THE TEAM
John Wesley Downey, Frankie Westmoreland and Bret Gipson are the multi-generational contributors to the TRUE FILM PODCAST. From Gen Z to Gen X to the Baby Boomers, we
give you a wide sampling of critical opinion. What does the trio have in common? They are
all passionate movie nerds who share the same love of movies, from the silent era
classics to the latest movies playing at the box office.
DINOSAURS,CRIMINALS AND SOLDIERS
This week John reviews the latest movie in the 32 year old Jurassic Dionosaur series, Jurassic
World Rebith, Bret checks out the Marvel Studio's The Thunderbolts and Frankie climbs into a
time machine to check out the 1967 war film classici The Dirty Dozen. Surprisingly it turns out
Thunderbolts and Diirty Dozen share similar story elements. The idea of taking criminals and
giving them a chance to reddem themsleves through performing a heroic mission is at the core
of both films. And that provides lots of fule for fun discussion.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Next week we'll talk about the Naken Gun movie starring Liam Neeson, and a disastrous remake of War of the Worlds. And in light of the death of astronaut Jim Lovell who was captain of Apollo 13,
we'll discuss the Apoolo 13 film by rRn Howard that captured the true drama for all time.
SOCIAL MEDIA
If you enjoy our podcast, visit us on Facebook on the True Film Fan page for more information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have a really good and interesting show for you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Tonight.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We're going to be talking about Jurassic World, The Rebirth,
We're going to be talking about a nineteen sixty seven
movie called The Dirty Dozen, and we're going to be
talking about The Thunderbolts. So those are some of the
movies we're going to be talking about. But before we
get to all of that, I'm going to be talking
a little bit about the show itself and just give
you all some heads up on things. First of all,
(00:26):
the movie show airs here every Sunday night at eight
o five pm on nine fifty KPRC, and of course
you can hear it on the radio. However, if you're
not in Houston and you're outside of the station's signal,
then you can still hear it from anywhere in the
world if you go to the nine fifty KPRC website
where they stream the audio signal of the station, so
(00:47):
you can get it anywhere, even if you're in Antarctica.
And finally, and I've been a little remiss in my
duties on this this over the last couple of months,
but we are going to archive a bunch of our shows,
some of which have been really fun, such as the
Superhero Fatigue Show, just to name one. With our True
(01:09):
Film Fan podcast, which by the way, is on the
iHeartRadio app. That's how you can hear some of our
previous shows. And by the way, those go on the
iHeartRadio app, but they go out to I think a
dozen platforms. I know we're on Apple, I think we're
on Spotify, so we're lots of places. You don't just
(01:33):
have to listen to us on the iHeartRadio app, though
we do prefer that, and my boss, I'm sure would
prefer that anyway. I also wanted to let you know
that I have an Instagram account called True Film Fan.
I'd like you to go to that and follow there
and check out a lot of the things we do.
And I've started a True Film Fan page on Facebook,
(01:55):
probably the easiest thing to access, even though people that
love TikTok would probably die before they'd go to Facebook.
But anyway, it's all set up and it's the easiest
thing really for us to upload stuff on, and there's
lots of stuff on our previous shows there. I put
up a lot of trivia there. Sometimes if there's a
(02:16):
news item, for example, if a famous actor dies or something.
I'll put something on the True Facebook page, just all
kinds of stuff, background on the other people here on
the show.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So please go to Facebook, go to the True Film
fan page there and subscribe to it. And when you
see stuff, do the usual ritual of you know, like
comment and share so that we can start building that page. Also,
there will be in the future Twitter accounts and TikTok
(02:52):
accounts as well, so we're getting all over social media
and we're going to be doing all kinds of interesting
things here. This is the multi generational podcast asked for movies.
Just something a little bit different since there's a wide
age range of those of us who are on the show,
and it gives it a little bit different flavor. It
gives us a wider access to more movies and more
(03:13):
information and more discussions because movies. Some people now they
seem to think movies started in nineteen ninety three or something.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, well movies began.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
They began with Jurassic Park, right, No, not quite anyway,
Before I launch into my initial comments on Jurassic World rebirth,
let me welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Brett.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Hello, Brett, that's me.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Tell us again how to spell your last night.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Oh yes, it's g ip as in Paul Son. I've
been doing that correction my entire life. Sometimes it's Pony
some most of the time it's Paul okay.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
And he is one of our producers here at iHeartRadio
and also a broadcast pro produced a very well known
radio show in Houston for five or six years YEP called.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
The Deanon Rod Show. A lot of fun. Had to
get up early. That was less fun.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
God, I could never do that and it wasn't great.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And in a couple of minutes Brett is going to
be giving us a review of Thunderbolts. Also, we have
with us Frankie Westmoreland, who's been here a while now,
a couple of months. Seems like we've been doing this
a while now. Frankie, Yeah, getting comfortable.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
It is getting comfy.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Okay, good?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And what is you have a very interesting assignment tonight?
What are you going to be reviewing?
Speaker 5 (04:35):
I'll be reviewing nineteen sixty seven's The Dirty Dozen, classic
war film.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Now, for those of you that are wondering, what are
they cooking up? We're going to This might seem like
two very different movies, but is it.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
That's the thing. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Anyway, I'm going to get going here on the movie
that I saw this week, and full disclosure, I've seen
most of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, but
I didn't see the last one because I felt that
the well had gone dry. I just didn't feel like
dragging myself to another one. I'll probably see it eventually,
(05:16):
but I skipped it. But I chose to go see
and review Rebirth because it looked interesting and I heard
some things about it that were very interesting. First of all,
it is an ambling Universal presentation. It was directed by
Gareth Edwards. It is obviously an adventure thriller. It stars
(05:37):
Scarlett Johansson and Maharasha.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I think it's Mahershala Marshala. That's what I do that.
Don't feel bad. I do that like three times a well.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Well, don't worry.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
We're going to have a contest over how to pronounce it.
The listeners can participate anyway. He's in it, very popular guy.
The music is by Alexander Display.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
That one I have no corrections for.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I don't know anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He is a fantastic composer and he composed the music
for some of Gareth's previous movies, and he did an
unusually good job on this one.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Let me give you the.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Oh, I don't need to say it on this man,
it's in color. Here's the interesting thing about it, though,
he Gareth decided because he was such a fan growing
up of Jurassic Park, he chose to shoot Rebirth on
film instead of digital wow, which gives the effects a
little bit different sheen interesting, so the effects may they
(06:38):
pop on screen. I got to tell you. The essence
of the plot is that the dinosaurs from previous episodes
pretty much all died out, except for around the equator.
The dinosaurs are still loose around there because the area
of the earth around the equator is the one that
was closest to what the dinosaurs lived in sixty million
(07:01):
years ago. So we don't still have the dinosaurs running
rampant over the earth and scaring the crab out of people,
but we do have them in that area, and that
makes sense that that's where they'd be. Also, we found out,
as you're told in the movie, that it turns out
that the dinosaurs really couldn't survive very well in our
age because it had a lot of things that, for example,
(07:21):
in the air and a lot of bacteria, all kinds
of things that were they had no defense against from
the time that they lived in. So we've resurrected the dinosaurs,
but it turns out they can't live very effectively in
our time, except for a few of them. But here's
the twist that made it interesting to me to go
(07:42):
see rebirth, and that is, for example, in the Lost World,
the second Jurassic Park movie, a big part of that
movie was rich people going out to hunt dinosaurs and
kill them as trophies. But in this case, Scarlett Johansson
and her team are approached by some very wealthy people
in a pharmaceutical company because they have discovered that some
(08:04):
of the larger dinosaurs who have huge hearts, there are
aspects to their physiology and to their DNA that can
be useful in research to cure heart disease. So they
need blood samples from these very large dinosaurs, and that's
why they go to a particular island which has some
of these dinosaurs on it, an island that had a
(08:26):
research facility on it where some things went terribly wrong.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Blambah bam again.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Absolutely, so as to what I that's the setup of
what the movie's about. However, I will tell you more
about my opinion of the movie after these messages on
nine fifty KPRC. So don't go away, there's a lot
more to come. Okay, we're back. That was some music
(08:56):
from Can you Guess a Jurassic Park movie? Sounds like it? Anyway,
I'm John Wesley Downey.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It's the movie show on nine to fifty KPRC. And
I did the setup before the break on the movie
that I'm reviewing tonight, which is a Jurassic World rebirth.
Set up the story for you. Now, what did I
think of the movie? I thought the movie was maybe
one of the better ones I've seen. Not as good
as the first one, and not as good as maybe
(09:23):
Jurassic World, or maybe right at the level of Jurassic World,
I think, the fourth one in the series. But they
really gave it the old college try, and they in
one way, they had a very innovative premise that I
just mentioned. They're hunting these dinosaurs for medical reasons, for
humanitarian reasons that could benefit people, And the other thing
(09:46):
they tried to do it seemed to me was just
do meat and potatoes. This is what people want people
getting into trouble, people jeopardized by the dinosaurs, and people
trying to escape with their lives, and it was all
all very impressive, particularly some of the scenes on the ocean. Now,
the grandpa of the Jurassic series, Steven Spielberg, had quite
(10:10):
a bit of experienced shooting on an ocean, and it
wasn't didn't go very well. But so what did he
do when they contrived this story. He made the people
making this one have to go out on the ocean,
but I think it was maybe a little easier because
they used obviously digital technology. The movie looks sensational. They
(10:31):
shot a lot of it in Thailand, in very very rich,
lush jungle areas, and I have to say everybody, the actors,
all did their job pretty well, and I was surprised
at what a great action hero Scarlett Johansson made. I
found out doing a little research that she had always
been a huge fan of the Jurassic Park films and
(10:53):
that every time they made one, she'd call up and
say anything in it for me, and they said no,
and they said no, but this time they said yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Us.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Anyway, the all of the strings, I think Gareth Edwards
pulled them together pretty well.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
He's famous for scale, and boy does this movie have scale.
