This Had Oscar Buzz - 315 – French Exit

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Michelle Pfeiffer is a screen legend whose return always feels like an occasion–even if we’re all stuck at home. In 2020, Azazel Jacobs’ French Exit debuted at the New York Film Festival with Pfeiffer starring as a wealthy New York eccentric who loses her fortune and absconds to France, all while perhaps haunted by her dead husband … Continue reading "315 – French Exit"

The Vulture Movie Fantasy League is finally for real starting off, even though it's had weeks of starting off. But now we have awards points in addition to box office points. This is true. This is true. Here we are. We have Gotham's. The Gotham's have landed. We talked about the Gotham's, actually.

If you are a Patreon subscriber, you heard us go off for 50 whole minutes about the Gotham's this week. So if that's not enough of a reason for you to go. sign up for the said Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance, truly what is. You'll certainly get more in-depth conversation than we're going to be able to provide in this brief little interlude. But suffice it to say. And because Venom 3, whatever the subtitle is, is not really like setting the box office a blaze. Right.

What was our top point on this week? It's not really laying an egg as much as something like Joker. Like, I think the fact that Joker is such a failure is really sort of like running interference for some of these sort of smaller failures. Venom at the bottom. So we're recording this on Sunday morning. So the box office totals are very estimating at this point that we haven't gotten the Sunday update. But it was tracking for Venom to pull in $22 million over the weekend, which puts it up to 86, just a little north of 86 total. So we still haven't hit the $100 million mark in the second weekend, which for a big sort of CGI superheroy blockbuster movie isn't great.

But if you drafted Venom, you're getting some points. It's probably not, it was probably not the wisest use of your dollars, if I'm going to be completely tough love, honest with y'all. But this is why you're seeing a lot of people. I think the current standings in the fantasy league, and we'll talk about who our leader is in a second, anybody who drafted both Venom and Smile 2 are sort of riding high at the moment. They are the heedless youth thinking,

I'm never going to die! And they're just sort of like speedboating their way down past Martha's Vineyard or something. Neither of those movies were the top point earner of the week, however. The most points earned this week was Anora with 60 Gotham's points. So, plus a little north of $1 million additional in theaters. So Anora's still doing well in a relatively small amount of theaters. It's still only in like 250 theaters. The most drafted movie, correct?

The most drafted movie. So, yeah, you're also seeing. Anora, the people who have Venom and Smile and Anora are the ones who are really doing well right now. But also, Gotham's got you some points. If you picked up I Saw the TV Glow, which I believe was a $5 by, 45 points off of I saw the TV glow at the Gotham's is actually really good. Nickel Boy is getting you 40 points and hopefully getting a toehold into award season is a really good sign. If you picked up Nickel Boys, ditto, if you had Baby Girl. Um, I think you and I both expect the Brutalist to have a long and fruitful life in this award season, the Brutalist, the second most picked movie this year. Um, so the Brutalist picking up 30 points at the Gotham's is a good sign. I was very happy that a different man picked up 30 points at the Gotham's. Sing Sing Sing also 30. One thing I want to mention, I think we mentioned this last week. This is not a movie that's getting anybody box office points because it opened too soon. But the wild robot has been in the top.

three at the box office for six weeks. Five of those weeks, it's been in the top two of the box office. It is now north of 120 million. I think these things bowed very well for the wild robot going into the awards portion of the year. I agree. I think you are seeing a very, very high likelihood that the wild robot is like the animated movie of the year, even with Inside Out to doing amazing box office and saving Pixar and all this sort of stuff. But no one really caring about the movie. Well, this is sort of a thing. We who drafted a wild robot are keeping our fingers crossed.

Yes. Why don't you talk about the other movie that opened this weekend that did not, or I guess this was the movie that opened this weekend because Venom was last weekend. It's almost as if they don't want to open movies right before an election. It's almost as if. Here, here. Here. Here.

Here. We, hearheads, are... Heard's notably disappointed by the $5 million opening, but we are not surprised. No one knows that the movie exists, nor do they know that juror number two exists because Warner Bros. is not promoting it and not putting it in theaters. I will say, I kind of want one of those juror number two tour t-shirt. that they're promoting. Have you seen those? Because it's only playing in 35 theaters

across the country. So somebody made t-shirts that have all the theaters, like it's a world tour, which... The funniest tweet that I saw last night when it was that tweet of, like, Kamala Harris has made a stop in New York City. We don't know what her thing is here for,

and it's obviously S&L. Someone quote tweeted juror number two, Union Square. That would have been... If Kamala Harris had showed up and gone to see Clint Eastwood's juror number two, 50 states blew and electoral sweep Kamala Harris, she would have united the country. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to see juror number two when I'm in town next weekend, that they hopefully haven't pulled it from theaters since then. Because David Zaslov is a...

Is a dick. Is a real dick. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's leading the leaderboard at this point? mention that people who have venom and smile number two smile number two smile number two

honestly what we're calling these things now and a nora fully i do yeah um yeah so we have one sole leader which i totally love after if you remember last year we had a a block of tied identical rosters at the top of the leaderboard for most of the season so any week where we have one sole leader i'm super super happy so right now the number one on the leaderboard is Luke Bart 07, who is solo first place with 389 points at the moment, representing the Santangelo Cinema Society mini league.

So congratulations to that mini league. You are the pride of the Fantasy League at the moment. Currently, Luke Bart 07 is pulling points from Venom the Last Dance, Smile 2, and Anora, the sort of, you know, the Holy Trinity. of the current MFL standings. Joker Folli Adieu, which is bombing but currently has positive point. You know what I mean? Like bombing, but at least it has points where a lot of people just have movies that haven't

started to accumulate points yet. Joker Folliadu will become an albatross around Luke Bart's neck, unfortunately, but not quite yet. Also on Luke Bart's roster are challengers, which picked up a few Gotham's. points this this week. Best feature nomination. The substance we love, we support, and

Missed performance nomination. Intriguing unknown quantity for December in Osferatu. Who is our champion among the Garys? This is a family meeting here. That's true. In the family meeting is gather around fam.

Your prized sibling who gets to sit in the front seat this week is Monstro Thob Lysasu, which the Monstro-A-Lis-Su names were plentiful this year, but I'm glad that we got one that combined our podcast

name with Monstro-Elusi-Su. Monstro-Thoblississusu, 279 points, leads all Garriators right now. Also has Venom the Last Dance and Smile 2. Managed to not have Nora on their roster and still do this well, which is pretty impressive, actually.

Does have Joker Follia do, so again, and enjoy this this top of the league standing while you can, but has Gladiator 2. Gladiator number 2, thank you. Has Heretic, which is opening this weekend. We Live in Time, which is collecting some points. And then my kind of secret fave,

I'm so kind of super excited for Lord of the Rings, War of the Roherom, the anime Lord of the Rings movie with Brian Cox, among the other voices. Live in your truth. I'm super into it. So I'm very excited for that. So good for you, Monster Thubbless Asu,

and congratulations as being number one Gariator in the standings. Chris, do you want to talk about what we can expect for the coming week? You can expect an election. You can expect heretic opening. You can expect the best Christmas page ever opening. Bird is opening limited. Small things like these is opening limited. Yeah, no lesson.

You're not going to get points for whatever theaters it's playing, but it's playing some theaters. Yep. And, yeah, no awards points coming at you this week, but, yeah, I might get some bucks on. You're more plugged into, usually, or often at least, box office conversation or tracking conversation than I am. Is there a sense that Heretic is tracking to be a big opening or no?

I think they're putting it in premium. theaters so like that'll goose its numbers but I don't I think I think people are busy people are occupied with other things they they're less concerned about what's going on at the box office this weekend but you know maybe but like I imagine people will want to you know escape to something lest we forget that like a rival did really big box office in the meet in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election I just I feel like I had rosier a rosier outlook for heretics box office prospects four months ago or so. And I feel like I was, and I, I'm not entirely sure what to attribute this to, but

there just does seem to be a general movie, maybe, except that horror movies tend to be impervious to that a little bit, right? But maybe this genre of a 24 horror isn't necessarily impervious to it. And maybe, I don't know, but there just does seem to be a general air of like not as much, There's not like pessimism for this movie, but I expected there to be a little bit more like, you know, super, you know, people super psych to see Hugh Grant in this movie. Maybe I'm part of the problem because I was somewhat down on this movie after seeing it at Tiff. But we'll see how it does at the box office. And in general, you know, things are moving. Things are churning. Things are going. And before you know it, we'll be in December. And that's when the critics awards really ramp up. But for, the moment. There's some big movies opening in November. So, like, I think we are certainly in the third year, in the third year of the Fantasy League, we are, I think, finally at a moment where we are getting multiple rolling sort of big box office pushes. So I think the standings

are going to be maybe a lot more volatile than they had been in previous years through this portion of the year, which I'm excited by. So we'll see what Gladiator does to the standings. we'll see what Wicked does, as you mentioned, to the standings. I'm excited. I'm excited to see how it goes. We shall see. Bye. I'm from Canada water.

Dick Pooh. The hens are clucking. Are they saying I'm broke? They are. What about my apartment at Paris? It's just sitting empty. Have you told your mother about our engagement? We're going to Paris.

Would you describe yourself as a coward? No. When I came to Paris, the first time, something sent up an alert. It was the presentiment of what was to come. We're going to lie down. Will you come visit us later? What's she paying you?

Peng. Aren't you her jiggle-o? Oh, God, no. That's my mother. Hello, and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast without a scratcher. on it. Every week on this had Oscar buzz we'll be talking about a different movie that once

upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we're here to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my fucked witch show. How dare

you? How dare you? Every time someone said the fucked witch in that scene, I just started giggling harder and harder. It's a very funny. It's a very funny scene it's a very funny turn of phrase it's a funny because it's funny it's funny because she's calling her a witch which is already funny that she's already funny yes it's funny that she knows her son's sex life the way that she bounds into that room going the witch you fucked

we'll get that witch you fucked um and then the when valerie mhaffee though starts saying it like that's when it really like uh er starts it takes it takes it takes it takes flight, so. Valerie Mahaffey. We'll talk, we'll be talking about Valerie McCaffy in this movie. My goodness gracious. What an actress, what a performance. You know what's funny is when I was looking up, I was, you know, doing my research for this movie and you see that like she really has not been in very many movies. She's kind of a consummate TV actress and mostly a guest TV actress. I remember her from a Seinfeld. I remember her from a West Wing. I remember her from, you know what I mean? Like, those are the things that I, that I mostly remember

Valerie Mahaffey from. Do you remember any of Northern Exposure, or is that a show we're both too young for? I was too young. I remember, I remember the fact of Northern Exposure. I remember it being a hit. I remember seeing, like, commercials for it. I sort of, like, I know who Rob Marrow is. I know who Janine Turner is. You know what I mean? Like that kind of a thing. I know that, like, John Corbett comes from that show. I know in general there's a moose. There are Alaska. It's a quirky town, yada, yada. But I don't remember, I don't ever think I've watched even one episode of Northern Exposure. Get it on the streaming services. Let's loop back to Northern Exposure. Let's see if there's problematic things in it. I remember there

was a big movement for that. And I remember it being one of those shows that was very notoriously difficult to get onto streaming probably because of music rights, as tends to be the case with those shows, like the Wonder Years. It's always what it is. Um, that was from an era. We've talked about Twin Peaks before, or not Twin Peaks. We've talked about picket fences before on this podcast. And like that was an era where CBS has this reputation for being sort of like uptight and stuffy and whatnot. And they had picket fences and they had Northern exposure. They sort of, you know, they were indulging in the David E. Kelly thing. They were indulging at Northern exposure was like very sort of obviously meant to be like, oh, it's like twin

peaks, but, like, not macab, right? And, but, like, quirky small town, quirky small town. And people were really into that show in these sort of, like, niche ways. We usually think of CBS as being, like, the, you know, the shows that your grandfather sort of, you know, falls asleep to watching kind of a thing, which is also true. But, like, it's interesting that we're in this current era of a little bit of a resurgence for network TV. And I'm right now CBS is right there and like what are my parents two favorite shows Elspeth and Matlock right now like

they fucking love those shows well and only murder is living for Matlock Mattlock I will say CBS CBS is always doing some some like truly grandpa shit of like watching Survivor we haven't had a new Survivor

conversation we really have yet watching Survivor there's like an NCIS Origins show Oh, I know. That it's just like, oh, the people that watch these things just, like, watch them. Also, I think there's a Young Sheldon spinoff that's on this year. The Mid-Sheldon?

I think that Emily Osmond, there's a show where Emily Osmond is like a newlywed or something like that. And I think that's supposed to be a spinoff of Young Sheldon, but don't, like, quote me on that because I could be wrong. CBS, what are we doing here? Thank you for keeping the lights on so we can have an outlet for Survivor. But what are we doing here? Listen, I'm glad that Elspeth is thriving, is all I will say. And I'm glad that Matt Locke is Matlocking. Yes, yes. We love Carrie Preston.

