This Had Oscar Buzz - 168 – Never Let Me Go (with Tara Ariano)

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

This episode, Extra Hot Great co-host Tara Ariano returns to us to talk about another much-requested film, 2010′s Never Let Me Go. An adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s incredibly lauded science fiction novel, the film stars a post-nomination Carey Mulligan opposite Keira Knightley and breakthrough Andrew Garfield as clones raised for the sole purpose of harvesting their … Continue reading "168 – Never Let Me Go (with Tara Ariano)"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. No, I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilynne Heck. Exactly how much experience have you guys had with the outside. Quite a lot. We haven't. Drinks?

Five Cokes, please. If there was a boy and a girl, and they were properly in love and they could prove it, then they would be given a few years together before they began their donations. Why do you do that thing? Squeezing Tommy's shoulder. I'm allowed to touch Tommy, aren't I?

It's the way you're touching him. Suppose for a second that there is a special arrangement for health from students. If they're in love. Although Tummy really likes you as a friend, he just doesn't see you that way. We are modeled on trash. We're in love, and it's true love.

It's verifiable. We didn't have to look into your souls. We had to see if you had souls at all. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that knows the majestic beauty of the Jaguar Shark. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty Academy Award aspirations,

but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my precious organ bank, Chris Fyle. Hello, Chris. Maybe not the first time I've been called an organ bank. Excellent, excellent. No, no, we are a family podcast.

How dare I. It's not that kind of show. Good start, though. Good start to this episode about this very tasteful and lovely little movie that you're going to take it right to there. So, yeah, we're going to be chopping up. You took it there. I did.

I'm sorry. I did. I don't regret it. We're talking about beautiful people getting chopped up for their little inner organs today in a very beautiful way. And we are doing so, Chris, with a returning guest who I am super psyched to have on the podcast this week we have um what was our was it the it was the family stone family stone baby family stone of course our very first christmas oh wow god that's right long ago that's crazy welcome

back it's been too long welcome back to the co-host of extra hot great and freelance uh entertainment journalist extraordinaire tar ariano hello welcome back thank you so much thrilled to be here so happy to have you. This was one of those episodes where I kept being like, well, we can't do, never let me go yet because we have to have Tara on. Never let me go. Because I believe, I think it was one of those where you're just like, you can't do, never let me go without me. And I was just like, got it. Like, Roger, that. But for a good reason, I feel like you are, you are exactly the perfect person to talk about this movie with. But why don't you, we, last time we sort of went through the Oscar origin story and all that.

But why don't you tell us and our wonderful listeners why this movie jumped out at you that you wanted to talk about it with us? Well, let me start with a brag. I read the book. Same. Same. This is what, like, I always talk

about how I don't read books. I did read this book. I read this book before this movie came out. I was very proud of myself. Yeah. Yes. I was going to try to reread it before this podcast, but what I went looking for it, I couldn't find it. So I guess I gave it away. I might have given it to you, Joe Reed.

It's very possible. Yeah, I just, this movie is, is like a beautiful little jewel, and I feel like it's really underseen and underappreciated. It's, watching it again this week, it just feels like there's not a false moment in it. It stands on its own as a, as a lovely achievement, but it's also such a great translation, adaptation of the book. I'm interested to get into the, the wise. of this movie because this is one of those movies where I talk to people and people are still

kind of puzzled as to why this wasn't an Oscar nominee because it felt like it had all the ingredients and nothing went particularly terribly awry with it. Chris, do you remember sort of this moment of Never Let Me Go? Were you psyched to see this movie when it came out? Absolutely because I adored the book. But I mean, it didn't have the warmest festival reception, but I always also feel like it's just one of those movies that probably part of the reason is because of its critical reception when the movie launched in September, like it's so easy for this movie to just outright die. Also, interestingly, with Fox Searchlight this year, I think it could be the same exact fate for a very different movie in Eyes of Tammy Faye. But it's like, it's really hard to bring a movie like this, around if people don't have a strong response to it from the beginning, whereas if they'd held the movie a little bit longer. And then when you look at Fox Searchlight Slate of this year, it's like, oh yeah, they ended up having other priorities. They ended up turning Black Swan into a hundred

million dollar movie at the box office. You know, like it was, I think it's pretty clear to me why this movie, you know, is left in the cold. It's interesting. and we'll get into talking about obviously the stars of this movie, Carrie Mulligan, Kira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield, and what other projects of theirs also sort of had more awards attention than this one, and some of them in kind of surprising ways. And even also with Fox Searchlight, the fact that they had a movie like conviction

that ended up doing better in the precursor season than Never Let Me Go did, which is just odd. Because we obviously feel, I feel like when we talked about that one, Chris, that one was more of just like a face plant of a movie and yet that one at least had like a SAG nomination for uh for Hillary Swank and and that movie is also a massive bummer yes that's the other thing yeah because I think yeah this this movie never let me go really got tagged with the with the bummer the label on it and I mean fairly sure totally but and we'll get into it but the other reason I think it might not

have done super great at the Oscars might be that it's you know a soft sci-fi story like this, which is not really super showy. Yes. Like, the technology isn't really even anything we ever see on screen other than their, you know, their tracking bracelets and stuff. But it's hard to, like, it's hard to know what, what is it that we're watching? It just, it looks like a beautiful stately, you know, BBC miniseries that would be on masterpiece.

And then it's actually telling this incredibly, like, dark and scary story. It does feel almost like a BBC America miniseries that might have done really, really well with, and probably could have attracted the same level of talent the way the television is today. Oh, for sure. I think if this were being made in 2020, it would be a miniseries rather than a movie. Yeah. Well, and it might even be, like, I may be a little bit, I still think it's good. I may be a little bit softer on the movie than you guys are.

But I think it might be better, even though it's a small book. I mean, like, it's a very quick read and heavy read, but I think if this material had a little bit more time to linger on the screen, it would kind of bring out what the thematic content of it is a little bit more in a way. I think that enhances the, like, you know, traditional science fiction of it, whereas the movie doesn't really, like, I don't know if that's one of the things the movie does successfully. well and it is the story is decently episodic right where you have the part where they're at halsham like even the part where like miss lucy the sally hawkins character is around for a little bit and then gone and then they're at the cottages for a little while and like donald gleason and Andrea riseboro are there and then they're gone and it sort of moves sort of forward in these kind of chapter pacing uh explicitly chaptered because we get like a screen with a title and everything. Right, right, exactly. And so, yeah, I think that would have lent itself well. But the other thing, Tara, that you were talking about about the sort of soft sci-fi of it, it is very much like, it's cautionary tale sci-fi without having that, like, really heavily, it's like it's an emotional movie, but it doesn't leave you at the end being like, we have to do something about this. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't stir the kind of big emotions that you would want from something that, like, you're going to ask people to vote for. And to remember from the beginning of September through a very sort of busy award season. Yeah. And it's also because it's so much sadder, I think, you know, you could maybe say there are similar vibes in her only a couple of years after this, but it's not, it's not as

sad. Right, right. And it probably also relates to actual science that is going on in our everyday lives, whereas this is, you know, a lot of hypothetical science. And, of course, you know, maybe a little bit more current in the type of questions we would have about science from when the book was published versus when the movie came out. I also have a lot of questions because we're also people who have read the book and all obviously keep saying it. It sounds great. I know all three of us.

Like, you know, we're changing to a, we're just going to cover books that we have all read on this podcast, you know, to see. But I do have a lot of questions for audience members who haven't read the book. I mean, obviously, it's a very immensely popular and heralded book. But I just wonder in the movie if the themes of it register as well for an audience that hasn't read the book. Like, we're already coming into it knowing the kind of ideas this story is trying to bring up, right? And I'm not sold on how well it does that as a movie. Well, and we'll get into it when we get on the other side of the plot description, but the adaptations that the movie makes to the story, which it doesn't change a ton,

but it does let the viewer in on some stuff earlier than the book does in a way that I'll be interested to talk about. But one other thing I wanted to mention, too, about, because Tara mentioned her, and sort of that got me thinking. And I think one of the things that her had in its pocket was it was from Spike Jones, who had already sort of been led into the fold a little bit. Spike Jones is also, similar to Mark Romantic, got his start in music videos. He sort of got famous for making music videos as Mark Romantic. He got his start as an intern at Sassy Magazine. All right. Well, very good opening to get a plug for also the Listen to Sassy Podcast, which if you are in any way into a teen culture of the late 80s, early 90s, which like, that was like my cool older cousins were exactly in that, in that sassy vibe.

So, like, it's a, it's a fantastic podcast, you and Pam. Thank you so much. I really enjoy that one. But, yeah, but the Spike Jones of it, he had already kind of been let into the Oscar fold with, you know, being. John Malkovich and adaptation already. And I do feel like, and Mark Romantic's only made two feature films. We covered the other one. We did an episode with our friend Matt Jacobs on one-hour photo.

But he's never really felt like he's been sort of welcomed into the fold properly as like a feature film guy. He still feels like a music video guy who is interloping, or at least that's how the Hollywood community seems to view him from the fact that they are just like. like, we're going to push this movie to the side a little bit, but I may be reading into things. Anyway, though, Tara, I know how much you love when we push our plot descriptions deep, deep, deep into the episode. So I didn't want to, like, disappoint you by getting to the plot description too early, but this does feel like a natural place to get to it.

