This Had Oscar Buzz - 225 – Murder on the Orient Express

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

All aboard, listeners! This week, we’re looking at Kenneth Branagh’s recent attempts to take on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot with 2017′s Murder on the Orient Express. Directed by and starring Branagh as the French investigator, the film assembled a gobsmacking assemblage of stars (from Michelle Pfeiffer to Judi Dench to Penelope Cruz to Johnny Depp) … Continue reading "225 – Murder on the Orient Express"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada water. The danger has died. So they got him after all.

You assume he was killed? No, no, no, no, not. Well, he was in perfectly good health. He had his enemies. Indeed, he was murdered. God, murder here. God, breath his soul. Someone was rumging around my cabin in the middle of the night.

No one would listen to me. Listen to me. If there was a murder. What is going on? Then there was a murderer. The murderer is with us. And every one of you is a suspect. And who are you?

My name is Hercule Poirot, and I am probably the greatest detective in the world. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that uses whatever damn accent we please. Every week on this ad Oscar buzz will 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 ostentatious mustache. Chris File, hello, Chris. The mustache just kind of keeps growing and growing. Like, you know that thing they say about dead bodies that they never stop growing hair?

Hair, and it's one other thing. It's like hair and fingernails. I feel like once Hercule Poro dies, it's going to sprout roots like a tree. You have to cremate him, otherwise the mustache will take over the world. Do you remember Robin Hood Men in Tites? The joke in Robin Hood Men in Tites where every time they cut back to Richard Lewis as Prince John, the like the mole on his face just keeps getting bigger. that, but for

Ercule Poirot's mustache. It feels like every time they say his name, it's more there's more oomph to it. Kenneth Branagh really is just sort of backstroking through this performance. Okay, so here's the thing. So many things about this remake of Murder on the Orient Express feel over the top and too much.

And I'm like, that's what I want out of this movie. And yet, why do I walk away from this movie feeling so unsatisfied? I feel like that's the bottom line. I feel like because it's made by someone without a sense of humor. I mean, that's not a bad. Except I do think Poirot himself is kind of a funny character. Maybe he just takes all the good stuff for himself. Is that the thing?

Is that the pathology we want to write on to Kenneth Branagh? for this movie? Because you're right, like, there is no fun to be had for any of the other characters in this movie. And it's like why, that's, I think, maybe where I come down is, why would you gather a cast this self-consciously star-studded and then basically put them through the paces of these one-on-one scenes with Poirot that don't have a ton of sparkle to them? Well, there's not a lot of chemistry. I mean, I think the biggest problem of this movie is you can tell when people who are sharing scenes together were absolutely not on set together.

And, like, there's no real chemistry. It feels like it's kind of played way more dower than it should be. And it's like you have this very famous, very splashy cast. You should be allowing them to have a lot more fun than they're having. So do we know this about this movie? that it was sort of filmed scattershot that way? I mean, in the way that it's edited, Kenneth Branagh is certainly not afraid of us thinking that way,

especially Redacted and Michelle Pfeiffer's scene. All right, here's what I'm going to say. On the subject of Redacted. Yes. I'm not doing that. There's nothing to say about Redacted in this movie. Okay, we're going to say, it's Johnny Depp we're talking about. Like, I'm not going to be afraid to say his name.

Like, he's not a boogeyman. Like, he holds no power here. like he's in this movie briefly he sucks as a person but like he's an actor in this movie I'm not going to be quite so precious about that like you can do what you want but I don't know

I think you're right The scene with him and Pfeiffer especially is like you only ever see the other character over their shoulder when the other person is speaking and you know it's not good

it's no it's not And, like, I get that, like, we're working from a source material, like, we're working from a story that is in place before this. So, like, there are expectations and there are only maybe so many places you can go with this in terms of, like, what characters get to interact with each other and what characters don't. But, like, there certainly were changes made from this version from the, like, 1974 version, right? The Sydney Lumet version. so like it's not like they were the Imagine Dragon song in the trailer okay I was I wrote that down to mention it because holy God I had forgotten that that was the case and like it became a meme of people putting ridiculous songs at the end of the trailer like recutting the trailer and then putting like super trooper on it well so we can let's talk about that now because like it's the trailer so like we can like if we're going chronologically like before we get into the movie we'll get into the trailer because I had seen this movie at a one of those sneak preview screenings that I had every once in a while would get no not snuck into just don't tell them that I worked for media you work you were a very large

mustache and spoken right um this is how I had seen tulip fever very early I had seen uh I believe I saw annihilation early this way so um the pandemic kind of killed that because I stopped wanting to go to incredibly crowded screenings full of uh randos but anyway Anyway, saw this in a sneak preview screening a good several months before it came out. And again, you see the movie, they pass out the cards, they ask you a bunch of questions about what you liked about it, what you didn't. These cards were a little less self-consciously nervous about the movie than the Tulip Fever ones. The Tulip Fever ones famously asked multiple times whether you liked the title, which I can understand. understand, but they never did change that title.

So you filled out the cards. They asked a few people to stay back. I was not asked to stay back, which is fine by me, because I'd rather get out of there at that point. At that point, I'm like, it's all it's taking me to, like, actually fill out the card. I just want to, like, I've seen the movie. I've gotten out what I've got to, you know, need to get out of this situation, and now I want to leave. But I walk out, and, of course, who is looming over the exit of this theater but Harvey Weinstein and so I was like

Oh, this is still Tulip Fever No, this is Mergerin Express Why? This was a Fox movie. Oh, maybe I'm mixing up stories then. Did Weinstein have nothing to know hand in this? Then I am mixing up stories. Then it was tulip fever. It's interesting because it's the exact same theater

so I'm having the exact same sort of like sense memory of walking out of it. You're right. It was Harvey Weinstein was looming over the tulip fever. which makes more sense. This one, Murder on the Orient Express, though, I remember walking out of it and being like, I don't know what they would change to make this better. It was just decidedly middling.

And I was like, I wonder how they're going to sell this movie in a way that makes it seem more fun than it is, because it's just not very fun. And you want it to be fun because it's a fucking murder mystery. And then I go, and then the trailer comes out all this time later and the Imagine Dragon Song is in it

and it's... As if to say, don't worry, it's not gay to anyone in the audience who is like, there's too many women in this movie. There's, yeah, there's no... French, is he gay? There's no, yeah, there's no campiness allowed in this. And yet, the act of

believer sort of kicking in at the end there is camp in and of itself, right? Where it's like you have... It can't be even than anything in the movie. Like Penelope Cruz, Judy Dench, Olivia Coleman, like Imagine Dragons comes in. And, but I was, the realization was just like, oh, they're trying to sell this as like cool. They're trying to sell this to, I guess maybe the Johnny Depp audience,

but it's not like they like put more Johnny Depp into the trailer than was necessary either. You know what I mean? Like the campaign for selling this movie was really muddled. And it ended up making... more money than I would have expected, given- Especially globally, given that it really felt like in the court of public opinion, or like the attention economy, it really flopped. Like, nobody paid attention to this movie. Nobody was talking about it. Nobody will talk a little bit about the other Fox movies from around this time, but like it really got lost in the conversation that the greatest showman sort of, you know, swept. swept it away.

See, this is the thing that's maybe died at the box office, and I don't want to linger on it. But there is a certain thing for movies released in November and December that, like, they have some legs to them if they're, you know, second or third choice, or if they're, like, no one wants to all see the same movie, and this is the movie that makes grandma and your weird cousin happy when we go to movies together. And I think that that's like part of what it's, you know, U.S. box office like tally kept it in there because you're right that like no one cared about this movie once it opened. No one really talked about it or, you know, mentioned liking it. You know what I love the notion of talking about going to the movies as a family in the holidays is the everybody goes to the movie theater and then you all break off and see whatever you want at the theater at the multiplex, right? That's the grand vision of a multiplex that isn't playing 24 screenings of Avatar

The Way of Water and one screening of Violent Night, and that's your entire multiplex, right? But the ideal of a holiday season, 24-screen multiplex is you can go there with mom, dad, three kids, Uncle Jerry, and Nana Rose, right? And everybody picks a different—uncle Jerry is a gay bachelor, and Nana Rose is a A spry... I'm going to see She Said for the fourth time. Right.

And Nana Rose is going to see Violent Night because she loves Slashers. I'm telling you, this is my grandmother. My grandmother who loves the Saw movies. Like, she probably has seen Violent Night. But, like, that's the ideal for me, right? Everybody goes and maybe, like, two people see one movie and, like, three people go to another one.

And that, to me, is... That's the America that I want. This is the future liberals want. Is that... And the problem now is that they have to make the one movie for everybody, or they make the one movie for mostly everybody and convince the remaining factors that they have to see it. Like, yeah, there's no real kids movie. Well, I guess there's Puss and Boots this holiday season. Okay, can we talk about for half a second?

Wait, who's your boyfriend? Harvey Gienz a voice in that movie. Oh, oh, I didn't realize. The interesting, I saw the Puss and Boots trailer before Strange World, and I turned to my friend Joey after that trailer started, and I go, is this a different animation style? And like, after like a minute, you're like, yeah, it obviously is. You can tell them that it doesn't have the budget of the original Puss and Boots. I haven't seen the first two Puss and Boots, but like I know that like the first two Puss and Boots are Shrek movies. So like they have the like the animation style of Shrek, I imagine.

And I've seen the... Wait, this isn't the second Puss and Boots? This is the third Pouss and Boots movie? Wasn't there a Puss and Boots, too? Or am I making up a Pussy Boots too? Entirely conceivable, but I do not know. Hold on. Let me get on IMDB. I could be wrong.

I would just imagine that... No, maybe there is only just the one Puss and Boots movie from 2011. Well... What if this is the fifth Puss & Boots movie? Honestly, it could be. But so... But, like, that's the most interesting thing about this new Puss and Boots now, is like, they gave it a whole new animation style

and like that's kind of like cool to like change that up in midstream you don't really ever see that in an animation series and like that's kind of cool I'm not really interested in seeing it in general but I don't know

good for that movie I don't know okay anyway that aside is done but like this is a movie who it's like okay we've already seen what were the big like

Thanksgiving and Christmas movies in 2017. Hold, please. Like Aquaman? Was that 2017? I thought it was 2018. Hold on. But, like, you've already seen one or two of those other movies. What are we going to see?

Well, we haven't seen Murder on the Orrin Express. It has a lot of famous people. Let's just go see that. Please hold. I will come up with this. All right, so we're saying from Thanksgiving through Christmas, right? essentially. Okay.

