advance copy of an album called The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, sit here while I play you the songs in order and stare at you. Like we're reenacting apocalypse now. Yeah. And it had a dynamite effect. Yes. What I'm saying is now at this point in our lives, like maybe it's harder to focus,

which, by the way, is a good segue into why this album is particularly fascinating and in this moment because it's definitely about the difficulty we have believing in rock music or connecting with or paying attention to anything anymore. Yes. So all of that is prelude to say that when I came in just now to record with you and I asked you if you had been listening to Little Baby and Gunna, it wasn't to change the subject, it's just because we're pals. Because I looked at you because I was like, you had one job.

But I listened to it. It's not that I waited for you to leave and then shoveled up my last elbow noodles in broth while listening to drip so hard. You make it sound like you live in Papillon. I was hungry. Look, it's possible for me to have been listening to Playboy Cardi and then forgetting to have brought it up. His album's called Die Lit.

Yeah. That's my life now. Confessional podcasting and dying lit. Okay. Yeah, 1975 is good. Let's talk about this. Lindsay wrote an amazing piece about it today on the site, which I thought was worth, we could use it as a framework,

which she just was essentially talking about its prescience and the way in which it kind of functions as the perfect rock record if you want to call it that because it's a lot of different things at once it's not just a rock record. We're going to talk about other stuff today. We're also going to talk about widows.

Yeah, wait, hello. Press pause, go see widows because we're going to talk about it because your boy saw a movie. Yeah. You know, that basically this album is the perfect record for a time in your life where so much of your life

is dominated by screens where so many people are essentially if they're not functionally ADD, they're like living as if they are because they're fling. between tabs and platforms and all this different stuff. And I don't actually, you know, I thought that that was like a really astute way of looking at the lyrics. But as a piece of music, I thought it was pretty cohesive, you know, and really kind of draws from a lot of the stuff that we've always been fascinated with, the idea of a night out, the idea of dance music as this kind of release from the drudgery of modern life.

the power of a band to be something more than just a band and the idea that it could be like a tribe or a team that you join. And I'm sure the 1975 fans are going to have to get used to like the real hardcore fans are going to have to get used to newcomers like me and Andy. Yeah, you know what I mean? When I was like 20, they used to piss me off and stuff like that would happen. I think there's a couple things to play here that are compelling to us.

And one, you cannot discount, maybe this is a weird thing to say about a band that I actually think is very much of the moment in an exciting way. There is a nostalgia factor of play here because the arc of this band contains two things that I kind of thought we wouldn't see anymore. One is the slow ascent.

Yeah, right. I was a big fan of some of the singles from their first record, like there's song Chocolate that's really good. Yeah. But I didn't understand what they were. And weirdly, because maybe I am impatient, now I assume that bands had to be

what they were going to be right from jump. Right. And maybe they were just a, an enjoyable pop act with no harm, no foul. The other thing is, you and I both love theatricality and music. I would like to remind our listeners yet again of the time I force you to sit and listen to the Black Parade by my chemical romance as proof of that. And it does my jaded heart good to see a band led by a front person who is like,

I'm going to will myself to global relevance through cockiness and attitude and drama in addition to songwriting chops. I love a band that wants to be the biggest band in the world, and that brings me to the last point about this record that I think is pretty exciting. One of the reasons why rock music is not at the center of the conversation anymore is because it self-deported itself from the conversation. So much of the music, even that I love from this year

that is nominally rock music, is essentially so deeply indebted to other eras of rock music, that it's a closed circuit. It's a Xerox. What this is is a collage of the moment. You know, there are songs that sound like they could be... I mean, it's fitting for them, but it's a Tumblr post. You know, yeah.

Yeah, there's stuff that could be... Clearly, they've been listening to a lot of Drake and thinking, I'm not going to rap on this record, but what is he doing sonically? I want to take the feeling of that. It's almost like I want to take the feeling of listening to Drake. Yes, but also, like, what... This is exciting the sounds that he's making

or that he's playing with. And these are the sounds that are connecting with people from all over the world, quite literally. And so what happens if we play with that? And that's exciting.

And then past all that, and I think that Lindsay gets at this really well in her piece, there are just some knockout songs on here that are just terrific and exciting

and very big, going for arena-sized emotions and landing. So what do you think of Love It if we made it, which is sort of the big single off of the record and it's been around

for a couple months now? Again, not to make this the Lindsay Zolads podcast, but I really appreciated her contextualizing it for me. Yeah. Because as she writes in her piece, it was Sonic Wallpaper when I encountered it. And then when I really listened to it and you consider the sentiment behind it. Sure.

