Ridley Scott Draft with Roxana Hadadi and Filipiñana | #1079 - Filmspotting

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie
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to receive 15% off. What kind of a show are

(00:46):
you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
No.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, look, we're going to do this thing.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
We're going to have a conversation.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
From Chicago, this is Film Spotting. I'm Josh Larson.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
And I'm Adam Kempinar.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Blade Runner.
A very good movie from the director of the new
The Dog Stars, Ridley Scott.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
Also good, Alien, Gladiator, Thelma and Louise, which means we've
got our work cut out for us with our Ridley
Scott draft featuring Vulture's Roxanna Haddadi. That and more this
week on Film Spotting. Welcome to Film Spotting. In just

(01:40):
a moment, we will welcome in Roxanna Haddadi from Vulture.
Can't wait to do our Ridley Scott draft. Josh, we
have been preparing. We have both done some homework and
filled in some Ridley Scott blind spots. Will it be enough, though?
That's the question. Is Roxanna going to surprise us with
some picks that are off the beaten path?

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I'm a little nervous. Yes, I did some homework. My dog, Louise,
lovely Louise, she ate some of my homework. So I
can't say that I'm a Ridley Scott completist. I hope
that doesn't come back to bite me. We'll see.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Same. We will also have some more golden brick spotting.
You have seen a movie that you would like to
recommend and add to the list. We will also play
Massacre Theater. A reminder that Film Spotting is now a
video podcast. You can watch us talk over at youtube.com
slash film spotting.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
The update here in the Larson on Film Studio as
it's coming together, paint day, Adam, literally today, the room
was painted. So if any of my Ridley Scott picks
go awry, I'm I'm going to blame it on the fumes.
Just take that into account, okay?

Speaker 4 (02:41):
So you've blamed the dog, and now you've blamed the painters.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
Do I need any more excuses? Up first, our Ridley
Scott draft. Joining us for this special occasion is the
great Roxanna Haddadi from Vulture. Roxanna, it's so great to
see you again.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on
for Ridley Talk. That's how I'm describing this.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
That works.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
That works.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Thank you, Roxanna, for filling in for me, I think
twice while I was in Scotland. The Bone Temple, I
think you did. And then that's when I forget the
other show, but I appreciate it. They were great lessons.

Speaker 5 (03:19):
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
It's always fun to be on, to chat. I hope
you had a good time in Scotland. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Amazing time. It was great. Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
We did choose you, not just because we obviously love Scotland.
to have you as a fill-in here or as a
special guest on Film Spotting. But you have written about
one Ridley Scott film upon an anniversary that shall go
unnamed for now because you may or may not get
it in this draft, which we are about to partake in.

(03:52):
Is it fair to say, Roxanna, that this is the
first draft of any kind you've ever participated in?

Speaker 5 (03:58):
I have done screen drafts a number of times.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 (04:02):
So I'm familiar with that. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. Like,
you know, we did like a five-hour Michael Mann one.
So I'm used to the like chaos of a screen
drafts approach.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
So I am looking forward to how this might go
similarly or differently.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
This will be a breeze compared, having done screen draft
as well.

Speaker 5 (04:23):
It was five hours of Michael Mann.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
You won't need energy supplements.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, no.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
So much more low-key. We are looking at the filmography
of Ridley Scott. Five rounds, that means five picks each. Now,
we did have to determine a draft order, and it's
always fun to share with our audience how that got
determined because we tabbed our quiz master, our resident quiz master,
Thomas Todd, he of many trivia spottings, and he came

(04:52):
up with this question for us via email. We submit
our answers, just have to do it off the dome,
and it's all on the honor system. He gets back
to us and tells us who was closest. Ridley Scott's
Kingdom of Heaven focuses on Balian of Ebelin, Orlando Bloom,
in the events leading up to the Third Crusade. What
year did the Third Crusade begin? And when I read

(05:12):
this question, I can tell you all I wanted to
do was not embarrass myself. I am so bad with
years and decades. And I could be off by whole centuries.
So it helped that I had just watched. Maybe, I
guess it got into my brain somehow, Kingdom of Heaven,

(05:34):
the night before I got this question. Roxanna, I'll go
in chronological order. Roxanna, you said 1106. I said 1230. Josh,
you said 1259. So Not only did we not embarrass ourselves,
we did wonderfully. We're like scholars.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Not bad. I mean, I had the same goal, Adam.
I wanted to hit it within a century and I
would have felt good about myself.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
And you did.

Speaker 5 (05:59):
I just thought 12th century. That's all that was like
in my brain. But my partner is the one with
the Middle Eastern history degree. I just absorb some of.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
It sometimes a little bit. I, too. I was thinking
12th century, 1200s. It's got to be somewhere in there.
And I was right. I was closest because the answer
was 1189. The film takes place a few years earlier, 1184.
So my 1230 actually did put me closest. That gives
me first pick. Josh, you were second 70 years off

(06:32):
at 1259. Roxanna, unfortunately, as our guest, you will be
picking third. But since it's serpentine. You'll get back-to-back picks.

Speaker 5 (06:40):
Yeah, I'm excited about that.

Speaker 4 (06:41):
At three and four. And I think that's all we
really need to know as we begin this draft. Do
you have any questions for us, Roxanna, before we begin?

Speaker 5 (06:52):
I don't think so. I'm curious how this is going
to go because when I was preparing for Ridley Talk,
I was looking over the films and I was like,
some of these I really love and some of these
I really hate. I'm curious about how this is going
to go.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
I think that that's probably fair when you're talking about
Ridley Scott's entire body of work. And in fact, one
of the things I was considering, and perhaps as we
go through the list, we can discuss this a bit.
With Ridley Scott, there's always been that question about, does
he qualify for such a good filmmaker, someone who has
made some classic films? Does he qualify as an auteur?

(07:32):
And does that matter if he qualifies as an auteur?
And one of the strikes against him seems to be
that usually with true auteurs, they don't have this wide
variance in their quality of work. And Ridley Scott really does.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
I think that's fair. That's a good question that probably
will come up in maybe a couple different ways from
a couple different angles. I came upon the realization preparing
for this that I don't really have strong feelings about
Ridley Scott.

Speaker 5 (08:02):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
That said, I do have strong feelings about some of
his movies. So I am very motivated for this draft
to your point about some real stinkers in there. I
want to avoid those by all costs. And there are
some at the top that are among, you know, the
most influential films of the last, what, 30 or so years.
But man, I was looking over my past reviews and

(08:27):
nearly half of his films that I've seen, I'm not
a completist, have left me just kind of, uh, when I,
when I go on my website and look through my
archive of reviews, he is the king of the two
out of four star rating. And I was kind of
shocked to see it keep popping up, keep popping up.
Basically of the 20 films of his that I've seen,

(08:49):
I rated eight that way. And I hate giving two
out of four star reviews. Those are, those are the
ones where you just, you know, for one thing, you
want to say something clear and direct as a, as
a critic. but also just having to wrestle with the
varying qualities, not only throughout his filmography, but within specific

(09:09):
films themselves. So yeah, there are some I'm really passionate about.
I'm going to try to grab those. I'm going to
try to avoid the stinkers and I'll probably get stuck
with a bunch of two out of four star movies.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Josh's strategy, avoid the stinkers. Do you have a strategy, Roxanna?

Speaker 5 (09:24):
Yeah, I think there are probably like five that I'm like,
if these get played, maybe I just close my laptop
and walk away. But I don't think we'll get there.
I think it'll be okay. But yeah, I think this
is a filmography with like some very, very, very distinct
highs and a number of like squishy middle films that

(09:48):
I think like some of us might be passionate about
or could like make a strong argument for. But yeah,
I think there's, I think there probably are like Three
unassailable top spots, and then everything else feels sort of
up for grabs.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Yeah. Well, let's see if that is indeed how it
plays out as we commence our Ridley Scott draft. I
am definitely going with chalk as my number one pick.
The obvious choice, and I feel great about it, I'm
going with 1979's Alien in the top spot. It's a

(10:23):
Pantheon film here at FilmSpotting. It is the only Ridley
Scott film that's in the Pantheon. Not that we need
to give it other accolades, but it's on the AFI
100 Years 100 Thrills list. It made the extended sight
and sound list at 146, so Critics and directors from
all over the world of various generations hail this film

(10:46):
as they should. If you were going to begin to
think about some themes, some recurring ideas that may form
an auteurist approach, an auteurist argument for Ridley Scott, thinking
about isolation, thinking about systems and individuals against systems, systems,

(11:09):
but isolation and confinement. Josh, when we gave this movie,
The Sacred Cow Treatment, a little while back for an anniversary,
we talked about that ship and how it's so expansive
and you have those long corridors and they seem endless,
but how tight they are. They're not wide. They're so tight.
They are so confining. It feels very claustrophobic. There's a

(11:31):
lot of closeups in that film. And how many movies
can you say this?

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Circular closing of the one tunnel, right?

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Just, yeah. Good point. How many films can you say
this about too, that check this many different boxes? It's
a great, all-time great horror film, an all-time great monster movie.
Those don't necessarily always go together. An all-time great sci-fi movie,
an all-time great thriller. If you were making individual lists

(12:00):
of those things, it would be near the top of
all four. It was a blockbuster hit, landmark feminist film,
Landmark in terms of production design. Yeah. And all of this.
And it was his second movie. It was his second
feature film. So Alien, an obvious number one.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Is that where you would have gone, Roxanna, if you
had the number one pick?

Speaker 6 (12:23):
No.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Oh, okay. Say no more.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
Obvious for everyone, but not Roxanna. I take that back.
I know, Josh, you would have taken it. We will
find out where Roxanna would have chosen.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
I would have. And I think, you know, I like
those auteurist, potential auteurist themes you picked up on. They
all track for me. This is also an example, though,
that Scott, I feel like, has always depended on really
strong source material. For me, his filmmaking has more visual
than narrative force. Doesn't mean that there aren't themes. We

(12:56):
can trace, as you did. But I think it's that
visual force that is his real auteurist stamp.

Speaker 4 (13:01):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
And here you have this Dan O'Bannon screenplay that is
very tight, but it's also observant about class, gender, which
you touched on. And then Scott comes in with that
and gets some help from the creature designer, H.R. Geiger,
but he comes in and makes it look every bit
the horror nightmare that is on the page. It is

(13:25):
that production design that you mentioned. And for me, this
is the the prototypical Scott Phil, because it has a
strong story. It has that strong base. And then he
just takes it and elevates it with his masterful style,
which I do think is an auteurist stamp. You know, it's,
it's maybe not, it's a more of a formal one
than a thematic one, but I think it's one we
can trace through his best work.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Which qualifies, absolutely. But you're right that then the fact
that he is always directing other people's material is the
biggest argument in the other column against him as an auteurist.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
All right, number two, will I be taking Roxanna's number one?
We'll see. I am going to go with what I
think is a worthy consolation prize. It's Blade Runner. This
may not be the perfect melding of story and style
that Alien is. It's a somewhat unwieldy adaptation of the
Philip K. Dick story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

(14:22):
But I think here, going back to that style, back
to that form, it's so dominant. so effective here that
it really doesn't matter if the story, which has its
strong qualities, meanders here and there a little bit. Because
what we remember is just the immersive experience of this
movie washing over us. We think of the constant rain,

(14:44):
which is juxtaposed with the piercing neon signs, how those
two elements play against each other. The spotlights coming from
those omnipresent advertising blimps, just sweeping through nearly every street,
nearly every room in this movie. I'm going to include
the Vangelis score as part of the ambiance here that

(15:05):
Scott brings together and puts in the mix. And even
little details. Think about when we revisited this one, Adam,
something I never noticed before, the umbrellas that most people
are carrying, how The choice to have the handles, part
of the handles just glow, which, you know, is taking
a familiar element of our world and just giving it
a little, you know, just dialing it a little bit

(15:27):
to make it unique and captivating. So, you know, there's
more to Blade Runner than these things. I don't want
to sell short the existential angst that's underneath all of this,
especially with Rudger Hauer's performance as a renegade replicant. But
it is the look of the movie for me, which
is all Scott and Honestly, talking about influence and reputation, Adam,

(15:50):
like think about the decades of sci-fi we got since
Blade Runner that you can directly trace the visuals to
what Scott established here. So Blade Runner at number two
wouldn't have been my number one, but I'm really happy
to have it at number two.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Roxanna.

Speaker 5 (16:09):
It is my number one.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
It is.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Oh, I feel good and bad, Roxanna. No, no, no.

Speaker 5 (16:14):
I think it's good. I'm glad that it made it
at two. I think it is very strongly my number
one for many of the things that you said, Josh.
Primarily the fact that I think every single cinematic sci-fi
thing that has happened since Blade Runner is indebted to
Blade Runner, I just think its shadow is so... gigantic

(16:37):
and I really would say it has cast a bigger
shadow than Alien because I think Blade Runner just feels
like it has touched everything about how we imagine dystopia.
And that is probably, again, because I think Philip K.
Dick was like a prophet who understood what was going
to happen to our culture and our society and a

(16:59):
lot of those ideas.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
That may be the best argument for it, Roxanna.