So we're talking about well honestly, if we're talking about movies that made money, Wonder, the Julia Roberts, Jacob Trombly movie, Wonder, opened in late November. Coco, the Pixar movie Coco, opened in late November. Shape of Water,

which was like art house and platformy. Star Wars The Last Jedi was like the big blockbustery thing that was happening. which Jumanji is it the The first Jumanji The first Jumanji which is actually really good I really liked that opens the same weekend as Great a showman

And actually both of those movies ended up making money One of them Much more interestingly than the other And then how wide did all the money in the world open I thought that opened wide on Christmas I think it did Yeah so like that's your Christmas That's your Christmas movie.

But yeah, so I think if you're looking at the big ones, it's Star Wars the Last Jedi, Coco. Oh, that was also when Netflix, oh, no, I saw a screening of Bright, a press screening of Bright in a theater. But they were trying to do the thing where, like, we're going to premiere that on streaming, and it's going to be the equivalent of the big tent pole blockbuster just on streaming. and they really tried to convince people that Bright was a big deal. I mean, Bright was the first, like, Netflix scare quotes blockbuster that had pulled these huge numbers, but I didn't know anybody who had watched it. Right.

Also, pitch perfect three. There was father figures that Owen Wilson Ed Helms comedy where... The bad Glenn Close poster. Yes, the bad Glenn Close poster. 20th Century Fox's Blue Sky Studios movie Ferdinand was that year, which ended up getting, I believe, an animated feature nomination. It did

because that was the one I was scrambling to see back when I was a completest. Art House stuff was Shape of Water and I Tanya and Darkest Hour and Roman J. Israel Esquire, rad movie. Great movie. Oh, and Justice League was in November as well.

So Justice League was your November tent pole. and then Star Wars. Justice League opened the week after Murder on the Orient Express. Murder on the Orient Express opens the same weekend as Daddy's Home 2 and the I believe limited release

of three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. So, oh, I'm sorry, and LBJ, lest we forget. The Rob Reiner directed... LBJ. The fall of 2017

is so interesting. We've talked about it a ton Because there's a lot of big Buzzy Oscar movies that flop in 2017. So we've talked about 2017 kind of a lot. But murder on the Orient Express was, I think

when you greenlight this movie, you want this movie to be a You want it to play really big during holiday season. You want it to be exactly what we're talking about, which is the whole family can go Oh, and Thor Ragnarok was early November. Sorry, I keep like going through different parts

of this calendar. Anyway, you want it to be the movie that right, like you maybe you've seen Thor Ragnarok already. Maybe you've seen Justice League and it's Thanksgiving Day weekend. And oh, murder on the Orient Express has been playing for a couple weeks. And it's still in theaters. You can't get Aunt Bev to go see Justice League.

No, no, no. No. No. No. I don't stand Jason Momoa for some reason. Like she saw the first season only of Game of Thrones. and she saw how, like, weirdly, uh, rapy that, uh, storyline was crafted. And she's like, no, I'm sorry.

I can't do it. Computer animation makes her motion sick. Right. Right. Right. Right. So it's like, what she's going to see. And she's obviously a huge fan of Mrs. Henderson present.

So you're just like, uh, Bev, you know, let's go see your fave, Judy Dench. And Judy Dench, who is in so much of murder on the orange, just like wall to wall, Dench in this movie. She's definitely not in one scene, and then, like, a couple moments where she's just sitting in a train car as a camera passes by. Like, that's definitely not exactly what happens in Murder on the Orient Express. So many wasted. Okay, the epitome, we'll get into the plot description after this. The epitome of my frustration with this remake is.

And I guess, whatever, like, whether it's a remake of the 1974 movie or just another adaptation of the novel, like, we're splitting. hairs. The fact that Penelope Cruz plays essentially it's a different name, but like essentially the same character that Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for playing in

the original. And yet I defy you to tell me a single, like thing that Penelope Cruz does in this movie that is memorable or like that, like, resonates it all. She again has like two, a scene and a half with Brenna?

And that's basically it. She's barely in this movie. Right. She doesn't really interact with the other famous people in this movie. The whole movie, right. The whole movie is waiting for the reveal, and then the reveal happens, and you see all the connections between the characters.

But like none of the characters, to hide that reveal, none of the characters spend hardly any time with each other leaning up to that reveal. And it's like, but you cast Oscar winner, international film star Salma Hayek's best friend

in the world, Penelope Cruz, and nothing. And you put her in this dowdy wig. And it's like if you have one of the greatest living actresses, Penelope Cruz in a movie, if you have one of the greatest living actresses, Judy Dench

in your movie, let them have some fun. If they're not going to be in or, if we're not going to get the joy of watching movie stars on screen together, let them have some fun because the scenes feel so inconsequential when basically Perrault is doing all of these interviews and it's like we're getting the story detail so it's like you can't cut them from the movie but a lot of them are so baseline not that interesting that it's like you could have

cut it from the movie you know it's like nothing ever feels like it's everything in this movie feels like it could have been cut except for the conclusion like honestly like this this movie could have been an email is really really like the this movie could have been an Imagine Dragons. All right. Let's get into the plot description, though, because, you know, times a waste in. We're talking about the 2017 version of Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Kenneth Branagh, written by Michael Green, and of course based on the novel, by Agatha Christie. It is starring, Deep Breath, Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judy Dench, Penelope Cruz, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom Jr., Willam Defoe, Olivia Coleman, Josh Gad, Derek Jacoby, Tom Bateman,

Marwan Kanzari, Lucy Boynton, Manuel Garcia-Rolfo, Sergei Polunin, and of course the aforementioned Johnny Depp who gets murdered by everybody, and we're all happier for it. This opened wide on November 10th, 2017. Chris, I'm going to pull out. I'm a stopwatch, and I am going to get ready to time you. Are you ready with a plot description for murder on the Orient Express? Yes. All right, go. Okay, so Hercule Poro is this, like, really famous French private investigator person. He ends up on a train to the Orient Express from his friend. He's kind of going through an exit to central crisis about, like, you know, truth and whatever.

It's not that important. It's not that well done. Anyway, he meets Ratchet, this man on a plane, or not on a plane, on a train. This man who is getting these threatening letters, and he's like, will you please be my bodyguard? And he says, no. But then in the night, there is a train crash, and there's a train crash, and there's a train. kind of derailed. They're stuck in the middle of the mountains, and Ratchet is found dead.

Porreau gets into action, starts investigating everybody to, you know, figure out who killed this guy. He has like a dozen stab wounds. Who went so crazy? Turns out that Ratchet is actually an alias, and he is this mob man named John Cassetti, who was charged for, like, kidnapped and killing a baby. Turns out at the end of it, it's not one murderer. Everybody on this train killed this guy and stabbed him one time.

and rather than reveal this to that and expose everyone for murdering this man, Porro is like, no, one person might have did it. I have no idea who did it. And everyone's free. 11 seconds over time. Yeah, so I'm glad you brought up the, what this movie decides is going to be the theme of the film,

which is Hercules Poirot is a man who views the world in black and white terms, right and wrong, there is no in between. He says this quite explicitly, right, quite explicitly in the beginning of the movie, there is good and evil, there is truth and lie, there is, you know, good and bad,

and there is no middle ground. And this movie then decides that what it is about is getting Herculoporo to a point where something can happen that is so morally, gray that it rocks his very foundations and he has no choice but to do the one thing you thought he could never do, which is not solve a murder correctly and to lie about who actually killed this man because the truth is so awful and the truth would damage so many people

who have already been damaged and yada yada yada. And it's like, it's all these people who are damaged by the death of this child who were associated to this family or were family members themselves. Cue up Jamie Lee Curtis because this is a movie about trauma, baby. By the power of Michelle Pfeiffer's wig reveal.

Okay, that was very, again, something that could have been incredibly campy because it's like Yeah, like that moment needs to be Michelle, not Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close at the end of dangerous

liaisons. Sure. Shedding a mask to reveal another mask. The wig was totally unnecessary. If you knew who this woman was enough to know who she was, her face would be enough. It's Michelle Fiper, first of all. It's not like, oh, she was unrecognizable as Michelle Fyfer. It's a blonde wig versus, like, brown hair.

It's not even, like, a different hairstyle. Right. It's one doughty wig revealed to another wig. I mean, the first rule of drag is if you take off your wig, you have to have another wig underneath. But I think the second rule is, you know, is the second wig needs to be better than the first. Well, and that is a rule that many drag queens on drag race in the years since Roxy Andrews did that wig on wig reveal

have not taken heed to when the underwig is a lot less impressive than the overwig. Like, it's a problem. You know who did probably the best since then? Who? Who? Who? She does the wig reveal that it's like, oh, it was a mistake. This is my wig cap.

But then, nope, actually, she liked you. There was another wig undergrina. It's gotten to, not to detour us too much, but like we're really reaching a point of unsustainability with how we're doing this. We're like, we really, do we have any more... Honestly, like, yes, we're going to have to, like, go to Pandora to, like, mine the undersea for ways that we can get

further gooped on wig reveals. All right, anyway. I do not support drilling in whale brains even to support the art of drag. What kind of fracking is that exactly? That's, that's, if we find out that in the future... Oh, my God, RuPaul is going to be...

The whale fracker. It owns a whale farm on Pandora. Revealed an Avatar for. And Peppermint and Bob the Drag Queen will not talk about it. They refuse to don't talk about the whale farming on Pandora that Rue is doing. Okay.

Wait, back up, back up, back up. What was I going to say? Oh, right. So, Porro's existential crisis. There's a way to make that work. And one of the ways I think to make that work is one of them is show don't tell. This movie does so much of just like telling us,

of Poro telling us what the theme is. That like it robs us. He literally lines up the entire. cast in a cave at a table, like the fucking last supper. And it's just like, now I'm going to go down the line and I'm going to tell you each who your character is. And at the end, I'm going to tell everybody at home the theme of the movie. And then I'm going to then tell the police when we make the stop, who the, my fake theory about the killer. And then I'm going to tell everybody that, you know, they've been broken already and then go about your business. And it's so

much telling and very little showing, and maybe that's the biggest problem of the movie. Maybe that's sort of where I stand with that. I mean, there is that crunchiness to it thematically, but also because of this, where it's, like, so demonstrative about giving you what the theme is, it makes you kind of question why this is the most famous of the Agatha Christie Poirot books. Like, you know, But this one carries at least the most name value, I think, in terms of this franchise, for lack of a better word, if you're talking about books. Right. Yeah. Did you see Death on the Nile? I did.