All good things for Kathy Bates. Hell yeah. Okay. Can we have two minutes of Survivor? Okay, go. Because I kind of don't know where I'm at with this season in terms of what I'm rewring for and who I want, except that I, like, want that girl, the blonde girl on the blue tribe. Carolyn to succeed. I'm rooting for her. I like her. Yes. I like her. I think she's playing very smart. I want to root for teeny. I don't think teeny is... I don't think teeny is very good at this game. I don't think teeny is very good at the game. She's got that super fan thing that like... Teeny's surprised by things that teeny shouldn't be surprised by. This is the thing. When we lost Asia for Teeny, like, you know, there were the two super fans on that tribe and we lost Asia and I'm like, I wish we had lost Teeny. instead because like Asia I mean they got rid of Asia for that reason and that she was more savvy she was you know and Rome was threatened by her and whatnot um this episode where it was like

the toppling the fall of the Roman Empire was uh white fun to watch and quite like I have to say about Rome because like everybody hates Rome blah blah blah so annoying survivor needs a villain of course they do too like mustache twirling of a villain probably but one of the of the most recent seasons is there have been zero villains. Right. But here's the thing, Chris. Zero real villains. Here's the thing is if everybody likes the villain, then they're not the villain anymore. So I am playing my part by being annoyed as fuck by Rome. If I'm not doing that, if I'm not reacting that way, then it's all for not.

Because then all of a sudden you just have a Tony Vlachos or whatever. And it's like, who needs those guys? You know what I mean? So Tony Vlachos is an idiot too. Well, yeah, an idiot with $2 million in the bank. But yeah, I know what you mean. What else about this season? I hope that the paint stuff with Sue lasts until the very episode, the very last episode, because it is so funny. Sue is going the distance.

It is very funny. She's going the distance. They give her so much attention every episode. It's the world according to Sue. And, yeah, the paint stuff with her is very, very funny. Where every time she gets caught in a lie, it's the most, like, deer in the headlights. She does not know what to do. She's so funny.

She's going to fail upwards this season, and I will love it. When Caroline pulled her aside, and she's just like, I got you. And she goes, what? What are you talking about? And it's just like, girl. That's the moment where I was like, oh, so Carolyn's going to be the, like, top dog in the science here. I really hope so. I would love to see Genevieve step up and fill the villain's shoes that Rome is leaving open.

Every time they show the little Chiron that says, like, Genevieve, corporate lawyer or whatever, I'm like, yeah, no kidding. Everything about her screams corporate lawyer. I love that she's a corporate lawyer from Winnipeg, though. Like, that's very interesting to me. Like, she's, you know. Go off Winnipeg. Yeah, go off. You've also seen universal language.

I know, big year for Winnipeg. Go off Winnipeg. I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big year for Winnipeg, totally. Yeah. All right. That's it for Survivor Corner.

We'll do it a Survivor again. We're at a transition stage in the season. Back to French exit. I'm excited that we're doing this show or doing this movie where sort of tying this to the Azizel Jacobs. It's so weird to say, to pronounce his name that way, but apparently that's how it is. Asizal Jacobs.

Because his three daughters is on Netflix one of the best movies of this year as far as I'm concerned. Wouldn't be surprised to see it get some spirit nomination. I hope so. I hope so. His past two movies have shown up a spirit nominees. Do you feel

like Netflix acquisitions are our temperamentally fair game for indie awards in a way where we'll complain about Netflix movies getting into the indie spirits when it's like a home

like a Netflix produced kind of a thing. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Oh, I definitely think there's a difference between an acquisition and a movie produced by a studio and let's be clear, Netflix is a studio

regardless of what the budget of something is. Yeah. Like, spirit nominations for his three daughters are not worth getting angry about from a, you know, financial perspective. But to me, like, marriage story is. Like, I don't care how much it costs to take, it costs to make marriage story. It's still produced by, like, basically the second most powerful studio in Hollywood at this point. Yeah. Understandable.

But it was one of those things where, I think, within the same few days. at TIF 2023 where like his three daughters got acquired woman of the year or woman I keep saying

woman of the year woman of the hour got required the Anna Kendrick movie and so Hitman got acquired by Netflix all within the sort of a condens and I remember

all three of those The Hour was the first one to get acquisition too and I think the biggest payday of the three and it's paying off if you look at like woman of the hour

has been in the Netflix top 10 for like two weeks and I think they were smart to release it during October because like you know the serial killer aspect gets spooky season watchers I think you know the vague veneer of prestige on the movie gets those people to watch it I'm glad people are seeing it I'm glad that people seem to be largely liking it because I think it's a really good sort of under the radar movie and the more I think back on it the more I really really like what I remember of it, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. Yeah, I have no complaints about that movie.

I'm not, like, through the roof about it, but I think also after what a lot of the actor directorial debut movies we saw at that. I'm saying, I'm saying. The bar was so low, and Woman of the Hour cleared it without question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so I thought French exit would be sort of a nice apropos movie. to do for the season. I know we just did a 2020 movie, but like, you know, there's plenty of material from the most recent years. So I'm interested to, I was interested to revisit this movie

because this is a movie that I had a sort of complicated reaction to. I remember sort of coming around to it as I watched it. But I also watched it. I did the, stream it via New York Film Festival, because this was, of course, like the New York Film Festival happening, but you could purchase tickets and then stream it in a very, very tight window. They made sure that you were, like,

streaming it at a specific time. And I remember liking it better at the end of the movie than it did at the beginning, but the other thing is, I trust my opinion from that period of time, absolutely none. Like I, anything that I thought during that, like, year-long window, I don't trust at all. So I need to, like, absolutely re-interrogate kind of everything.

Do we all collectively, as a unit, need to hold hands and go back and re-watch Nomadland? Oh, I don't know if I want to do that. I liked Nomadland. Nomadland, I still, I would stand by as saying, is really, really great. I know. I don't want to feel any differently. I don't want to like it worse. I'm not sure what the movie would be for me that I would like significantly less, you know, being that I, you know, have a life again and I'm not cooped up within, uh, my husband and I owned a studio during that whole time. I, you know, to reveal part of my life. So we went through lockdown in a studio. Oh, God bless you. Um, in Ohio.

I think they wrote a song about that for the last five years. we were sharing our space with a former stripper I will say French exit I think you are correct that this movie is building to something and I think it leaves off at a better spot than it enters into it

it and I think you know this movie kind of doesn't really reveal its full self and its full intentions until it gets to the end Well, and that said, I do think on this rewatch, I was more aligned with the people who, I wouldn't say I was aligned with the people who don't like this movie, but I liked it less than the first time I saw it. I will tell you, I had the exact same reaction to it this time as I did the first time. Whereas I was watching it, I'm like, oh, right, like this, you know, it's, it's kind of dull. It's kind of, you know, we've seen this before.

it's substituting sort of like low affect for interesting and then it hits a point where and it honestly like it starts when Valerie Mahavis introduced when she opens that door yeah but it's one of those things where it's sort of like for me it gains momentum it gains depth and complexity I think fifer's performance um becomes much much more multifaceted as the movie goes along and then at some point, what did I write down? I literally wrote down, I cannot resist a movie about a full house. And this is sort of what I mean. You know what I mean? Like a movie where like a whole bunch of people who wouldn't normally be like, and it's funny that this didn't resonate with people in COVID, a movie about like all these sort of people who like end up just sort of like under the same roof in the same apartment for these sort of like vaguely defined reasons. I think the sort of the realism of this movie comes and goes. I think obviously it's not strictly realism.

This is a movie with a reincarnated cat and Tracy Letts speaking through a flame. Jacobs is absolutely interested in magical realism in a way that I think we should talk about but put a button in for now. We should. But I think part of that sense is also the fact that you look at this apartment and you're like none of them would have sought out. a hotel, but it's just like, no, because like, that's not the story we're telling. The story we're telling is about the... Right, the story we're telling is about the building of a family.

These are all isolated people who come together and form a unit, basically form a family. Yes. People who don't have that, you know. And it's not like they're going to be, like, moving through life together. I think by the end of the movie, we already see where, like, you know,

the Danielle McDonald character has left. I don't expect her to ever, like, encounter these people. again. Much respect to Danielle McDonald, but it's always an ominous sign when Paddy Cake Dollar Sign shows up in a movie. You're not entirely hard. I just don't. You don't trust it. Much respect to Dumplin herself. Was this the same year as Dumplin or was Dumplin 21? Dumplin, I think, was... Or was it 19? I don't know when anything happened. I don't know when anything happened. Especially when you're talking about Dumplin. It's such a crazy

cliche, but it's totally true. But anyway, but yeah, so I had the exact same experience watching French exits. By the end of the movie, I'm like, oh, I'm moved. I'm genuinely moved. And I feel like this movie has, you know, communicated something to me. So I think, I can't quarrel with people who look at this and you're like, oh, God, like these people are awful. My God. And sort of just the first half hour is rough. Like you can, I don't begrudge people who don't like. or even hate this movie because it doesn't start you off on the right foot and it has to earn you as an audience member throughout and I think that's what it's setting itself up to do. I do feel like though that like some people are just never going to get on board with it.

Fyfer's doing good work throughout though and I feel like that's enough for me to sort of like stick with it until it gets to the part where I think it sort of unlocks itself. I think they slow roll the cat thing. enough. You know what I mean? Like, I don't feel like I'm bombarded with this like, oh my God, it's a fucking talking cat or whatever. Like, um, I don't think the movie ever even fully goes into twee. No. In a way that you would maybe, like, describing it to someone who hasn't seen it, you would be like, that sounds like the most twee thing I've ever heard. Even, I don't think the movie's quite that. Even the Lucas Hedges character for being such a mope. And I know that was a big

thing with a lot of people, because people... this is going to sound very stupid. People hate to see a young, rich, twinkie guy be mopey. You know what I mean? Because it's just like, fucking what do you got to me mopee about, right? Which is the point of the character,

but like nobody seems to like want to like reckon with that. Which, whatever. I would maybe argue that while I don't think he's bad, he's slightly miscast. he's missing maybe a quality I don't know that is not in his wheelhouse but like is maybe a little bit more intangible

Regardless though But I don't have an option of who he should be Who should, what actor should be in that role I think there's The way that character is drawn though Could have been a lot more obnoxious He could have been a lot more sort of And you know I love Wes Anderson

But like I think it would have been wrong to have made him sort of like more demonstrably morose or more sort of like um like uh verbally um Jenna Ortega in in Beetlejuice kind of a thing right where it's just you know that kind of a thing um you know I don't think Wes Anderson is even a bad name to bring up in context of this movie but like I think I think a lot of people judged this movie like oh it's failing at being a Wes Anderson thing. But I think, you know, if Wes Anderson is the metric stick that we're using or the meter stick that we're using to judge this movie, I think the intention that Jacobs is trying to do is present these characters who they themselves exist in a Wes Anderson movie. Yeah. But

then dropping them into the real world. Yeah. So it's like all of his characters feel like these kind of alien people. Yeah. And this is true of its other movies, too. that through the course of the movie they become more real and human and like down to earth I agree because they're forced to get on each other's level through whatever their circumstances is

and I think this movie pulls that off really well I think all of the things that this movie are of that I think his three daughters does like exponentially oh I absolutely agree with that and like the the recipe the ingredients, the amounts of those things that are put into his three daughters. Like the balance is

just better. I want to do that thing that we do, which is where we jump to the end right at the beginning of the podcast. But before we do, I want to do the plot description first because the plot description sort of leaves off right there. And I want to sort of maybe jump into that. So why don't we do? Well, and we can't do the plot description until you tell our listeners about our Patreon. Quite true. Quite true. So listeners, if you are not already, you really, really should consider signing up for our Patreon. This had Oscar Buzz, turbulent brilliance. It is a mere $5 a month.

I know a saw buck is a 10. There should be, I think a five is a fin, right? It's a fin, a month. I am not well-versed in currency. I'm not either. But you know what? We'll be fine. When, what did I look up recently where, oh, it was something about,

It has to do with the game that I'm doing later, so I won't spoil it. Anyway, this had Oscar buzz turbulent brilliance, $5 a month. What do you get? Well, you get two bonus episodes a month, two more whole episodes of this had Oscar buzz. The first one that drops on the first Friday of the month? First Friday of the month. First Friday of the month is what we've been calling an exceptions episode. The exceptions are the movies that really feel like a This Had Oscar.

But we technically can't do it on Flagship because they got an Oscar nomination or two. We have just dropped the episode for Hitchcock, the movie where Anthony Hopkins plays Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock. Helen Mirren nearly got an Oscar nomination for playing his wife, Amel Revell. Just the most recent of a year plus now of exceptions episodes that has included House of Gucci. Knives out. My best friend's wedding. W.E. Vanilla Sky. Molly's game. Barney's version. My God, Barney's version. How are you living? What if Barney had a version? What if Charlie Wilson had a war?

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We're not made of money here. The second bonus episode of every month will be an excursion. We call these excursions. They are off format. We're not talking about a movie. We are instead diving into some piece of Oscar-related ephemera that corresponds with our interests. We have done old award shows. We have done, excuse me.

