This Had Oscar Buzz - Back to TIFF!

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

We’re back from our annual trip to the Toronto International Film Festival! Once again, we’ll be dissecting our festival experience, the films we saw, and what lies ahead for the season. We discuss the Peoples’ Choice Award winner American Fiction and its chances in the awards race, several International Feature contenders at the festival including Perfect Daysand The Teachers’ … Continue reading "Back to TIFF!"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Millen Hack and French. I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh. To travel without moving. To enjoy what's precious. The passage of time.

The colors of the seasons. To define yourself. To remember the past. to look to the future. Hello, and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's even better than the book! Every week on this at 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 was. went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we're here to perform the autopsy, except this week, we're here with our annual recap of the Toronto International Film Festival. I'm your host, Chris Fyle,

and I'm here, as always, with my beacon of blue in a sea of movie lovers, Joe Reed. For the love of film! For the love of film! I will, we've talked about the TIF volunteer ad before, not to get to Inside Baseball, but this is our most inside baseball episode of the season where we talk about, or the year, rather where we talk about the Toronto Film Festival. Listeners who did not attend TIF have no idea what the hell we're talking about. There's an ad every year that celebrates the wonderful TIF volunteers, who genuinely are an army of blue and a sea of movie lovers, and we love them.

Unfailingly helpful and nice and organized. Herding Cats is a good metaphor for what they do at the festival. But every year there's a pre-roll ad celebrating them. And usually it's a new ad with a new concept every time. And sometimes they're more creative than others. And sometimes they're the aha video. And sometimes they're a parody of the Breakfast Club. And they've had the same ad now for two years in a row.

Now, it's been a busy thing. All of the ads were the same except for the Visa ad, the one that we did at the top of this episode. Yes. Yes. The Bulgari ad was the same. the really annoying ones, the two different, or at least I only saw two, that's like, what is it for? It was, there's the Jane Austen one, and then there's the horror movie one. Oh, I never saw the Jane Austen one.

I only saw that. That was the, like, Royal Bank of Canada celebrating the audience or something like that, right? Oh, yeah, which has, like, a huge amount of controversy this year because all of these stars are, like, doing an open letter to Tiff to drop them as a sputz. Oh, is that true? We don't like the Royal Bank of Canada? Yeah, they're not ecologically conscious. They're like one of the worst. A bank?

Not being ecologically conscious? Yeah. Yeah. It's great. No, I love that ad because that ad invites the audience to applaud themselves. And it's fascinating to watch the audience either resist that temptation or fall into that trap. And it's like kind of delicious because it's like... Especially because those ads were annoying.

Here's to you, audience. I kind of like, the horror one I kind of liked. I thought she was kind of funny. And I do think there is that sappy part of me that does feel like... Yeah, me. Tiff audience, not me, but like TIF audiences are built different. Remember when we talked about the film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool premiere where they were like screaming their heads off for a net Benning and Jamie Bell?

Like, Tiff audiences are kind of just built different. And I like that about them. And watching an entire city mobile. eyes to get out there and watch and go line up and see American fiction, which we'll talk about in a second. Do you know what I mean? There is something... People's Choice winner, American fiction. There is something... Minutes ago. Biring about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's something... Oh, no, totally. Totally. It's a good group, those TIF viewers, so those TIF audiences. So anyway, we are here for the however many year in a row to talk about

our experience at the Toronto Film Festival. We were back once again, live and in person, 41 stories looming over downtown Toronto, Ontario. What can we say, Chris? Good festival. We were there for a shorter period than we usually are. Alas, yes. I did not see as many. Here's the thing I will say. I did not see as many films as I wanted to see in terms of like sheer volume. there were not too many movies, individual movies, that I was dying to see that I missed. I feel like I hit everything I really needed to see almost. I really would have liked to have seen Kitty Green's The Royal Hotel. I really would have liked to have seen, well, now.

Because of scheduling, I saw no Netflix movies. Right. I only saw Rustin. I was very content to sort of, like, with a shorter schedule, I was very content. to just sort of wait, knowing that the Netflix movies would make it to me eventually. I really wanted to see... Until late. I wanted to see wicked little letters, and then you and Katie talked me out of it.

And then I found out later that it was, like, really fun and kind of exactly what I was hoping for, out of a, like, pleasant British comedy that I always like to see late in the festival. But anyway, it's fine. Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. What was your general feeling on? Did you see everything you wanted to see? Did you, were there any major ones that you missed?

I would say no. I could have used another day or so to have seen more. Yes. But that's okay. Scheduling was also against us because, like, not seeing Nyad because of when we left, though. Heard it was horrid. Heard bad things about it. Heard really bad things.

Yeah. So yeah, like I, we've had this conversation and maybe we've had this conversation on Mike, but like after last year's TIF experience, I didn't really feel like I had much to look forward to in the fall in terms of like things to get out of the house and go see. So like I'm still very happy to have some things to look forward to this fall. My batting average, this TIF was incredible. I saw 16 movies in total. Of those 16, I didn't like two of them. Like, on some level, and of those two that I didn't like, at least one of them, I'm like, but I'm glad I saw it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm glad.

Like, one of those movies that I didn't like, and we'll talk about it, was, like, my most discussed movie of the festival because I could not wait to just be like, what did you think of this movie? We have to talk about it. Are you talking about the movie that, like, I'm laying in bed and you come, like, barging in, like, the Kool-Aid man to, like, yes. at me about this movie? Kool-Aid Man is unfortunately accurate, yes, given my... Because you were so loud, like, yelling about this movie. Yes.

I did do that. It was very that. I did prepare you because I texted you, and it was like, as soon as you are back from Origin, we are talking about that movie. We'll get to Origin. Yeah, the only other one that I didn't really like was Rustin. I thought Rustin was bad,

and I really had high hopes for Rustin. So that was a little bit, Christ Vaughn. But everything else that I saw, I at least thought was okay. I guess Fingernails is my other one where it's just like it was okay. But everything else... You really think that movie was okay? Yeah. You were as negative on that movie when you came home from it as anything else.

I think you're being a little more generous than you really want to be towards that movie. I... Maybe. I think it was just... The thing about fingernails is... It's based on an untenable premise. But I think for a movie that was based on an untenable premise, it was like, okay. Like, and I say, like, compared to everything else that I saw at the festival, that puts it, like, way at the bottom of the list.

But, like, it's a dumb premise, the idea, the premise of fingernails, which is the new movie from, is it Christos Niku? Is that how we, is that? Yes, the Apple's filmmaker. The Althamas Protégé. Right. Which you can tell. But it's like, it's dumb. So the idea is that in this, like, plausible near future, there's a test you can take

to determine whether you and the person you are romantically involved with are truly in love. And the test, like, requires you to, like, have a fingernail removed, which is why it's called fingernails. But the whole idea is then... Fingernails! But the whole idea is this, like, but now there's anxiety for people who, like, maybe they've taken the test. and they're not quite sure if, you know, they took the test a couple years ago, but they don't know whether they're still truly in love with their partner or some people haven't taken the test and there's anxiety.

And it's like, yeah, feelings fucking change. Like, you know what I mean? It's just like what, what is, like, there's no, they do not do a good job of selling why this test would be in any way valuable for people. It's like, yeah, at the moment you tested, you were maybe in love. But, like, that's the whole thing about falling out of love is that, like, feelings change what the fuck this is dumb this is dumb I don't like it I didn't see that movie it did sound to me like a movie that imagines a world where gay people don't exist and

your description of the movie did not deceive my perception yes that is correct and you know what honestly I'm fine because like I don't want gay people to be involved with that foolishness you you can you don't want gay people to be involved in this bad movie you can you can imagine a world where gay people would have been like well that's dumb like that's not not how we do relationships, so, like, y'all can have that. Like, you can take your little fingernail test and, and we'll be here, like, we're not sacrificing our fingernails for anything. Right. Like, yeah. That's important to the full picture aesthetic. Okay. But those are the movies that I didn't care for. I guess get those out of the way early. You know, I thought my

batting average, personally, was good, surprisingly, for the amount of bad movies I saw. I wrote about all of the actor-director debuts for The Daily Beast. And it turned out pretty much all of them were among the worst things that I saw at the festival. With the exception of Anna Kendrick's Woman of the Hour, I feel like people really kind of leaned into that movie in terms of how good it is. Because, like, I think that that is a very, it's not this amazing debut, but it's a very serviceable movie. I think it'll do well on Netflix.

Yeah. I liked it, and I think it got the benefit of being the one that did well among this, like, morass of movies directed by actors. And I think people were maybe a little more effusive about it because of that, but it is a good movie. Anna Kendrick knows where to put a camera. Well, the thing that I liked about Woman of the Hour, I will agree with you, that was of the movies that I wasn't super sure about, I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I liked Woman of the Hour. when you hear that like Anna Kendrick directorial debut, you're expecting a kind of low-lift

romantic comedy, maybe romantic dromedy, or maybe something like the movie that she did last year whose title now I can't think of. Did you see that one though where it was her and her friends go to that weekend getaway and her abusive boyfriend? She's going to remember what this is. Whatever. It was okay.

It was deeply okay. Anna Kendrick puts some challenges in front of her for this movie. This is not an easy movie to direct. This movie has challenges in terms of timelines and tone. It's a very, very delicately balanced tonal movie that goes from genuinely very funny sort of, you know, a light comedy to really terrifying, like, true crime stuff. And improbably, she balances it really well. She keeps the momentum going very well. I think for a debut, I think she sets up some challenges for herself, and I think she succeeds

quite well. I was very pleasantly surprised. And I'm hoping that this movie doesn't just sort of die on Netflix. Right. You know, and you can see it could because, like, this is not a movie that's going to stand out from the crowd during award season. And they probably won't release it maybe until next year. Maybe who knows.