See, here's the thing about Death on the Nile, and there's going to be a third one coming that, like, I think that their, death on the Nile is a more interesting but significantly worse movie. I think it's made, it's the quality of it is worse. But I think it's definitely a more interesting way to tell the, like, a more, maybe a more interesting story. There's a course correction that happened between these two movies. I think it's an acknowledgement of what wasn't working in the first movie. And they bring that to the second one, but the second one is also bad. Yeah. Because, like, it's definitely campier.

It's fun, more fun to watch. Like, people are doing bigger performance. Events actually unfold. One thing leads to another, leads to a. another. It's not like just one thing happens and then we spend the rest of the movie waiting for Poirot to tell us what happened. And I think part of the course correction is like not that Death on the Nile doesn't have a lot of famous people in it, but it's not, you know, a list famous people like Michelle Pfeiffer who was like, we'll talk about Pfeiffer because like 2017 Fyfer

is a whole thing. Sure. Like people who are harder to get and like make that your entire cast for murder on the Orient Express. Whereas that's not true of Death on the Nile. And this third one that's coming out, it's like, there's like three maybe top tier names that are involved in it, like Michelle Yo, Tina Fey, which is like... Wait, let me bring this up. Is Brandon directing this one as well?

Yes. All right, hold on a second. I believe that it's filming right now. Hold, please. I have it pulled up. Okay, so what's... Give me the cast. What's it called?

It is called. It's an alteration from the original Agatha Christie novel. It's going to be called A Haunting in Venice. Sure. Halloween party. Halloween party, you know, doesn't have the same, you know. Right. Obviously, Branagh is returning as the mustache.

It will have Michelle Yeo, Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, and Kelly Riley. Also, Jude Hill from Belfast. From Belfast. Sure, sure. I like Tina Faye still. I know there was a whole backlash cycle against Tina Faye that, like, happened for, like, several years or whatever. I wish people would stop casting her in things where she just doesn't temperamentally fit. This is the problem. Like, I, whatever you think of Tina Faye, it's like, as an actress, I don't, I'm curious how she's going to be a fit for an act of the Christie movie.

Like, I, like, in Death on the Nile, so one of the, like, you cast French and. Saunders, right, in Death on the Nile. You cast Don French and Jennifer Saunders, who are comedians, who are, you know, a little bit out of place, but also, like... And they don't get to be funny in that movie. But, like, they're not... Like, there's something about casting an American comedian or comedic actress, which feels just a little less...

I don't know. Maybe I'm, like, exoticizing the British Isles or whatever. But, like, it's just flatter. You know what I mean? It's just like it's less interesting to cast Tina Faye that would be to cast, oh, what's her name from Spy, who I love? Oh, God, you ask me too fast, because yes, I do love her. Or not even her, but like a Sharon Horgan. Oh, my, Sharon Horgan would be super fun in a movie like this, actually, as she is in Game Night.

What is her name? Spy, hold on. Apologies to this woman. Miranda Hart, Queen. Miranda, I knew it was something hard, Miranda Hart. Yeah, like, Miranda Hart would rule in a movie, in a fun murder mystery movie. Like, cast her in your next Knives Out sequel. I mean, get her to stop doing Australian tourism.

I mean, but this is one of the things, in the last week we've gone through a big social media cycle of, who would you cast in the new Knives Out, who would you cast in the new White Lotus? and that's fun because those franchises both have big expansive casts that give actors and actresses a lot to do, a lot of fun, interesting things to do, even if the roles are small, and it really shows you how much we want to let these actors and actresses we love have fun in a movie. And like the Brana Poirot movies are not exactly what I would think of as where you would go to for fun. But, like, there are ways that they could be more fun and casting them. No, one's having fun in Murder on the Orients. No, it's so dour. Okay, here's my

question to you with Murder on the Orient Express, though. And I say this, again, saying, I haven't seen the 1974 one. I wanted to have time to see it before we did this episode, and I just didn't. It's the holidays, everybody. We're very busy. With the story that murder on the Orient Express tells, that it ultimately is about a bunch of people who were so rocked by the death of this child, this baby in their lives, that they all were motivated to murder. Is there a way to tell that story fun? I mean, it's not about the content. It's about the tone. It's about, like, I don't know, because the original, like, people, I think, thought was fun, like there's an

right, that's my impression. That doesn't feel is in this one, you know, in terms of like design. Like, this movie does feel somewhat like corners are cut aside from, you know, performers not being on set together at the same time.

Sure. You know, I don't know. I feel like, obviously the movie from the 1970s, which was successful with Oscar, got Bergman her second In Oscar, her third?

Her third. So we'll talk about that in a second. Oh, let's talk about it right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that movie's success with Oscar is part of why we can have this conversation about this movie. It's also the presence of everybody else. But it's also the type of movie that's like, this could very easily be a production design, could very easily be a costume design nominee. And it's like, I think on those terms, it's not very satisfying.

either. It's not very, like, you know, campy, splashy, ornate fun. So, yeah, the fact that this is a remake of 1974's Murder on the Orient Express, I think, is probably the primary reason why this movie had Oscar Buzz. That was a Sydney Lumet movie. Sydney Lumet, at this point, by 1974, had been nominated for Best Director for Twelve Angry Men, and he was about to enter in a very sort of like Oscar welcoming period. right? We're like Dog Day Afternoon and Network were upcoming. He would be nominated for Best Director again for The Verdict. He would receive an honorary Oscar in 2004. So like this is in the thick of a very successful period for Sydney Lumet. This film in and of itself is very star-studded. I think that's why you go in with the expectation of you're going to cast a remake of Murder on the Orient Express as starry as possible. The original starred Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, John Gill, good. Vanessa Redgrave is in that movie. Michael York, Jacqueline Bissette, Anthony Perkins. Like, it's a really, really starry movie. It gets ultimately nominated for six Academy Awards.

Albert Finney for Best Actor as Poirot. Ingrid Bergman, as we said, wins. Best Supporting Actress. Put a pin in that. I want to talk about that a little bit more. Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, Cinematography nomination, costume design. dramatic score. It wins for Ingrid Bergman. It was, I believe, a bit of a surprise that she won. At least if you go by her speech. So she's, this is her third Oscar. She had won Best Actress for 1984's Gaslight and then again in 56 for Anastasia. I don't believe she had been nominated since 56. I think this, I think Murder on the Orient Express is perhaps her first nomination in a while, right?

Wins for playing the role of the former, essentially the former nanny, I guess, right, for the baby? Yes. That's, yes. Okay. So she wins, if you watch the clip, I watched it yesterday. This is, by the way, six years removed from announcing the best actress tie between Streisand and Hepburn, which is a clip I've seen eight billion times,

It's just to sort of orient you in Oscar history. So she goes up there, first of all, wait, I wrote down my favorite quote ever. One of my, it's up there with what a thrill. She says, it's always very nice to get an Oscar. That's the first thing she says. And like, she says it in such a like, I don't, like, I don't think she thinks she's making a joke. And the audience laughs. And she sort of like is like, oh, right, that's like, yes.

Thank you very much indeed. It's always very nice to get an Oscar, but in the past. But then she immediately starts talking about, she was up against Valentino Cortezza for Day and Night. Who is probably second place. Right. It seems like the one everybody thought was going to win for Truffaut's Day for Night. And Bergman is talking about how, well, it's so strange because last year, Day for Night won. She said Day for Night one Best Picture.

She meant Best Foreign Language Film. It was City of God situation, where Day for Night was one foreign language film the year before, and then the year after, when it released in the States, it gets like three Oscar nominations. It was like, I think it got director, supporting actress, and something else. Maybe screenplay. I think there were also some of the craft nominations for that movie, if I remember correctly. The Valentina Cortez had already won the BAFTA for it. Right.

And then the next year, Bergman would win BAFTA in the same case. category. Yeah. Tina Cortez won New York critics. She won National Society, a film critic. She was probably the odds on paper to win. So, and Bergman's basically sort of like playing essentially like an Oscar column. It's sort of like going about this.

She's just like, it's so strange that like the movie won last year and you were so great and wonderful. And I don't like that we were up against each other and were rivals. It's so ironic that this year she's nominated when the picture won last year, I don't quite understand that, but here I am, and I'm her rival, and I don't like it at all. Please forgive me, Valentina. I didn't mean to. I don't understand how this works, that the movie was nominated last year, and now you're here nominated this year, and I don't like, she's just like, I don't understand it, but I really don't like that we were rivals, and she's being very lighthearted about this, but the last thing she says is, forgive me, Valentina, I didn't mean to, and then

she sort of walks out, and this is very charming speech. And Valentina Cortez, at this point, is in the audience, like, beaming, just, like, wonderfully happy for Ingrid Bergman. And, like, she's not taking it hard or anything like this. And it's, it's kind of a wonderful moment. Go check it out if you want to. I will put it on the top. On YouTube. Yes.

My name is Hercule Poirot, and I am probably the greatest detective in the world. Oh, ho, ho, Chris, we must stop the investigation into the murder on the Orient Express. We have arrived at our layover destination. That's right. Our layover destination in Vulture movie fantasy land. No, what do they call it? I mean, it technically is a layover. Stopover?

Maybe stopover. I don't know. For my purposes, we arrive to Albany early and we're not leaving for another hour and a half. So you can step off the train and have a cigarette, but be back on the train because it will leave without you. That's what I call it. So, yes. movie fantasy league update for the week of first week of the new year well happy new year to all of our listeners and we are ready to hit the ground running with a couple months sprint of movie fantasy league up through the Oscars so very exciting

we are awaiting January 2nd's um rotten tomatoes lockdown where all of the rotten tomatoes scores for all of the movies will become officially ensconced in amber and forever permanent, but we don't know we're not there yet. We're recording this on New Year's Eve. So we don't want to talk about that quite yet. But I imagine in the newsletter that should be arriving in your inboxes on the third, that I will have given an update on the Rotten Tomato scores, because that'll be the next big points, a Croatian.

A cruel? A cruel, I think. Besides the avatar, the continuing incoming avatar box office points. But for now, Chris, I want to talk about flops. We're going to end the year talking about flops. Not just box office flops, not just critical flops, but specifically flops in this game. Flops in this game. You did break up the critical point, though, into my great shame. I did not catch. I knew the quote was from something, but I did not know it was from. Off the top of my head, I couldn't place who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, which is too bad. When in texting, you told me that you sent an email with all the flops, and I said, is it just a Google spreadsheet that just says I am the Earth Mother and you are all flops? You brought up the pertinent point, though. You said that Martha would get ratioed in 2022. Yeah, on Twitter, Marsha would get ratioed.