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And join us for award season. We will be happy to have you. Joseph, yes. We're here talking about the motion picture, French exit. Directed by one as his old Jacobs. Not written by him, though. It's written by Patrick DeW. Witt based on his own novel, which I did have to keep reminding myself throughout because

I was just seeing so many parallels to his three daughters, even though there are two movies that kind of couldn't be more different. They're close collaborators, though, too. So I feel like it's not like, it's not like exactly a work for hire kind of a thing. We're like, you know, as Jacobs and DeWitt are, you know, friends and collaborators. And it's... I suppose I should have got his three daughters to confirm that as is a Jacobs did write it and he did.

Yeah, there we go. All right. Unpartnered. Much like me. Unpartnered. The unpartnered flipped crispy greens donut. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges, Valerie Mahaffee, Image and Poots, Isaac de Bancole, Daniel McDonald, Susan Coyne, Daniel de Tommaso, and the voice of Tracy Litt.

You almost said Daniel McDowler sign, which I think is very funny. Because I was like, I should say Danielle, Paddy Cake Dollar Sign, McDonald. I understand. I understand. Much respect to Daniel McDonald's. Listen, I will continue to say Paddy Cake Dollars. The fact that Daniel McDonald is not an American is the wildest thing ever. I mean, probably does the best American accent. I've never, I've never questioned it ever, not once.

Good for her. French Exit World premiered as the closing film of the 2020 New York Film Festival on computer screens across the country. Exactly. And probably one small drive-in in one of the New York City boroughs. It had a qualifying release in February 12th, 2021. That was a thing you could do that year. The, yeah, the calendar got shifted due to COVID. It was one of the last movies out the gate, yeah.

Yeah, I think Sony Classics did a qualifying release for, like, all of their movies that weekend. Yeah. Because it's like, there's nothing else playing at The Angelica to know people. I mean, I can understand the strategy of like, because when early, there was, there was that narrative during COVID of like, listen, we're going to be back in three months. And it just kept, like, getting, like, pushed down the road. And so that was one of the things that. you know, the Oscars extending the year that year was they were doing it in the hopes that theaters, you know, would be open in January. You know what I mean? That they would get

some sense of normalcy. And it just kept getting sort of like pushed farther and farther down until they were like, well, we have to have in Oscars. It's just, you know, got to do it. Cases and surging. The actual limited release for the film occurred April 2nd, 2021. meant to be timed with those Oscar nominations that ultimately the film did not receive Joseph. Yes. Are you ready to give a 60-second plot description? Certainly. Then your 60-second plot description for French exit starts now.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays Frances, a widowed and somewhat infamous New York City socialite, who is at last being forced to face up to the fact that her late husband's money that she's been blowing through for the past decade or so has finally run out, so she now must sell all her belongings and pack up her cash and her dead pants. to the point of comatose son Malcolm and the family cat Small Frank for a transatlantic ship voyage to Paris where she never outright says it, but we all assume she's going to kill herself when the money finally runs out. Along the way, Francis and Malcolm acquire a peculiar coterie of cohabitators. There's the cruise ship Clairvoyant, who seems to be the only other person to sense that Small Frank is in fact inhabited by the spirit of Francis's late husband. Small Frank runs away, so they need to find the clairvoyant to communicate with this spirit. there's Madame Reynard, the lonely ex-patriot widow, who provides enough enthusiasm for everybody.

There's Malcolm's jilted ex-fiance, her jealous new fiancé, the private aide they hired to track down the clairvoyant, and there's Francis's friend Joan who is in whose apartment they're all staying. You'd think with that many people in one flat that the final stretch of the movie would be about coming to terms of each other, but it's mostly quiet moments of accepting each other for who they are and nothing more, until Francis finally heads out late at night into the Parisian streets and walks down a cobblestone road with small frank following behind her, and she probably dies in the end. 10 seconds over. Yeah.

I thought I'd get that pretty well. You did it very well. The thing I want to talk about at the end, so the thing that I don't get into is after that scene, then we get a flashback. So the movie is bookended in flashbacks to right after or shortly after Malcolm's father dies. We sort of get little bits and pieces of this family history where Pfeiffer is his mom, she kind of didn't really have a relationship at all with him. He went, you know, sent away to boarding school. She was like legitimately absent for several years.

So the end scene is we see everything that happens after she sort of picks him up from boarding school and takes him out of school and is going to take him home with her. Essentially, I read one of the reviews was basically like she brings him home because, you know, she needs somebody to, you know, love her essentially now that her husband is dead. But you get this scene where they started off having no idea how to communicate with each other, where she's like, you know, tell me about your boarding school experience. What was it like? And he's like, I don't know. And she's like, don't say, I don't know.

Like say something about it. Like, you know, what was your social life like? Did you, you know, did these people meet your expectations or whatever? And by the time they get into the car, she's sort of explaining, you know, because she went to jail for a few days because she didn't call the, you know, the paramedics when she found the dead body. So she was suspected of maybe killing her husband and all this. And they're having this sort of like wary, you know, feeling each other out kind of moment. and he says to her what was jail like, and she sort of like, you know, brushes it off, and he says, what was the food like?

And she looks at him, and she goes, you're getting it. Like, now you're getting it. And it's this moment of just like, we couldn't make this work. Now, it's a lovely ending, and I think Pfeiffer is, it's some of her, like, most underrated best work in that scene. Like, I really, really do think she's, like, at the top of her game. She's terrific in this movie. what I want to present to you is what does that scene how does that scene re contextualize the rest of the movie for you because you look at that scene and you're like if you had seen that you know in a linear movie if a movie that had been about this social lady who finds her husband dead and she has to go to jail and the movie ends with that scene and you look at it and you're like these two are going to make it these two are going to be good and then but you've

you see it at the end of French exit, and it's like, well, clearly, they, the rest of their relationship, they sort of grew cold and distant and insular. She, you know, became, you know, even more sort of embittered. She doesn't want to be around anybody. She doesn't have friends except for Joan. And who I do think is her friend. I sort of went back, and I was sort of assuming it was her sister, because I had read a review that said it was her sister. But I do think it's just like her only friend in New York City. And so you think of everything that happened in the movie and you're like, oh, things kind of devolved for them.

You know, they both sort of kind of entombed themselves in whatever was left of Tracy Lutz's money. Malcolm never really became anything. He kind of just, you know, calcified. He, you know, this character that we know can, you know, barely make a decision for himself. He just sort of, you know, he's sort of a non-functional person. And then, and Francis has become, you know, not just irresponsible with the money, but just sort of like, mean and, you know, embittered and whatnot.

And I just think it's interesting that the movie ends at this like plausible, everything's going to be okay, you know, moment. I think it's more about just finding that tone. than it is something that's narratively coherent because I do think, and I thought that's the first time I saw it, that the scene is very strange to end the movie with because it sends exactly the wrong message

of everything we've just learned about their relationship. But it's also kind of that thing of, you know, after someone dies, you're remembering the nice memory, you know? There's a little bit of that to it. I think it's also, I think it's Malcolm in, like, because it's not just that we get an option, omniscient flashback. We are very much told that it's Malcolm remembering this. We get, you know, he sort of goes out to the city by himself and then the camera's on him and then we go into that flashback. So I think you're right. I think it's much more about this is how Malcolm is going to choose to remember and memorialize his mother. And I think it's, I think it's very much about people sort of accepting, you know, each other. That's why Imogen Poots ends up back with Malcolm. Because she's just like, I don't.

don't know. I just love this guy. I don't have any good reason to, but here we are. And I think that's the way for a lot of these characters. Yeah. And it's just like, I think it's the less successful fairy tale that Asizal Jacobs has done between his three most recent movies, all of which I think are basically fairy tales. The lovers included in this? Yes. Yeah, I think that's one of the problems, but it's also, you know, it's not as successful to me as the first introductory scene. You know, the other bookend of this memory. When she picks them up, yeah.

Because the second that Michelle Pfeiffer shows up and she's got that crazy wig on and it's like... And the coat. It's the coat. And the coat, it's just like, okay, here we go. Here we go. Yep, yep. Um, the crazy thing about her hair in this movie is that it's not like she's doing some crazy character hair. It's just the like, the specific ratty, the like upper west side lady ratiness of it.

That it's like, it's been overstiled for decades. Yes. So her hair is just like fucked. Like, you know. One thing I really like about, one thing I like about this movie is how much we learned about her piece me. sort of in dribs and drabs through like other people's reactions to her where like we sort of find out through the course of the movie that she wasn't just this like wealthy New York City socialite but she was like notoriously remembered for this thing that happened after her husband died and she didn't call the authorities for what did she say like several days right a weekend I think is what she said and so she's sort of like notorious she's you know not not the like Klaus von Bulo, you know, of the Upper West Side. Circumstances were slightly different. But so then you can, so you can see where that then turned her into this, you know, sort of like walled off, you know, cold, you know, embittered woman because like all she had was her money and her one friend and her son because everybody else sort of like whispered behind her back that she was a murderer. And you find, and then all of a sudden you get to Paris and here's Valerie Mahaffey who's like a fan. girl of her and she's just like well obviously i know who you are like you know um well also

simultaneously being the only normal real person in the entire movie up to that point you know of just like she's not an alien from space dropped here on her she's also she doesn't exist in a different world she exists in the real world you know she's also radically honest about herself you know what i mean where where she she admits right up front she's just like i'm lonely my husband died, all of his friends, stopped hanging around with me because it turns out they didn't like me. They just liked my husband. I missed the sound of people around, and I wanted to invite you over. And there's a moment early on in that conversation where Fifer makes a crack about her husband dying by choking on lamb. And she's like, that's a new one. And Valerie Mahaffey just sort of like looks at her,

and she's just like, please don't be cruel to me. And I just like, it's that like, she's so honest. She's not beating around the bush. She's not trying to like do what any of us, the rest of us would do is just be like to try and like fight your way through it or whatever. And she's just like, please, I am lonely and I'm vulnerable. And please just stay for Casillet and have another round of martinis. And maybe we'll just talk and maybe everything will be okay. And I appreciate that.

what were you saying about how it's surprising that people didn't connect to this more than COVID when they, you know, weren't around other people? Though I also forget, I'm like, oh, yeah, people were probably also not behaving as well as, like, we will. Well, and I also, yeah, I wonder if you watch, people are watching this movie and you're like, oh, God, like to be stuck in, you know, a place with, you know, this mean person. It was just like, oh, get it away from me. I almost wonder if that part of especially Mahaffey's character was part of the impetus to release this during COVID because this movie was shot in the late fall of 2019.

They could have held on this movie. They didn't, you know. But I also feel like there was a thing of like the Oscars are an open field right now. And I do feel like there was a sense of like if we throw this Fyfer movie into the New York Film Festival and get people on board, we could get a best actress nomination out of this.

And they maybe should have been able to do that. They should have been able to do that. I almost think the thing about this movie's placement in New York, you know, New York likes to have in those gala slots, they like to have a New York filmmaker or something that represents New York, and Jacobs is a New York filmmaker. So, like, you can kind of see that's why they would have went for this.

because I see this as a movie that people, like, kind of look down their nose at, like, why did New York Film Festival program this movie? They programmed a lot worse, including in those gala's lives. Do you want to go for that? Like, the New York Film Festival that year, all right? So, opening night was Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock, which... Hell, yeah, so good. Yes, but I think the fact that the opening night movie was an episode from something

that was being presented as a television series, I think, is a thing that probably would not have happened at a regularly occurring New York Film Festival. I think they would have programmed it. It was supposed to premiere at Cannes. It would have been at Cannes that year. Sure. And I can, but I also feel like it's, it's fine for this to play at a film festival. I think it probably just would have played, you know, the whole series, the entire, you know, small act series probably would have played. New York played three of the small act films. And I would be

very firm on saying that those are five movies presented in a mere miniseries format because all five of them are very, very different and they're all feature length and I think those are five. But this was the problem in that whole season was

I think they were being presented both, as both, as both individual movies and a television series. And I think ultimately, people were like, give us one answer. Every time they were like, are you a movie or a TV? And they were like, yes. And you're like, I don't know what to do with that.

So I think a lot of people ended up like throwing up their hands and were just like, fine, exist, you know, in your own little corner. And we'll pay attention to different things. The centerpiece movie was Nomad Land, which was playing every single. I saw Nomad Land because I bought a ticket to like the Indiana Film Festival and because they were streaming because like every film festival was streaming. Nomad Land was extremely available. Nomad Land went everywhere and I think it was obviously a successful, you know, strategy. Other movies of note that played at this New York Film Festival included Christian Petzold's Undine, the Truffle Hunters, the Truffle Hunters. of that documentary.

Good movie. I was oversold on the Truffle Hunters, unfortunately. By the time I saw the Truffle Hunters, everybody was so hyped about that movie that it could not... 40% of loving that movie is loving those dogs, and that is, you are not going to fall for that.

I'm just not going to fall for that, yeah. MLK FBI, which was a very, very lauded documentary that ultimately gets snubbed by the Oscars that year. What other titles of this year jump out at you? You know, it's not a lot of Oscar nominees, though, Garrett Bradley's Time is there. Oh, wonderful. I believe that's how I first saw Time. Time is a great movie.

