This Had Oscar Buzz - 391 – The BFG (with Kyle Amato!)

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

With Steven Spielberg returning to theatres with this week’s Disclosure Day, we’re taking the rare opportunity to discuss one of his films! Kyle Amato returns to talk about Spielberg’s take on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s fable The BFG. The film was a reuniting of Spielberg with his recent Oscar winning actor Mark Rylance in the role, all … Continue reading "391 – The BFG (with Kyle Amato!)"

House. No, the right house. I didn't get that. I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh. Because I hears your lonely heart. Are there in all the secret whispers of the world? Hello and welcome to the This Head Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast with 24601 problems, but unpoton, ain't one.

Every week on this head 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 big, friendly gay, Joe Reed. I forgot to do the thing that I was going to do before we recorded, which was literally like open up a blank sheet of notebook paper and write as many BFG, what the BFG could stand for things as possible. And thank you for at least using one to hate crime me.

Well, what's crazy is he's abbreviated to the BFG, which is big, friendly giant, which are three simple, easy to understand real words. And you don't get any simple, easy to understand real words until maybe an hour into the movie. Big faggot Gary. Big faggot Gary. That's a good one. Oh, there you go. Anyone out there who wants to claim that mantle, you are free to do so. Get in the mentions.

Get in the comments telling us how you are the biggest. faggitist gayest Gary please do not get banned please do not get banned we will exalt you as you are as is fitting for you before we get too far into the bit

we have to bring in our guest y'all the host of Hawkcast what do you call like owner writer of of projects Kyle Lomato is back Hey how's it going everyone We had to have you back for a voice thing, especially since you immediately yelled at me because I didn't have you on the voice episode for category.

Our only guest from our guest from our only animated film that we've ever covered on this podcast. I don't think this is the film I had in mind. But you know what? When Chris texted me just saying like, hey, do you want to do the BFG? I actually laughed out loud at the text. And then I was just like, you know what? Yeah. Why not?

This was nobody's preferred movie in any context, in any version ever. So, yeah, that, you know, that's fine. It's weird that it was Spielberg's preferred movie. We're doing this on the week that we get a new Spielberg. Disclosure Day looks amazing. Already their reactions to it are annoying me. Yep. Because we just got this fresh reaction.

Friday had a whole article that I literally sent to like five different people being like, and I understand that like this is how the industry works nowadays, but it was like, first reactions to disclosure day are, you know, that it's a masterpiece, and Emily Blunt should be an awards contention, whatever, and I'm just like, this is not from, I don't know, we all know how the industry works. Let us just enjoy a Spielberg movie. Also, the best Spielberg movie in 20 years. Stop shitting on Lincoln.

Yeah, that was, I love that that was your reaction, where you were immediately just like, hey, Lincoln exists. Yeah, there are those things where I'm also like, I love the Fableman, so the fact that I love the Fableman, I love the Post. I love Westside story. Like, he's actually made a ton of my favorite, you know, movies of his in the last, you know, 10, 15. So, yeah. Well, and it's also, yes, that was my first complaint.

My first complaint is stop shitting on Lincoln. My second complaint is, oh, God forbid Spielberg make several movies that center on a woman. Yeah. Yeah. How dare he? Incredibly Chris File complaints. And of course, but of course I'm complaining about it because it's all men saying things like that. Anyway.

Hate him. Spielberg. Okay, so, Kyle, I'm not going to spoil. I don't want to spoil this for you, but like, I know how you're going to feel about this. Worse-looking giant in a movie. Mark Rylance as the BFG mocapped or the dude from the back rooms. Worst-looking giant. Can we, wait.

When is this coming up? We can like, I was somewhat trepidious about giving that away in my letterbox review. But yeah, I guess this is why I had to bring it up because I was like, we got to talk about this. Well, yeah. I have only known about him from, I'm seeing the movie tonight and I know about the thing, but I haven't seen what he looks like yet. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I promise you, Mark Rylands is scarier. Yeah, I believe you.

Well, yeah. I've seen the YouTube things or whatever, and I'm just like, I don't care about this. I was, I thought you were going to ask, like, seeing the Cyclops in the Odyssey trailer. and I'm just like, I think it looks fine. Oh, no, I think that's cool. Are people complaining about the Cyclops in the Odyssey trailer? I don't look up what people are saying about basically anything anymore. I just... Now that people have, like, it doesn't move me.

Planted a flag in the ground and being like, I must oppose the Odyssey because of, you know, whatever, woke. And it's just like, uh, yeah, it's just like, shut up. Stop giving gas to these people. Like, that is not a real thing. These are idiot people with social media accounts who live in their parents' basement. Stop giving gas to...

the Odyssey is woke I don't feel like anyone's heart is really in it either of like opposing it they just kind of it's like the same arguments in there and I'm always just like you're not real like you don't go have a job like yeah yeah it doesn't concern me I also barely am on Twitter at this point so I don't

see what like is being echoed around and I got confused because I went on Twitter to check some stuff and people were talking about some sort of controversy with like Uve ice cream and I'm like I don't know what this means Not of my business. No, it's being perpetuated by like the trades reporting on it all the time. Oh, yeah.

And that's all you hear about it. And I'm like, it's like, this is not real. This is not in the real world. Stop wasting your ink on it. But it gets some traffic, I guess. Yeah, the trades, I don't know. That's something in my, like, when I have my morning coffee, I'll look at variety or deadline or Hollywood reporter.

And I've noticed that more and more in the past couple years where I'm just like, this is all, like, really. It's like a rat. Yeah. I will say, like, I believe I, it tracks as true that the New York Post would be doing that genuinely because like that is what the New York Post does, which is tries to poke at people for like, they're making your movies woke. Like, they made the Little Mermaid Black. Like that's, that is their thing. So.

And you see, I completely forgot that happened. Mm-hmm. I never even watched it. No, God, no. I love myself. Speaking of horrible digital creations. Yeah. The BFG.

The BFG. Kyle, I apologize for making you watch this movie again. Joe, I apologize for making you watch this movie again. Myself. Not again. I did not see it. Oh, you didn't see this in theaters? This was my first time.

Oh, okay. So you're very fresh to this. Yeah. Can I just start with? I feel almost a little bad... doing a bad Spielberg on the week that we get a new Spielberg that we're all excited about and expect to be good. But this doesn't feel Spielberg-y in almost any way to me. It's just kind of like he wants to play with the, with like in the toy box of mocha. He's doing Robert Zemeckis cosplay in a

really odd way it feels like to me. I also though never saw Tintin. And like I wonder if it would make more sense to me if I had seen his Tintin movie. Tintin is way better than this. Yeah, Tintin is a lot more fun, but I think there is a lot of comparisons to be made there, except with Tintin, it's heightened on purpose, and here the CGI creations are just like so disgusting. But it's odd for me, because I loved this book growing up, and that book is gross and scary, and I feel like he just got rid of all of that, and the only gross stuff he kept is all the farting and how gross the snows cumbers look. But in the books, there's so much...

Yeah. In the books, they describe so often of, like, all the bad giants, the specific ways they like to eat children and how they do it, and how it sounds and the screams. And that's just not in this. The closest we get is when we learn about the BFG's like Little Buddy, who also died, but even that is done in a very different way. I don't know.

There's so much missing from this book that made it, like, compelling as a child. And this is, I'm just like, like, normal, but this also, this does feel like a recurring thing with Roll Doll specifically, with Roll Doll adaptations. I was, I don't think I read very much Roll Doll as a kid, but like, I feel like this is the thing that I hear about with regard to, like, the witches or, you know, with, I'm not entirely sure how it would, how much it applies to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. but these things where like they make a movie adaptation and people be like okay but like the original is much gnarlier and i wonder if it's what like what is the disconnect there because like clearly these books became incredibly popular and beloved because people read them as children and like they gravitated to them as children so they were not you know whatever harmed or turned off or scared away by them existing as they did.

And now you are like decades into the future and you're making these movies and you're like, oh, but like, we can't, we can't do that. We can't put that kind of stuff in a movie. And it's... When it's Spielberg and he can do whatever he wants. Well, right. But it's like you are denying the whole thing of what... It's not like that's why they were popular.

but it's just weird that there's just like there is every time with a role adaptation except for I guess maybe the the 1990 version of the witches which I recall as being fairly gnarly it still scares the shit out of children but was you know

but it's kind of more remembered as a cult thing nowadays so like maybe there is a point there that like in movie version it's two people the idea is that it's too intense. I don't know. It's just odd to me that like it keeps happening where they're like, oh, let's make a roll doll movie,

but let's not make it the role doll version of the role doll movie. Yeah, are you talking about the witches, the Zemeckis one? Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. Horrible movie. Anne Hathaway is incredible in that movie. I don't even think I would go. I mean, you are the Anne Hathaway authority now.

I can't fuck with you with Hathaway because you have, have put in all of the work. She's going for it, man. He's trying. I don't recall liking anybody in that movie, including Hathaway. She is trying, but, like, I don't remember thinking. I think people hated that movie so much that they, like, threw the baby out with a bathwater in regards to her performance. I think it's really funny and fun.

It is not, not a Melania impersonation. Honestly. Okay, but the thing about the, like, dull... the dollness of this movie. You can't read the doll. I get it. Why did nobody ever make that meme, by the way? What was wrong with people that nobody made that name? Joe is going to hell and...

Goodbye, Joe. Sorry. Kyle and I are going to the nunnery. When I try to ban books in elementary school, you can't read the doll. The thing is, I did try to read the doll during COVID. Like when we were all, you know, trying to give ourselves a bomb, give ourselves projects. doing infantilism as a bit. I tried to read The Witches because I was a doll kid.

I never got into the BFG though. So, Kyle, I'm glad you're here that you are saying that BFG was big for you. Like, Matilda was probably my favorite book throughout childhood. Can't tell you how many times I read it. I don't have my copy of Matilda. I do have my copy of Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. And I don't have my original copy of the witches. But I did try to read the witches during COVID.

And I got through like three pages of it because I was like, whoa, this is just like flagrant anti-Semitism. Oh, boy. It's rough, man. Oh, yeah. Like, yeah. That's the whole, there's that whole Broadway play happening right now. By the word, John Lithgow decided he wasn't going to be, he needed to have new problematic endeavors to. Sure.

He needs to stop giving interviews. He keeps being like, well, I did this. And like, I'm sorry about that, but hey, I'll be dead soon, so it's fine. And I'm like, John, I don't know if that's, like, helpful, but okay. Shout out to my wonderful colleague Rebecca Alter for getting that cover story, but yes. Whatever happens at the Tonys, if he makes some type of comment on the stage listener, this is being recorded before the Tonys. But wait, so without, I was just, this is quick.

The only people who actually have Trump derangement system are, what, Trump derangement syndrome, are De Niro and Lifkow, because every time Lickko was on a late night show, he's like, hey, I wrote this poem about this stinky orange man in the White House. And then the person would be like, oh, yeah, go ahead and read. I've never listened to one, so I couldn't tell you what they're actually. No, no. But they have the same problem. Or anytime they're in front of a microphone, they were like, you know what? Who sucks?

Donald Trump. And I'm like, I do agree, but we were talking about something else. Right. Wait, Chris, I was going to ask you, what is, and the both of you, honestly, what is the sweet spot age range? for reading Roald Dahl as a kid. 8 to 12, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

That's when it really hit for me. That makes sense. My favorites. I was trying to think of like, what was I reading at the time instead of that? And I was like, oh, probably the babysitters club. Yeah. Gay. Gay.

No, you're kidding. Yeah. My favorites, I believe, were BFG and the Twits. Because the Twits, I just found, like, so ghoulish. and funny of like what happens to those nasty people. And I think they end up like stuck glued to the floor doing like headstands. And they are stuck there for so long. They just shrink into nothingness.

And I was like, all right, yeah. The Twits, which got a full-ass animated Netflix movie last year and no one knows. I was going to say, you put that in the list of the document. And I was like, I don't recall that movie at all. No, whatever's going on there is not right. Anytime something, I mean, Netflix just announced the Charlie Verbalt. versus the chocolate factory where like Willy Wonka gets out of jail

after having been arrested for all the dead kids and now Charlie is like an older teen and he's fine and a joke gets worse. It's animated. Charlie's voiced by the top from a heart stopper and then Willie Wonka's voice by Tycho Atini. Oh no.

It does, that seems like it's based on a one joke premise which is Willie Wonka went to jail for killing all of those kids. Yeah, I'd say it is. That's the joke. That's a funny joke. I would watch that on that premise, but then it just got worse. You can't turn that into a movie. That's just a good... And yet,

that's all Netflix is trying to do is, like, we're kind of lucky that Steven Spielberg made this BNG movie, because if he hadn't done it, when do they get the Netflix deal with the doll estate? It's in like 2019, 2020, something like that. Because now Netflix is like, we're going to make

a doll universe of all these different things, and they've barely done it. They kind of like run Ramshot over Wes Anderson's shorts because he was like, oh yeah, I kind of thought there were going to be a movie or something, but Netflix took over and now I'm like, it's this. And they want him an Oscar that no one talks about. You'll take your Oscar

and like it. Yeah, exactly. He wasn't even there. No, he sure wasn't. But also that was supposed to be like a big deal for Netflix and they just kind of dumped all of these things with the exception of Henry Sugar. Yeah. Even if they like tinkered with how

it ultimately came to be. Because also the Matilda musical. Which people seem to like. My mother loved it. Yeah. Yeah, it was like a hit on Netflix, but it was released firmly an award season when they could have just, you know, put it at the Paris and qualified it. And they didn't.

They did not give it an awards push at all. Well, Netflix's deal is always that, like, they have their two or three awards movies. And then they're like, we're just going to, like, throw out another one or two movies at the end of December that we're not going to, really push for awards. Sure. Probably could have. The Kate Winslet movie last year. The Kate Winslet movie, the Clooney movie

with the boat, or the whatever, the rowers. That was Amazon? Was that? Yeah, it was Amazon. Oh, you're right. It did make money. You're right.