Would, okay, here's my question, though, is would the degree to which Martha would get ratioed outweigh the degree to which she would have, like, legions of gay fans just sort of death-dropping in front of her to save her from all harm. I mean, people might hate her fans more than they hate her is part of the problem. Or would she be, like, Ellen, where it's like, oh, Martha's mean. Like, Martha's way too mean. We can't support this. I don't know.

I don't know. But Martha doesn't pretend to be nice. I think that was Ellen's downfall. Right. Martha would get ratioed for not being nice, but Martha would be the type of person that gets ratioed and, like, hardcore ratioed, even though, like, what they said wasn't necessarily, like, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Yeah. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, if it was released now? Martha would get the Lydia Tar is Real treatment, where it'd just be like, Martha's a real person.

And Edward Alby is rolling in his grave. I mean, the same degree of misinterpretation of, like, what Tarr is saying about the canceling of Lydia Tarr, would I imagine be the same, a similar treatment to a modern day release of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Thank God that thing came out when it came out. Anyway, Flops. All right. So, yes, so let's talk about the flops in the movie Fantasy League. These are movies that we talked the last time about. about good value picks. These would be like the opposite, is you paid a little bit of a price

tag for these, and they have not delivered what you want them to deliver. Top of that list for me is, well, at the very most, let's start with the most expensive. So for $20, you could have picked up Ruben Austlin's triangle of sadness, which has thus far only accrued 35 points. I think for all of these, I want to just sort of quickly, and we don't want to take up too much time because we want to get back to the investigation. The investigation is currently happening on the Orient Express. What are the chances that as we move into Guild season and like BAFTA season and finally the Oscar nominations and awards, what are the chances that something like Triangle of Sadness is able to rebound and recoup some of these points that you paid $20

to get? I think it's as likely to rebound as it isn't. Like we were having this conversation the other day that it's like this movie could suddenly have like four or five Oscar nominations after I still think the outside movie was dead I still think the outside shot at picture and director nominations exists but it's like that window seems to be closing quickly right as other you know challengers seem to solidify right what they're doing like almost like I almost feel like and this isn't going to happen but maybe it's just because I just watched it yesterday But, like, I almost feel like EO has more of a momentum in the, among the, like, foreign language films. If we feel like there's a quote-unquote slot, a foreign language slot in Best Director, which...

That's a movie that a lot of people respond to. A lot of people respond to... Janice did a great job with Drive My Car just last year. I'm saying, as we were all saying that Janice couldn't do an Oscar campaign, they, you know, they proved us wrong. It did. So, yeah, I don't know about Triangle Sadness. I still feel, I still like this movie, and I kind of like it more and more, the more I sort of observe conversations about it, even among people who don't like it.

I sort of tend to be coming to its defense. So, I think there's been somewhat of a cold critical response in the States, at least, in terms of the critics that don't like it really, really don't like it. And, you know, this is maybe why it's not doing so well in this game right now is because, you know, it doesn't have any critics prices, basically, and it probably won't. Well, and so I also want to clarify that when I say foreign language thought, I know that Triangle of Sadness is not a foreign language film, but it is from Ruben Ostland, who I feel like is sort of slotted into that foreign language film director. A lot of people when they've talked about the race and predictions and stuff. have treated it like it is occupying that space. Yeah.

Sorry, my Gmail just refreshed itself, so now I have to find that email again that I sent you. Okay, so next I want to talk about an actual foreign language film, at least in its majority, which is Bardo. What's the subtitle of Bardo? I never remember to put it in. Something half-truths, something about an uncomfortable. A comfortable assortment of half-truths?

What does it call it? Hold on. When the pawn goes. False chronicle of a handful of truths. Okay. Yeah. A movie I liked, I think we talked about this a little bit. A movie I liked better than I expected to. I like Bartow quite a bit.

It was a $15 buy because I think when I was making the point valuations, the dollar valuations for this, it was still like Netflix has got to have something for a number one contender, and that was the one that had the most sort of sight unseen potential. It has thus far not been realized. For a $15 buy, it's only gotten you 10 points thus far. However, it did make the shortlist for Best International Feature. And do we feel like, as we move into guilds and Basta and Oscar, that the Iniaritu will bounce back? The Oscars do love them, some Iniaritu. I mean, this movie is very quiet right now, even though it just dropped on Netflix.

I mean, I think from the very beginning when there was, you know, it's kind of harshly negative critical response immediately when it was premiering at festivals. The industry was very quick to get behind supporting this movie, or at least a few people very visibly online were doing so. But that anecdotally, the type of things you hear is that, like, festival goers weren't liking it. but people from the industry that were attending and seeing the movie did. I mean, much like Triangles Sadness, it could suddenly have five Oscar nominations on nomination morning. It had a similar theatrical run as Glass Onion did back in November, earlier November, and nobody was talking about it then. Like, it does feel like at some point people have to start talking about this movie, and thus far, that conversation hasn't happened yet, really. And it's going to have to, at some point, if it's going to end up getting nominations.

So maybe Bardo will just be the one where constantly, it's that Simpsons episode where it's just a little airborne. It's still good. It's still good. Like that kind of thing. And eventually Bardo's going to land in the river or something. I don't know. Finish that. Listeners can finish that metaphor for me.

A handful of the $8 values that were available in the Fantasy League. The Sun, White Noise, and Empire of Light. The Sun has gotten 15 points thus far, White Noise 20, Empire of Light, 25. Do we feel like, to what degree are those movies dead in the water, a little alive, you know, where do we feel like about this? In terms of this game, those are your points, guys. That's what you're getting, probably. Do you not feel like Olivia Coleman is still in the best actress race? very possibly

I mean it seems like she's getting out there more than she does not like to do campaign stuff for movies or for award season but like I think because this movie is struggling financially she's kind of getting out there to support it or she seems like she's doing much more for it and she's really all that movie has to hold on to at this point so I can see that being like please

there's pockets of people that like that movie We can suddenly hear from people attending, you know, luncheons and such that, you know. Shout out to Richard Lawson, who has made a very good case for that movie for being good, even though this is a movie that I did not latch on to. But, like, I always like when movies have these really good faith and well-articulated defenses. It's always a much more interesting landscape for that. I've talked about white noise where I just don't see a world in which that movie connects with Oscar voters beyond possibly song.

I still feel like that LCD sound system song is not only a good song, but so clearly the energy wavelength highlight of that movie if people make it to the end of that movie, which is maybe a question, especially because

it's on Netflix, and it is very easy to not make it to the end of movies when they're on Netflix. But if you make it to the end of white noise, you will get the best part of white noise, which is the supermarket dance sequence. Um, so I feel like, but I feel like that's the ceiling on white noise, right? Like, it's one nomination at best. And then the sun, I do feel like is dead. We've talked about the best actor race being shallow, but like it's filled in a little bit since we've talked about it that way. And there are plenty of options now, I feel like, that are ahead of Hugh Jackman. If Hugh Jackman ends up getting a best actor nomination for the sun, I think I and a lot of people will probably be very, very, upset because somebody a lot more deserving. Now all of a sudden I feel like Paul Mascall is a

possibility. So now if you, like several months ago, if you had said that Hugh Jackman's going to get nominated and Paul Mascall wouldn't, I'd be like, yeah, probably. And now I'm like, God damn it if that happens. And even if it's not Paul Miscall, it's like, it's Jeremy we're talking about who would get the fifth slot. There would be a lot more interesting possibilities. I think even, like, back to Bardo, Daniel Jimenez-Cacho could be, like, a cool surprise. What's the current- It's like a not-good performance or a not-strong performance in a really bad movie that no one- Nobody likes that movie. Nobody, I've seen zero people make a case for the sun. And usually you will find people who will make a case for anything. You know what I mean?

I'm trying to look and see who's being... So, like, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, Austin Butler are like the ones that are sort of locked in. Bill Nye is looking pretty good. I would buy... God, it would be such a chaos agent. But, like, at this point, I'm starting to feel like Tom Cruise for Top Gun Maverick is not the most out there notion

that that could happen. Like, there's so much support for that movie as the Best Picture nominee. But like I said, Paul Muskell's out there after Sun's doing so well on the precursors. I'm still going to be riding for Jeremy Pope. So, yeah, maybe it is still kind of a shallow pool, and maybe Hugh Jackman has a better chance that I think.

But, like, oh, it's going to make me mad if that happens. The next two that we have on our list are definitely movies that points will begin to roll in, I think. Okay. Hit me with him. The first is Corsage, which is a $5 buy. Only has five points so far. ultimately not surprising to me that it's not like, you know,

racking up critics prizes for international feature or foreign language film prizes. Do you feel like now that like the divisive movie, but I think is safe to be nominated for Oscar? In what? In foreign language? In costume. In international feature. In international feature. He made the short list.

I think a movie that is about as much about costumes as corsage is, that it does have an outside shot at a nomination for costumes. I think people are already familiar with Vicky Creeps in the industry. Yeah. So I could see it getting a couple of nominations. It's still probably not going to get you a ton of points, but off of a $5 bet. If it even gets you, like, if you end up the season with like 50 points off of corsage, that's probably a good, you know, a good bet for that. And then, yeah, Wendell and Wilde in animation, I genuinely don't know. I genuinely don't know if it's going to end up sneaking in on that five.

It's going to get nominated, of course. You think so? Nobody's talking about it. They're not going to nominate, like, Lightyear. Well, I want to get to that in a second. I don't know if I would be so declarative about that. Pixar is very... Looms large, I will say.

I mean, that's true, but nobody liked that movie. People don't remember that that movie happened, like... And yet. You think that they would go for a... They would go for one of the worst Pixar movies over a Henry Seleck-bespoke weirdo movie. It wouldn't shock me. Okay. It wouldn't shock me.

I'm not saying I would like it, but it wouldn't shock me. I mean, Henry Seleck should be walking away with his first Oscar this year. And why isn't he? Yeah, that's the thing. I think there's a reason why he's not. And I think it's because that is a movie that is, I think. Because Netflix is dumping it for Pinocchio. Yeah. A movie that is no less weird, by the way.