That's what I would imagine. I mean, it's sold for $11 million, the first deal of the festival. That's a number that you could see them. Unfortunately, from historically, what's happened with Netflix buying things out of festivals, that could absolutely completely go away or they could, you know, give it a push. But I imagine that's something that we'll see in the spring on Netflix. Take it from us, though, listeners. Keep an ear out and an eye out, woman of the hour when it comes on the Netflix.

you have our recommendations. See that movie. It's a good one. Don't just sort of let it disappear. It is interesting, though, because of all of these movies, that was the one that I think people had their knives out the most for of these, and people were maybe optimistically looking towards Chris Pine Pullman. She was the absolute polar opposite of Chris Pine. I think people walk into a festival being ready to, you know, carve up the new and the debut Anna Kendrick movie and ready to fawn all over the new Chris Pine directorial debut because people fucking love Chris Pine. And it was kind of gratifying to me

who has a little bit of a raised arched eyebrow at both of those tendencies from people. It was very gratifying for me to have people forced to admit that the Anna Kendrick movie was good and the Chris Pine movie was bad. I don't think anybody was forced in either direction. people were, people were very complimentary to the Anna Kendrick.

Yeah, because it was good. And the Chris Pine movie was bad, and they were, and they had to say so. And that was fun for me. Listen, I was at the Pullman premiere. Listeners are going to want to hear about it. Let's get into it before we do some table setting, and then we get into the festival at large. I thought it was, parts of it were fine. It's kind of like Chris Pine made like an animated, like, animated, like, animated.

Maniacs type of movie, but then it's like, it's got kind of this madcap American Dad vibe, but with live action and nobody laughing at any of the jokes. Sounds great. I was laughing for a while. I was like, okay, this is, this is wild. I'm kind of, I get what he's going for, and I can laugh at some of these jokes, but by the end, it gets really annoying. What's the premise in a nutshell without like giving it away? He is a kind of slacker pool man who lives in a mobile home at like an apartment complex and spends his time, you know, trying to preserve the city of Los Angeles, uh, from things like, uh, you know, the city concerns of like development and, uh, you know, the water supply, etc. And then the movie starts referencing Chinatown every five minutes, and it becomes this kind of very silly noir movie centered around this character who is like the most annoying little boy at a Christmas party who just wants to like show you what he can do.

You know, you know like what I'm saying? This does sound like the reasons why people say they don't like Anna Kendrick. That's very funny to me, actually. It's not like that, though. It's a little more, I don't know. But, like, the comedic tones throughout it are wild. There is a moment where Annette Benning, who I do think is funny in the movie, it just cuts to her doing a direct camera address, sitting in a chair,

and you can tell that she's reading from the book in her hands, and you can see the cover of the book is my struggle. And it's like, oh. Oh, dear. it's it gets it gets cringy and annoying and it that being said with like i was like i had some laughs with this movie when i did i was one of maybe like three or four people laughing in the theater i don't think i have been a part of a tiff crowd that a movie did so poorly at like the vibe in the room it was bad vibes and i got to say like maybe 20 percent

20 to 25% of the theater was like blocked off for people who were associated with the movie, like people who were part of the production, and it was still flat out dying. None of the laughs were coming from that part of the crowd. It was... It was a late evening premiere though, right? It was like 9.30? On a Monday, not in a large... In the lightbox,

not in one of the large venues, which should have been a sign. Yeah. And it had this, you know, it was supposed to be projected in 35 millimeter, so We're supposed to be seeing it on film, and they said that there was a technical issue, and we couldn't see it that way. And I feel like this movie, having its world premiere in one of the not-large venues, should have been a sign, and nobody listened to it. It's not a good movie. I think it's going to be scrubbed off the face of the earth. But, like, you know, it's not, it's, I understand why people think it's a disaster.

I think it's just mostly embarrassing. All right, let's get the other bad movies out of the way before we can move on to the good ones, and then we'll do the vulture movie Fantasy League promo in between. Worst movie I saw at the festival was Patricia Arcad's Gonzo Girl. I think no one else was saying that at the festival, because no one else saw it. Saw it, right, yeah. Really bad movie. Willem Defoe is basically playing a Hunter S. Thompson type.

The tone is all over the place. It's a lot of close-ups of him screaming. Sure. It's not a good movie. Sure. It's bad. It's really bad. Unfortunately, as I said before, the worst movie that I saw at the festival was Rustin, which is going to be released by Netflix in January, ahead of what I still imagine will be a campaign to get Coleman Domingo, a best actor nomination.

Coleman Domingo has been good and enough things that if he gets nominated for a bad thing, I'm not going to begrudge it. it's a real, I hesitate to use this word because it's so TikTok generation, but it's real cringy. It's very, when the title, when the credit came up at the end of the movie that it was written by Dustin Lance Black, I was like, okay, a lot of this makes sense now. It's directed by George C. Wolf, who directed Ma Rainey's Black Bottom a few years ago, which I really liked a lot, a lot, a lot. Like, George C. Wolf is most known for being a theater director. He's also he'll also show up in movies. Sometimes he's, if you'll notice him in the runway editorial room in the Devil

Wars Prada. But he also directed the TV movie adaptation of Ruben Santiago Hudson's Lackawanna Blues for HBO back, back in the day. I think as a filmmaker, he is probably as good as his material and the material in this movie is really not good. It's so it's this kind of brain dead

raw raw biopic stuff where it's really it's hard to explain it without just like. Characters constantly introducing themselves by their full name, it sounds like. Yeah, there's a lot of that.

There's a lot of the, there's so much potential intrigue in this idea of Bayard Rustin was a black gay civil rights leader in the 1960s who helped organize the march on Washington with Martin Luther King and then was kind of drummed out of the movement for various PR reasons. And it's a powerful story. And there have been like several documentaries recently that have touched upon that story. There was an FX five-part documentary on queer issues, whose title is now escaping me. But that one focused on Bayard Rustin for a while, and it was very, very interesting. It's incredibly, like, fascinating story that is told in the most sort of embarrassingly broadstrokes.

All of the performances are, like, pitched to 11, and it's just, it's sort of this, like, recitation of facts of characters sort of, like, stomping out to the middle of the stage and, like, their feet and being like, and this is why this happened, and this is why, you know, um, Bayard Rustin didn't get along with this person from the N.A.C. And his queer relationships are really drawn in these very kind of like melodramatic, uh, strokes. It's, it's a tough watch. It's a really tough watch. Which, as I said, I don't think disqualifies it from it being an awards contender, actually. Like, I think sometimes people really go for movies that tell you exactly

what's, you know, what's going on. The Netflix has gotten Oscar nominations from movies that aren't widely liked or thought of as good before, so I don't think it's... I don't think the press perception of this movie out of TIF is going to harm the movie at all. I feel the same way about Nyat, too.

I would... Not having seen Nyat, ad, but I would agree with that out of hand. I'm not at all dismissing either one of these two movies in terms of awards chances, although I will say, no, I'm not even going to say that Coleman Domingo can't win Best Actor. You can win Best Actor, giving a, you know, broad performance in a bad movie. It's happened before. Like, there's no...

Joker. Sure. Yeah. Like, Judy, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I stick up for Judy in a lot of ways. But I was disappointed because this is a historical figure who deserves a more robust and thorny movie than this one delivered. The other worst movie that I saw at Tiff, unfortunately, was Ava Dune's origin, which is not bad for lack of trying. This movie really goes for it, and I really appreciate that.

that about origin. It is an adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction book, cast, which explores racial prejudice and oppression through the lens of cast divisions as presented in places like India and Nazi Germany. It's an academic text that Diderney attempts to adapt in a way that would like make lay people understand it. And I think it fundamentally fails at that task.

And but the swings she takes in it, while not successful, are real interesting. I don't know if that's how you felt about it as well. There are so many things I can like- Kinder thoughts for it. I don't think it works, but I do appreciate the swing, especially for a filmmaker who I think her instinct, are more towards mainstream storytelling, and that's not a dig in any way, but doing these very, like, non-traditional, a non-traditional approach to this, like you said, academic material. I don't ultimately think it works. I understand why some people really, really like it. I also understand why some people, like you, think that it's really bad. I fell somewhat in the middle with it. I I think Anjuna Ellis is really good in it, but then there's also scenes where it's like, you know, she literally builds a whiteboard in the final scene of this movie.