But Clooney, I thought, had another Netflix after Midnight Sky. Midnight Sky. The worst movies I watched during the pandemic. That movie's awful. I can't say I watched it. It was a tender bar Netflix? Or am I making that up?

Amazon. Amazon. Yeah. All of these fucking streamers, I swear to Christ. Yeah, yeah. Listener, we're here to talk about the BFG, aka the big friendly giant. We'll get into the plot description and all of our thoughts about this movie. We're going to have many of them.

Before we do that, Joe, would you like to hype up the Patreon? Sure. Get hyped, everybody. We've got a Patreon. We've had it for years. It's called This Had Oscar Buzz Turbulant Brilliance. It's only $5. a month, even, no, I was going to say even in a crashing economy, $5 a month is a good deal.

And it is, but I don't want to bring up the crashing economy right now. So pretend I didn't say it. We give you two full-length episodes every month. That is 50% more this had Oscar buzz for a Patreon. That's pretty goddamn good. First bonus episode every month comes on the first Friday of the month. We call it an exceptions episode. where we cover, in a similar fashion to what we do on Flagship that said Oscar Buzz,

we cover a movie that we can't cover on the flagship show, because despite the fact that it had great Oscar expectations and disappointing results, it got a nomination or two, oopsies, and thwarted us. But now we can cover movies like Tim Burton's Big Fish, or Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, or Barbara Streisans, The Mirror Has Two Faces, or House of Gucci, or Mary Queen, of Scots or, as we did earlier this month, perfection on celluloid,

the birdcage. Happy pride. Birdcage, we had so much fun. Happy pride, we spent half of that episode basically arguing. It's not gay pride if two gay guys aren't arguing about something joyful. Don't start again. I haven't listened to

this one yet. I don't think it's out. Second bonus episode of every month will be what we call an excursion, which is not about a movie specifically, but about some piece of award-sy ephemera that we, of the kind that we obsess about always, whether it's entertainment weekly fall movie previews or Hollywood Reporter roundtables or watching old random award shows, doing odd little category-specific flights of fancy like we did recently with the best original song

category. Later this month, I'm damn excited for the fact that we found on YouTube the entire 1987 Academy Awards, including, I believe, the video that I found has commercials, which, hell yeah, 1980s commercials. Oh, I love when that happens. So we're going to be talking about that entire ceremony. I haven't started watching it yet, so I can't even properly preview it for you. We'll be talking about Sheriff's Oscar win. Well, obviously we'll be talking about Shares Oscar win 100%.

It'll be good. So, I don't know why I just lost my train of thought right there, but you know what? But help me find, get the help that I need by giving us $5 a month to our Patreon. You can sign up for This Had Oscar Buzz. Turbulent Brilliance at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Kyle, I don't believe projects had launched when you were on for the Good Dinosaur. Oh, no. Or it had like just launched.

No, Good Dinosaur was almost five years ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago. It was like fall 2021. We were hardly out of the pandemic. I wasn't even in my last New York apartment. I was in my second last New York apartment. Which is why I brought it up a few times where I'm like, I have a couple things I would love to cover if you want to do this.

I'm bad at that. You have to hit me over the head with a club for me to pick up on it. I'm happy to be here, but I have wanted to do a Bell episode for a long time at this point. Oh, God, Bell. What, do you go about the Raz Bell? No, the anime bell. the one that almost got nominated and stuff. I was like, that actually had anime buzz.

You guys have never done anime. We've never done anime. This would be a good one to do because I liked that movie a lot and it felt like Hosoda was ready to like start getting his nomination every once in a while and then it just didn't happen. And then his last movie, Scarlett,

which just came out, also didn't get nominated. But that movie's not like... Scarlet is weird. Skyla was one of those movies where I was like... Bell's cool. I'm like, I'm going to get ahead of this. Like, this is going to be the movie that everybody's going to be like, where did this movie come from out of the festivals,

whatever? And I was never able to get into a screening of it. And I was like, oh, my God, this is going to completely, like, screw me up. I had such great plans. And then it, like, totally fizzled. Yeah. Well, that movie is so strange. I liked it more than I expected to, to, just because the CGI is really fussy.

But I think Bell was the best that that man's going to get. And then he'll keep making stuff. But I'm like, I don't think you're able to do it again. Yeah. Well, if you are, if you're listening to this and you are our friend and a former guest of the show, allow Kyle's experience to make you feel that you are in good company and that it's just us. It is not even my friend I talk to every day. I can't pick up on the.

It's totally fine. And then, of course, the thing that I message you about is like, we're doing the BFG. And I was just like, you know what? Why not? Because I actually watched it for the first time in the very room I'm sitting in. It was right after I moved into this apartment like nine years ago. In the state you were born and raised in? That's crazy.

Actually, yes. Very much so. You know who has more skills and experience to be the governor of the state they were born and raised in than Ella McKay? Disgraced former governor, Al-Macon. Kyle Omano. I was going to say the BFG? Where are you going with this? All of us are our more equipped governor, potential governor of the state we were born and raised in.

I feel so bad for El-M-K. She really got railroaded over there. It really did, though. Like, let's be honest. Oh, I can't wait to do an L.O. McKay. We need to do, like, a marathon. When we do L.M.K., Joe, it needs to be like a marathon. It should be like a call-in.

You've talked about doing this format of episode before. We're going to have to do it for something. We need to, it needs to be, like, Kornacki performance art. Honestly. It needs to be a telethon. It needs to be election night coverage. Wow. Wow.

I agree. I made my parents go see that with me for my birthday. Like, I had had dinner with my friends on my actual birthday, and then that weekend, my mom was like, what do you want to do? And I was like, Diane, we're seeing Ella McKay. And I made them do the Ella McKay challenge at the poster. I don't remember this. I remember this. I double featured it with Avatar Fire and Ash for the most bizarre evening. Well, you had to see El-Makee opposite something realistic, you know, something grounded in realism.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I only started projects last year. Like early day, you went through that filmography fast. Yeah, I mean, I was very motivated because I love... It feels like it's always been here. Exactly, thank you. It's been really fun.

It's such a great, like, exercise for myself. And I just put out that big old list of 100 underseen movies. So I wanted to bring this up. Yeah. I have been so happy with people reaching out to me, being like, oh, I've only seen like six of these, and I want to watch this on. I was like, that's great. And then I'm always like, we're six.

And it's been different for everyone. Yeah. That's got to be satisfying. Yeah. Sonia's husband reached out. And he's like, oh, yeah. Like, I'm so glad someone else likes to return to soul. And I was like, yeah, exactly.

Return to Soul rule. That's a great movie. But that was so much fun to put together. And I had been working on that for a while just like here and there. So it was nice to finally put it out. It is a fun list. I mean, we who love a list. That was actually a great list.

And right at the top of the list was Wu. That's why you texted me about Wu. I know. I texted multiple people. I was like, girl, that's woo. It's woo. It's just on YouTube. You can just watch Woo on YouTube. I love when a movie is just like just fully available on YouTube.

That's great. Because when that happens, it's because it's not available anywhere else and people sneak it on there. But somehow like, you know, shout out to our early episode on A Love Song for Bobby Long, which we set. Yes. And we learn the hard way before we lock in a movie. We need to see that it's available. And then we were like, oh, shit, the full movie is on YouTube. Weirder thing that John Travolta put on his head, his wig from a love song for Bobby Long or the beret at Cannes this year.

I think he looks legit as fuck in his berets. Like, I think this is really, totally for real for a minute. It's the best press he's had in forever, the berets. Like, it was a great decision. He finally found a look for his giant fucking head, and I just think it's... Yes. I think he looks cute. Oh, what a sweetie.

It makes me not think about everything that's ever happening. Everything else about John Travolta. Yeah, exactly. And everybody's dogging on the pose, and I'm like, come on, you guys. That's a perfectly normal pose from this specific person. I don't think it's so much dogging, so much is just like, we're all having fun with John Travolta for the first time in a while, and I'm very happy about that. He's living theatrically authentically. He also seems to be decently in on the joke about it.

Like, he knows that, like, people are like, you know, having a chuffle. He has a sense of humor about it, which is just like, good for you, John Travolta. And his reasoning was just like, when I look at these pictures, I want to know. Beret means that's when I was there for my film that I directed. Yeah. Yeah. That couldn't make sense to me. Couldn't pay me to see this movie.

This 61-minute movie, which apparently is like him reading the book. Like the majority of it is a visual audio book. That's what I read. Maybe it was a joke that I didn't pick up on as a joke. I would believe it. What has stunned me is to learn that Lights Camera Jackson didn't love it. I really thought he was going to do this number one movie. Wow.

First of all, fucking crazy Lights Camera Jackson goes to Cannes. Yeah. I just, I was like, he might have just watched it on Apple TV Plus this weekend. I don't know. Oh, is it already up, okay. I don't think that little ghoul is heading over there, but, you know. It is really funny to imagine LCJ going and having to sit through like fucking, I don't know, Minotaur or something. He's sitting through some, like,

but then again, like the LCJ real, like that's why it's like the peak of the art form. He'll be like, uh, Toy Story 5, uh, sinners. And then he'll say something like really esoteric and weird.

It's like, can't imagine you sitting through that movie, my man. Yeah. And then his number one movie of the year will be Eileen. Yeah. He's like 27. now, though, right?

Like, he's far beyond the time where it's, it's, like, cute that he's doing these things. Oh, yeah. No, he, I don't like, there's a sense of darkness I get from him that's very upsetting. Always. The older he gets, the closer he feels to Willie M. H. Macy and Magnolia, where I'm like, this is just not going to be. Yes. L.C.J is Quiz Kid Donnie. Yeah.

It just sets the thing. That's all I see when I see him, and I'm just like, oh. Yeah. It's going to be, it's a bleak future we're all projecting. Yeah. Honestly, I don't think. I think LCJ is a little bit more respectable than some people who behave exactly the same way at reputable outlets. So throw it down.

Get their ass. Kyle, we can't end the conversation about projects without talking about Toy Story 5. I know that is not this week. It is the coming week. It's very soon. And I'll say a good friend of my reached out last night and was like, am I expected to care about Toy Story 5? I'm like, but we're in our 30s. So no.

And I was like, I don't care if you go see it or not. I have heard enough details that have me like, okay, I see what they're trying to do here and I'm willing to hear them out. I don't think it's going to be bad, but I do see it. I don't think it's going to make as much money. I think it's going to not get to a billion worldwide. That's what we had thought about Inside Out too. No, I know. You had to, that was always going to be enormous.

That was aimed squarely at Disney adults in a way that is. That is very true. Pernicious. With Toy Story 5, I think that we've had about, what, 15, 16 years now of people being like, Toy Story 3 is the best ending of a trilogy ever. And now we're two movies outside of a trilogy. And I do really like Toy Story 4. I think there's a lot of good stuff in there for a movie that is held together with scotch tape,

where it is like the RV, a carnival, an antique store, Bo Peep, Forky, all these things happening at once where I'm like, I don't understand how this has a through line, but I thought it worked for. Focusing just on... Bo Peep as Furiosa. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The thing about Toy Story 4 is I could not have been more pre-like anti-presold for a movie. I was just like, this.

We've got, you know, this is too much. Let the franchise, you know, end when it was supposed to end. And then they ended up liking it quite a bit. And so now I'm like, well, no, I can't do the same thing with Toy Story 5. And then, as I've talked about on this podcast before, like, my nephew so now into the Toy Story story stuff. And I'm like, okay, well, this gives me hope that like, you know, there's always, you know, a new generation to, you know, to replenish the fields or whatever. Absolutely. That being said, so like my favorite thing that has happened in the last three months is watching my nephew

watch the trailer for Toy Story 5, which he does every time he's over and sing, you've got a friend in me when it prompts in the trailer. And I went to see sheep detectives in the middle of the two very buzzy horror movies that I saw yesterday. And I was expecting, I will say, the crowd at sheep detectives was a lot less well behaved than the crowd at backrooms. And that was not what I was expecting. And I do mean from like the adults in the room. Was your audience also actively turning against backrooms as it was happening? No, my audience was very pro.

Our audience food. We had a very, I don't know who your audience was, but like, no, my audience was very pro-backer. Like, tonight it's like a cultural exploration for me and a couple of my friends where I'm like, I want to see the crowd for this. I was very, I came away from backroom's feeling weirdly optimistic about like the kids today, and I was not expecting that either. So I'm very well-being. Yeah, I don't feel bad about the kids today. I'm a little confused how this movie is so huge when, very few people seem to be

enthusiastically positive about it. Well, that happened with Five Nights of Freddy as well. Yeah. I think, I don't know, I've never seen Five Nights and Fridays, but I thought back, I'm the pro, I am the pro backrooms person of this one, but anyway, about sheep detectives. We got the Toy Story 5 trailer

before Sheep Detective, and there's a bunch of kids, obviously, in the audience for that. That one, by the way, sheep detectives was packing him in still yesterday, like that. Hell yeah. It's still doing very well. And the kids, in the room, by my observation

at least, maybe they were like wrapped into like silence or whatever but like there was no apparent buzz in the room for that. And so I was like, oh, this is maybe. I've had similar experiences like it was playing in front of Devil Wars Prada too. And there wasn't

a ton of reaction. Oh my God, this is a tangent inside a tangent. When I saw Devil Wars Prada 2, we saw it with my friend who's breastfeeding so we had to time it between like pumps. It worked out great. But we saw it in fucking brain tree. which is like South Shore, like, closest to her house. And we got there, and there was, like, a gay Threple of, like, 40-somethings

that were sitting a couple rows in front of us, having the time of their lives. But I was like, yeah, that's who this movie is for. Yeah. It was great. Okay. You mentioned, though, about, like, Inside Out 2 being, like, for Disney adults. Yeah. What is, in your experience, because obviously I defer to you with, like, the anime and stuff,

what is that alchemy these days in terms of, like, to be a successful anime animated movie. How much do you have to position it towards the adults versus the children? For the sequels, you basically are aiming

in the sequels to people my age. Okay. Inside Out 2 is for women my age who got their period at camp and had to deal with that. That's what those movies are for. They're like, this is my story.