So sorry, you can't be a classic good fight 20 minutes into the episode opening credits. If any of our listeners know when the longest that we've ever taken to get to a plot description, what episode it is and what the time stamp is, I would love to know that because I think there is an episode or two where we pushed it to like 40 minutes. Well, there was one, I don't know if Joe told Chris, but there was one recently where I was like, did you forget to do the plot description? You literally made me go back and check because it was like, fuck, did we forget? I would absolutely not put it past us, though. I think our listeners would all, like, immediately tell us that we didn't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I think that's probably true. But, yeah, Tara, I feel like we're round in about that time to get 60 seconds worth of a plot out of you. But first, I want to run down the specifics of this week's movie. We are talking about Never Let Me Go, the film directed by Mark Romantic, written by Alex Garland. And we'll definitely get into that a little bit, based on the novel that all three, three of your hosts read this week, have we mentioned, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and I probably worked that up a little bit, but that's fine, starring Carrie Mulligan, Kira Knightley,

Andrew Garfield, Charlotte Rampling, Sally Hawkins, Donald Gleason, Andrea Riseborough, Natalie Richard. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 3rd, 2010, and then opened wide a few days later on September 15th, 2010. Opened wide is a real, real particular way of saying that, because I feel like wide was like 200 screens at most with this movie, but still. All that said, Tara, are you ready for a 60-second plot description? Yes. All right. Your time will start now.

We open on Carrie Mulligan watching Andrew Garfield going into surgery. They both look upset as anyone would when they're going into surgery, and then we flash way back to when their characters were kids at a school called Hailshund. And at first, it seems like your standard British boarding school with a bunch of little cute Muppets. But then as time goes on, we realize things are not quite as they seem. And eventually a new teacher comes to the school named Sally Hawkins, played by Sally Hawkins. Her name is Miss Lucy. And she is weirded out by things that are going on and eventually tells all of the kids what is actually happening. They have been raised basically to be organ donors later in life.

They're going to go through two or three donations, and then they will complete. That is the euphemism. Then the other thing that's happening is Kathy, Carrie Mulligan is in love with Tommy, Andrew Garfield, while they're kids, but their friend Ruth gets in the way of them kind of out of spite, it seems like. And then we see them grow up. That's time. I forgot I was supposed to do this. They didn't get the dog until today. All right.

So what happens after that? is they grow up, they live in these like what are called the cottages where they're sort of supposed to learn how to function in society barely, because they don't really have to do anything. They don't have to get a job. All they do is keep themselves healthy until they have to start doing donations. And they don't know

what like food is or beverages are, apparently, because they go to a restaurant and they don't even know what a Coca-Cola is, or a water is. Well, but you also get the sense that society also doesn't want them

around. They don't want to have to kind of look at these people and take them in as people. They want to keep them as separate as possible just so that they don't have to think about what's going on too much. And that's a really interesting thread of this movie. There's a lot of sort of very subtle stuff that builds this world in a really interesting way because you don't ever really encounter much of the outside world. You do get that diner scene. You get when they visit Charlotte Rampling and Natalie Richard in their home. When they go to hunt

who Kira Knightley might have been cloned from or modeled after. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I love the euphemism, the use of euphemism in this movie and the way that like talking about completion, how completion is their

euphemism for death and the donation and possible and even like the cottages, which is just sort of this like almost halfway house for these clones and they never use the term clone and it all feels very much again that to me feels like supplemental world building where it's like oh this is a society that wants to be very delicate about the way they talk about it because they don't want to get into the ugly reality of like we are raising organ banks you know we are cloning organ banks for us and i think that is

pretty successful And certainly, like, you know, comes from the novel. But the thing I wanted to talk about was in the book, you don't find out what's going on until about halfway through, if I'm not mistaken. And I know. Even a little bit later? Maybe. It takes a lot longer in the book.

To get the full picture, at least, that they are indeed clones. You know something's up. I don't think is until they do that visit to Charlotte Rampling in the book. You definitely, you know that something's up. and it sort of reveals things, I think, sort of slowly. And in the movie, Romantic and Alex Garland make the decision to let the viewer in on it really early. Obviously, even just with the scene with Carrie Mulligan and Andrew Garfield at the beginning, it definitely sets the audience onto sort of the right path.

And then when Miss Lucy sort of spills the beans to the kids, that's still really early on in the movie. And she tells it to him flat. She's just like, you are being raised so that you will donate your organs. and then at some point you will die young. And I liked that because it makes sure that the audience, especially a movie audience, who's trained to be so focused on plot, that it allows the audience to experience the movie

without being like, what's going on? I got to figure this out. Yeah, but the other thing that's effective, even before we get to that point, is that they establish, like, there's there's lore at the school like there's there are sort of these these uh you know urban myths that have been going around like well we can't go outside the fence even if there's a ball that's rolled three feet away from where we were because there was a boy and he went outside

the fence and he was found tied to a tree with his hands and feet cut off dead or you know there's a girl that starved outside the gates and then there's the whole thing with the gallery like creating the art and what is it for and stuff so it it almost seems like This Lucy's story is just another piece of lore, except we know it's not. But that's, but at the same time, like, the stories, we don't know, because we don't know what the school is for. It's hard to tell if these are just regular, like, urban myths that go around to school where, like, you hear something from someone's cousin.

That's totally not true. Right. Or if there's, like, something more nefarious going on. The lore stuff that you point out is, like, one of the better things of the movie to me that, like, establish like the theme one of the themes that in the book of like indoctrination and isolation where it's like you know because they are told this is who you are and this is your function and that's all you will make of your life you know the idea that they can't you know rebel against that or find you know it's not that type of science fiction right where it's like

revealing a certain human nature of like the thing that we're told we're told we are We are stuck in that forever. Right, right. But it also sets up the most important myth, which is the deferral myth. Yes. Only comes out when they're older. But, yeah, they're like babies. Like, they just, they don't learn anything about the world and continue to be babies.

And because of, like, that isolation, too, they can believe these myths, you know, because, like, their world is so small. And, like, the idea of these myths create in their minds a world bigger than, you know, the one they actually experience. Right. Like even when Miss Lucy is saying, like, what do people do when they grow up? They might, you know, work in a shop. They might move to America.

And they're like, what? Like, they've never thought that's not. Right. Well, and then the movie and the book, I'm pretty sure, does the same thing, jumps you from the part where their children, their school-aged children, to then their adults. And they've already gotten past the point where they know now the ins and outs of what the rest of their life is going to be.

And Kathy has become a carer. And Ruth, by the time we see her again, has already begun her donations. And Tommy is about to begin his donations. And, um, or no, wait, we see them at the cottages. No, he has too. Right. Yes. Um, we do see them at the cottages in the interim, too.

I, I think I, uh, I missed that. But, but anyway, we get past the point where they, for where whatever this process is is explained to them. So we don't see them kind of dawn on. The Miss Lucy part really is the part where they're sort of given that information for the first time. But the thing about the stories and the sort of the urban legends, as you put it, that I think is so effective is it, part of it is stuff that they're just trying to tell, they're trying to teach themselves about a world that they don't know about. So they end up sort of spinning out these ideas that they hope to be true in these really sort of childlike ways. And you get really, really heartbreaking scenes.

That part of the diner where Donald Gleason and Andrea Rysborough are asking them, like, you guys went to Halesham. There's this story that Halesham students are special. And if they are in love, they can get a deferral. And the looks on their faces when they sort of realize that these Halesham kids don't know what they're talking about. is devastating. And then you get it again later when Tommy has like fully spun this idea out in his head that the artwork is meant to show that they are worthy of a deferral, that they are, that they are special, that that's why they did the artwork. And that's why he now has to, has to do artwork to present to them because he didn't do it when he was a kid, because he was kind of an unruly kid. And there's no real reason for him to think that that is true.

And Kathy kind of says that to him at one point, where she's just like, we don't know that that's what the artwork was for. And he's like, no, that's what it was for. And it's a very childlike thing of like, this is a thing that could be true. So I have decided that this is a thing. This is possible. Yeah. Totally. The other thing about when the looks on Donald Gleeson and Andrereisbrose's face is when they realize the deferral thing is maybe not true.

is that the scope of what they're dreaming could be possible is so small. It's not even like, if we can prove we're in love, we won't have to do donations. Like, that's not even on the table for them at all. They don't, they can't, they don't have the concept. It's like three or four extra years. Like, that's it. Like, that's all, right. That's, yeah.

Yeah. It's heartbreaking. Well, and I think the really tragic thing about the artwork is that it is actually significant in what it, what, you know, their experience was or what, you know, their experience was or what. that Halesham meant and also that Halesham students are special. This is something that the movie really, I think, lacks clarity on and is frustrating to me as a viewer because it does really like kind of complete the portrait for us in that the book, Halesham is like the one institution that tries to at least raise these clones in a in some type of self-awareness educational way where the suggestion is all of the other clones, all of the other, like, basically hosts of organs

aren't treated as well as they are at Hailsham. So Hailsham is actually special. Halesham, you know, um, is basically the place that treats them with the most human ethics. Right. Well, and is eventually shut down because it's, you know, they can't prove that these children are indeed children. And And it's less efficient than just raising them on farms, as someone says, like, later on, which is so, so bleak. But, again, you know, it's very intentional. This is the stuff that we don't see. Yeah. Well, and the artwork was supposed to be the tool to say these are actual human beings, even though they have been, you know, produced in a lab somehow, which that we don't know the details of.