So there's a little crunchiness to it. There are metaphors that are, there are metaphors in this movie that I think are effective if you are giving a lecture. The one at the end of the movie, where she explains America's sort of racial situation as akin to you've bought a house and the foundation. is damaged. And you may not have damaged that foundation, but it's your house now, and you are responsible for getting it fixed. That's a great metaphor to use in a lecture. As delivered in just that way in a movie, it sounds didactic. It is, it is didactic. You know what I mean? There is, this is a, the attempt to tell this, to adapt this book by telling the story of the author and how she wrote this book, I think is an, is, is a interesting work around that ultimately, I think

doesn't work because it, the movie never escapes its identity as being a sort of academic framework in search of a story. And instead, there's a reason why some people were comparing it to eat, pray, love in that way. Well, and that's the thing is the stuff that focuses on Isabel Wilkerson's life, I think those are the really powerful parts of Antoineau Alice Taylor's performance. And she's an incredible actress, of course. And there are moments where she, like, goes through these moments of grief and these moments of, you know, real frustration, and she sells it very well. But then I think, yet you mentioned Eat, Pray, Love. She goes on this sort of world tour of oppression and learns these stories of

that end up sort of beefing up her theory of America's racial animus as being an issue of cast rather than racism, which my other problem with the movie is I don't think the movie ever truly sells me on the notion that there is a difference between cast oppression and racism as presented in America's racial situation that goes anything beyond semantics. I think ultimately the movie doesn't sell that to me. And I think it needs to. But you get these, like, little portions of the movie that start to tell these little vignettes of stories within a story of, you know, this group of white and black researchers down in Mississippi who were there essentially embedded in the local racist community to observe how whites and blacks interacted. She tells the story of a little league team in a segregated town, which couldn't all go play in the community pool together because one of the kids was black. She tells the sort of smaller, she tells the story of Martin Luther King touring India and like getting a lot of his ideas about, you know, the American presentation of racism from his visit to India and his observation of the case.

cast systems there. All of those things could have been individual movies that I would have loved for, and I still would love for somebody to tackle. I think in the movie they are used as like slides in a slideshow. I don't want to get too into it because like this movie deserves to be, you know, dealt with in its own terms when it actually opens. But sometime this year from Neon. What do you think of it as an awards contender? Because it obviously it premiered in Venice and then very hastily set up a TIF premiere. And it felt like there was this sense of, oh, here comes Origin. And it's about to sort of try and barnstorm the awards race. And after having seen it, I have trouble imagining it just because whereas Rustin is a

worst movie, it's also a much more recognizably Oscar-y movie. Whereas Origin feels too academic to me to build any awards momentum. What do you think of that? I'm really curious because, like, also part of the reason I think why, you know, Nyad and Rustin are not going to have issue as far as the industry is concerned if people don't necessarily, if, like, you know, if, you know, moviegoers or the press doesn't think they're very good. You know, neon who has origin, they've never really had to sell us a, well, I guess,

Titania. They never really had to sell a movie that wasn't as well received. Sure. That's the bigger question mark for me. As far as the movie itself, I can see the industry going for it and appreciating the swing. I think it's one of the bigger question marks moving forward in the season. Neum also has a lot on their plate. Yeah. So we'll see. I could see a campaign being, you know, I could see ingenue Ellis Taylor getting a robust campaign for Best Actress. I think the performance backs that up, and I think she's the kind of actress who is ready to level up from a supporting nomination to a lead nomination. But Best Actress is really, really competitive this year from where we're standing now in mid-September with, you know, Carrie Mulligan and, Emma Stone, and Annette Benning, and Sandra Huller, and it's going to be...

What's interesting, I think, is a lot of those contenders are, like, Netflix has a lot of leave actresses to push. Now, even Neon has multiple ones to push. I mean, I think Sandra Huller is going to be talked about all season and is going to be fine to get a nomination, but, you know, those competing within a distributor, you know, competing priorities do have a way of playing out. But we'll see. But where do you see competing? Oh, I guess it's Carrie Mulligan and at Benning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And May December. Oh, right. And Natalie Portman for May December. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good point. A lot going on at Netflix.

A lot going on at Netflix this year. That's right. Okay, before we move on to people's choice and the movies that fared better at Toronto, I do want to talk about the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. When this episode goes up, as we record this episode, we'll go out tomorrow. A couple more weeks to get your team in for Vulture Movie Fantasy League. So if I have cautioned you to maybe wait a little bit and see what the landscape is before you draft, you have waited long enough.

The fall festivals have played out. You have all the information you're going to get from the fall festivals. Don't wait for New York Film Festival because they will only be just underway by the time the deadline for drafting a team is here. September 28th, you need to have your team drafted. And while there remains always a chance that a movie will drop out of the 2023 season I would

I would say right now is where you should be looking to draft a team and there are some post festival are there any Chris you have I don't think you've drafted a team yet but I think you've taken a look at the landscape there

are there any movies that jump out to you as particularly tasty as a drafting option at their price point the $20 range I feel like is where the, you know, point power lies, you know, because who knows what box office points are going to do. Granted, the Taylor Swift movie is, what, a $10 buy, $5 buy?

Yeah. So if you want to get some box office points, that's, you know, probably a good bet. Maybe not for awards. But the $20 range is where you have what films are on there. I think Barbie is like $25. Okay. So your $25 range is where you can get Barbie, The Holdovers, Maestro, Ridley Scott's Napoleon. Then you drop into your $20 movie is a little bit less certain with something like the color purple.

Past Lives is a $20 buy. You can get Anatomy of a fall for a cool 15. We just mentioned May, December. You can get that for 15. Across the Spider-Verse, which seems like a major contender in animated is 15. So, yeah, that's where you're sort of looking, Chris, is that general area. It's not a bad idea. That's where I'm strategizing.

That's where I'm moving the chart around. I can see that. That's good. What's also valuable, like, Oppenheimer is a $50 buy-in, 55? Offenheimer is a $50, so, yeah. So play your cards, right? You can maybe get Oppenheimer and some of those, and then some of the lower dollar. items, and we'll see.

You've got to be able to fill out a full eight film roster, though. So be careful about spending too much money on your top end, or else you're just going to be fishing through the dollar bin for roster fillout. And much as Dick's the

musical, which just won the People's Choice Award at Tiff for Midnight Madness, is a fun pick. I'm not sure how many awards. I mean, who knows? Independent Spirit nominee. I have an original song category. Independent Spirit nominee for Best First Screenplay,

a possibility. Who knows? All right. So for the Vulture Movie Fantasy League, Chris, also do you want to remind our listeners that they can sign up for a league if they want to join in with their fellow Gary's? Yeah, there's a league option.

We are encouraging all listeners of the show and all Gary's to sign up with the league name All of Us Garys. That's capital A, L-L, capital O, F, capital U, S, capital G, A-R-Y-S. All one word, no spaces. People were asking what that's for, and it's like, are these people not hounding for details for all of us strangers, the Andrew Hay movie? It's going to be so infuriating if I can't get down to New York Film Festival, and I have to wait until December to see all of us strangers. I know that's the case for everybody, but, like, I want to see it maybe more than anybody else. Newfest is also showing it, so you could try it out.

I know. The problem remains, which is that nobody I know in New York is vacating their apartment for a month and will let me live there because it's so fucking expensive to stay in a hotel in New York City. I hate it. Eric Adams is ruining the city. He's pricing everybody out. Get rid of them as soon as possible in New York. Okay.

So, um... Yes. So, Gary is everywhere. Go to vulture.com backslash movies dash league for the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. You can get rules and regulations. You can see what prizes you could win, which include a 65-inch Roku television, a Roku stream bar, some pretty badass headphones. There's a criterion channel subscription this year, which is new, for fourth through eighth place. There's a grab bag of Vulture merch. I mean, there are prizes. There are prizes and not just for first place. So head on over. Also the prize of bragging rights, if you win. The greatest prize of all.

It cannot be undersold. As Whitney Houston once told us, to brag on yourself, it is the greatest prize of all. So listen to Whitney. Vulture Movie Fantasy League, you've got until September 28th to sign up for a team. Get out there and do it, everybody. We'll see you on the playing field. All right, Chris. Joe, do you also want to hype our Patreon for listeners?

Why don't we? Yes. Patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz is where you're going to go. If you have not already signed up for a $5 monthly membership for This Had Oscar Buzz, Turbulent Brilliance, which is what we are calling our Patreon, we have some really good episodes already up. So even just if you signed up for what we have up there now, we have, we have, uh, we have, We have exceptions and excursions on this had Oscar buzz, turbulent brilliance. What we mean by that is the exceptions are the movies that we could not cover on Flagship Show because they've gotten a couple Oscar nominations, but they were still pretty disappointing.

We're talking about movies like Nine and The Lovely Bones, or even movies that we love like Pleasantville that did not get... Lovely Bones is not up yet. It is coming October 1st. Oh, my gosh. By the subscribers. That's true. All right. Lovely Bones is coming up.

Thank you, Chris, for keeping me... on point on the schedule. What just did go up, though, is one of our excursions episodes. Excursions are when we sort of go off format, off topic a little bit, and go into the kind of down a rabbit hole of one of our little Oscar obsessions, which this past week we put up an episode on the 2016 actress roundtable that featured no fewer luminaries than Isabelle Luper Annette Benning Annette Benning and her friends

taking a trip to South America To really investigate that area Amy Adams' awful Baker's wife wig From Into the Woods in the park Annette Benner I said Annette P. Benning Natalie Portman Emma Stone, Naomi Harris

Taraji P. Henson Taraji P. Henson sassing the fuck out of What's His Face? The moderator, who I always forget. Stephen Galloway, who sucks. It's a good one. have some really good discussion there. We have a mailbag

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So go and sign up. You won't regret it. All right. Christopher, we just before we started recording, we got ourselves a people's choice winner at TIF and our little group chat that you and I have with Katie Rich. Katie called for predictions just this morning who we thought would win. Katie and I both thought it would be the holdovers, and you thought it would be... No, Katie said American fiction.

Oh, Katie said American fiction. Okay. Because I didn't want to, like, you know, I wanted to, like, judge something else to have bragging rights rather than piggyback. I said hitman. That's right. That's right. That's right. But he called American fiction.

We got a talk... American fiction would have been my actual prediction if I wasn't being a past. You kept saying it during the festival. You said you thought. thought, as soon as you saw American fiction, you pegged it as a possible people's choice winner. That premiere crowd really aided up. Yeah. And I think a lot of people who were in that premiere screening really thought of this as a potential winner.