And I'm like, I believe you, but Rory, Riley is the lead of Inside Out 2. Right. He's very boring because if she has a personality, that whole movie explodes because it's all metaphor. Right. This has always been my thing with both of the Inside Out movies,

especially the second one, though, yeah. Yeah, where I'm just like, oh, my God, is this... Like, I remember sitting down with my friend and talking about before two came out because we covered it for Hawkcast because Maya is in as anxiety, and I think she's very good. She's good.

She's good. Anytime that movie comes up, and specifically her as anxiety, I remember the tweet that said, anxiety looks like it would taste good cooked in an air fryer. One of the best tweets ever. But I just remember turning to my friend, I'm like, I have trouble with Inside Out. And I looked at my friend, I was just like, is it real?

And he was like, what do you mean? I'm like, is it happening? Like, are they, do they exist? And it's just like, I don't know. So it's easier for me to get behind Toy Story with their rules. The rules of the Toy Story world makes sense to me. Yes. Yeah.

Because. No, I went through an entire crisis after Inside Out, too, just being, like, metaphor collapse because, like, it, it... Like, elemental. Yes. Well, Elemental's horrible. The failure of Elemental also feels like it's more... I can explain that a lot more cleanly, which is just like, is he water or is he of what, like, whatever, like, that to me... Well, whatever.

I interviewed a Pixar animator for that, and I literally, I was like, where is the core? How much of him do you strip away before he's dead? And I do really say it like that, but... No, but, like, yes. But your original question of, like, what makes an animated movie sing? Well, sorry. Sing people like... It has to be in the sing franchise.

Well, yeah, the sing movies work because they just do covers of songs everyone like sung by pace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That works for me. Illumination works because they make the most middle of the road, uninteresting, entertaining enough movies. I just was on my friend's podcast, Marvelous, to discuss the Mario Bros. I knew it was never going to be good.

My nephew was also super into now as Mario. Good. I'm glad that he chose it. But they're just like, yeah, it's colorful, like, whatever. And then, so that's their strategy. DreamWorks, I don't know how DreamWorks is still around. I thought they were used to have parts years ago.

I feel bad because every once in a while, they'll do a good movie. But if you think about like Puss and Boots, that was a Shrek spin-off sequel, and everyone like that, because it had a specific look, like, looking more Spider-Verse. It looked very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the key...

I think... I think Jama... Jama... What is the name? Jomalini is really good in that movie. Yeah. Jack. Little Jack Horner. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

Yes. But, yeah, there's a lot going on in the movie. So I feel like the few ways you do it is, like, legacy sequel. Well, not even legacy, because they keep making these things. Like, there's three cars movies. Yeah. Looks like Spiderverse. Where there's, like, a little hit to it.

Music, K-pop Demon Hunters. and then like video game yeah we've only had the mario movies of that we don't know how like an animated star fox movie would go poorly is the answer poorly right right i'm shocked that they've never i mean i'm sure that whoever's the rights holders for it are keeping it very tightly controlled but like i'm shocked that there hasn't been an attempt at a big screen legend of zelda anything it's coming it comes out next

year it's coming oh is that true okay it's line action And stars, here's what they're doing. They got Wes Ball who did, like, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which is basically a Breath of the Wild movie already. And the Maze Runner movies, right? Yeah, but those don't matter. You wouldn't have to survive in the scorch or whatever he says. They almost killed.

Poor Dylan. Yeah, poor Dylan. I know. So, Wes Ball's directing. They cast two unknowns as Lincoln Zelda. I'm like, okay, great. The costume looks like Zelda, but not like in a cosplay-ish way. And they filmed it in the woods.

And I'm just like, okay, those are all things that you kind of needed. It's not like it's going to be like the Dungeons & Dragons movie, which was not for me, but I was happy for the people that it was for them. I thought it was perfectly cute, but yeah, Disney adults, they just want to be like held a bit. And that's what these movies are. So I'm interested with Toy Story 5, bringing in an iPad does feel like an actual evolution. But it feels like it's 15 years too late to do a Toy Story movie that does. question is what if iPad? It's about 2013,

2014 in the Toy Story universe because of the timeline of it. So it doesn't... No, I know. It is late. And that's why I'm like, the ending kind of can't be like, they can't throw into the road and kill her. Like, the ending is going to be like, well, we have to learn to exist with tech. And I'm like, well, that's sad.

I don't want to think about that when my movie with my toys were my friends. Well, I also feel like, though, if you are making a movie in which the whole thing is learning to live with tech or whatever, you couldn't make the tablet movie until you had gotten to a point

where the people who raised their children with tablets, like, got past it, got through it. And now can feel like, I did it the right way. You know what I mean? There are a lot of knowing laughter at some of the stuff Bonnie does.

This is sort of what I'm getting at. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. I think it's, my story is definitely pitched towards the older people at this point. Like, who saw the first one when I was born. Whereas you couldn't make Toy Story about like trying to troubleshoot

your child's YouTube viewing so that he doesn't accidentally watch Huggy Muggy and you know, fucking scare the shit out of everybody. I don't know. It's so frustrating for me that the lessons of the Toy Story movies are like, it's okay to die, move on, you're going to be okay,

and then they just keep making more of them. Yeah, no, I know. But like making this, the stuff I know about this one where I can tell you, guys in spoilers later, but knowing that it's very Jesse focus, I think that's Mark, she's barely in four, making it

like Woody coming back and being like a little different because he's outside of the room now. He's not an owned toy. He's old, he's bald, he's whatever, yeah, yeah. Bald stuff is like really good. It's a good joke in the trailer, yeah, exactly. And then like, just talking about tech in this way

where it's like, how existential is it for these sentient toys? Or like, I don't know. I think there's enough in there that I could get behind it. We'll see. I'm seeing it with my mother. That's what matters. And I'm like, we'll talk about it on projects when it happens.

Yeah. Nice. You know. And Joe, hopefully you take your nephew to see it. I've already made my sister confirm that I can go with them and they go to see. Great. Awesome. Good, good, good, good.

Just like lock the day down the whole time. Yeah, exactly. I do want to bring it back to the question that you pose, Joe, because it is a question I kind of want to sit down everyone involved with the BFG and ask them like inches from their face because watching this movie I really don't know who it's for and I think one of the like things that people have shit on in recent years but I think is actually really great about Spielberg movies is at the end of the day all of his movies are at the very least for him and this does not feel that way. And I think maybe

it's the only time I've ever felt that watching a Spielberg movie. Yeah. Because even... I'm incredibly puzzled watching this movie and being like, this doesn't fit. First of all, I can't make it fit with anything else in his career, which is even like, even E.T. because of the Melissa Matheson connection. And I want to talk about Melissa Matheson a little bit later.

Yep. But like, it doesn't, it's not even a good fit with E.T. It really, it really... he isn't. And so I'm with Spielberg because so much of the Spielberg conversation is like

really, you know, there are experts, people, you know, know his filmography backwards and forwards. He's one of the most like known filmmakers

that we have, if not like the most known one. And so so much of anything that he makes we can make sense of, you know, ready player one, we,

you know, we knew immediately that this was, you know, Spielberg reckoning with his, you know, a contribution to the content industrial complex or whatever. And like, we knew what the fableman's was, like months, you know,

ahead of time or whatever. Right. Even, like, the Post was just like, ah, this is his reaction to Trump getting elected and whatever. And with the BFG, it's so hard to parse why he would make it on a, like, meta level. And then you watch the movie, sort of, like,

hoping that it's going to immer to you, and it's just like, no, and it really does seem like a Zemeckis movie. And I wonder if it was like, I can't imagine Steven Spielberg feeling competitive with somebody like Robert Zemeckis, that he would be like, I've seen too many of Robert Zemeckis's ugly-ass mocap movies. I'm going to have to show this motherfucker how it's done, because, like, I just can't imagine that that would have been a sufficient motivation for Steven Spielberg, who, like, cast aside 200 other projects whenever he decides to actually make a movie.

So it's... Yeah, that's the other thing. You can believe this as one of those movies Spielberg never made. That was just like one of the 20 things that could very possibly be his next movie. It just never gets me. It makes way more sense as that than something that actually happened. I kind of wonder, given where it's placed in his filmography. It's five years removed from 10.

But between then, you have Warhorse, Lincoln, and Bridge of Spies. And I wonder if it's still this trying to kind of, you know, he's always been in and out of movies that were targeted towards families. And even Tintin felt like it didn't connect with children. It was like adults going to see that movie. And Warhorse, they tried to make it like kind of family-friendly, like to the point where it's like, are they making a Christian? movie in some of the advertising for Warhorse. Right. And then it's like, it's like movies that were received as kind of vegetables for adults

in Lincoln and Bird of Spies. And I kind of wonder if that is the reason why, you know, he's bouncing out his career. But, yeah, I have a couple theories when I was looking at. I was like, you know, there's something about this movie where I was like, I can see him having tried to make it for a long time. And I was looking and it's like, yeah, he tried to make it in the 90s with Robin Williams. as the BFG. And I was like, that makes perfect sense to me.

It didn't work because improvising did not gel with the BFG's stupid language. The language, yes, which is a fascinating thing. And it's one of those things where you wonder how long they worked at that because... Well, not that long. I was going to say, like, maybe, like, give Robin Williams some time to try and figure out.

Or maybe Robin Williams was, like, after a couple go-rounds, it's just like, this is not fun for me. I don't want to do this. Maybe it's in a reaction after Robin Williams passed away, he was like reminiscing about different products they could have done and he just got Mark Rylance and Oscar.

And he's like, fuck it, what if we do the goddamn BFG? We're at a point with technology where we can do it, make it look like this, a lot of tactile, like holding the kid, putting her in a big bowl and stuff. And then it just looks really bad. I don't know. Did it have like a really quick turnaround or something? Did he? Because I remember he made the post when he was waiting for post production to be finished

on Ready Player 1. Because he filmed that one first, and then shot at the post really short. Did the BFG, like, film in 2015 and then just immediately come out summer 2016? Is that what happened? I don't know. It just feels like it happened so fast. Principal photography, it says, began in March of 2015. See, that's crazy for a movie that mostly takes place in giant country, which is not real.

Yeah. Yes. But they were doing mocap, so they were filming on sound stages. I know, I know I can tell. I also wonder, and this is complete, you know, speculation or whatever, but whether

it was something that, like, he wanted, a project he wanted, wanted to work on with Melissa Matheson before she died. Like, if she dies. She passes away at the end of 2015. November of 2015, right. Yeah, I hadn't realized that she had written in and I felt bad. I was just like, oh, she got handed, like,

a turd. Yeah. Yeah. she's an incredibly interesting person to, you know, look into in terms of her career that she, like, grew up in L.A. Her family was friends with the Coppola's. She, like, babysat for Francis's kids and then worked as his assistant on The Godfather, too, and then, like, had a years-long affair with him through. Like, being, like, Francis Ford Coppola's essentially... Gumma. during the apocalypse now shooting

has to be a real experience. Like, I have to imagine. Like, that is some chocking up some life experience right there. And then she goes and writes, you know, one of the most beloved movies of all time. The greatest family film of all time, potentially. That's not the Wizard of Oz.

Yeah. There's one line in her Wikipedia page, and I think it's just a quirk of how this person wrote it but it says she wrote the script for E.T. It was based on a story written by John Sales that Spielberg provided to Matheson during the filming of Raiders of Lost Ark.

Spielberg attributes the line E.T. Phone home to Matheson. Like, bitch, she wrote the screenplay. Like, Spiel, thank you. And you read the source material and it's like, it's not that condescending from Spielberg. He's just like relaying an anecdote about like,

you know, collaborating with her or whatever, but it's just like, it's just like Spielberg attributes the line E.T. phone home to Madison as if it's like, you know, a special credit reserve just like, his name is not on that screenplay hers is. Like, fuck off. And that's what frustrates me about this movie

where, like, Steven Spielberg is the man that killed E.T. and dropped him in a puddle. Right. You can't like have any of the shown or implied violence of these evil giants. Like, most of we do is see them like sleep and bully the BFG, which I also, I'm not happy about

that either. But like, they're called like the the blood bottler and stuff. And right, they don't, they, you don't see them do anything. Well, and it's like, and it's implied. So it's just like, it's not like we are, you know, yeah, it's, it's odd. It's, it makes it hard to invest in the story, too, when these other giants are just sort of this like, you do, it is odd that they give them all these specific names or whatever. And they, then they just sort of always behave as this herd.

Yeah, essentially. It's just like they're not different. We haven't done the 60 second plot description. I was going to say, I want to pivot us towards it before we get to the hour mark of this episode. But I do have to say, we'll get into this on the other side of the plot description. It's also hard to invest in the giants when you are fed nothing but nonsense language. Like to the point where I'm like, this is not a formulated phrase that I, can follow. You know, we've seen plenty of movies where there's like a stylized language to

mythical creatures of some kind and we can still follow it. Which makes Rylance kind of a perfect choice for it because like, he's a nonsense actor. Well, he's also just like he's done, you know, Shakespeare. He's done like all these like very like, you know, language heavy theatrical stuff or whatever. And so, um, and like accents and whatever. It's just like he's tech, you know, technically trained to do this kind of thing. And I imagine that, like, coming off of not working with Robin Williams, I imagine, maybe that's why Spielberg did it. He's finally found the actor who all of these years, he was like, somebody who can, like,

tackle this language that is so, you know, that was so notoriously difficult for us. I think that's the most we can say. Like, I feel there's a very big difference between reading how the BFG speaks and hearing it in the movie. Absolutely. So when your kid, reading the book, it's fun to pronounce the. weird words either to yourself or reading it with your parents. And in this, you're just sitting there or often being like, oh, snows crumbers and the

queenie. And I'm just like, shut the fuck up. Oh, my God. Right. Exactly. Because, like, this is, this goes back to the question, Joe asked. And I'm like, I want to ask everybody involved with this movie, that question. Because who is this movie for?