But, like, it's a little bit grayer in the movie where I think the book kind of puts that expression. explicitly in a way that we as an audience need. Well, the one thing that I did think was effective is we don't find out the part about how Halesham was the only school that was trying to sort of prove to the rest of the world that these are not just, you know, bags of organs. These are actual, you know, humans with souls. That was ultimate, that's the devastating line that Charlotte Rampling says, but we wanted to prove that you had souls at all.

and but I think the visual of that where because we don't see Charlotte Rampling for like a very long time after they jump forward in time and all of a sudden we're seeing her again and when we do at the beginning she's that sort of she's the headmistress she's not exactly shown as being cruel or mean but she's strict and she's you know blunt and you don't you get the feeling that you know nobody really wants to in the quintessential Charlotte Rampling way that is British but also somehow French And also somehow, I don't know, granite. Yeah, exactly. But I think it's very intentional that when you see her again, she's in a wheelchair, she's older, she's more frail, she's the ultimate ineffectiveness of what she's been able to do, I think is reflected. And when you see her again, she's not this, like you said, like made of granite, this sort of, you know, stern authority figure. she is a little bit a little bit apologetic her partner uh i can't remember her name now the character's name madame yes thank you um is more sort of outwardly like sympathetic but ultimately neither one of these women are able to help them by like saving their lives they tried they tried to prove to

the rest of the world that these kids were human but ultimately they failed halsham was shut down and now all these pleas to them for deferrals are, you know, useless and it's... Well, they don't say that they failed. They say it didn't matter because people just... The decision was we can't go back. Right. But I do think it's interesting that Miss Emily, the Charlotte Rampling character, is using a wheelchair at the end because it makes you wonder, like,

did she have access to some kind of surgery that she turned down? Oh, you know, I got it's wild that I never thought of that, because of course, of course that. Yeah. Well, it's not even that she turned it down. It's just that you questioned it at all if she would have turned it down or if maybe she did receive something because we don't, we don't know. We just see the visual of her in a wheelchair. We don't know the circumstances of her help.

So it raises a lot of those questions. Yeah. So just sort of backing up and I feel like the questions of why never let me go had Oscar Buzz at the time. At the time, it felt very much, like, there was a lot of expectation on this from the beginning. I think primarily, well, first of all, Fox Searchlight is a very Oscar savvy studio. So anything that comes out of there, you already have your eye on. But I think the fact that it was an Ishiguro novel, an Ishiguro had written The Remains of the Day, which was a Best Picture nominee in 1993, got a bunch of nominations, was Merchant Ivory production,

with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins and never let me go was really well received. It was on these best novels list not only of that particular year it was the mid-2000s when it was released but also like at the end of that decade there were a bunch of lists that it showed up on

so it was a very very well-regarded and highly acclaimed novel so there was a lot of light on this and I do that does make me kind of curious as to why it ended up with Mark Romantic who had only done one feature film previous to this and it was, what, eight years before this.

So do we feel like maybe Romantic was the right guy for this or maybe they could have had a director who was a little bit more suited to this and could have pushed it to a more successful place? I mean, there's things that the movie does well from like Romantic's lens of like visually it's really good visually i think it's kind of keyed into the emotion really well but i think where this movie struggles is kind of developing the grander themes of it because like sure it's about cloning and it's about you know ethics in science which is a you know really tricky thing for a viewer today that i was like wait is this anti-science i'm my guard is up maybe through

our past two years of trauma. But I don't think the kind of like grander ideas that, you know, Ishiguro is not explicit about, but like, you know, subtle themes that he's trying to make you think about of things like indoctrination, education, you know, general mortality, what impact do we leave on each other type of science fiction questions that I just, I think. that the movie is maybe a little bit too

literal, and it's maybe just that film is a very literal medium, but I don't know if I think this movie's particularly well directed. Yeah, I mean, his music videos, we should, I think we

probably got into this a little bit when we did one-hour photo, but like he was best known for things like the Michael and Janet Jackson video for Scream, or 9-inch Nails is closer, Fiona Apple's criminal Madonna's bedtime story, Johnny Cash's Hurt, which I think some of those are very kind of, you see this sort of cold futurism in the Michael and Janet video, and obviously

bedtime story is very, you know, dreamlike and weird. But then you get stuff like the Fiona Apple video or even the Nine Inch Nails video for closer. And it's like he is, he does manage to get to a kind of like he knows his way around an image a really sort of like stark image that can be very unsettling and so much of the story of Never Let Me Go can be very unsettling but I think

a director who maybe was able to key into a little bit more of the emotionality because it doesn't come easy the emotionality in this movie comes in really sort of like quiet glances the whole thing about the fact that these characters

accept their faiths with such sort of, it's not even stoicism. It's just sort of like it's innocence. It's the fact that like they don't even know enough to try and rebel. So it's not like, this is not a story about rebellion ultimately, but it's just about how crushingly sad it is that these characters just sort of move through to their completion. And if the system creates you as something, you are destined to be stuck as that thing because you can't envision yourself as anything else. Right. But I think. it then, it leans a lot on

the actors to bring that kind of emotionality out of it. And fortunately, I think they're all really good. I think this cast from top to bottom is really, really successful, starting with Carrie Muggan, who I had forgotten that this was just the year after an education.

And she had been in some other things. She had been in Pride and Prejudice with Kieran Knightley. I think when they filmed this movie, like, an education had only premiered at Sundance. I don't think, like, audiences had really gotten a chance to see an education. I don't think it was released by the time they filmed this movie.

So that makes it even more interesting, I think. She was in the theater when I saw this for the first time. I saw this at the now gone and well-remembered Landmark Sunshine on Houston Street. And I saw this with a couple friends of mine. And all of a sudden, the movie's about to start. And she just walks up to the front of the theater. Because Landmark Sunshine would do the thing. like the usher would like introduce the movie and just be like thank you for coming this is a you know

this is the movie please don't talk you know and then leave and then this one it was just like oh yeah and we have a guest here and it's carrie mulligan she was just like hi thank you for coming to see the movie and this wasn't like a premiere this was just like this was probably the first week that it was open but it wasn't even like opening day and she was just like thank you for coming to see the movie i hope you like it and and that's it and i was just like that's wild that's sort of kind of crazy um but like not even there for a q and a after no no not at all just high literally it was just like she was it she was in the neighborhood decided to stop by i've never seen anything like that before i mean she was living in new york these during this time this is also

the year of uh wall street money never sleeps i am definitely the first person to invoke the name of that movie in the past five years well another movie was living with shia at that time Oh, I don't, I didn't remember that part. Interesting. Oh, yeah, they, they dated for a while. They almost got engaged, I thought. I did not remember that at all. Wall Street Money Never Sleeps another movie that probably got more precursor awards attention than never let me go to.

That got a Golden Globe nomination. Crazy. But I think, right? I think she's fantastic in this movie, though. I think she's the performance of the movie. Yeah. She has the job of being the most. like, wise and knowing of all of them.

I mean, the love triangle between her and Andrew Garfield and Ruth, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, Kieran Knightley, mixing everything up. She, you know, it's a, it's a very simple kind of setup. Like, on the surface, you know, Ruth sees that Kathy likes Tommy and Tommy likes her too. And so she just inserts herself because she's jealous. but then we find out the real reason is that she of the three of them is the only one apparently who's heard the deferral myth and is trying to like lock him down basically but Kathy has more knowledge of the world because she becomes a carer and so she's she spends more time with with more people as they're going through their donation process and so just by the time

we see her again post cottages like you can just tell the weight of it that she's she's holding on her delicate, beautiful little banged face. Well, and she's so, she's so effective in that role that you find yourself sort of admiring what a good, how well-suited she is to the role of a carer, right? Where she's always been in that position with, even like with Ruth and Tommy when they were younger, the fact that Ruth would be like really kind of nasty to her and sort of rubbing it in that she was with Tommy knowing that Kathy had these feelings for him. and she didn't really

she never lashed back I think she even had those care instincts then and then you almost sort of take a step back and just be like wow like I'm she's really really good at being a care and then you're like wait a second it's insane that anybody would have to do this anyway and you sort of have to remind yourself

that this is such a horrible system but she it's a really great performance I went back I was sort of looking up her filmography just to sort of get a sense of where she was in her career at the time, obviously, right after an education. I don't think I ever realized that she does not make very many movies.

So every movie she makes, even if they're not, like, great movies, they end up being, like, impactful. Like, Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. She's sort of, like, you can almost, like, brush that design. She's just the girlfriend in that movie, but she's the best performance in the movie. She's also Michael Douglas's daughter, so she has the incredibly unfortunate character name of Winnie Gecko, which, like, Christ Almighty. Why would you do that to somebody? But, like, 2011, she's in two really kind of divisive movies. She's in drive and shame.

