Mike shares his history of R-Rated movies. From the first R-Rated movie he was that scared the crap out of him to the one he regrets seeing with his parents at a young age. Plus the list of the Top 10 Highest Grossing movies of all-time in the US and what does and doesn’t deserve to be on it. In the Movie Review, Mike gives his thoughts on Dìdi which is a coming of age story that takes place in 2008 during the last month of summer before high school begins. Mike talks about how it brought back things he hadn’t thought of since high school, how the family dynamic reminded him of his and the days of MySpace drama. Mike talks about A Complete Unknown which is the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. Mike gives his theories on how the movie is set up to have him win his first Oscar but will it work?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today we're talking about the
top ten highest grossing R rated movies of all time.
I'll give you what I consider the best, the worst,
the first R rated movie I ever saw, Oh Boy,
that was traumatizing. In the movie review, we'll be talking
about d D, which is a coming of age movie
set in the late two thousands in the trailer park.
(00:22):
We'll take a look at a movie called A Complete Unknown,
better known as the Bob Dylan Biopic, with Timmy tim
Timothy Shallowmet playing Bob Dylan. I have a history of
not enjoying biopicks because I often feel they're rushed, even
more so when the person is still alive at the
time the movie comes out. So not looking good for
this movie as of now. But thank you for being here,
(00:43):
Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday
Morning Movie crew.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And now let's talk movies.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
much movie knowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
He's basically like a walking IMTB. With Glasses from the
Nashville podcast network. This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
One of the biggest headlines since dead Pula Wolverine came out,
all the box office records it has broken. In my opinion,
the biggest record is becoming the highest grossing R rated
movie in the United States, beating out The Passion of
the Christ. And I want to get into this full
top ten list because oddly, when looking at the top
(01:34):
ten highest grossing R rated movies in the US, they
are all pretty vastly different. And when I consider what
goes into making an R rated movie, I think you
would start to fall into some of the same type
of genre. For me, I feel like the R rated
genre is dominated by horror, especially now in today's market,
where I feel like studios are hesitant to put out
(01:56):
an R rated movie because you are limiting your audience,
and you don't want to reduce your audience right now.
You want as many people to go and see your
movie as possible. So I think it is amazing that
Deadpool and Wolverine has already crossed that mark. So we'll
get into that top ten list. But my history with
R rated movies, We're gonna do first, Last, regretful, worst,
(02:20):
and greatest R rated movie of all time. The first
R rated movie I ever saw. I was seven years.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Old in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
This movie came out in nineteen eighty eight and is
regarded as the movie that almost traumatized me forever. It
was child's play. The reason I watched this movie at
seven years old. The reason I was really exposed to
so many things so early on is because I have
an older brother and an older sister who are seven
and nine years older than me, so they were probably
(02:50):
fifteen fourteen years old in that age range, and I
was always exposed to things that they were exposed to
just because I was around. I wanted to be with him,
and my parents were okay with it for the most part.
I think the problem my parents had was nudity. They
could do and deal with us watching bloody and violent things.
That was okay with him. They were used to that.
(03:12):
We would even watch old school eighties Mexican movies with
people getting shot and cut up, and that was fine
with them. But when it came to anything showing a nipple,
we were not exposed to that. And we'll get into
one of the movies later on this list. That was
traumatizing for everybody in that picture. But I always wanted
to be just like my brother, just like my sister,
(03:33):
and for that reason is why I was what was
considered to be a lot more of a mature kid
growing up. My teachers would be like, there's something about
Mikey here that he just doesn't really interact with all
the other kids the same way. He speaks differently. He's
a little bit of an outcast and was always viewed
as being much I don't want to say older and wiser,
(03:55):
but I had an older soul just because I was
used to being around two older all the time, and
that probably has a lot to do with some of
my trauma from my early years. But what came along
with that is I watched a lot of movies I
was not supposed to watch. And the way we watched
Child's Play is we used to go to Walmart, and
there was a video store connected to our Walmart back
(04:17):
in the nineties. I don't even think it made it
to the two thousands. It wasn't even a name brand
video store like Blockbuster or anything. I really never went
to Blockbuster as a kid. Their prices were astronomical for us.