Speaker 5 (17:02):
Like a lot of those ideas, yeah, like come from
Dick and come from the things that he understood about
how like capitalism will shape everything about how we live
and especially how we live in the world as it
is designed, which I think is exactly what you were
talking about, Josh, about like the corporate shadow in this film.

(17:25):
But I do think that for me, it just has
done more in terms of like how we imagine the future,
I think, than like any other sci-fi film has done.
And I also think for me, what this core question

(17:45):
of like, what is a human being? And why are
we so certain of our value over other types of life?
I think that that is something that Ridley is obviously
really fascinated by, at least to me, I think, in
his sci-fi work. And I think that it's sort of

(18:08):
this idea that he's chasing, like, how do we prove
humanity and how do we make it worthwhile and worth defending?
And maybe it's not worth defending, which I think is
what Blade Runner is sort of making this argument for.
But yeah, it would have been my number one. I
think it's a wonderful number two. I think for me,

(18:30):
the power of Blade Runner is when you watch something
like Blade Runner 2049, which I enjoyed in the moment.
I thought that parts of it were great. Ryan Gosling
will be my husband one day. But when I'm thinking
about it and then the film's over, I'm not still
thinking about it. And Blade Runner, I feel like I'm
always thinking about a little bit. So I'm happy that

(18:54):
it's very high up here.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Okay. Well said Roxanna. Let's get then what would be
your second pick, but is your first pick in this round?

Speaker 5 (19:06):
I mean, I think that you guys knew that I
was going to do this when you asked me.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
Had a feeling. To be honest. Think I know where
you're going.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
I am going to go with Kingdom of Heaven. Director's cut.

Speaker 4 (19:17):
Director's cut.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Director's cut. Asterisk.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Noted.

Speaker 5 (19:24):
Yeah. How do you even begin talking about this movie?
I've written about this movie a lot. I think the
thing that I would say and the passionate defense that
I would make is of this movie is admittedly, like,
very personal. Like, it is a very personal thing being
a Muslim American growing up through 9-11 and seeing how

(19:48):
the culture changed and seeing still now, 25 years later,
how it is still, I think, very difficult to be
a Muslim person in this country. All of that is
to say, I think that Kingdom of Heaven is.
Maybe the largest scale, most ambitious film. I've seen made

(20:13):
from the West that dares to be like maybe Muslims
are also people I just think that it was like
remarkable to do that in 2005 like shocking to do
that so soon and amid the beginning of the forever
wars and sort of just how much like the us

(20:35):
and the uk and europe changed to become honestly these
surveillance states that ridley was sort of aware of in
the 80s sort of thinking would be where we would
turn um and so to like amid that to make
this film that has such a I mean, honestly, for me,

(20:56):
like a beautiful rendering of like the Muslim forces during
the Crusades and to give you a character like Saladin
and to have Alexander Siddig here as sort of like
this wise old mentor, like to do all of these things,
I think was just really phenomenal. And I think the

(21:18):
director's cut gives you even more of that. and more
of Ava Green and sort of more of an understanding
of this time and this place and that maybe there
could be some sort of like cross-cultural understanding. And if
we could have it then, and if we could recognize
within this film that like white Christians that are like

(21:41):
sort of the bad guys, again, a bold idea for 2005.
I just think it feels to me like the wildest
swing Ridley would make in his career in a good
way because he makes a lot of other questionable swings
but I think this is the one where I sort
of felt like oh there is something that Ridley is

(22:04):
working through about what's happening to our world and he's
putting it into this movie and I just I really
love and admire all.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Of that a new world.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
A better world than has ever been seen There, you
are not what you were born, but what you have
it in yourself to be. A kingdom of conscience. Peace
instead of war. Love instead of hate. That is what

(22:39):
lies the end of Crusade.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
You wrote about it, it looks like, in 2021 for
the AV Club. Ava Greene rules the much longer, much
better director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven. So that would
have been for its 15th anniversary. Does that all sound correct?

Speaker 5 (23:01):
That sounds correct.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
So I, and we've mentioned this a few times on
the show, I have been needing to watch this, rewatch
the movie, but watch the director's cut since 2006 when
it came out On DVD. It was May 2006, basically
a year after its theatrical release that The Director's Cut

(23:25):
came out on DVD. And listeners have been saying for
20 years, Kingdom of Heaven, The Director's Cut. It's so good.
You got to watch it. You got to give it
another chance because in 2005... when Sam and I reviewed it,
we were kind of mixed on it. And unfortunately, I
haven't gone back. I don't go back into the archive

(23:46):
that deep and listen to my reviews, certainly not from
that far back. And I can't find my notes from
that time. It was too far back for me to find.
There was no Google Doc then. I don't know what
I said about it. I assume or I feel like
it was just a general lack of coherency. I vaguely
feel like it just felt rushed and some of the

(24:09):
storylines just didn't all come together in a satisfying way.
So that when I remember hearing, oh, there's going to
be a director's cut, I thought, oh, that makes sense.
When people started saying it's a much better version, I thought, okay, well, yeah,
with more of the story there, it might be a
much better film. So you talked about it a little bit,

(24:30):
but what would you say is the real advantage of
the director's cut? What makes that really work? Or over
the theatrical version. And did you like the theatrical version?

Speaker 5 (24:43):
I think I liked the theatrical version because you're still
spending time primarily with the Muslim characters and you're getting
to see sort of how like the Ladeen is navigating
sort of like the extremist forces on his side. and
also with not wanting to sort of bend to the

(25:04):
extremist forces on the other side. So I still liked
the theatrical version. I was still Kingdom of Heaven pilled.
But the director's cut adds in so much more. I
would say really the benefit here is for Ava Greene
because there is so much more of her performance and

(25:24):
so much more here with her son and with her brother,
who is obviously played by Edward Norton. And so you're
getting a greater sense of like, what are the pressures
for her as a woman at this time, realizing that
her brother is dying, that her terrible husband is going
to try to do something with their son and like

(25:47):
ready him for war as well. Like, I think you
get a lot more of her interiority. So her romance
with Orlando Bloom's character does not feel as abrupt. I
don't think. I think you're getting a stronger sense of,
to go back to what you were talking about, Adam,
like her solitude, her loneliness, how that is shaping her reality.

(26:07):
And I do think that she, in the director's cut form,
is up there with some of Ridley's best female characters
in terms of someone who feels to me very real
and very fleshed out. And I mean like flesh also physically.
She feels physically real.

Speaker 4 (26:27):
Right.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
In the director's cut in terms of like just something
as simple as like getting on and off her horse.
Like there is a lot of like tactile beauty in
the performance that I think is restored with the director's cut.
I was watching you today.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
You've been given a touch of dirt and it seems
you will build a new Jerusalem here.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
It is my land.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
It would be if I did not try to make
it better.

Speaker 5 (26:57):
So yeah, if you're wondering like, hmm, how much Ava
Greene is in this, in the director's cut, it's.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
A lot more.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
Well, I buried the lead there. I did re-watch the film,
or I watched the director's cut, and everything you're saying
does check out. I can't compare it directly against the
director's or the theatrical version from 20 years ago. I
don't remember it that vividly, but I do sense that,
having watched this version and how Ava Greene's character is handled,

(27:25):
and it does... it does feel at least like a
different experience from my mixed reaction 20 years ago. It
is now a very good Ridley Scott film. And I
will say, yes, film spotting listeners were right.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Kingdom of Heaven, it's one of those two out of
four star reviews for me. So I think I must
have had a similar reaction to you, Adam, and maybe
watching the director's cut would put me a little bit
more on the positive side of the fence. But I
think As you're talking about it, Roxanna, this element of multiculturalism, yeah,
low bar to reach that, right? But still, I think

(28:04):
you're right, a wild swing in 2005 to attempt that.
And I imagine even more so now. I mean, think
about trying to get this movie made right now.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
I didn't.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
And you can't imagine that.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
No, I did not expect this film, did not remember
that storyline at all, or That narrative being the heart
of the narrative. And if you put this movie out now,
it would get more threats and charges of wokeness thrown
against it and protests about it than The Odyssey. It

(28:39):
would be four times The Odyssey.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 4 (28:42):
It would be absurd.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
And I think what those people would all miss is that, like,
the closing moment of this film is.

Speaker 4 (28:51):
Spoilers.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:53):
Spoilers. Spoilers for history and religion. Like the final moment
of this film is a Muslim character picking up a
cross that has been like discarded on the ground and
like setting it correctly because there is still this like
shared respect for Jerusalem and for the Christian faith. It

(29:15):
is really the film more than anything is just a
warning against extremism of any kind. Like that is the
fear in this film is being swept away by that.
And yes, I am sure that it would not get
made today. The other thing that concerns me is that
I don't think it would get made by Ridley today
because Ridley had that horrible quote during Exodus Gods and

(29:38):
Kings where he said he couldn't cast Muhammad so-and-so to
lead that movie. So it just, it feels like a,
A real moment in time where Ridley and I were
vibing on the same wavelength, and I'm grateful for it.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Okay. That means we are starting round two, and you
get another choice. Okay.

Speaker 5 (29:59):
It's not going to happen.

Speaker 4 (30:01):
To be Exodus, I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Sounds like no.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
But please take it.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
What if it were?

Speaker 4 (30:06):
It'd be so great.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Talk about a wild swing.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:09):
It would be like actually plot twist. No, it's going
to be Thelma and Louise.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
So close. I was so close.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:18):
It's going to be Thelma and Louise. which I rewatched
last month for another pod. And I was just, look,
like we're talking about how like the sci-fi Ridley stuff
felt very prescient and obviously like set major trends. What
was astonishing to me watching Thelma and Louise is just

(30:41):
how much it feels like none of the America depicted
in that movie has changed.

Speaker 6 (30:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:48):
The misogyny is still the same. Sort of these questions
of like, when is a woman telling the truth? What
does a woman want to do with her life? Leaning in,
like all these things that we talk about, like in
a very circular, social fashion, societal fashion are there in
that movie anchored with just like a slew of phenomenal performances.

(31:15):
Like I really can't get over what Geena Davis and
Susan Sarandon are doing in that movie, but also Harvey Keitel.
And also, you know, like all these other people that
round out this cast. And so I remember in watching that,
I think when I watched it the first time, maybe
I did not clock that like Ridley Scott was also

(31:38):
the person who made Alien. Like I think I was
too young and I didn't quite like put it together.
And now with the benefit of being old I do
think that Thelma and Louise is such an interesting point
in Ridley's journey with female characters and I think that
movie tells us a lot about how he wishes women

(32:00):
were treated and like the dignity that he would like
to give them and like the primacy that he would
like to give them and I just also think about
like how that movie visually to go back to your
point Josh like captures a version of the American West
that I think again is like really definitive and really

(32:21):
like planting a flag in the ground of like this
is what America looks like in these corners of the
West and corners of the desert that maybe a lot
of you people have never been to. But there's a
reason that this land is like so sprawling and there's
something really iconic about two women who making their way

(32:42):
out West and doing something that has been so synonymous
with men in this country's history and doing it as women,
women who get more feral and like unfettered as the
movie goes on. Um, and who like move closer and

(33:02):
closer together when they've like rejected men from their lives.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Where are you going?

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Fresno.

Speaker 6 (33:10):
We've been seeing you all over the place.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
Why don't you take off those shades? I want to
see your eyes.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I've been seeing you, too.

Speaker 5 (33:19):
Yeah, we think you have really bad manners.

Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, where do you get off behaving like that with
women you didn't even know?

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Huh? Huh?

Speaker 3 (33:31):
How'd you feel if somebody did that to your mother?

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Or your sister? Or your wife?

Speaker 4 (33:36):
Huh?

Speaker 5 (33:37):
Again, sort of like Kingdom of Heaven. I just think
this one is incredibly special, very different, I think, when
you first see it from the rest of Ridley. But
then when you think about sort of like those auteur
through lines that Adam brought up, I think it makes
complete sense.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah. And the contemporary American West, which is distinct from
classic Hollywood Westerns, right? And I'm glad you brought up
that visual element because that was one question I had.
This would have been my next pick, but largely on faith.
It's been years since I've seen Thelma and Louise. I
think it might've been a Next Picture Show episode where
they discussed it recently somewhere. And that conversation made me

(34:22):
confident that it did hold up. And it sounds like, Roxanna,
from your viewing, it absolutely does. But I was wondering
about that in my memory. I think of it as.
You know, a showcase for strong performances.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
And, but that visual element, as you describe it of the,
of the West, I think you're right. I think it's
distinct and that is where he is very much playing to,
to his strengths. So yeah, I, uh, I would have
liked to have had that one, but not going to happen.
So let's see, that leaves me with, I'm going to

(34:57):
go with, um, I mean, it's more sci-fi, but in
some ways different than Alien, in some ways similar. I
think here I'm going to actually take The Martian as
my next Ridley Scott film. And in terms of what
his strengths are, I think this is evidence that taut
and tactile sci-fi, like Alien, actually, is where he really...