But those are both, like, we remember both of those movies now, and they're both with really interesting directors in Nicholas Winding Riffin and then Steve McQueen, obviously. Then she does Great Gatsby with Buzz Lerman, inside Lewin Davis with Joel and Ethan Cohen. Far from the Madden crowd with Thomas Winterberg, which is really underrated, If it's not like, even at like its greatest level, you're not going to be like telling all your friends back, you know, when you go home for the holidays about like, got to see far from the Madden crowd.

But it's really good. I mean it's a gorgeous movie. Suffragette, which we covered on this podcast, which is a bomb. But like mudbound with DeRees, I think she's really good. I loved her in Wild Life, the Paul Dano directed movie. And then promising young women last year, which almost felt like a comeback, even though she hadn't really gone anywhere. but it was her first nomination since since an education and she like that was a really like powerful sort of just like Carrie Mulligan motherfuckers kind of a performance and it's a really well put

together career for somebody who is still really like relatively really young in the industry I don't know I'm very impressed by it and does take these breaks because she's also a mom she spends time raising her kids, too. So she has a very intentional career. And she does some theater, too. She does a bunch of theater in London and on Broadway. So one of those, like, low-key putting together a really great career is Carrie Mulligan. Like, maybe, you know, we'll start seeing it. She's in an upcoming movie directed by Maria Schrader, who did that Netflix series Unorthodox. And I'm Your Man this year, the German Oscar submission. Yes. And it's the movie about the two New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct story, which I'm not sure how much I'm psyched about seeing that sort of dramatized into a movie. Or like, I'm a little bit trepidacious. It's her and Zoe Kazan playing Megan Twosie and Jody Cantor. But I don't know. I'm, I'm. I'm willing to hear it out. I don't know. She's still, I think, a very exciting actress. Like, one of the things that makes her great for Kathy H. in this movie and makes her also amazing in something like Wildlife is she does very well with these characters who maybe don't communicate their whole circumstance, but can really convey, you know, a certain level of experience that she's able to.

Carrie, you know, in her physical presence, you know, that speaks a lot of volumes when we watch her on screen. And I think that's why she's kind of perfectly cast for this movie because it is this quietly difficult character because it could just be so boring, but because she can communicate a lot of things nonverbally, it fills in a lot of gaps that I think, you know, less interesting performers would have maybe sunk the movie for. Yeah, I agree. She does a lot with stillness. Yeah.

Tara, do you have a particular favorite Carrie Mulligan performance outside of this movie? I really liked an education. I thought she was great in that, but this is probably my favorite. Yeah. Yeah, she's, I mean,

that's one of the great sort of like breakthrough first nominations, sort of coming out of nowhere. Justice for her shame performance. I loved her in that movie. thought she was great. Kieran Knightley has, I would say, the most difficult role in this movie because that's clearly the least likable character of the main three.

She definitely, she's there, she has moments where she's cruel, but she also, she's the best line in the movie, however. Oh, we are modeled on trash. I use constantly. We are modeled on trash. And the, like, the sort of the pain in that line and sort of the frustration about, like, because she got her hopes up that she had found, they found her possible, and she wanted to believe that she was cloned after a woman who was sort of the successful professional lady.

Not even like this huge ambition, like, I am cloned from someone who is like wealthy or has made so much of themselves. It's just like an average business woman. Yeah, someone who works in a traveling agency. That's the ceiling on, you know, how they vision themselves. I think she's quite good in this movie. She kind of got some of the, I think, in general the performances were reviewed very well, but I think when I saw some of the more negative performance reviews, she kind of bore the brunt of that. I think critics have had a

hard time coming around on her, even though by this point she had already done Pride and Prejudice and gotten an Oscar nomination. And people were pretty on board with that. And she had done movies like Atonement and the Duchess, both of which got Oscar nominations, but not for her. but I think at the beginning of her career with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and even like and the fact that she was in

the first Pirates of the Caribbean and Love Actually and Bend it like Beckham all at once there was the sense of like why are you pushing Kiranightly on the culture a little bit and I think there was a lot of pushback and I think it's taken her a long time

to get to a point where people respect what she's doing and I think it's a really good performance and never let me go. I agree. Yeah. Andrew Garfield was probably at the most interesting

career point making this movie and when it came out because he had only really been in some British TV stuff. He was in that movie, Boy A, which he won a BBC or some sort of BAFTA TV award for that.

Like the Rising Star Award maybe? something like or I think it was just for their for British Independent maybe television work yeah and then he was in a trilogy of TV sort of like detective stories called Red Riding that was like this like you know crime procedural stuff and he was in Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas which was like got a lot of attention but not at all for him you know that was there was other other fish to fry in that movie but then this is the same year never let me go is the same year as the social network so Social Network comes out, like, the month after this. And I think even as Never Let Me Go was being released, he had been announced as the new Spider-Man. Like, he had already been cast in that movie. So he was, like, a rising star by the time you got to this movie. And obviously, Social Network overshadows, all of that. He almost gets Oscar-nominated.

It comes very, very close, I would say. And this movie was definitely sort of like the afterthought for him in this year. but I also think he's really good. You know what I mean? Like, I think he's, he has to have the sort of, like, the biggest emotional sort of, like,

catharsis scene when he gets out of the car and he sort of screams into the void. And it's less, I think it is less effective than the more quiet stuff from Carrie Mulligan. But he has some of these scenes where you just sort of get that, see the look on his face and see the sort of, this sort of tragic childness of of his character and it's really heartbreaking yeah well especially the scream because it it um you know recalls the one where he's not picked for a game and just screams in the middle of the field for a while even when they reconnect with uh Charlotte Rampling's character like that's the thing she remembers about him she's just like subject to such terrible rages and it's just like oh man like that's the thing you remember about me like yeah that's not what you want to teach her to say no No, it's not the pleasure to have in class that all us gay boys got when we were in school.

What struck me on this rewatch about his performance is that it's working really well in tandem with what Carrie Mulligan is doing because, like, he has that, you know, kind of enduring boyishness of it that makes that, like, rageful scream makes so much sense, especially after, you know, he visits a teen. who mentions it um and like she after her time as a carer is like you see her you know growing in like age and weariness so it's like they're complimenting kind of i guess the paradox of each other's like existence in terms of the performance like that maybe sounds a little bit pretentious of me but like uh i don't know they bring out uh the like i think both these performances are bringing out the tragedy of each other's character through contrast. Yeah. But I think he's effective with Knightley as well because you can see how someone of his

temperament would just be bulldozed by her. Like, we are boyfriend, girlfriend now, even though he doesn't really like her very much. He has made zero decisions in that relationship throughout the entire course of it. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. I also want to bring up, of course, my favorite scene in the movie, we talked about a little bit, that diner scene, just because Donald Gleason and Andrew Rysbara win so

little of this movie. And one of the great things about, if this were a miniseries, is they probably would have gotten, like, a whole episode where they were, like, really featured. The sweater plus sort of shaggy long hair plus kind eyes that Donald Gleason is sporting in this. I said, I was talking about something else on Twitter the other day. And I was remembering the thing where when I was younger, you would do the, like, gay or just nice to me thing. And I feel like his character in this movie would have been my ultimate, like, gay or just nice to me, Kryptonite, where it's just like, he would say one really kind thing to me. And he would be about, like, two or three years older than me. And I would just be like, maybe he's gay because he's nice.

Boys aren't nice. So what you're saying is you were staring into your TV saying, give me your organs, daddy. Okay. You took it there this time. I did not do that. You did that one. That's on you. But you're not. About that scene, though, I think Chris was saying earlier that they don't know what food is. They don't know what Coke is. I don't think it's that. I think it's that they've never been in a position to make choices before. Yeah. That's true. And that's what's hanging them up. I mean, we see the scene earlier when they are actually play acting. Like, here's, this is your your workshopping what you do when you do. you go into a cafe and apparently it didn't stick because none of them remembered tea with milk and sugar. Right. But yeah, that's what strikes me in that scene. And they each sort of followed suit.

He ordered what was like sausage and eggs. And so they all had to order sausage and eggs. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very sweet scene and it's a really, I think one of the great successes of this movie is it has these very quiet scenes that end up telling you a lot about the characters and also about like the world they inhabit and yeah it's really sweet but like god i would watch a whole side movie about rodney and chrissey and like what was going on with their lives because like

they clearly were again so devastated by finding out that they couldn't get this deferral like they had their own little love story on their own and and uh yeah andrea riseborough giving great hat acting she's got like a beret or something andrea riseborough who is an actress who i adore and always like I will probably watch a lot of junk just because she's in it and she's always like great and fascinating, has never played more normal and she's a clone. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. Her career is fascinating because for the longest time, I finally sort of gotten on it, but like it wasn't exactly face blindness, but it was like, I know her. Why do I know her from something?

This era of Andrea Reisborough, though, yeah, absolutely face blindness, because, like, even watching this, loving her for, you know, a decade on, I'm like, that is Andrea Reisbrose. She does, like, kind of not, I mean, by design for that character, like, she doesn't necessarily register as much in this movie. This was at least her. There's also a little kid at Halesham that looks like she could be little Andrew Rysborough to the point where I was like, oh, right, they didn't go. They didn't go to Halesham. That wasn't intention. Was W.E. even this year? No, that was the year after this.