Right. I like Pinocchio, but, like, its qualities, its positive qualities are kind of similar to the positive qualities of Wendell and Wilde. And if those two movies would be your one and two in the animation race, I would love it. But, yeah. All right. Before we go, there are a handful of movies that currently, as we are recording this, have zero points. They're all going to end up getting points by the time the Rotten Tomato scores kick in, because every, will have gotten points by then. But thus far, in the Critics Awards precursor season, zero points for Emancipation, I Want to Dance with Somebody, Light Year, we just mentioned, and the Northman.

Are any of those waiting in the wings to take a late run at award season? I mean, Emancipation made the makeup shortlist. Would not be surprised if that becomes a nominee because of that. I don't see it for the other movies. The Northman has like some avenues that you really kind of wish that it would have, you know, a hold on original score, production does. Well, and The Lighthouse did get the cinematography nomination a few years ago. So like, you could see a world in which that could repeat, and yet it was released so early in the year. And people really are just not talking about it in a way.

it's like a little vexing because like even if you feel like the movie is a little off putting or a little too much and it doesn't quite work for you the crafts are so apparent in that movie right um i don't know and then i want to dance with somebody which was a giant question mark kind of looming at the end of the season and like people had seen it but like you hadn't really heard anything about it and now it's basically kind of dead in the world i want to dance with somebody is the kind of movie that needed a groundswell of popular support. And right now, the current box office situation is not conducive to a movie of that scope and size getting popular support. And I don't even, I haven't seen it yet. So I can't even say it's a

bummer. Like, I've heard, I've heard mixed things about it. But, like, I've heard some people being like, oh, that's a better movie than I was anticipating. But even- I've also heard people say that's a worse movie than I've seen kind of like a spectrum of... It's running the gamut. But I just, in general, it's a little bit of a bummer that that avenue isn't available because like that avenue has served us well in the past of like smaller movies that have... It's also given us Bohemian Rhapsody. So like I'm not saying it's a great avenue. I'm not saying that, you know, we should invest public funding and paving that avenue. But... Also, I think in terms of an award season with Elvis doing it, as well as it is, that makes it harder for this movie.

Yeah, and a better version of it, for sure. All right. Well, we've monopolized people's time long enough. We've given Hercule Poirot plenty of time to ruminate on his theories in seclusion while we've taken this intermish. But we hope you're enjoying

the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. Like I said, with the new year, we're hitting the ground running. We've got Rotten Tomatoes points. We've got the Golden Globes. right around the corner. The Golden Globe Awards will be here before you know it. And then the guilds will start to have their say. And round and round we go. So enjoy. Oh, I should say, I always forget to do this. Go to moviegame.vulture.com to get a link to the landing page where you can check out scores and point values and what's coming up next. And you can see

where your team ranks. Do a little control F search on your team's name and you can find out where it is on the list. I am currently riding fifth place among vulture staff. So watch out number one, Nate Jones. We see you up there at the top of that Vulture staff chart, and I'm coming for you. So we'll talk to you guys soon. So all of that to say, and of course, this is one of like Albert Finney's kind of signature role. playing Poirot in this movie. So, like, this movie is remembered

very fondly. It feels like a movie that, like, would be on cable, basic cable a lot, on, like, AMC or whatever, TCM.

And just a very popular crowd pleaser kind of a movie and nominated a bunch in 1974, which is, like, a pretty great year for Oscars.

That's the year where, like, the Godfather and Chinatown and the conversation. Godfather Part 2. Got for the Part 2, right? And Chinatown and the conversation and Alice doesn't live here anymore. And just a really great Oscar year for that. So like, that's where the pedigree for then a remake comes along and you're just like, well, that movie did so well. And obviously remakes aren't exactly like slam dunks with Oscars. But I think by 2017, certainly the stigma of, you know, that this movie's going to just compare poorly to the original and it won't have a shot

isn't really there anymore. And Branagh, of course, still has the shine of pedigree. He's, you know, by 2017, he was a five-time Oscar nominee. Right now, after Belfast, he's an eight-time Oscar nominee in seven categories. That's the other thing, is I think the thing about Brana with the Oscars is they've nominated him kind of everywhere, director, both screenplay categories, supporting actor, lead actor, short film. Like, he's got nominations everywhere and has won just the one. Send him over to Weta Digital and he'll be nominated for Best Visual Effects. Right, right, right.

Was Belfast his first ever win, or did he win for something for Henry V? Yes, it was, because that's part of the reason that helped him. win was that he had never won and he had never won before you know so honored across multiple categories and across several decades yeah yeah yeah um so that's obviously and then of course you gather together a cast full of Oscar winners and nominees Michelle Pfeiffer was a three it's still weird that Michelle Pfeiffer is only a three-time Oscar nominee like it feels like she should have had many more nominated for on top of it like it's mostly love field is A lot of that has to do with the Lovefield nomination.

Yes. Like, getting nominated for Love Field, I would be so curious to go back in a time machine or, like, somehow dredge up, you know, whatever punditry was happening then in that early in the 90s. Because, like, it's the same year as Batman returns, correct? Yeah. Which they were absolutely never going to nominate her for then. She might be today, but, like, absolutely not going to happen.

I mean, dangerous liaison. I think she's incredible in, but, like, it's not really one we necessarily talk about when we talk about her. So it's like her good nomination is Fabulous Baker Boys. But Dangerous Liaisons is the same year as Married to the Mob. So it's almost like similar to that, right? We're going to nominate you in this movie. We're already nominating in a bunch of categories anyway in a costume drama rather than a comedy, a sort of contemporary comedy, even though that's where. So Harry Dean Stanton that's nominated for Married to the Mob?

It's Dean Stockwell. It's the other Dean. Stockwell. And I think he had, like, not really received any awards attention for that movie before the Oscar nomination, if I remember correctly. That could be true. But Pfeiffer, I think, was definitely in the best actress conversation that year. And then she ends up getting the supporting nomination for Dangerous Liaisons. And then the very next year, it feels like a momentum thing, right?

Where Fabio Spaker Boys comes out, she gets tremendous reviews. She's great in that movie. She comes very close. I don't know how close she came to Tandy, because I imagine if they loved that, driving Miss Daisy enough to give it best picture. I imagine Jessica Tandy was decently well ahead of the pack and best actors. But, like, Fyfer is definitely

second place, you would imagine, for fabulous Baker Boys. She wins the Golden Globe. And it feels like the momentum of 88 into 89 for Fyfer is so strong that it's going to carry her through

all of the 90s. And she gets, like you said, just the one nomination for Lovefield. And then... horrible movie. I've still never seen it. She's not good in it either. That's the one where she plays Is she a widow in Dallas around the time of the Kennedy

assassination? Is that the deal? Yeah, yeah. And she falls in love with President Palmer from 24? This is going to sound reductive, but like it's, when you watch it, it's like, yeah, it was Green Book before Green Book. Oh, interesting.

It's a lot of that. It's not great. We've talked about Pfeiffer before, but I want to just talk about her in the 90s, though, because after that movie, it's a lot of movies that, like, well, there's definitely a handful of, could have had nominations. Age of Innocence is probably the big one, where she's the lead actress in Age of Innocence, and the nomination ends up going to supporting actress, Winona Ryder. She's in a Mike Nichols movie, but it's Wolf, right?

She's in a thousand acres, which we've talked about on this podcast. She's in Two Jillian. We've done a ton of Pfeiffer movies because I think after that married to the mob, Dangerous Liaison's Baker Boys thing, she just gets Oscar buzz in most of the things she does. She's in, you know, box office, like movies that were more box office plays, like Dangerous Minds and Up Close and Personal and things like that. But like she's in the 1999 Midsummer Night's Dream, which, like, you could see a war. in which that like shakespeare adaptations used to be a lot more popular with oscar right so like you can see a world where that gets her nomination i am sam gets nominations for everybody but

her essentially dakota fanning gets the sag nomination uh shan pen gets the oscar nomination and fifer's like the other one um we've done white oleander on here where she comes very close i would imagine to an oscar nomination doesn't get it she's in a rob riner movie but it's the story of us. You know what I mean? It's just like once again. She's in an Oprah Book Club movie like The Deep End of the Ocean, which we really got to do at some point. We got to do the deep end of the ocean. But so it's just surprising that like Lovefield is still her most recent Oscar nomination. And it's... I thought you were going to keep going and you'd be like, she's in an Aronovsky movie, but it's mother. Well, she should have been

not... We've talked about it a lot. We've talked about it a lot. She's talked about it a lot. She's talked about it a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She is mother in many ways. Even down to like... It's giving potential mother. A couple years ago, she's in French exit, right? We're like, I think a lot of people talked themselves into, including maybe briefly me, talked themselves into

the idea that she might get a best actress nomination out of that. I think my reasoning was, it's a pandemic year. Anything could happen, even though people really did not care for that movie. I liked it better than I think most people. But it was just like, it was very

much like a movie that kind of repelled a lot of people vibes-wise. So we're with Michelle Pfeiffer, sort of where we were the last time we talked about her on this podcast, which is it's maybe never going to happen

for her. And that's a bummer, if that's the case. She doesn't work that much. It's unfortunate that some of these roles that she's great in, like Mother and French Exit, are just like they don't pay off.

It's usually. I mean, like, she's such, we've talked about her before, but, like, again, she's such an idiosyncratic performer that, like, it's hard to just shove her into a box. And, like, Orion Express is a movie that I think kind of just shubs her into a box or just asks her,

please show up and look fabulous in this dress and wig. I will say, if you were to single out one performer from this movie to push for an award, she would be the one. I think she gives... Yeah, she's the best performance in the movie. She gets the biggest signature scene. I think for as sort of hamstrung as that scene in the cave is,

she sells real genuine emotion and devastation. Like, she's the... The whole thing leads up to the, you know, I died when Daisy died or whatever. And that's a tough line to sell because it's so melodramatic. but, like, she makes you believe it. And ultimately, nobody from this movie was ever going to really get nominated.

Once people saw it. Once you saw it, you were just like, yeah. But she would have been the one. She would have, if they had tried for a, it's surprising and not surprising at the same time, that she's in two movies where she's the best part of murder on the Orient Express, and she certainly was the most credible case for an Oscar nomination from Mother.

given, I think people were a little horrified by the Jennifer Lawrence performance. And yet, realistically, neither one of those things was going to happen, which is too bad. Right. Which is too bad. All right, let's get into the rest of the cast.