It also has some of the most interesting looking dinosaurs
that we've ever seen in this series.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
And overall, I.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Would I would give this movie maybe a C minus
or a B plus, maybe even a B. I was entertained.
Part of it is you go to see this movie,
this kind of movie in the series, now you basically
know what you're gonna get. You know they're not going
to be uh you know, down at the library having
coffee and talking about dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, we're going to see some.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
We dispensed with the moral conundrum.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Yes, the dinosaurs to be sitting in the library.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
No.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
But it was a satisfying movie and I noticed interestingly
that there was some applause at the end of the
screening I went to see it.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
The movie was about.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
The theater was i'd say maybe maybe two thirds full,
and I did notice also through the movie that it
seemed like there were good reactions. And I always try
to watch the crowd as I'm leaving the theater, and
it seemed like everybody was happy over the comments I overheard.
So I'm pretty tough on movies, but I think given
the context that this is now a thirty two year
(12:22):
old film franchise. They managed to pardon the pun, squeeze
some fresh blood out.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
He did it.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
But I want to pay particular kudos to mister Spielberg
and David Kept the screenwriter, because by making the hunt
for these dinosaurs a humanitarian effort, something that where the
dinosaurs can actually do something to save us, it gave
it a completely different twist as opposed to the people
(12:54):
hunting the dinosaurs for sport or for exploiting them in
a theme park or any of that kind of thing.
It was an interesting, very very interesting tone to it
changed the tone of the movie.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So, okay, guys, you've heard what I have had to
say based on what I've told you, because I know
neither of you have seen the movie. Brett, First of all,
what's your reaction.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I am actually the most likely I have ever been
in the last five to six years to watch a
Jurassic World movie. That sounds pretty good actually, and honestly,
from the trailers and feedback I've heard from people, it
sounds like a fun movie and I'm down for that.
And it's not like you know, bringing the legacy carriers
characters back to whip them or any of that sort
(13:36):
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
There's no legacy, I know, so I'm all about that.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So I was probably gonna get around to watching it eventually,
but from what you've said, I'm all for it. It sounds
really interesting and they put a little bit of thought
into it, which I was not expecting at all.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Right, and by the way, just to repeat again, I
thought the score was sensational anyway, Frankie, what do you
think just hearing my capsulization there my review, what do
you think?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:59):
I think even the way in which it's approaching the dinosaurs,
so we they we need them to help humanity. It's
not necessarily caging them or I think the second Jurassic
World it was selling them an auction or something like that.
So it's not like abusing them in any way. But
(14:20):
in this case, it's actually they're the key to our
survival and it's almost a you know, they need us,
we need them kind of thing. And I think, just
based off of that, I want to go see it.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
It's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, it's I don't want to. I want to be
careful here. I don't want to oversell the movie.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Right, But you know I have tempered expectations even still.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
But the thing is, if you're doing a series like
this and it's been around this long, you've really got
to work at it to keep it fresh. And I'm
not even sure that's completely possible.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So given the degree of difficulty at this point, I
think they did a pretty good job. Anyway, real quickly
got a little more time in this segment here before.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We move on.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
What was your first impression when you were a kid
when you saw Jurassic Park.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Oh, my god, like completely blown away. I know that's,
you know, the basic reaction, but I that was on repeat,
like just every ding dang day. I had all of
the toys. I had the shirts, I had the bed spread,
the whole thing. In fact, everything that they had at
the you know, the gift shop in Jurassic Park. I
(15:35):
probably had some version thereof like I was.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
The demo Forassic.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Okay, Frankie does the John Williams Jurassic Park theme. Stir
your soul when you hear.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
It, it's a good score. That is actually a very
good score.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
When they're coming up to the island and they're in
the helicopter and they just all these vistas. Then they
go and of course they see the brontosaurs. That's like,
you know, I think that's almost like anywhere from five
to ten minutes of like to completely uninterrupted, uninterrupted score.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
And it's magic.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
It's magic.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
It makes you believe, and it almost has a spiritual
feel to us.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yes, a little bit.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Oh, certainly there is sort of a religious feeling from it.
And I think that that that's mainly because of the
awe of the fact that they're seeing these dinosaurs come
back to life after millions of years.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I'm not like, I know this, we've seen.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
We can't imagine it because there's been an entire multi
film franchise about it, but it's still in I would go.
I would a I would be on titan a ship
called the Titanic. I would take that to an island
called Jurassic Park. If they ever did it, I would
do it, just in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Frankie, you want to finish up.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Yeah, I mean the original Jurassic is a great premise.
I mean, just to have them come back. But then
wait a minute, you know, we can't play god, we
can't control nature. It's all great, it's all classic formulas stuff.
You know, I mean Michael Crichton, of course, you know,
it's a great writer in his own right. And so
I do wonder what the Chrichten the state does think about,
(17:14):
you know, all the films now that they've been doing,
because now it's kind of gone into its own direction.
But you know, based on what you were saying, John
about the new kind of twist to the material that
keeps the franchise fresh, It keeps it interesting, that keeps
I mean, now I want to go see it. I
wasn't planning I'm going to going to go see it,
but now I kind of want to cool.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay, all right, So that will cap it for tonight
for the Jurassic Park rebirth. Now, when we come back,
Brett is going to be telling us about the thunder Bolts,
which I have not seen. I don't think Frankie's seen. No,
you have not, So we're going to listen to his review,
and then we're going to respond to it the way
everything just worked with the Jurassics film.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So stay with us.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
You are listening to the movie show on nine fifty kPr.
Back after these messages, we're back, and we're gonna be
talking now about the Thunderbolts the Marvel movie, and Brett
is going to give us his review of it, and
we're going to do something interesting. After we have heard
(18:18):
Brett's review of it, Frankie and I will comment on it,
and then Frankie's gonna come along and compare The Thunderbolts
to a movie from many decades ago. And it's pretty
much sure it's going to be an interesting comparison. Anyway,
Brett give us the rundown on the Thunderbolts.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
The Thunderbolts asterix, and that's actually important.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Okay, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Going to actually spoil what the asterix stands for, because
it's a really funny joke that they actually land. They
really land well in the movie. But Thunderbolts Asterix came
out a couple months ago in May. It's a Marvel
Disney property. Do you probably guess that already. It was
directed by Jack or sorry, Jake Shearer, who I looked
(19:02):
at his filmography. I didn't really see too much. He
did a little thin, but he did direct an episode
of a Skeleton Crew which I really did enjoy, and
the it's a superhero action comedy kind I was kind
of the hymning and hung whether I should put comedy
in there or not. It is very comedy focused, but
it's not like exactly what it's about. It's probably more
action focus. And really I kind of want to start
(19:25):
with the positives, which is weird for a modern Marvel film.
I know, it's crazy. The performances are actually really good.
The people are enjoyable. Even the characters that are being
introduced or that you hadn't seen for years or it
appeared in like one movie for five seconds, they do
a really good job. They characterize them well, and I
(19:48):
think like Florence Pugh is definitely the lead. She is
the lead of the whole thing. But the standout performance
is actually the new character played by Lewis Pullman, who
is Bill pol Son. I didn't know that until I
got to the absolute end of the film, and he
is like the standout performance.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
In the entire What character does he play?
Speaker 3 (20:08):
He plays Robert Reynolds or Bob as they say, and
he also plays a different character, but I'm not going
to tell you about that.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Well, incidentally, when you say he's Bill Pullman's son, those
of you that saw Independence.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Day, yes Bill.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Bill Pullman played the president.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Don't you have any more bullets.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
And it's so crazy because I actually watched this on
a plane, the best place to see a Marvel movie
on a tiny little screen that's right in your face.
I watched it and I was having so much fun
with it. My wife decided to watch it next to me,
so I watched it with her again. So uh, And
when we got to the end of it, he's like, oh,
he's doing so great, and I'm like, who Bill Wollman's son.
(20:47):
It's like who anyway. Uh. The music apparently was done
by an experimental band called son Looks, which I only
found out during my research. Because the music is basically
just standard Marvel stuff, a lot of fun, but you know,
very forgettable. The basic premise is, this is the CT characters,
(21:09):
Cetier characters of Marvel. You slam them all together, whoever
you have left, put them together and give them a mission,
give them a mission, and hope that they actually succeed
in it, because they're not actually that good at what
they do.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Oh good.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
That's where a lot of the comedy comes from, and
so performances action very good. It is only two hours long,
so with credits, it's actually like an hour and a
half hour forty five is like actually manageable. Can you
imagine that? But the biggest thing that I really my
(21:46):
the biggest takeaway from this, because it sort of falls
into what we were talking about earlier with Superhero fatigue,
is that this film is actually quite good. Like I'd
give it a solid probably like six and a half
seven out of ten. Not great, not exceptional, but better
than any Marvel property I've seen in the last five
or six years. Wow, And like hands down, Like I mean,
it's it's it's no mar it's no Avengers, right uh,
(22:08):
but it's it's fun, it's enjoyable, that you actually care
about the characters. By the end of the film, you
care to see what happens next. Remember that in a
Marvel movie. And my the thing I kept coming back
to is like, if they had released this instead of
Multiverse of Madness like right after Endgame, we would be
(22:29):
seeing a very different MCU right now. Uh yeah, So
I would highly recommend it if you are into MCU,
into the MCU, But since we saw what happened with
the Fantastic Four, we might not be seeing a fall
up to Thunderbolts. So enjoy it while you have.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
It all right, Would you say you were surprised.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yes, I was surprised because I there's there's some people
that I listened to online, those content creators online that
literally just trade on hate seems to be you know,
and like when it came out.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Of you, hates that leads to the dark side, needs
to fear.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
It was surprising because from the people that I allegedly
trust said, oh, it's terrible, there's no reason to watch this,
it's complete waste of time. It's not funny, it's not entertaining.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
But it is that really drives home the point that
all of us should follow our own light that no
matter what other people say, because we're all different. And
you know something that I've found. I've seen movies that
I hated and I saw them two years later and
I loved it, or even like t checks the first
(23:40):
movie George Lucasmith, I saw it when I was a
teenager and thought, Ah, this looks cool, but I have
no idea what's going on. Many years later, when I
was older and better read and more sophisticated, and after
I'd heard the director's commentary and understood everything, I realized
for a twenty five year old guy. That was amazing.