Oh, boy. This one, she had already made two movies, actually, funnily enough, with Sally Hawkins. She was in Happy Go Lucky. She was in Maiden, Dagenham. And then she was, she's Tom Cruise's partner in Oblivion, right? I say this as if we've all naturally seen Oblivion. Yes, yes.

But she might, I forget if she is a robot. No, she's not. a robot. She's like, she gets to scream in oblivion. Right. She's like the one who screams. But like she's in bird man. She's in nocturnal animals. She's in Battle of the Sexes, which we talked about a few weeks ago. And all of those ones- She and Donald Gleason each in very good black mirror episodes too. Oh, which one is she in? I know the one that he's in because he's in such a heartbreaking one. She's in the one that said in Iceland where there's a crime happens and they figure it out with like surveillance.

Oh, okay. I still haven't seen all of the black mirrors. I need to go and like pick up all the ones that I sort of skipped past. You value your levels of anxiety too much to finish black mirror. But I think it wasn't until she was in Death of Stalin, which I think she's flat out hysterically funny. She's really funny. She's good. She's the best thing about that movie. That's the, that was the one that really like, it locked me in. I was like, all right, I remember. Because I had seen her in a play before I had seen her in any kind of a movie. She was in a play called The pride with Hugh Dancy and now I can't remember the other guy but it was like the two guys were in like sort of a fraught gay thing and then she was the best friend of one of the guys oh it was

Ben Washaw I forgot Ben Washa take me to jail I know don't tell him I go to the doctor after we finished don't tell him um and she played I believe Ben Wishaw's friend and I thought she had such a like I said afterwards I was like she's got such a Kate Winslet vibe and I'm not sure as exactly if that that's the career that she's sort of built into but she's really really good she showed up in a movie called possessor last year directed by brandon kronenberg where she's this like assassin who inhabits other people's bodies she rules in that movie i have the issue of that movie but she fucking rules yeah so love her she's also got like two scenes in birdman everybody forgets that she's in birdman right yeah she also

shows up. I think this movie will be on Amazon Prime at this point in the like deeply fine electrical life of Louis Wayne, but she enters the movie brandishing a butcher knife and just like bellowing. And I was like, yes, thank God Andrea Reisbrough is here.

Yeah. She's one of those actors that their first Oscar nomination is going to be so boring, but like you'll be happy that they're an Oscar nominee now. Right. It'll be like Helen of Bottom Carter's for the King's speech or something like that. which was, even though Helena Bonham Carter had already had, you know,

their Oscar nomination. But yes, it'll be like that. It'll be like that. The, moving on to sort of the, the failure of this movie, I think it was one of those things where it wasn't really any one, like, disastrous thing. It's just, like, nobody really saw it, and the reviews were really kind of, like, tepid. They weren't, like, even bad.

They were just sort of, like, mixed enough to a degree that, like, nobody really had any strong reason to go see it. And it was a huge bummer. was a whole article in the LA Times about like why did never let me go fail at the box office, which is so funny to me because it's like it's kind of a mid-level indie drama. It's like it's from Fox Searchlight. I made almost $10 million, right? Like if this movie made almost $10 million today, it only made $2.4 million domestically. Because a lot of that, a lot of that article was like even Winter's Bone did better. And it mentioned Winter's Bone like three different times. And

winter's bone was like famously like the the best picture nominee that was so that made so little money that the Oscars changed their rules the next year so that it wouldn't just be a top 10 because they were so embarrassed by having a movie as small as Winter's Bone which is I think a pretty stupid way of going about things because as this particular well this particular LA Times article was like why couldn't never let me go have caught on like Winter's Bone did and it's like, yeah, some movies are small and have a small scale success that is definitely a success. Like, that movie, you know, got people to see it that you wouldn't have thought that people would see it.

But anyway. It's also programmed differently. Like, Winter's Bone would have been a counter-programming being released in the summer and, like, allowed people to discover it, whereas, you know, never let me go launches right after the festival season and it didn't have a warm festival response too so it's like yeah it's competing for airway with all of these other movies that are still premiering as the festival season goes on and like nobody's really stumping for this movie i also kind of feel like launching this movie at telluride which has you know a very kind of yeah i mean like it's

you know considered somewhat of an oscar breeding ground or quite at this point you know a decade after this movie, very much an Oscar breeding ground. But, like, I don't know if the tell your right audience is the audience to launch this movie for... The telluride audience were the ones getting the organs that these clones were having to get by.

I mean, like, it's a lot of Oscar voters and billionaires and, like... Yeah, they're like, we can't support this movie. It's putting our shit on black. Right, exactly. We're so close. We're so close to having this clone program succeed. But also, just like the tone of it. And I, I went back because the Telluride website has all of their old schedules, which is, like, fabulous to me. But, like, this would have premiered the first night of Telluride.

Like, it was clearly the big ticket movie on the first night. And, like, that just seems like a mistake to me. Well, and then everything else that plays after it is going to, like, overwhelm it in terms of, you know, chatter and buzz and things like that. This also, the tidbit about how Fox Searchlight replaced Never Let Me Go with Black Swan in the Venice lineup is to me. So you never hear about shit like that. But like that's so, it's incredibly telling. First of all, it's like somebody at Fox Searchlight was like we are switching horses in midstream. Like clearly they had seen something.

And obviously it worked out like Black Swan made so much money for being the weirdo little movie that it is and got so many Oscar nominations. And obviously one for Natalie Portman. Um, but that was another one where I looked up the article, it was a deadline article or something like that about, um, never let me go that contained the information about never let me go getting pulled from Venice. But the rest of the article was like, why is nobody, why does nobody care about the Venice film festival anymore? Like Venice, the Venice film festival is dead pretty much. And it's so funny to read back because like the movie press does this all the time where like the, the festival that's out of fashion. is like, it's over. Like, this happened to Toronto a few years ago. It's happening to Toronto again. Right. And you read this article,

and it basically was just like, Cannes is the only festival that matters. Venice is done. Nobody wants to send their reporters internationally. And, like, this was before they realized that, like, reporters were just going to, you know, foot their own bill to go and whatever and recover and cover this.

But, like, at that point, tell your ride wasn't even a thing. They were, like, they would, they would, they, they, that article wrote about telly ride as if it was this like negligible thing and now telly ride has become a much more important festival and it's just it's a nice way to remember that like the way we talk about what's in like what's the dominant sort of like trend in these oscar structures is not you know you'll look back in 10 years and just be like oh wow we really did think that at the time so i thought that was kind of funny but not only black swan like fox searchlight also had 127 hours, which people forget, like, got a best picture nomination. Like, in addition to a best actor

nomination. And again, I mentioned conviction, like, managed to snag that sag nomination for Hillary Swank. So, like, Searchlight really, really, really backburnered this movie and pretty much, like, lopped it off. I mean, September, especially, like, mid-September,

right after the festivals, is such, like, a fertile ground for what we do here. A, because it's very easy for movies that are released in that month to get overshadowed and outright forgotten. But it also just seems like

it's where a lot of indie distributors or prestige distributors like Searchlight put their lowest priority awards prospects. Right. Yeah, it's because it's going to allow it. It's the sacrificial

land. It's a giant or Boris eating its own tale of, you know, one thing to put it out in the fall. But you need to save the better slots in the fall for the movies that you think are going to have a better shot at it. So that's where it goes. I want to talk about Alex Garland a little bit because he does the screenplay adaptation for this. He hadn't directed anything at this point.

But he had done the screenplays for 28 days later and Sunshine, both of those Danny Boyle movies. And they're like my two favorite Danny Boyle movies. They're super curious to have seen what the version of this movie that's a lot. a Danny Boyle movie would have been like. I kind of thought the same thing. I thought that would have been a really interesting. I mean, it'd probably be better, but. Well, and I think it also would have been, I mean, I don't know, it's tough.

Danny Boyle is one of those filmmakers who it's tough to really, like, try and grasp, like, what's his thing? What's his, like, you know, what's his angle? Because he makes a lot of different types of movies. But, like, the Boyle Garland movies, like, 28 days later is a movie about, like, what if zombies were fast. And yet has one of. the most emotional, like in a horror movie, the part where Brendan Gleason looks up and the blood gets in his eye and the second that happens, you know what the next three things to happen in the movie are, like what's going to happen to him, what they're going to have to do to him

and what it's going to do to his daughter. And it's so devastating. And like, to put that in the in the midst of this zombie movie is, I think it's, you know, I think it's, you know, I think it's pretty laudable and then sunshine which is like kind of messy but like I really love it and both of those movies really benefit from having a great score but I'm glad you bring up that 28 days later scene because like there's a lot going on in very short time in that moment that like we as the audience have to like understand but also like Danny Boyle sells it incredibly well which is why I think I would like to see this movie from Danny Boyle but I would also rather see Danny Boyle making something like this than 127 hours, which I hated.