Which was an Oscar nominee, yes. Siming Lang's Days is there. That's also how I saw that movie that I love. Beginning was a movie that played a lot of festivals. Dei Okulenberg. Apologies to Day. Her last name is Kulumbegashvali. Ashvili.

Also has April on the festival circuit this year. That's also a very good movie. But yeah, in terms of what would be available virtually. Right. And to my memory, New York made all of their films virtually available. To, I think what they said they did at the time was available. to the equal amount of people who would have been able to see it at a physical festival, which was really cool. They tried to approximate the experience of the festival as much as possible. Again, as I said, with French exit, you had to start filming pretty close to, it's not like they live streamed it, but you had to start watching it.

The streaming, yeah. Start streaming it as within a very tight window. I think it was something like two hours. Yes. It was a very tight window on that. I remember it was a Saturday night. or maybe a Friday night, but anyway, yes. I think the comparison here is you look at Nomadland, which was very virtually available before they ultimately did their limited IMAX release in the early winter and then did a limited release and did a Hulu release. Before then, like you mentioned, you watched it at a regional festival that made it virtually available for you to watch.

That's how I watched Minari as well. Yeah. And that's how I watched Minari. There were not a lot of movies that took the risk of, because, you know, a lot of the concerns were, well, what does piracy mean by making film festivals, make films virtually available? Nomadland took the risk that it's like, well, people are probably not going to be pirating this movie. Well, and also, like, we're in an extreme circumstance.

stance year like you know what are you what are you going to do and right it paid off for nomad land it paid off for minari um i'm trying to but french exit did not make itself virtually available and therefore i think did not stay in the conversation partly because of that because premiering in october virtually and then you know once the deadline is extended and they shift the oscars back further into the year that's a long period of time before people see your movie, that's like premiering at Cannes and then doing no festivals and then dropping in a limited release the week of Christmas. Especially when the word of mouth out of New York Film Festival wasn't great. You know what I mean?

It wasn't, it wasn't, it didn't get savaged across the board, but there were enough people being like, that was unbearable, that the mixed reactions sort of, it was able to, it was sort of mixed negative, if I were to characterize the reaction to French exit. Yeah. Positive for Fifer, though. Yes. Yes. Yes, definitely. And so you have to wonder if, you know, we're obviously talking about regular Joe moviegoers, but like there was not a whole lot of conversation around French exit when, you know, it got closer to voting time. And that's strange given Fifer's star power. Yes. in terms of how much this could slash should have been in the conversation?

Well, it's instructive. Look at the one place that this performance does get recognized throughout the season. I think the only place is the Golden Globes' comedy lineup. And so let's look at the Golden Globes' comedy lineup in 2020. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. So Michelle Pfeiffer for French exit, yes. Anya Taylor Joy and Emma, period, which is a movie that opened before the pandemic.

So this got to actually play in theaters. It was a legitimate sort of like indie success. People genuinely liked it. This makes all the sense in the world that even in a non-pandemic year, Anya Taylor Joy would have very likely been nominated for Emma. Maria Bacalova for Borat's subsequent movie film. I have gone on the record saying that our culture's embrace of Borat subsequent movie film in 2020 was a symptom of our disease, a symptom of the pandemic, was

the just absolutely like running back to an old problematic lover and was just like take me back into your embrace, Borat, make me feel like it's 2006 again. And Maria Bacalova. Maria Bacalova also got, I think, a lot of respect points for audacity for the Giuliani stuff in that movie. The way that people reacted. I think a lot of people did not own up to that they're like, yeah, well, we're giving this one audacity points, not just we think it's a... Sasha Baron Cohen dangled this young woman in front of a predator, and people also... People were so weird about this movie, just across the board. I'm sorry. It's one of... It's me at my most unlikable, and I understand if I sound like an asshole when I'm talking about this,

but I genuinely feel like people lost their minds in the way that they responded to Borat. But people responded to Maria Bacalova, like she was an undercover FBI agent. And they were like, this woman, give her the presidential medal of freedom because she got the goods on Rudy Giuliani. And it's like, y'all, this is like, this is only one of 18 billion unhinged things that Rudy Giuliani did in this year. Like, by the end of the year, he was, you know, talking about the stop the steal and front of a tire emporium or wherever the fuck he was a lumber yard with his just for men melting down the side of y'all i'm saying so like i i do feel like borat and maria bacalova got credit for our our political need to um incarcerate rudy chiliani by hooker by crook

right which understandable i think she's fine in the movie i don't think she's fine in the movie i don't she was needing Oscar nominations for this movie. I'm with either. But like... I don't hate her in this movie. I hate this movie, but I don't hate her in this movie. Right. I just think it's an incredible overreaction. I do think it's maybe, at least what I will say on her globe nomination is, you know, maybe good on the globes for being like that's not a supporting performance. Well, and also, like, if the globes are going to nominate goofy shit, like, that's fine. It's literally if this did not go on to get an Oscar nomination, I would have no problem with this globe nomination. But like... She's not the enemy of this category. No, we've talked about the enemy of this category, which is Kate Hudson in music. We don't like calling Kate Hudson.

I love Kate Hudson in general as a person. But, like, this movie was awful. This performance was not a diamond in the rough in this awful movie by any means. And it's also, it just goes to show, because this is also amid all of the controversy with the globes and their, you know, general practices, their voting practices. etc. Because this is also, you know, they did a telecast of this and you have all of these stars on their Zooms, which we'll get into it. And then it's just like you have music getting multiple nominations. And I'm sure I said this exact phrase on the music episode of it just shows that

Sia and Kate Hudson do one Zoom conference with the members of the HFBA. That's all that it took. Music is a nominee because they paid, they paid attention to me, Daddy. You would think

that if anything would have neutralized the glad-handing tendencies of the Hollywood foreign press. It would have been lockdown year because you couldn't throw a banquet for them or whatever. But no, you're right.

All it took. was just hop on a zoom and let Kate Hudson smile at you. Yeah. Yeah. It made them worse because then the other enemy of the category and we don't want to call her an enemy either, but it's Rosamond Pike winning, winning for I care a lot. If in a year of weird shit happening, Rosamond Pike getting nominated for I care a lot, whatever, it's not, I don't love that movie. It was a Netflix movie, though. Netflix had a leg up that year because they could just sort of release everything as they normally would. So they get, you know, that year at the Golden Globes, like Ma Rainey's a nominee, Pieces of a Woman is a nominee, I Carole's a nominee. Obviously, the Chicago

7 is a nominee. Like, Netflix is, you know, rock and roll, and especially at the Golden Globe stage of this award season. But the fact that Rosamund Pike ends up winning in a year where people assumed either, I think a lot of people were kind of predicting Maria Bacalova, that point because she was like the buzziest but also i look at those five performances and i'm like if you are somebody who values quality and you know what i'm just like look at if you if you've actually watched all of these movies and cannot walk out of that and be like michel fifer is the most impressive acting of these five nominated performances then what are we doing i know i just don't know I just don't understand it.

I just don't... That to me is like, well, I'm not sure that... Because the thing about Fyfer is we know she does not like doing press. She's probably more open to press now that she's like on Instagram than she's ever been in her whole career. Yes. I don't know how much she actually did ultimately for French exit. Probably not. She might not have done even like a...

Sure. But like if she had done a Zoom with the HFPA, maybe she would. would have one. You know me though. What does that say about the HFPA? I always default to sort of the assumption that like we're just, we're voting on the things we like best. And I understand that like I tend to sort of willfully push the idea of campaigning. I think you and Katie in our group text have multiple times brought up that like people are saying that Mikey Madison isn't the most sort of like naturally sparkling Oscar campaigner, and people are... She's a lovely young woman, but she is kind of Walt.

And people are sort of saying that this could hurt her in the Oscar race. And I'm here being like, but people will like the performance. And I'm just like, I'm very willfully sort of pushing the idea that anybody would allow how a person comes across at a cocktail party to influence their voting patterns, even though I understand that like... It could also be a... strategy like as friend and former guest i'm being naive i'm being willfully naive it is a movie about yelling yeah so you know appearing very different than the character is not not a strategy

that's been used before you know that's true but anyway i think just i tend to i tend it's not that i want purity i just feel like to me i don't understand why you would see a performance like it a lot and then be like, well, I'm not going to vote for it because this person did not impress me in a cocktail party, but like, that clearly does probably happen. Influence people.

Anyway. I mean, it's the globes also like Raws. They nominated her for a private war. They do. They definitely, and listen, as do I. I like Raws. Love Raws. I think that movie

is kind of one of those sort of like obnoxious black comedies that is like, you know, I think it's, it's very 2000. It's trying very. It's, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about, though, this best actress race in general, because I find it obviously, it's obviously very interesting because it was so wide open. Obviously, everything in this COVID year was super wide open. The Critics Awards went to kind of all over the place, right, where like New York film critics went with Sydney Flanagan for,

never rarely, sometimes always. L.A. went with Cary Mulligan, right, for promising young woman? Yes. And that's kind of the biggest surprise that L.A. would go for that. NBR also went with Cary? Yes. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. National Society goes for Francis McDormand, who ultimately wins the Oscar. So Globe drama was Francis Carey, Viola Davis for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which is a movie that I think took people by surprise and how good it was. I think people were sort of expecting, you know, the George C. Wolf movie to feel a little bit more stagebound in a negative way, but people really liked it as...

Particularly coming from Netflix. I remember being very impressed by Monterey's Black Bottom. Andrea Day ends up winning for United States versus Billy Holiday because, like, this globe's year was just like, whatever, anything goes. It's good performance. I stand by thinking. that's a great performance. I didn't love the movie, and the performance didn't really land with me as much either. But, like, I understand that, like, I am probably in the minority on that. That movie also didn't really lock down its distribution plan until the very end. I think, if I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a paramount movie, and then they sold it to Hulu. Interesting. I think.

Here's where I'm going to go with the next movie on this list, pieces of a woman. I'm going to try to try, and look up what I wrote about this thing for my, my, uh, my, uh, Oscars ranking that year, because I genuinely don't trust what I would have said about this movie then. Um, I don't know if I have. I do not like that movie. I think it's kind of exploitative crap. I remember you being very, very, very anti that movie. I understand it was probably made with good intentions, but the result is very exploitative to me, and not just because of that one big showcase scene. All right. Every movie nominated for a 2021 Oscar ranked. Okay. I did not rank it very high. I ranked it number 49 out of.

how many? Oh, I'm going opposite way, 49 out of 56. So yeah, I did not like it very much. What did I say about it? I said, all praise it's kind of Vanessa Kirby has been more than justified for her performance as a woman who, blah, blah, blah, blah. I agree with that still. The film around her is woefully ill-equipped to capitalize on that performance delivering clunky dialogue and ill-modulated supporting characters. Shile LeBuff as Kirby's husband is a real detriment. I stand by it. Okay, okay, good. I'm glad that I stand by my words from 2021. Okay.

I think that performance is fine. I think it's cool that Vanessa Kirby has an acting nomination. I wish it was for a performance and especially a movie that I liked more. I'm glad they didn't nominate Ellen Burstyn, who was told to just yell. Remember how she was in the conversation for supporting actress that year? there's also just I mean I don't love this best actress lineup

generally I think Kerry Mulligan ultimately I'm fine-ish with the nomination I could name five performances I would rather see there am I wrong in thinking you were initially a lot higher on promising young woman

that you've come down on it in recent years I've definitely come down on it I do think that that was the movie that I watched at the right point in the pandemic that it's like I just needed kind of something brash and loud and I don't necessarily fault the movie for saying less than maybe it's marketing said that it's said. I don't really think the movie itself thinks it's necessarily saying anything.

I remember calling the movie a temper tantrum, brackets, complimentary. And like, I think the movie is fine with being mad, and the marketing kind of made it more than it is. I think I don't really remember much of her performance, and I'm someone who likes Carrie Mulligan a lot. So that's why I'm like, I would rather give it to this performance or that performance because I just ultimately don't remember much of what she's doing in that movie. I feel like Carrie Mulligan in the American idiom always feels like it's existing. The performances always feel like they're existing in not exactly quotation marks, but not not that. You know what I mean? that there's always sort of a heightenedness to her.

I appreciated the bold gesture of promising young woman. I still, after this movie and Saltburn, I don't fully understand why people seem to despise Emerald Fennell as much as they do, sort of as aggressively as they do. I feel like there's a real vigor to people's negative opinion of her, and I find it somewhat puzzling. I think people are responding to marketing rather than the movies themselves

because I don't think her movies have fully fair. I think she makes entertainments and her movies get marketed like they are comments, they are satire. I think last year is a much less interesting year if we don't have saltburn to talk about.

Like I feel like that was one of the like more, you know, vibrant. Just like, there was a movie that got everybody talking. What the fuck is everybody's problem? That's also only Carrie Mulligan's second nomination, too, right? Promising Young Woman? Because I also, I mean, I was very high on her performance in wildlife, and I think part of my initial enthusiasm was carryover love of that. I think she's been passed over in a lot of instances.