(24:03):
So time can do a lot for you. And also
the mood you're in on the articular day. If you're
in a terrible mood, you watch something, I don't care
how good it is you you know, you may not
like it.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Well, I was trapped on a plane and we had
been delayed like two hours, so my mood was not great,
and I came out pretty chipper if that means yeah,
that's actually a pretty good I hadn't thought about it
that way, but it pepped me up a little.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Bit prankie based on what Brettz told us, would you see.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
I'm curious to dig into how incompetent they are.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Well, the incompetence really stems from most I mean most
of the time. They're actually pretty competent in what they
do obviously, Yeah, but they're interpersonal, you know, having to
work together as a team thing, which of course is
you know that's the standard go to. Oh, they have
to learn how to work together. But this one is
actually interesting because all of these people are ruthless murderers, right,
(25:00):
So that ruthless the point, which is really the point, say,
similar to like the Dirty Dozen. I thought I was
very interesting that they took these people that you know,
if taken alone, would be bad people. But put together,
they are doing something heroic, sometimes against their will, sometimes
on purpose. Uh oh, and uh really if you just
(25:22):
want a good laugh, I mean you you don't. I
went into this. I have not seen a Marvel movie
other than this one, not including Deadpool and Wolverine, not
including the Spider Man Away from Home or Near from
Home or with whatever Home Won Everything after the home Run,
Home Run something like that. Those don't count because they're
not continuing the story. This is the first one that
(25:42):
has continued the story. And I actually cared wow, which
means something to me.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
That does mean because there's so much you can like
go anywhere, and if you feel like you're not keeping
up with it, it would be like really a slog.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
There's two mentions of Brave New World because there's like
they mentioned, well, there's like two or three mentions of
like Sam Wilson or the you know, Big Red Hulk
and the President. I haven't seen that movie. I watched
that movie and I was like, Okay, I get what
you're saying. You don't have to see it.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I just had a funny thought. I need to go
buy a referees whistle because it's time to end this segment.
Otherwise we're never going to have time for Frankie's review.
But okay, I think we I think we got the
picture and people can make up their own minds now
based on what you've told to spread. I know, I'm
my interest is a little bit peaud Now.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Don't make up your own mind. I major mind up
for you. Watch it someone you know if.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You have time.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You're listening to the Movie Show on nine fifty KPRC.
I'm John Leslie Downey, Red Gibson and Frankie Westmoreland are
with us. And what we're going to do now, as
I told you earlier, having heard about the Thunderbolts, we
have Frankie go watch a movie from the late nineteen
sixties that might sound curiously like the Thunderbolts plot. The
(27:04):
True Film Fan Podcast Hope you're enjoying the show. Please
visit our True Film Fan page on Facebook. Follow us there,
tell your friends about it. We have lots of information
about movies in this show, and we'll post some information
about ourselves and what's coming up in the future. It's
the place you want to be it's free. And also
(27:26):
we have an Instagram account that's also True film Fan
that you can check out a lot of times. We
put little reels and stories and posts about the upcoming
shows on there if you want to get ahead of
the game. Anyway, we're back and Frankie is going to
tell us about a film. We thought this would be
interesting to go back and find a film that was
(27:49):
similar to Brett did the review of The Thunderbolts, but
there have been other movies that have a curiously similar plot.
So we're going to put it in Frankie's capable hands
and have him review that movie, and then brettanill and our.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
Remarks, absolutely, yeah, No, this was fun to watch. It's
it's the Dirty Dozen. It's a classic war film from
nineteen sixty seven, so it's older. It's not in black
and white, it's in colors. It's in glorious color. Who
produced it. It's a Kenneth Hyman production. I only saw
a credit for this one and a few others MKH
(28:23):
I think is this production thing? And it's distributed distributed
by MGM Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
What genre is it?
Speaker 5 (28:29):
I'd say it's action, it's adventure, it's a war film
and it's so funny. You mentioned that about comedy earlier
with The Thunderbolt. There is a lot of laughs to
be had in this movie. Really, there is that really
is engaging in that way. It's not all that dry.
Who's in it. These are the bigs names that I
noticed and some that I hadn't heard of before. Lee Marvin,
(28:52):
He's he was a very hot actor at the time.
He has an amazing voice. He's very well known at
that time. Honestly though, I had to put subtitles on
to understand him sometimes because.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
He spoke so low and he's kind of wonder it, like.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Hell, wait, wait wait, huh.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
Ernest Borgnine. Younger folks might know him best for being
Mermaid Man and SpongeBob. That's how I grew up with them,
evall Jim Brown, who was an amazing before we move off.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Ernest for one second.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, did you know Ernest Borgnine once won a Leading
Actor Oscar.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Oh. He was the star of a film in the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Called Marty Okay, Marty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
He was the lead actor and he won an Oscar.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Interesting out.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Spencer Tracy oh Wow, one of the greatest actors of.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
All time, Ernest nine times, so.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
He's got quite a track. He used to have his
own TV series. I'm I'm not surprised. In the sixties
he was pretty hot, so I'm not surprised.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
To hear he was in that.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
I forget the name of the director for Marty, but
I believe asked around and Robert Aldrich, who directed this
film that Dirty doesn't recommended Dirt his borgnine for Marty,
so it's a bit of a yeah, a bit of
a connection there. Jim Brown, he was an amazing black
football player at the time who had not acted before.
He does actually a really good job in this Charles Bronson,
(30:18):
who was a very well known name at the time
and he's done a lot of stuff I like, who
brings a real stoicism to a lot of the roles
he had happens. John Cassavedes, who is a filmmaker at
his own right and who was nominated for an Academy
Award for this film. And Donald Sutherland who he was
supposed to be an extra in this film. Really he
was given mash because of his role in this film.
(30:40):
He does a really funny scene where he acts like
a general. He kind of goes up to everybody's like,
where are you from? Son, Missouri City? He's like, never
heard of It just keeps moving and it's really great.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
It's really funny. Can I interject this quick here? In
your cast list, you mentioned Jim Brown. Yeah, the football
player and the movie star. He had a role in
Mars Attacks. He's the one that takes on the entire
the entire mob of aliens and they surround him and
beat him up.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
But he has a heroic role in of all things. Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
It's a great career.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
There are others, but those are the big ones that
I could see now. Who did the music? I had
not heard of this gentleman before. His name is Frank Devall.
He was a bandleader and a arranger.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Like I said, I never heard of him, but I
really liked what he brought to the film. There's some
good snare drum stuff going on. You gotta have that
in a war movie. And it's a really funny scene
actually that features the national emblem march.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
You know my I watched that with my grandfather the
last night he served in Korea, and he noticed that
and pointed that out to me. So the basic plot
of this movie. I got this from letterboxed. It's a
film social media app Twelve American military prisoners in World
War Two were ordered to infiltrate a well guarded enemy
chateau and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers,
(32:04):
most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety
of violent crimes, agreed to the mission and the possible
commuting of their sentences. Now, one thing I think is
kind of interesting and I wanted to dig into with
this is I wanted to look and see how historically
accurate this was. This is based off of a novel
that came out just a couple of years before the
film came out. Turns out there was a unit called
(32:26):
the Filthy Thirteen, which was the inspiration for the original
novel that got adapted. Funny enough, a very similar film
was made by Roger Corman just a few years earlier,
called The Secret Invasion starring Mickey Rooney. But about the
Filthy Thirteen. According to the daughter of one of the members,
John Agnew, her dad thought it was about thirty percent
historically accurate.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
So there's a lot of that that's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yes, so the Filthy thirteen somehow became.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
That they should have either been the Filthy fifteen, right,
like dudes and like the rolls off the tongue better.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Absolutely did you like it? I really did like it.
Let's see what can I think of?
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Well?
Speaker 5 (33:07):
What makes it great? Well, the premise, for one, now,
it's sort of expected. It's funny that you said that
earlier about Thunderbolts. It's that like, oh, that it's a
struggle for them to work together, and that's the main
driving thing. But I think that was incredibly novel for
something in the nineteen sixties. You know, put a bunch
of half wits into a unit and expect them to
overcome incredible odds on a mission of the highest secrecy
(33:29):
and importance. And not only that, they're their own they're
their own worst enemy. They fight bigger, and they aren't
organized at all at the beginning, But slowly and surely,
with the guidance of Lee Marvin's character, Major Riceman, who
himself dislikes authority and has a hard time working with
his superiors, they mold a unit which exceeds all expectations,
(33:49):
and the characters are colorful. Most are detailed, Some unfortunately
are paid less attention to. But the action is great.