Penelope Cruz, we talked about. She's in the, for all intents and purposes, the Ingrid Bergman role. So that was where my expectations were. That, like, oh, Penelope Cruz. I think a lot of people were feeling the same way, too. She's a three-time Oscar nominee by the time of this movie. Then she's gotten her fourth since then for parallel mothers.

But she had won an Oscar, obviously, for Vicki Christina Barcelona. And you figure she had already a little bit been in this similar situation where, oh, her role in nine is the one that got the Tony Award attention, right? where she played the, is it the Jane Krakowski role? And Jane Krakowski had been nominated for a Tony? Or had she won a Tony? She won a top. In that revival, this is when she comes from the rafters hanging from a sheet.

And then when she ends the number in that giant, you know, high note that she ends it with, that's also supposed to be an orgasm, she, because I saw this production, it was one of the most fucking insane things I've ever seen. in my life. It's not like she has a harness strapping her to a wire in case she falls. Right. She falls. She probably dead. She's on a curtain, right? Yeah.

She goes in this like swooping sheet backwards and it pulls her like head facing the ground up into the rafters of the theater. Yeah. It was crazy. She won Tony Ford. Uh, that's who, that's who, uh, Penelope Cruz gets to play in Rob Marshall's, uh, um, nine. Right. And then she takes that to an Oscar nomination. You know what I mean? So it's like you could track similarly onto expectations for Murder on the Orient Express, but obviously, as I mentioned, she gets less than nothing to do in this movie. She's really indicative of what's wrong with

this adaptation. Similarly, Judy Dench, who at this point is a seven-time Oscar nominee and also an Oscar winner, couldn't be more pedigreed going into this movie. And again, she goes in and she gets a scene and a half of stuff to do. She's just hiding out in her sidecar or whatever. Right. Chilling with Olivia Coleman, which, you know, that's nice work if you can get it there too. The rest of the cast, I think, is interesting

in terms of what's going on in their careers at that time, right? We're like, Willem Defoe is in this movie. He's nominated for the Florida Project that same year. Leslie Odom Jr. is in this movie. He had just won the Tony Award for Hamilton the year before. Daisy Ridley is

in this movie, like, at the same time that Star Wars, The Last Jedi. Like, that movie opens five weeks after Murder on the Orient Express. Olivia Coleman is a year removed. This is a year before she stars in The Favorite and ends up surprisingly

winning the Oscar there. So, like, they're all sort of having a moment in their careers at this time, and this movie is this kind of, like, sort of nothing now on their resume, on the road from, like, one big sign post to the other at this point, right? This is Leslie Odom Jr.'s movie in between his Tony

award and his Oscar nomination, right? This is basically the movie Daisy Ridley made when she was taking a break from being in Star Wars movies. I remember the... And because you don't really get any of these stars together, even just not like the megastars at that time. No offense, I wouldn't consider like Daisy Ridley a megastar on the way of like, you know. But yet she would have been the one who has been seen by the most audience members, probably, than a lot of these people. You know what I mean? Because, like, they're not really performing together in this movie. There's not going to be any, like, fun stories.

There's not going to be any dishy, gossipy, or, like, you know, goofy stories that come out of this movie. Right, right. So it's, like, when are we going to have much callbacks to this movie? Right. So all of these people play characters who have... some sort of connection to this baby Daisy who was killed or connections to her parents or connections to the woman who was accused, falsely accused of killing this kid, right? So like everybody's

got some sort of a connection to this case and we find that out by the end. And we find that out, as we said, by purely exposition. So it's a bummer. It's a real bummer this movie. time, like, I had the same feeling watching it this time than I did the last time, which is how do you drop this ball? Like, you have so much talent on your hands. You have so much to work with. And it's just such a nothing. It's a bummer. The other thing I wanted to talk about, you always know more about this than I do. When I saw, when this movie started and we got the 20th century Fox fanfare, first of all, it struck me that, like, we don't get that anymore. Like, it's, I mean, you get it in Avatar, right? Not the same way. There's the, there's, it's not the same.

Like, I was actually shocked that it, what, there wasn't a Disney logo in front of Avatar. Yeah. In terms of the timeline, though, this is a year out from the, like, actual. The actual acquisition, but they had announced, they announced their plans to acquire Fox only a few weeks after this, after this movie comes out, after this wasn't exactly a bugger fall for Fox too. They have some things that don't work, like the

mountain between us, fuck Mountain, which we really have to do that movie. We do. Logan and the Greatest Showman, at that point with the greatest showman, like, it was considered a failure at first, ends up making a crazy amount of money. But, like, I think that was basically the last, you know, kind of bastion for Fox in terms of success. It's interesting.

Logan is such an overachiever with Oscar, right? It ends up getting a lot more just genuine, genuine respect. It gets a screenplay nomination, and then Greatest Showman is an overachiever box office-wise. Probably close to winning. It was probably maybe second place for that original song, Oscar. there's they also have the post which like underachiever underachiever i would say yeah the post yeah um yeah because it probably could have made more money at the box office it only gets the i mean it gets best picture and best actress but like but that's it when people first saw it they

were like it's over and done this is you know i am i am people i remember i walked out of that and i was just like at this moment like at this time when like the the best picture race was so much in flux when, you know, because that was the year of shape of water. And I think a lot of us were sort of waiting for the thing that was going to beat the shape of water. Right. But like, I think we were waiting for like, what's the movie that's going to finally overtake the shape of water? Because we didn't really, for a while there, it took us a while to sort of get used to the idea that like the shape of water was going to win. And even up until Oscar night, I remember a lot of people were predicting a split between shape of water.

and something else in Best Director, I think we couldn't really agree on what that other something else was going to be. But yeah, I remember watching the post and being like, he did it. Spielberg did it. He's going to take it by storm. And here we are again,

potentially. It keeps happening, Chris. It keeps happening. At this point, I almost enjoy the idea that I can be an iconoclast by being a fan of the most prolific and beloved filmmaker in an olive cinema at this point

where it really does feel like supporting Spielberg, you're a little bit of like justice for this wildly successful and wealthy man. I mean, but the thing, I don't know, there's not, Spielberg doesn't inspire,

there's always, there's cases where this is not true, but like, I don't know. I think part of that, at least within, like, fan communities is that, like, there's much less aggression, I will say less, not none, that comes out of people loving Spielberg. So it's like, it's very easy for them to like get overtaken by like the Nolan fanboys, the Michael Mann fanboys, the, you know, the PTA fanboys. I think it's a little, the PTA fan boys. I think it's telling that like who's the filmmaker who every month and a half

we have this tempest in the teapot over his movies versus popular movies, which is Scorsese, right? Like, Spielberg is just sort of like sitting in a corner just being like, I'm just going to make another, you know, populist movie. Like, why not? And I mean, I think some of that has to do with, you know, in the past maybe 10, 15 years, he's made some of his weaker movies. Who? Spielberg. Oh, okay. Which ones would you say?

I mean, the BFG. Sure. Ready Player 1. Please do not come to me if you think Ready Player 1 is great. No. You know, stuff like that. Yeah. No, I agree.

But I think that same span of time, he's made, you know, the Post and West Side Story and the Fablements. You know what I mean? Like, it's, I love this era of Spielberg. But, yeah, so those, it was a good year for Fox just in general. Yeah, the thing is, like, between Fox and Fox Searchlight, you know, I think that this also kind of contributed to the kind of animosity, you know, in people in our circles for the, you know, the acquisition of Fox is like, it's not like they were doing horrible. Not only is like Fox Searchlight having this great year, but like when your Booger movie

for your 2017 lineup is murder on the Orhean Express, which is financially successful, like, you know, the things don't compute. Yeah, I ended up making 102 domestic. By the way, apologies to listeners, the snowblower next door is really kicking into high gear, so I'm sure that is picking up. It's just a dramatic effect for this snowy movie. It'll come up on my audio track, almost certainly. So enjoy the dulcet tones of snow being removed from the driveway next door. This movie was nominated for three AARP Movies for Grownups Awards.

including the reader's choice, which I don't know if that's a thing anymore. I don't think it is. I maybe think they only did this for a year or two. I'm not positive. Read us off the Reader's Choice nominees. Right. So the Reader's Choice nominees, Murder on the Orient Express, Beauty and the Beast, the terrible live action, quote unquote,

live action Disney remake of Beauty and the Beast, starring a whole bunch of people who deserved better and who I'm glad at least they got paid. That monstrosity is when I severed all emotional ties that I have to the Disney Corporation. I do have to say, that piece of shit. It's a bummer. And I didn't want to be one of those people that hated on that movie so much, because it's directed by Bill Condon, who's like, you know, smaller movies I really like and respect, and he's like one of the few openly gay directors working within the studio system.

But Bill Condon, my dude, what the fuck? Well, and again, I'm glad he got paid. You know what I mean? Like, that is Cash Grab the movie, and it was part of such a trend of them is the other thing, like, that got increasingly less creatively inspired to the point where now we get this year's Robert Zemeckis Pinocchio that is just absolutely reviled.

I have not seen it, but I believe other people when they say it was like... As I have previously said, with every new variant of COVID comes a new Pinocchio. That's true. All right. So, anyway, reader's choice, Beauty and the Beast, Dunkirk, Get Out, both of which were Best Picture nominees, Girls' Trip, which was a hugely well-loved phenomenon of a movie that year. Last Flag Flying, the Link Letter movie that bombed with Oscar.

The Post, aforementioned, Spielberg, masterpiece, The Post. And then the winner, which is a real time capsule for what was going on in 2017. was Wonder Woman, a movie that everybody was very positive about in a way that now that the second Wonder Woman movie everybody was very negative about, I think now there's some revisionist and whether, I think some of the revisionist stuff on the first Wonder Woman is people who maybe overrated it at the time because, you know, for reasons, who are now coming down a little bit. I think also people who are maybe... The second one is so horrible, too. Well, and I think people who didn't like the second one to the point where they are now maybe overstating their dislike for the first Wonder Woman movie to sort of like be in concert with that first one. So I think the levels of where we are, I think similarly another movie around that time, I think Captain Marvel has been a similar thing where it's just like, There was a lot of celebration for the success of those movies, and rightly so, but...

Wonder Woman is so much better than Captain Marvel, though. I agree, but also I haven't seen either one of them a second time, so, but that was my sense. I would, I probably would need to, like, to be able to, like, have a full defense of it, rewatch Wonder Woman, but, like, I think Wonder Woman does a lot of things pretty well. Pretty well. In a way that, like, made the second one just such an egregious thing. failure. Yeah.