Yeah. It's the type of movie that was getting so many laughs throughout the movie that we were missing clear jokes that were happening. Yes. That's how my screening of the holdovers was, which is why I was predicting the holdovers. American fiction directorial debut from Cord Jefferson who I know from as a

culture writer from he had written for Gawker and he had written for Grantland and he had written for a bunch of different places. This is how I felt when Che Serrano premiered his TV show Primo over the summer and it was so good and I loved it so much. It's nice to see these sort of people who work in the

general sort of field that I've working in kind of make good. And Court Jefferson has been, you know, writing great things for a while. He won an Emmy, along with Damon Lindeloff, for an episode of Watchman that he wrote a few years ago. But this is his film debut with American fiction. Chris, why don't you explain what, sort of briefly, but explain what in American fiction was about? So it stars Jeffrey Wright in a really incredible performance as this writer who is not getting so much attention. attention for his books, even though they are, you know, seen as very good. Opposite, you know, what's happening in the literary field, books that he perceives by

black writers as being exploitative, etc. Meanwhile, we're also seeing personal details about his life, you know, it's not just, you know, a character that's talking points. He's, you know, also this fully fledged character that Jeffrey Wright is phenomenal in. But the twist of the story is he decides to go by an alias to write the type of book that he has been criticizing and the journey of getting that book published and I love that he writes this he writes this novel very quickly as a as a troll essentially as a fuck you to the industry that he's going to send it in with the with the assumption also for the money of it because he gets this huge advance and he needs it for, you know, care for his ailing mother. For his

his ailing mother. But also he expects that when he sends it in, that the second somebody reads it, somebody's going to know that it's him throw in a middle finger to the literary industry and he's going, and it'll be received as such. And then to his great surprise, and of course, anybody who's seen a satire sort of sees this coming, they love it, of course. And it becomes this like sensation. I think the thing that you mentioned, though, is very crucial to the success of American

fiction, which is, on one level, it is this kind of scathing indictment of the literary industry and the ways in which black authors and black creators, this also gets into ideas of, like, film adaptations

and TV adaptations, that kind of thing, that take these that prioritize stories that will appeal to white audiences, either white audiences who want to kind of white liberal audiences who want to self-flagelate over these stories of like black pain through stories about slavery or stories about oppression, or white audiences who want to kind of revel in these stories

of hardened black criminals in, you know, in gang, and, you know, drug runners and guns and all this sort of stuff. And as being like the creative pinnacle of, you know, of black artistry. Like the black experience. Right. And all of that is insightful and incisive and comes from, you can tell it comes from a place. This is also, by the way, this is an adaptation of the novel Eurasia by Percival Everett.

But you can tell this comes from a place from Everett and also from Court Jefferson. of experience and, you know, sort of the heightening of very real feelings. But on the other side, there is this really, really successful family dromedy happening with, you know, there's this, he's one of three siblings, all of whom have very specific and challenging relationships, not only to their mother who is, you know, who is ailing and needs to be placed in a home, but also to their late father. And his brother is played... Their mother, played by Leslie Uggums, we should say. Played by Leslie Uggums. June was busting out all over in this film. Jeffrey Wright's brother is played by Sterling K. Brown,

who has, you know, his characters recently left his wife and come out as gay. His sister is played by Tracy Ellis Ross. Jeffrey Wright's character, whose name is Thelonius, Alison, of course, he goes by Monk, because the, you know, the Thelonious of it all. The movie's also a decent romantic comedy too Because his romantic role is played by Eric Alexander Eric Alexander is so good in this movie She gets the okay she is so good in this movie

She's getting the type of role that she should have been getting Like you said for the past 20 years I would still argue I want her to be playing roles that give her more to do I was just happy to see her get the level of screen time That she gets in this movie This is why I specified when I said that, like rom-coms. I want her to have been the lead in about 15 rom-coms over the last 20 years.

Since from living single to now, she should have been, you know, I mean, whatever. You can rail against the movie industry and lack of opportunity for black actresses. But anyway, some really great small performances in this movie from Adam Brody and Issa Ray. Keith David shows up for a scene, and it's very good. But I think the show here is Jeffrey Wright. I think Jeffrey Wright is incredibly good in this movie. And I'm hoping the People's Choice winner at Tiff has not gone without getting, has not, how do I not do a double negative here? The People's Choice winner at Tiff has gone on to get a Best Picture nomination every year since 2011.

It's been a long time since the People's Choice winner has not gotten a Best Picture nomination. So, MGM... There's a decent shot that this movie becomes a Best Picture nominee. I really, really hope that it helps catapult the movie to get Jeffrey Wright the nomination because, like, it's a comedic performance. It's not the type of thing that the Oscars necessarily go for in terms of an acting performance, but, like... At this point, Jeffrey Wright's a legend, like, and he's so good in this movie. The thing about, so I want to go through the last, like backwards through the People's Choice winners very briefly, because when you talk about comedies that have won, there's always something, so like Fableman's won last year, Belfast the year before, both of those sort of, you know, coming of age memoirs from their filmmakers, Nomad Land won in 2020, that's a straight drama. Jojo Rabbit, probably the most overtly comedic of the recent winners, but even that one, it's like, it's an overt comedy set in.

Nazi Germany. What do the Oscars love? Most of anything. It's things said in Nazi Germany. Green book, that's a whole other bunch of bullshit. Three billboards, La La Land, Room, The I Immitation Game, Twelve Years a Slave, Silver Linings Playbook, and then the last movie... Which I think is probably the best analog

for, like, this movie and what the potential is for Oscar. Silver Linings Playbook? Yeah, because, like, it's a comedy that's kind of, you know, I like that movie, but in terms of the kind of energy

to it, the kind of, like, pace. I think there's so much more drama in Silver Linings Playbook than there is an American fiction. I worry that I just, my worry is that American fiction is going to be too much of a comedy

to succeed, and I hope I'm wrong. Because it would be a real bad look for one thing, if this is like the one exception to the people's choice to best picture pipeline. The other thing is they would just be denying themselves this really, really good movie. And especially, I think Jeffrey Wright, who has never been nominated for an Oscar, which is obscene and absurd, Jeffrey Wright deserves to get his first Oscar nomination for this. And I'm putting out the call now. Let's make this happen. There's also an aspect to winning the people's choice

that I think people get a little show me about. And I do think that this movie, like, you can nitpick this movie. Coming to this movie with- As we've described it to our listeners, there is obviously a lot going on here. There's obviously maybe some moments of it being two or three competing movies. That being said, it's so enjoyable. I've also seen people mention that the ending is not great. I don't think it's the movie's strongest point.

It's kind of the reason why I thought it might not win people's choice and that there are other movies that end a lot stronger. But here's what I will say. Do not, please don't go to American fiction with your arms crossed with a show me attitude. Like, be open to this movie, be open to a little bit of messiness with this movie, but it's, it's rewarding if you, you know, if you go with your mind ready to, I don't know. And see it in a fucking theater because it really plays to a crowd. Okay, let's talk about the runners-up.

The two runners-up for people's choice were Alexander Payne's the holdovers and Haya Miyazaki is the boy in the heron. I really did think the holdovers was going to win just because my screening was so raucous for it. It's such a likable movie. It is a, there is no barrier to entry to this movie, I don't think. I think it's very, it's so accessible.

It's so, I mean, it's, you know, it's a simple movie, don't want to use that as backhanded at all. The simplicity, I think, is one of the strong things going for it. I think so, too. It's, you know, straightforwardness, I think. It's also Alexander Payne's best movies since Sideways, and that's like, I don't think

there's any arguing. Which is true, but it's such damning praise, right? Like, you know, those are not, you're comparing it to not great movies, in my opinion. But two of those not great movies were Best Picture nominees. Do you know what I mean? So, the Oscars really love Alexander Payne. I,

I definitely expect the holdovers to be a best picture contender. I think Paul Giamati and Devigioi Randolph are definitely in the acting races. I am, I really enjoyed myself with this movie. I really, it's the one movie that I saw Tiff that I can't wait to, like, recommend to my parents, which sometimes is a back-ended couple, but it's like, it's not in this case. I think this is a movie that will recommend well. And it's, I mean, I think if you've seen the trailer, you sort of like get the gist of it, Giamati as a teacher at a prestigious boarding preparatory school for like, you know,

children of rich senators and whatnot in the 1970s. And he's the teacher designated to stay at the school over holiday break with the handful of students who can't go home for the holidays. Divine Joy Randolph is the cafeteria manager at the school who also is staying over holiday break. She has recently sort of undergone a family tragedy. I'm not sure to the degree to which that's being revealed in the trailer, so I won't say specifically. It's in the trailer, suggestively. It is.

Okay. And then, of this handful of students that have to stay back, there is one student in particular who is sort of an older teen who is of particular note and particular difficulty. He and Giamati really do not get along. And surprise, surprise, the events of the story move along to where they come to an understanding with each other, and it becomes a little bit of a road trip movie for a while. It becomes a movie about, you know, class resentments and, um, you know, overcoming the hard aspects of your past.

And it's just a really solid, strong, good, very funny movie. Like, this is a... It is very funny. Yeah. There's no real element of surprise, but I don't think the movie needs it. No. For me, it was a movie I liked quite a bit, but was a little long. I needed less with the teens than...

Yeah, I liked the teens. Especially for the length of the movie. I liked the teens more than you did. I did not like the teams. Chris. But yeah, it's a good movie. Chris taking public transportation, I did not like the teens. It's another movie that I could have like a bunch of nitpicks about, but I feel like, you know, the movie transcends it, especially, much like American fiction.

Yeah. Just by being so funny. Yeah. excited to see Divine Joy Randolph in the supporting actress conversation. I think she's wonderful. One million percent. Yeah. I did not see The Boy in the Heron.

Oh, you didn't? That's right. I did not. I did. Like, wonderful to see a Miyazaki movie as part of a film festival. This is the first time I've been able to do that. That's really felt special. The audiences were very, very buzzy for this movie.