I think I really loved her in shame. I know that's a very divisive movie and also a divisive performance. I think she's tremendous in wildlife. I think she's very good in mudbound. I think she's very good in far from the Madding crowd. She's given a ton of really good performances, and it's interesting. It's not surprising that Promising Young Woman ends up being her second nomination because it was, you know, it made such a bold stand for itself. I think also people kind of reacted to the idea of like, well, if this wasn't a pandemic,

year people like that movie would not have lasted and it was like yeah true but like that's true of a lot of it was supposed to originally come out in april like i don't think that movie still would have been in the conversation by the end of the year right but also like it is a pandemic year so like what are you going to do it's you know yeah but also if it was a if it wasn't a pandemic year we would have never been talking about pieces of a woman totally and totally absolutely true um anyway the sag awards give So all those globe drama nominees ended up being, that was the Oscar field. The Sags only didn't nominate Andrea Day.

They instead nominated the person who I really did think was going to sneak in and was going to drive everybody crazy. It's just Amy Adams and Hillbilliology. I remember I had been in our group chat. Every once in a while, I would just pop in and be like, Amy Adams is going to get nominated for Hillbillogy. And you and Katie like threw holy water on me and were like, don't, don't bring this into it. It is a very typical SAG thing, though, that the Outlier nominee is a little behind the curve by the time, you know, it's old, the Outlier nominee with SAG is usually old news by the time the nomination. SAG is the so five minutes ago in the EW, like, in, out, a chart or whatever. Though, I mean, Glenn Close was never not in the conversation.

Right. But I do think those are two very different. different races and yeah. Am I within my rights to say that this was the year that BAFTA overcorrected for its years and years and years of myopia in their nominating procedures? Am I fair to say that? You see two things happening with the BAFTA nominations in this year. One is that yes, they're trying to realize, oh, we've not had great demographics.

graphics for our nominees, but they also are taking, I think, the thing that I think is cool about the BAFTA nominees is they were taking the initiative, especially in a COVID year, to recognize British cinema more? Which I appreciate. Yes. Whenever people say it about the Oscars, that it's like, well, it's just about American cinema, so they should be honoring American movies. Like, I think Terry Fremot says that. And I'm like, fuck off. That's not, no, I don't agree with that. But, you know, I do, globally, I don't think that, like, the Cesar's should be honoring, you know, American films. Those movies have enough opportunities to be awarded wherever. I don't mind.

But, like, I like that BFTA was nominating things like rocks, you know, that were honoring British cinema. People get upset at things like Sundance for having specifically American, you know, United States exclusive. categories. I don't mind that. I don't mind that the Independent Spirit Awards do it that way, too. I think there's, you know, I think like you say, like there's a Cesar's. You know what I mean? There's a, you know, there's a goias or whatever. And I don't mind that necessarily. The Oscars, I think, are a different story and that they are like the be all and all. And all. And if you want to be, if you want to be the B.L. End all. I think it's a very different conversation when you have someone be like, well, why would you be nominating a French movie? in best picture for the Oscars when it's about American cinema. I just think it's different. I do feel like there is not a responsibility, but I do feel like if a movie, a French movie is going to get nominated for an Oscar,

I think you have to prove that it is a movie that made an impact in the American imagination or marketplace or something that year, that it had to have played well in theaters or been received well by American critics or something that, you know, I think that... I mean, Parasite winning. Parasite was the movie story of the year. 100. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Period. It's exactly what I'm talking about.

And I'm not saying that like the Cesar's then have to go and honor it. And I'm not trying to be like American exceptionalism. Right, right. Peace sign. But like, you know, we have the... As far as movie going industry, we have one of the biggest that's most global. recognized. Granted, you know, in India and China, they have their own massive industries, but those...

No, no Trump, but we're losing ground. I got to say these, like the... Well, China's dictating more and more and more. And these, you know, billionaire and millionaire execs that don't want to make anything right now. Like, they don't let alone anything. They're at the point where they're not even producing things that are fucking IP because they won't make it. And they're creating the system where the only people that can make money is then. Yeah. Anyway, the BAFTA's freaked at that year.

They really did. Including some nominees that like I fuck like finally somebody nominated Alphrey Woodard for clemency. Finally. I know. A year after it's U.S. release. I know. I know. I mean, the Wunmi Masaku nomination for his house, his house is a great horror movie.

I love Wummi Musaku. I'm always happy to see her. That's a cool nomination. I love Roda Blaine. I was going to say, the 40-year-old version was your shit, man. She was definitely on my best actress ballad.

What was the title of that song that we all wanted to get nominated? Um, fuck. From the 40-year-old version? Yeah. Yes. Shit, I'm looking it up. Yeah, I forget the title of that song.

I was definitely in the very pro camp of that movie. I mean, speaking of... You were at the, like, you were in the... Talk about the 1%. You're in like the top 1% of it was the best Netflix movie of that year like and it kind of got paid dust throughout and like we're talking about the golden globe sorry I just bumped my mind because I was getting so emphatic with my hand movements golden globe musical or comedy and they don't nominate a Netflix sun dance comedy what are we doing here now? Globes comedy lineup sucks. It does. It's super sucks. I can't, I can't think of the... Did you get the title of the song?

No, I can't. I couldn't find it. I don't know. It's also just like weird things are happening in the Globes comedy categories this year. Like they're nominating the prom and Palm Springs for Best Picture, but not an actress when it's like, you have Merrill. And they're not even nominated. I think Meryl probably sent out a hit to the Hollywood Forum Press, and it was like, if you nominate me and I have to show up and do something on this movie, you will be done. Oh, for the prompt. Yeah, but like this is also the year. Yeah, they nominate James Corden, but not her.

That's weird. This is also the year that like HBO or whatever, like Warner Brothers via HBO Max declined to, you know, campaign let them all talk. Speaking of which, Lucas Hedges, the king of transatlantic boat voyages in 2020. Which is, it's never stopped being funny that Lucas Hedges is in two movies where he accompanies legendary actresses on a transatlantic boat voyage in the same year that cruise ship travel became a notorious hotbed of the spread of COVID. Like, it's the wild. Tell me that God doesn't have a sense of humor and then, you know, and then show me that. What else was they going to say? Best actress race that year

Just to sort of like Continue it out Who were some of the other Sort of outliers that year? Zendaya gets a nomination At the Critics Choice For Malcolm and Marie God bless them.

The $20 million Netflix acquisition Malcolm and Marie The movie we were told Was going to change The entire Oscar race My favorite Outlier nomination

are the ones where you can tell exactly what week they voted. Because there was that one week where people were like, is Malcolm and Marie going to be the late breaking thing and is Zendaya going to end up taking Best Actress? And it did not last more than a week, but like people remembered it. Independent Spirit Awards that year gave a nomination to Nicole Bihari and Miss Juneteenth and also Julia Garner and the assistant.

Garner and the assistant both, I finally watched the Royal Hotel, which is okay. It's fine. It's not bad. It's just sort of, it's like, the Royal Hotel is one of those movies that walks you up to the door of something happening and then nothing happens. And I'm just like, many times. Many times. What's going on here? And it's so subtle. And I, it's, it communicates its themes well and subtly. But I'm like, you are not operating within a milieu that, that I, that I, that I'm going to. to be satisfied by like a thinker of an ending where I'm just like, ah, yes, isn't it, isn't, you know, the world a dangerous place for toxic masculinity? And it's like, you have set up all the makings of a horror movie, madam, and I expect that. So nothing really happening is not the same as nuance. Put it on a t-shirt, sir. You know, there's not really any idea. There's not really any payoff. That is not new one. The assistant is a better horror movie than the Royal Hotel because the assistant is horrifying that Matthew McFaginstein in... Should have been Oscar nominee.

Oh, my God. Just incredible. Anyway, and Nicole Bihari, incredible in Miss Juneteenth. Nicole Bihari, I'm just going to say, is so good in the morning. show. Nicole Bihari's never been bad. No, that's true. She's a really good actress.

What did Jesse Buckley get nominated for? For I'm thinking of ending things? Online film critics? Good for them. A movie I didn't really like very much, but a lot of people talked about that movie. I'm thinking of ending things.

Yeah. A weird, weird, as you might expect, a weird year, although one that kind of coalesced quickly. All of a sudden, it kind of, you know, closed ranks around that five, McDormand, Viola, Andrade, Vanessa Kirby, Carrie Mulligan. Could have been weirder. Should have been weirder. Should have been weirder, is all I'll say. Can we play a game before we move on to the next thing? I would love to play a game. So, one of the stars of this movie, who we haven't really gone into too much, she doesn't really have a ton to do in this movie. But Imogen Poots plays

Lucas Hedges' fiancé, who he dumps, and then she shows back up because she can't get him out of her mind or whatever. You know, who could resist this mopey, you know, bad, hair-cutted, sorry, Lucas, but this is not your best hair era. Anyway,

Imogen Poots. So... Not his best. Hera. Exactly. So we are in early October, or sorry, early November as you're listening to this. Of course, the great, this had Oscar-Bus tradition of November is we bring on Katie Rich to do our November Thanksgiving episode. She will be back. Don't you worry. So, but so every year in that episode, I create a game that drives you both crazy where I ask you to sort of tell similarly genre. actors or actresses apart. Are you about to do this with Image and Poots? I feel bad that I sort of only do it once a year and you guys don't have an opportunity to

sort of like train or to sort of like, you know, get yourself into fighting shape. And so I'm going to give you, Chris, the advantage of you know, a little bit of a pre- Thanksgiving workout on the idea of separating

similarly positioned actresses. So for you, I have devised a game that is called Imogen Putes, Tuppence Middleton, or Holiday Granger. And so these three actresses, I would get confused for each other all the time because they're all in a general sort of like range of like British-ish actresses who have very, very silly names. As far as, like, they just... Image and Putes is definitely an actress I have seen in a lot of movies. They all sound like they were named by Dr. Seuss. And so I'm gonna...

I have a feeling you will probably be better at this than I would, you know, give you credit for in the abstract. But I want to see, so I got 12 rolls from various movies. And you are going to tell me whether... And these are no tricks, by the way. Sometimes I give you tricks. and there's no tricks in this. I don't believe you.

Well, hand a gun. Image and Putes, Tuppets, Middleton, or Holiday Granger. Are you ready? Yes. And then at the end, we'll sort of explain who these people. As we go through the game, we'll explain who these two people are, because I can't be like, you know who Tuppens Middleton is. She was in X, Y, and Z because then defeats the purpose of the game.

All right. Starting. As Amber, the friend of a girl murdered by Nazi rockers in Green Room. Oh, that's Imogen Putes. It is Imogen Putes. Okay. As Mary Edison, wife of Thomas Edison in the current war. Tuppens Middleton.

Yes, that is Tupin-Smittleton. Very good. We got to do the current war. Yes. As Maria or perhaps Mariah, the maid who is pregnant by a fishmonger and gets caught up in a whole baby swap scheme in tulip fever. Ooh, Holiday Granger. That is Holiday Granger. Very good.

Yeah. All right. As Calique Abrasix, second primary of the house of Abrasix, one of three heirs to a powerful alien dynasty in Jupiter ascending. Sure. Image and Poots. No. Tupin. Holiday Granger.

Nope, it's Tupin's Middleton. It's Tuffin's Middleton. You, who's always sticking up for Jupiter, Sending. I'm just going to say. As Anastasia Trimane, a wicked step sister in Cinderella, the 2015 Cinderella.

Image and Poots. Holiday Granger. I just don't think you get to have that be your government name and then play a character with a name like that. Like Anastasia Tremaine. As Lydia,

an unhappily married woman in 1950s, Scotland, who begins a romance with Anna Pacquin in Tell It to the Bees. Holiday Granger. Holiday Granger. Very good. Did you know that or did you just like make a confident guess?

I made it very confident guess. Very good. Okay. That tip that we all definitely had way too many conversations about Tell It to the Bees. A movie that is not real. As Laura, one of Anthony Hopkins' caregivers in The Father. Imogen Poots. That is Imogen Poots.

Yes. A very Sony Pictures Classics year for Imogen Pooh. Very. Yes. Also, she ends up being not real. She's a projection of, I think, his other daughter who had died, maybe. I think that's the deal. Yes, and the other caregiver. Yeah. Yeah. As Sarah Mankowicz, wife of Mank in Mank. Holiday Granger. No, Tupin Smydleton.

As Alexandra, the daughter of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener in a 11th, late quartet. Image and Putes. Yes, Image and Putes. Very good. As Lucy, a maid to the Queen's lady in waiting, who has a romance with Crawley chauffeur turned son-in-law, Tom, in

Downton Abbey, the movie. Holiday Granger? Tuppence Middleton. Okay. As Blanche Ingram, Rochester's proposed wife in Jane Eyre. Holiday Granger. Image and Putes.

Ah. As Diana Rivers, sister to St. John Rivers, who unsuccessfully proposes marriage to the titular heroine in Jane Eyre. Holiday Granger. This is Holiday Granger. There we go. Very good. All right.