(35:23):
shines more so than, maybe I'm showing my hand here,
but more so than deep think sci-fi. So like, you know,
Prometheus territory, please, one of you, take Prometheus.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Oh, hey, just give me a shot. Put me in, coach.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
Don't put me in, Josh. You're not going to get
the answer you want.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Okay. We know who to leave that one for. Yeah.
I just think this is Scott in that territory, that
alien played in where it was very much about what
we could reach out into the screen and actually touch
and making that feel like it's all around us and
we can picture ourselves there. That's what you get here.

(36:05):
Even when, speaking of Prometheus and Exodus even, there's a moment,
I thought this was interesting in The Martian, where he
teases us that religion is going to come into play.
In this movie, if you remember, there's this scene of
Matt Damon's Watney. He's watching Happy Days, I think it is.
And he's thoughtfully twirling this crucifix. And you're thinking, you know,

(36:28):
with some of Scott's other movies in mind, oh, are
we about to get some like deep philosophizing, some statement
on belief or hope? And then what he actually says
is he breaks the silence and says, the problem is water.
And I think that's, that just encapsulates the Martian, right?
Is that it's about the here. It's about the now
it's about the practicality. It's about the temporality and how can,

(36:54):
how can we make that extremely vivid? So we feel
like we're trapped there. You bring in someone like Ridley
Scott who can do that as well as anyone. And
so I think it's, you know, maybe because it's so compact,
I don't know what its reputation is. You know, I
feel like other films of his come up more, but
maybe because it's so compact that it doesn't have that

(37:16):
more expansive, ambitious sensibility to it that people are looking for.
But I really do think it's one of his best.
So I'm going to take it here.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
I'm with you. It's definitely one I would have considered
for my next pick if you hadn't taken it. In fact,
I remember, Josh, when we reviewed it, my setup question
to you was along these lines, basically, is it just
too damn likable? Yeah. It's a movie that everybody I
talked to enjoyed the hell out of it. And I

(37:44):
could recommend it to everybody. And at least Prometheus divided
people a little bit. It had such ambitions. It provoked
passionate responses on either side. My question to you, I
think literally was, does it aim high enough? Or is
it too amiable? And the practicality you talk about, I
do really like. In some ways, it makes me think
about Alien and the efficiency of Alien. There's a practicality

(38:09):
to this film and to that character where I like
how not only does it not get into religion, he's
not even thinking about any people back at home. There
isn't a family element and our attachment to him. Yes,
we want to see him live, but more than anything,
it's sort of like, can he achieve this? Can he

(38:31):
simply pull off this incredible task and these series of
tasks to get there that that he has set out
for himself in order to survive. And survival again, seems
to be one of these themes that, that comes up
a few times. And that script that, that drew Goddard
script is, is really good because we, we still, we feel,

(38:52):
we feel everything we need to feel, but it's also,
it's also just, it's, it's rye. It's a, it's a
really rye script that I think Damon delivers that, that
Watney character, the dead pan delivery of, of, Of those lines,
he really finds the right tone for it.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
I have created 126 square meters of soil. But every
cubic meter of soil requires 40 liters of water to
be farmable.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
So I've got to make a lot more water.

Speaker 6 (39:23):
The good thing is I know the recipe.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
Ridley's best characters, his most entertaining characters, are resourceful. And
I think, like, the Martian, like, Streamlines that that is
like pure guy figuring out a problem like and I
think Ridley really I don't think he's like Soderbergh in
terms of being obsessed with process but I think he's
really interested in sort of like the decision making that

(39:49):
can get you from point. A to point B. And yeah,
I feel like The Martian is beloved, Josh. Like I
think people adore it.

Speaker 4 (39:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:01):
Or at minimum think it's very good. Very fun.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
I don't know if people think it's great. They're going
to put it in their top 100 movies of all time.
To your point, Adam, it didn't rile anyone up. I
don't think you'll find anyone who says it's terrible. I
do wonder, when you talk about Scott's best, is it
kind of like, yeah, that was good. I really liked that.
Not that it matters. I took it anyway.

Speaker 4 (40:23):
You did.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's my second pick.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
That does, though, allow me to close out round two
with the choice that maybe... a lot of listeners thought
would go above The Martian. And I'm very happy to
take it here. I mean, is Gladiator still on the board?
Am I missing something? Has Russell Crowe not been taken?

(40:49):
I didn't prepare any notes here whatsoever. I didn't think
Gladiator would make it to pick six. But I do
really like Gladiator. Gladiator was a movie I loved in
the theater. I was thinking about this and whether or
not I would get Gladiator. And I'm like, Is Gladiator,
it's like the new Rio Bravo in a way. It's

(41:12):
the modern Western as far as dad movies. But I
loved it when I wasn't a dad. But now it
seems like the ultimate dad movie with a character that
general figure that Crow plays who can just withstand any battle.
He's stronger. He's more cunning. He has more courage than

(41:35):
any other man. and can just withstand any challenge that
he seems to be facing. It's what every red-blooded American
male aspires to be like. That's what we see in
Russell Crowe's character in Gladiator. And speaking of Crowe, when
I think of Gladiator, I actually don't really think of

(41:56):
any of the big fight scenes. I think of just Crowe.
I think of Crowe embodying that character and that, that,
that face, the, the, I won't say emotion because it's how,
how much he downplays it. It's the ruggedness. What, what,

(42:18):
what do you say about how Crowe plays that character?
I'm sure some of you've seen it too. There's a
TikTok or an Instagram that will pop up in my
feed every now and again, where Russell Crowe is talking
about being directed by Ridley Scott in that movie. And
With it, they'll show the scene from the movie. They'll
intersplice it. And it's the scene where right before the

(42:39):
battle at the beginning, the bird appears. It's like dawn
or whatever. They're about to go fight. The men are assembling,
and he's having a quiet moment. And then he spies
a little bird some yards away and looks at it
and has a little smile. And then he comes back.

(42:59):
to the moment ahead of him and focuses. Apparently Ridley
Scott had this idea just before they shot it. And
he came over to Ridley Scott or he came over
to Russell Crowe and said, you know, so here's what's
going to happen. Of course, there's no bird there. He says,
but this is, this is what's going to happen. You know,
you're just before the battle, you're going to, you're going
to see this little bird and you're going to look
at it and then you're just going to come back
and then you're going to refocus. And, and that was

(43:21):
about it. Just gave him this little direction. Russell Crowe said, okay.
And they shot it. Crowe nails it. Just what you
see in the film is exactly what it needs to be,
but far better than you would imagine anyone doing it
based on the little description that Ridley Scott says to him.

(43:42):
It's just, it's imbued with all of these notes. As
a viewer, you can pick out like seven things that
this character is suggesting to you. and he's barely doing
anything as an actor in that scene, but he's, but
he's doing it. And, and really Scott says, cut. And
he says something like, Oh, you and I are going

(44:04):
to get along real well, mate. You know, it's like, and,
and they did those, that pair on that film, there
was some synergy between them that clearly elevated that film
into the, the beloved film that it is today. It,
it has, it resonates with people in a way that

(44:24):
not every commercial blockbuster film from that period does. It
has a, it has a legacy that I think goes
beyond the material itself, or again, the action itself. I
think it's something about what, what Scott was able to
bring out of his leading man and what his leading
man was able to, to give his director.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies
of the North. General of the Felix Legions. Loyal servant
to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son.
Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my
vengeance in this life or the next.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Well, and it's held up too. I mean, you know, revisiting,
this is one I have revisited recently before Gladiator 2.
And I think I found it, I found more interesting layers.
I liked it when it came out, but more interesting
layers this time I mean, politically in terms of the
fall of Rome and how it plays today is at

(45:29):
once prescient and maddening. So yeah, would have been happy
to have this. It was on my board for sure.

Speaker 5 (45:37):
It was my number six.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Okay, number six.

Speaker 5 (45:40):
Adam and I are aligned. Yeah, I mean, I think
that everything about it is just like, This is what
movies are for. Like a big message, like a sweeping spectacle. Yes. I,
you know, when I had cable and it was on
TNT every other weekend, I was watching it on TNT
every other weekend. It's just very satisfying, incredibly satisfying. And

(46:05):
I think that Russell Crowe is so incredible in it
as somebody that you... I mean, I was going to say, like,
somebody you'd want to get a beer with, which is
a weird thing to say about, like, a general, you know?
But I do think that he has, like, a very
earthy quality in this movie that is also very relatable

(46:25):
and adds to the whole project of what Gladiator is
supposed to be and supposed to represent. And all I
will say about Gladiator 2 is that it is not
Gladiator in any way, shape, or form.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
That it is not.

Speaker 5 (46:39):
It does not.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
Though it does sound like, based on that, I'm higher
on Gladiator 2 than the both of you. I must
be a Ridley Scott apologist.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
I mean, wouldn't it be nice to have a little symmetry?
You have the next pick, right? Just do Gladiator.

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Just go ahead and take it.

Speaker 5 (46:53):
And Gladiator 2.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
That would look on a list.

Speaker 4 (46:57):
You're urging me and you think you're that little devil
and it's not going to work. But Roxanna, before I
take my next pick, because this is appropriate, I was
going to mention to you that one of the philosophical
aspects of this that you're probably not aware of it
is and we wrestle with this sometimes is that you
have to wonder what the goal of these drafts right

(47:19):
what what the goal is is it to draft the
films that you truly love the most or is it
to win and by winning we mean earn the acclaim
of The audience and your peers, have them all nod
in agreement and say, yes, that was the right choice.

(47:40):
You clearly had the best draft. And we also do
pose a poll. We put the poll up and say
who won the draft. Now, you don't get any prizes
or anything, but you can pat yourself on the back.
We really should award ourselves.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
I mean, give a little impetus here for ourselves.

Speaker 4 (47:55):
So do you want to win or do you want
to pick the movies you love or do you want
to have some kind of hybrid of the two? That's
what you have to ask yourself. Now, Josh likes to
think that he only wants to pick the movies he loves,
and he doesn't care about winning, but the.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
First time we ever- I somehow win all the time anyway.
That's the curious thing.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
The first time we ever did a draft, he picked
Lady Bird, which is a movie he feels quite highly about.
He likes it a lot, but he picked it entirely
to ruin my night, and- my month and maybe my year.
And I'm obviously still bitter about it. So it worked.

Speaker 5 (48:36):
Is it because you hate Lady Bird or because you
loved Lady Bird and you wanted it for yourself?

Speaker 4 (48:40):
Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (48:42):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
So that speaks to the strategy involved, which you and I, Roxanna,
have already blown. We should not have, you know, correctly
pointed out Prometheus as a botched film because now he's
going to sit on it. He's got it right there
at number five. And there are people who love it. So,
you know, if he wants to win the draft, he'll
grab that.

Speaker 5 (49:00):
I'm very used to a world in which most people
are wrong. So like, I'm really okay with whatever goes
down here.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Can I borrow that? Can I just.

Speaker 6 (49:08):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah. I mean, I think that way as I move
through my day, but I've never quite distilled it so beautifully.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
So thank you. Well, let me say this, Josh. There's
no world where I would take Prometheus before the fifth round. Okay.
So we'll see how the draft shakes out. But with
my now third pick... Mm-hmm. Gladiator 2.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
We've already solved this. It's Gladiator 2.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
I am going to take a movie that I think
a lot of listeners, if they've been listening a long time,
they see it coming. They know I'm going to take
this movie and I think they're even going to be
happy about it. But if I was trying to win
the draft, there are certainly two movies I should be
taking ahead of it. If I wanted to win, there
are two movies I should be taking ahead of it.

(49:55):
But I don't care because I like this movie considerably
more than both of them. And so I am taking,
with my third pick, 2003's Matchstick Men.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Oh my God. Wait, wait, Roxanna, you have to explain
that reaction.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
It was just, it was so- Does she?

Speaker 2 (50:15):
No, no, no.

Speaker 5 (50:16):
It was so beautifully done. Adam just really led us there.
I was on the ride the whole time.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
It was great.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
How do you feel about the destination?

Speaker 5 (50:27):
I think that Adam is allowed to do whatever Adam
wants to do.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
Thank you, Roxanne. Tell that to my family.