I think there was a ton of excitement. As a Miyazaki movie, there are others I like better. But, like, of the people I know who are, like, super, like, big-time Miyazaki fans, they walked out of that movie and were, like, singing its praises to the hill. So, like, take what I say with a grain of salt. I think it takes a while to get to the point where I'm, like, really invested. I think it's a little long. And, but by the—I think it ends tremendously.

well. I think there is a point in which the story sort of like unlocks itself where, I mean, it's a Miyazaki movie, so it's a lot of like, you know, fantastical creatures who end up being metaphors for the history of you know, Japan during

the pre-war era or, you know, there's a lot of stuff like that. While also being a story about like a kid who misses his mom and who has complicated feelings about his stepmom. And while all of this time, like, there's a bird that's maybe not really a bird, and it's kind of tormenting him. And he goes into this kind of magical realm, and parakeets are cooking up humans for dinner, and there are little things that look like Kirby from Nintendo, and there's just, there's a lot going on.

There's, it's, you know, obviously a feast for the senses and all that. And I felt there are times in which I'll walk out of a Miyazaki movie, and I'm like, cool, cool, cool, cool. I don't know what I think about that. You know what I mean? It's just like, I think, and I sort of, like, there are very few movies that I much, that I get more reward out of reading the reviews of than Miyazaki movies. I love hearing other people talk about that because that's how I then process what I have seen and really like, you know,

it's not that I'm waiting to be told how I felt about a movie, but I think Miyazaki movies especially, once I hear more people talk about it, I am able to sort of sift through my own feelings about the movie and come out at a more, you know, concrete feeling. And so I'm going to have a very good time, I think, throughout the next several months listening to people talk about

the boy in the heron I think it's going to be a contender in animated feature it is not going to be Japan's choice for the international feature and we'll talk about that we'll get into that but I think

the excitement for Miyazaki being back I don't there I've seen some people say that this is maybe a fringe contender for a Best Picture nomination I think that'd be cool I don't think it's going to happen but like you know

I'm all for cool things to happen at the Oscars. So, like, that would be fun. I'm excited for you to see it, though, Chris. What are your general Miyazaki feelings? I've done a lot of Miyazaki catch-up this year. I have nothing interesting to say about Miyazaki. I'm not a scholar, while also, you know, really enjoying every movie of his that I've seen. Yeah. Yeah. You also didn't... I'm sorry seeing this movie in IMAX in a few months. You also didn't see The Midnight Madness the People's Choice winner, correct? I did not. I did not see Dix the musical.

It opens this month. Well, they've changed the release plan for the movie now, but I was like, I can see this in two weeks, and it would have had to have derailed my schedule to see it, so I didn't see it. On my list of movies that I'm encouraging people to see

in a theater and a crowded theater at that, Dix the musical, experience this movie, um, watch other people react to this movie. Everybody I talked to who saw Dix at Tiff really liked it, including

me. I think Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, who I've seen do comedy in New York throughout the years, are very funny and are very I think intentionally, if you've seen them do comedy, you understand that

they are not here to do comedy in any way conventional. I think they very much prize sort of like doing the thing that you would not expect them to do. And so all of Dix is this sort of riding the line of try hard, but in a way that I think it stays on the good side of everything. It's like, yeah, nothing really makes sense in this movie. And yet it makes the sense of two comedy people who will make that most absurd choice.

every time. Do you know what I mean? So like along those lines, it actually does make sense. My vibe from the trailer is that like, it's not being try hard. It's presenting try hard as a comic sensibility. Like, it's almost making fun of try hard. Yeah. It's also aggressively, what was, what was the, the movie that Lights Camera Jackson was like, it's hostile towards heterosexuals? Joyride. Remember? Wasn't it Joyride? No, that was hostile towards men. Not LCJ. Dix the musical is the most hostile towards straight people movie I've ever seen, and that is a compliment. Like, if that appeals to you at all, even as a straight person, if you are a straight person, and you hear me say that, that should make you want to go see this movie. Like, this movie does not value the heterosexual experience, and in fact reviles it, and I love that for this. movie and see it. Okay.

So... Do we think there was anything surprising that didn't make the people's choice line up? I was expecting Hitman to show up, especially when I heard that there was a mid-applaus break in the premiere screening. That's true. For the big scene, and listeners, there is a big scene that is fucking awesome. Hitman's the new movie from Richard Linkletter. It is a quasi-based on a true story.

movie starring Glenn Powell as a sort of ordinary guy who moonlights helping essentially like police sting operations, specifically ones where people try and hire people to kill people for them. And he ends up being unexpectedly really good at it and maybe a little too good at it and it gets him caught up in a relationship. And it is, among many other things, a tremendous showcase for Glenn Powell, who I've obviously loved for years. He's definitely no longer like the best kept secret in

Hollywood after, you know, Top Gun Maverick and a bunch of other things. But like, I've loved this guy back to fucking Scream Queens. And his superpower is that he's the funniest. And also, like, the most, like, the most knowingly attractive person. Like, he's somebody who sort of, like, wields his attractiveness, like, a weapon, and he knows it. And this movie... And also, the beginning of this movie, we're supposed to believe that he's, like, a dweeb. And I was like, okay. He tries his best to sell dweeb.

But he actually kind of sells it, and I believe it? It's a great performance. I said, walking out of this movie, I'm like... I have my two should wins for the Golden Globes musical or comedy category this year. And it's Glenn Powell and Hitman and Jennifer Lawrence and No Hard Feelings. And neither one of them are going to win, but I need them both to be nominated because they are fantastic. And they're both bringing back the romantic comedy with complete full force. This is like, I thought Hitman was one of the best romantic comedies I've seen in a while.

Of course you would say that. Of course you would say that. have a slight screw loose, as I sometimes do, I think you will find it a very romantic movie. I was very, like, touched by the ultimate. We don't have to get into it. I don't want to play. This surprises me none. I will say, see this movie, and you'll walk out of it and be like, yes, of course, Chris thought this was incredibly romantic. Yes. Yep. Yes. Yes. It's a very romantic movie. Yeah. Yeah, Hit Man's a Blast. Someone needs to buy it. I feel like somebody probably already had. I was going to say, by the time you're listening to this, there's a good chance

that somebody's bought it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not Netflix. We were talking about this with Richard Lawson, former guest, Richard Lawson. Don't put that movie on Netflix. I swear to God. Give this movie at least a small theatrical run. Allow people to see this movie in a roomful of people. It's such a crowd pleaser. It's such a movie that, like, will get everybody, like, laughing. It's so, it's not a movie. Nothing deserves to die, a quiet Netflix death. We mentioned this with Woman of the Hour, but like, especially not Hit Man. Please do not let it happen. Again, it was another movie that I could nitpick, but I had a great time. Yeah. We've mentioned the holdovers as a potential best picture contender. Do we think we saw any other future best picture nominees at TIF? I would say we've seen the fewest number of future best picture nominees than we've ever seen at TIF. I would agree. I think Anatomy of a Fall has real potential.

I agree with you. I would also say it's very interesting because this is a movie that I think everyone was a line. I mean, not a, not, you know, a Tiff World premiere or anything, but everybody was pretty aligned on its greatness, but I heard nobody really having actual conversation about it, and that's the zone of interest. That was, I felt like that movie got a weird reception and that everybody was aligned in saying it was one of the best things I saw, but nobody really. talked about it. And maybe that's fine, because the movie doesn't open until December. It really is something that you have to, like, take a minute to reflect on. But also, is it just so obviously the thing that it is and doing what it's doing that it doesn't leave much room for conversation about it? Give the nutshell description of what zone of interest is for our

listeners in case they don't know. So, Zone of Interest is the latest movie by Jonathan Glazer. We've previously talked about his movie, his masterpiece, birth on this podcast. He's also done sexy beast and under the skin. You know, movies that could not be any more different. And what this movie is gives you kind of a bird's-eyed view of Rudolph Haas and his family. He was the real-life longest serving commandant at Auschwitz, and it is set in the family home literally over the fence from Auschwitz. Auschwitz's next door neighbors. Yes. And Sandra Huler plays his wife. It's constant, basically, domesticity of this family living next door to atrocity. And you're never inside Auschwitz in the movie. You are always at their home or in the village around it. And yet you can hear gunfire in the background. You can see smoke in the background. of things happening at Auschwitz.

So it's like, it's constantly omnipresent. Yeah. But they're in lives continuing. Glazer is making a real statement about our not just ability to just overlook atrocity, but also be more involved in our own self-interest as horrible things are happening in the world. I think there's a certain element of the movie where, he's inviting you to consider the way your own self-interest, not that he's calling, you know, the audience Nazis, but the way that your own self-interest allows you to overlook things happening

in the world that are, maybe our own self-interest is actively allowing those things to happen. And to allow that self-interest to become the conversation, rather than like, to allow you, to allow us to turn to turn the conversation away from the flat atrocity into ancillary issues that concern our own self-interest. You know what I mean? Where

it's really clever in that way. And it's a constantly appalling and nauseating movie. I mean, like, when you hear people say the banality of evil about it, I think that's the most basic thing you can say about this movie. There's a lot more layered to it. But as the plot kind of develops, and there is plot to this movie, I think when people describe it, it just sounds more like vignettes or such. But he gets a reassignment, and his

wife is very opposed to it because she wants to cling on to this house that they have and the life that they've built for their children. And she says something to the effect of, I would rather die than leave this place. And it's so apparent that she is talking about Auschwitz. I think the reason that people sort of talk about it in a way that sounds like it doesn't have a plot is because of the conceit of the movie, the plot is so absurdly ridiculous. The fact of the plot is so self-evidently unimportant to what is going on that is, It almost feels like it doesn't exist.