You said there were no trick questions. You lied. Well, listen, I was very upfront that they are two different roles in Jane Eyre. I think Tuppence Middleton is your kryptonite in this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know who she. I don't know who the...

You have Tuppens Middleton blindness. She was in Sense 8. That's how I remember her. And I still have to watch Sense 8. She was in Sense 8. I think Holiday Granger is married to one of the Treadaway twins, either Harry Treadaway or what's the other one? You know, you didn't watch, you didn't watch Penny Dreadful. Penny Dreadful.

Oh, no, I bet I would like Penny Dreadful, though. Just skinny British guys. Imogen Putes is the one who plays American most often. I think that's the, I think that's the unlocking point for Images. is she played she was in um that cameron crow show on showtime that was really really bad um uh roadies do you remember hearing about roadies at all i know you didn't watch it of course but um yeah image and poots i can always remember who she is because of green room i'm pretty sure that's the first time i ever saw her in something and i think she's good in that movie green room is a movie that i underrated the first

time I saw it, which was surprising because it was at TIF Midnight Madness. It's a really good movie every time I see it. And also, I want to see, I still haven't seen Rebel Ridge, but that's the sort of the Netflix movie that was such a big hit in September. But that's a Jeremy Salonier movie, and Green Room is a Jeremy Salonier movie. So I have all the confidence that I'm going to like Rebel Ridge. Plus, I'll catch up to Rebel Ridge. I think some of the people who are going really hard on Rebel Ridge or the voices that usually trust the least.

You know who loves Rebel Ridge though? I'm pretty sure is Roxanna. And so I see and that's someone who I do really trust, but The thing with Rebel Ridge for me, I've seen other people getting louder and I'm just like, yo, I've, calm down. Rebel Ridge to me sounds like a Taylor Sheridan title.

So I'm like, what? And then all of a sudden people are like, no, it's Jeremy Solnier. And I'm like, okay. On a certain level, Jeremy Solier is like if Taylor Sheridan was good and non-te. If Taylor Sheridan fucked? Yeah, yeah, exactly. What are other other image and poots ones that I didn't put in?

She's in The Art of Self-Defense, a movie that I've never, and I still haven't seen. She's, I think, didn't like it. I think she's the main, yeah, she's the main girl in the second Black Christmas remake. You know how they did two Black Christmas remakes? And the second one was a lot more like post Me Too kind of a thing, which doesn't fully succeed. but I think it has its moments and she's the main one in that.

Neither Black Christmas remake is very Black Christmas. These are all three very different movie. Also, here's the thing. Black Christmas, the original, the 1974 Black Christmas, is so available. It is always streaming for free

somewhere. Just watch that one. You won't go wrong. It's so fucking good. She was also in, what else was Imogen? She was in Pop Star Never Stop, Never Stop, Never Stop. Which I don't remember her from, but like, she was the main girl in greetings from Tim Buckley. Did you ever watch that one where Penn Badgley plays Jeff Buckley? I saw that Tribeca Film Festival one year. I love Jeff Buckley so much. And that's why I'm like, yeah. No, I get it. I get it. I'm less, I have, I don't have that. So I was more. fine with it. The other one that I didn't put in that quiz, even though it has both Imogen Putes and Tuppens Middleton, is a movie called A Long Way Down, which was a Nick Hornby novel adaptation. Oh, yeah, with Tony Collette. Pierce Brosnan and Tony Collette, that I don't remember

existing at all. But now I might want to check it out. Because I generally like the Nick Hornby sort of stuff. Can we take it back to Pfeiffer and Best Actress, because there is one major Award that we did not mention. Okay. Probably because Foolish Me does not have it in my Best Actress spreadsheet. I will fix that. She was nominated for an M4G for Best Actress. Oh my God, fix it, Steve.

Put it in the spreadsheet. Goodness gracious. If you want a quintessential M4G Best Actress win and lineup, the winner is Sophia Loren for the life ahead. An Oscar nominee. an Oscar nominee, because of Diane Warren. A movie that was kind of fine. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it.

It was fine. Also Netflix, because Netflix had like over a dozen movies in contention for various things. A 2020 Memory Hole movie, although you know what's even more of a 2020 memory hole movie? Is Robin Wright in Land, a movie that I don't think I saw, but I could have seen and just don't remember. I saw and kind of liked it. I mean, I have a lot of patience for this type of movie. A lot of people talked about it in the context of wild. It's less like wild because she's just like going to a house, you know?

Stay in the house. Land is a movie that I would absolutely watch again. No Reservation. Viola Davis and Francis McDormon were also nominated for the M4G's. But Fifeer, like, I don't think we've done a Fyfer movie in a while, and that's because, you know, she has a very interesting career but doesn't make as many movies as her contemporaries. And she also, you know, doesn't do as much press as her contemporaries. But I think recently you see that she's, I think the more recent thing for her is that she'll be in like an indie movie. And it's just like, I don't know if I, if that movie ever, like, made a mark.

Like, where is Kira? Remember hearing about that film? Where is Kira? There's a lot of interesting behind the scenes hubb of on that movie. Is there, like, why? What happened with that? She apparently is not very used to doing independent productions. Oh, she was not a happy camper.

Okay, okay. And, like, you watch that movie, and I think that's a really good movie and a really good performance. I love that director Andrew DeSanmu. Also did Mother of George, which is great. You watch that movie and it's like, oh, well, they made this for $10.

Like, they, and she's also been kind of out of the industry, too. She's kind of, it's at a stage in her career where she was kind of reticent to go back and do roles. And so there's that. She really had to kind of be wooed by

Darren Aronofsky for Mother, as well. She's talked about how she just like did not get that movie whatsoever, but through like Darren Aronovsky's enthusiasm, got her on board for the movie. Here's an interesting thing about where is Kira? It's like the third most recent Bradford Young movie. I know. I know. I'm a Is there a story? Is there a story there about why Bradford Young just hasn't worked? I think he's unhappy with the industry, but he's also been teaching. Oh, okay. He has this A.C. Steve Capadia pseudo-documentary that Neon is kind of dumping this year. It was at Venice, right? It was at Venice. People do not seem to like it, but you will not keep me from watching that movie at Bradford Young shot it.

Its description on Wikipedia is 2024 British documentary, directed by Acef Kapadia, set in a dystopian future, this genre-bending film inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 feature at La Jette, follows a time traveler who risks his life to change. the course of history and save the future of humanity. Now, how that sentence fits documentary, I'm not sure how that works. Yeah, it's like this weird hybrid narrative documentary. Is it just a mockumentary? Is it just like a fake documentary? Which is what's also known as a narrative film? Like, I don't know how we're calling this documentary.

I think it's just, you know, a blend of elements. Okay. You know, there's a narrative juxtaposed against documentary elements. Samantha Morton's in it. But it's shot by Bradford Young, like, who hasn't shot a feature film in years. Right, right. And he's a genius. He's an incredible artist that, like, we got really, really excited for, and over the period of a few years, and we haven't had a movie from him.

I think the last, like, Hollywood-ish thing that he shot, was the Avid Verne mini series. Oh, yes, when they see us, yes. Yeah, it's literally, after arrival on his CV, our where is Kira, solo a Star Wars story, and then when they see us, and then nothing for five years.

Right. Bring them back. Imagine Solo got someone to leave the industry. Solo has done more damage to careers. Alden, Aaron Reich, as I have said, it kind of kneecapped Amelia Clark's quest to become a leading lady in films. Anyway, we can't talk about that. We've gone too far afield already. Let's talk about Pfeiffer's three Oscar nominations. Three always sounds so shocking. But we haven't talked about Pfeiffer in a while. None since 1992 is crazy. Crazy.

It's really wild. I mean... You look at the actual movies and it's like, okay, I get it. I get how that happened. But when you have something like French exit, especially in a COVID year, it just makes it more shocking. You think that's narrative enough. Yeah. And it's like maybe it's just the type of thing that, you know, Fyfer kind of keeps to herself is not so ingrained in the industry that people feel like she's one of them that they have to nominate her for this pseudo comeback type of performance. Then again, there's also, I mean, we've done an episode on White Old.

Leander, which we both think she's great in. Yes. Well, also, remember when we did our Frankie and Johnny episode, and we talked a lot about that excuse me, we talked a lot about that Barbara Walters interview that she did in promotion for that movie, where Barbara Walters was incredibly confrontational about Fyfer's reputation at the time of somebody who didn't like to do press, didn't like to, you know, you know. Right. The audacity.

was she was she was sort of she was viewed as as cold and standoffish and all of this stuff and one of the things that I think is interesting is you look at who sort of gets this beloved sort of you know back you know he or she is back kind of a narrative obviously you get it for people who were very big in genre movies because that's where sort of the enthusiasm lies. You got that with, you always get that with Sigourney Weaver. You got that very much so in Jamie Lee Curtis's run to the Oscar a couple years ago, where, you know, I think you got a little bit of that in the Brendan Fraser comeback narrative. I think one of the interesting things about the current years Demi Moore narrative that I've been sort of tracking through my podcast is, and especially now that I'm sort of getting to the 90s movies, is DeMey was. in a lot of, or at least a good handful of movies that were sort of these like broadly talked about sort of much discussed movies, obviously ghost and a few good men and that kind of a thing. And you look at somebody like Michelle Pfeiffer, I think, and you see an actress who was at the top of her game, but within a, you know,

a portion of the Hollywood ecosystem that was a little refined. Do you know what I mean? And it's a little, I don't know where the like fervent Michelle Pfeiffer. I think you talk to a lot of people who were like, wow, Michelle Pfeiffer, like, you know, legendary, you know, beauty, obviously and whatever. And, but I think beyond Batman Returns, which is weirdly still a more divisive movie than I ever would have thought, because I only really hear from queer people who are like, yes, Michelle, work. Whereas, like, I think you look at more sort of mainstream critics, and they still are kind of a little nonplussed about what was going on with Batman Returns. Um, but anyway, I think that's the closest that Pfeiffer ever really came to that kind of Sigourney Weaver-esque sort of like hooking the fan community, because otherwise it's

dangerous liaisons. It's the fabulous baker boys. It's, um, white olander. It's, uh, you know, I'm trying to think of what were the other sort of like really good, really, you know, it's just, it's a little bit more of a, of a refined niche. Because I want to be like well mother well mother but again mother's a movie that was like you know kind of largely reviled by a lot of people yeah we're the freaks that it was hard enough to get people to respect what jennifer lawrence was doing in that movie much less sort of like look to the supporting performances in that movie yeah so i don't know it's it is a it's the type of thing that i think there's this disconnect that we don't really she's one of those performers that

we as people who love movies see her in this legend status that I'm not quite sure the industry agrees with in a way that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but you know, you do also have to remember these are people who not only build their relationship through working together, but like being at similar parties and, you know. Michelle Pfeiffer seems almost destined to be the kind of actress who 50 years later, People talk about, like they talk about Kim Novak or Deppre Carr sort of, I'm trying to think of like these sort of like older, like classic Hollywood actresses who people are just like, you know, Barbara Stanwick, you know, that kind of a thing. You know, where it's just they, they're not the Elizabeth Taylor's or the Audrey Hepburns or whatever, the ones who sort of have this. much more lasting, like people today will have maybe seen an Elizabeth Taylor movie or have seen an Audrey Hepburn movie or a Catherine Hepburn movie, but maybe are like, but have you seen a Lana Turner movie? But have you seen an Ava Gardner movie? You know what I mean? Like that kind of a thing. And I think Fyfer, what I'm trying to say is that she's like, she's an actress for people who love actresses. And I think our friend Nathaniel Rogers would certainly. you know, agree with a statement like that. We had him on for the White... Only under episode.

He was always sort of banging the drum for Fyfer. And I think it's... I think that's the appeal. I think she's the person who, you know, the old queens are going to be like, you know, nobody did it like Michelle Fyfer and the fabulous Baker boys.

You know what I mean? Like that kind of... And they'll be right to say so. They will be right to say so. I think there's also this element today of Fyfer goes away and comes back so many times and there's been a lot of... Oh, Fyfer is back for so many of these performances,

and they're in a lot of lesser movies like Sheree. Right, right. You know, movies that while she might be good in them, they don't really do anything for her, and people don't get excited about the movies. Yes, I think that's right. Because you look at where after the... Sorry, I'm going to bring up her filmography one more time.

So after Love Field, which is her final Oscar nomination, in 1992, which is... the same year as Batman returns. So you can sort of see where, like, you know, that's the, that's the Oscar thing where the more populist thing helps bolster the more sort of fancy pants thing. And so she gets nominated for the inferior movie, but... And inferior performance. She's not very good in that movie.

But the more palatable sort of Oscar thing. I think Oscar's done a good job of becoming less and less like that, whereas, like, they'll just, well, they didn't nominate Margot, Robbie Forbar. but they'll nominate Barbie. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. I very much... So the age of innocence, she rules.

I think she and Daniel... Her best performance should be her Oscar. It's so fascinating to me. We've talked about that movie on the... Well, we didn't really get a chance to talk about it as much on the Scorsese screen draft thing because we very heroically boosted it into the top 10. But that's a tremendous movie.