I don't think about the second one hardly at all. I'll still at least think about some stuff that happened in the first Wonder Woman movie. But anyway... First Wonder Woman movie is funny. Yes. Yeah. That's a lot of what I like about it. Yeah.

There's good comedy in that movie. All right. Other M4G nominations for Murder on the Orient Express, it's nominated in Best Ensemble, nominated alongside aforementioned Girls Trip, aforementioned less flag flying. They really liked... What a weird double feature that must have been for AARP voters to see Girls Trip and Last Flag Flying in the same Mudbound, which is a movie that has kind of gotten forgotten in the years since, but I really liked Mudbound. I feel like if that was not a Netflix movie, it would not be forgotten. That's maybe true.

Although I imagine more people saw it than would have seen it in an art house release. That's the sort of the dichotomy of Netflix, right? is it's available to so many more people, and yet it disappears in the cultural conversation so much quicker. Yeah, the movies have so little footprint. Right. The winner in that category, quite deservingly, I would say, is Get Out. That's a great ensemble.

Good job there. And then director, best director nominees were Kenneth Branagh for Murder on the Orient Express, Steven Spielberg for The Post, Ridley Scott, for all the money in the world, which every nomination that that movie got felt like a, I'm so sorry you had to put up with all of that kind of a thing of just like, good for you for getting that movie into theaters. I mean, that movie, we can't talk about it because it did get Oscar nominations, or at least the one for Plummer. It was also just this kind of like awe of what Ridley Scott pulled off. Well, people forget also, in addition to the fact that they had to recast Kevin Spacey and scrub his footage from existence, that also had.

the bad press of not paying Michelle Williams as much as they paid Mark Wahlberg and like all of that stuff. I totally forget that Mark Wahlberg is in that movie. Everybody does. How could you not? Like he's so forgettable. Not that he's bad in the movie.

He's not someone I think is a very good actor usually unless he's playing someone who is stupid or, you know, in over their head. He's an incredibly director-dependent actor and Ridley Scott is a great director, but he's not somebody who's going to give a shit about that aspect of his movie, right? He's not the one who you'd go to to, for as much as like David O'Russles a piece of

shit as a human, like he's been able to get great performances out of Mark Wahlberg. Paul Thomas Anderson, not a piece of shit and also a great filmmaker, has been able to get at least one great performance out of Mark Wahlberg. And, well, Mark Wahlberg, kind of also a piece of shit. So while we're talking about stuff like that, lots of pieces of shit, this discussion we're having this week. Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Also, the other thing about all the money in the world, aside from the fact that Michelle Williams is spectacular in it, people also kind of forget. People also thought that it was like this just nothing else but a fuck you to Kevin Spacey, that he was replaced by Christopher Plummer and Christopher Plummer got that Oscar nomination. Yeah. But like Christopher Plummer was the original first choice, wasn't originally available. But then also like unquestionably gives us.

a performance 10 times better than what Spacey would have given. Oh, I mean, yes, but like Oscar Worthy? Like, I kind of disagree with you in that I think that nomination is 100% of fucking. I think that's 100% a if not a fuck you, Kevin Spacey nomination. It's a

I can't believe that works. You gave this performance at the drop of the hat. Like, that is a functional performance. No, I agree with that. That assessment of the nomination, I maybe think the performance is better than you do. I don't think anything of that performance. I just like Christopher Plummer. I mean, I love Christopher Plummer.

And I love Michelle Williams. I think that movie is kind of a dead fish. But anyway, the fifth nominee for M4G's and director was, of course, Reginald Hudlin for Marshall. We all remember everything about that movie and love it so much. Best Original Song Nominy Marshall. again we can't talk about it on this podcast because of that but yeah um kate hudson uh in in marshal we all remember uh quite so well um all right so uh also all right i have to bring this up we've talked about this before uh an awards giving institution that we should talk about more just in general because they're always so insane the saturn awards nominated uh murder on the orient express for best thriller The Saturn Awards, by the way, which are the science fiction awards, essentially. Like, that's the genre.

It's not just science fiction. But it started out as, like, this is the genre creep in the Saturn Awards has gotten more and more expansive over the years. Even among those very liberal definitions of genre movies, right, the Saturn Award nominees for Best Thriller include, Murder on the Orient Express, a movie that not for one second is thrilling. Okay, I'm going to read... Their winner for Best Action Adventure film this award year, because I think they hug years, is Best Action Adventure is the Greatest Showman. Perfect. An action adventure like no other... Okay, I'm just imagining, like, imagine you are in a video store in, you know, imagine video stores still exist in 2017, and you're wandering the video.

video store. I defy you to put these movies in the same section of the video store. It's murder on the Orient Express, brawl and cell block 99, suburban con, again, the thrill ride of the world that is a suburban con, the post, Wind River, and then the winner, three billboards outside of abing Missouri. At most, two of those movies at any given time are in the same genre section of a video store. At most. You get like, the post and three billboards are in drama. You know what I mean? Like, that's basically it. Like, Suburicon, not a thriller. The Post, not a thriller. Three Billboard, Not a Thriller. Murder on the Urian Express, maybe, even in its best incarnation, not a thriller. I've refused to see Brawl and Selbach 99.

No, absolutely not. And I haven't seen Wind River either. I guess I can go on faith that maybe one or two of those movies are thrillers, but I kind of doubt Wind River, because everything I see about it is just like Elizabeth Olson and Jeremy Renner sort of like investigative drama right sure but like come on come on now Saturn Awards you're crazy as always and we love you I guess

for it we don't love you as much as we love the emphrages we save our true appreciation for that what else what else about this this misbegotten film um I like it that at one point Kenneth Branagh just says to Johnny Depp, I do not like your face.

I feel like that should be memed maybe more often. Why is that not a screen cap that exists everywhere? We should all be sending that screen cap to Elon Musk. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I don't know. Like, this movie bums me out. It has all the ingredients, or at least a lot of the ingredients for something that I should like. And I guess, okay, here's what I will say.

This movie comes out two years before Ryan Johnson's Knives Out. And I think this makes a lot of money obvious. I mean, like, I do think that there is a certain element to this movie that maybe greased some of the wheels for Knives Out in that, like, who done it's and murder mysteries are becoming popular again, that I think gets credited to Ryan Johnson in a way that I'm not quite so sure. Because, like, you get even tangential things that are, like, finger quotes murder mysteries on TV. Obviously, the White Lotus, you have. Only murders in the building. I mean, like, true crime has kind of grown to be this ubiquitous cultural force. Yeah.

That, like... Well, but so here's what I will say is a movie like the Brana version of murder on the Orient Express really allows me to give the credit that I want to give to Ryan Johnson for Knives Out. and for glass on it's because like and it's like and it's not just like well that's a bulletproof genre and he was going to succeed no matter what because we all love a star studded murder mystery and it's like no there are ways to make those

movies good and there are ways to make those movies not good and he has made them very good and I think sometimes people want to sort of deny him like he's a movie with he's a director with a lot of fans like to be sure like Ryan Johnson is beloved

by a lot of people but I think a lot of people who sort of want to go against a grain on him are like, he's overrated. He's, you know, murder mysteries are a slam dunk and he, you know, he casts his movies well and that's really and yada, yada. This movie, I think, kind of really dispels that because, I mean, it's not just like doing it well, but also giving the audience what they want when they sign up for a movie like this because I don't know if this movie does really at any turn, aside from, you know, Michelle Pfeiffer wig reveal. Like, I don't know what boxes this movie really checks off.

You see famous people, but you don't really see them together. Right. Certainly not in any interesting way. You know what I mean? And again, like, if your big trailer shot is walking down the dining car of the train, that's the other thing. It's like, how dare a movie not take advantage of the, idiosyncrasies of a whole thing taking place on a train in a way that like you you would pick a hundred movies before you would pick this one for like an art directing nomination right right

it does like nothing interesting this movie is not this movie is not like snowpiercer you know where it's like there's nothing interesting about this train heightened realism but it would be so much more fun if it didn't like why isn't why does the dining car look almost indistinguishable from any other car on this train. Like, it should look like a fucking clue board. It should be... You are on a train called the Orient Express, which just sounds amazing. You're in a movie called Murder on the Orient Express.

The Orient Express should be one of the most interesting things about your movie. And it's so drab. Why can the audience not distinguish between other people's, you know, lodging cars more than they do? like Judy Dench's room has some drapery or something, but like it should look like an entirely different train. Why did

the more than not disappointing HBO series Run starring Merritt Weaver and Donald Gleason do so much more interesting things with Amtrak than this movie does with the Orient Express. Like, honestly,

for as much as Run ended up going off the rails, no pun intended, except maybe pun intended. Quite literally, like, the end of episode three. But, like, at the very least, that movie gave you great chemistry between its two leads, and it explored the space of the fucking Amtrak trains in a way that I found interesting. So, like, Kenneth Branagh, you have no excuse, and it's infuriating. Should we move on to the IMDB game?

Yeah, let's do that. What is the IMDB game, Chris? Why don't you tell us? Well, every week, we end our episodes. you know, the caboose of this train is the IMDB game, where we challenge each other with an actor, actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits.

We'll mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. If that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints and stabbings from multiple Oscar winners and nominees. Exactly. All right. Chris, your choice this week is to go first or second. Give or guess. I hinted before we were recording that I maybe got a little evil with you because you have been tough on me lately.

Yes. So for you, I have pulled from the upcoming, what is it, a haunting in Venice or whatever, the next Poirot Adventure, I have pulled from that ensemble for you, Kelly. Oh, you're a dick. Any television? There's no television because we have liberated this good and interesting actress from Yellowstone. It's so insane, though, that, like, Yellowstone, like, one of the most watched shows on television, and is one of the things she is known for is not on her known for. Okay. Well, this is just cruel, and I'm going to struggle mightily.

I hope to God flight is on there. Flight is on there. The one movie I know her from. has to play. Do I know any movies that she's in besides flight, honestly? I might not. I might need to, like, jump to hints, right? I'm just going to, like, haunting in Venice.

No. No, it's just not on there already. Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane? No. She's not in Citizen Kane, so it shouldn't count. But I will give you your years. Yeah, give me the years.

We have 2005, 2008, 2009. Jesus. 2005. Multiple Oscar nominee. Oh, okay. 2005, in Best Picture or in lower categories? Not in Best Picture.