You know what I mean? It almost feels like it's so insubstantial for it to not exist. I mean, I think, you know, there's obviously a lot of time. This movie debuted at Cannes and it got the Grand Prix. I do feel like... We'll talk about Anatomy of the Fall. Because Anatomy of the Fall was the Palm winner. One of the things, though, I wanted to mention just sort of structurally about TIF,

but also, which pertains to zone of interest. So the thing with TIF is... On the very first day, they'll essentially, maybe, you know, it'll bleed over into that second day. But they try to screen everything on the first day that previously screened at Cannes and Sundance. And to just sort of like get all of that stuff out of the way so that the rest of the festival becomes things that are not, if not necessarily TIF premieres, but things that are, that are, that feel newer. You know what I mean? They want to emphasize their world premieres. certainly but even stuff that like may have like quietly premiered a telleride but like you know are you know that that stuff happens later in the festival but anyway it turns that first day of tiff if you have not been to can which neither one of us have well the press but also like a lot of those public premieres also you know what i mean like a lot of those public premieres get taken care of in that first day but anyway yeah certainly for press um you have to watch all over your can movies essentially

the first day. So that first day becomes, and of course, when you think of, like, Cann movies, they're all incredibly challenging and incredibly, like, dense and good. I had my first ever five movie day, and four of them were Cannes. Lunatic. So even I, who did Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest, and then Aliche Roerockers, La Cimera, back to, back to back. Roroace. Ro Ro Ro Ro Rocha. Okay. Aliche. La to-da-da-da-da-oh. I have heard enough people who, worked, who have worked with her

pronounce it as Roar Walker, that like... Oh my God, okay. You haven't seen the movie. I haven't. You'll get the joke when you watch it. I will. Okay. Anyway, though. But so, even just those three movies back to back to back, I was dragon ass by the end of the third one.

It's just a lot of emotional and mental commitment. And I think it doesn't always, it's not always conducive to appreciating those movies. when they screen it can, they screen one at a time. Like, at most, it's two in a day, right? Of these, like, in-competition movies. And so you get more time, the people who watch them that way, to sit with them, to process them, to write about them, to whatever.

And so when they're at TIF all in one day, and it's back-to-back-to-back, where you don't even really always have time to talk about them with your friends before, as you've, you know, in between seeing them, it can feel like a disservice to those movies. And of course, that is, you know, that's more of a my problem than an anybody else problem. But just in terms of the fact that, like, this is why I maybe need a little bit of more time to figure out where I'm at with. Us having to haul ass from Anatomy of a Fall, which is two and a half hours, to get immediately into Zone of Interest, sit down.

And then the movie starts, it's, you know, it's not. I will say. I really did, on first blush, though, really vibed with Anatomy of the Fall. I understand, I get why it won The Palm Door. It is a movie about a couple different things. It's a movie about a marriage that is toxic to itself. But it is also a movie about a legal case going through the French court system that I found... Let's talk about the French court system.

If that's what it's really... like, shit is wild over there. I almost don't want to know if it's, if this isn't, if this isn't what French court is really like, please don't ever tell me. Because watching this movie, I'm like, this is the way it should be done. There are narratives. There is back and forth. There are people, two people testifying at the same time.

There are people just outright talking to children in the gallery. There's bitchy prosecutors who are in BPM who are like wearing a wig and doing it right. It's so wild But like that was my favorite part If they had come forward and been like half of this If they had done the blue is the warmest color thing And been like well Half of this palm belongs to Sandra Hewler

I would maybe get it a little bit She's You are unreal You are very much the I loved I loved the Sandra Hewler movie that I saw And I am very much the I loved Anatomy of the Fall So I think that's the difference between us

Yeah I think it's a better movie about a marriage than it is about the court proceedings. I'm the other way. The movie, I think one of the reasons, and maybe why it won the palm, is like, the movie probably invites more interesting conversation than the movie is interesting to me, because the way that it presents this character's potential guilt or innocence invites a lot of, like, personal bias or interpretation, or, how we process the details of her case, of her marriage, of her as a person, that probably

invites more interesting conversation than I felt. I don't really want to spoil anything about the movie for viewers because I think people will probably have a more interesting relationship with this movie than I had. I fell so adamantly on one side of her guilt or innocence throughout the movie and not because of my personal disposition, but the way that it was presented. It is my feeling, though, that that, that, it is my feeling that that's not a detriment and that the movie is not necessarily about you finding out whether she's guilty or innocent.

But I do think it is about ruminating over the potential for either. case to have happened. I mean, I do think that, like... Maybe. The idea that the movie is after is not answer, but debate. And I didn't feel much room for debate.

Do we feel like that's going to be France's submission for international future? The announcement will happen for France sometime this week. The week that this is dropping, there should be a lot of news. The thing about this being France's potential submission

is there is a lot of English in this movie. Very much. Not so much that it isn't eligible. There is a plot point in the movie. Like, there is a plot point in the movie of how much English is used versus how much French is used. Because she does play a German woman

who... Who does not like living in France. And didn't like living in Germany. But she speaks English better than French. So she prefers to speak in English, especially when giving her deposition because she can, as she says, be more honest and clear about what she's saying.

Yeah. But, of course, it's, you know, the question comes up of whether or not she's trying to be evasive by not speaking in French, which to me, I'm like, well, then make her speak German. Like, you know, get a German interpreter. Yeah, so, like, that's a plot of the movie. Do I think that that's going to necessarily prevent it from being France's submission? No, but I do think it's a more risky choice because of that, even though it has the palm door, because I do wonder how much of a question.

This is going to maybe expose me as not knowing something I should already know. Are there institutional strictures within the Oscars for how much English is allowed in an international feature? because there have been movies that were deemed ineligible because there was too much. At what phase would that eligibility be adjudicated? I think it's before, I think it's post-submission, but before shortlist. So you're really kind of taking a chance if you submit this, and you're hoping that the Oscars will let it slide through. But apparently Anatomy of the Fall has enough English, but like I think it's, it's somewhere in the 50 range of something.

And this also brings to question, like, how necessary do we actually need these arbitrary rules, especially for, like, it's international feature now. So some of these countries, like, that have submitted and had things, you know, deemed ineligible. Yeah. Like, English is the primary language in some of these countries that have been ruled ineligible for primarily English language features. So it's like, what are we even doing here?

Off the top of your head, do you know any French movies that might challenge it for the submission? The French shortlist, it's five films. The more active challenger against Anatomy of a Fall is whatever they're calling potafu now. The Taste of Things. The Vague of Vague. That's the title of that movie. So we'll see. All right.

Which I haven't seen, but which is playing at New York Film Festival, one of the many movies that will be taunting me from the New York Film Festival. And IFC is apparently releasing it at some point. The two other international feature contenders that I saw at TIF, both of which I very much loved, will start with... Your favorite movie of the festival. My favorite movie of the festival, which was Perfect Days of the New Film from Vim Vendors starring Koji Yakusho as this older gentleman who works as a cleaner for the Tokyo Toilet project, which is not a thing that I knew about, but when the screenwriter for the film introduced

the film before our screening, essentially was like, I wanted to make a movie that really featured the beautiful Tokyo Toilet Project. And you're like, interesting. And then you watch the movie and you're like, oh, absolutely. Yes, there are these wonderful sort of public toilets in the city of Tokyo that are kind of an art installation unto themselves. but they are also just sort of this triumph of public works where they're and part of the reason why they are such is because they are like immaculately maintained and Kojiakusho plays one of the people who maintains them

but there are these you know seemingly no two of them are the same the you know sort of wonderful public toilets and some of them are more sort of you know seem more sort of artistically designed. Some of them have this kind of like space-aged glass where you push a button and the glass goes frosted and it's opaque. And so you go inside this glass cube and you push a button and then all of a sudden you are obscured from

literally like the street. And then you push a button again and it's so there's that, there's the interest of that. But there's also, it's just this like character study of this man who like gets up every day and goes to like clean the toilets in in Tokyo and it's his routine and is he you know he seems content but it's also the movie is is you know showing this repetition it is very much the sort of the same the same day he listens to his cassettes he trims his mustache he goes to the baths he drives the same stretch of highway he sees the same sort of buildings in Tokyo and then as the

movie goes along, you get a little bit more about him and about his life. We meet his niece. We meet his sister. And it, to me, I think vendors does such a great job with that repetition, with this sort of, you know, simple decency of this man without, as I've seen in some criticism sort of like painting him as this kind of like saint of the underclass or anything like that like I do not think that that's what this movie is doing without getting into spoilers for the movie it's text that it's not that right and and so anybody saying that I'm like did you did you watch but there's but you also don't have to be of the opinion that this that this man is like secretly tormented or whatever like he is there's a complicated

relationship that this man has to his routine, to his job, to what his life, the spot that his life has arrived at. And I think it's an incredibly, it's a movie that invites active watching, even though it is not a movie that is very active. You know what I mean? Like it's a, it's almost like it's a passive movie that invites a lot of active watching, which is one of my favorite types of movies. And the music is really wonderful. He's really into listening to, like, American classic rock. There's a lot of Lou Reed and Velvet Underground and Patty Smith and Van Morrison and Nina Simone.

And the music choices are all really fantastic. Cassette culture. Cassette culture will love this. That's the thing. And they're all in these, you know, cassettes that he plays. He has a co-worker at the toilets who is this sort of, like, young guy who doesn't really want this job. And he's, you know, a really interesting contrast to. to this main character, and he won the best actor prize at Cannes, Yakusha.