Yeah, not one of my favorites of his, for sure. I never saw it. Yeah, I think you're fine. I mean, it's one of those things, like, so I shouldn't go, like, wedging myself down a crevasse in the middle of the American Desert? Like, way ahead of it. I was just about to, and then I heard about that movie and decided not to. That movie had an interesting festival run, including at the same tell your ride as never let me go, where it was like getting reports of people fainting during the scene

where he finally chops his arm off. Right. Right. Because that was based on a true story, right? That was a... Yes. Yeah. Oh, gosh. It's weird that, like... And I liked it. I thought that movie was pretty impressive when I saw it,

although I have not had a desire to watch it again. And a lot of that is that now it's like, well, I don't want to watch any James Franco things anymore. It just feels like the type of movie that is purely just its logline, and you see it, and you're like, well, that's what I was told I was going to get. I guess that's, you know, nothing unsurprising about that movie. Yeah. Yeah. Tara, do you have any Alex Garland sort of thoughts? I don't know if you have any

strong opinions on like Ex Machina or Annihilation or anything like that. I also love 28 days later. That's probably one of my favorite, I won't say elevated horror movies. One of my favorite zombie movies. I've seen it many times. And I thought because of the Danny Boyle connection, I just looked it up and I assumed he had also adapted his novel for the beach, but he didn't. no he's just credited for a novel right it's just right he had just done the novel for that the beach is a fascinating failure of a movie like that's one of the yeah it's and the story behind it is really fascinating the fact that like Danny Boyle essentially just like burned his relationship with you and McGregor to cast Leonardo DiCaprio in it and where that movie sits

in DeCaprio's sort of fame story is really interesting and it was seen as such a failure but I think it's such a, it's such a risk for, you know, where DiCaprio was at the time. And it's like, it's not great. But like, I will, I'll watch that movie again. It's also the first time I saw Tilda Swinton in anything. So, yeah, that was cool. The Andrea Reisboro over day. I'll say about Alex Garland, I do, I think annihilation was great.

I haven't seen it since I watched it the first time when we, we just bought a new TV and we're like, what can we test this with? Oh, love that. And it was perfect. That's great. Yeah. Ex Machina I think is good too. I sure hated devs though. Oh, I never watched devs. I think I probably... You're fine. Oh, man. It's like, what if made for love, but more ponderous and boring? Oh, God. Yeah. No thing. That's so much of like... This next movie, which will have Jesse Buckley, hopefully will convince Joe that Jesse Buckley is great. It's just called men. I can't imagine how this is going to go down for people on the internet. Heard of them.

It did make me think of humans, speaking of heard of them, Tara, in a lot of ways. Yep. Yeah, I'm the lone holdout on Jesse Buckley. I know I'm like, I'm on the, I'm on the low of my side of it. I, for whatever reason, I think I was oversold on Wild Rose. And then when I saw Wild Rose, I was like, this is fine. Like, this is like, I don't know. I was a little, not underwhelmed, but just like merely whelmed.

And then I actively thought she was bad in the season of Fargo that she was in, which I had to watch to write. about, which otherwise I get were like, nobody else saw that season of Fargo and like so much the better for anybody, because it was bad and she was, I thought, particularly. She was doing she was the designated, like, you're going to be a real like hard

accented Minnesotan. And it was, and she was playing this like. Or as we should say a. Yeah. And she was doing that while also being this like murderous nurse. And I was like, I'm not into any of this. So I'm still waiting for me and Jesse Buckley.

I'm sure it'll happen. Maybe it'll be the lost daughter whenever you get to see it. Oh, I am looking forward to the lost daughter. Listen, Maggie Gillenhall does anything, and I am there for that. And I know, Tara, you are with me on Maggie Gillen Hall. I love her. You are the only other person who loved, oh, what was that TV miniseries now that I can't remember the title of as much as I did? Oh, the Honorable Woman.

The Honorable Woman is so good. Okay, I need to watch the Honorable Woman before this movie, even though, you know, Maggie's in her movie but no but it's really good yeah lots of great actresses for you yes and she begins every episode with this like very breathy accented voiceover uh which is just fantastic it's like as well speaking of breathy uh voiceovers we mentioned annihilation several times already without saying annihilation annihilation yeah um real quick about the the score for this movie this was Rachel Portman did the score for this one. Stunning.

Really, really beautiful. This is one of those movies, though, where people think that the music, the score from the trailer is the score for this movie, and the score from the trailer is from the door on the floor, which Chris, you and I covered many, many moons ago on this podcast. I think one of our first movies that we did for this. But still, you will see that piece of music from the door on the floor on YouTube as like the never let me go music. And I'm just like, no, it's not.

Um, I'll get irrationally angry about that. Um, but the trailer for Never Let Me Go does make me cry every time because of its use of that movie. It's just really, of that music. It's a very, very beautiful. Yeah, we're really selling it. If you want to feel very bad, which is not being. Listen, I know there's a good portion of our audience that, like, will go for that. So, um, if you want to feel futile about our own humanity, watch Never. let me go. If you read bad art friend and thought, but what if it was even worse? Never let me go. This is bad art friend the movie. Oh, God. I didn't even make a connection at all, but wow.

Yeah. Wow. Carrie Mulligan is bad art friends. Here's the thing, though, if Carrie Mulligan posted in a Facebook group about what she was doing, I would give her all of the sympathy that she was asking for. because she deserves it. Listen, if they make a movie of bad art, friend, and I pray they do, it has to be Reese Witherspoon. Oh, 100% true.

Oh, that's totally it. Fantastic. Oh, my God. Speaking of Rees Witherspoon and The Morning Show, which you didn't specifically, but I'm going to make that connection. I was walking to, I was walking up Broadway to go see the new Halloween movie the other night, and I passed the Beacon Theater. And so, you know, the beacon has the big marquee out in front that sort of shows you all the

things for like the next nine months that they're that they're going to have and one of them is um katie kurek is giving a speaking tour and it's like the it's like i went there is that the title of her book because that's the title of going there going there yes yes going there so that's the title of her speaking engagement too and i literally because the beacon will cycle through literally like all the way through like its next almost years worth of programming and i stood there and waited for it forever to hopefully for the Katie Kirk went to come back again

so I could take a photo of it and finally I gave up because I waited too long and the movie was going to start but I was like I need to take a photo of this so that when the morning show puts Alex Levy on a speaking tour

and people are like that would never happen in real life I would have photo evidence that it would because at least like I feel like Katie Couric is the living example of like you like Alex Levy

like that stretches credulity And you're like, nope, because Katie Kirk did it. Nope. I know. Even worse somehow. Yeah. Oh, the beacon. Our old hood. I know.

I saw so many movies around there. Oh, I know. I know. I walked all the way up to the 84th Street cinema and saw a very bad Halloween movie. But you know what? It was worth it. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride will pay for their crimes. Yes.

Evil dies tonight and it is David Gordon. It's the worst script for a movie I've seen in. a very long time, Halloween kill, or Halloween, yes, Halloween kills, it's bad. Since the last Halloween movie? No, I, I didn't think the last one was that bad. This one is like, you know how I despise it. I do. This is the one that's on Peacock, right?

Yes. My Dave's nephew is visiting and he's a big John Carpenter guy, so maybe we'll make him watch this movie. Do it. You are one of the 15 subscribers of ad-free peacock. I keep seeing all of this stuff about the box office success transcending, even though. it's on streaming. And I'm like three people pay for peacock. No one has peacock. That's why. Actually, it jumped out ahead this year because of the Olympics. But a lot of people have probably canceled it since then. Well, yes. And somebody I also saw tweeted was just like, people who have peacock don't even know that they have peacock. And it's like, yeah, that's probably true. Figure out you got how to get peacock guys. Saved by the bell is back in November. I know. Right in time for Thanksgiving. Saved by the Bell, which is so much better than you think it's going to be. Like it's so funny. And also, girls, Vibeva, we'll be back at some point.

I'll pay for it when Girls Viva comes back. And also AP Bio. They have a lot of good companies, guys. They do. Every streaming service, for as much as, you know, I sneer it, a lot of them, like, they all have at least, like, one or two things and I'm like, yeah, but you should get it for that. Like, I am, I'm a simp. I'll get it.

To bring it back to Never Let me go. Just go to bunch of your friends and share passwords. I mean, don't do that. No, never. No, we are not an advocate for, um, uh, doing, streaming services like everyone else does. I would never, you know, give it out to my mother and my friends. No, never.

All of that. Never, never. People I've never met in person certainly don't have mine. Prank caller, prank caller. Who's this? Chris, you were. That is the real world donations that we're doing, you know, instead of, you know, we are not harvesters of organs.

We are just harvester of passwords. Right. Yeah. And watching content on them is going to make us live longer. It really is a good. It's true. It really dovetails. Or it'll at least make us survive as the past year has shown.

Yes. Seriously. The music in the movie you mentioned, I kind of want to stump for the original song in this movie because when I was, you know, baby simp Oscar watcher, I was like, well, maybe you don't get an original song nomination. because this song is really good. Who was it?

Because I dead-ass paid for this song on iTunes because I really liked it when I saw the movie. It's very Dusty Springfield. Like, it feels like... It is. You know, it feels like it could be something that already exists in the world, and that's why I felt like it should have been recognized.