Is she in Walk the Line? She's not in Walk the Line. Okay. Does this movie have acting nominees, the nominations? It does. This is a movie you like, a director we have, we both like, and have defendants. before. Defended is an interesting word. Why would an actor we need defending? I feel like that's overplaying

my hand and giving this to you too early. I need to be making you suffer. No, no, I don't want to suffer. 2005 director, we defend acting nominee is do, do, do, do, do, do. I keep thinking of 04 now. I'm trying to like, no, 5, 05, 05. Is she in North Country?

She's not... Well, she could be in North Country, but this is not... Conceivably, she could be in North Country. There is a world in which she is in North Country. Okay. 2005. Who even wins best? Not an acting winner.

No, I know, no, but I'm just trying to, like, orient myself in the categories a little bit. and then definitely not even close to winning definitely not even close to winning that's an interesting way to put that so it's just one acting nominee at most was third place okay um and no question was anywhere above third place okay that's funny um good acting nomination though. Oh, so it's not a history of violence. Constant Gardner. No. Damn. Constant Gardner is an acting winner. It's an acting winner. Right, right, right, right. Okay.

Capote is an acting winner. She's not in Brokeback Mountain. Why would somebody not be conceivably above third place? Because it is bad? I don't understand the logic. No, because... First and second place, we're so far ahead. Oh, okay. All right.

So we're talking about best actor. So is she in Hustle and Slow? We're not talking about best actor. Just Christ almighty. I hate this already. You did this on purpose to make me frustrated and to make me look silly. Eric Stoltz was hard. This is harder.

Eric Stoltz was in multiple moves. Eric Stultz was in Pulp Fiction. Like, Kelly Riley is not in one of the. A lot of people are in Pulp Fiction. Do you know how long it's been since I've watched Pulp Fiction? All right. He's the most famous, one of the most famous scenes of Pulp Fiction. Anyway, so, best actress wasn't...

You guessed a movie that is the right category that won. What's that? You guessed a movie that is the right category. I guessed a movie that is the right category. But you said it's a category where, like, it was like two people, like, neck and neck to win. Not necessarily neck and neck, but like the only two conceivable winners. Oh, is she in Cinderella, man? She's not in Cinderella, man.

Wrong category. So, not actor, not supporting actor, not supporting actress, because Rachel Weiss was way ahead of everybody, and not actress, because Reese Witherspoon is way ahead of everybody. I never said not actress. I said not walk the line. Yeah, but Reese Witherspoon is not neck and neck with anybody in that category. I didn't say they were. were neck and neck. I said there was a very clear first and second place and no one else had a chance.

Is she in Pride and Prejudice? She is in Pride and Prejudice as Carolyn Bingley. Christ Almighty. Also, we don't defend Joe Wright. Joe Wright is like needs no defense. We defend Joe Wright. No defense needed. He's the best. Um, fine. 2008, 2008.

Jesus. All right, 2008. Is she in the dark night? she's not in the dark night but this is a 2009 is a blockbuster 2009 is a blockbuster blockbuster end of the year blockbuster oh not avatar action blockbuster or blockbuster from a different genre she's in the blind side the Saturn awards might have said that it was an action blockbuster I wouldn't call it an action movie um so not the blind side is what we're saying Golden Globe winner. Golden Globe winner, 09.

Golden Globe, maybe a comedy Golden Globe. Oh, what was 09? Was 09 the hangover? Possibly, but it is not the hangover. Acting winner in comedy, in Comedy Globe? Yes. Okay.

Who are we talking about? out in 2009 in comedy. Barney's version? No. Oh, God damn it. This is so frustrating. This was the year of The Hangover. This movie was not nominated for Best Picture at the Globes in comedy or musical,

but it won one of the two acting comedy globes. The Last Station? No. He shouldn't win for that. Not a comedy. also not well i defy you to tell me what genre the last station is we don't remember anything about that movie um okay so drama drama globe was won by sandra bullock comedy globe is she in julia julia she is not in julia and julia you are looking in the wrong category all right actor at the globe's actor in uh crazy heart that was drama that was that was not seen as musical. Okay. Listen, if you are about a musician and it is, like, sad, they don't consider you, like, stars born was submitted drama. But Ray was submitted as a musical, right?

Because DiCaprio won for The Aviator. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes in 2009, Dan Daniel D. Lewis did not win for nine, and Kelly Riley is definitely not in nine, as far as I can recall. Was this person who... I'll give you the other nominees that didn't win. Okay.

Matt Damon and the informant. Michael Stulberg, in a serious man, should have won, should have been the Oscar nominated. Probably my best actor of that year. Wow. And Joseph Gordon Levitt in 500 Days of Summer. Keep in mind, this is a blockbuster. It's a blockbuster. End of the year blockbuster, major star, especially at this moment.

Oh, okay. Probably single-handedly made this movie into the huge hit that it was. Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock Holmes. I have no memory of him winning best actor for that. Wow. Okay. Avatar was going to take us to the cleaners.

Right. Right. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, shockingly, I don't go back and watch the Robert Johnny Jr. Golden Globe speech from the 2009 Golden Globes a whole lot. All right, what's our other year, 2008? 2008 is probably harder to place because I think it didn't come out until 2009 in the States. It is a UK movie. I don't know if you've seen this, so I'm going to go easier on you for this because it is...

Great. It's definitely the hard one here. I could have gotten the other ones. Is this one of those like Brendan Gleason movies? But like... No. This is a movie that is... Is it made in Dagenham?

With horror fans. Oh. This is definitely more of like an extreme thriller than a horror movie to me. But it's probably... If you've heard the name of this movie, not from like horror circles, I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen this movie. But the actor in this movie would be... around this time, like, winning acting prizes for, like, four movies at a time.

In 08? Like, 0,8,09. This is an actor who's, like, suddenly in 15 movies. Oh. Young. And, like, this would be one that would get mentioned. It's like, yeah, he's grading this and this and this. And by the way, did you see this, like, totally fucked up movie?

Oh, interesting. And he's also inexplicably graded. A young, sort of like young 20s and 30s actor, or? More 30s and 40s. Okay, all right. Sarsgaard. Not SARS guard. Like a leading man or like character actor?

He got thrust into leading man stuff, but I would argue he's probably better as a character actor. Okay. He got thrust in the leading man stuff. oh golly cheese I'm gonna just give this to you in the hopes that it gives you the movie it is Michael Fastbender Oh that's yes that was around that time So he's in a thriller slash horror

Around that time It's pretty gruesome He wasn't no that's Paul Bettany who was in Priest and Legion around that time It's pretty gruesome Yeah Oh God I may just give it to you so we can move on.

I've seen Eden Lake. I've never maybe heard of Eden Lake. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's a good movie. Is it? It's fucked up. Okay.

No. No idea. Fassender is like really good at playing. I am being horrifically tortured. So what you just did to me is the equivalent of we're out in the sandbox playing and I overly rambunctiously throw a toy to you and I throw it a little too hard and it bonks you on the head, and you, in response, pull out a hammer and, and bash me in the skull. That is not what I just did.

Kelly Riley. I'm going to be so mean to you next week. Maybe I blew over your sandcastle. I didn't hit you with a hammer. Oh, my God. I'm going to give you the most impossible one next week. You're going to be, oh, it's going to be brutal, and I'm going to enjoy it. All right.

All right. Who do you have for me? I have one, somebody who is not nearly as obscure. So I went through the Kenneth Bran of Filmography. I went to one of his earliest movies, a movie called Peter's Friends, which starred him and his, at the time, uh, wife Emma Thompson and all a whole bunch of their friends at the time.

Hugh Laurie is in this movie. Stephen Fry is in this movie. That movie is dated as hell, but it is so good. Yeah, it's very charming. Uh, one of the people in this movie, It's sort of like English the big chill a little bit, right? And so... Except good.

And then I imagine the sort of the Mary K. Place equivalent in that movie is Amel de Staunton. And so to you, I say, give me a Mel de Staunton's known for. Well, Vera Drake. Yes, correct. I kind of want to guess the National Theater Live Follies, but I know it's not going to be that. Order of the Phoenix. Correct. That's the right Harry Potter movie. Yep. All right. So am I going to guess another Mike Lee?

She's so good and upsetting at the beginning of another year. I'm just going to say another year. Incorrect. Strike one. Pride? Yes, pride. That was the one I thought you would take. a little time on, but yeah, very good. Her scene with Nye is so good. We maybe should do Pride soon so we can talk about it. I've said, like, twice before on this podcast recently,

that we're going to do it for Pride Month in June. We're going to... Okay. Spoiler alert, for six months or five months away, we're going to do it, yes. Okay, so I have three, only one incorrect guess. I don't think that another Harry Potter is on there. what's another movie where she's an asshole because there is like a grouchy performance

that's not as bad as another year but she's still like a grouch and why can't I think of it I may throw something off just to get the year because I'm willing to bet that it's post Vera Drake unless it's like much ado about nothing because she's in that as like she's like horny as hell in that movie

I remember when we did that episode I'll just say much ado about nothing incorrect I know I'm a little bit satisfied that you had to go to hints even though I think you're going to get it now right away once I give you the year your missing year is 1998 1998

okay so that is before Vera Drake is it she's not in no Topsy Turvy's 99 wait, what was 98 that she would have been in? All right, I'm a little satisfied that you should be getting this and you're not getting this. Maybe I'm going to be stupid. Yeah. Oh, it's a, duh, yeah, you should be satisfied.

Yeah. She's so funny. It's Shakespeare in love. Yes. Ha, ha. You don't look as bad as me, but you look a little bit bad. And that is satisfying for me. So very good.

That's a good known for Amaldus Taunton, though. I feel like that's a representative spread of, you know, her big, her big mainstream franchise movie, her Oscar nomination, her early work in a Best Picture winner, and then she's rad and pride. Yeah. I think that's your ideal. I think that's what you want out of a known for, right? Your critical hit, your commercial hit, your early thing that people are like, she was in that movie, and then the one that's not like the others. The fan favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

we make this for the fans and not the critics. All right, Chris, that's all. That's for our episode. A Murder in the Orient Express. This comes out... We've arrived at our final destination. We have arrived in the station. A New Year's day, just after New Year's?

What's going on? Yeah, right after New Year's, same bullshit here on this had Oscar buzz. There we go. So happy New Year to you all. And to all a good... Wait, that's Christmas, right? That's whatever. Happy 2020.

doesn't suck. All right. That's our episode. If you want more of this had Oscar buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.tumlr.com. You should follow our Twitter account

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