The suspense of whether they will pull off the mission,
it's like the last twenty thirty minutes, it rivals anything
I've seen in the modern day. It really kept me engaged,
and like I set out like no, no, like they
almost get caught.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
I'm like, I can't know, mister Darvin, No, I know.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
And so it really engaged me.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
For you, a gen Zer, I'm gen Z watching a
nineteen sixty seven film. Were you surprised at the amount
of suspense they created?
Speaker 5 (34:24):
Oh my goodness, yes, because because they have the plan
and they go to execute the plan, various things go wrong.
They almost get caught, and it's very close a couple
of times, and you know, there's one guy that I
don't want to give too much about it away, but
it's like that, you know, now you're wondering whether or
(34:46):
not one of them is actually gonna go with the plan.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
It's crazy. It really engaged me.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
All right, very good. Okay, so you had the experience.
It sounds like you really enjoyed it. You heard everything
Brett said, yeah about Thunderbolts. Now bring us up to
speed on your assessment of how the two compare and
what are their similarities.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
I think one of the things that I was reading
about Thunderbolts is that they're not you said this earlier too,
is that they're not really good people. No, they and
and exactly like this movie. These are convicts. These are
people that they're supposed to be on They're supposed to
be put on death row, They're supposed to be put
(35:31):
in penitentiary for a number of years.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
One question, the dudes in your movie, were they ever
given any other than you know, working together and learning
how to work together. Were they given any characters what
is the word I'm looking for? Were they given the
opportunity to redeem themselves in some way or another?
Speaker 4 (35:49):
I think because of the mission they were.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Okay, because I think that the dirty doesn't. I wondered this.
I've seen this movie, and it's been a very long time,
but I have I'm willing to believe that the sixties
was way more willing to depict people who are really,
really bad and not give them a chance for redemption.
Thunderbolts they tried to. They do sort of say these
guys are, oh man, they're all really bad. It super
(36:13):
irredeemable but then by about halfway through the movie, two
of the two of the like five of them have
already been roudeemed because we couldn't possibly have you know,
complex characters going on here. That was a little disappointing.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
But yeah, So based on what he told you, Brett,
what Frankie said about The Dirty Dozen, would you watch it?
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Absolutely, I'd watch it, hands down. I'd actually watch it
again because I have said my grandpa showed it to
me when I was probably like ten or something, and
I have like flashes of like images like yeah, and
I remember it being a lot of fun, So I
really would love Yeah, it really sounds like a lot
of fun. You've just sold it to me. I'm gonna
go force my wife to watch it.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, you know, one of my thoughts, it's I think
I saw it a lltery long time ago, and I
one thing I thought of, you say, the Dirty Does,
and you know it's going to be a bunch of
tough customers. Let me tell you something right off the bat.
If it's got Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson in.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
It, it's pretty hard, that's pretty harsh.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
They're very good at it.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
They really bounce off each other, really well, almost this
sort of unspoken sort of camaraderie between them very quickly
in the movie, because I think Charles Bronson's character, I
think what it is is that he kills I think
this he kills an officer because he did the wrong thing,
and so that's why he's in prison.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
So it's like you kind of understand why he did it.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
He wasn't just murdering somebody, right.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
But the the macho ness between them is it's great.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's great. Is it's a man's movie.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Does it reach predator levels with the with the Arnie's
and it's a locking arms?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
No?
Speaker 4 (38:03):
But you know, I did think.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
I did think when I was doing my research how
it's probably influenced a lot of movies afterwards, just like
a group of men that have to bond and they're
slightly different from one another, but given the greater threat
or the mission, they have to work together. And I
think this movie really laid down a lot of that
groundwork of what we see and those kinds of like
(38:28):
even more movies.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Uh, did it win any Oscars? I believe it.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Oh that's a funny story actually with that, because I
think they were gonna have that film be eligible for
the Oscars if they took out the final scene or
they blow all the Nazi sky high and very much
in a visceral fashion.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I mean, that's what the whole movie is about.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Well, it's done. It's done pretty cruelly.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
I will say that they're in a bunker and they
put they throw grenade and gasoline, and the.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
You know, and.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
The director Robert Aldrich, they were like, well, you know,
we'll put it up there if you want to take
that out. I was like, no, no, no, these are
bad people and they do bad things.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
I'm keeping it in. The film's better for it it is.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I don't think it.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
I think it was nominated for a fair amount from
the cursory look that I if it won an yeah,
let me see.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, let's be curious because.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
It it's a it's a movie with a famous name.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
It is. Well that's yeah, that's one of those names
that even despite the majority of people probably haven't seen it,
they still know the name.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Right.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Okay, it did win an Oscar h Let's see here.
I think it won Best Edited Feature Film.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Let's see here.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
Uh. John Casavedes was nominated for Best Actor. It was
nominated for Best Sound, Best Film Editing and oh okay,
hold on so that At the ACE Awards, the Editors Awards,
it won for editing, but at the Oscars it won
for Best Effects and Sound.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Effects Good and Sound Oscar.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
They won a Sound Oscar.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
It was the sound of all those.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Blown up. There is a lot of boo.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Like it.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Just okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
If you're listening out there and your seven year olds,
lots of noise.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
Oh yeah, that's the one to check out for the
seven year old.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Okay, all right, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
And I think that was a fun experiment. We may
do that again at some time in the future, comparing
U two movies vastly separated by their release dates, but
still with similar themes and similar concept And that was
Thunderbolts and the Dirty Dozen.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Who Knew? Who Knew?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Anyway, we're gonna be doing lots of more stuff with
the show in the future and having it. We wanted
you to go to the True Film Fan Facebook page.
Eventually we will be on TikTok and Twitter, and we're
already on Instagram and you never know where you might
find us, but we're going to I suppose at some
point will be on YouTube, won't we at some point
(41:16):
Now that's going to be your responsibility, Okay, And at
some point I think we'll probably have Frankie review some
film scores. Though it's kind of hard, you know. Reviewing
music I've always thought is a very difficult thing because
how do you describe the feeling you get when you
hear a piece of music. It's pretty hard. It's just
(41:37):
not the same as hearing the music.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
It's kind of subjective.
Speaker 5 (41:40):
Yeah, if you listen to it that you communicate through
the music, it's really kind of how you But I
think part of it you can judge it, especially with film,
you judge it off of what you're seeing, Sue, is
it communicating is it reflecting what I'm seeing? I think
there's a scene in a Full Metal Jacket where they
have like the Mickey Mouse Well they're singing versus that background,
(42:02):
and it's the disparity between the two.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
Yeah, whoa.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
Yeah, so you can comment, you can you can say
something different, so you can measure it slightly. It is subjective,
but yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
I remember reading a quote from Jan Harlan Stanley Kubrick's
producer on Full Metal Jacket and also his brother in law.
By the way, he kept it close. He didn't trust
anybody in the movie business. He kept it close to home.
But anyway, mister Harlan, when he was Stanley said, I
(42:34):
think I want the contrast at the end of this
while they're uh marching away from war, I want them
to be singing the Mickey Mouse song. So call Disney
and get the rights. That would never have that was
that was an interesting conversation. And anyway, John Johan Harlan said,
(42:55):
it cost us an awful lot of money to get
the Mickey Mouse theme song for Full Metal.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Because it's so dark.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
It's such a dark movie, and it ends with that
and then it goes to Painted Black by the right,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, it's the the way that movie ends is it's
the sniper battle, right, and that's the last scene where
Cowboy gets I want to say, I say a spoiler
alert for a fifty year old movie, but that that
entire last sequence is some of the most stress and
it's just it's really well done, like so incredibly stressful
and having it be the you know, you just had
(43:35):
this horrible, bloody, disgusting altercation and it's like I want
to sing Mickey Mouse.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Why not? So it's.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Mister mister Kubrick didn't mess around. He sure didn't when
I when he made a statement, Boy, did he make
a statement anyway. Well, we'll have to spend some time
on him in the future, because lord knows he spent
time on everything.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Can we have an entire like show about the uh
the movie? Ai? Is that? Like? That interaction is so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's a very interesting movie, and it's interesting. I'm sure
at some point we'll be doing that. I think Frankie
and I already talked about it.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Which is whenever I hear Kubrick. I just I didn't
know about this until I was older. The relationship between
you know, Spielberg and Kubrick to each other. They were
best friends and they both envied each other for like yeah, uh,
Kubrick wanted to be the crowd pleaser that he wasn't
and he never could be. And Spielberg wanted to be
the artist. You know that he can never really be.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Nobody.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I'll tell you what in the artist sweepstakes, Stanley Kubrick
never let anybody.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Get close to him.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
The uh, it's some of the Oh, by the way, Uh,
if you've never seen it, There is a documentary made
on Stanley Kubrick by his family, by the man I
mentioned a couple of years moments ago, Jan Harlan, his
really his right hand man, and his brother in law,
called a Life in Pictures, And it's about two hours
(45:00):
and fifteen minutes long. And even though I was very
familiar with everything about Stanley Kubrick, I'd read every book
on him and seen everything I could on him, which
for a long time there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Much you could see.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
But this documentary the thing that Stanley kuber was an
incredibly complicated human being. In some ways he was practically
a saint, and in other ways he was a month.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
He was a bit of a monster.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
And the thing that surprised me was the family that
produced the documentary on his life. They certainly they shined
up his reputation, but they did not hold back on
some of the stuff in there. One actor on camera says.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Legendary meanness.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
So you know it speaks well of his of his.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Family. Oh yes, they were saying, Hey, we're not hiding.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Right, We're just gonna tell like it is.