Speaker 5 (50:35):
And I think that everyone is allowed to make a
wacky choice every once and again. And I want to
hear the explanation so bad.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
What's there not to like about Matchstick Men? Another great
star giving a great performance in a Ridley Scott film.
I think Nicolas Cage is... doing exactly what Nicolas Cage
should do in a film, being a star. I had
this as my number five overlooked movie of the 2000s. Oh, wow.
It is a movie that actually has, it did not

(51:03):
do well. It did not fare well at the box office.
It made a decent amount of money, but it cost
a lot of money. It was a bomb. It did
okay with critics, but it is not a beloved film.
The only other critic that really went, kind of crazy
for it, is Roger Ebert. So this is where I
do want to go to the gospel of Roger to

(51:25):
have a little bit of support for this. He says,
Ridley Scott's Magic Men tells three stories, each one intriguing
enough to supply a movie. It is one, the story
of a crisis in the life of a man crippled
by neurotic obsessions. Two, the story of two con men.
The other one, Sam Rockwell, who happened onto a big score.
And three, the story of a man who meets the
teenage daughter he never knew he had. and finds himself

(51:45):
trying to care for her. The hero of all three
stories is Roy Nicholas Cage, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, agoraphobia,
panic attacks, you name it.

Speaker 7 (51:55):
Look, Doc, I spent last Tuesday watching Fibers on my carpet,
and the whole time... I was watching my carpet. I
was worrying that I might vomit. And the whole time
I was thinking, I'm a grown man. I should know
what goes on in my head. And the more I
thought about it, the more I realized that I should
just blow my brains out and end it all. But
then I thought when I, well, if I thought more
about blowing my brains out, I started worrying about what

(52:17):
that was going to do to my goddamn carpet.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (52:19):
So.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
And all three storylines are interesting. And yes, as I said,
I think it is one of, is certainly one of
my favorite Nicolas Cage stories. And I love Sam Rockwell
as an actor, so you put them both together in
this film. You compare it to, from a production design standpoint,
the beginning of Alien with those opening shots, like we

(52:43):
talked about, of the ship and the opening shots of
this movie, which are Roy's home. And it couldn't be
more different in terms of being this pristine home from
the outside and the inside. Everything seems perfect. It's this
completely sterile environment, whereas in Alien, it seems very lived in,

(53:07):
very grimy, very old in that way. But they both
still give you the sense of loneliness, of isolation. Even
the music is suggesting the good life, like he's living
the American dream or whatever, but we come to know
pretty quickly that that's not at all the kind of

(53:27):
life he's actually He's actually living and he is quite
a lonely person. So I loved it when I saw
Matchstick Man originally. And as a con man movie that
actually has so much heart, you kind of forget it's
a con man movie. It worked its wonders on me.

(53:49):
I'll just leave it at that.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yeah, this is one... where the strategy comes into play.
I was a fan of Matchstick Men when it came
out as well. I like it. I think it's one
of his better films. And I was going to take
it next, if you hadn't, because I know about your
love for it. So I'm a little sad I didn't
get it for those diabolical reasons, but I'm okay with

(54:11):
making another choice as well. So let's see here.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
No, wait, I got to know, Roxanna, since you scoffed,
I mean, you more than scoffed. It seemed like you
were just out and out just making fun of my choice.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
No, no, no.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
It was not a ha-ha.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
More my grand setup.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:33):
It was like, aha.

Speaker 4 (54:35):
I can take that. I can take that.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Much better. Much better.

Speaker 5 (54:39):
I was just waiting. I was like, what could it
possibly be?

Speaker 4 (54:42):
You thought I was going to go like, you know,
wear white squall?

Speaker 5 (54:48):
That would be fine.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
House of Gucci. Something like that. House of Gucci.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
I went pretty pedestrian after all of that is what
you're saying.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
I got it.

Speaker 5 (54:59):
House of Gucci would have been incredible.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
It would have been.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
I really would have lost it.

Speaker 4 (55:03):
Sorry. Matchstick men too safe. You're right.

Speaker 5 (55:06):
A fun time. A fun movie.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
A fun movie. Okay. Josh.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
There you go.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
Your choice.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Round three.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
That bought me a little time here. Um. to make
this choice since my strategy has gone awry. Um, I
guess if I can't have alien and I don't want Prometheus,
should I take alien covenant? I think I should. I
think I should. I think I will. And it kind
of splits the difference between those two. I feel so

(55:36):
here at this point in the draft, I'm comfortable taking
it because yes, you still have some of that, you know, the,
The turgid mythologizing of Prometheus is still there. There are remnants,
but there's a little more of the genre sleekness from Alien.
And first and foremost, I think we're maybe picking up on,
I don't know if it would be an auteurist quality,

(55:56):
but certainly a quality of Scott as a filmmaker, is
his work with actors. That's come up a number of
times already in many of our picks. And I don't
know if I would have anticipated that going into this.
But certainly we've rightly praised what he's been able to
bring out in actors. And here you have, I mean,
Michael Fassbender in a dual role. Thank you, first of all,

(56:20):
just for that existing, but for it to work as
well as it does here playing, you know, Synthetics David
and Walter. So yeah, I think, you know, it's not Alien,
obviously far away from Alien, but I lost that one.
So Alien Covenant is going to go on my list.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
I knew you were a fan. I didn't know Roxanna
was also a fan. I have it at number 16
on my list, so it wasn't going to go in
my draft.

Speaker 5 (56:49):
Yeah, I have very mixed feelings about it. I think
what I respond to the most is that I think
it might be Ridley's nastiest film in terms of I
think he really hated humanity while he was making this one.
And if I am pinpointing like when it was i

(57:12):
think it might have been after tony died i think
that like in the big new yorker profile that came
out a few years ago i think ridley talked about
how this movie he felt like maybe it had the
most of his grief um and mourning his brother So
I think that there is something in it that is

(57:35):
very angry and unresolved. And I think I really respond
to that. I have learned not to take any of
the alien lore or mythology seriously at any point because
I think it has gotten completely out of hand. But
I'm with you, Josh, that what Fassbender is doing, and

(57:57):
I think sort of the two paths that that character...
is charting about individual choice and response to authority. I
think there's something really compellingly furious within that that I
really like. And Danny McBride, you so rarely see Danny

(58:18):
McBride in something that isn't a Danny McBride movie. So
I'm very happy to see him.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Here as well.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
That means, Roxanna, you get to close out round three.

Speaker 5 (58:29):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
Can't wait.

Speaker 5 (58:30):
I am going to Okay, so now this is where
like some strategy comes in because I was like, what
if I choose something that I actually had lower just
to like clear things up. But I think I'm going
to go with what I actually had like higher up,
but hasn't made it in yet. And that is 2021's

(58:50):
The Last Duel, which I really, really admire because I
think that sort of this like Rashomon style, you're going
to get three perspectives on one story could be very,

(59:11):
I mean, for lack of like a more nuanced term,
I think it could be like really played out because
it's just such a device and it's been used so much.
But I really, really respond to the little ways in
which these three telling of this story are different and

(59:34):
how like each actor's performance changes within each slice of
the story and I think that the three parts are
almost like differently paced they certainly have different tonality as
we're sort of interrogating this question of like, was this

(59:54):
woman willingly cheating on her husband or was she raped? Like,
what were the circumstances of this? I think that Ridley
takes a lot of care to differentiate the three accounts
in a way that I found very thoughtful. Again, sort
of taking me back to like Ridley doing things that

(01:00:15):
I wouldn't expect him to do. I really think, again,
like it is a difficult thing to interrogate rape and
like causality and the actions of men in like a
big blockbuster movie. I think that it is still really
wild to do that. I think it's wild to do

(01:00:36):
that twice, basically, with Thelma and Louise. And with this film,
arguably with the alien movies all also being about rape
and sort.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Of like the utility of the body.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
And G.I.

Speaker 4 (01:00:48):
Jane effectively has a rape scene.

Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
Yeah, like I just think it's really.

Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
Or close.

Speaker 7 (01:00:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:00:54):
I hate to say interesting because that's such a nothing word.
But I think it's a noticeable pattern that Ridley sort
of keeps coming back to. And I think like trying
to understand the prevalence of this phenomenon in our society
and what it actually does to like... the moral fabric
of how we treat each other and trust each other. So, like,

(01:01:15):
I love all of that sort of thematic stuff. I
think I love Ridley just in, like, period piece mode, like,
between this and Kingdom of Heaven. He has such, in
these films at least, he has such an eye for scale,
I think, and for understanding, like, the ways to fill
a frame with set design and with production design to

(01:01:37):
really make you feel immersed. And the last thing I
will say about him as a director of actors is
I think this might be my second favorite Ben Affleck
performance just because, again, he's so awful as a character.
He just is really tapping into something very dark about

(01:02:01):
the way that men consider women. And I think a
lot about the moment when he is talking about whether
he should, like, fess up, right? But he's like, deny, deny, deny.
And again, if we're thinking about, like, Ridley as a
commentator on our culture, I think, like, a very self-involved

(01:02:25):
ruler slash monarch slash royal figure believing that he can
deny his way out of a bad situation does feel
very relevant to our current So I'm going with the
last duel.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
The most unspeakable charge has been brought against you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Jacques Legree entered our home.

Speaker 5 (01:02:49):
He attacked me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
The accusation is false.

Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
I am telling the truth. The truth does not matter.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
There is only the power of men.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
Josh, I'm wondering if you... could help me out here
and maybe explain to Roxanna and our audience why, despite
the fact that this was Ridley Scott, that the storyline
sounded fascinating. We knew it had this Rashomon approach, starred
not only Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, but Adam Driver

(01:03:26):
and Jodie Comer, came out in the fall of 2021,
height of prestige season. Why not only did we not
review it on the show, I'm pretty sure neither of
us have still seen The Last Duel. Oh, no. I know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
It was, yeah, that's the case. And it was on
my homework list, obviously.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
My biggest regret. Didn't get to it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
I don't know. You know, the only thing I can say, Adam,
is I don't remember a lot of talk about it
before its release or even after. Not that it was panned,
not that it was celebrated. It just, you know, it
probably depends what else was coming out that fall. That's
a busy season, but it sounds like... We made a

(01:04:07):
mistake on that one based on what Roxanna said.

Speaker 4 (01:04:10):
Yeah. I, I really, that was, I mean, I did
some homework for this list, so I prioritized a few
things ahead of it. We'll see if that pays off
or not, but this was the last one that I
felt like I really needed to get to everything below it.
I could have, I could have been okay. I had
a feeling this might come up and I blew it,

(01:04:31):
but Roxanna, you just, you've just made me even more
excited to now finally seek it out. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:04:36):
I'm genuinely very curious what you two think, because at
least in my very small corner of the internet, it
is very well liked. But I do think a lot
of the, you know, a lot of the sort of
reporting that I saw about it before was that Nicole Holofcener,
I'm going to pronounce that wrong, had done the screenplay

(01:04:57):
and there was this question of like, how would Ridley
adapt this? How would they work together? together and I
remember that a lot of the reviews were sort of
I don't know if they were at like a two
out of four but I do think there was like
a greater response to certain segments of the Rashomon style
than others. So I think it is another sort of

(01:05:19):
like semi mixed Ridley one but it certainly feels like
of the latter era Ridley's I think people respect this
one the most. But yes, I fully demand email replies
from both of you within 48 to 72 hours.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
Or what?

Speaker 5 (01:05:39):
Nothing.

Speaker 4 (01:05:39):
You must have satisfaction, I think is what you're supposed
to say.

Speaker 5 (01:05:46):
Next.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
We do have a couple of picks left, but we
like to remind you that you can see all of
our choices anytime by going to filmspotting.net and clicking on
lists right there at the top of the page.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Adam Ridley Scott was more than just a visual director,
but I think most moviegoers think of those visuals first.
He made movies that demanded to be seen on the
big screen, in a theater. Even something like Napoleon, produced
by a streamer, got a theatrical release because it deserved
that big experience. And the same with Dog Stars, his

(01:06:23):
new film, which is playing in theaters right now. With
Regal Unlimited, you could see the dog stars for free.
Regal Unlimited is the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays
for itself in just two visits. Right now, Regal's offering
film spotting listeners endless movies for less. If you sign
up for Regal Unlimited using code FILMSPOT26, you'll get 15% off.

(01:06:48):
Regal Unlimited is the only truly limitless movie subscription pass.
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also save on snacks. Members get 10% off all non-alcoholic concessions.

(01:07:08):
Sign up now in the Regal app or at the
link in our description and use code FILMSPOT26 to receive
your discount. Adam, let's take a minute to thank our
members of the Filmspotting family. Membership is the largest source
of support for the show. It really does keep us
doing what we've been doing for over 20 years. We

(01:07:28):
want to thank this week family members David L. Williams
in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and Jay in Minneapolis. David wrote in,
got an iPod for Christmas 2004 and started listening to
podcasts when they were featured on iTunes. The review for
Last Days is an all-time great, and I knew I
had found my people.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
So just real quick. Just real quick. Last Days. It's
that Kurt Cobain, Gus Van Zandt movie that we reviewed.
And I'm forgetting the line. And of course, it's much
better than I'm going to try to repeat it. But
it's memorable because Sam had a line that was something like,
I wanted it to end so I could declare it
a masterpiece. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
I know that feeling though, right? It's the don't screw
it up feeling. And you know, if you get a sense,
there's like 10 minutes less than a movie you've loved.
It's like, come on.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
Yeah, but he was 10 minutes in.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Oh, well, that sounds like Sam. All right. Continuing with
David's letter here. I always love the marathons and how
they give me an entry point into a part of
cinema I had not yet explored. A review we got wrong.
Adam's overwhelming love of the perfectly okay film, I Never

(01:08:44):
Changed My Hairstyle in 60 Years, released in America as Atonement,
is still puzzling.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
David, we were friends once.