It does not feel like the type of thing that, you know, like a Pixar as, you know, an example, where the adults are going to get something out of it separate from the kids, but they're both can enjoy it because this movie is also seemingly not for children at all. I would challenge anybody to be like, show me a child that loves this movie. It's so boring. That's my big problem. I mean, it wakes sense that we're only now getting to the 60-second plot description because the plot of this movie doesn't start until like 15 minutes in.

Yeah. Like, well, I'm, I'm about to just describe this in 60 seconds. Yeah. All right. Let's do the table setting then. Listener, we are here talking about the BFG, directed. by Stephen Spielberg, heard of him, written by Melissa Matheson,

adapted from Rolltall's children novel, starring Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, we'll get into it, Penelope Wilton, Jermaine Clement, Rebecca Hall, free her. I would never thought that I would think free her

about Rebecca Hall in a Spielberg. Two hours max that she spent filming this movie. Generous, generous. You can't finish Peter Hoogar's day. in the time that Rebecca Hall spent on set in this movie. Steve, cast her again.

Give her something to do. Rafe Spall and Bill Hader, the movie premiered out of competition at Cannes. I thought about that, yeah. You know one thing I am certain about the reception of this movie? I am positive French people loved this. I could see it. The French liked this.

I don't know. The French liked this. They do like farts. I don't mean to shade you French garries, but the French probably liked this movie. The movie opened wide, July 1st, 2016. Fourth of July weekend, go see this movie. This Fourth of July weekend is bananas.

Bananas loco. Third weekend of Finding Dory in number one, not surprising. But then the rest of it is movies that do not exist. It definitely made way more money than you expected. In second place, the Legend of Tarzan. Alexander Scars Garden is Tarzan. Margot Robbie is Jane. Legend of Tarzan, great Cinematrix movie.

Third place, the purge election year. Not with someone else's eyeballs would I watch that? Oh, is that the one with Juliette from Lost? Yep. Oh, God, I love her so much. I love her, but I can't do that. And then in fourth place, the BFG, I would not want to have worked in the Spielberg offices that his movie opened in fourth place. In fourth place, and third of three new movies, yeah.

Yeah. And then in fifth place, it gets worse. Independence Day resurgence. You look at this top five, though. The only movie that in any way is meeting its moment is the purge election year, where, like, finding Dory is the like, Ellen did. generous, you know, family-friendly movie, like, minutes before it would all come tumbling down for Ellen. Legend of Tarzan, as you say, weirdly, like, on a star level should be ahead of its time,

and yet nobody remembers it. Nobody saw it. FG, we're talking about it. Independence Day Resurgence was just, you know, flopperuni on all levels. And the purge election year was the only one who's just like, guess what's coming, folks. And of those five movies, the one that made the least. amount of money is the Spielberg movie. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

All right. Let's get into this plot description. I was just going to say, I think the purge election year is one of the movies I saw with the man who took my virginity. Well. Sounds about right. Yes. Love was in the air. That was that year. That was that year. Stressful. Love was in the air. Yeah. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't.

Well, I mean, it was the purge election year that did it. God. No, I know. I actually officially lost my virginity. after a screening of 10 Cloverfield Lane. Wow. Okay, that's a great movie, though. Yeah. I mean, I had done hand stuff before then, but that was like a full, like...

Sure. Sure. If you lose your virginity during the Purge election year, though, it doesn't count because it's, you know, all... No rules. Yeah, all rules have been suspended. You know there's a comedy coming out this year that it is the Purge for sex. Yeah, it's the Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro.

whatever thing. That trailer also played in front of Demer Wars Prada, too. And when they were revealed, it's like, oh, you're not allowed to have sex. Oh, it's only one night a year. My friend turned around and was like, what the fuck? And I was like, I'm sorry. I didn't do this. She was like so aghast.

It was so fun. But we should do it. I encourage for all different types of activities. We should. In the meanwhile, Kyle, you are charged with doing a 60-second plot description for the BFG. I think this might be one of those circumstances where it could happen for real. Are you ready? I am ready.

All right, then your 60-second plot description for the BFG starts now. There are giants in the sky. No. There are all terrible giants in the sky. I don't know the rest of the lyrics really, but yeah. So Sophie is an orphan who lives at the orphanage. It's written on that on the letters. And she likes to stay up in the middle of the night and listen for things.

And during the witching hour, which she says is 3 a.m., she spots someone. and the person spots her back because he has big giant ears and can hear her. So he is a giant. 30 seconds. He snapses her up. Oh my God already. Jesus. He snatches her up, takes her to giant country, says like, oh, you got to stay here now because you found out

about me and people can't find out about me. He is a vegetarian giant. He has a bunch of giants that bully him. Sophie says, you can't keep living like this BFG, big friendly giant, which is what she calls him a child who was eaten, named him that. Ten seconds. So they appeal to the queen. The queen do a mill. military raid on giant country, throw away the bad giants, and then everyone lives happily ever after.

Yes. 59 seconds. You did it. Wow. Well done. This movie does suddenly become about British imperialism. When we hit the 30-second mark and we were still in the orphanage, I was concerned. No, I got there. You got there.

Nothing happens in this movie. It's all like set dressing. It's all... We don't even see the bad giants until about 40 minutes in. Uh-huh. It's all like caricatures. whimsy, but the character whimsy is annoying. It's not

what Spielberg is good at. It doesn't even feel like a Spielberg movie because like every Spielberg movie, I think even his less well-regarded movies have like a core of emotion, have like an emotional through

line that he is very good at least telling you what that is. Even something like Crystal Skull. has that. Though I will say, watching this movie, I was like, I maybe was unfair to, like, there's maybe stuff going on in Crystal Skull. It made me curious to watch Crystal Skull and be like, is it that bad because I can't imagine it being as bad as the BFG? Can I tell you my favorite, fun? Can I tell you my favorite part of BFG and the part that made me think, like, oh, maybe there is going to be something here because it happens early on?

The farts, all the farts? No, not the farts. Um, when he's, when the giant is making his way through the city, he's like, he's taken her, he's put her in his, you know, sack or whatever, and he's trying to get out of the city and, like, keeps, like, hiding in shadows

and, like, you know, putting the cloak over himself and, like, hiding in place. Because you're like, you know, how can these giants move through the city, whatever? I thought that was creative and kind of nimble and kind of just like, oh, this is, I'm fascinated by watching this giant move through the city.

And there's nothing as the movie gets to its more fantastical environs, it doesn't maintain that sense of, like, creativity or anything like that at all. Yeah, the transport, I think you're completely correct. Like, the way he

transports himself across the sky off these, like, little islands to get to giant country is way more fun to look at than anything else that ever happens where we were just sitting in some dumb giant's house. Yeah. I also did think when he was taking her out of the orphanage of we've all seen, I imagine, Mickey's Christmas Carol.

Of course. Amazing. Incredible. One of the best of the form. Where he also like turns a street lamp into a flashlight and is like lifting the top off of houses and looking into, you know, where he's looking. I was just like, uh, it made me wish I was watching that. Instead. Um, but

yeah. Also, I was wilded out to find out that this movie was said in contemporary times when we get to the queen and it's like, oh, it's like the queen, the queen. And like the bee feeders all have like semi-automatic weapons and whatever. It's just like, you are taking these out of. She says, Nancy, she says, Nancy, get Ronnie on the phone. I'm like, oh, so it's the 80s. Oh, is it supposed to be the 80s? It's the 80s apparently.

Those are very modern semi-automatic weapons. I know. She did not look like... Nancy... Yeah. Nancy, get Ronnie on the phone. Like, I totally didn't even catch that. I will also say...

Penelope Wilton. Penelope Wilton, we love. Penelope Wilson. We'll be using this in movies categories for Spielberg actors. Yes. P. Penelope Wilson. Yeah, totally. As bad...

Okay, the design of the Giants and the CGI in this movie, I think, is simultaneously. awful and really, really impressive because you get all of that, like, facial detail, you know, as close to, like, a photo real giant as you can have. But it also is just, like, hideous to look at. I do think the live action sequences somehow look worse. It's the only thing Spielberg has ever made that looks like a Netflix movie. It looks like something straight out of stop that train. Certainly once they get to Buckingham Palace or wherever the hell, like, yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Because the most Spielberg thing I can think about it is the way the camera moves in this movie, because that's his favorite thing. And I think in the sequences that are more like the Tintin movie, where we're watching the giant skulk about, or even in his house where he's like hiding Sophie from the other giants and, like, to put it in a bowl and stuff, the camera never stops, like moving. When they're in Buckingham Palace, it looks like a Lipton commercial. Like, it's just like it's dead.

Yeah. I want to bring up the mocap thing, though, because I, I realize what I sound like when I say this. I sound like the most sort of like fashionably luddy, like film bro possible where it's just like, I am not interested in mocap. Like respect to Andy Circus and everything that he's done, and of course I love the Lord of the Rings movies and Gallum and whatever,

but like I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting out of the, whole concept of doing like mocap characters. It only makes sense to me, yeah. Never like them. I never get what I'm supposed to be getting out of them, I don't think. It only makes sense with me in like Avatar, and Galam. Yeah, well, Ghalem is in service of the story,

and he works there, and it's really well done. Like, I always think about when he has, when they tie him up and they have him on a leash, and he's like writhing around being held down by Sam and like splashing in a puddle, I just think there's nothing that has ever looked better in mocap than that. It looks, it's very tangible. It's incredibly like, oh, Ghalm is disgusting and he's real.

I hate that. And here, I'm like, oh, I guess they're real. But whenever Sophie is in front of them, it looks like she's being held up by like the Pixar lamp, where you can see the pixels in a way that they're so sharp that it makes them look less real, even though they're more real. It like hurts my head to think about, like the type of bad they look. And it's just like, is this purely, am I watching a demo? Am I watching something that just feels like somebody tinkering with the tools to, you know, see what they can do with it rather than something that feels strictly necessary?

Like, you know, obviously we're dealing with source material, which is giants and whatever. And, you know, you have to do something to convey giants that, you know, is a feisty in some way. but I just, I always feel like the juice is so rarely worth the squeeze. And when it comes, and when you think about those like Zemeckis movies and whatever, it is like actively horrifying. And this feels much, much closer to that end than it does to like Caesar in the planet of the apes movies, which again, I appreciate the, you know, the accomplishment. And yet I would nine times out of ten, just like,

even though I like those movies well enough, would rather be watching something else. So, I don't know. I'm not special for this. Here did a lot to make me a Zemeckis apologist. And it's so funny that that movie worked on. What a sentence. What a sentence to hear said out loud.

I mean, you guys know that you both know. I know. You both received my text messages when I was, like, crawling out of the theater, sobbing at here. That movie works on me? Whatever. I don't, I can't imagine a person that. the, I mean, maybe I'm being a jerk here.

If you love this movie, I apologize. But, like, I can't imagine this movie working on anyone because it's, again, like, all of those bad visuals, I think, really kind of only underscore how empty the, like, story is, how empty the, like, emotional side of this movie is. It feels like the only impersonal movie Steven Spielberg has ever made. Like, I see no connection personally for him for this movie. No one fucking saw this movie, right? Like, that didn't happen. It made $55 million. What's crazy is that this is like 74 on Rotten Tomatoes.

That's so strange. Which is low for Spielberg. Yeah, I know. It just feels like people were probably giving it a free pass. And I mean, I guess if you're also seeing Independence Day resurgence at the same time, the BFG seems, you know, inoffensive. It seemed like, just even from skimming, it seemed like it was a lot of, like, you know, you know, this movie may have its problems, but at least it's, X, Y, and Z, at least it's, you know, not a franchise, at least it's not a, blah, blah, you know, that kind of a thing. The, like, the low bar that we are clearing by not being, you know, I don't, I don't even know, Joker 5 or whatever, you know, so.

Yeah. Or, you know, another Tarzan movie no one asked for and didn't like. summer 2016 was also I think the only thing that was happening was people being mad about a woman Ghostbusters like I feel like that's the only thing Oh true yeah yeah yeah yeah But that movie didn't come out until like late July

I think so Yeah that makes sense Those that I just feel like that was the only movie thing Happening in summer granted this was also the first summer I lived on my own well I have roommates obviously But when I wasn't either in school or at my parents' house So I was just kind of experiencing the world of myself, seeing the purge election year

with a man who didn't like me, all these things, but I didn't see the BFG. I wasn't in the point in my life yet where I'm like, no, I should do that because I like Steven Spielberg. I was just like, I'm not doing that. Starting in May of 2016, here are your number one movies for every weekend. Captain America Civil War for two weekends.

Didn't see in theaters. The Angry Birds movie. Oh, boy. Ex-Men apocalypse for Memorial Day weekend. Didn't see. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles out of the shadows. Absolutely not. The Conjuring 2.

Then it's one, two, three weekends of Finding Dory. Which I did obviously see in theaters. Yeah. Two weekends of The Secret Life of Pets. I didn't see in theaters. Star Trek Beyond, which deserved better. I like Star Trek Beyond. I like that movie.