We never had a membership card, so I don't really
get nostalgic for Blockbuster.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
The other video.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Store in town and walks of Hatchie, we had a
place that was just called the video store and you
could go rent movies for a dollar. They would have
these little hooks on the wall with a number written
on them. They were like these little coin medallion things,
and you would take it off the wall on any
movie you wanted to rent and then just go up
to the cashier and give them all these little coins
(04:58):
and they would go get the VHS or the DVD
for you. That is was probably our primary source of
video rental after the video store inside of the Walmart
could put But the first time we ever went and
rented a movie from this Walmart video rental place, I
had my cousins in town from Memphis and we wanted
(05:19):
to rent some movies, and that was really the only
way we could convince my mom to allow us to
rent something because we just never paid for that. If
we were going to get a movie in any capacity,
we would buy it from the flea market. That way
we could keep it forever and watch it for years
to come, which we did it with a lot of
our vhs, but convinced her to do it. And I
don't know why she let us rent Child's Play. Maybe
(05:42):
she didn't really know what it was. Maybe it's because
Chucky is on the cover and it looks like it
could be a movie for kids.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
There's a doll on it.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I don't know if that was really going on back
in the eighties and nineties where people were confused about
what Chucky was, but maybe it got past my parents.
And we also rented one more VHS that night, and
it was a ThunderCats VHS. I think it was just
episodes of ThunderCats from the eighties, and I remember my
brother being a big fan of that show, and it
(06:09):
blew our mind that it was available to watch it home,
back when you had to watch everything on regular TV.
But we rent a Child's Play, watched it on a
Friday night, and by late Friday night, I was traumatized.
It freaked me out so bad. I thought all of
my toys were going to come to life. The first
kill in this movie is just burned into my head
(06:33):
as being one of the gnarliest things I ever witnessed
as a kid, and I was so freaked out by
the end of this movie that I was so glad
that we had also rented ThunderCats because it was kind
of a palate cleanser and I still need that to
this day. If I watch a really dark show, like
I was just watching The Boys on Amazon, and not
that that show would give you nightmares, but there are
(06:54):
some very graphic and violent images that if I watched
that show right before bed, it could creep to.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
My dreams and I have nightmares.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So sometimes I'll throw in an episode of Dragon ball
Z in between, so I don't have that as the
last thing I watched. But luckily we had a VHS
tape of ThunderCats. I watched that after Child's Play, but
Sdelle ended up having nightmares. So that was the first
ever R rated movie I watched back when I was
seven years old in nineteen ninety eight. Last R rated
(07:21):
movie I watched in theaters was Deadpool in Wolverine. Streaming
at home, it was probably Late Night with the Devil Love.
That horror movie still in my running for the best
horror movie of the year. That movie, in my mind
is battling out right now with Long Legs as taking
that number.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
One spot.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Most regretful R rated movie I ever watched was also.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
In nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Another movie we got from the Walmart video rental store,
and it was Beloved, starring Oprah and Danny Glover. I
don't know what possessed my mom to want to rent
this movie. This was a pick from my mom. And
if you listen to this podcast, you know that my
mom oddly loves horror movies. Really, the genre she leans
(08:03):
into most is horror movies, and it doesn't matter if
it's overle gory, if it's I would say she leans
more towards like a possession type movie, anything related with
any kind of exorcism Laorna. She loves Annabelle in the
Conjuring series. She is all about the horror genre. Second
(08:25):
favorite genre of movie for her is probably animated when
it comes to Pixar movies, Coco being one of her
favorite movies of all time. In that third category, it
would definitely be comedies from the nineties. But for some
reason she wanted to rent Beloved, And maybe it was
because Oprah's talk show was much more popular in the nineties.
(08:46):
And I don't know if she did an entire segment
promoting this movie or had people on her show to
talk about it. But for some reason, when this movie
came out on VHS, my mom wanted to rent it.
And if you've never seen Beloved, it is a very
stirring and weird movie that's part drama, part fantasy horror,
and we were not.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Prepared for this type of movie.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
If you've ever went blind to a film, this is
not one to go in blind on that you watch
with your parents, and you probably have a story like
this of hey, let's all go watch this movie as
a family. It's our rated, but it'll be okay, and
then bam, you get a wiener on the screen, you
get people hooking up, you get something that is going
(09:29):
to traumatize your experience that you were not expected to
see with.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Your mom and dad. Beloved is one of them.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Again, if you're not familiar with this movie, it has
full frontal nudity, and my seven year old self was
exposed to that with my mom for the very first time.
I think my mom gasped in sheer terror of what
was happening on this screen. That paired with the fact
that we didn't really understand what was going on in
(09:57):
this movie. It was hard for us to comprehend not
movie we should have watched together as a family, But
that scene came out of nowhere, and I will never
forget it, much like I never forgot the first time
I saw Child's Play. So the one regretful R rated
movie I have is beloved from nineteen eighty eight. I
feel like, now, as an adult thirty three years old,
(10:18):
I should revisit that movie to see if I understand
it a little bit more. Now people say you have
to read the book before watching that movie to understand it.