And in big songs, big songs should have that extra gear where it's like, oh, no, it's actually about something that is kind of a gut punch. Yeah. And the idea that the song's about, I would love it if we as humanity fucking survived. Yeah. Yeah. That would be cool. I agree with that.

I got kids cleaning their rooms right now in anticipation of, future life. There's a lot of moments on this record that I think are kind of remarkable. I like America and America likes me as I joked about in the intro. The second half of how to draw that just turns into this kind of skittering like the IDM gospel moment is pretty amazing. I really like it's not living if it's not with you, which is essentially like this perfect little like prince like pop delicacy.

It's really, there's a lot of different stuff in here, but it all feels like very much of the moment and very much of a time in this band's life. I think the other thing I'd say about it, and hopefully this will make some people give it a listen or at least consider it, is consider this, I've said rock music a bunch, consider this pop music, consider it pop music with guitars, and you should, and consider it kind of an antidote to a lot of what's on the charts, because pop music is fucking sad right now. And I don't mean that because it's like pathetic. I mean that it is, its dominant emotion is Xanaxed out sadness.

And this is, you know, whether that's because of the. the dominance of Drake and his producer 40's influence or because of youth culture or because the world really is in precarious shape. I don't know. There's been a lot of good writing about this. Jason Green wrote an essay on Pitchfork last month that I really recommend talking about what's going on in the charts. But I, grandpa who can't download a zip file, still goes to music for feelings of escape.

Yeah. You know, and of exhilaration and release. and the idea that this guy, who, by the way, I didn't know any of this, like kicked heroin in the last year. A lot of the songs are about that. And is chasing, is trying to articulate chasing the high

without the drug now and trying to find release in other ways. That also ties in with, since most of the pop charts are like Juice World talking about, he's taking enough pills to kill himself because he wants to die, but, you know,

it's a flip. Maybe it's the next chapter, of that. Here's why I think you'll ultimately like fall in love with this record, I think, is that they have a, you know, they make their own playlists on Spotify. This is, this is like, this is very much a band that like feels like it emerged out of its own Spotify profile.

Here are the, there's a, there's a playlist called Fated Splendor on Spotify. Here are the first five songs on that playlist. Okay. Faber Trail by Ride. One of the all-time greatest songs. Save It for Later by the English Beat. Yeah, dido. Indi-Ongist by the replacements.

Oh, shit. Ceremony by New Order. Swayhead by Marcy. So maybe you spend some time With this record They also have Brian Eno Mineral Teenage Fan Club

Jesus and Mary Chain My Bloody Valentine Squeeze guided by voices Yolotango Do you want to hear What's on Little Baby and Gunners play? Yeah, let's do it Well, I haven't found it yet

But sometimes Sometimes you just got to drip too hard Daniel Johnson And Teenage Fan Club, you think? All right, so that's like Let's maybe revisit this next week Maybe we'll have Lindsay call in And do you think I'm going to have more...

Uh-huh. I'm going to be like really worked up about it. Or you'll just be like, I haven't listened to it. I'm doing. Die lit, Chris. Die lit. Die lit. Let's talk about widows, man.

I just want to ask you one other thing about movies, Chris. Sure. Aquaman. Oh, fuck, yeah. Let's talk about Aquaman, man. Whatever. Is that for real? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, okay, I'm just asking this. Is this the perspective we want this podcast to come from now? I just you tell me. We're dubious about the reality. of Aquaman. What I'm... Like, its existence.

Look, man. Black helicopters, conspiracy theories, put on your tinfoil hats, what I'm saying is, what if there is no Aquaman movie? I'm serious. I am a thousand percent serious right now.

Yeah. What if the bright boys in the back room at Warner Brothers like cooked up some CGI stuff with fish to fill a trailer? And Mamoa looks good on the poster. And then, Larry in marketing was like,

what about, he ain't from here? is the tagline. And they're like, book it. And it's basically like some elaborate... He ain't from here? You think that sells Aquaman? That's the tagline!