Justifiably so. He's really wonderful. I don't think there's a chance that he's going to get an acting nomination. I really wish that Neon would make a play for it, though, because I think he's tremendous. For me, the best thing about the movie. A movie that's clearly playing well, I think it's going to be a frontrunner for Internet. feature. I hope so. It's so good. A lot of people are really responding to this movie, but I really wish that there was, that they can build some conversation around his performance

because, A, best actor is boring as hell already. And Koji Yukusha's a legend. One of my favorite horror films is Cure. He's tremendous in that movie. He's worked with, like, global filmmakers in his long career. Yeah. You know, I don't think. that it's that far outside of reason that they couldn't make a case to get him Oscar nominated. I will be loudly supporting this movie throughout Oscar season, especially if it gets an international feature nomination. The other movie I really loved is Germany's submission, which is called The Teachers Lounge,

which in a nutshell is about this school in Germany where there are thefts happening. And the teachers and the administration are kind of wrestling with how draconian they want to be about sort of ferreting out how fascist they want to be about ferreting out these thefts. And then one of the teachers, our protagonist, gets something stolen from her, and suspicion for that falls upon one of, essentially like, the school secretary and who has a son who is in the school. And it becomes this like very thorny, very kind of like, very European, very German, actually, this sort of thorny morality play about who is at fault

and what these sort of sins of suspicion will now, you know, the seeds of the suspicion now bear fruit in these like really difficult ways and you almost suspect it to go like really, really dark and it doesn't, it pulls back from actual textual darkness, but like that spiritual darkness sort of like feels like it's still within you, I can say, without spoiling it. It also has some fantastic moments of levity, most primarily, which involve a student newspaper at this high school that is tremendous, like genuinely one of my favorite child, child, like set of child performances that I'm going to see this year, is everybody who worked at this student newspaper. I'm not sure if this is going to be a major contender, but I would love it if it was, because...

I think it will be. I think everybody I've talked to who has seen it has really liked it. I liked both of these movies a good deal less than you did. For perfect days, like, I don't think it fully dives into the, like, cutciness of it, but it's, like, constantly tottering on the edge of it for me. That, like, I just didn't love living in that tension of this could become cutesy and annoying at any given way. Oh, I did not feel any of that tension.

I love it as like a movie that's about, you know, even if you, it's not just regret, but like living the life you want to live, there will constantly be tension and a pull for a different kind of life. I think Perfect Days articulates that beautifully. The Teacher's Lounge, I think is good. I think people are going to respond to it, and I think it'll be a contender, at least for a nomination. I had a lot of snags with it as, like, being representative or allegorical to how democracy works or social structures work. It's a bit too cynical for me because there's a degree to which the movie, I think, everybody behaves a little too ridiculously.

Sure. I think if this, while I loved all of those kids, I think this, like, student paper, if it's supposed to be representative of the press, I don't think it ultimately has a good point of view on the effectiveness of the press or the motivation of the press. I thought that was intentionally comedic, though, in a way that really worked for me. Oh, see, I kind of felt like, you know, if they, if they represent the press, this movie thinks that the press is stupid and bad. I don't know if I think it's that straightforward, but anyway, continue. So, yeah, I had some reservations about both of those movies, but I absolutely see why people love it. You weren't just one of the people that thought that was your favorite of the festival for perfect days.

No, Katie. I heard that from like three or four people. Yeah, Katie also, I think, had it as her favorite of the festival talking to her. Yeah, I was very, it was one of those movies that it ended, and I, like, have this, like, biggest smile plaster on my face. And it was also, that was a late night, late Friday night movie. I had, that was the movie where I'm walking up to the theater and I'm like, I cannot fall asleep. This was, so my, my radical honesty time, my very first day, by the time I got to La Cumerra, my third of three movies, I was nodding off a little bit. Nothing against La Cimera, which we'll talk about in a second because I know how much you loved it.

I, it is of no fault to La Cimera. that I was nodding off. I was just constitutionally incapable of hanging at that moment. And I was deathly afraid that the same was going to happen at perfect days. And so I'm like, it's like nine o'clock at night. And I'm like, do I get a cold brew and risk like this thing blazing a path through my intestines? You know what I mean? And like putting me in some sort of like late night distress in the middle of this.

movie, or do I risk nodding off? And I got the cold brew, and the cold brew settled quite nicely, and I was, like, had no problems. And weirdly enough, like, the Tim Horton's cold brew kind of saved me throughout that festival. I was, uh, I was, uh, alert and awake throughout all of my rest of my movies. So, uh, apologies to Aliche, Roar Walker for, uh, nodding off to Locke Camara. I will see it again because Chris, you fucking love that movie. I do fucking love that movie um tell us about it what's it about okay so uh in the grand sense it is about uh italian grave robbers who uh throughout the landscape there are these hidden tombs that they dig up and find these artifacts so that they can sell them for you know profit and you know this isn't national treasure

This is also, you know, a class satire. These are people not of means who, that this is what they have to do in order to be able to, like, provide for themselves and their family. And it's led by Josh O'Connor as, you know, a vagabond who's, you know, not from that culture, but he's our protagonist who we follow. and there's something about the way that Aliche creates magical realism in her movies that I really very much vibe with, but I also, for when she does certain type of social commentaries, I understand some people think Happy as Lazaro is ultimately a little heavy-handed. This, I do not think, is. I think there's a lot of subtlety in what she's doing.

I think for movies that want to have, like, social conversations and, you know, have an ultimate, like, theme and comment on our society, even a lot of movies that I like can be very didactic, some of which we've already talked about on this very episode. And she dodges that at every point for me in a way that just also she's presenting this very magical movie. that I get very keyed into, and I don't know. I felt transported by this movie that was my favorite of the festival for most of the festival. Up until your very last day. Up until my last day. And I felt like I got a transportive experience, much like I do any time that she makes something, in a way that I didn't really get much of in this festival.

Two things you didn't mention that I loved about Lachimera, one of which was I love how much it references the Etruscans and how they are sort of raiding the tombs of the Etruscan people and how the Etruscans were this much more gentle society as contrasted with the more sort of macho temperament of what Italian society became. I thought that was very interesting. You also failed to mention my favorite character from the movie, which was Josh O'Connor's linen suit. Oh, yeah. Which is as much of a character as anything in that film as it gets...

There's also Isabella Rossellini as the grandmother or the matriarch of about 14 and a half sisters, which is a very... Who all seem to hate her? Like, none of them like her, and they all resent how fond she is of Josh O'Connor. And she's so, she's a, she's a gem in this movie.

What do you think this movie's chances are of getting the Italian slot? It's on their shortlist. Hold on, let me pull up what the rest of their submissions are. Neon has it, so like Neon is capable of pushing this movie before, or, you know, they've shown that they can do well by a movie. The Italian shortlist is a bunch of different movies. This is, I think, at least the one that I've seen well received. There's also Mateo Gironi's Io Capitano that just did well at Venice,

which I think is probably the biggest threat to being the submission. They do tend to like Matteo Gironi in Italy. Any other international feature contenders you want to mention? I saw a bunch of them. Yes. Previously, I'd seen Shada, which is the Australian submission. And that was the one that I'm like, Sony Classics has it. And they're pushing really hard on Teachers' Lounge.

And I think they should be pushing hard on Shada because it has another tremendous Zara Mirabra-Brahimi performance. Shada is how the characters in Lakhimara watch RuPaul's drag race. And they say, Shada, Shada. Shada! Yeah. I also saw the South Korean submission Concrete Utopia. I think it's the type of disaster movie that we've seen before. I don't know if it's going to be a threat to be nominated. I also saw the Chilean film The Settlers, which also has a lot of English in it. That was a canon in certain regard movie that did well, and Mooby has it. It's pretty violent, but I thought it was pretty good. I liked it better than, say, the teacher's lounge. And then I saw the Romanian submission that will 100% not be nominated. Radu Judes do not expect too much from the end of the world.

Listeners might remember Radu Jude from Bad Luck banging or Looney Porn during the pandemic as a submission, which of course also didn't get nominated because his movies are wild. This movie is almost, it's an almost three hour long comedy that, has all of these different diversions. It mostly follows this character who is basically a gig employee. She does Uber driving. She works for this production company going around getting these interviews for a work safety video that really, as the movie goes on, we learn that it's more about this corporation

absolving themselves of responsibility for the Romanian workers who have been injured, basically. And then it ends with these super long takes of them filming this video that it's constant. There's cringe humor, but then there's also, like, traditional setup punchline jokes throughout the movie. I thought it was one of the funnier movies I've seen in a while, while also being absolutely not something the Academy is going to go for. Nina Haas plays, like, the head of this corporation, and her first scene is entirely through Zoom. And it was maybe the single funniest scene I have seen in a long time. There's an Ova Bowl cameo.

Sure. Why not? This movie's nuts. But also, like, really great. Pretty didactic in terms of, you know, the social commentary that it's doing. Yeah. But didactic in a very funny way. Wonderful. Yeah.

All right. We want to talk about our top five films. I'll go first since I have one that we, the old, I only have. one on mine that we haven't talked about, and you have two. Here's what I'm going to do. Initially, I was going to include both Anatomy of the Fall and Zone of Interest in Mine, because I think in terms of, like, the best movies that I saw, those deserve spot on my top five. But in terms of, like, the movies that I was most enthusiastic about at TIF, it seems dishonest for me to not go that way. So just know that, like, I think Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest or Masterpieces

and I will be happy to talk about them throughout award season. But my top five go. as follows. Number five is Anna Kendrick's Woman of the Hour. Number four is Richard Linkletters Hitman. Number three is Alexander Payne's holdovers. Number two, well I'll say number one

is Vim Vendors' Perfect Days. And then number two is the only one... Sorry for spoiling that. No, that's fine. And then my number two is the only one we haven't talked about yet, which is Azazel Jacobs' is his three daughters starring Carrie Coon, Natasha Leon,

and Elizabeth Olson as the titular three daughters. Chris, this movie hit me like a ton of bricks. I was there right next to you. I think you can attest that it did the same. You were a puddle of tears, Chris, in this movie. Listeners, Joe was patting my leg, I was crying. I really was. He needed comforting.

And then, okay, but I also did the thing where I leaned over and I said, I have tissues if you want it. And then Chris's response to me was. And I said, yes, I would love a tissue. And listeners, what does he do? Okay, Chris's response to me was, so I heard, I did not make it out. And I did that dumb thing where I'm like, okay,

because I genuinely thought he was saying, I'm good. And so he was not good. I should have just handed him tissues. Listeners, let this be a lesson to you. If you think somebody needs tissues, just hand him the tissues. Don't ask. Luckily, there was only like five minutes left in the movie. And then at the end, you're like, I'll take those tissues now.