I feel like in the book... Someone please create a drag queen named Judy Bridgewater, who is just the saddest. I will perform this song as Judy Bridgewater, my first time in drag while I am doing like gore drag and like pulling gorgans out of my body and you know I could be wrong passing them off to a Carrie Mulligan drag queen I feel like in the book it was Dusty Springfield like it was like this like no I I know I swear to God I thought I remember or at least like they in describing this other woman like maybe mentioned dusty

Springfield is sort of a I'm sure that's the inspiration but I don't think they said her name yeah um one kind of a bummer about all this, not to tack on yet another one, is that it was nominated, one of the few places it was nominated for awards was the British Independent Film Awards, and it got beat by the King's Speech in pretty much every category it was nominated in,

which I don't hate the King's Speech, but like the King's Speech is not a better movie than this one. No. But yeah, it won Best Picture over, Never Let Me Go, Best Director, Gareth, no, Gareth Edwards from Monsters Beat Out Mark Romantic for Never Let Me Go. That's an odd choice. That's interesting. I don't hate that movie.

I like it. That's the first thing I ever saw a little Scoot McNary in, so that was fun. We love Surprise Scoot McNary. Speaking of people I had face blind this for for a while, until Halt and Catch Fire basically is when I finally started remembering what Scoot McNery. Great show. Yes, fantastic. Now it goes Mexico coming back soon for its final season. Oh, is he in that?

You mentioned the King's Speech. This is the King's Speech year. Can I mention one of my favorite like Oscar smear campaign attempts of all time? Go for it. Is the King's Speech was filmed at the same place that some gay porn was filmed at you. Oh, I forgot about that. Yes, I do remember that. And that was like one of the attempts to smear the King's speech and people immediately were like,

ha ha, who cares? Because the wall, you could recognize the wall. as the same right and you couldn't like the king speech was just the thing that like you couldn't like talk shit against like I think some people tried to like drag it down again but like it it's one of the few front runners of the past like decade that didn't really have much of a smear campaign that really took effect there were like small things that like went against it but like when that one happened it was just pure comedy the king speech was Weinstein right so it wasn't even like a typical Harvey Weinstein dirty trick.

Who was the social network studio? That was Sony. Yeah, so maybe it was them because they were the big opponent there. But I did want to say the King's Speech beat Never Let Me Go in pretty much every category. But, of course, the King's Speech does not have elite actress, so Carrie Mulligan was able to triumph in best actress at the British Independent Film Awards, which is good. It also got nominated for a bunch of Saturn Awards. Now, Chris and I become radicalized about the Saturn Awards now that... Oh, I'm going to Google this really fast,

because I think a date was set for those Saturn Awards that are still awarding movies from, like, 2019. Right. Please. Keep going. Wow. Because what was the movie that we were talking about that took us down that road, even? Lucy in the Sky, famous piece of science fiction.

Lucy in the Sky. Right. Right. Right, yeah. Never Let Me Go, at least, is, like, thematically fits into Saturn Awards and, like, good for it. Absolutely. It was nominated for Best Science Fiction film. It lost to Inception, which fair. But the other nominees were Iron Man 2, Tron Legacy, which I don't believe, like, anybody likes. Tron Legacy roles.

I like it, too, but I don't remember other people, like, being all that fond of it. I never saw it. It's stupid. It's so fun. That movie... Is it? I do. It's on Disney Plus.

Maybe we'll watch that, too. It's going to be a real shitty movie. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Also nominated was that movie Splice with a Canadian treasure Sarah Polly and also Adrian Brody. That's the one where what if we had a mutant hybrid child that my boyfriend has sex with? I have seen that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. We would have seen that one together, actually. maybe yeah maybe maybe we were seeing a bunch of movies that was when you were still living in new york city so yeah yeah well i mean when you talk about the social network that was famously the topic of the very first mark one extra hot that's right god that's right um we both hated it and then everyone else is like no it's good i know i know no and then also nominated for best science fiction film is the clint eastwood movie hereafter which is that science fiction isn't it

Just about a flunk? I mean, it's like metaphysical. Like, weird. Weird nominees, as always, with the Saturn Awards. Chris, do they have a date for their next? Important update.

It'll be the week that this episode is airing. October 26 will finally be the 46th Saturn Awards where we are actively rooting for Lucy in the sky to win in all categories. Other nominees,

Okay, so Tara, to just throw you on these awards that have still not gone out, I'm going to read you the title of some of these nominees. Of course, this is all because of the pandemic, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joker. Not sci-fi. Well, they do, like, that's in like a comic motion picture. They do like science fiction, fantasy horror, a lot of it. Joker.

Ad Astra. Gemini Man. The Lion King Maleficent Mistress of Evil We are still awarding Maleficent Mistress of Evil for things Jeez Lion King feels like 8 billion lifetimes ago

When I saw that movie Like it's crazy to think The Lion King caused COVID I should also say that Andrew Garfield Did win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor For Never Let Me Go Which is good Beating out

Christian Bale who won the Oscar that year for the fighter, which again, I'm not sure which of the science fiction fantasy or whatever. The fighter fits in under. Yeah. Saturn Awards are wild, Tara. Like, it's a wild ride. That's hard to defend. It's really hard to defend.

I would agree. Also, John Malkovich nominated for Red. I'm not sure where that fits in under that. It's an action movie. I guess. Like, they're just like, it's... It's just movies for dudes. The thing about the fighter and they don't really say,

on screen, but people who know, no, it's from the planet Boston. It doesn't actually take place in Boston Massachusetts. Well, and also, the cloning technology that was possible and never let me go is what gave you all of Mark Wahlberg's sisters in that movie, which was a benefit to us all, so good for that. You're one of them MTV girls. I love that. I love that movie. Problematic Fave, so many David O. Russell movies, unfortunately. But anyway, was there anything else we wanted to bring up

about this movie before we move on to other things? It made me sad. It made me... Yeah. Also, oh, just, and again, sad on sad, but, like, Ruth's death scene in this movie

is so devastating. Oh, it's brutal. It's so brutal. It's so brutal. It's so, like, ruthlessly, efficient and coldly, like, uh, like, functionary. Oh, my God. What the hell do they take out of her? Like, it's these giant organs. Do they take, like, both of her kidneys connected to each other? And her liver also, it felt like. That's what I thought. Yeah. It was liver and something else, I thought. But it was like, it was literally just, like, one last haul. And then just the absolute way that they, like, shut everything off and leave that body alone in the room. It's so

that I feel like, again, Mark Romantic, very good at striking an image. Like, that is an incredibly striking image to see. And, like, that's where he's incredibly talented. And that I thought was really, really good. I mean, good

in that, like, it's awful. But, yeah. All right, do we want to play the... But yeah, make yourself some, like, nice hot apple cider and just settle in for real fun autumn feeling. Yeah, but then, like, throw a whole bunch of brandy in that apple cider or something. Do we think that never let me go as a candle movie?

Wait, define candle movie. We've talked about candle movies. I know, but to find it again for the listeners. Okay, so, like, a candle movie is like a movie that sends off a vibe that could easily be, like, a candle. Like, fall movie, autumn movies are, like, automatically candle movies. Atumnal. Yes. Yes.

This one smells like, it smells like a slightly musty old house, smells like where they were in the cottages where you can smell the wallpaper glue because it's coming off seaside abandonment yeah right chips right off season off season boardwalk amusement

park kind of a vibe like that kind of a thing chips and depression yes exactly yeah this is the one that you burn when you've finished burning your virgin suicides late summer candle yeah moss and mold

all right well since the apparent birthday party that's happening in the backyard out there is becoming loud enough to probably get picked up on my mic. Why don't we move on to the IMDB game and wrap things up? Chris, why don't you remind our listeners what the IMDB games? Every week we end our episodes. We complete our episodes with the IMDB game, where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voiceover performances, or non-acting credits will mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release use as a clue. If that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. You only get three, maybe four hints until you complete, though. It really depends. It depends on what is being harvested from you. Fair, fair.

So, Tara, as our guest, would you like to give a clue first or receive a clue first and also who do you want to give your clue to? Thank you, Joe. As people who have listened to us on a lot of podcasts, know, I like to beat you at games. This is true. Even games where you can't really win. So I will give to you.

And then Chris can avenge you by giving to me. All right. So Tara will give to me. I will give to Chris. Chris will give to Tara. All right, Tara, why don't you then start this off? See, we'll see how I can do. Well, I'm going with someone who has a lot of connections through past performances with people in this movie.

This actress has worked already with Carrie Mulligan multiple times, with Sally Hawkins multiple times, with Kieran Knightley. She gets around. You already know who it is, Joe. It's Rosemann Pike. Oh, of course it is. Raws. We love Raws. What is the thing she's advertising now that is so psychotic?

It's like, it's not Bitcoin, but it's like... Why is she in this show? No. It's like a, it's a, it's a, like, it's some sort of banking thing that she's advertising for. And now I can't remember what it is. Oh, I've heard about this, but I haven't seen it. Oh, my God. Well, no, she's doing some type of genre show that I'm like, Rosamuk, like, you are too famous for this show. But she's doing these banking ads in like her, like, scary American accent, you know, that like she's decided that like Americans all sound absolutely terrifying. That's how I'm going to do my American accent. And it's like, it's very strange. Sure. offer you free coffee. But Marcus by Goldman Sachs offers personal loans with no fees. Anyway, I'm stalling. All right, so obviously gone, girl.