He's not from here. Right. I liked it better in Brooklyn East, but whatever, teach his own. What I'm saying is, wouldn't that be a totally plausible, like, tax dodge? And I don't want to, like, listen, this is an influential podcast. I do not want to send Warner Brothers shares tanking over this revelation. But what if they, like, inflated the shares and didn't make the movie? And then would there be any fallout from that?

That's like the plot of Wag the Dog, pretty much. Right, but what if the entertainment wag the dog, like, do you think, what would, okay, here's a hypothetical. You love hypotheticals. You love surprises. What do you think the immediate fallout would be if on December 21st, 2018, there was no Aquaman movie in theaters? Like, like we lost the print? What if not even that? They just never made it in the first place.

What if there was just no movie? There's just the trailer. And then it became December 22nd. and life moved on, what would be the net effect on planet Earth? Would Michael Cohen recant his statement again? Like, I don't know what you want me to say. That's what I wonder. Like, would people be angry?

Uh, yeah. There's definitely, like, there's definitely people who are anticipating seeing Neptune's sun go to underwater battle. Tell me more about that. I don't know anything about Aquaman. And I just feel like this is one, this is one for the kids. You know what you mean? Okay. It seems like they're trying.

Nicole Kidman is in this shit? Yeah, man. And Amber Hurd? Who's the bad guy? Patrick Wilson. Yeah. And, you know, but Patrick Wilson, you wouldn't know this because you're scared of things, is a frequent collaborator with James Wan.

He's worked with him in a couple of his horror films. Okay. And James Wan is kind of like moving away from the conjuring universe here. I think he had a lot to do with Saw films. But this is like a real effervescent pop art kind of thing. Dolf Lundgren and Willem Defoe. I often don't. find that these kinds of movies actually catch on.

I don't know why, but it kind of makes me think of almost speed racer. Remember the Wachowski's did that? Yeah. And, you know, like these kinds of like electric, almost psychedelically pop movies tend to fall short. But I think that this one's going to be pretty big. I mean, this end of the year is very strange. There's a bunch of blockbusters kind of safe. Mary Poppins, this.

There's a couple that are like that are being saved for the end of the year, it seems like. Well, I think it's because there's no Star Wars. movie this year. They cleared out December. Yes. With disastrous results, by the way. Yeah. And I think they moved, did they move the next episode into the summer too? Or did they keep the Christmas time?

They're just going straight Christmas now. I don't know if they're going to do summer again. Oh, Bumblebee is the other one, the Transformers movie where Haley Steinfield is like my car talks. How do you feel about that? Well, I mean, I don't know if it's just like an Alexa kind of thing. Yeah, because like she's got like the Volkswagen. A lot of cars talk now. Beetle and it saves her life.

And she saves its life. Yeah, I don't know. I'm all in on Mary Poppins, but that's not for this podcast. You can talk about it? I haven't seen it yet. I'm excited. Okay, so my hypothetical wasn't flying with you. I just...

I think we could take a larger, you know, one of the big takeaways I'm getting here is that you're not interested in this Aquaman movie. I guess I'm just flummoxed by it. I am just surprised by it. And I do think that it would be naive. It is the height of naivete to pretend that this is a new idea that all this money and all this effects and just all the time it takes to generate effects

and all the people who are working hard on it. For real, is for something that was going to exist no matter what. It's just, you know, because they picked the release date. Yeah. It's just weird. It's weird to me. I don't know.

Is it a zip file? Can it play on my laptop? This is going nowhere. No, I kind of want to get to the bottom of why you're asking. Maybe it's because we live more covered up lives when we're in Los Angeles. Like we're in our cars and, you know, in order to feel things we crash into each other on freeways, I believe a great man once wrote. But just all of a sudden those billboards started coming up and I'm just like, we're really doing this. Well, it definitely feels like a different Christmas without the Star Wars movies, without a Star Wars movie.

I really did anticipate that. Right now I'm like, I had to. catch up on a couple of things. I have to see the favorite. I'm very excited to see that. I mean, I can't wait for to see Roma. And then, you know, as far as like the Blockbuster stuff, I'm kind of like neither here nor there about it. Probably just do a couple more Soldato rewatches. Since we're doing Grandpa Hour before we get to Widows, where do you stand on this sort of half step of like the new Quarron movie is by all accounts a masterpiece? I cannot wait to see it.