Jerk. His three daughters, though, okay, so in a nutshell, three sisters, their father is dying. They are in his New York City, rent-controlled, Richard Lawson sort of surmised

that it was around the sort of Stuy Town area, which makes sense, rent-controlled apartment that he shares with the one daughter, played by Tasha Leone, who's kind of the

least financially, socially, professionally, stable of the three, the one who's sort of, like, her life isn't quite together yet. She lives there. Carrie Coon is the oldest and the meanest. Elizabeth Olson is the youngest

and a new mother of a baby girl. And the sort of, you think, the flightiest... Flash former deadhead. Former deadhead. But like an atypical former deadhead. although she's like, you're not, you're never quite sure how flighty she is versus just sort of like, is she, does she just have new mom brain? Not to, like, insult new moms out there. The movie opens, and it feels like these characters are aliens because it's so heightened.

And, like, that's one of the things about Azizzo Jacobs is, like, there is a heightenedness to his movies. And I feel like it starts that way as, like, this jarring effect to, you know, really sink us into the tension between these sisters that, like, Carrie Coon is so, like, battering Ram, like, angry. She's so angry. Elizabeth Olson is, like, this wisp of a thing that's just, like, you know, a high-pitched voice. and like she's almost like a forest sprite of some time. The thing about Carrie Coon being the angriest though is she's so angry and yet she's determined to justify every angry impulse as having like a rational basis to it. So she's always just like, I'm not mad, I'm just saying, I'm not mad, we just talked about

this, I'm not mad, but it would be nice if you could. And it's just like, it's all of that stuff. And it's so, it's recognizable. All of this, these relationships, you said they, start off like aliens, but it becomes so recognizable. Every new thing you learn about their dynamic makes so much sense. It's such a well-built movie. It's such a well-acted movie. I'm not going to say a thing about what happens in the last half hour of this movie, except to say that it is a fucking wallop. And it is, it really hits you. It's, for any listeners who maybe have guard up around

this movie, I think it's the most straightforward thing as Azizel Jacobs has ever done. If you saw French Exit and you're like, ah, that was a miserable experience watching a movie. It's nothing like French Exx. It feels almost like a reaction to him making something that was so heightened, which like, I'm someone who came out positive on French Exit. I understand why a lot of people hate that movie. But do not allow your feelings on that movie to influence you watching his three daughters because they are just, it's night and day in terms of vibe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was my...

Go ahead. I was just going to say it's, it's cheap to say that it's maybe, you know, the type of movie that doesn't get made anymore because it's a lot of just conversations in one space. And I hope that that doesn't prevent it getting the type of distribution that it really deserves. But this is also the movie that when you were talking to people, what they saw and loved in this festival, this is the movie I kept hearing from every one. And I think it's partly because, it does have that element of surprise and what it's doing and how real and rich these characters feel and how earned the emotion in this movie is. And just how relatable, I think a lot of this movie will be for a lot of different people. Yes. All right, Chris, what is your top five? Natasha Leon, who we didn't mention, is also... All three actresses are tremendous. I think Natasha is probably my best among equals for me. I think she's so phenomenal.

nominally good, I think, like, but it's going to be one of those movies where maybe everybody has a different favorite performance in it, which is, I love those movies. As I mentioned, on Letterboxed, Carrie Coon is the Clarissa Vaughn because she's, she's all, she's making dinner and nobody appreciates it, and she's also the most uptight. Elizabeth Olson is the Laura Brown because she's the one who is most defined by her motherhood even though you start to wonder and Natasha Leon is the Virginia wolf because she smokes all the time so there we have it

um all right Chris Elizabeth Olson's monologue about the deadhead community if I just like described it to you you would be like that sounds awful and annoying but I thought it was one of the most beautiful moments I've seen in a movie So wonderful. All right, give me your top five and then we got to get a move on. All right. My number five was Radu Judes. Do not expect too much from the end of the world.

My number four, Azizal Jacobs, his three daughters. Number three, the zone of interest by Jonathan Glazer. Number two, Alicia Rorovace's Lakimera. And my number one saw on my last day on the ground, Bertrand Benelho's The Beast. Tell me about it. What has Bertrand Bonello done previous to this? Bertrand Bonello, I think listeners would probably be more familiar with his film Nocterama, which was at Cannes and Tiff maybe a decade ago. It's somewhat controversial. It's about the teens who bomb Paris, I believe. He's done a lot of other French movies.

Many of which I have not seen, but now desperately want to catch up to. The Beast is a science fiction pseudo-romance based off of a Henry James novella. It is a lot going on. It is the movie that made my brain explode from this whole festival. It stars Leis Adieu and Shocker, George McKay, who I loved his performance in this movie. he's never been better cast it's a time-hopping science fiction movie

where future Lais Adieu in order to be a more efficient happier slash despondent human in the world decides to have her DNA memories erased

and it sends us back to three, that timeline there's also a timeline in the early 1900s, and a timeline in the roughly early 2000s, I think it's like 2012 or something, where it's all kind of centered on these past lives, past experiences, where she's ridden with this anxiety that something horrible is going to happen. And in some of these timelines, the horrible thing does happen or already has happened or is in the process of happening and this kind of anxiety that the suggestion is this anxiety that we have as a society

or will have as a society has been part of our, you know, human existence through all of this or through all different types of experiences and different types of modern culture. And yet it is also a love story. And in the middle love story, the love has curdled. And George McKay is playing a based on life, I forget the guy who was posting these vlogs and then went and killed these women.

He's basically playing an in-cell who is stalking Leis Adieu in that story. and it's, you know, he is the actual calamity that she is terrified of. It doesn't have distribution. It was the most thrilling viewing experience I had in that I could not predict what was going to happen next. And the way that it ties, it's very wide-reaching themes together, I thought was tremendously thrilling. this type of experience is why I kind of come to the festival to see this, you know, really uncompromising vision that I know this movie is not going to be for everyone, and it takes some wild leaps, but... Do you think I will like it?

I think possibly. Okay. I think it's a rigorous type of audience, sometimes distancing thing, but if you can get on, on its wavelength, it's a ride. And all of the things that I saw it compared to, I was like, yes, but not really. Like, I've seen people say Holy Motors, I've seen people say David Lynch, and that, I just think they're saying that because there's a Roy Orbison song in it, but like, those comparisons make sense because there's no immediate thing I can draw comparison to with

this movie. And that, of itself, was thrilling. in in future layasidu goes to a club that every night is like based off of a different year so of course i was thinking club 96 the whole time um so in that regard it's a really interesting reflection on time sure things that change or stay the same um our fetishization of past you know culture sure um it's a it's an an incredible movie. Nice. I almost did the festival five-star slam on it, but, you know. Wow.

When you see so many things next to each other, you do want to stoo on movies a little more. All right, Chris. I think I have exhausted my TIF notebook for another year. What about you? Let me pull up my letterbox list and see if I have anything else I want to comment on. I saw Ryosuke Hamaguchi's new movie, Evil Does Not Exist. Right. I really liked this movie.

I was high off of the beast immediately after seeing it, so I'm eager to see it again. It was very, I don't want to spoil it, but not the type of experience drive my car gives in terms of, like, I think this is a bleaker movie, almost a Wiseman-esque centerpiece about process and, you know, community process. that that was the peak of the movie to me.

Yeah. I really liked Rale Pek's Silver Dollar Road. I know a lot of people didn't respond to it, I think partly because he's another process filmmaker, whereas this movie I think he's making, he's less interested in process because the legal struggle of this family, who they bought 60 acres of land the year after slavery ended

and passed it down through generations, and now they are part of a lot of people in this country who black families are losing their land because of the legal tangle that they get enroped in because there's all these encroaching corporations and companies trying to get this land that is rightfully theirs. And you hear that and you imagine the Raulpec version of that, but really what he's, made is something completely different from the rest of his filmography, I think, and that he's made a family saga. That's really, as in-depth as he normally gets with process, he is about these people and learning their family history and their current struggle in a way that I found

really moving. Anything else I want to talk about? Yeah, I saw a lot of bad movies, but I do think my battering average was generally high. A lot of things that I could quibble with. Yeah. Go seek out Chris's piece from The Daily Beast talking about the writer, or the actor-directors of 2023. Make his sacrifice worth it. All right, Chris. I saw Gonzo, girl, so you don't have to. Another— I saw a hell of a summer, so you don't have to.

Another successful Tiff. Looking forward to the next one already. Cameron Bailey has already announced the dates for the new one. 5th to the 15th next year. I'll be there. I hope you're there. Yeah, that's it. That's it. We did it. We did it. We did it.

Coming in under two hours. Just. All righty. Do we don't typically do the IMDB game for this, and I think we can rest our brains a little bit post-festable. We'll recharge for next week. Subscribe to the Patreon.

Don't forget to join the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. All of the stuff. But for now, That's our episode. If you want more ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out out the Tumblr

at this had oscarbuzz.com. Please also follow us on Twitter at Had underscore Oscar underscore buzz. Also on Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz.

Our Patreon is patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you? Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D.

And I am also on Twitter and letterbox at Chris V-Fie-File. That's F-E-I-L. We would like to thank Taylor Cole for our theme music, Kyle Cummings, for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez, and Gavin Mievous for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Five-star review in

particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility. So I wasn't prepared for a joke, but go and give us a review. I think we're closing in on a thousand reviews. Oh, that's nice. I will confirm. But, hey, if you haven't left us that five-star yet, give us that five-star. That's all for this week. We hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Okay. This is Canadian content, and it's time we take credit for it, starting now.

Oh, Canada!