Correct. All right. I don't want to guess I care a lot because it's probably too recent and it's also Netflix and Netflix doesn't show up a ton on these. Oh, what's the Bond movie she's in that shows up on every, die another day? Correct. All right, all right. Usually die another day fools me, and I'm glad that this one, this did not.

Miranda Frost, and she looks like a Miranda Frost. She absolutely does. All right, all right, all right. Rosamund Pike. I think you'll get, sorry, I think you'll get one. I don't think you're going to get them all. Okay, sounds good. Is she in it for Pride and Prejudice?

Correct. That's your third. This is the one I think you're not going to get, but prove me wrong. I almost yelled when I saw it. Yeah, I was really surprised. All right. What's an unlikely Ross Pike movie? Because she was one of those actresses who before, like, she got, like, name famous was, like, in a bunch of stuff. Oh, well, I loved her in an education, but I don't think that would be wild enough unless you're trying to mislead me, which I wouldn't put past you because you play to win. If anything I know about our history of competing in games, you play to win.

Oh, oh, shit. She's in one of the... the Jack Reachers, which one is it? Is it the first Jack Reacher? I'm going to, yes. Yes. You were the only person on this planet that knows that Ros Pike is in Jack Reacher. I saw Jack Reacher.

I didn't remember she was in it. I only know it because it's such a weird credit for her. It's so like it sticks out in that way. Joe, that's why David Fincher cast her is because all of her credits are weird. Yes. Good job. I would have blown an incorrect answer on an education if, if I didn't think, if I wasn't going for a year.

So, no, listen, I'll take it. I'll take a perfect square wherever I can get it. Okay. Yep. Thank you, Tara. I'm going to give to now to Chris. So we mentioned the strange oddity that the same year that Carrie Mulligan made, never let me go.

She also made Wall Street, too, Money Never Sleeps, a movie that I watched and remember. She did. Really none of. So the star of that film is one Mr. Michael Douglas. Chris, there is one television entry for this. Which is the Kaminsky method?

It is not. One strike. What? It is not. Doesn't he have like a globe for the Kaminsky method? I think he does. I don't know anyone who watches it. Clearly. Wait, is it is it TV that

perhaps otherwise in the world is a cinematic film? Yes. It's behind the candelabra. It's behind the candelabra. Yeah. Perfect. Wall Street, his Oscar. Correct.

Fatal Attraction. Correct. He's pretty prominent in Ant Man, and they made a big deal about him. Am I going to go with MCU? There's also, like, romancing the stone, which I feel like has gotten a boot. lately like people watching it in quarantine and such I also there's also is like the year of traffic and wonder poise I'm gonna say traffic incorrect so that's your second strike biggest head on that poster it's true the thing about Michael Douglas is there's a lot of ways you could go like

there's a lot of avenues yeah he's done so many movies it's so many movies and ones like he's like the definite star and they were like big and yeah it's a lot so your year for your missing movie and i think this is what you'll get it pretty quickly once you get the year is 1992 oh basic instinct basic instinct yes nice very good yeah yeah you could go a lot of ways with uh michael douglas i almost went with romancing the stone didn't even mention that he is Andrew shepherd and he is the president right uh yeah i was trying to think a post where his head is big and went straight to the game. Also that is, yeah, big old head on that poster.

His head has never been so big on a poster. Is that the one where, like, his head that there's like a puzzle piece, like missing from his head because it's a game. That movie slaps. It's a good movie. Fincher, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. If that's the weakest movie that you've ever made, which I think that's Fincher's weakest movie, you know, you don't ask for yourself. His batting average. You think that's weaker than Benjamin Button? Oh, I like Benjamin. Okay. I've never seen it. My thing about Benjamin Button is everybody thinks it's a romance, but it's not.

That's a movie, more a movie about, like, death than it is about a love story to me. Wait, Michael Douglas is in pre-production on a TV miniseries called Reagan and Gorbachev, where he's playing Ronald Reagan. Pass, the hardest of passes. Wait, wait, wait, I want you guys to guess without looking this up. I want you to guess without looking this up. The only cast members who have been announced are, Reagan and Gorbachev. Yep.

Who got cast as McCall Gorbachev? I have a guess. Who? I have a guess, too. Wait, Tara first. Is it Brendan Gleason? Chris. Is it Stellan Scarsguard?

You're both wrong. It is Christoph Valtz. Ew! What? Ew! That's a terrible match. He looks nothing like Gorbachev. It's wild.

We don't want Christoph Waltz in anything anymore. I have no idea who is, because I'm only looking at IMDB, so I have no idea if this is one of those things that just, like, is announced, but is never going to actually make it to anywhere, but, like, be warned and be prepared. Michael Douglas. Who's like the credited showrunner on it, or the writer or director? Um, director James Foley, writing credits only. Uh, there's this, the B. Garita, who is the only other credited writer besides the author of the book that it's based on, and this person has no other writing credits, so it seems like maybe it's a fake

name. I don't know. Michael Douglas is producing, as is Christoph Valtz, as is James Fully. So, like, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. This sounds like it's going to suck ass. Yeah. I'm excited to see where it happens, though. All right. Chris,

why don't she get to Tara? All right, so I actually went into the field of Oscar nominees this year from this ceremony. I chose a, because I figured we were talking about Kira Knightley and Kira Knightley's history with Oscar, I went into supporting actress. I chose an actress who received her first Oscar nomination this year. Who else could I be talking about? But one Miss Jackie Weaver. Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom. Correct. Her first Oscar nomination. Um, Silver Linings Playbook. Correct. Her second Oscar nomination for making all of those crabby pets. POMs?

POMs? No. What a great guess. Oh, man, I might be out of Jackie Weaver knowledge. Shit. Probably something Australian that I've never heard. Is she in, like, strictly ballroom or something like that? That won't count as an incorrect guess if she is not.

But I'm going to guess that she's not. Yeah. She is not. Hmm. Of the two, one of these movies I remember her being in and one of these movies I definitely don't remember her being in. Okay, great. Yeah, sorry.

I feel like I'm trying to picture her in every scene I'm picturing her is just another scene from... Oh, wait. Was she in joy? She was not in joy. Okay. Well, give me my years. That won't help. your years are 2013 and 2017 2013 movie I remember her being in

I'm pretty sure the like marquee stars of this movie there are three of them they're all on the poster and then it's like those three Stoker Jackie Weaver is next built

oh I just said the name You just said the movie I was like wait a second Is it Stoker? Jesus Stoker I wouldn't have gotten that anyway Anyway, that's fine. Okay, so the next one she's in is actually a surprisingly large ensemble with a lot of cameos.

Okay. She, this is, she stars as somebody in a movie within a movie. The movie is about the making of a movie. Is this their finest? No, great call out, though, because their finest is such a good movie. Yeah, their finest is fun. Their finest is a movie that you would be happy to revisit right now. This movie in question is one that you would probably not want to revisit because of the top-line talent involved.

We had talked about this a little bit earlier in the episode about movies you don't want to revisit because certain people are involved in it. So this is a James Franco movie? Oh, this is the one about the room. Yes, the disaster artist. She plays the actress that played Claudette, the one who says got the test results back. It's definitely breast cancer. Oh, right. Now I remember.

All right. Yeah. That was a very fun movie to watch that now I can't ever go back and watch again, unfortunately. Sharon Stone showing up in that movie was an event. I literally, I hooted and hollered at that moment. I was right next to you. You did indeed hoot and holler. It was great.

Oh, my God. Is that the first time one of us has accidentally given away? No, I did that one time. I'm pretty sure I did that one time. We would be here for another half an hour trying to get me to Stoker, so it's fine. Well, well done. anyway Tara on that but that is our episode Tara

thank you so much for joining us for this one I'm glad you for coming back yes we'll have to have you on more more recently than the interval that we had between the Family Stone and this one well I'm saying it now next summer walk on the moon with um Diane and Vigo which I've never seen

I'm still gonna save it I'm gonna save it save it for August it's an August movie it's an August movie okay perfect fantastic is it a candle movie no it's it's like It's at Woodstock. It's like high summer. Oh, okay. Love that.

All right. That's the name of the candle of the movie, Woodstock Summer. That's true. Maybe it smells like brown acid. Yeah. Brown acid and linen. Listeners, if you want more ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had Oscar Buzz.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz.

Tara, where would you like our listeners? to check out more from you. Well, for more on me about pop culture in a very autumnal mode, I will be recapping every episode of Succession at DeSahor.com. Hell yeah. And I'm also talking about it every week on my podcast, The Sweet Snell of Succession, which I co-host with David Chen of the film cast. And you can find both those things and everything else I do at my Twitter, which is Tara Ariano, T-A-R-A-R-I-A-N-O. sweet small succession also a candle i'm just going to say it right now smells like money and fear of uh of your parents money fear and shiv spit

and park coke chris where can the listeners find you in your stuff you can find me modeling myself on trash on twitter and letterbox at chris v file that is f e i all right i am on twitter at joe read read spelled r e i am also on letterbox as Joe Reed spelled the same way. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mavius

for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility. So before you complete, please consider writing something nice about us.

That is all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. baby that's no lie that's no lie you never fail to satisfy it's no Thank you.