Netflix bought it, but they are putting in theaters for a brief run. I would love to see it in a theater. Reality is even if it played in the theater without the Netflix name attached to it, most people would end up seeing it on their home screen regardless. Yeah, sure. Do you have a dog in that fight? Are you a partisan that movies should be seen in the movie theater? I think ultimately there are several films a year that really lose something, not even lose

something in the emotional impact, but I think really deviate away from the intention of the creators when you get them off of the big screen. And I think that that can be anything from Dunkirk to a lot. apparently Roma. Everybody I know has seen Roma has been like almost emotionally overwhelmed by it but are very much saying

like it's a film that you really need to like get enveloped by. You know, Sean had a really interesting tweet. Fantasy had a tweet the other day where he was talking about how he's already watched the Ballad of Buster Scruggs multiple times.

Right. And that that was an underrated aspect of the Netflix experience is the ability to immediately kind of rewatch and re-experience some of these things. And in terms of doing a really deep reading

like something a Cohen Brothers movie would actually support maybe Outlaw King doesn't but like a Cohen Brothers movie you actually can get these little nuances and these little things out of each we watching and that that was an okay trade almost. You know I'm

filling that second half inch on didn't say that but I think with a movie like Romo which it sounds like the initial watch is such an emotional experience I do feel bad that it's not going to be able to get to that not that many people will get to have that experience with it.

However, there is something a little almost, there is something nice about how many people will have access to Roma immediately in so many different parts of the world. What you're describing is something that I think is a really important part of culture, which is the ability to just get lost in something. And I think that we are losing that ability to get lost, both because of, you know, moving into the home and to the couch where we're distracted by our phones, distracted by our life, affects that.

I also think that we've sort of lost the ability to get lost because we are, I mean, this is TV brain, this is Twitter brain, this is podcasting brain, like we're immediately looking for the pegs. The angles. The angles or the cracks to pick at an exploit or whatever. It's an interesting argument, and it's hard to use it to describe something like ineffable or transcendent that resists words, right? I think that I am still on some level used to that moment

where you can have that first rush of excitement and experience, and then you pick later. It's like the second life when you see it again. But Sean's not wrong about the Cohen Brothers. I mean, everyone was doing their lists the other week about their favorite Cohen Brothers movie. Hail Caesar was low on people's lists. Yeah.

The more times you watch that movie, and I have watched that movie multiple times, the more I think it's a master's. Was it like on a plane or something? I watched it. Yeah, I watched it on a plane. I watched it. Then I watched it on, I think it was on HBO or whatever, a couple of times, and it just gets better and better.

Oh, it's an incredible movie. It rewards multiple views. I mean, the basement for, like the floor for a Cohen Brothers movie is pretty high. You know what I mean? Like bad Coens, like even the Hudsucker, which I like checked out when we were doing the podcast with Neiman. Last week we did a big picture two weeks ago with the top five Coens. And we each had like very different, fairly different lists, although I think the backbone of each of our lists was still Miller's and Lobowski for me and Sean. and Neiman had that

Neiman and Sean both had a serious man as their number one. That's wild to me. Mine was Miller's. But yeah, we each had no country, I think. Barton Fink, Fargo, I'm just doing this off the top of my head. I really like Hell Caesar.

Raising Arizona? Inside Lewin Davis would be my top five. I think that is understated masterpiece. I guess what I'm saying is I'd like the full emotional experience of Dolph Lundgren's performance as Noreas, the king of the Atlantean tribe of Zebel. Like, I'd just like to experience it.

He's an Aquaman too? Fucking, yeah. So that guy's in Aquaman and Creed 2 at the same time. He's playing the long game, Chris. This shit ain't a sprint? Yeah. This is a marathon. Good for him.

You know? So, finish your thought. You were saying that, like, I don't want to look at Netflix as some sort of collectivization of movies where everybody gets to experience them. You still have to pay a subscription feed at Netflix. You have to have a piece of equipment

to play it off of. but so all that stuff comes with a price tag itself but I do like the fact that so many different people will get a chance to see Roma even if it isn't exactly in the way that Alfonso-Coron intended it for I guess it's just a question of patience because everyone gets a chance to see everything eventually should they choose to right?

Maybe it's moving out of fashion or for whatever reason but like a movie we loved last year like Lady Bird had the longest runway imaginable. It premiered early in 2013 at festivals Yeah, whiplash was like that too. There was buzzed, slowly. It was released in New York and L.A. Then I went to other cities.