Jason Bourne, which deserved worse. Didn't see. Wow. I saw so few of these movies. Yeah. Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad. and then to end the summer don't breathe going into

Labor Day weekend Don't breathe is a movie I should like but I hated that movie I don't like it That is a nasty little movie That is a movie I also felt like oh I think I'm going to like this movie And I did not I do I'm like you know what's an awesome horror movie High Tension and I watch Don't Breathe

And I'm like fuck that movie This is like the fourth consecutive episode You've brought up high tension which I love I need to rewatch it I need to rewatch it That movie's just disgusting And it has the stupidest twist in movie Wait, Kyle, thoughts on those movies that I just rattled off?

Most of them, I didn't see in theaters because I was busy living my life out loud. And now I see every movie because I'm like, I'm not doing anything. But I just, I remember Captain America coming out and just being like, I'm going to pirate that. And I watched it like on my laptop. I watched a ton of stuff on my laptop here because I was poor. And I was just like, well, I can just do this. This was your rebellious phase where you were just like, I'm not going to listen to those non-pirators. warnings. But you did go see the purge election year

with the man who didn't love you. I let him use our laundry machines because he has broke and I was just like, okay, he's going to be here doing laundry in our house. I'm just like, I can't believe that's. You're like, peace, I'm going to see Finding Dory. Yeah. Lock the door behind you. Fucking, no, I just, that was, I was not,

it's fine. But yeah, Finding Dory was like the only one I saw and I like Finding Dory enough. I didn't I think Finding Dory is perfectly good and pleasant and like I love finding Nemo. So like I am going to get a lot of like refracted you know love for

Finding Dory anyway. Like there's only so low I can go on a movie in that universe. I wrote about this in projects but I like how much of that movie is about characters who cannot breathe learning how to navigate a space where they will be dead. Yeah. So much of that movie is about them

hopping into different cups and like jars and stuff. And so that part I think is fun and creative where it adds a real level to that, but then, I mean, it's finding Dory. I'm like, there's all this stuff. I'm going to get out of it. The A-plus joke, though, that Sigourney Weaver is the voice of the, like, aquarium, like, guide,

but she's playing herself. Just the line, hi, I'm Sigourney Weaver. I'm not going to hate that movie. Yeah. And Dory being like, oh, my friend, her name is Sigourney, by the way. And, like, yeah, yes. At the risk of taking everything.

everything that happened in 2016 and turning it into a harbinger for Trump. But like, you look at the list of, you look at the list of number one movies, even going back further. Like, Zootopia's number one up through like mid-March and like that's good and fine. But like Batman v. Superman Dawn of Justice is number one for like three weeks. And no one liked it too. Like no one likes Suicide Squad either, but people kept going. One sad little April weekend where the boss is the number one movie, which like nobody remembers. the boss, the Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell movie, The Boss.

Then the Jungle Book, which was like, this movie that, like, succeeded so well that it doomed us to a full decade of live-action Disney remakes. Captain America Civil War, which, like, I stick up for, but I understand when everybody is like, this is, like, this was kind of a canary in the coal mine for, like, people being, like,

the Marvel universe doesn't really, is, like, the center isn't quite holding. Yeah, talk about something that feels weightless where, like, they have the airport fight where I'm just like, oh, this is clearly just Atlanta. Like, it's always just Atlanta. I, again, this is maybe the second straight episode. No, I think I talked about this on B-sides somewhere.

Where I mentioned that, like, one of my favorite things about the Marvel movies is the relationship between Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch. So, like, Captain America Civil War scratches a niche for me in that direction. But, like, I think you mean Black Widow, but yes. No. No, I do mean Scarlet Witch.

No, he does mean Scarlet Witch. Why? What do you mean? So like in Age of Ultron, like, it's Hawkeye who, like, convinces Scarlet Witch to, like, become an Avenger by, like, you know, gives her the little, like, you know, if you walk out of that door, you know, you are an Avenger and then, like, that convinces her to, like, actually, like, fight for them. And then in Civil War, he's the one who, like, comes and, like, liberates her from the, like, Tony Stark prison that she's, you know, in whatever. It's such a small thing. This is why it's so insanely stupid. believe you we all have those things we all have those things because I'm like the reason an unmarried

woman is a masterpiece is because she sees her therapist at a party they also have that wonderful little scene at the end of end game where they both sort of mourn the people they lost because the only two people who die in that whole thing besides Tony Stark or Black Widow and Vision anyway but like Angry Birds movie

X X Men Apocalypse which is is like by far, I, well, no, God, dark, my favorite billboard ever, which is just Oscar Isaac choking the fuck out of Jennifer Lawrence and they're just like, everyone's like, you can't actually put that up. You can't do that. Yeah. Like, it was, if you

look at it again, it's horrible. Like, it really is, like, it'd be like, I never saw that billboard, but now I want to check it out because I believe it. It's insane. But, like, it's, I think that movie was, like, shockingly bad. Secret Life of Pets, which like is one of, like, is an avatar for me of,

there's so many animated movies that make so much money that I know nothing about. Because you don't have children. Do you know the lead of that movie, Joe? Couldn't tell you. Oh, it is Louis C.K. I'm not kidding. No. The main dogs are Louis C.K. and Eric Stone Street. I'm not kidding.

Oh, my God. Could not have told you that in a million guesses. For Secret Life of Pets, too, they replaced Louis CK. Patten Oswald. Wow. Which why wasn't a Pat and Oswald? To be in every... To be in every...

Remy! Like, Jesus Christ. But like, suicide squad that year... I didn't see that shit because I don't have children. Like, no. Yeah. Girl on the Train was a number one movie that you're just like,

there are so many things that you're just like... That are just like... It's... It's... It's... The harbingers of an absolutely enemic, like, film culture.

That if you only look at the... the number one movies of that year, you're just like, we are in trouble. Yeah. I mean, you say you don't want to ascribe everything in 2016 to, like, being a harbager for Trump, but it literally was. Like, that's what this whole year felt like. I'm sorry. Like, that's just, you look back at every single thing that happened.

You're just like, oh, yeah, I guess that all makes sense. Yeah. We should have known Hillary wouldn't win when the BFG opened in fourth place. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that list of movies does invariably at least get more optimistic, if not better, if the BFG was among them, right? Yeah, like. Sure.

That's how bad. I mean, it would only take away number one from finding Dory. So it's like that's, you know. Yeah. And this is also Disney, right? Yes. Which is also Disney. Well, that's the other thing is it's opening, you know, this Disney.

It was the first Spielberg Disney official Spielberg Disney collaboration, I believe, is what I read somewhere, which is it so weird. There were also these odd little like wranglings of like, is it a DreamWorks, does it get a DreamWorks title card or a Amblin title card or whatever? And like, I'm the wrong person to, you know, get into the nitty-gritty of, like, the Amblin versus dreamworks of it all. But, like, apparently it was like... It's exhausting. Yeah, I imagine so. I had a friend who worked for Amblin, which he enjoyed the job. I'm not, like, shitting on...

I'm not getting him in trouble or anything, but it's just like, there's a lot going on at times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe it. To talk a little bit about the Spielberg history, I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of his less-received movies. Yeah. Before we do that, we could throw, you can feel three to throw out a favorite Spielberg. We almost never have an interesting answer for someone like that, I feel. Because like, for me, it's E.T. And I don't have anything interesting to say that anyone has never said about E.T. I mean, my thing is, it's Jaws. Like, okay, what am I going to say about Jaws? You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm somewhere between, like, Jaws and AI. But AI is one of those movies. I got to see it in a theater a couple years ago, and I was with my friend DM. I was just like, okay, now it's going back in the vault.

I'm not thinking about it at all. I can't really dwell on AI because it makes me feel like I'm going to die. I mean, that's E.T. for me. E.T. is such a hot stove movie. Everybody's like, I could never watch that again about like Requiem for Dream or something. I was going to say that. I'm watching E.T. because I saw it. in iMacs when they did that iMacs release watching ET is like doing violence to myself it is a full

regression it that movie taps into something that is almost like religious right like it's it's like that person who in like uh group therapy exercises comes up and like touches you on a pressure point and then suddenly you're sobbing on the floor that's what yeah it is yeah it's not it's not good for me i did really love fableman's because it honestly and i talked about with my therapist a lot where I was just like, this movie felt like Steven Spielberg sending me a message, be like, you can understand me now because of this. And I was like, this was to me only. Because I felt like at the time some people were just like,

I don't want to deal with this. Like, what are you talking about, Stephen? You want to fuck your mom? And I'm like, thank you for telling me this, Stephen. That's how it felt like a personal missive to me, which is, I guess, what movies. You feel connected to him. That's good. I genuinely did where I was like, I can't believe that he put this on film.

I don't know. He was vulnerable. He was genuinely vulnerable. Like this, you know, the eternal, you know, kid who's making, you know, Indiana Jones movies for his whole career. Just like he's actually being vulnerable on screen. And that's the thing. Watching this, the BFG, this is the second time I've watched it because I first watched it on Netflix on my bed in this room, my office, which used to be in my bedroom. And just not getting much out of it.

And I was like, okay, so post-Favelmans, what is this movie? Like, do I get anything out of it? New, like, looking about, like, Mitzie Fabelman. And I was like, no. I don't really. I just want Rebecca Hall to be in an actual Spielberg movie. Yes. Right.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. So what's everybody's worst Spielberg then? Ooh. Worst? I have to say, it was always easily Crystal Skull for me. Rewatching this movie, I don't feel so confident about that anymore.

Because of that core thing of there's nothing recognizable about Spielberg here, except for what Kyle's saying in some of the, like, camera movement. of this thing where he's like having fun with the camera but like there there's nothing otherwise distinctly Spielberg about this in a way that makes me feel it i just also felt it we'll talk about some of i want to throw out the rotten tomato scores and grosses of the of his other movies that didn't do as well but it's like everybody always kind of goes to hook and i'm like no there's no way that hook is worse than this movie there's too many like individual good things about hook to put hook in that conversation exactly filmed in a real

a place. They built like a fucking pirate ship. And he, and the BFG sleeps in a pirate ship. It's not real. I'm like, that's not, this isn't a, the girl is not sitting on a big pirate ship bed for a giant. It's not real. Right. With the caveat that I've never seen 1941.

I haven't seen 1941 either. I haven't seen that and I haven't seen Sugar Land Express. And I haven't seen Adventures in Tintin, so, but from what I understand that wouldn't be part of this conversation anyway. So, The thing about the lost world is like, I don't trust my recollection of it from when I saw it the first time, and I've only ever seen it in like bits and pieces. But, like, that's another one where I at least remember, like, one or two good, like, set pieces from that that I feel like maybe.

The RV stuff is good. Yes. The thing where it's dangling over the cliff and it, like, falls past them. Like, I like that. Crystal Skull has definitely has its moments, even though, like, the ending is embarrassing. Ready Player 1 is tough to defend. Ready Player 1 is very close for me. It's tough to defend.

For me and Reader 1, I'm like, I don't know, Bayonetta shows up for five seconds in that movie. Pretty early on this show. I'm pretty happy. But I'd say, I think it has to be in 1941 for me, because that thing is a top. It is genuinely like, how did anyone bounce back from it? It's really, really racist, obviously.

It's not funny. It's so long. I mean, those aren't great things. No. No. No. No. No. I'm like, I barely registered. It's just like, it's nonsense. That's crazy because he's like one of the most charismatic screen presence ever.

Yeah. But BFG would have to rank in my like, bottom tier. It really would. I would be willing to say that it, I will stand by saying this is Spielberg's worst movie. Yeah. It's down there. So you collected his. lowest

rotten tomato scores and grocers which I think is interesting. BFG is the 74 Rotten Tomatoes. Yes, Rotten Tomatoes is a flawed system

especially with some of the age of the movies we're talking about, but just to have a metric. 74 and below, I pulled. So anything less well-reviewed than as bad

or as less well-reviewed as the BFG and then it made $55 million at the box office. I pulled everything 55 and below. Can I just note that the king

of the lowest RT scores is Warhorse. Just saying. It made the same. That is what's great. You need to bring this up. You as our preeminent Warhorse Defender need to bring this up because it has the same Rotten Tomatoes score as the BFG and that is crazy. Yeah. That's objectively crazy. Warhorse is objectively better and deserves a better reaction than the BFG. Also, Warhorse for as much as it's like it's based on another, you know, it's, you know, based on this

Broadway play or whatever. Yeah, with the big puppet. But, like, it has, it has something that Spielberg wants to say in this movie. Like, you can, you can very easily glean a filmmaking, like,

storyteller's intent in this movie for Spielberg. And, like, you cannot do that with BFG. You just can't. The other lowest, scores from the beginning of his filmography. 1941 has a 39% color purple a 72, always a 70.

Always, which was seen as such this huge disappointment. I actually like always. We did an episode on Always. It's worth revisiting that. You both liked it, right? I remember that. I expected to not like it based off what people think of it, but I really liked it. Near the end of 2020, I was going insane.

And I was just like, you know what? I should just finish Spielberg. So, like, the movies you're listing right now are kind of the ones that I have to catch up on. Like, I do watch Warhorse and all that. Yeah. I also don't like the Terminal at all. I find the Terminal. Yeah, I want to, like, find things in the Terminal to really ride for, and it's tough.