Speaker 5 (01:08:55):
Brutal.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
That's rough. Okay. A film that David credits for becoming
a cinephile. Reading in the newspaper that Barton Fink had
won the Palme d'Or and then renting it from my
local video store blew my teenage mind. What was this movie?
And were these really the people who made Raising Arizona?
I was hooked for life. Favorite book about movies or moviemaking?
Independent Visions, a critical introduction to recent American films by

(01:09:19):
Donald Lyons. It came out in early 1994 and was
a valuable guide for me. Plus, in his section about
Reservoir Dogs, Lyons notes, quote, one future title mentioned is
Pulp Fiction, a tribute to the world of the crime
magazines of the 1930s. Sounds juicy. Indeed. That one panned out,
didn't it?

Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
Let's see if Jay insults me here. I'm a rejoining
family member after taking a break after COVID and not
having a commute to focus on the podcast. No one
episode hooked me specifically, but I took to the thoughtful,
intelligent discussions about my favorite art form. Thanks, Jay. I
really enjoyed the Minelli Marathon. The marathons are a great
way to break out of a genre rut. Here's some
more Cone Brothers love, a film I credit with becoming

(01:10:01):
a cinephile, Miller's Crossing. Yes, Cone Brothers were a gateway
for a lot of us.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Yep, that was a major one for me indeed. Well,
thank you, David. Thank you, Jay, for joining the family
and for listening. If you would like to follow them
on Letterboxd, David is at PlaywrightDavid and Jay is at J-A-G-E-P-R-O.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
You can learn more about joining the Film Spotting Family
at filmspottingfamily.com. You get early and ad-free listening. You get
a weekly newsletter. You get access to the Film Spotting
Family Discord. You get complete access to the Film Spotting Archive.
It's 1100 Episodes or so, when you add in all
the bonus shows and such, you also do get our

(01:10:44):
monthly bonus episodes. Roxanna, we just posted a bonus show. Myself, Josh,
and Sam got together and talked about Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure
from 1997. Do you know that film?

Speaker 5 (01:10:59):
I do know Cure.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
I just made a slightly horrified face.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
Yeah, you flinched. You flinched appropriately. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:11:07):
Well, we were disturbed in the best way possible watching
that film. And we had a very, very good, a
very fun conversation about it. So film spotting family members
are enjoying that in their feed now. If you would
like to hear that again, you can become a film
spotting family member. Also, we did crown the film spotting

(01:11:29):
madness just for family members. best film of the 1920s
and 30s, came down to The Wizard of Oz versus
Sherlock Jr., maybe not a big surprise. The Wizard of
Oz did ultimately take it 61% to 39%. We have
to congratulate Josh. Maria Marchesini, I hope I said that right. Maria,

(01:11:50):
you'll have to correct me here. When you jump on
a draft that we're going to do with you, you
get to pick the topic and we'll do a bonus
show draft with you Maria in Kent, UK was the winner.
And Josh, she is always near the top of the leaderboard.
I think she's been in second in past Madness competitions.
I don't know what her secret is, but she finally

(01:12:11):
won it all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Congratulations, Maria. And this is great because she had emailed
when I was having an Edinburgh meetup that she had
hoped to come. It didn't work out. Didn't get to
hang out with her. Now I get to do a
bonus episode with her. So looking forward to that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:26):
And maybe we'll see her. Sorry, Roxanne, were you going
to say something?

Speaker 5 (01:12:29):
I was going to say, that sounds awesome. That's such
a nice perk to do. Like, I just think I just,
I'm just effusive and enjoying this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
They are always a lot of fun because, you know,
somewhat like you, though we know your critical taste, but
really a lot of these listeners are total wildcards. We
don't necessarily know where they're going to go in a draft.
So yeah, it's a really fun element.

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
And we do one last thing. We have trivia spotting
for family members exclusively and Quizmaster Thomas Todd aforementioned. coming
up on Thursday, September 17th. Roxanna, we roped you into
that at least once, didn't we?

Speaker 5 (01:13:01):
Yeah, and I'm so bad at trivia.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
Well, join the club.

Speaker 5 (01:13:04):
It was very fun.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
She's like, don't ask me to be back.

Speaker 4 (01:13:07):
See? See, Roxanna even says it. You don't have to
be good to have a good time playing trivia spotting.
You can sign up for that now as well. FilmSpottingFamily.com.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
The top, I think, sci-fi films, in my estimation, would
be Alien Blade Runner. I'm not going to be modest
about that.

Speaker 4 (01:13:28):
Let's get back to the draft now. We are ready
for round four. And Roxanna, that does mean that after
the last duel, you are up with another choice.

Speaker 5 (01:13:38):
Okay. I am going to go with a movie that
I think, if I'm remembering correctly, I pretty much hated
when I first saw it. And I did not. I
was like, I don't understand it. why what's happening is happening.
And it took some repeat watches and it took some

(01:14:03):
further reading for me to grow, to appreciate the 2013 film,
the counselor. Really?

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:14:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:14:16):
Yeah. Okay. How to, how to explain this?

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Tell us your journey.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:14:20):
Let me say the journey. I, okay.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (01:14:23):
I really love Cormac McCarthy, but when I was first
watching this movie, I was like, is this Cormac or
is this somebody pretending to be Cormac? There was something
about it that felt very, like, engineered, maybe is the word.
There was something about the movie that felt very sterile

(01:14:45):
to me, and I did not respond to it immediately enough.
aside from Cameron Diaz fucking a car, which I, of course,
appreciated as soon as it was put on screen. But
I think that I was really frustrated with it, and
I was really frustrated with how dark it was, and
I think I felt somewhat unfulfilled. And I think in

(01:15:08):
the years since then, as I've become a more nihilistic,
pessimistic person, I go back to this film, and I think, like,
there was something captured... hear about where we are heading
and sort of how disposable we can be as human

(01:15:31):
beings and how society can sort of decide that some
of us are just no longer necessary to their greater
ambitions or their greed or their need for more capital
or more power or more control. I think there is something, again,
like we keep going back to like these questions that

(01:15:53):
Ridley seems to be working through. And I think for
me in time, I have come to see this as again,
sort of like a low point, maybe in Ridley's view
of like people at large and, But I think of
it in a lot of ways as very similar to

(01:16:14):
obviously No Country for Old Men, but also Killing Them Softly,
There Will Be Blood, sort of these movies that were
coming out in this like six to eight year period
where we were interrogating again this question of like the
American West and what it represents and what we have
lost and maybe what we never really had when we

(01:16:38):
romanticized it in a certain way. So I've come to
really appreciate it, but it did take like rereading Blood
Meridian and like spending more time with Cormac to like
get to that place. And I do think that it
is an interesting performance from Fassbender.

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
Another Fassbender.

Speaker 5 (01:17:01):
Yeah, because his normal like charming self, but it is
very almost like caustic. There's like a real edge to it,
which I do keep sort of coming back to. And
I think like, oh, this is what would then be
used so well in something like Alien Covenant. Like this

(01:17:22):
would be sharpened and made even more acidic in a way.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
I have something to discuss with you when I'm a
bit scared. If you pursue this road, you will eventually
come to moral decisions that will take you completely by surprise.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
What do you think I should do? I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:17:42):
Consider.

Speaker 5 (01:17:43):
I have grown to really like it. I do feel
like people hate it. And I say that as someone
who first thought they hated it. But it has come
to represent something, I think, interesting in Ridley's career and
again in sort of like his portrait of like, what
is America? I think that this is like a sort

(01:18:06):
of a remarkable sort of point on that map.

Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
So without in any way purporting to degrade your choice, Roxanna,
if you look at Ridley Scott's films ranked on the
Tomatometer or the Tomometer, whatever you would like to call it,
how many of his films out of 29, so we're
not counting the new one, I don't believe The Dog

(01:18:31):
Stars makes 30, I think. So this is out of 29.
How many films do you think are ranked below The
Counselor's 34%? This is trivia, so this is probably not
good for you.

Speaker 5 (01:18:45):
I mean, God, I would hope. Look, I really want
to say that Exodus is ranked lower than this, but
I'm going to guess that it's not.

Speaker 4 (01:18:55):
It is, actually.

Speaker 5 (01:18:56):
Oh, thank God.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 (01:18:59):
Alhamdulillah. Like, thank God. But no, people hate this one, right, Adam?

Speaker 4 (01:19:06):
Like, this was reviled. Yeah, no, yeah. 34%, but also
below it is 1492, Conquest of Paradise, Josh's next choice.
Then Exodus, Gods and Kings, followed by, in last place,
A Good Year is number 29. Wow.

Speaker 5 (01:19:22):
Wait, so Napoleon is over these?

Speaker 4 (01:19:25):
Yeah, Napoleon is... Now.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Roxanna, what's... What's that phrase you said about people being wrong?

Speaker 5 (01:19:33):
I'm very accustomed to people being wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
There you go. You're good. Just say that three times
and you'll be fine.

Speaker 4 (01:19:42):
Is that an indicator, Josh, of where you're going in
round four? No, no, no.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
I haven't seen the counselor. Have you seen it, Adam?

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
See, why did you have to embarrass us again, Josh?

Speaker 5 (01:19:52):
Oh my God, you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
It was high up there.

Speaker 4 (01:19:56):
This is 40% of her choices. Like, we have to
now not put this show out.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
This is what I'm saying, is she at once embarrassed us,
but also made it easy because she's picked two films
that I could not have picked.

Speaker 5 (01:20:08):
Yeah, I think that's good. We're making a multifaceted list.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
This show is never going to see the light of day.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
Oh my God.

Speaker 4 (01:20:14):
It's too embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Yeah. The reputation of the counselor is why it was
high on my homework list. And I ran out of time.
It was just one of those, like, I've got to
see this at some point.

Speaker 4 (01:20:24):
And.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
It didn't happen. Roxanna probably would have grabbed it before
me anyway.

Speaker 5 (01:20:29):
48 to 72 hours.

Speaker 4 (01:20:30):
Gosh, this means, this means.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Yeah. Now, can you stretch our deadline a little more
now that you've.

Speaker 4 (01:20:35):
Given us two assignments? If we're going according to what
I didn't get to on my homework list, that means
that Roxanna's last choice is going to be Black Rain.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
Oh, Adam.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
Oh, did I call it? That would be amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:20:50):
Adam, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
Here we go.

Speaker 4 (01:20:52):
60%. That would be amazing. 60% of Roxanna's list I
haven't seen.

Speaker 5 (01:20:56):
Well, I'll go with something else.

Speaker 4 (01:20:59):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:20:59):
No, go with it. Go with it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:01):
Who knows if I've seen the one you're going to pick.
I swear I've seen a lot of Ridley Scott movies.
I thought I was totally prepared for this draft. And
Roxanna is shaming me. Well, okay, Josh.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
I guess it really depends on what we would make
of the counselor, Adam. So, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:21:20):
Put us back on track.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
So I'm going to go with one I'm not that
confident about because, again, have not revisited since it was
first released. And let me look at the year here.
Roxanna's been good about giving us the year of some
of these films. I'm going to go with a 2001 movie.
And it's Black Hawk Down. And this is a movie I...

(01:21:46):
Can I put an asterisk on this pick? Because I
feel a little bit I've seen so many American military
films since then. I've lived through so many ill-advised real-world
military exploits since then. This is a movie that struck
me as surprisingly apolitical at the time. And just to

(01:22:07):
refresh memories or to let people know who've never seen it,
this basically tells the story of a 1993 clash between
Somali militiamen and US special forces. So what I appreciated
about it then is it didn't feel to me like
an exercise in jingoism, but also it comes back to
the Martian, actually. I remember it was the logistical details

(01:22:29):
of modern warfare and then the experience of American soldiers
in the midst of that. And, you know, I have
space for movies that honestly want to tell that American
story of young men and women largely sent overseas and
have to just survive what they've been thrown into. I
think that's a completely legitimate exercise for a film. Um,

(01:22:54):
I would like to revisit Black Hawk Down and see
how much it really is that, or just seeing that
year 2001 makes me think, I don't recall, you know, it's,
it's actual release month. Um, this was maybe a summer movie.
I mean, it was clearly in production, um, before nine 11.
And so December 2001, it was December. Okay. Thank you.