And it had a very long tail. And then even finally when it went to streaming, people appreciated it and enjoyed it. Look, maybe this should be, we should, these are liner notes for a future in 1975 album. But I do think that seven years, almost seven years of doing this podcast, one of our constant things that we return to is this idea of centrality of culture, of shared experience is something that we value highly. And weirdly, you know, look, when did we talk about Star Wars? Wars this year. I was probably either shitting on solo or the TV shows or whatever else. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about the

Mandalorian directors and stuff like that, yeah. But you know what? Getting a little nippy here at Los Angeles, and I'm like, I kind of miss seeing a Star Wars movie. I am shocked to be saying that, considering everything I've said on this podcast. But it started to feel like the season to do

that, and that was fun, because it gave us something to think about and talk about an experience. And, you know, instead it's just going to be Patrick Wilson as Orm slash Ocean Master. Well, we could also talk about Olivia, the dog. Yeah, let's do that. So let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

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Do it for you. Just visit adt.com slash smart to learn more about how ADT can design and install a secure smart home just for you. We're back. Greenwald saw a movie. I did. I saw widows. So Steve McQueen's heist movie, I guess, is the way in which it's sort of being presented. I really love this movie.

I want to let you go because I feel like, you know, there's nothing like Greenwald fresh out of a theater. What I want to start with may be considered untraditional. And I like this movie. But what has stayed with me isn't necessarily the twist. It isn't the lyrical and surprising ways that Steve McQueen films violence or that he films interactions between women. Really what I want to know. This is obviously going to be a spoiler section, by the way.

What stayed with me and what I cannot stop thinking about is what was the phone call to John Bernthal's agent like? Was it a phone call where they were like, Johnny, listen. J.B. Steve McQueen here. I'm not even going to do it. Do it.

But is he like, I need you. I need that J.B. swagger for 45 seconds of screen time. Yeah. Is it that he thought he was the only person who could play a character who was incinerated in the back, who shot and incinerated in the back of the van, within the first six minutes of a film. Or, and here's my theory.

This is my working theory, and you can poke holes in it, and then we'll talk about the movie seriously. My working theory is that the character in the script was called John Bernthal or John Bernthal type. And no one thought to change it. And somehow, because Hollywood works in mysterious ways, a van came to his house where he was polishing his Glock or just putting on knuckle dusters

or doing whatever John Bernthal does to stay in that character. Yeah. On call as that character. Just in case. A van picked him up and he got in it because he's always working, took him to set. And he was like, I'm sorry, I don't, what am I doing here? And they're like, well, you're threatening to hit Elizabeth Debicki

than caressing her face. You're getting shot and you're being loaded into a van where you will be burned alive. What am I doing here? It's like, do you remember what you did in Sicario? It's that, but you have a worse haircut. Yeah, or baby driver. Yeah.

But you have an even worse haircut. Yeah. So, God bless. I mean, the same way would be said for a bunch of the people who show up in this movie, it's got such a rich, deep bench of actors. This cast is wild. I'm sorry I started with a joke because I hope people have seen this movie. I'm excited to talk about this movie.

I wish there were 100 movies like this that we could get into every year. Yeah, and I think that was sort of my eventual takeaway. There's a shot in this movie that a lot of people have talked about, but it's essentially the difference between widows and a lot of movies that aren't widows. And it's the shot where the camera is sort of fixed to the top, to the roof, to the hood of Colin Farrell's car. And he's going from a campaign event to his home, and they drive throughout a neighborhood.

And he's having a racially charged conversation about the changing demographics of the neighborhood that he's an alderman of. And he's talking to be the alderman of it. He wants to be the alderman. He's talking to his campaign manager, and he's being driven by a black chauffeur. And the camera is essentially taking in

the changing background from kind of beaten up street side stuff to the sort of leafy greens of a suburb, not even a suburb, just a tonier part of the sea. Just a few blocks away, it gets fancy. And this whole time, kind of obscured by the glare from the windshield, you can see his driver. And it just is a one take. It's this whole conversation that's essentially just exposition about the district. But you get to see not only the changing background, but the power dynamic between Colin Farrell and his driver. It's just a thing that I don't know if most directors wouldn't think to go that.

that deep or most directors wouldn't do something so inventive and flashy with something that was such a connective tissue of a scene. No reason for that scene to be in the movie. Everything that you kind of think about Colin Farrell, you already think and will think after and before that scene. It doesn't change anything about how you feel about the character. But we talk so much about world building and often what we meet is things like about production design or depth of mythology within the world of a movie.