Maybe that would have helped, but still I regret that
R rated movie. The worst R rated movie I've ever
seen has to go to Showgirls, and this was back
when Elizabeth Berkeley was primarily known as Jesse Spanno on
(10:40):
Saved by the Bell and a lot of actors have
this journey where you get known for something so wholesome
and something associated with your childhood or just a very
family friendly show. You want to shake that. You want
to do something different. You want to show people that
I'm not that character anymore. I could do more adult,
(11:01):
mature things. And I think that's the idea that Elizabeth
Berkeley had going into Showgirls. What I don't like about
R rated movies like this. It's one thing to show nudity,
but when you're just showing it for the sake of
showing it and making it R rated, making it raunchy
and being just so shocking, it is probably the worst
(11:21):
thing you can do. Just looking at the acting in
this movie, I don't understand how at any point while
filming this they actually thought it was going to be good.
Elizabeth Berkeley's character in this movie is so chaotic, so
overly dramatic, she makes no sense. She goes from trying
(11:42):
to be sweet and inviting to just blowing up on people,
stabbing people in the back. And on top of that,
why you can't take it seriously is everybody's naked all
the time. And I get it, it's a movie called
Showgirls set in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
But I believe it was overly R.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Rated just for the sake of doing you can get
almost got slapped with the NC seventeen rating, which is
a whole other episode of this podcast. But worst R
rated movie I've ever seen, Ghosts to Showgirls, greatest R
rated movie I've ever seen. Mentioning earlier, I believe that
the R rated category belongs to the horror film. When
(12:20):
I thought of R rated movies I wanted to see
as a kid go to the theater and experience that I
couldn't get into. It was always a horror movie, with
the exception of the teen comedy about people hooking up
that came later in the mid two thousands. But I
still feel and believe that the genre is owned by
(12:42):
scary and horror movies because sometimes it's odd why other
movies get categorized as R rated movies. And when we
talk about the highest grossing R rated movies of all time,
a lot of the times it is due to language,
using of the F word explicitly, and then often just
because you see a nipple or a butt, they throw
(13:02):
R rating on it. For me, that doesn't really always
warrant an R rating. They may have changed the guidelines
a little bit, but usually you get the one F bomb,
a handful of S words to keep that PG thirteen ratings,
so they use them very very cautiously, but you get
any amount of skin and bam R rated. So with that,
(13:22):
I go back to a classic which actually has sub nudity,
but it is Halloween, which was one of my favorite
scary movies growing up and still one of my favorites
of all time. Change the landscape of horror in the
late seventies going into the eighties. I think other horror
franchises like Friday the Thirteenth Nightmare on Elm Street greatly
(13:43):
benefited from the success of Halloween. So that is my
favorite R rated movie of all time. Getting now into
the list of the top ten highest grossing R rated
movies in the United States at number ten from two
thousand and nine is The Hangover. I believe that this
is the last R rated movie that we all experienced
(14:04):
as a nation. Seems like there were so many in
the late nineties movies like American Pie early two thousands,
knocked Up, forty year old Virgin, Old School, But now
those movies have kind of dried up. And I'm talking
about the genre of movies that we all watched and quoted.
They were in constant rotation on TBS, so you could
(14:25):
not miss these movies. The last one, I feel had
that same level of impact and that same giant footprint
was The Hangover, and I believe is the only comedy
I've ever seen in theaters twice. I loved it that much.
That is in at number ten. At number nine is
the Matrix reloaded from two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I was never too.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Huge into all of the Matrix movies. They went a
little bit over my head. When the first one came
out in ninety nine, I was still eight years old.
I enjoyed the parodies of the Matrix more than I enjoyed.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
The actual mo movies.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
But what I could respect is what they did for
film at the turn of the century. Coming out in
ninety nine, going into the two thousands, this was so
influential on all different types of filmmaking, primarily in the
sci fi genre, but also in action movies. This movie
was so cool and futuristic. It pushed the envelope when
(15:20):
it comes to special effects. The problem that The Matrix
ended up having is the first one was so good.
It was so hard to make a decent sequel.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
To these movies.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
They even tried it again back in twenty twenty one,
and it wasn't that any of those sequels were inherently bad.