(01:23:18):
clearly made right before then. But yeah, just in the
sense of what America means on the global stage and
how it wields its power felt very differently in December
than while that movie was being made. And to place
that burden on it probably isn't, wouldn't be fair. So
I'd at once want to have that historical lens and

(01:23:39):
take it with a grain of salt, if that makes sense.
That's a lot of waffling for a movie that I
think is just brilliantly made. in terms of craft, if
we're going back to this sense of Scott being able
to put us in the immediacy of a brilliantly designed
for its story production. I think Black Hawk Down does

(01:23:59):
this as well as any of his movies. This was
following Gladiator, so he's kind of in that altered frame
rate mode for action scenes. But again, that made things
very exciting, and I wonder if I'd have qualms about
that excitement level watching it again. Anyway, a lot of
qualms for a pick, but I do, among what's left,

(01:24:21):
think I want to go with Black Hawk Down. I
was trying to fight. You trying to fight, Sergeant? I
was trying to make a difference. So guess what? You're
going out today.

Speaker 4 (01:24:29):
What?

Speaker 6 (01:24:29):
It's what you wanted, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
Oh, yeah. Hell yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:34):
Just remember when everybody else is shooting, shoot in the
same direction. I'm with you in that I felt similarly
about its craft and And I suppose it's politics or
lack thereof back in 2001, as I recall it, Josh.
But that was a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
A long time ago.

Speaker 4 (01:24:55):
And I have not seen it since then. And I've
had no desire to revisit it since then, to be
totally honest. So it's one that in this spot, I
might have felt obligated to take it just based on
its reputation and my remembrance of it. I remember in 2001-
writing newspaper reviews at the time in grad school and

(01:25:17):
having it in my top 10 and just thinking it
was certainly one of the best films of the year then,
but I have no idea how I would, I would
feel about that film. Now I do know how I
feel about my next pick in round four. And this
is where some homework pays off. And it is another
military movie, though, a very different kind of military movie. And,

(01:25:42):
I'm also glad I watched it because you can look
back at a lot of filmmakers' first features and see
how it sets the template in a lot of ways.
And The Duelists is a really good movie. The compositions,
the use of landscape, but also how he uses light

(01:26:07):
indoors is so rich and The storyline, the thing I
was thinking about watching it, going back to Alien Covenant
a little bit, actually, I was thinking about Alien Covenant
watching The Duelists, and here's why. I was thinking about
Fassbender's David, and it's almost like The Duelists, this movie,

(01:26:27):
where you've got Harvey Keitel, and I'm blanking on, he's
not as memorable as Harvey Keitel, Keith Carradine, right, as
these French soldiers who... As the title suggests, they have
a duel early in the film and the dishonor is
so great, at least according to the Keitel character, that

(01:26:53):
they continue to have this spat over the course of
decades and then multiple duels. This is another reason why
I really wanted to watch the last duel. I wanted
to sort of see how this book ended in Ridley
Scott's career. But the thing I was thinking about with

(01:27:13):
Alien Covenant is it's almost like a character like David,
if he was trying to get a sense of what
honor and duty actually meant to humans. If he wanted
to understand what those words meant, the duelist seems like

(01:27:34):
a treatise or an exploration of those words. Because these characters...
are fundamentally wrestling with that. The Keith Carradine character feels
this obligation, even though he doesn't feel as aggrieved as Keitel's.
He nevertheless basically feels bound to continue to defend himself

(01:27:58):
against this man. And his life is ultimately dictated in
some ways by him to the point where he really
doesn't have, he almost doesn't have any free will of
his own. I don't suppose General Farrow would accept an apology.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
I have a question. You could declare yourself unfit to
be a soldier and resign your command. That might do.
It wouldn't do. The General has received too deep an injury.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
I see.

Speaker 4 (01:28:29):
That element to me, this idea too, you can see
it in Gladiator. You can see it in some of
his other films, this idea of duty. I think in
Black Hawk Down as well is one that comes up.
It's a beautiful film just to look at. You see
the Ridley Scott visual style right away. You understand why,

(01:28:53):
even though a movie like Alien, from a content standpoint,
you might not understand why the producers of Alien would
have tapped him to make that film. But you understand visually,
you can see the eye early on and see why
they might have approached him to make that film.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
I think you're inspiring me. Well, you have another pick,
so I was going to say to go with the
homework pick as well, but I have to wait. I
don't think you're going to steal it, though. So go ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:29:23):
Where are you heading? Yeah. Well, I think there is
a pretty obvious pick here for me, even though we
are now getting into, after the duelists, we're getting into
the territory of movies.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
Two out of four stars?

Speaker 4 (01:29:40):
No, not two, actually. I'm in the realm now of
just three out of five on Letterboxd. So I liked it.
Liked it, but did not love it. And that matters
because this movie, I think a fair number of people
do feel stronger about it. And it was a movie
I expected to love. I remember going into the theater

(01:30:02):
in this year, which is one of our, this will
be an indicator for people listening, one of our all-time
great cinematic years, expecting based on the cast and the
director and the material, I thought this film is going
to be one of the best films of the year.
It's going to be up there with all these other

(01:30:24):
incredible achievements. The movie is American Gangster. You're re-teaming Crow
with Ridley Scott, adding in Denzel Washington, and the material
being about the lone good cop now becoming a lawyer,
and he's putting away the drug lord. It just seemed

(01:30:45):
tailor-made for me, and I think it's I think it's
a perfectly fine movie. I cannot remember. I'd have to
go back and look through my notes and see what
my criticisms were when it was reviewed on the show.
But it was a movie that worked for me just
enough for me to recommend it. And that was about it.

(01:31:05):
I didn't have a passionate response to American Gangster, do
either of you. That was before you joined the show, Josh.
Do you remember how you felt about it?

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
I gave American Gangster two out of four stars, Adam.
There you go.

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
I love that.

Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
What about you, Roxanna?

Speaker 5 (01:31:21):
I'm with you. I think it's fine. I actually probably
put it like more as a two out of five
than a three out of five. But I do, I
do have a number of friends who ride really hard
for this movie and really appreciate it for its depiction
of like the Denzel Washington and like all of his

(01:31:43):
machinations and sort of like him taking care of his
family and sort of how much of a mess the
cops are. Like, I do think that all of that
is perfectly fine. But to me, it's the closest that
like Ridley has come to trying to make a Michael
Mann movie. And I don't think it works. So it
doesn't hit for me personally.

Speaker 4 (01:32:00):
Yeah, that's really well said. So yeah, it just didn't.
Maybe it was a case, honestly, of not quite living
up to very high expectations. And upon a rewatch, I
might come in with more reasonably set expectations. And I do,
there are moments and there are scenes that that pop
up here and again on TV and you see Crow

(01:32:21):
and Denzel going at it a little bit and you
get a little bit of a charge from watching two
really fine actors do, you know, ply their trade. But
that's about it with American Gangster.

Speaker 6 (01:32:33):
Did you really find a million dollars in the trunk
of a car and turn it in?

Speaker 3 (01:32:37):
Did you do that?

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):
You did that for real, huh?

Speaker 3 (01:32:40):
My man. Good for you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
You know Johnny Law got it though, right?

Speaker 4 (01:32:45):
Maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
There ain't no maybe about it, Mr.

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
Richard.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
You know he got it.

Speaker 6 (01:32:48):
You turned that money in, he took it, and you
ain't getting nothing for it, did you?

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
That's why you do that. It was the right thing
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:32:55):
That's true. That's a good answer. It was the right
thing to do. The question I have, the question I've
been asking myself is, would you do it again?

Speaker 1 (01:33:05):
All right. I'm going to go with my homework pick
for my final pick. It's not just because of homework.
I like how it looks among my other choices actually
there probably are a few scott films that i have
rated higher but having just watched 1985's legend it's such

(01:33:29):
a curiosity and maybe i'll court a few votes here
because while derided at the time it does have cult
status now curiosity be why well tom cruise is like
bounding about a completely fake forest. And he does a
lot of bounding. You have a story that's just a mess.

(01:33:53):
I mean, going back to this notion of Scott needing
strong material, that is absolutely what he does not have here.
This is, it's like, I know it's more fantasy than sci-fi,
but it's very much the opposite of Star Wars where
their religion myth and pop culture, it kind of creates
this enchanting alchemy. Here, it's just a mishmash. It doesn't

(01:34:18):
work at all in terms of the story. You can
see where everything's been plucked, and then it's just kind
of been plopped onto a table, and nothing's been done
with it, except how it's been envisioned. And the craft
here is just extraordinary. I think maybe part of its
cult status and appeal is the more we get into

(01:34:39):
ages of increased digital imagery to see something that, you know,
has early vision variations on that. But primarily these sets,
this forest, um, and the other fantasy realms we see here.
I mean, they absolutely there's artifice, but it's, it's like
on the right side of artifice, you know, where it

(01:35:01):
doesn't matter that, you know, it's all been created. It's
wizard of Oz level. The fakery is part of the wonder.
And there are plenty of movies where it's fake and
it looks ridiculous. And Legend is not one of them.
They've managed to make this, again, a realm you can
imagine yourself in. And the cinematography is part of that. Obviously,

(01:35:22):
the production design. The makeup work here is just seamless.
It's surreal. We're going to be mentioning Tim Curry's passing.
And he plays the adversary here, this demon, Darkness. again,
kind of a ridiculous concept and how it's fleshed out,
but his look is incredible. That face. I knew, I mean,

(01:35:45):
I've known that face since I was a kid, having
never seen the movie, just from the immediacy of the
makeup design. So Legend is a film that, you know,
doesn't always work, but it absolutely looks the part. So
I like it as a number five pick.

Speaker 4 (01:36:02):
Roxanna, I saw that movie in 1985. when I was
probably too young and remember dark.

Speaker 5 (01:36:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:12):
Remember having my mind kind of blown by it. Do
you remember when you saw legend?

Speaker 5 (01:36:19):
I think it was one of these that I saw
on like UPN on a Saturday afternoon or something.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
I don't, I, so not the director's cut.

Speaker 5 (01:36:26):
No, I have it absorbed within me, but I, I
think it's, it's less distinct to me than like, return
to Oz or something like that. Like I remember being
sort of kooky and weird primarily because of Tim Curry,
but I don't think I remember much else about it,
but I like it here as sort of like a,

(01:36:48):
another like Ridley deviation.

Speaker 4 (01:36:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
And I mean, just this, this emphasis on style, right.
Which I'm not meaning in a derogatory way. I think
it's his strength. And when he leans into it, he can,
I cannot imagine what legend would have been In a
lesser skilled visualist, the hands of a lesser skilled visualist.

Speaker 4 (01:37:09):
Roxanna, you get to close out our Ridley Scott draft,
your fifth and final choice.

Speaker 5 (01:37:15):
Okay. I'm going to say this and I'm like, I
will see if you two have seen it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
Yeah, really. I think you have.

Speaker 5 (01:37:23):
I think you have.

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):
I'm going to guess no, but go ahead.

Speaker 5 (01:37:24):
I'm going to guess yes. I'm going to close this
out with 2008's Body of Lies.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:37:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:31):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:37:31):
Good.

Speaker 5 (01:37:32):
Okay, great.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
And I'm going to predict I gave it two out
of four stars. I will check as you're talking.

Speaker 5 (01:37:36):
That's fine.

Speaker 4 (01:37:37):
You must have, Josh.

Speaker 5 (01:37:39):
Body of Lies. How to begin my thoughts on Body
of Lies. I am not a Black Hawk Down person.
I think that it is a film that is ostensibly anti-war,
but actually quite pro-war in what it depicts in terms
of like, Honor and loyalty and all of these sort

(01:38:00):
of like self-sacrificing feelings that you will experience when you're
in a country killing people of color. So I think
that like the impact of that movie has actually been
like quite destructive.

Speaker 4 (01:38:15):
And I feel like something.

Speaker 3 (01:38:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:38:17):
But again, and, you know, that's my like, you know,
very lefty perspective on it. But I do think that
something like Body of Lies and to a certain degree
Kingdom of Heaven, I think these to me feel almost
like Ridley sort of being like my bad. Let me

(01:38:37):
do a corrective. And I also think Body of Lies. So, okay.
So Body of Lies is about the CIA and their
operations in Jordan to hunt down like a terrorist mastermind.
It is Russell Crowe again as like CIA guy in
Virginia who is like, you know, laying out these like

(01:38:58):
complicated plans, doesn't care about like international sovereignty, basically just
treats it as like the U.S. and the CIA can
do whatever they want around the world, which like mostly
they do and they can't. And Leonardo DiCaprio is playing
like the agent on the ground, the guy who actually
has to like make connections with people to gather information

(01:39:18):
about what they're trying to do.

Speaker 3 (01:39:20):
Hey, buddy. Back from the sandbox? How are you enjoying civilization?

Speaker 1 (01:39:26):
Want to go and get a hot dog? How do
you expect me to operate, huh, Ed?

Speaker 4 (01:39:28):
What are you keeping all the cards in your chest?

Speaker 3 (01:39:30):
What about an ice cream?