This is world building in a way that gives you a sense. of geography. And it's such a little brilliant flourish by McQueen, but it's what makes a movie like this a slightly different experience than say something that I also have time for, like Den of Thieves, which is this Gerard Butler Heist movie from earlier in the year, that is supposed to be set in Los Angeles but was shot in Atlanta and kind of looks like it. And doesn't have that layer of perception of the world that it's set in. Perception of the world is absolutely crucial and key here. I think that, that we and anyone who talks about film

or even people who make it spend a lot of time obsessing over what is happening in front of the camera and how we're going to play it and how we're going to CGI it or whatever. It's sometimes important to talk about filmmaking, I think, in a much more primal way, which is just where am I pointing the camera? What am I looking at?

And how quietly and profoundly radical it can be to point the camera in a different direction. The brilliance of the movie, and I do have some issues of the movie, and we can talk about them. But I think the brilliant of the movie is how deeply it understands where Steve McQueen understands

where he wanted to put the camera and what he wanted to look at and particularly what he wanted to look at is people who aren't looked at, or who aren't seen, who are looked at but not seen. And that's even put into the text, right? When there's a line when the widows are getting ready

and I think there's something about like people don't think we can do it. Literally, I think she says, they don't think we have the balls for it, I think is the line. That idea shooting through this movie, which otherwise in its structure, It's not typical. We don't see enough heist movies or sort of this type movie set in the underworld or any of that, I think. But that adds this third rail, not just of relevance, but of excitement. You know, it makes it feel alive and breathing and unique in a way that is not common in. I mean, I don't know if this is a major Hollywood really. I don't even understand what any of that means anymore. But this movie certainly could have and should have been.

It's got an Academy Award winning actress starring in it. It's got Robert Duval. and Colin Furrell. I mean, it's a significant, it's a Hollywood movie. Yeah. Robert Duval, Robert Duval's, like, last act as just a dude who yells wild-ass bullshit, like, the judge being an all-timer. And then continuing in this is really something special. And this is totally ridiculous, and I think, and it's, I'm, I'm to blame me. I'm immediately talking about the men in the movie called Widows, and I shouldn't do that. But I just want to say for watch listeners who may be on the fence and who haven't seen the movie yet, just to know where it fits into our pantheon. Within the first

10 minutes of this movie, there's a conversation about power dynamics between Colin Farrell and Brian Tyree Henry. What I wish I could do was take that conversation, seal it into a Ziploc snack bag, put it into my daughter's lunchbox

and carry it around with me during a long workday or commute in Los Angeles. So that you could just have that as like a 2 p.m. snack. I don't need a protein bar. I just need those two kings going about the change of the neighborhood. They're so good. Yeah.

Brian Tyree Henry is next-level actor. And it's so exciting that everyone's seeing that. And people should check out our friend Zach Barron's profile of him in GQ. But the God Colin Farrell, just cooking. Letting him, they let him alone in the kitchen to cook in this. It's great. His, like, weird smile in this movie is really good. I also wanted to shout out Elizabeth DiBecki.

Yes. Holy shit. And Cynthia Irvo. Yeah, I mean, Elizabeth DiVecchi is somebody who's often just like the best person and whatever she's in. She almost can't even help it. And I really, really was, I've been a, I've been a fan of her since the man from uncle. But she's astonishing in this movie.

I think it was Kate Hollowell, who actually, who works over at the ringer, who pointed out that this is the first movie that it's allowed her to be as tall as she actually is. And not tried to, like, kind of fake it and hide it. And they use her height as a real character element in Widows itself. I mean, every performance in this movie is really pretty, is really something else. It's one of the best acted thrillers or just sort of mainstream dramas you're going to come across in a few years. It's already unique. The premise, people don't know, right, is that there's a criminal gang who gets knocked out and their widows. This is the logline pitch, come together to finish the job, basically, do the heist.