Speaker 5 (46:02):
Right.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
We all know he was all weird, Okay.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
He could be he could be a jerk, but he
was famous for his extreme involvement in animal rights and
very very concerned about the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. And it's just a pity there wasn't
an organization called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Actors Some shining actresses, mighty limits the amount of takes.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yes, okay, anyway, Hey, we had fun tonight as always.
I hope you enjoyed it, and we'll be back next
week with another movie show and another podcast on True
Film fan and thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
This is nine P fifty kp RC
We have a really good and interesting show for you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Tonight.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We're going to be talking about Jurassic World, The Rebirth,
We're going to be talking about a nineteen sixty seven
movie called The Dirty Dozen, and we're going to be
talking about The Thunderbolts. So those are some of the
movies we're going to be talking about. But before we
get to all of that, I'm going to be talking
a little bit about the show itself and just give
you all some heads up on things. First of all,
(00:26):
the movie show airs here every Sunday night at eight
o five pm on nine fifty KPRC, and of course
you can hear it on the radio. However, if you're
not in Houston and you're outside of the station's signal,
then you can still hear it from anywhere in the
world if you go to the nine fifty KPRC website
where they stream the audio signal of the station, so
(00:47):
you can get it anywhere, even if you're in Antarctica.
And finally, and I've been a little remiss in my
duties on this this over the last couple of months,
but we are going to archive a bunch of our shows,
some of which have been really fun, such as the
Superhero Fatigue Show, just to name one. With our True
(01:09):
Film Fan podcast, which by the way, is on the
iHeartRadio app. That's how you can hear some of our
previous shows. And by the way, those go on the
iHeartRadio app, but they go out to I think a
dozen platforms. I know we're on Apple, I think we're
on Spotify, so we're lots of places. You don't just
(01:33):
have to listen to us on the iHeartRadio app, though
we do prefer that, and my boss, I'm sure would
prefer that anyway. I also wanted to let you know
that I have an Instagram account called True Film Fan.
I'd like you to go to that and follow there
and check out a lot of the things we do.
And I've started a True Film Fan page on Facebook,
(01:55):
probably the easiest thing to access, even though people that
love TikTok would probably die before they'd go to Facebook.
But anyway, it's all set up and it's the easiest
thing really for us to upload stuff on, and there's
lots of stuff on our previous shows there. I put
up a lot of trivia there. Sometimes if there's a
(02:16):
news item, for example, if a famous actor dies or something.
I'll put something on the True Facebook page, just all
kinds of stuff, background on the other people here on
the show.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So please go to Facebook, go to the True Film
fan page there and subscribe to it. And when you
see stuff, do the usual ritual of you know, like
comment and share so that we can start building that page. Also,
there will be in the future Twitter accounts and TikTok
(02:52):
accounts as well, so we're getting all over social media
and we're going to be doing all kinds of interesting
things here. This is the multi generational podcast asked for movies.
Just something a little bit different since there's a wide
age range of those of us who are on the show,
and it gives it a little bit different flavor. It
gives us a wider access to more movies and more
(03:13):
information and more discussions because movies. Some people now they
seem to think movies started in nineteen ninety three or something.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, well movies began.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
They began with Jurassic Park, right, No, not quite anyway,
Before I launch into my initial comments on Jurassic World rebirth,
let me welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Brett.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Hello, Brett, that's me.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Tell us again how to spell your last night.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Oh yes, it's g ip as in Paul Son. I've
been doing that correction my entire life. Sometimes it's Pony
some most of the time it's Paul okay.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
And he is one of our producers here at iHeartRadio
and also a broadcast pro produced a very well known
radio show in Houston for five or six years YEP called.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
The Deanon Rod Show. A lot of fun. Had to
get up early. That was less fun.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
God, I could never do that and it wasn't great.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And in a couple of minutes Brett is going to
be giving us a review of Thunderbolts. Also, we have
with us Frankie Westmoreland, who's been here a while now,
a couple of months. Seems like we've been doing this
a while now. Frankie, Yeah, getting comfortable.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
It is getting comfy.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Okay, good?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And what is you have a very interesting assignment tonight?
What are you going to be reviewing?
Speaker 5 (04:35):
I'll be reviewing nineteen sixty seven's The Dirty Dozen, classic
war film.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Now, for those of you that are wondering, what are
they cooking up? We're going to This might seem like
two very different movies, but is it.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
That's the thing. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Anyway, I'm going to get going here on the movie
that I saw this week, and full disclosure, I've seen
most of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, but
I didn't see the last one because I felt that
the well had gone dry. I just didn't feel like
dragging myself to another one. I'll probably see it eventually,
(05:16):
but I skipped it. But I chose to go see
and review Rebirth because it looked interesting and I heard
some things about it that were very interesting. First of all,
it is an ambling Universal presentation. It was directed by
Gareth Edwards. It is obviously an adventure thriller. It stars
(05:37):
Scarlett Johansson and Maharasha.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I think it's Mahershala Marshala. That's what I do that.
Don't feel bad. I do that like three times a well.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Well, don't worry.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
We're going to have a contest over how to pronounce it.
The listeners can participate anyway. He's in it, very popular guy.
The music is by Alexander Display.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
That one I have no corrections for.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I don't know anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He is a fantastic composer and he composed the music
for some of Gareth's previous movies, and he did an
unusually good job on this one.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Let me give you the.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Oh, I don't need to say it on this man,
it's in color. Here's the interesting thing about it, though,
he Gareth decided because he was such a fan growing
up of Jurassic Park, he chose to shoot Rebirth on
film instead of digital wow, which gives the effects a
little bit different sheen interesting, so the effects may they
(06:38):
pop on screen. I got to tell you. The essence
of the plot is that the dinosaurs from previous episodes
pretty much all died out, except for around the equator.
The dinosaurs are still loose around there because the area
of the earth around the equator is the one that
was closest to what the dinosaurs lived in sixty million
(07:01):
years ago. So we don't still have the dinosaurs running
rampant over the earth and scaring the crab out of people,
but we do have them in that area, and that
makes sense that that's where they'd be. Also, we found out,
as you're told in the movie, that it turns out
that the dinosaurs really couldn't survive very well in our
age because it had a lot of things that, for example,
(07:21):
in the air and a lot of bacteria, all kinds
of things that were they had no defense against from
the time that they lived in. So we've resurrected the dinosaurs,
but it turns out they can't live very effectively in
our time, except for a few of them. But here's
the twist that made it interesting to me to go
(07:42):
see rebirth, and that is, for example, in the Lost World,
the second Jurassic Park movie, a big part of that
movie was rich people going out to hunt dinosaurs and
kill them as trophies. But in this case, Scarlett Johansson
and her team are approached by some very wealthy people
in a pharmaceutical company because they have discovered that some
(08:04):
of the larger dinosaurs who have huge hearts, there are
aspects to their physiology and to their DNA that can
be useful in research to cure heart disease. So they
need blood samples from these very large dinosaurs, and that's
why they go to a particular island which has some
of these dinosaurs on it, an island that had a
(08:26):
research facility on it where some things went terribly wrong.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Blambah bam again.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Absolutely, so as to what I that's the setup of
what the movie's about. However, I will tell you more
about my opinion of the movie after these messages on
nine fifty KPRC. So don't go away, there's a lot
more to come. Okay, we're back. That was some music
(08:56):
from Can you Guess a Jurassic Park movie? Sounds like it? Anyway,
I'm John Wesley Downey.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It's the movie show on nine to fifty KPRC. And
I did the setup before the break on the movie
that I'm reviewing tonight, which is a Jurassic World rebirth.
Set up the story for you. Now, what did I
think of the movie? I thought the movie was maybe
one of the better ones I've seen. Not as good
as the first one, and not as good as maybe
(09:23):
Jurassic World, or maybe right at the level of Jurassic World,
I think, the fourth one in the series. But they
really gave it the old college try, and they in
one way, they had a very innovative premise that I
just mentioned. They're hunting these dinosaurs for medical reasons, for
humanitarian reasons that could benefit people, And the other thing
(09:46):
they tried to do it seemed to me was just
do meat and potatoes. This is what people want people
getting into trouble, people jeopardized by the dinosaurs, and people
trying to escape with their lives, and it was all
all very impressive, particularly some of the scenes on the ocean. Now,
the grandpa of the Jurassic series, Steven Spielberg, had quite
(10:10):
a bit of experienced shooting on an ocean, and it
wasn't didn't go very well. But so what did he
do when they contrived this story. He made the people
making this one have to go out on the ocean,
but I think it was maybe a little easier because
they used obviously digital technology. The movie looks sensational. They
(10:31):
shot a lot of it in Thailand, in very very rich,
lush jungle areas, and I have to say everybody, the actors,
all did their job pretty well, and I was surprised
at what a great action hero Scarlett Johansson made. I
found out doing a little research that she had always
been a huge fan of the Jurassic Park films and
(10:53):
that every time they made one, she'd call up and
say anything in it for me, and they said no,
and they said no, but this time they said yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Us.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Anyway, the all of the strings, I think Gareth Edwards
pulled them together pretty well.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
He's famous for scale, and boy does this movie have scale.
It also has some of the most interesting looking dinosaurs
that we've ever seen in this series.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
And overall, I.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Would I would give this movie maybe a C minus
or a B plus, maybe even a B. I was entertained.