I mean, the Terminal has a 60%. They built a Terminal. They did build a Terminal. I kind of can't believe Hook is 37% on Ron Tomatoes. Hook is his lowest Rotten Tomato score. I feel like people ride for that thing where I remember watching it at, like, a sleepover, and not totally connecting. I knew who Maggie Smith was because of Harry Potter

and just being like, what's going on here? Why did Julia Roberts turn big for one scene? Right. I don't think I've seen it since. Watching when it is new as a child and watching it on the Disney Channel once a week or whatever is a different experience. When you're engaging with Hook merchandising,

when you're doing Hook Happy Meal Toys, it is very different for you. Hook wasn't Disney Channel. Hook was we recorded it off of a HBO free preview weekend and then watched I'm going to say that makes more sense if a movie channel newsies was Disney Channel newsies we watched all the time on Disney Channel

Did you guys ever do movie tie-in board games? This was one of my childhood obsessions. Sometimes, yeah. I had the hook board game and you were Peter Pan you had to go through part of Neverland and then you got to hook ship

and there was like a spinning wheel with all of these barrels and you had to guess the barrel that had Peter Pan's kids and then you had to take them out of Neverland without getting caught by Hook or any of his henchmen. So is it like a chutes and ladders kind of like That sounds fun. No, hold on. I guarantee you I can find it on

eBay. We will be doing this live on air. Yeah, that sounds fun. I don't think we had a ton of tie-in board games except for like Harry Potter because I am the exact age for that to happen. Yeah. I had tie-in board games for the shadow that was a really cool one. That's crazy. I loved The Shadow as a kid, real weird. I was a weird kid.

What can I say? I had one. I had two different Batman ones. I had a Batman Forever one. And I had, the Batman Forever one had, like, the circus where you had, like, the trapeze type of thing. I had a Batman Returns one. I'm trying to, like, envision this. So is it, like, mouse trap where you build a contraption, like, up from the board?

I'm going to have to send you, like, a whole space. spreadsheet of these things. I'm trying to envision it in my head. Okay. Here, I'm going to send to the chat the hook board game. Let's find out. They didn't do like BFG monopoly, right? I feel like they'll turn anything into the monopoly. They will definitely

turn anything into monopoly. Yeah. And then you always find them for like $4 at the half-price books. So the barrels are our little figures it looks like, but Yeah, I see it now. Okay.

The real winner was I had an Adams family board game, which was more of like a collecting game. I think it was like you have you have to send out invites to the Mamushka party and like you have to go around collecting cards of those people. Chris, Mamushka being an answer in double jeopardy on one of the games that wasn't yours. And I didn't get to buzz in. What went through your head watching that episode? Oh, that's devastating. It was already past the point where I was like, I just can't buzz in on anything.

And then when I do, I panic so badly that I answered a question wrong. No, but that wasn't in your game, though. That was a completely different game, right? Was Mamushka? I think Domushka was in ours. Oh, was it in yours? Oh, gosh. You know what else was in ours?

Okay, we'll do this now. We'll do this now. Any garries who are disappointed that I didn't get to answer the hustler's question. I'm sorry. I was trying. I did know that answer, obviously. I just didn't get the buzzer. It just seems really hard to be on TV.

Yeah. Being on TV seems like I don't think I would like it. And I don't know. Kyle, I think you would probably like it more than I would. I think you would thrive, Kyle. I think you would do well. I'll give it a show. No, I think it was just, I think, no, I had an incredible experience.

I want to be very clear. Everybody in production is wonderful. All of the people we played against and not like filmed with, the coolest people you could hope to meet. I think it was a symbol for me of my inability to ever just like have fun to just like calm down and have a good time. And you know, like I think, I think, uh, you know, if I just told myself, we're just going to have fun. I would have probably done better. Uh, you and this is my motto moving forward. My year of 2026 is about like, I just need to shut up and have fun. Like, you so pre-prepared me for you having, I'm not going to say like having an awful time,

but like you being in crisis during this game or whatever. And then watching you, I was like, you can't tell. You can't tell. I said you. Yeah, because I don't have any airtime. You can tell one time when like in that hustler's question, I knew it was coming. So I like zeroed in on you. And I could tell like a little micro expression on your face was like, damn it.

But, like, that's the only time you really like, every other time you look like perfectly good and fine and normal. So, like you. Thank you. I had a great time with our friend, Katie. What a one of a kind experience to have with one of your good friends. No. Anyway, digression. You guys were thrilled in the pictures.

Like, you guys were just like, oh, my God, I can't believe this is happening. It was really sweet. I don't know. To wrap up the RT scores, the Lost World has a 57. We said the Terminal 61 Warhorse. 74. Ready Player 1 having 71% I think is one of the examples of Rutton Tomatoes is I don't want to say a scam but like inflated. You can't really trust it as a yeah, you can't trust it as a true barometer.

But then again, there's also those people that ride for Ready Player 1 and say that no, it's Spielberg commenting on all of this and I think that's. It is. It's just like, his comment is Sawie. I mean, kind of. Yeah. I don't think he has a ton of. like, you know, a ton of real great insight, but like he's absolutely commenting on it.

Like, I do feel like that is true. As far as his grossers, movies that have grossed less than the BFG, Sugar Land Express, obviously, at a 7.5, 1941, a 31.7. Empire of the Sun is actually the one that's kind of like the box office disappointment, really, at that period. And it's only 22 million. Always does 43. Amistad does 44. Munich 47. West Side Story. Amicron movie.

38 million. People freaking out when that happened. I was like, it would have made more outside of Ammocrine. It just would have. And then the Fableman's does $17 million, which is like objectively disappointing. The Fableman's an Empire of the Sun, though, behaving like Art House movies isn't necessarily surprising. The other thing about the Fableman's, like the Fableman's, like the Fableman's, like the Fableman is the poster child movie for me

that I'm like, it is bullshit that they don't release streaming profit numbers because it's just like, you can't tell me that the Fableman's wasn't huge on VOD. You just kind of can't. What was the last movie, what was the last movie

that like took the form of the Fableman's that was the box office hit? Like family, a family dromedy. You know, when was the last time that a movie like that made a ton of money at the box office like decades ago? Spanglish didn't actually make that much funny, right?

That was the problem with it. I think Spanglish probably outgross the fablements. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, so it's just like, yeah, it's not a disappointment. And then, like, of course, they'll use that as a cudgel during award season being, you know, like, yeah, nobody

somebody saw that movie. But this is what I'm saying is like, people did see that movie and people did pay to see that movie. I also felt this way about an of a fall where it's like, yeah, most of the people who paid to see that movie paid to watch it on VOD because their theater never booked it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my sympathy for such people only go so far. Like, with some exceptions, most of these movies are available for you to see them at some point if you really, if you care to.

I understand that, like, people have families and children and whatever. It's just like, if you want to see a movie, see a fucking movie. I don't know. Get your ass out there. I mean, people are taking their kids. I saw somebody post that they had like a sub 10 year old child at the backrooms. Oh, I saw that too. But it was like complaining that like their backroom screening was full of children or whatever.

I was like, go ahead, Kyle. I was just going to say the last time I dealt with like a screaming child in the movie was for the Meg 2. And I felt so bad because the kid was clearly like terrified. and we all were yelling like, take him out. He's not happy. And the mom was just like ignoring everyone. And the kid was just like, like genuine screams of terror because of the Meg.

And I was just, she eventually did leave. But it was like a Tuesday night. I was like, should need me in bed? Like, I don't know. I saw backrooms last night. First time, as I said on the blue sky, first time I've sat, I've sat shoulder to shoulder with strangers

in a movie since Oppenheimer. at a non-festival setting, which I was like, it's odd that this is, this is the next one. On my left was a dad and his two young, who had brought his two young daughters, and the one daughter says to me,

like, do you know what this movie's about? Like, clearly, like, she did and, like, you know, wanted to, like, I'm like, and the dad goes, I don't know what this movie's about. I'm like, I barely know what this movie's about. And you could tell, like, the dad was just sort of like bringing his kids out of obligation. And at the end of the movie,

He just sat there and, like, the vibes coming off of them were just like, yeah, I don't know what I don't get it at all. But the daughter seemed to get it. And, like, everybody seemed to be, like, genuinely pretty well behaved. Like, there was one point where, like, somebody sneezed in the back and there was, like, a loud, God bless you. And there was, like, titters or whatever. But, like, that was the extent of it. I was prepared to be very, like, you know, these kids don't know how to behave in movies or whatever. But, like, they were fine.

I was expecting chicken jockey is kind of what I was expecting. And I didn't get chicken jockey. I wish the whole movie was found footage because the found footage sequences in the movie were the things that I was like, this is good. Yeah. Believe it. And the parts that you'll note that those are parts where people are not talking.

Yeah, there's a lot of talking. My joke was that Griffin Nathley wrote all the dialogue. Griffin Nathley would have done a better job with the dialogue. Sure. Anyway. Any other things we want to talk about. Roll Dahl, not Oscar's favorite children.

an author. It's just kind of a couple stray nominations throughout, but mostly around score. This reminded me of like that there were, that there have been more rolled dull adaptations of movies than

I think. My favorite of them obviously is fantastic Mr. Fox. Agreed. But I remember like me. Matilda is also, Matilda at the time I guess was received fine. But

Matilda is definitely a better children's movie than I think people give credit for. Matilda is like is like millennial bedrock. Like people like millennials fucking love Matilda. I do love Matilda. Sorry. People try and like deny me of the fact that when I try and say that I'm Gen X and not millennial, I should point to Matilda more because it's like if I were a millennial Matilda would be a movie of mine.

And it wasn't because I was 16 at the time. And like I'm not seeing Matilda at 16. Like even nerd ass me wasn't seeing Matilda. at 16. That's the difference. I wasn't 14. You know what I mean? I wasn't 13. Like, there's a fucking difference. So, there. But you can agree. Matilda

is good. I've never seen it. Why would I have seen it? And he's not going to watch it. Why would I have seen it? I don't know. Because it's a fun, nasty little Danny DeVito movie. Yeah. I want to note, there's one thing Raldol also did film-wise, and he wrote the script

for the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. which is the one where he does yellow face, obviously. Oh, no. Obviously, that's the Rald doll one. I was going to say, Rold was like, what? Is there a culture I can insult? I could be racist. I can I be racist?

Okay. I do have to say, one of my things about James Bond is like really anything that's not explicitly the first James Bond. Well, the first two. Dr. No and Goldfinger. Purist, don't get at me. there's something before then. It all just becomes

the soup to me, and I do think I might need to do the full James Bond rewatch. I did it a few years ago, because I missed No Time to Die when it was out, and it was fun to do. I did like one or two a week for a bit. Watching them all together like that, they do

kind of blend, but then the good stuff you actually like recognize. You're just like, oh, wait a minute, I'm enjoying what I'm seeing on screen. If you're going to watch the Bond movies do them all at once like that? What were the ones that jumped out to you as being surprisingly good? I really liked

George Lassonby's, the Honor Majesty Secret Service. People do love Lassaby. It's a good one. It's not even just him, like Diana Rigg is in that movie. That's nice. I liked, so Octopusy is bad. Like, it's really bad. I also can't believe that it is actually called that.

It's incredible feat of titling. There's a part where Roger Moore has to, like, disguise himself with a clown, and it's really, like, strange and odd. But then there's the one with Christopher Wacken and Grace Jones of the villains. Right. You live in LaTayette. Yeah.

God, I fucking love Grace Jones. See, that's kind of what I want to do the James Bond stuff for. Not to be like, fuck yeah, James Bond, but like, I want to get hyped about like the really stupid ones. I want to see James Bond go to the moon. Well, this was going to be my question for you, Kyle, is did it sharpen any sense in you? Because I don't mean, I don't know, maybe you don't feel this way. about the Craig Bonds,

but I feel like the dominant thread of criticism of the Craig Mendy's Craig era of Bonds is that they're too serious, they're too sort of lore intensive or whatever. Did watching all of them sharpen that sense in you, or no? Yeah, because those movies

are really dumb, and I don't think Daniel Craig's character, Bond, gets to, like, make enough jokes. And those got way to... I was going to bring this back to the BFG. We're making it about British identity. And like James Bond being one of the pinnacles of that Raldol, including all of the things that he said

about Jews. All those things, obviously. Roldol is very much about protecting cultural identity. Yeah, the witches, he was just like, you know about Jews? Well, some of them are witches, too. And I'm like, whoa, are you sure? Like, I don't think that's right, man.

But the Craig ones become, like, so much about, like, bond having to represent, like, the U.K. in this way where they don't get to have the same amount of fun, where it comes to important. And I don't know with the BFG, it needed to be more British in a way, even though they hang out with the Queen

and her core use big CGI farts and stuff. Yeah. I think that there's something missing with like the ghoulishness taken out and like the dreams and nightmares and stuff. Not really being as much of a focus. Who's the British filmmaker who should have made the BFG?

I mean, probably the motherfucker that did the Wonka movie, which was he with the Padding guy? Oh, the Paddington guy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know me. I'm famously pro Wonka. I think Wanka worked to a point.

I really liked all the evil gay chocolatiers. Yeah. But I think bringing that sort of the whimsy there, where the whimsy in this movie is all being processed through like an unpleasant old man that kidnapped a child and is like, well, now you're going to stay here forever until you die. And she's like, well, I don't know about that. indistinguishable from something like Jack the giant hunter, you know?

Yeah. Ooh, I watched that recently when I was doing the Brian Singer stuff and that is... Oh, boy. That is a strange movie. There's a two-headed giant in that and I really... I think he's the main bad guy. Really gross. But I will say that connects to British identity in the stupidest way

possible because there are like giant jewels or something that Jack ends up with and they're passed down through his family and they do eventually become the crown jewels. I'm not kidding. Oh, wow. I know. I've said I'm not kidding so many times in this episode because I keep revealing like horrible things that I just have seen through catching up on. I know like popular movies, movies made by criminals, animated stuff. You just learn all these horrible things. We should talk about Rylance specifically, though, particularly because he's coming off of... It's a year after his Oscar win.

Year after his Oscar win. And it's one of those things where I think if you were plugged into... theater, him winning the Oscar wasn't as much of a surprise. I mean, it was a surprise in that, like, Stallone was the sort of assumed winner with the narrative for Creed. And, you know, I think if you were- Mark Rylance had already had three Tonys before he won an Oscar. Good for him. People love voting for Mark Rylance to win awards.