And the women are played by Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth DeBecke, and Carrie Coon. And then Cynthia Reevo joins the group in a different capacity. it's already unique. What is so wonderful about this movie is that it's made by this autore, Steve McQueen, who has not just the artistry, but also the juice to let the uniqueness shine. So there are scenes in this movie like when Michelle Rodriguez goes for her part of the heist, you know, I mean like this is highbrow Ocean's Eight shit, right? Like she goes to do her part of it and she cons one level and then

goes to the next level to find out about blueprints and has this really uncomfortable wrenching emotional scene that ends in tears and failure. And the movie never, they had room for that. Yeah. You know, and the dynamics between the women is so striking and so unsugarcoated that I really appreciated it. There's a scene between Elizabeth DeBecke, who again is just astonishing. She, in many ways, I mean, Viola Davis is a force of nature and is incredible. But I think Elizabeth DeBecke has the biggest arc. weirdly in a movie that has a ton of characters. The dynamic between her and Viola Davis,

the parameters, shifting parameters of that relationship, what each need from the other and what they are comfortable admitting they need and what they are not comfortable admitting they need. You're getting at something that I think is at the heart of the movie, which I think it makes it different than a lot of heist movies. Because I think when you see something like Heat, which is sort of the ur-text of heist movies, there's a line in that I think Tom Seismore says famously,

the action is the juice, which sort of makes it is very silly on its face, but is essentially positing bank robberies or heists or this kind of lifestyle as the pursuit of something that gives your life meeting. It's like, I can't not do this because my life is built around this idea of living outside of the margins of normal society or the thrill that I get from conducting this kind of activity

just makes me feel alive. So the action is the juice, right? This movie could have just as easily been called debt. And it's a lot of what I got out of this was the way in which owing someone something else can change your life. And so many of the characters in this movie are essentially indebted to someone else or something else. Whether it's the legacy of their family in the case of Colin Farrell, whether it's the debt that Viola Davis's character feels like she needs to pay to get out from under her husband's legacy. and then there's people like Elizabeth DeBecke's Alice character who's kind of like I'm I need to get out from under the perception of who I am

because everybody I come into contact with looks at me as either like a vessel for sex or for money you know and even the way in which some of the interactions like when they go into the steam room in the sort of early in the movie when they kind of get the gang together that in and of itself is those women are becoming indebted to Viola Davis now because she's creating this like I'm going to break you off a little bit of money piece by piece to get you through this. And she threatens them. But I'm now bringing you

into this situation that you cannot leave. You cannot walk away from this. So I thought that the way in which that the dynamics of that all, because they were all in debt essentially it created a different kind of sensation. You know what I mean? Like it

doesn't ever feel like you get this vicarious thrill from watching someone take down a bank. You're more just happy that they're getting away with it because they get out from under the shit that they were under. Well, I think that's really well said, and I think that one of the thrills of

heist movies is you know they're going to get away with it. So it's really a clean thrill, and that it's just pure adrenaline and happiness ultimately. There's no cost. You know, it's not going to cost you anything. You don't have to actually worry. It's escapism. And I say that

with the highest possible praise, because I love movies like that. What was great about this movie and really indicative of what great storytelling is in this particular era, I think, was that it in ways active and subtle as who gets to have escapism, who gets to get away with everything free, and, you know, Liam Neeson's character

believes that he's owed that and is able, you know, I'm not going to spoil anything, but believes that that's something that he can do, he can take, keep taking. and then take for himself. And he probably thinks that he's paying for something that happened to his son in some ways. And that his pain is so blinding. He can just live in his own pain that it's a get out of jail-free car. It allows him to do whatever it takes.

Whatever he wants, no matter what happens anything else. And that is, often can be a masculine view of the world. And this is a movie that takes a non-masculine view of the underworld. And I think that it is rare and affecting to have a movie about a heist that never forgets about the indignities of child care. Like there is a moment when Viola Davis is like, who's looking after your children if you're both here? And so it never lets us forget that even if they pull... This is an incredibly Dattington take. No, but even if they pull off this ill shit, they've got to get back.

I know. You know? And the movie doesn't shy away from that. I want to talk about also Cynthia Revo, who I just think clearly is a star. I think she was a star on Broadway already. She is so exciting to watch on the screen. Yeah. And the way she creates a character that is so deeply compelling

through just sketching in the beginning because she's tangential to the story at first until you realize the clever ways that the script, which is by Julian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl and Steve McQueen, there's a lot of subtlety in the beginning that rewards either second viewing or close viewing. As soon as she bursts on the screen

and she's so physical and dynamic that I can't... I would just... A buddy movie with her and DeBecky would just kill. I like how awesome. Also, her character's physicality is very much a product of where she lives. It's not like we got the body man who's like really good at bending. Yes. It's like she's a Chinese acrobat.