Part of it is you go to see this movie,
this kind of movie in the series, now you basically
know what you're gonna get. You know they're not going
to be uh you know, down at the library having
coffee and talking about dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, we're going to see some.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
We dispensed with the moral conundrum.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Yes, the dinosaurs to be sitting in the library.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
No.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
But it was a satisfying movie and I noticed interestingly
that there was some applause at the end of the
screening I went to see it.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
The movie was about.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
The theater was i'd say maybe maybe two thirds full,
and I did notice also through the movie that it
seemed like there were good reactions. And I always try
to watch the crowd as I'm leaving the theater, and
it seemed like everybody was happy over the comments I overheard.
So I'm pretty tough on movies, but I think given
the context that this is now a thirty two year
(12:22):
old film franchise. They managed to pardon the pun, squeeze
some fresh blood out.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
He did it.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
But I want to pay particular kudos to mister Spielberg
and David Kept the screenwriter, because by making the hunt
for these dinosaurs a humanitarian effort, something that where the
dinosaurs can actually do something to save us, it gave
it a completely different twist as opposed to the people
(12:54):
hunting the dinosaurs for sport or for exploiting them in
a theme park or any of that kind of thing.
It was an interesting, very very interesting tone to it
changed the tone of the movie.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So, okay, guys, you've heard what I have had to
say based on what I've told you, because I know
neither of you have seen the movie. Brett, First of all,
what's your reaction.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I am actually the most likely I have ever been
in the last five to six years to watch a
Jurassic World movie. That sounds pretty good actually, and honestly,
from the trailers and feedback I've heard from people, it
sounds like a fun movie and I'm down for that.
And it's not like you know, bringing the legacy carriers
characters back to whip them or any of that sort
(13:36):
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
There's no legacy, I know, so I'm all about that.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So I was probably gonna get around to watching it eventually,
but from what you've said, I'm all for it. It sounds
really interesting and they put a little bit of thought
into it, which I was not expecting at all.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Right, and by the way, just to repeat again, I
thought the score was sensational anyway, Frankie, what do you
think just hearing my capsulization there my review, what do
you think?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:59):
I think even the way in which it's approaching the dinosaurs,
so we they we need them to help humanity. It's
not necessarily caging them or I think the second Jurassic
World it was selling them an auction or something like that.
So it's not like abusing them in any way. But
(14:20):
in this case, it's actually they're the key to our
survival and it's almost a you know, they need us,
we need them kind of thing. And I think, just
based off of that, I want to go see it.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
It's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, it's I don't want to. I want to be
careful here. I don't want to oversell the movie.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Right, But you know I have tempered expectations even still.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
But the thing is, if you're doing a series like
this and it's been around this long, you've really got
to work at it to keep it fresh. And I'm
not even sure that's completely possible.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So given the degree of difficulty at this point, I
think they did a pretty good job. Anyway, real quickly
got a little more time in this segment here before.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We move on.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
What was your first impression when you were a kid
when you saw Jurassic Park.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Oh, my god, like completely blown away. I know that's,
you know, the basic reaction, but I that was on repeat,
like just every ding dang day. I had all of
the toys. I had the shirts, I had the bed spread,
the whole thing. In fact, everything that they had at
the you know, the gift shop in Jurassic Park. I
(15:35):
probably had some version thereof like I was.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
The demo Forassic.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Okay, Frankie does the John Williams Jurassic Park theme. Stir
your soul when you hear.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
It, it's a good score. That is actually a very
good score.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
When they're coming up to the island and they're in
the helicopter and they just all these vistas. Then they
go and of course they see the brontosaurs. That's like,
you know, I think that's almost like anywhere from five
to ten minutes of like to completely uninterrupted, uninterrupted score.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
And it's magic.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
It's magic.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
It makes you believe, and it almost has a spiritual
feel to us.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yes, a little bit.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Oh, certainly there is sort of a religious feeling from it.
And I think that that that's mainly because of the
awe of the fact that they're seeing these dinosaurs come
back to life after millions of years.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I'm not like, I know this, we've seen.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
We can't imagine it because there's been an entire multi
film franchise about it, but it's still in I would go.
I would a I would be on titan a ship
called the Titanic. I would take that to an island
called Jurassic Park. If they ever did it, I would
do it, just in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Frankie, you want to finish up.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Yeah, I mean the original Jurassic is a great premise.
I mean, just to have them come back. But then
wait a minute, you know, we can't play god, we
can't control nature. It's all great, it's all classic formulas stuff.
You know, I mean Michael Crichton, of course, you know,
it's a great writer in his own right. And so
I do wonder what the Chrichten the state does think about,
(17:14):
you know, all the films now that they've been doing,
because now it's kind of gone into its own direction.
But you know, based on what you were saying, John
about the new kind of twist to the material that
keeps the franchise fresh, It keeps it interesting, that keeps
I mean, now I want to go see it. I
wasn't planning I'm going to going to go see it,
but now I kind of want to cool.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay, all right, So that will cap it for tonight
for the Jurassic Park rebirth. Now, when we come back,
Brett is going to be telling us about the thunder Bolts,
which I have not seen. I don't think Frankie's seen. No,
you have not, So we're going to listen to his review,
and then we're going to respond to it the way
everything just worked with the Jurassics film.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So stay with us.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
You are listening to the movie show on nine fifty kPr.
Back after these messages, we're back, and we're gonna be
talking now about the Thunderbolts the Marvel movie, and Brett
is going to give us his review of it, and
we're going to do something interesting. After we have heard
(18:18):
Brett's review of it, Frankie and I will comment on it,
and then Frankie's gonna come along and compare The Thunderbolts
to a movie from many decades ago. And it's pretty
much sure it's going to be an interesting comparison. Anyway,
Brett give us the rundown on the Thunderbolts.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
The Thunderbolts asterix, and that's actually important.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Okay, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Going to actually spoil what the asterix stands for, because
it's a really funny joke that they actually land. They
really land well in the movie. But Thunderbolts Asterix came
out a couple months ago in May. It's a Marvel
Disney property. Do you probably guess that already. It was
directed by Jack or sorry, Jake Shearer, who I looked
(19:02):
at his filmography. I didn't really see too much. He
did a little thin, but he did direct an episode
of a Skeleton Crew which I really did enjoy, and
the it's a superhero action comedy kind I was kind
of the hymning and hung whether I should put comedy
in there or not. It is very comedy focused, but
it's not like exactly what it's about. It's probably more
action focus. And really I kind of want to start
(19:25):
with the positives, which is weird for a modern Marvel film.
I know, it's crazy. The performances are actually really good.
The people are enjoyable. Even the characters that are being
introduced or that you hadn't seen for years or it
appeared in like one movie for five seconds, they do
a really good job. They characterize them well, and I
(19:48):
think like Florence Pugh is definitely the lead. She is
the lead of the whole thing. But the standout performance
is actually the new character played by Lewis Pullman, who
is Bill pol Son. I didn't know that until I
got to the absolute end of the film, and he
is like the standout performance.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
In the entire What character does he play?
Speaker 3 (20:08):
He plays Robert Reynolds or Bob as they say, and
he also plays a different character, but I'm not going
to tell you about that.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Well, incidentally, when you say he's Bill Pullman's son, those
of you that saw Independence.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Day, yes Bill.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Bill Pullman played the president.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Don't you have any more bullets.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
And it's so crazy because I actually watched this on
a plane, the best place to see a Marvel movie
on a tiny little screen that's right in your face.
I watched it and I was having so much fun
with it. My wife decided to watch it next to me,
so I watched it with her again. So uh, And
when we got to the end of it, he's like, oh,
he's doing so great, and I'm like, who Bill Wollman's son.
(20:47):
It's like who anyway. Uh. The music apparently was done
by an experimental band called son Looks, which I only
found out during my research. Because the music is basically
just standard Marvel stuff, a lot of fun, but you know,
very forgettable. The basic premise is, this is the CT characters,
(21:09):
Cetier characters of Marvel. You slam them all together, whoever
you have left, put them together and give them a mission,
give them a mission, and hope that they actually succeed
in it, because they're not actually that good at what
they do.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Oh good.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
That's where a lot of the comedy comes from, and
so performances action very good. It is only two hours long,
so with credits, it's actually like an hour and a
half hour forty five is like actually manageable. Can you
imagine that? But the biggest thing that I really my
(21:46):
the biggest takeaway from this, because it sort of falls
into what we were talking about earlier with Superhero fatigue,
is that this film is actually quite good. Like I'd
give it a solid probably like six and a half
seven out of ten. Not great, not exceptional, but better
than any Marvel property I've seen in the last five
or six years. Wow, And like hands down, Like I mean,
it's it's it's no mar it's no Avengers, right uh,
(22:08):
but it's it's fun, it's enjoyable, that you actually care
about the characters. By the end of the film, you
care to see what happens next. Remember that in a
Marvel movie. And my the thing I kept coming back
to is like, if they had released this instead of
Multiverse of Madness like right after Endgame, we would be
(22:29):
seeing a very different MCU right now. Uh yeah, So
I would highly recommend it if you are into MCU,
into the MCU, But since we saw what happened with
the Fantastic Four, we might not be seeing a fall
up to Thunderbolts. So enjoy it while you have.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
It all right, Would you say you were surprised.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yes, I was surprised because I there's there's some people
that I listened to online, those content creators online that
literally just trade on hate seems to be you know,
and like when it came out.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Of you, hates that leads to the dark side, needs
to fear.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
It was surprising because from the people that I allegedly
trust said, oh, it's terrible, there's no reason to watch this,
it's complete waste of time. It's not funny, it's not entertaining.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
But it is that really drives home the point that
all of us should follow our own light that no
matter what other people say, because we're all different. And
you know something that I've found. I've seen movies that
I hated and I saw them two years later and
I loved it, or even like t checks the first
(23:40):
movie George Lucasmith, I saw it when I was a
teenager and thought, Ah, this looks cool, but I have
no idea what's going on. Many years later, when I
was older and better read and more sophisticated, and after
I'd heard the director's commentary and understood everything, I realized
for a twenty five year old guy. That was amazing.