It was almost as if the Matrix should have stood
as a one and done. But obviously having that much
success with the sequel from two thousand and three, making
this list. You're gonna chase that money, You're gonna put
Keanu Reeves.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Back in that leather.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So I respect this franchise for what it did, But
out of every movie on this list, it is probably
my lead's favorite. At number eight from twenty eighteen is
Deadpool two. Out of every movie on this list, I
think this one has no reason to be here. It
kind of snuck in there, and it really rode the
success of Deadpool One, which was so polarizing and one
(16:17):
that wasn't expected to catch on as much as it did.
But this sequel just did not live up to that.
So with that said, I have more respect for the
Matrix reloaded than I do Deadpool two. It is a
fine movie, but easily the weakest now in that trilogy
to date. But at number eight is Deadpool two. At
number seven from twenty seventeen, is it This movie kind
(16:38):
of rattled me. I think that's a little rare coming
out in twenty seventeen. I was twenty six. I was
pretty jaded at this point when it comes to R
rated horror movies, and the original movie was always creepy
to me, and I don't really have a phobia of clowns.
I never found the original one to be that scary,
aside from the scene wherever a Wise would open up
(17:01):
his mouth and you'd see all the teeth and he
would look real demonic. That scene got me a little
bit as a kid. But I feel like Pennywise in
that movie was so just felt like a birthday party
clown and was so comical looking to me for the
most part that I never found it to be that scary.
When it came to twenty seventeen, it, oh my gosh,
(17:24):
they turned it up so much and they were really
able to make him, in my eyes, be the version
he needed to be to be truly terrifying. The third
act in it is one of the best third acts
in any horror movie from the twenty tens. That final showdown,
that final fight where Pennywise goes all out to try
(17:45):
and kill these kids, to try and terrify them and
also in turn.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Terrify you as the viewer.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I remember getting actually heated in my seat, like physically hot,
because my mind couldn't really comprehend all of these insane
images with all the blood, and I thought Bill Skarsgard
did a fantastic job as Penny wise, I'm glad this
movie made it on this list at number seven. At
number six is well before the number one movie. The
(18:15):
latest entry from twenty twenty three is Oppenheimer. I'm still
surprised by how well this movie did.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
I still really enjoyed it. In my eyes.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I still believe it is a five out of five
how I rated it last summer. I really think the
reason this movie was so successful was because of the
Barbenheimer promotion. That wasn't even a real promotion. It was
just that hype of two very different movies coming out
on the same weekend, and people just ended up watching
(18:47):
them both. You'll never experience that again. Because I feel
as good of a movie as Oppenheimer is, it wouldn't
have been successful if it did not come out the same.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Weekend as Barbie.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
It wouldn't because on paper, there is nothing that tells
me that it would have the same effect if it
came out on a different weekend, even a week after,
much less in a different season, which it could have
easily not come out in the summer and come out
in the fall and really leaned into the Oscar season.
But the movie is three hours long, diving into the
(19:23):
life and the mind of a very unorthodox historical figure.
But it was also the fact that I watched this
movie in seventy milimeter Imax, so I was engulfed in
the screen and fully had my attention on every single
frame of this movie. I feel like for the people
who waited and watched it at home, Oh man, I
don't know if the story came across the same way,
(19:44):
because I feel that three hour movies are a lot
easier to do and take in and not be distracted
if you go see them in a theater then if
you see them at home. But now, rounding out the
top five at number five from twenty nineteen is Joker.
It's a masterpiece. Very rarely do I call a movie
a masterpiece, but for the longest time, I love this
(20:05):
movie so much After seeing it in theaters that year,
which twenty nineteen one of the best years in film
of all time and the last great year we've had.
Twenty twenty three got really close there for a second,
but then the writers an actor strike just kind of
took the wind out of its sales. Twenty twenty four
has been a big rebuilding year. I think twenty twenty
(20:27):
five is going to be the only year in recent
history that could rival twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
But for the longest time, after.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Watching Joker in theaters, which I believe was just one
of the best experience I've had watching an R rated
movie in theaters, I never wanted to watch it again.
And it wasn't until recently, maybe twenty twenty one or
even early twenty twenty two, that I watched it again
for the second time, because I didn't want to ruin
that experience. Sometimes there comes a movie where you love
(20:59):
so much, you know if you go back and rewatch it,
you're gonna point out plot holes, You're gonna find things
to critique, and those will be movies that I will
not go back and rewatch. And it's usually the movies
I end up rating a five out of five and
don't want to find those little things that I can
go back and nitpick or think, oh, maybe that wasn't
as good as the first time I saw it. But
(21:19):
Joker was that for a very long time. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
If Joker Too could live up to those expectations.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
They put out the latest trailer in the last two
to three weeks, and I'm hoping that it's not the
exact same thing as part one, which is always hard
when you make a sequel. You want to give people
what they loved about the first one, but also give
them something that they had no idea they wanted, and
that is the kiss of death when it comes to
(21:48):
making a sequel to as beloved a movie like Joker.