She runs fast or she's a good runner because she runs after buses. To make $12 an hour. Yeah, exactly. And she's, and then run back out to be a babysitter on an app. Well, someone else looks after her kid. Exactly. In general, I did think there were moments in the movie where Steve McQueen's very, very valiant and worthwhile desire to make this movie quote unquote relevant to bring it very, very fiercely into 2018 clunked.

Are you talking about the police shooting? There's the police shooting scene, which makes sense, but in terms of the characters they built and the world they build, and again, I love the fact that it never shies away from the racial dynamic that is inherent in the Liam Neeson, Viola Davis relationship. It would be a crime to ignore that part of it. And I think Viol Davis has done interviews talking about how important that was to her and taking the part. But yeah, there's a police shooting that feels,

almost shoehorned in the way that it's presented, there's a conversation that is just verbatim kind of a, like a Trump immigration policy argument. Duval's statement is essentially bill. Giving the city away, this is our last chance to take what we're going to. It's over, but we're going to loot this for the last dollars that we can. Some of that was a little clunky, but to me, honestly, none of that matters because A, what I,

both of us have always wanted, our dream is for Oscar caliber filmmakers to do genre work. Yeah. it's so exciting because it's always going to be different. While genre stories essentially are the same, each person's perspective on it is different. And two, again, for people who haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil the very, very end.

But I found the very last scene, the very last moment. You can spoil it. I mean, like, we're talking spoilers. Talk about it in detail. Well, just to say that a movie that can distract you and maybe even in its marketing attempted to distract you, that it was essentially a heist movie or a crime movie, and there would be a lot of violence,

and there is violence in the movie. mostly thanks to our friend Daniel Kalalia who just regulates it ends on something that is even more challenging often for people and certainly these people which is a deeply human moment

I don't remember the exact line which is why I'm kind of not spoiling it but characters who said they would never see each other again bumping into one other and reach out and there's something that was so great that a movie that

again made by someone else in a different era it would end with one last score you know like a raised eyebrow instead it's really more like how are you? you. What kind of ties into, I think, everything that we were talking about on Monday with Little Drummer Girl, which is this idea that these kinds of stories, there's only so many of them. It's really about how you tell them and the things about them that you find interesting.

And in that sense, they're just endlessly fascinating to me. I'm always interested in someone else's take. Like, I can't wait to watch Karen Kousama's Destroyer soon, which is essentially on its surface, like, you know, a Harry Bosch novel. Yeah, with deep, L.A. Nguar. But it's going to have a different feel to it. And I feel the same way about widows, the same way I feel about drummer girl, because Park Chanwick just has an eye that completely changes the way I, for somebody who's been reading LeCarray for 20 years, I've seen that world in my brain.

You know, and that that's the most exciting thing that can happen. And I'm sure it's the same thing that Mal and Jason feel when they come across moments and Thrones that are just, or Harry Potter, that's like, oh, my imagination is not only being fulfilled, but it's being challenged. Yeah, and I'll bring it back. I'll try to actually give some closure on the joke about John Bernthal, which is, of course, I know why he wanted to be in the movie. Why not?

He probably was like, I'll be the guy who's, like, sweeping up in the background. I'll do anything to work with a great filmmaker. But beyond that, I think it must be very exciting to be a John Bernthal or Liam Neeson, both of whom are very talented actors and nuanced actors who are capable of a lot of different things, but find pretty steady work being goons, right? Whether good guys or bad guys, depending on the actor we're talking about, this is a movie that in a limited way and in a larger way ask them to use the skill set that they could do in their sleep

but not in the same way which I feel like must be liberating. Yeah, right? To actually for Liam Neeson to be the kind of person. I mean, you make the prequel to Widows, and it's a Liam Neeson movie that gets released. Liam Neeson is the femme fatal in this movie. He's the woman who disappears

and then is actually, he's gone girl in this movie. Exactly. And if you make the prequel version of it where he's just keeping a detailed notebooks of cool-ass robberies. It's a movie that gets released in February, and it's called The Thief. Right. This is the next chapter, and we don't usually get to see it. Yeah, all right. We'll wrap it up there. We'll be back next Monday. Thanks for listening. We're going to watch some TV, right? I'm on it, guys. I'm on it. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Sonos. Meet Sonos Beam, the smart compact

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