Speaker 4 (01:39:31):
All Honey wanted was patience, Ed. Patience, not as a
personal quality.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
I don't care what Honey wanted.

Speaker 4 (01:39:36):
Not as a personal quality, but as an operational requirement.
You can't do it, huh? You are too f * * *
ing power hungry and greedy. You f * * *
ed this whole operation up. For Christ's sakes, I thought
Honey wanted to kill me.

Speaker 2 (01:39:46):
Oh, don't exaggerate.

Speaker 1 (01:39:47):
Honey don't want to kill you.

Speaker 4 (01:39:48):
He likes you.

Speaker 5 (01:39:50):
I really like you. The two of them together, I
think that Russell is just in pure like DJF, like
doesn't care about anything. It is like a very interesting 180,
I think, from Gladiator and from his previous work with Ridley.
And I really like Leo here. I feel like this

(01:40:10):
was sort of on that time when he wasn't really
playing heroes necessarily, but he was sort of playing flawed
men who are aware that they are flawed. and are
still trying to devote themselves to something. It is very clearly,
I think, Ridley's attempt at doing Spy Game, which was

(01:40:34):
Tony's version of this with Redford and Brad Pitt. Also,
how does intelligence and covert operations end up damaging lots
of really innocent people? Um, but I, you know, I
really like body of lies. It feels to me like, again,
sort of a little overlooked because there isn't really much

(01:40:57):
that is flashy about it. It's like surveillance imagery, planes, drones,
all the stuff that Tony was working with, um, in
sort of building this genre. But I think it's a
pretty solid Leo performance. I, I, can tolerate Mark Strong
in brownface. He's playing like a Jordanian character. And what

(01:41:23):
I also really appreciate about these movies is like I
do think that Ridley cast them with an array of
interesting Middle Eastern Arab Muslim characters.

Speaker 4 (01:41:35):
Actors.

Speaker 5 (01:41:35):
And I say that because there is a Palestinian movie
that I love very much called Paradise Now. And the
two stars of that movie are in this. And yes,
it is essentially still sort of saying a, why is
terrorism a problem in the Middle East question, but I
think it's more clear eyed about like the American role

(01:41:57):
in maintaining that political ideology. So I really like it.
I was surprised. I have to sort of remember that
it like sort of made money, which was like shocking
at the time. It made 120. It costs like 68.
So it didn't make a ton of money. But this
to me felt sort of like Ridley proving to us

(01:42:19):
that he can still do drama, that he is still
sort of fascinated by these like larger worldwide questions. And
I just I enjoy it.

Speaker 4 (01:42:31):
I like it.

Speaker 5 (01:42:32):
I think it's good.

Speaker 1 (01:42:33):
Yeah, that interplay between Crow and DiCaprio was one of
the strengths. But yeah, that being said, two out of
four stars.

Speaker 5 (01:42:41):
Two out of four.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
Turns out.

Speaker 4 (01:42:42):
Yeah, and I forgot that actually, that's another one that
I do have in my like range. I also, I
liked Body of Lies. And I agree about the two
performances there. So with that, we officially conclude our Ridley
Scott draft. We encourage you to go to filmspotting.net slash lists.

(01:43:02):
To see all of our choices, you can see exactly
how it all played out. Roxanna is now done shaming
us for the Ridley Scott films that we have not seen.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
Roxanna, name a Ridley Scott film you haven't seen just
to make us feel better, or are you a completist?

Speaker 5 (01:43:19):
I'm not a completist. I don't think I've seen a
good year.

Speaker 4 (01:43:22):
Yeah, well, that was number 29 on the Rotten Tomatoes list,
so if our critical brethren are correct, then... You're good, right?

Speaker 1 (01:43:30):
I'm just going to beat this bit to death, but
I kid you not, two out of four stars for
a good year for me.

Speaker 5 (01:43:39):
Wait, Josh, what was Dog Stars?

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
Haven't seen it yet. Have you?

Speaker 5 (01:43:43):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:43:43):
Oh, okay. Because, yeah, we have not gotten to Dog
Stars quite yet.

Speaker 5 (01:43:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:43:49):
To be clear, that's not a no, you haven't seen it.
That's a no, don't bother.

Speaker 5 (01:43:54):
It is a no, I have not seen it.

Speaker 4 (01:43:56):
Oh, okay. By the hand gesture, I wasn't sure.

Speaker 5 (01:43:59):
I was at the beach.

Speaker 4 (01:44:01):
Okay. Like us, you have better things to do.

Speaker 2 (01:44:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:44:04):
I'm off this week. I took off a week just
to do stuff at home. So I do have a
little list of movies that I need to watch this week,
and Dog Stars is on.

Speaker 2 (01:44:12):
It, unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (01:44:12):
Well, thank you for making time for us.

Speaker 1 (01:44:14):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
We really appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:44:17):
Of course.

Speaker 4 (01:44:17):
Obviously, you added a significant amount of substance to this
Ridley Scott draft, and we look forward to having you
back on again soon.

Speaker 5 (01:44:25):
Thank you, guys. Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:44:26):
Hey, take care, Roxanna.

Speaker 4 (01:44:27):
We have to remind people, though, where they can find
your work.

Speaker 5 (01:44:30):
Yes, you can find me at Vulture. You can find
me on X. You can find me on Blue Sky.
Any places that tolerate my Ridley's movies about the Middle
East are good, actually, agenda.

Speaker 4 (01:44:44):
And we will link, speaking of that, we will link
to your article about Kingdom of Heaven in our show notes.
So seek that out. Thank you again, Roxanna.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
Thanks, Roxanna. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 4 (01:45:06):
It is time for Golden Brickspotting. Filipiniana is the feature
debut from director Rafael Manuel. It debuted at this year's
Sundance and it opens in limited release this weekend, including
in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Set at
a country club in the Philippines, it's about a young woman,
Joribel Agotos-Isabel. and her curious interest in the club's president.

(01:45:29):
She soon realizes that the club and its pristine grounds
are not all as they appear. If you're nominating it
for the Golden Brick, Josh, that must mean that something
stood out to you in terms of the director's vision.
Tell me what that is.

Speaker 1 (01:45:44):
Sometimes it seems unfair to include a title in the
Golden Brick race because as emerging filmmakers, sometimes we see
glimpses or promise, right? And then sometimes movies arrive so
fully formed, you're like, wait, this is a feature debut.
I think maybe another strong contender this year, Blue Heron,
we might put in that category. And yeah, Filipinana is

(01:46:07):
on that level. Just the striking assurance that Manuel has
of the compositions here and the imagery. These are tableaus
that he creates and And then he adds movement and
rhythm into them, often to create these juxtapositions between what
we're seeing and how things are moving and what that

(01:46:30):
all says. There's choreography at play. It feels like a
slow cinema musical in a way, because these are all
very long shots as well. Long takes, I should say.
So it's interesting. It's very unique. At the same time,
you can see traces of going all the way back
to Jacques Tati or relatively more recently, a filmmaker we've explored,

(01:46:54):
Roy Anderson, where you have these tableaus and different figures
moving throughout them and some sort of commentary at play.
I would say Filipiniana is much more acerbic, much more
acidic in its black humor, particularly Where this ends, I'm
not going to give anything away, but definitely if you
go see this at the Cisco Film Center, stay through

(01:47:16):
the final credits all the way to the end. Because
you won't have experienced this movie unless you do that.
One question I have, and this actually relates to the
movie racket, what Michael Phillips and Robert Daniels are talking
about on this past Monday's episode. you know, message movies

(01:47:37):
and what is a message movie and when can that
be good? When can it be negative? I mean, this
is clearly making statements about, um, about class, about capitalism.
And that is what I appreciated about it, but it's
also a blunt instrument in that way. You get what
every one of these compositions is trying to communicate. I

(01:48:00):
think I like that. I think I appreciate, even though
you understand that message, the creativity of the artistry that's
been employed to get it across. But I'll be curious
to see how reactions are on that front. So yeah,
this is not only a strong golden brick contender right now,

(01:48:23):
it's leapt into my top 10 of the year so
far list. So that will give you a sense of
how high I am on it at least. And I
hope people really do seek it out because however you
feel about this, I think Manuel is going to be
a talent that's going to do some astonishing stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:48:41):
Moving forward keep an eye out for Phil Vignana out
now in limited release if you would like to see
our growing list of 2026 brick nominees you can go
to filmspotting.net slash bricks we did want to take a
moment to note the passing of both Dolly Parton and

(01:49:01):
Tim Curry. Dolly's passing was, fair to say, seismic in
its response, but Tim Curry certainly also beloved, and certainly
one positive outcome from this, Josh, was that Dolly's passing
got you to watch a movie that, is this right,
you hadn't seen before? You had never watched 9 to 5?

(01:49:22):
I don't know....

Speaker 1 (01:49:25):
How to explain my experience with nine to five Adam,
because it is at once a film that I feel
like was constantly on during my childhood in some way
at the same. And when I watched it, there were
long stretches. Whereas like, I have seen this, I absolutely
have seen this, but I don't think I ever watched

(01:49:45):
the thing, the whole thing through in its entirety. Um,
I don't know how to explain that. You know, we,
I didn't, we didn't have cable growing up, so it
couldn't have been catching it. walking in on cable. Maybe
it was VHS at friends' houses. I don't know. But
it was a delight to watch it again. It's, you know,
it's got its ups and downs, nine to five. None

(01:50:07):
of its downs are due to Dolly Parton.

Speaker 6 (01:50:10):
Look, I got a gun out there in my purse.
And up to now, I've been forgiving and forgetting because
of the way I was brought up. But I'll tell
you one thing. If you ever say another word about
me or make another indecent proposal, I'm going to get
that gun of mine. And I'm going to change you
from a rooster to a hen with one shot.

Speaker 1 (01:50:25):
I mean, she just not only shines on the screen
in this movie, but is so happy to be there.
And I don't mean like she thinks she's getting a
shot at something that she, she knows she belongs there
and she's just having a blast, uh, as she should.
And it did make me think, as we look at

(01:50:46):
some of her other, you know, titles here as a
lead best little whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds, again, 82,
I have, you know, Memories, vague memories of that one.
Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone in 1984. And then, of course,
Steel Magnolia is part of that ensemble. You know, she
could have had three to four star vehicles, romantic comedy,

(01:51:11):
something in that genre that she would have hit out
of the park. I'm not saying she would have ever
rivaled Meryl Streep during that era. But it is a
bit of a shame that she didn't either get more
opportunities or maybe want them. I mean, maybe she just said,
I had fun. I'm going to go back to music.
But she would have easily been able to carry really strong, well-written,

(01:51:33):
romantic comedies with her mixture of, you know, just comic timing.
That's the musician in her, right? Comic timing, sense of joy,
and the self-awareness is what was so unique about her.
I think. And you see that in nine to five.
So yeah, incredible screen presence. If you think like you only,
for some reason, you only need the music. No, you

(01:51:54):
need to, you need to watch Dolly Parton on, on
screen as well.

Speaker 3 (01:51:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:51:58):
I don't know what was different. Well, I know part
of what was different about our childhoods. I did have
cable and my parents didn't block what I watched and
I watched nine to five. Not that it was necessarily
a movie that kids shouldn't watch though. It had some
adult themes and material certainly. I watched 9 to 5

(01:52:19):
every time it was on. I don't know what it
was about that movie that I responded to as a
young lad, Josh, but I adored it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
It works at the level, one reason might be, it
works at the level of cartoon. I mean, literally, there's
an animated segment. There's a cartoon in it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:33):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
So it could have simply been that, maybe.

Speaker 4 (01:52:35):
Yeah, it could have been part of it. I did enjoy,
I think I remember thinking about my mom then as
someone who worked in the corporate world in a small town,
but for a corporation that was a pretty big company that,
that produced something that, you know, that was shipped all

(01:52:57):
over the United States and the world and, and was
part of that world. And I, I remember seeing something
in those characters that reminded me of my mom and
some of the same things that I felt like she
had to, she had to battle. And maybe that was
even the first film, the first movie that I remember
watching where I remember at that age being exposed to

(01:53:20):
the idea of sexism. Truly, the idea of misogyny in
the workplace was watching a movie like 9 to 5.

Speaker 1 (01:53:26):
Do you have any recollection of your mom's awareness of
the film or response to it if she saw it?

Speaker 4 (01:53:32):
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:53:33):
I don't remember, but surely.

Speaker 4 (01:53:35):
It was something that we were both aware of, and
it was a film she watched, probably watched it with
her the first time. So I loved that film. And
speaking of childhood, I mean, Tim Curry, Annie in 1982
playing Rooster. I loved that film. I loved that performance.

Speaker 1 (01:53:57):
And then Clue from 1985.

Speaker 7 (01:54:01):
And you forget.