(24:03):
So time can do a lot for you. And also
the mood you're in on the articular day. If you're
in a terrible mood, you watch something, I don't care
how good it is you you know, you may not
like it.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Well, I was trapped on a plane and we had
been delayed like two hours, so my mood was not great,
and I came out pretty chipper if that means yeah,
that's actually a pretty good I hadn't thought about it
that way, but it pepped me up a little.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Bit prankie based on what Brettz told us, would you see.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
I'm curious to dig into how incompetent they are.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Well, the incompetence really stems from most I mean most
of the time. They're actually pretty competent in what they
do obviously, Yeah, but they're interpersonal, you know, having to
work together as a team thing, which of course is
you know that's the standard go to. Oh, they have
to learn how to work together. But this one is
actually interesting because all of these people are ruthless murderers, right,
(25:00):
So that ruthless the point, which is really the point, say,
similar to like the Dirty Dozen. I thought I was
very interesting that they took these people that you know,
if taken alone, would be bad people. But put together,
they are doing something heroic, sometimes against their will, sometimes
on purpose. Uh oh, and uh really if you just
(25:22):
want a good laugh, I mean you you don't. I
went into this. I have not seen a Marvel movie
other than this one, not including Deadpool and Wolverine, not
including the Spider Man Away from Home or Near from
Home or with whatever Home Won Everything after the home Run,
Home Run something like that. Those don't count because they're
not continuing the story. This is the first one that
(25:42):
has continued the story. And I actually cared wow, which
means something to me.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
That does mean because there's so much you can like
go anywhere, and if you feel like you're not keeping
up with it, it would be like really a slog.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
There's two mentions of Brave New World because there's like
they mentioned, well, there's like two or three mentions of
like Sam Wilson or the you know, Big Red Hulk
and the President. I haven't seen that movie. I watched
that movie and I was like, Okay, I get what
you're saying. You don't have to see it.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I just had a funny thought. I need to go
buy a referees whistle because it's time to end this segment.
Otherwise we're never going to have time for Frankie's review.
But okay, I think we I think we got the
picture and people can make up their own minds now
based on what you've told to spread. I know, I'm
my interest is a little bit peaud Now.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Don't make up your own mind. I major mind up
for you. Watch it someone you know if.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You have time.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You're listening to the Movie Show on nine fifty KPRC.
I'm John Leslie Downey, Red Gibson and Frankie Westmoreland are
with us. And what we're going to do now, as
I told you earlier, having heard about the Thunderbolts, we
have Frankie go watch a movie from the late nineteen
sixties that might sound curiously like the Thunderbolts plot. The
(27:04):
True Film Fan Podcast Hope you're enjoying the show. Please
visit our True Film Fan page on Facebook. Follow us there,
tell your friends about it. We have lots of information
about movies in this show, and we'll post some information
about ourselves and what's coming up in the future. It's
the place you want to be it's free. And also
(27:26):
we have an Instagram account that's also True film Fan
that you can check out a lot of times. We
put little reels and stories and posts about the upcoming
shows on there if you want to get ahead of
the game. Anyway, we're back and Frankie is going to
tell us about a film. We thought this would be
interesting to go back and find a film that was
(27:49):
similar to Brett did the review of The Thunderbolts, but
there have been other movies that have a curiously similar plot.
So we're going to put it in Frankie's capable hands
and have him review that movie, and then brettanill and our.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
Remarks, absolutely, yeah, No, this was fun to watch. It's
it's the Dirty Dozen. It's a classic war film from
nineteen sixty seven, so it's older. It's not in black
and white, it's in colors. It's in glorious color. Who
produced it. It's a Kenneth Hyman production. I only saw
a credit for this one and a few others MKH
(28:23):
I think is this production thing? And it's distributed distributed
by MGM Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
What genre is it?
Speaker 5 (28:29):
I'd say it's action, it's adventure, it's a war film
and it's so funny. You mentioned that about comedy earlier
with The Thunderbolt. There is a lot of laughs to
be had in this movie. Really, there is that really
is engaging in that way. It's not all that dry.
Who's in it. These are the bigs names that I
noticed and some that I hadn't heard of before. Lee Marvin,
(28:52):
He's he was a very hot actor at the time.
He has an amazing voice. He's very well known at
that time. Honestly though, I had to put subtitles on
to understand him sometimes because.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
He spoke so low and he's kind of wonder it, like.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Hell, wait, wait wait, huh.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
Ernest Borgnine. Younger folks might know him best for being
Mermaid Man and SpongeBob. That's how I grew up with them,
evall Jim Brown, who was an amazing before we move off.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Ernest for one second.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, did you know Ernest Borgnine once won a Leading
Actor Oscar.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Oh. He was the star of a film in the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Called Marty Okay, Marty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
He was the lead actor and he won an Oscar.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Interesting out.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Spencer Tracy oh Wow, one of the greatest actors of.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
All time, Ernest nine times, so.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
He's got quite a track. He used to have his
own TV series. I'm I'm not surprised. In the sixties
he was pretty hot, so I'm not surprised.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
To hear he was in that.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
I forget the name of the director for Marty, but
I believe asked around and Robert Aldrich, who directed this
film that Dirty doesn't recommended Dirt his borgnine for Marty,
so it's a bit of a yeah, a bit of
a connection there. Jim Brown, he was an amazing black
football player at the time who had not acted before.
He does actually a really good job in this Charles Bronson,
(30:18):
who was a very well known name at the time
and he's done a lot of stuff I like, who
brings a real stoicism to a lot of the roles
he had happens. John Cassavedes, who is a filmmaker at
his own right and who was nominated for an Academy
Award for this film. And Donald Sutherland who he was
supposed to be an extra in this film. Really he
was given mash because of his role in this film.
(30:40):
He does a really funny scene where he acts like
a general. He kind of goes up to everybody's like,
where are you from? Son, Missouri City? He's like, never
heard of It just keeps moving and it's really great.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
It's really funny. Can I interject this quick here? In
your cast list, you mentioned Jim Brown. Yeah, the football
player and the movie star. He had a role in
Mars Attacks. He's the one that takes on the entire
the entire mob of aliens and they surround him and
beat him up.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
But he has a heroic role in of all things. Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
It's a great career.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
There are others, but those are the big ones that
I could see now. Who did the music? I had
not heard of this gentleman before. His name is Frank Devall.
He was a bandleader and a arranger.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Like I said, I never heard of him, but I
really liked what he brought to the film. There's some
good snare drum stuff going on. You gotta have that
in a war movie. And it's a really funny scene
actually that features the national emblem march.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
You know my I watched that with my grandfather the
last night he served in Korea, and he noticed that
and pointed that out to me. So the basic plot
of this movie. I got this from letterboxed. It's a
film social media app Twelve American military prisoners in World
War Two were ordered to infiltrate a well guarded enemy
chateau and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers,
(32:04):
most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety
of violent crimes, agreed to the mission and the possible
commuting of their sentences. Now, one thing I think is
kind of interesting and I wanted to dig into with
this is I wanted to look and see how historically
accurate this was. This is based off of a novel
that came out just a couple of years before the
film came out. Turns out there was a unit called
(32:26):
the Filthy Thirteen, which was the inspiration for the original
novel that got adapted. Funny enough, a very similar film
was made by Roger Corman just a few years earlier,
called The Secret Invasion starring Mickey Rooney. But about the
Filthy Thirteen. According to the daughter of one of the members,
John Agnew, her dad thought it was about thirty percent
historically accurate.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
So there's a lot of that that's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yes, so the Filthy thirteen somehow became.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
That they should have either been the Filthy fifteen, right,
like dudes and like the rolls off the tongue better.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Absolutely did you like it? I really did like it.
Let's see what can I think of?
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Well?
Speaker 5 (33:07):
What makes it great? Well, the premise, for one, now,
it's sort of expected. It's funny that you said that
earlier about Thunderbolts. It's that like, oh, that it's a
struggle for them to work together, and that's the main
driving thing. But I think that was incredibly novel for
something in the nineteen sixties. You know, put a bunch
of half wits into a unit and expect them to
overcome incredible odds on a mission of the highest secrecy
(33:29):
and importance. And not only that, they're their own they're
their own worst enemy. They fight bigger, and they aren't
organized at all at the beginning, But slowly and surely,
with the guidance of Lee Marvin's character, Major Riceman, who
himself dislikes authority and has a hard time working with
his superiors, they mold a unit which exceeds all expectations,
(33:49):
and the characters are colorful. Most are detailed, Some unfortunately
are paid less attention to. But the action is great.
The suspense of whether they will pull off the mission,
it's like the last twenty thirty minutes, it rivals anything
I've seen in the modern day. It really kept me engaged,
and like I set out like no, no, like they
almost get caught.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
I'm like, I can't know, mister Darvin, No, I know.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
And so it really engaged me.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
For you, a gen Zer, I'm gen Z watching a
nineteen sixty seven film. Were you surprised at the amount
of suspense they created?
Speaker 5 (34:24):
Oh my goodness, yes, because because they have the plan
and they go to execute the plan, various things go wrong.