And, like, he had won three Tonys. I remember if you knew theater and if you knew the Tony Awards, you knew that when Rylance won the Oscar, that he was just going to go up and give. a very peculiar little speech. I sent you both his first Tony speech when he won for Boeing Boeing, which is definitely some weird poem about how he feels out of place

in New York City, but it couldn't be more, you know, left of center, crazy. And everyone loved it. Also, like, to what you're saying, Joe, like, people love giving him awards. The thing about that Boeing Boeing revival was that Boeing Boeing was

a flop farce when it first came to Broadway, like, contemporaneously, I believe, in the 60s or 70s. And that was like this massive hit, partly because of violence's performance in that revival. And I think they brought it from the West End. I think that's right. That was right around when I moved to New York for the first time.

So I didn't see it. I was still sort of like getting on my feet. But Jerusalem I definitely saw. Jerusalem I saw this really lovely Wednesday matinee where I just took the day off of work. And my friend and I went to see Jerusalem, then went to Sardis. And it was like, it was just lovely. And I really loved that play, and I loved him in it.

And I was, you know, very pleased to see it succeed and to see him, you know, win. But it was also, I think that was the first time I had seen him in anything. And, like, you look back and, like, he had been in movies and stuff like that. but like not really in any like sustained way. But he just sort of like has amassed this reputation as being like one of the like great, this great chameleon sort of that he, you know, sort of like disappears into these roles and then you see him talk for real. And he's just like such a, he's,

I think because he has this odd little like, you know, turtle retreating into a shell kind of persona. Spielberg harnessed that chameleonic quality in him for Bridge of Spies and then, you know, into this with BFG is such a, obviously like, mocap or not. That's his big fucking face. You know, it's sort of like right there on the screen. And it's, I don't know whether I would say it's like there's like there's an. Uncanny Valley aspect to the performance, not specifically in how we define Uncanny Valley, but in the league where it's just like, it's so I can see, I can recognize him so much in the face of that character that it's just like I don't. It's too much.

It's such a big performance for the BFG, obviously. Yeah. But just thinking about, I want to shout out specifically the illustrations in all of the Rawl Doll books that I read as a kid by Quentin Blum. are so iconic, the sort of like squiggly lined, like easy line smiles on every character. All these drawings are so evocative. And for this, the BFG here is wearing like the exact outfit that Quentin Blake drew him in for the versions that I read. I keep saying it like that because I'm not sure if there were older versions of some of these books that didn't have his art. Because I've only ever known the Quentin Blake ones.

And it almost is like pseudo translating that cartoon to live action in like a video. I'm looking at them now and like you're totally right. Yeah. It's almost like, remember when Sonic had teeth for a minute and like... Yeah. It reminds me of that. And so, I mean, the Sonic movie scaled that back and made him actually look like Sonic, which helps make that movie exist.

But here, it's... I just don't like looking at him. And the way he plays it is like so miserable because he had a friend who was a little boy who got eaten by the Giants and it was his fault. And I can't remember if that happens in the book or not. But in the book, all the illustrations, even when he's holding up, like, fucking snaws cumbers and being like, oh, yeah, they're really disgusting.

Bam, mom, mom. Like, he's much more jovial in the actual, like, friendly part, which in this, he's muttering, like, an unhoused, like, lunatic. Yes. In the back, it reminds me of bones and all. When he leans over and you, like, see his full change while he's eating at all. When Mark Rylance was once again good. Yeah, I love him.

that movie. It is odd that like in film, his performances now tend towards this like middle of like the Mark Rylance screen person. And he's ready player one. Ready player one. This

Bones and all. BFG was the first time that I was like, oh no, we're going to have a problem on our hands with this guy. The one that I was really like grabbing my pocket book and I am leaving performance where I I almost yelled out.

I have had enough of this is don't look up. Where I'm like, he needs to fool it. He's the eccentric tech billionaire in that one. And then he like immediately won me back with Bones and All. I don't know if he won me back with Bones and All, but I liked Bones and All. Well, I mean, go back to our Bones and All episode. That is true. He finally gets to fulfill his life's purpose in playing Mr. Herbert from Family Guy.

It's so perfect. It's The fact that you are dropping Family Guy references that I don't get on this podcast is... You know who Mr. Herbert is. I don't watch enough of Family Guy to know who that is. We had this conversation in their bones and all episodes. Oh, okay.

It's odd that you are that plugged into an avatar of straight culture there, given our general dynamic on this part. I watched Family Guy and it's like, first two original season runs. I was in middle school and I watched them. It's wild. I always said Bones and All is a movie about what happens when I meet

other people who like anime. I really responded to it in that way. Where I'm kind of just like, I maybe shouldn't be here. Yeah, what does Rylent have coming up? I wonder. I'm saying hi.

Oh. Hello, Hank. hello my nephew my son my diva oh right you wrote this down Chris in the outline that he's playing Satan in the supposed Terence Malick Jesus movie

that apparently apparently exists even though it does exist but he has gone completely nuts editing it because they have so much footage that movie and the shot pre-gale I'll believe it when I see it I think he also because he teaches I think he also because he like teaches

I think he like uses his movies as like teaching experiments. Where does he teach? He does. You both know my theory about the Terrence Malick Jesus movie is that Terrence Malick will not let that movie be seen until he's dead. I wouldn't be shocked by that. Where does he teach? I mean, he lives in Texas, so Texas somewhere. Oh, okay.

I don't think he teaches in a formal capacity. Oh, he just gathers people to his front stoop and he just sort of impasse. Much like the sermon on the mount or whatever. That's why he decided to make a Jesus movie. He's like, ah, it speaks to me. No, he's like, I love Dick, where he's summoning people to Marfa. First, I Love Dick reference in this podcast history, so that's... That can't be right.

What else do we want to say about this? Okay, so I want to bring up an interesting stat. The, obviously, this. qualifies for our show because anything Spielberg touches is going to have some type of Oscar buzz however the BFG was the first time since

1992 that John Williams had an eligible score in that year he doesn't get nominated for every single thing but this is the first time since 1992 that he was eligible to be nominated for original score and wasn't and wasn't nominated that's how bad

that's how bad it is not that sad Kyle he has like 80 nominations But he should have more. Wait, did he get nominated for something else this year? No. Interesting. That's so fascinating. 1992, he did the scores for Far and Away and Home Alone, too, and did not get a

1992 nomination. Well, Enya really sort of usurped him on Far and Away as the primary driver of music on that movie. I wrote down, I'm checking my notes, and it's like, I almost, I only watched this movie like three days ago and already it seems forever ago, partially because I watched the movie that we are doing next week already. So I've already sort of moved on to my next one. We've moved on. We all moved on. I tried to structure my watching like that too. I wrote down dreams as a plot driver. And now I am remembering that like so much of this movie is about the fact that he like collects and then distributes dreams or something like that. Yeah. There's much more of an explanation to that in the book. Here it's like an afterthought. I do like the look of the nightmare. He calls us some stupid word.

Like, well, blah, for him or whatever. But it looks like a horrible little tentacle monster. And I like the idea of a nightmare wrapping around your head and not letting you go. So I was like, that works for me. But that's more abstract where it looks like inside out. Like, you know. Yes.

There was a couple of things where, like, you see him sort of like projecting a dream for a kid on the wall of, like, the bedroom and stuff like that. There were a couple interesting things there. But, like, as a plot driver, the idea of, like, dreams feels to me so, I don't know, like, woo-woo a little bit or a little just sort of, like, okay, where, you know, this is a chance for us to talk about, like, these elemental things about childhood and whatever. It's just like, oh, the dreams of children and the dreams of adults and yada, yada, yada.

And it made me realize that the only pop culture property I thought has ever really, like, wrangled with the idea of dreams successfully is fucking Sandman. And now we're never going to be able to talk about that again because Gilgaman is a sexual maniac. And it's just like, great, great. Yeah, I love Sandman as a teenager. Okay, Kyle. I get it. I get it. Read accepted. But anyway, I also wrote down farting corgis, and I don't remember that at all. They drink some of the fizzle bottle or whatever the shit.

Oh, God, right, right, farting. And so everyone farts, even the queen farts. Race fall, race fall, farts, Rebecca Hall doesn't fart. She's not on screen for the farting. Yeah. No, she watches it, and she's just like, oh. She escaped without farting. Good for her.

She got out with her dignity intact. You know what movie I want to rewatch? The COVID, not the new resurrection. Begones Resurrection. Just watched that rad movie. Wish I loved it a little bit more. But, you know, I saw it late. The Rebecca Hall COVID resurrection.

Oh, great movie. I talked to Ira Sacks about that. Great movie. I can't remember if he had seen her or not, but I was just talking about her intensity. Oh, I want to watch Ira Sacks. Talk to him about who jar. A classic of Albany brutalist architecture.

No, literally. That's how I sold it to one of my friends. I was like, it takes place in Albany. The other thing I wrote down was, why isn't this bad giant played by Ray Winstone? Why am I being denied this? That is true. The Jermaine Clement, a giant. Like, this is a Ray Winston character.

What the fuck are we doing here? Yeah, I agree. I have, like, two notes that I wanted. I mostly covered things I wrote down, which I just want to say I love her line, what I said in the description of, you can't keep living like this BFG where she's, like, she's, yes, I remember that. I think it's so funny that this child is like, your life is disgusting, you're pathetic, we need to do something about this.

Okay, the child is a problem. Okay, I have made a raise up earlier. There's such non-specificity to this child. Well, she's out to see in a little CGI world. She's on set with you. I don't blame the actor. I genuinely don't. I just think, like, as a character, there's just nothing to her.

But also, it's from Spielberg, who is, like, famously good with child actors and has, like, been the, like, you know, usher of, like, some of the most heralded, celebrated child performances. He's the only person who ever believed in Drew Barrymore. So, yeah. I'm going to cry. I know. Thinking about Drew Barrymore in that moment does make me. cry. The other note I have is at the end,

they dropped the bad giants on Luke Skywalker's Island with the porgs. I didn't think of that a little bit too. I was just like, is this not like the same place? They don't know of weird fish nuns or whatever. Yeah. No, the fish nuns just lived there. He sucked off the weird, like, it almost looked like

a big, I don't know. What's his name? Wadow. It kind of looks like if Wado had moves. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, the last Jedi You don't know Wado's Journey. that everybody loves. We don't want to get into it. No, we don't.

And I know, like, at the end, Sophie is suddenly just adopted by Rebecca Hall, which is a dream. Like, I'm happy for her. I mean, all of a sudden, we're watching Annie. Now all of a sudden, it's Rebecca Hall is, what's her face? What is that character's name?

Uncle Penny. I almost set up for Penny Bags. But, um... No, Daddy Warbucks is secretary. Oh, yeah, yeah. And, yeah. Honestly, let Rebecca Hall be Daddy Warbucks. I mean, yeah.

I mean, we already. Blue our wad on the modern day Annie and I don't think anybody would ever allow anybody to do it again but like, yes. Rebecca Hall as Lady Warbox, yes, I would accept that. That's like. Maybe Warbucks is also a good drag race, a drag queen name, so, yeah.

B-F-G, first name. B-E-A, last name, E-F-F-J-E. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Terrible drag name. Joe, would you like to explain the IMDB game? Hey, sure. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game, where we challenge each other with the name of an actor or actress,

and then we try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television shows, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits, we mentioned that up front. After somebody makes two wrong guesses, they get the remaining titles release here's as a clue, and if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. All right, Kyle, you're the guest. You get to call the shots. want to give first, guess first, and then what direction are you giving and guessing?

I'd like to give first. I'm sorry, IMD is making me log in now before I can see it. What? Sometimes you just have to like hit cancel somewhere. Well, something is happening. I just had it. But I was going to say, you just mentioned him. So I'm trying to say, who could I fuck with more if I pick? I'm going to go with Chris, because I have a feeling you're not going to get this. But I'm going to go with the main bad giant, Jemaine Clement. Ugh.

Okay, how much TV is in there? Two. So fly to the Concords. Correct. What was his other show? Was he on the original British office? No. Okay.

Someone was, and I always forget who. Oh, it's like Martin Freeman was. Something. Yeah, that was Martin Freeman, but that's not who I picked. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to say the BFG, but I will say, just to be a pill about it, Jack the Giant Hunter, because I believe that he is in that. I don't remember.

And I was it last year. What are my years? Your remaining years are 2014 for the TV show, and then 2012 and 2016. Okay. So it was a one-season show in 2014. No, it's actually like really annoying and pedantic. I realized how stupid this one is. Oh, no, this is actually the movie version.

I'm sorry. Well, that just gave me. Oh, it's a movie of a TV show. The TV show came after. Oh. Oh, it's what we do in the shadows. Okay, yeah. So you got that.

Sorry. I read that as like, that's what. I got confused by. I was going to say Brad's status, but that's 2017. Yeah, it's not Brad's status. Okay. One is in line with

what we've been talking about is in voice performances. Oh, one of these is a voice. And he's a giant? He is giant. He's not a giant, but he's pretty big. Oh. Okay. So a large is it Avenger? Is it Avengers' end game?

Is he like Carrie Coon? No, he's not Proxima midnight. I'm sorry. It's a Disney property. He's a giant creature, and he sings. Yeah, he gets his own little tune. Oh, oh, this, this, this, um... You gotta get it.

It's the same year as the BFG. Oh, okay. Uh, 2016. Oh, it's Finding Dory. No, you fool. There's no singing and finding Dory. There is no singing and finding Dory. What else was...

Oh, Zootopia. Nope. It's the other Disney animated movie that year. Oh, my God. There's one more. We're talking about it again this summer because... Oh, Toy Story 4? No, you fool.

A different Disney... It's a live action remake happening this summer. No one is happy about it. No one's talking about it. It's very funny and large individual. It's very fitting that you're not thinking of it because, like, nobody's talking about it. Oh, it's Moana.