Speaker 4 (01:54:05):
You forget that, legend may or may not come up later,
but he even has a role, a fairly memorable role
in the hunt for red October in 1990, of course,
most well known for the Rocky horror picture show. And we'll,

(01:54:27):
we'll get to the Rocky horror picture show maybe a
little bit later when we talk about what may be
coming up in terms of upcoming programming for film spotting.
He was also in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's
it as Pennywise and, But I didn't know this until
Sam put it in our notes here that he was
Tony nominated in 1980 for his Mozart in the original

(01:54:51):
Broadway production of Amadeus and his Salieri was Ian McKellen.
So this is a three-time Tony nominee for Amadeus for
My Favorite Year, for Spamalot. Just obviously an incredible performer
and sad that we had Tim Curry and Dolly Parton
going the same week. And now we're going to honor
both of them by playing Massacre Theater.

Speaker 1 (01:55:13):
I suppose we are. This is where Adam and I
perform a scene, and you get a chance to win
a film spotting prize. Last time, we massacred this scene.

Speaker 5 (01:55:22):
Just make me a salad or.

Speaker 4 (01:55:23):
A spaghetti, please.

Speaker 3 (01:55:25):
Secondo, I want to know for who is it for.

Speaker 4 (01:55:31):
For the lady with the risotto. What? Why? She likes starch.

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:55:38):
Come on.

Speaker 1 (01:55:38):
That was Stanley Tucci and noted Italian Tony Shalhoub in
1996's Big Night, written by Tucci and Joseph Charpeano, directed
by Tucci and Campbell Scott. That massacre was part of
the show that featured reviews of The End of Oak
Street and the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony. So why that
scene from Big Night?

Speaker 4 (01:55:59):
Probably pretty obvious. Here's Bruce Batchelor Glader in Milford, Ohio.
The minute I heard risotto, the Big Night orders up
bell went off. Never has a film featured this delicate
dish so prominently. Obviously tied into this week's review of Tony,
Big Night's story about two brothers working in an Italian
restaurant kitchen to create one very special dish evoked a
similar event in Tony, although without the pyrotechnic disaster. Your

(01:56:21):
authentic Italian accents surely evoke Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub's
voice work, resulting in a brimming hat of correct answers.
Now that's a spicy meatball.

Speaker 1 (01:56:33):
Whoa. Can I ask for a retake?

Speaker 4 (01:56:35):
You have to say it that way. That's how you
have to say it. That's a spicy meatball. Okay, well,
that's better.

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):
Meatball.

Speaker 4 (01:56:42):
See, you outperformed me.

Speaker 1 (01:56:44):
Well, I just, I never heard it done that way.
Here's Addison Alley from Salt Lake City, Utah. This is
big night. I could tell because I could hear your
hand gestures. Oh boy, the obvious connection is to the
end of Oak Street with how the film famously ends
with a pack of velociraptors storming the restaurant and feasting

(01:57:05):
on the diners. But it also very loosely connects with
Tony with its depiction of the art and drama of
a busy restaurant kitchen.

Speaker 4 (01:57:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:13):
Well done.

Speaker 4 (01:57:14):
Here's Jeff Clark, Carrboro, North Carolina. While there is a
superficial connection with your review of Tony having to do
with cooking, shallow given the gap in skill between Tony
and Primo, there is a deeper connection with your review
of the end of Oak Street The latter had rapacious dinosaurs,
and Big Night had Ian Holm's rival restaurateur Pascal, none
of whose hungers could be sated.

Speaker 1 (01:57:35):
There you go. How about Aviv in LA? First of all,
how dare you impugn the accents in Campbell Scott and
Stanley Tucci's Big Night, a film I recommend to just
about everyone I meet. The long take scene where Tucci
simply makes and eats an omelet is mesmerizing in a
way that I still can't quite verbalize. The connection to
this week's episode is obviously Ewan McGregor's pretty lousy American

(01:57:57):
accent in the end of Oak Street, which, like Shalhoub's Italian,
falls deep into the uncanny valley of accent work. Or
maybe it's just bad. It could also have something to
do with chefs who are, for one reason or another,
way out of their depth. I think the Anthony Bourdain
equivalent to Louis Prima coming to his restaurant would be
the New York Dolls coming to Provincetown for a nice
seafood dinner. And who could forget the psychosexual scene between

(01:58:21):
Tucci and Shalhoub amid all their dipping sauces clearly paid
homage in Camp Miasma. Anyway, keep up the good work.
For the past 18 months, I've been listening on my
morning hikes with my dog. He is also a fan.

Speaker 4 (01:58:35):
Yeah, and Aviv sent a picture with Chubbs.

Speaker 1 (01:58:38):
I'm assuming Chubbs is the aforementioned dog.

Speaker 4 (01:58:40):
That is correct. So, Josh, you get to reach into
the aforementioned brimming hat and pick out this week's winner.

Speaker 1 (01:58:48):
Our winner is Liam McKenzie from Richmond, Vermont.

Speaker 4 (01:58:51):
Congratulations, Liam. You get to email us and claim your
very own FilmSpotting t-shirt, tote bag, or trial membership to
the FilmSpotting family.

Speaker 1 (01:59:03):
Would the detour so simple? Would the detour so simple?
Would the detour so simple?

Speaker 3 (01:59:10):
Would the detour so simple? My dear boy, why do
you say that?

Speaker 1 (01:59:12):
Why do you say twer?

Speaker 4 (01:59:14):
Well, you should say it like I said it. We
move on out of this week's edition of Massacre Theater,
and yes, as usual, there are some layers here in
terms of why producer Sam suggested this scene, but we
usually come up with just a couple layers, and the listeners, Josh,
are always smarter than us, and we'll see what they

(01:59:35):
come back with.

Speaker 1 (01:59:36):
I'm sure they will find many other layers. I'm just
grateful the timing of this is working out well because
we're two hours into recording and in my part requires
a weariness, weariness and exhaustion at its end. So it's,
it's really working out for me here.

Speaker 2 (01:59:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:59:57):
That won't be tough to embody at all. Will it? Okay.
You started off. I'm going to give you the action
and action.

Speaker 1 (02:00:08):
Edgar just wants to help, you know, thinks the world
of you.

Speaker 4 (02:00:13):
You shouldn't worship me the way he does. I'm not
who he thinks I am.

Speaker 1 (02:00:17):
Few of us ever are.

Speaker 4 (02:00:20):
All right. We're here. Tail section. Quarantine section. Prison section. Gate.

Speaker 6 (02:00:27):
Gate.

Speaker 4 (02:00:28):
Gate. Four seconds when all three gates are open at once.
We have four seconds to go through three gates and
bust Nam out.

Speaker 1 (02:00:37):
Then Nam gets us the rest of the way. Our
fate depends on this man.

Speaker 4 (02:00:42):
Yeah. If we can get him to cooperate... It can
take us all the way to the front of the train.

Speaker 1 (02:00:49):
And scene.

Speaker 2 (02:00:51):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:00:52):
I mean, I know I had some help there, but
I feel like pretty good performance by me.

Speaker 4 (02:00:58):
Yeah, I think you did all right. I didn't notice
any kind of accent really whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (02:01:03):
Oh, really?

Speaker 4 (02:01:04):
No, not really.

Speaker 1 (02:01:05):
I mean, maybe I pulled back after doing Big Night.

Speaker 2 (02:01:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:01:11):
I felt like I had to pull back too far.

Speaker 4 (02:01:13):
Pulled back a little bit, maybe a little bit too far.
I just went for as bland as I could possibly be,
and that wasn't tough. And I like this actor. Don't
get me wrong, but this scene, there's not a lot happening. Okay? No.

Speaker 1 (02:01:23):
I mean, he brought a little bit more, but you know,
he's a professional.

Speaker 4 (02:01:31):
I would hope so, Josh. If you know what film
we just massacred. Email the movie's title, your name, and
location to feedback at filmspotting.net. The deadline is Monday, September 14th.
We will select the winner randomly from all the correct
entries and announce it in a couple of weeks. Josh,
that's our show.

Speaker 1 (02:01:48):
That's our show. If you want to connect with Adam
and the show on Instagram, Facebook, Letterboxd, YouTube, Blue Sky,
he's at Film Spotting. I'm at Larson on Film. We
are independently produced and listener supported. You can support the
show by joining the Film Spotting family at filmspottingfamily.com. You
can listen early and add free. You'll get monthly bonus episodes,
a weekly newsletter, and access to the entire show archive.

(02:02:11):
For show t-shirts and other merch, go to filmspotting.net slash shop.

Speaker 4 (02:02:16):
Out streaming, or VOD, this weekend. You can see Mayday,
the latest from the director of Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons,
Honor Among Thieves. This stars Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh.
It's on Apple Plus. Teenage Wasteland.

Speaker 1 (02:02:29):
Please tell me. Please tell me that SVU is on
this case.

Speaker 4 (02:02:33):
Oh, Josh. I mean, yeah. It's just ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:02:36):
They are. How have I not heard of this one from.

Speaker 4 (02:02:38):
I know. I know. A U.S. Navy pilot? Cold War?
Trap Behind Enemy Lines?

Speaker 1 (02:02:44):
Come on. Well, Game Night, one of the comedy classics
of the last, what, 10 or so years, and Dungeons & Dragons,
really funny as well. I'm assuming this is humor to it?

Speaker 4 (02:02:54):
Yeah, directors, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daly, they're back with Mayday,
and yes, SVU is on the case. Teenage Wasteland is
the new doc from Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss who
did Boys State and Girls State. This does sound fascinating
about a group of 90s high school students who made
a student film that uncovered a vast conspiracy that was
poisoning their community. That's on Netflix. In limited release, Josh,

(02:03:16):
you recommended Filipinana, which is at the Gene Siskel Film
Center and other select cities around the country. In wide release,
you can see By Any Means starring Mark Wahlberg and
Yahya Abdul-Mateen. as well as Onslaught, starring Adria Arjona as
an army sniper who must unleash hell when a rogue

(02:03:37):
squad of genetically engineered super soldiers threatens her daughter. It's
directed by Adam Wingard, the director of Godzilla vs. Kong,
and you're next. On Monday, in the FilmSpotting feed, you
will get the new edition of Movie Deathmatch. It's concert films.
Stop Making Sense vs. The Last Waltz. You can't miss that. Tuesday,

(02:03:59):
FilmSpotting SVU. Yes, Mayday on Apple +. Hear what Matt
Singer and Jordan Hoffman have to say about that film.
On Thursday, you'll get a new edition of The Next
Picture Show. I don't have their exact pairing. I don't
know if it's set for sure, Josh, at this point,
but I do know that Genevieve and company were kicking
around It Ends, which was recommended last week here on FilmSpotting,

(02:04:22):
and Tarkovsky's Solaris.

Speaker 1 (02:04:25):
Wow. Yeah. Okay. That gives me pause, which means if
they go that route, it'll probably be a great episode.

Speaker 4 (02:04:32):
Indeed. Friday on Film Spotting, with Tim Curry's passing, we
were thinking about, and Halloween approaching, a blind cow review
of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is indeed a
blind cow because I have never seen the Rocky Horror
Picture Show.

Speaker 1 (02:04:48):
It is time, I think.

Speaker 4 (02:04:49):
Yeah, it's definitely time.

Speaker 1 (02:04:50):
Do listeners feel the same?

Speaker 4 (02:04:51):
Is it leading the poll for film spotting family members? Yeah,
we put that in a poll question. Yeah, we sent
it out to film spotting family members because we were
also considering T2, Terminator 2 Judgment Day, since that's out
for its 35th anniversary. And as we sit here at
this moment, Josh, it is a case where fairly decisively, well, yeah, 58%

(02:05:13):
to 42%. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I did
see a listener, and I'm sorry, I'm blanking on who
said it, who maybe gave the best justification for Rocky Horror,
which was with Curry's passing, it's the best time to
do the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And there will be

(02:05:34):
other occasions to talk about Terminator 2. So I think
that probably does justify it now. I don't know if
you saw this quick on-air production meeting In the Film
Spotting Family Discord, there were some people talking about the
fact that maybe we needed to put into the poll
question Coyote vs. Acme.

Speaker 2 (02:05:53):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (02:05:55):
I do want to see it very much.

Speaker 4 (02:05:57):
So maybe we're missing something by not doing that film.

Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
Maybe one or both of us could sneak into a
Coyote vs. Acme screening and we cover that as well.

Speaker 4 (02:06:08):
Stay tuned. Visit filmspotting.net slash episodes for the schedule once
we have it all sorted out.

Speaker 1 (02:06:14):
Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe DeSoto and Sam
Van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go.
Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Ariana Martinez is our
marketing and social media assistant. Special thanks to everyone at
WBEZ Chicago. More information is available at WBEZ.org. For Film Spotting,
I'm Josh Larson.

Speaker 4 (02:06:35):
And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 3 (02:06:37):
This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

Speaker 4 (02:06:41):
Goodbye. Thank you.

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Ridley Scott Draft with Roxana Hadadi and Filipiñana | #1079

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ridley Scott Draft with Roxana Hadadi and Filipiñana | #1079