I think it's a movie that sort of sits interestingly in the Scorsese history because as a follow-up to Goodfellas and Cape Fear, it's obviously a very, very big genre shift. And I think all of... It was also delayed a year, too, so it kind of had a stink on it that didn't allow people to appreciate it for what it was at the time. A lot of people had their walls up for that movie. And even when they, like, they nominated Winona Ryder, who was... very much like the young, you know, the young teen star has now transitioned into a more grown-up

role. But you look at that movie, and obviously, I think riders fantastic. But like, that is Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer's movie. And it is wild to me that neither one of them were nominated when this was in their, like, there were, they were hot commodities then. You know, he was only a few years removed from his first Oscar win. She was coming off of, like, three Oscar nominations in five years or something like that. So it's like, I don't understand, I don't understand the holdup. It was, it's a 1993 best actress is a banger year, but even still, like, Lord knows, I think Deborah Winger is quite good in Shadowlands, but I don't understand why that's not Fyfer's nomination. 100% absolutely agreed. Can we talk about her first

nomination, her supporting nomination for dangerous liaisons, because I think this lineup is so fascinating. And really good. Yes. Gina Davis wins for the accidental tourist, which was a very popular movie, best picture nominee. I still, I would never take an Oscar away from Gina Davis. I love Gina Davis. It's never going to be a performance I think about when I think about her. And I kind of hate that movie.

I don't like that movie. She very obviously pops out of that movie, though. That is sort of like a low, low energy movie that she. she sort of, you know, rampages through in a way. I always think it's interesting to talk about the 1991 best actress race between Jody Foster for Silence of the Lands, Gina Davis, and Susan Sarandon for Thelman Louise. And you all, and you wish that you could just sort of like reshuffle the deck in terms of because they all end up as Oscar winners eventually.

But you're like, the how of it is, you know, interesting. And that like, you know, if Joe. Jody, you know, does Jody win there? Does Jody win for Nell? Or does Jody, you know, do you take the win away from the accused? Do you take, you know, Gina's Oscar away for the accidental tourist? Does she then win for Thelman Louise? Does Susan win for Thelman Louise and someone else wins, you know, for Deadwin walking?

It's, you know, I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, back to 19-A. It's very Judy Holliday's Oscar year where Judy Holliday wins for Born Yesterday. You have Betty Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve. and Gloria Swanson for Sunside Boulevard. And it's like, spread these out, ladies, spread these out. I'm not one of those people that will ever shit on Judy Holiday.

I love Judy Holiday. Sure. I mean, Gloria Swanson's my pick. You kind of wish they could all four have won Oscars. Yeah, it's like, can we, can we negotiate here? It's tough to watch All About Eve, too. Like, Lord knows, Sunset Boulevard is incredible, and Gloria Swanson's incredible. But I also look at All About Eve and, like, zero best actress Oscars.

for this movie? Like, how did that happen? Maybe we should have multiple best actress Oscars for this one movie. Yeah, exactly. So it's Gina Davis for The Accidental Tourist. Continue. Joan Cusack and Sigourney Weaver for Working Girl. Just to separate

this conversation. Joan Cusack and Working Girl, that nomination is like, by the God. Sometimes Oscar gets it so right. Like, would do absolutely nothing to take that nomination away. It's Kind of, I mean, it definitely tells you how popular working girl was that this very, very, very supporting performance that, you know.

I put on my Nicole Kidman voice and I go, wow, the power of Mike Nichols. You know what I mean? We maybe don't talk enough about Joan Kusack when we talk about Mike Nichols. Francis McDormand for Mississippi Burning. I have not seen that movie since it was on a T. That is a Francis nomination. Yep. I haven't seen it since it was on like a wheel-in TV in a middle school classroom, so I can't

really speak to it right now. But I maybe think that the surprising thing is not that Fyfer doesn't win, because Dangerous Liaisons really doesn't get its due for a movie that got a bunch of Oscar nominations. It's the classic, widely nominated, but like little awarded movie, yeah. And we could be talking out of our ass, and it could have four Oscars. But, like, you watch that movie, and it's like, so no one got an acting Oscar for this movie? Just no one did crazy.

That should be Glenn Close as Oscar. Sure. Yeah. It is surprising to me that the winner is not Sigourney Weaver. Well, she was also double nominated. That was sort of what was widely expected at the time was she's nominated for this and Gorillas in the Mist. There was a sort of kitchen table, you know, truism at the time that was. like, well, when an actress is nominated in lead and supporting, they'll usually win for supporting. I can't remember the...

Because I think she's the first to lose when she's double nominated. Right. I can't remember who the other people were in that situation. I know Jessica Lang was one of those examples. She wins for Tootsie when she's also nominated for Francis in lead actress. But people sort of kind of widely assumed because not only is she double nominated this year, but she's coming off of that nomination for aliens only two years before. And also, working girl is hugely popular. Melanie Griffith is in the best actress race, but she's really not expected to win that. Well, best actress was kind of... Speaking of Judy Holiday. Yeah, yeah. She's so good in that movie, even though there was a lot of shit going down during the filming of that movie. But so, yeah, I think Weaver was kind of expected to win this.

I think she wins the Globe, right? Yeah, she won the Globe. She won two globes because she was part of that three-way tie for the globe for Gorillas in the midst. Madam Susatka for Shirley MacLean. And I think Jody Foster for the accused was the third one in that. I always want us to do a Susatka ever. Let's do it, man.

You know what? That's what I'll get Lewis Vertel to come on to get to talk to us about. We'll do Madam Susatka. Lewis has always. Although somebody, I feel like somebody else who we've had on before, name dropped Madame Susatka. And I was like, okay, well, now we have to have you. you want. This is why I need to write everything down. I, the fact that I, this is such a

tangent, and it'll only take two seconds. The fact that I am not a journal person is stupid. And I every time I think of that, I'm like, wouldn't it have been good if I had journals going back to like my 20s? And I always sort of like, think about that, like, well, oh well. And it's like, no, like, you could just start doing that now. Like, you know, so that in 10 years you're like, don't I wish. Sort of. It's just like, it's just like jotting down, you know, ideas. Jotting down like, I don't know, whatever. It's just, I'll probably cut this out. Anyway, Sigourney. Surprising she didn't. Sugorny. Surprised she didn't win. Yeah. So a lot of people look to the fabulous Baker boys nomination because they hate driving Miss Daisy so much. I don't think Jessica Tandy was ever in any danger

of losing that Oscar. Well, and Pfeiffer won the Globe that year also and she won a bunch of critics award. So she was like very, very much sort of the, in a year where you see this all the time where like the more sentimental or populist choice wins, there's always people kind of, you know, gather support around the more critically rigorous choice. And she was definitely, she was the LA confidential to Jessica's Titanic, not to, you know, not to elevate driving Miss Daisy to Titanic's level, but you know what I'm saying. And then to close out the conversation, the Lovefield nomination was never going to be a winner. That's an Orion movie as Orion was dying. And that movie is not Silence of the Lamps or even Blue Sky while we're at it. That movie's terrible. We should do a 1992 movie soon so that we can delve into this best actress race because this was one that... Because you want to get me on the record talking about Passion Fish, maybe the most Chris Fyle movie ever.

Passion Fish fucking rules. Passion Fish is incredible. But Emma Thompson, that was one of those, like, wire-to-wire things where she won every single thing that year. Deservedly so, like... Oh, well, you're a huge Howard Zend person as well, yeah. And I am a huge... And, of course, I think Howard Zend is wonderful, and I love Passion Fish, but I am a big Lorenzo's Oil person. So I would have to go on and on and on about Susan Sarandon in Lorenzo's Oil playing...

We'll investigate 192. Michaela Odone. I love her name in that. Anyway... Lukey Hedges is in this movie. Again, the boat captain of 2020, the cruise ship director, ferrying acting legends,

hither and yon, across the ocean. This was, I think, maybe people kind of turning on Lucas Hedges a little bit in a way that I found a little unfortunate. I think he kind of got dinged. for not handling the improv as in Let Them All Talk as skillfully as he, as the other women in that movie, certainly. We talked about that movie a few months ago. I think he's good at that movie. We've got to be closing in on a Lucas Hedges six-timers.

I'll let you know right now because I can go find that there. I was a little surprised we didn't hit a six-timers for somebody in this movie. Well, Pfeiffer's past it. She's not at 10-timers yet, but she's definitely blown past six-timeers. timers. Hedges is, I think, at four. Because we just recently did, yes, he's at four, because he was in Labor Day.

So we've done two Lucas Hedges movies in the last four weeks. Boy erased, let them all talk. Labor Day French exit are four Lucas Hedges. We can't, wait, Moonrise Kingdom got a screenplay nomination or did it. Sure did. Okay, so we can't do Moonrise Kingdom on the flagship show. What are our other Lucas Hedges possibilities? Where could these other films come from?

I wonder, because he stopped. Surely? Surely, you can't be serious. Surely, a movie that nobody really realized dropped on Netflix when it finally did because it was pushed back so many times. Yes. We're going to have to do waves at some point. So there's that.

We will definitely be doing Ben is back at some point. So, yeah, so there are Lucas Hedges movies in the Hopper, for sure, for sure. All right. Valerie Mahaffey. Valerie Mahaffy. Not, I mean, like we're, I guess we're saving her for the end, but not enough conversation with, I think she's kind of, Fyfer is definitely the more getable nomination for this movie. But I think the innocent bystander of people really not liking this movie is Valerie Mahaffy not really getting enough conversation around her performance in this movie. Because I think she's really wonderful.

She gets an Indy Spirit nomination that she unfortunately was never going to win. You and Yous Jung wins that, goes on to win the Oscar. So literally, I just looked up the, I just looked up Mahaffy, and so I'm bringing up my texts, our text thread, you and me, from when I first saw this. How are you able to just get texts from that far back? I type in Mahaffey into my text search. and I get it. I don't text about her that much that I've lost in the sauce there. So I text you.

Teach me your ways. October 10th, 2020. French exit is qualifying for so many of our scatigories. Clues is what I first said to you. And you said, what a weird and lovely movie that I think only I will love. And then in all caps. And now I don't love it. And then in all caps, the witch you fucked on the boat.

And then you have Valerie Mahaffey with one, two, three, four, five, six stars, or six, uh, hearts. And then I said, and then at the same time I said Valerie Mahaffy supporting actress nominee and I jinxed you. So, um, clearly I knew, I remember us texting about Valerie immediately after we had seen it. So I, I think the performance has a lot of weight in how this movie is able to even function. Because I talked about the thing of how, you know, these are all aliens, dropped onto earth. None of them really kind of makes sense in their surrounding. And then she shows up and she's a real person and she kind of pulls the energy back down to earth and then slowly and surely everybody's kind of isms and everybody's quirks get shipped away at so that they can all communicate with each other, especially mother and son. Because I think the big kind of emotional apex of this movie is that like kitchen conversation where they're able to finally communicate

and still be themselves but they're not aliens anymore you know and I think Valerie Mahaffey has so much to like so much control of the movie's energy like you mentioned when she shows up

in the movie the movie instantly gets better it gets more complex it gets more you know sort of um I don't know, just like, things start taking on different complexions, I think, when she gets there, it's... I think it's more recognizably human, too. While her quirk is that she kind of has no defenses, she just basically speaks very plainly. You know, that thing of like, please don't make fun of me or whatever, that moment.

Yes. Don't be cruel. Don't be cruel to me. Yeah. Yes. Please don't be cruel to me. That, I don't, and she's, it's the type of character that could be grading in the way that these characters great other people. But I think she's not, and that's all performance-based, just this really lovable woman who is very, very vulnerable.

Well, she, she sort of has, I talk about her sort of like TV roles because she's definitely one of those people. who plays a type in, you know, in movies. And it's, um, what was I going to say? It's, it's one of those things where somebody, I think TV, especially around that time in like the 80s or 90s, where you depended so much on getting the character sort of kind of immediately where the guest star is sort of like knowing what kind of character this person's going to play. think every time she sort of shows up in movies, you get that very like, oh, she's very sort of

like she's tightly wound. She's a little, you know, she's certainly, she's not blue collar, right? You know what I mean? She's a little flighty, a little fragile, you know what I mean? There's like a fragile bird quality to her, I think. And I want to sort of, wait, hold on one second. Oh, okay. So she wins the primetime Emmy Award. She's only been nominated for an Emmy one time, which I think is wild because she was on so much television. She wins. But so much about like guest stars now is like very famous people doing guests. Well, yes. And it sort of was like that. Well, so the interesting thing to her, because she was, I feel like, the consummate guest star, she wins supporting actress in a drama series for Northern Exposure. But this was the year that the rule change has. and I think it only lasted for one year, where guest stars could be nominated in the supporting or lead categories based on how, like, prominent their role was in that particular episode. So her category, she's in, there are seven people nominated, sorry, there were seven people nominated for supporting actress that year, but like she's up against Barbara Barry for an episode of Law and Order. Now, Barbara Barry was a guest star on Law and Order.