Yeah. That's right. He's the tribal. He's the shiny crab. Yeah, yeah. I can never place Moana in time. And I think that's because it came out post-election and we were all depressed. Yeah.

I remember people like sobbing in the theater during that movie and I was like, all right. So, yeah, there's one more, one more movie. This was maybe cruel because I didn't even know he was in this movie. And I've never seen that. The 2012. 2012. Yeah. So this is pre-.

It's not, no, it's too early for Hump for the Wilder people. Yeah, that's like 2016 as well. Is it like a Miguel Arteta Mike White movie? I wish it was something. It's very far from that. Oh, so it stars... Yeah. Go ahead.

It stars someone who's not in Independence Day Requiem or whatever that thing is called. Oh, it stars Will Smith. Yeah. Will Smith and 20... Oh, Pursuit of Happiness? I wish. That was 06. What's he doing?

in 12. There's a lot, there was a lot of to do about his trailer. I was going to say he's living in a big ass trailer is what he's doing. Oh, it's Hancock. No, that was a late 2009. Doesn't he live a trailer in that? I think it's eight.

No, no. As in the real man Will Smith had a really absurd trailer that took up like streets of New York. Like a full city block in New York. Yeah. Oh, I don't remember this. So it filmed in New York then.

Yeah, which is so weird, right? Like, what's he doing in 2000? It's like focus? No. Focus movie you think would be a good Cinematrix movie and it's a terrible Simatrix movie. I think much more crassly commercial. Like $200 million

that cost to make. Yeah. Oh. What the hell movie am I forgetting? Think of legacy sequels, basically. Yeah. Allad. No, it's too early for a lot. No, that's 2019. Wow.

I don't know how it's so hard this week. It's movie with number and tie it. I'm so, no, do you remember about to say like, I am number four or something. No, stop it. It is a sequel. It's a third movie.

It's a, yeah, it's a three. Oh, men in black three? Yeah, I guess I think Jermaine's the bad guy. I've never seen it. I never saw Men in Black Three. But then Jermaine is also in Avatar, Way of Water, and Fire and Ash, so I like that. And he's doing an American accent. It's strange.

Well, sorry to torture you with that. That's okay. It's okay. It's what I get for kind of shading him briefly. All right. So I'm giving to Joe. Joe, I wanted to give Andre the Giant, Andre Reney Roussemal. Oh, did he not have a sufficient? Quite literally two of them are wrestling things and his known for. It's kind of cool. Like, like WrestleMania 3. WrestleMania 3, a WWF championship, triple WF championship wrestling, 14 episodes. Old thing.

Oh, okay. That's a good thing. Six million dollar man for two episodes and then Princess Bride. Shade to my giant. Oh, no, he wasn't in my giant. No, he was maybe dead by them. B.F.G. I had to say it once.

I'm sorry. Andre the Giant would have, was no. Well, to some people, I bet he was friendly, a big friendly giant. He was really nice to Robin Wright because remember the story of like she was freezing on set and all he did was put his giant hands around her and warmed her up. Oh. See? Big friendly giant.

I am. Yeah. Instead, I just went to the cast of Disclosure Day to make it simple. The person we have not done, because we've actually recently done most of the cast of Disclosure Day. Mr. Wyatt Russell, not featured in the trailers. Wyatt. It's so hot. It's really, yeah.

You know, he does not look hot miraculously. This person has never not looked hot. Colin Firth, what is going on with the facial hair they gave that man in that movie? He's the bad guy. I think he looks good. I got to say. Wait, Wyatt Russell newly minted Buffalo Sabres fan, so he's fam. Which means I am fam by proxy to Kate Hudson, so yay.

You couldn't ask for anything more. Any television for Wyatt? No television. Okay. Fucking Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts. 22 Jump Street. Correct.

I obviously thought this is going to be harder. Maybe you just follow your family. We're about to hit the wall with Wyatt Russell films that I can remember. I should look it up too. Shit. Okay, yeah, no, those were the two that I could think of off the top of my head. Wyatt Russell, is he? Okay, yeah, that's funny.

I just looked at now and I was like, oh, okay, whatever? I feel like one of them's like a comedy I should be remembering and one of them's probably an action movie. Both incorrect. I will not to give you hints before you get in your years. I would consider one of them actioning. I've not seen it. I've not seen either of these. Okay.

All right. I might just burn some guesses. I'm going to say Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Incorrect. The Christmas Chronicles. Also incorrect. You're two years... I think this is dad.

I know. That's why... Oh, okay. You're pretty sure that's his father? Are 2018 and 2024. So no woman in the window. No Ingrid goes west. Oh, I love him that Ingram goes once.

Yeah, I forgot that he's in that. Okay, so what did we say? 2018 and 24 In 20204 2018 is the one that could Mostly be described as an actionish movie But it's definitely horror adjacent Okay

I never saw this movie I remember it being like Oh this movie's gonna be like Cool and awesome and badass And then no one liked it Oh I wish it seems like I would maybe like But I just have never watched it

So it's not a remake of a horror classic Or something like that No. I believe it's... It's not... Correct me if I'm wrong if it's not a graphic novel. I would fucking believe you, but I don't think it is. Okay. And he's like part of an ensemble.

A small group of American soldiers find horror behind enemy lines on the eve of D-Day. Oh, is this Operation Finale? No. No. That's like a normal movie. That's a normal movie. Um, fuck. Find horror.

Yeah, it's, oh God, I know what movie you're talking about. I haven't seen it, but like, um, I genuinely don't know. Oh, John McGarro's in this movie. What's it called? Exxie. Do you want to know what it is? What if Nazis were vampires? Operation.

Operation Overlord or it's just Overlord? No, it's just Overlord. I don't know what I'm getting out of years. They're just like monsters and it was originally going to be like tied into Cloverfield. but then they decided not to. That was going to be the one that was going to be a Cloverfield. I can't know if that's true or not. But I remember that being the rumor.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I would have never gotten that title. 2024. So I want to know, I think that this is like a, the premiere date on this is wrong. It might be from a festival because this was very much a January movie, and I think it was last year.

Oh, okay. Is it like anyone but you? No. No, that was a December movie. Okay, wrong genre. So January of this year. Yeah. No, of 2025.

Yeah. It is, the title is very close to the title of an REM song. My favorites. Yeah, same. I think the plot of this is like, what if this thing was haunted? What if this thing you might have in your home? was haunted. Or outside of your home.

Or outside of your home. Behind your home. Oh, is this the haunted swimming pool movie? It is. What is that called? So it's sort of like night swimming, but not night swimming? Yeah, it's night swimmer. Carrie Condon's in this?

What the hell? Yeah, she's the mom. I know. I didn't see it. Wait, Chris, who do you know that has a swimming pool inside their home? He's like a chikuzzi. I love that. You didn't watch neighbors, so.

you and fucking neighbors it's so hard to Kyle have you gotten to the farm episode Yeah I got to this farm I'm like that show stresses me out I have to like take a minute See it's very comforting to me This is my psychosis

It's a comfort watch Oh god now I have to fail at those Okay Kyle Would you like easier hard Let's go for hard Because I feel bad If I just breeze through, it wouldn't be fair.

Okay. I went into the cast of Ready Player One, and while I don't remember the nature of this person's role in this, I do like this actor, Ralph Innocon. Oh, yeah. I think I'm going to get the... I figured he might be somebody who was up your alley. Okay. He's a fabulous actor. I love him.

Nothing is specifically... stated as voice, but, like, you know the kinds of characters Ralph Innocon plays. Like, there's a lot of, you know. So is it, is it four films? Yes. Okay, the witch.

Yes. Okay, great. I keep being like, oh, right, this happened, but is Guardians of the Galaxy on there? Because he's, I almost said Magneto, the planet eater. Galactus. Galactus? Fantastic Four.

I was going to say, it's not Guardians. Not the fucking Guardians. Yes, yes. Fantastic Four. Fantastic Four Which came out last year And everyone was just kind of like, no thanks Yeah

I remember seeing you guys And they're going to be a cornerstone Of the upcoming Avengers I'll say I like everything right again I did like how much of that movie was about Sue Storm Vanessa Kirby But I was also I saw it like the week after Superman

Which I really enjoyed And I was just like what am I doing here I so Yeah I whatever we can't get into my thoughts Yeah That's later So the witch Fantastic Four

first steps. Yes. The Green Knight. Yes. He's the Green Knight. Are you going to go four for four on Ralph Fennison? This would be very impressive. It would love to, but I'm a little worried.

It's some British bullshit that I don't know. There's one other guess I could make of a large-ish movie, and I think I'm just going to do it. Is it Nosferatu, 2024? It's not, but that's a really good guess. So close. He's the one who comes up to the Renfield character, who bites a bit, bites head off a rat and he goes, my good sir, why did you do that? It's incredible.

Shoot. Okay, so do I get the... Oh, fuck. Do I get to you... No, because you'd have to get one more wrong to get the air. You can burn a movie if you want, yeah. No, I don't want to. He definitely did a voice in something, but I'm honestly like, it could have been a video game.

Who... Is he in... Is he in the Northman? He should be, right? Is he? He's got to pop up, right? It's not the correct one, but yes, he's in the Northman. Okay, so what's the year?

As Captain Volodymyr, of course. Oh my gosh. Is it the, what is it? The Voyage of the Demeter? Oh, no, no, no. He's the Captain Volodymyr in the Northman. Okay, never mind. Your movie that you still need to get is 2023.

It's hard. It's an Oscar nominee. but good luck remembering that it exists. Oh, God. No one liked this movie. It's a great trailer movie. It's like, obviously, they cut a good trailer from this movie. I find it to be a somewhat interesting movie.

Like, I'm not uninterested in the movie, but it definitely, like, came, got a couple Oscar nominations, and then, like, went. That's so funny. So was it, like, late 2023? Very. Very late 2023. Right? Wasn't it like December, Chris?

I think it's a March-ish movie. Oh, God. Now I have no idea. Hold on. It is original. No, September. Did it September? That's earlier than I, that's earlier than I would have said.

Oh, yeah. I also feel like it made, like, more money than people expected it to make. Because, of course, it was one of those movies that is like, original movies can't make money, and it's still made. Famously kind of snake bit director of big. big sci-fi kind of properties. Oh, this movie made $40 million and it definitely costs way more than that.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, is it... Is it the creator? It's the creator. Yeah. I remember this making more money than expected because on a specifically movie's Fantasy League level it did, whereas

that's not going to do anything. Because it stars Denzel's flop son, right? It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. Yeah.

Flops Sun, yes. And Gemma Chan, an actress who I am increasingly flummoxed by, who is sometimes fantastic and sometimes like an absolute blank. Yeah, I feel bad for her in the Marvels. I'm like, you were battled with something here that you could not handle it. Yes, God, I totally forgot she's in the Marvels. She shows up. Is that, is she the only person from Eternals to show up in another Marvel movie? They did it like with some other background people, but yeah, because she's, She was a blue woman in Captain Marvel and then was the lead of the Eternals. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still want to catch up to Eternals. You could not get me to watch Fantastic Four with a gun to my head or like Thunderbolts, but like I'm, I remain highly. And Thunderbolts. I just need to understand what's going on there. I just need to know. I actually really like Thunderbolts where I was just like, yeah, this is fun. This is about a bunch of people who like want to kill themselves.

Yeah, it's fine. All right. Yeah, yeah. Well, Kyle, thank you for coming back. Thank you for talking this not very good movie with us. Tell the listeners where they can find more of you. Well, I still do reviews on Boston Hassel, like here and there, depending. But my main project right now is projects, my substack, where I go through different projects that I'm doing, either film-related or my life-related.

And in a way that's like half-dairy, half-analysis. last year when I started out, I just went through all the Pixar movies one by one. I recently did the Rugrats movies as like, as to myself. I was like, I need to think about these harder. How much time did you spend on Maya and Black Streets take me there as the lead single for the one Rodriguez? Honestly, the soundtrack is a big discussion point in the first Rugrats film. I love that movie. That movie is very important to me.

And I'm a little in between big projects right now, so I made that big list of 100 underseen movies. of stuff where I'm like, hey, does anyone know what these are? And I'm going to do the LICA movies soon. I kind of want to wait for Wildwood, but the trailer for Wildwood made me very excited. So I'm like, oh, maybe I'll just do it now. But that's, that's Kyleomato.com. And you can follow me on Letterbox, too, which is also Kyle Lomato. I think, pretty sure I changed it to that.

Yeah. And then every six months or so, Ethan Hawk puts out a new movie. So Corey and I talk about it on Hawk, which I really appreciate that. You guys have a podcast that I can listen to every week, but having a quarterly podcast that I do makes me so happy. Like, we only have to do this, like, every six months or so. It's incredible. That's a good, it's a good racket.

You got that. Also, six months. Ethan Hawke releases a movie every six months. You, sir, know that that is not true. My God. It has been lately. It has been lately. We did, like, eight episodes last fall.

It was crazy. Yeah, where he's, like, filming things in Croatia that go direct to VOD. he's such an annoying bastard but yeah I think that's about it well that's our episode thank you for showing up this is great oh yeah thank you so much thank you friend this was fun

you want more of this had Oscar Buzz you can check out the Tumblr at this hadoscorbuzz com you can also follow us 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 Letterboxed and blue sky at Joe Reed reed spelled R-EID also Vulture

all the time a letterbox and blue sky for me as well at Christopher FIE file that's FIAL we'd like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork Dave Gonzalez and Gavin News for technical guidance when we need it and Taylor Cole for a theme music please remember to rate like and review us on Spotify Apple Podcasts wherever else you get those podcasts

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A big five-star review. How about that? Even though it feels like the word big has been taken away from us as an adjective. Anyway, we can't get lost on that. That's all for this week. We hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Bye.