They almost get caught, and it's very close a couple
of times, and you know, there's one guy that I
don't want to give too much about it away, but
it's like that, you know, now you're wondering whether or
(34:46):
not one of them is actually gonna go with the plan.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
It's crazy. It really engaged me.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
All right, very good. Okay, so you had the experience.
It sounds like you really enjoyed it. You heard everything
Brett said, yeah about Thunderbolts. Now bring us up to
speed on your assessment of how the two compare and
what are their similarities.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
I think one of the things that I was reading
about Thunderbolts is that they're not you said this earlier too,
is that they're not really good people. No, they and
and exactly like this movie. These are convicts. These are
people that they're supposed to be on They're supposed to
be put on death row, They're supposed to be put
(35:31):
in penitentiary for a number of years.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
One question, the dudes in your movie, were they ever
given any other than you know, working together and learning
how to work together. Were they given any characters what
is the word I'm looking for? Were they given the
opportunity to redeem themselves in some way or another?
Speaker 4 (35:49):
I think because of the mission they were.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Okay, because I think that the dirty doesn't. I wondered this.
I've seen this movie, and it's been a very long time,
but I have I'm willing to believe that the sixties
was way more willing to depict people who are really,
really bad and not give them a chance for redemption.
Thunderbolts they tried to. They do sort of say these
guys are, oh man, they're all really bad. It super
(36:13):
irredeemable but then by about halfway through the movie, two
of the two of the like five of them have
already been roudeemed because we couldn't possibly have you know,
complex characters going on here. That was a little disappointing.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
But yeah, So based on what he told you, Brett,
what Frankie said about The Dirty Dozen, would you watch it?
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Absolutely, I'd watch it, hands down. I'd actually watch it
again because I have said my grandpa showed it to
me when I was probably like ten or something, and
I have like flashes of like images like yeah, and
I remember it being a lot of fun, So I
really would love Yeah, it really sounds like a lot
of fun. You've just sold it to me. I'm gonna
go force my wife to watch it.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, you know, one of my thoughts, it's I think
I saw it a lltery long time ago, and I
one thing I thought of, you say, the Dirty Does,
and you know it's going to be a bunch of
tough customers. Let me tell you something right off the bat.
If it's got Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson in.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
It, it's pretty hard, that's pretty harsh.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
They're very good at it.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
They really bounce off each other, really well, almost this
sort of unspoken sort of camaraderie between them very quickly
in the movie, because I think Charles Bronson's character, I
think what it is is that he kills I think
this he kills an officer because he did the wrong thing,
and so that's why he's in prison.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
So it's like you kind of understand why he did it.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
He wasn't just murdering somebody, right.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
But the the macho ness between them is it's great.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's great. Is it's a man's movie.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Does it reach predator levels with the with the Arnie's
and it's a locking arms?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
No?
Speaker 4 (38:03):
But you know, I did think.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
I did think when I was doing my research how
it's probably influenced a lot of movies afterwards, just like
a group of men that have to bond and they're
slightly different from one another, but given the greater threat
or the mission, they have to work together. And I
think this movie really laid down a lot of that
groundwork of what we see and those kinds of like
(38:28):
even more movies.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Uh, did it win any Oscars? I believe it.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Oh that's a funny story actually with that, because I
think they were gonna have that film be eligible for
the Oscars if they took out the final scene or
they blow all the Nazi sky high and very much
in a visceral fashion.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I mean, that's what the whole movie is about.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Well, it's done. It's done pretty cruelly.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
I will say that they're in a bunker and they
put they throw grenade and gasoline, and the.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
You know, and.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
The director Robert Aldrich, they were like, well, you know,
we'll put it up there if you want to take
that out. I was like, no, no, no, these are
bad people and they do bad things.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
I'm keeping it in. The film's better for it it is.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I don't think it.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
I think it was nominated for a fair amount from
the cursory look that I if it won an yeah,
let me see.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, let's be curious because.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
It it's a it's a movie with a famous name.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
It is. Well that's yeah, that's one of those names
that even despite the majority of people probably haven't seen it,
they still know the name.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Right.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Okay, it did win an Oscar h Let's see here.
I think it won Best Edited Feature Film.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Let's see here.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
Uh. John Casavedes was nominated for Best Actor. It was
nominated for Best Sound, Best Film Editing and oh okay,
hold on so that At the ACE Awards, the Editors Awards,
it won for editing, but at the Oscars it won
for Best Effects and Sound.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Effects Good and Sound Oscar.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
They won a Sound Oscar.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
It was the sound of all those.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Blown up. There is a lot of boo.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Like it.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Just okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
If you're listening out there and your seven year olds,
lots of noise.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
Oh yeah, that's the one to check out for the
seven year old.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Okay, all right, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
And I think that was a fun experiment. We may
do that again at some time in the future, comparing
U two movies vastly separated by their release dates, but
still with similar themes and similar concept And that was
Thunderbolts and the Dirty Dozen.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Who Knew? Who Knew?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Anyway, we're gonna be doing lots of more stuff with
the show in the future and having it. We wanted
you to go to the True Film Fan Facebook page.
Eventually we will be on TikTok and Twitter, and we're
already on Instagram and you never know where you might
find us, but we're going to I suppose at some
point will be on YouTube, won't we at some point
(41:16):
Now that's going to be your responsibility, Okay, And at
some point I think we'll probably have Frankie review some
film scores. Though it's kind of hard, you know. Reviewing
music I've always thought is a very difficult thing because
how do you describe the feeling you get when you
hear a piece of music. It's pretty hard. It's just
(41:37):
not the same as hearing the music.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
It's kind of subjective.
Speaker 5 (41:40):
Yeah, if you listen to it that you communicate through
the music, it's really kind of how you But I
think part of it you can judge it, especially with film,
you judge it off of what you're seeing, Sue, is
it communicating is it reflecting what I'm seeing? I think
there's a scene in a Full Metal Jacket where they
have like the Mickey Mouse Well they're singing versus that background,
(42:02):
and it's the disparity between the two.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
Yeah, whoa.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
Yeah, so you can comment, you can you can say
something different, so you can measure it slightly. It is subjective,
but yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
I remember reading a quote from Jan Harlan Stanley Kubrick's
producer on Full Metal Jacket and also his brother in law.
By the way, he kept it close. He didn't trust
anybody in the movie business. He kept it close to home.
But anyway, mister Harlan, when he was Stanley said, I
(42:34):
think I want the contrast at the end of this
while they're uh marching away from war, I want them
to be singing the Mickey Mouse song. So call Disney
and get the rights. That would never have that was
that was an interesting conversation. And anyway, John Johan Harlan said,
(42:55):
it cost us an awful lot of money to get
the Mickey Mouse theme song for Full Metal.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Because it's so dark.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
It's such a dark movie, and it ends with that
and then it goes to Painted Black by the right,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, it's the the way that movie ends is it's
the sniper battle, right, and that's the last scene where
Cowboy gets I want to say, I say a spoiler
alert for a fifty year old movie, but that that
entire last sequence is some of the most stress and
it's just it's really well done, like so incredibly stressful
and having it be the you know, you just had
(43:35):
this horrible, bloody, disgusting altercation and it's like I want
to sing Mickey Mouse.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Why not? So it's.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Mister mister Kubrick didn't mess around. He sure didn't when
I when he made a statement, Boy, did he make
a statement anyway. Well, we'll have to spend some time
on him in the future, because lord knows he spent
time on everything.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Can we have an entire like show about the uh
the movie? Ai? Is that? Like? That interaction is so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's a very interesting movie, and it's interesting. I'm sure
at some point we'll be doing that. I think Frankie
and I already talked about it.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Which is whenever I hear Kubrick. I just I didn't
know about this until I was older. The relationship between
you know, Spielberg and Kubrick to each other. They were
best friends and they both envied each other for like yeah, uh,
Kubrick wanted to be the crowd pleaser that he wasn't
and he never could be. And Spielberg wanted to be
the artist. You know that he can never really be.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Nobody.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I'll tell you what in the artist sweepstakes, Stanley Kubrick
never let anybody.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Get close to him.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
The uh, it's some of the Oh, by the way, Uh,
if you've never seen it, There is a documentary made
on Stanley Kubrick by his family, by the man I
mentioned a couple of years moments ago, Jan Harlan, his
really his right hand man, and his brother in law,
called a Life in Pictures, And it's about two hours
(45:00):
and fifteen minutes long. And even though I was very
familiar with everything about Stanley Kubrick, I'd read every book
on him and seen everything I could on him, which
for a long time there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Much you could see.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
But this documentary the thing that Stanley kuber was an
incredibly complicated human being. In some ways he was practically
a saint, and in other ways he was a month.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
He was a bit of a monster.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
And the thing that surprised me was the family that
produced the documentary on his life. They certainly they shined
up his reputation, but they did not hold back on
some of the stuff in there. One actor on camera says.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Legendary meanness.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
So you know it speaks well of his of his.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Family. Oh yes, they were saying, Hey, we're not hiding.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Right, We're just gonna tell like it is.
Speaker 5 (46:02):
Right.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
We all know he was all weird, Okay.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
He could be he could be a jerk, but he
was famous for his extreme involvement in animal rights and
very very concerned about the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. And it's just a pity there wasn't
an organization called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Actors Some shining actresses, mighty limits the amount of takes.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yes, okay, anyway, Hey, we had fun tonight as always.
I hope you enjoyed it, and we'll be back next
week with another movie show and another podcast on True
Film fan and thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
This is nine P fifty kp RC
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!