Conchata Farrell for L.A. Law. Cynthia Geary for Northern Exposure. Marg Helgenberger for China Beach. Now, she was a regular. Kay Lens for Reasonable Doubts and Mary Alice for All Fly Away. And I'm pretty sure Mary Alice was a regular on I'll fly away. But anyway, so this was the year that, like, Shirley Knight gets a best actress nomination for just being in a law and order episode.

Do you know what I mean? So it's kind of, you know, betwixt and between. between Kate Nelligan gets a nomination for lead actress and a drama for an episode of Road to Avenly. I think that was the year that, sorry, one second, actor in a drama series. Yes, Christopher Lloyd wins outstanding lead actor in a drama series for a one episode performance in Road to Avenly. Kirk Douglas gets nominated in that same category for an episode of Tales from the Cript. It's crazy. It's like, and this is all up against like Scott Bacula in Quantum Leap and Rob Morrow and Northern Exposure and like, you know, Sam Waterston and I'll fly away these Slick series regulars.

Why did this opening of this rule happen? Was there a lack of television shows? Like, was there, you know. I genuinely don't know because I wasn't, um, let me give me a second. This rule allowed Hollywood stalwarts like Kurt Douglas, blah, blah, blah. I don't know the why of it But it just it happened It was only for that year

And then they went back because they were like This is too weird So It can't be that there was a lack of product I mean Valerie Mahaffey's one of Right Right Right

Right Right you know I don't think there was a strike that year I genuinely don't know What prompted that But unless people were sort of like You know

The guest act category has this lineup though of Valerie Mahaffey Mary Alice Barbara Barry Conchata Farrell that is file

Oh 100% It's queen queen on queen like 100%. So yeah Yeah it's wild So anyway

But so as I said I remember her I'm trying to go through her her TV Like even She's in so few movies That her just like

Her filmography is TV and movies just together. There's like no a point in differentiating. But like, I'm just going to read to you a sampling from 1990 of the shows she's on.

One episode of the Father Dowling Mysteries, one episode of Quantum Leap, one episode of Cheers, one episode of Seinfeld, which I totally remember. She's the one who George sort of like dumps because she's too pretentious or whatever, and then they have

to walk it back because they need her help for Jerry's getting audited or something like that. One episode of Dream On. Okay, she's on five episodes of Northern Exposure. So she was at least on like a run. One episode of L.A. Law. Three episodes of Wings. She was on four episodes of the TV adaptation of the client. The John Grisham movie, The Client. They did a TV series starring Joe Beth Williams as Susan Sarandon's character, and Valerie McHawley played Ellie Fultrig, who I can only imagine is the wife of Reverend Roy Fultrigg, the Tommy Lee Jones character, who in this version is played by John Hurd. So, and yet, Asey Davis, who played the judge in the movie,

is also the same role in the TV show. One episode of Caroline in the city, four episodes of ER, one episode of Ali McBeal, one episode of Judging Amy, one episode of the West Wing where she played somebody who was trying to gut funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, one episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, an episode

of Frazier, an episode of CSI, nine episodes of Desperate Housewives, where she played I believe the ex-wife of Kyle McLaughlin's character, who was Marcia Cross's second husband. one episode of private practice, one episode of Boston Legal,

seven episodes of United States of Terra, an episode of Hannah Montana, an episode of Grey's Anatomy, an episode of workaholics, an episode of the Mindy Project. Like, I'm trying to think of, like, her most recent nine-episode role on Dead to Me. She's a legend. She's a television legend. Queen. Again, and more people should know.

her name is all I'm going to say. Eight episodes of Devious Mades. What else do you want for me? What else do you want for me? Three episodes of glee. All right. Anyway. I love this performance. I was so happy just to rewatch this movie, just to experience her performance again. It really is not the type of thing that gets awards recognition. So I think the immediate reaction after seeing this movie was like, okay, well, maybe in a COVID year, we can get a true, like, character actress, performance like this, nominated for an Oscar again because she's the best thing about the movie. And then I think slowly but surely, as this movie was leaving conversations, you know,

not being made available for people to see so that it could stay in the Oscar conversation, you know, she got forgotten in the series. So she gets nominated for the Independent Spirit Award, though. Yushin Young wins for Minari, sort of the early indicator, I feel like, that was one of ones where you saw the enthusiasm in the room for her winning the independent spirit award. And you're like, maybe she did. Maybe they did vote her to win the Oscar. Like, uh, um, because who was the other? It was, it was, it was Glenn, of course. Like, of course it was. Um, uh, Hillbilliology. God, thank God. Thank God. Um, that, uh, who else was in contention, though? Was it just? I think we were also gritting our teeth and crossing our fingers that Amanda Seifred would land the nomination and ultimately she did. Oh, thank God. She's so good in Mank. Oh, love her in that. Yeah, Alexis Shikizi for Miss Juneteenth was also nominated.

Yerihan for Minari and Talia Ryder for Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Any last thoughts on the movie or anything you want to say about his three daughters? I mean, go see. His three daughters are streaming on Netflix. it's incredibly good

it is incredibly emotionally affecting so like prepare yourselves it is about three adult sisters from two different marriages but their father in common all from different plans

yes all from different plans Carrie Coon Elizabeth Olson Natasha Leon each one of them is incredible in their own way sharing space in an apartment while their father in the next room is dying and it's just tremendous. I will final thoughts on French exit though. There's a scene

after Joan comes back. And so it's a full house in this apartment and people are sleeping on cots and pull out beds and shes lounges and whatnot. And Francis, Michelle Pfeiffer and her friend Joan are sharing Jones bed because it's Jones apartment. And they're just sort of holding hands in bed and Michelle or Francis just goes, we're just two little old ladies and it's so like that to me is sort of where that last half hour or so of the movie really lands with me is these kind of, you know, what is there for us in this world? You know what I mean? Like we've blown through the money and, you know, we've blown through the notoriety sort of. And this is the odd collection of people who we have with us around us in our,

you know, in her waning days. And she just sort of has this connection to her one friend. Somebody's, I can't remember which one of them says the fucked witch and small frank were connected. But like, what a sentence. Just what a sentence. I think that was Valerie. I think that was Valerie Mahaffey who said that. Oh, the part, the scene on the boat where the one guy takes Lucas Hedges to the morgue on the boat

showing them and he just goes, and he's just like, this happens all the time. He goes, industry standard for an Atlantic crossing is two bodies a day. Oh, this was the other thing. Just on a thematic level, watching how this movie sort of like

presents itself in retrospect as Francis sort of going to Paris to end her life, it takes on the sense of this sort of like old Egyptian empress who is entoming herself with everything that she's collected in this world. She's got her cat and her son and her whatever money is left. And she's just sort of like, and this is sort of her, you know, it's her tomb. You know what I mean? It's, it's, I just thought that was kind of an interesting sense.

Anyway, she also says, oh, to be youngish and in loveish, which early out of the movie, which I think is such a funny life. She also has these journal entries, including one where she's like, men just take out their penis in France and urinate in the streets. She's like, I can't really say that I didn't like seeing it. It's funny. It's good. That monologue, perform it at my funeral. I don't know. I think, I'm glad you mentioned the scene of Francis and her friend in bed and just kind of the emotional tenor that this movie works up to. And I would argue really earns, though, his three daughters does it better. That the whole trajectory of these movies is these people who cannot communicate with each other, these people who don't even feel, they feel like caricatures to the audience at the beginning of the movie. And everybody,

kind of do almost speaking a completely different language to the audience and they feel like they belong in different movies

and by the end of the movie all of that is reconciled they feel like true human people and they're able to connect

and communicate and have an emotional experience with and I think Jacobs is very good at doing that even though French exit

is a flawed movie but I think it becomes very, very powerful in his three daughters and his three daughters, you know, rather than starting with this kind of magical realism as French Exit does and dabbling in it here and here and there. It surprises you with it.

His three daughters does it in a way that I wouldn't want to ruin for anybody, but is very, very powerful. Agreed. Yeah, seek that movie out. I think people ever since it's been on Netflix are a little unfair to it, even though I with accusations of staginess, I always feel like that's a lazy criticism. I think it's because... But I also accept it's something that I have a lot of patience for.

I think it's because most of it is set in the same apartment, but I feel like that's, like, that's how you, that's what's going on. That's the sort of the, that's the movie. What do you want them to just, like, take a trip to Coney Island? Like, what the fuck? Like, I don't know. And, I mean, I think that's a pretty. precisely structured

and unfolding movie also again as you say I also have a lot of more patience for movies that feel

stagey and also if that's what you need to get these three performances you know this is a

delivery system for three of the best performances of the year so I mean and I think

the campaigning of all of them in supporting, I understand it. I think that, you know, it's okay to say that a movie has a shared balance between performers, but to me, that means, well, then they're all weeks. But Netflix can't campaign, you know, 17 people in lead actress, though I don't think Netflix will be getting a supporting actress nomination for any of them either. I do think I came down definitively on which actress is giving my favorite performance in the movie, and that's Elizabeth.

I'm currently on also Elizabeth Olson, but I think it could change. I would be willing to accept Olson is supporting, and the other two are leads, but I can't accept that they're all supporting. I mean, supporting what is sort of the follow-up question. Although, interestingly... I mean, and while I think, you know, she's a shared protagonist, I do think there's an element of Olson's character that she is deferential to the other two characters. Yeah, yeah. but I think she's the best performance in the movie. I shift and I change, but I think, yeah, if you asked me today, I probably would also say that.

All right. Should we move on to the IMDB game? Okay, so every week we ender episodes with the IMDB game, where we challenge each other with an actor or actress and try and 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 mention that up front. after two wrong guesses we get the remaining titles release years as a clue and if that is not enough it just becomes a free for all of hints all right so what's happening what are we doing who's guessing who's giving i will say why don't i give first so um

when we recorded our most recent patreon recording for the movie hitchcock i as i sometimes do in preparing for that, I picked an IMDB game for that, and then was just like, oh, right, we don't do IMDB game for the Patreon, but I didn't want to waste it. So you're getting a Hitchcock-themed IMDB game, even though it has nothing to do with French exit whatsoever. Although this woman does have a connection to sort of France, kind of France. She ended up being the Princess. of a country that was very close to France being Monaco, I'm going to ask you to give me the known for for Grace Kelly. Great. High noon.

No. Great. We're starting out perfectly. Her Oscar win, her erroneous criminal Oscar win for the country girl. Yes, that's the one she beat Judy Garland for a Star is born. I don't want to talk. Anyway, yes, you got it.

I'm still mad about things that happened well before my lifetime. At this point, it's got to be a bunch of Hitchcock then. Rear window. Dial-in for murder. Yes, you got it. There we go. Three Hitchcock's and the country girl. So there we go.

Weird that high noon is not only. Sorry, friend. But you got it with only one strike. All right. Well done. All right. So for you, we were just talking about his three daughters, while we're at least momentarily aligned on our favorite performance of the movie. I think we would also be aligned on the performance most likely to make some headway in the awards race. That is Natasha Leone. Sure. So for you, I have chosen Natasha Leone. There is one television. Is the television, oh, this is an interesting conundrum. She's the lead in Russian doll, but I think Orange is the New Black is the more widely. appealing one, so I'm going to say orange is the new black.

Correct. Three films is one of them slums of Beverly Hills? Correct. Okay. Tamara Jenkins's wonderful slums of Beverly Hills. I'm going to guess, even though she's way down the cast list on this, but I'm going to guess American Pie. American Pie is correct. Okay, okay. I don't know if she's in the second one, and even if she is. is, I'm not going to guess that.

So, am I three for three? You are three for three. You have no wrong guesses. You're not getting any hints. Okay. I want to guess, but I'm a cheerleader. But I want to make sure that I'm not disregarding anything that's, like, much more obvious. Um...

Because she's a lead in Ben, but I'm a cheerleader, and I don't think she's a lead in much else. I don't think his three daughters would be there yet. I'm going to guess, but I'm a cheerleader. Joe Reed, you got a perfect score. Yeah, all right, okay. Well done. First perfect score in a minute. Oh, right, I know.

I haven't gotten a perfect score in quite a while. I'm very happy. All right. Cool. And I was close, so we got through that very quickly. Very good. All right. Which is fine.

We went a little along today, and that is okay. That is our episode. If you want more This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz. You should also follow us on Twitter at Had underscore Oscar Buzz on Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz and on Patreon at Patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you? I'm at Joe Reed on the social. read, it's spelled R-E-I-D. You can also follow my Patreon-exclusive podcast on the films of Demi Moore called

Demi-M-M-M-M-E-M-E-M-E-L at Patreon.com slash Demi-M-P-O-D. You can also read my stuff at Vulture, play the Cinematrix, follow the Movie Fantasy League, yad-da-da-da-a-da. I'm on Twitter and Letterboxed at Chris F-E-I-L. We would like to thank Kyle. for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mavius for their technical guidance from time to time, and Taylor Cole for our theme music. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get

those podcasts. Five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility. So go fuck a witch on a boat and then give us a five-star. Why not? That's all for this week. We hope you'll be back next week for more. Bye. Thank you.