Although I feel like you have to be in a
certain headspace to watch this movie, it's also a movie.
I don't think it's for everyone. Before those people who
like R rated movies that are in the comic book world,
I think it's perfection. So how can Joker two still
(22:09):
appease those fans while also giving them something different and
not alienating other people from.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Watching this movie?
Speaker 1 (22:16):
The really tough thing to do, but I think Todd Phillips,
Joaquin Phoenix, and Lady Gaga can pull it off. Still
super excited for Joker two, but Joker one comes in
at number five at number four from twenty fourteen American Sniper.
Out of all the films on this list, this one
is the most surprising, and when looking at all the
different genres in this top ten, you have superhero movies,
(22:38):
you have horror movies, you have bio picks, you have
horror movies again, comedy in there, but this is the
only war and action movie the real life story of
US Navy Seal Chris Kyle played by Bradley Cooper. And
the reason I love this movie is not only did
it show the dark and off full side of war,
(23:01):
it also focused on the PTSD of war and when
soldiers go fight for our country and then come back
home and are expected just to click back into society.
And this was the first time I saw it depicted
in a way that it really registered with me. How
somebody can go overseas and do something that's just so
(23:24):
beyond what I can comprehend, and you imagine the toll
it takes on your brain, on your body, seeing some
of the most awful things you could see as a
human being, and come back and know that people appreciate
what you did, which I'll just say, shout out to
our military. And even though US as civilians can sing
you our praises, we just can't comprehend it because we
(23:46):
didn't go through it. And in this movie showing his character,
showing Chris Kyle having to come back and adjust the
family life. Oh, the scene with him and his daughter
like just him holding her in her arms, and you
hear it in his head that he hears all this
war going on. That is a scene that really sets
in with me that you're expected to go to war
(24:06):
and come back and just have a normal life where
you're just going to the grocery store and taking away
all those awful images from your head. So I love
that the movie shine light on that. And it also
had one of the most intense scenes where you could
hear Bradley Cooper's heartbeat, and I just remember the entire
theater being so silent in that moment where you could
(24:27):
just hear the popcorn hitting the floor. So I was
pleasantly surprised to see American Sniper at number four. Moving
on to the top three at number three is twenty
sixteen's Deadpool, an unexpected hit from a.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Mid comic book character.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Deadpool was by no means one of the best Marvel offerings,
but that is kind of the history of the success
of Marvel. After so early on they sold off all
the movie rights to their best characters and had to
do what really no other studio could do and build
an entire billion dollar company off of their lesser known characters.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
So I'll take all the bad.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Marvel movies we got in the early and mid two thousands,
because all of those gave birth to what is known
now as our MCU. But then rounding out the top
two at number two is The Passion of the Christ
from two thousand and four. If you missed the episode
where I talked about where I watched this movie for
the first time, I'll take you back to two thousand
and four Janajuato, Mexico. We had just bought I think
(25:33):
I got it for Christmas. Was our first ever portable
DVD player that we all used as a family, and
it wasn't a nice one. We got it from Walmart.
It was probably like fifty bucks, so very bottom of
the line portable DVD player. The battery life was terrible.
I had to keep it on the chargers of the
entire time. But we went to Mexico for Christmas in
(25:55):
two thousand and four, went to a Mexican flea market
and bought a bunch of bootleg DVDs. And bootleg DVDs
in the two thousands were not straight video rips. It
was somebody going into a theater and filming the entire
movie on a handheld video camera and that is how
I watched Passionate the Christ on a bootleg DVD. My
(26:16):
mom had a moral dilemma with it, so eventually we
ended up watching it on normal DVD.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
But she still struggles with.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
This movie because it is hard for her to see
the story just unfold in an R rated fashion, and
that was with even her knowing what was coming, because
she read the book before watching this movie, which I
think most people did right the Bible. At number one
is Deadpool and Wolverine now taking that number one spot.
If you missed it last week here on the feed,
(26:44):
I put up my spoiler. Yes, the version of the
review with all the spoilers talked about my favorite cameos.
I feel like I've mentioned and talked about my feelings
of Deadpool and Wolverine enough. But if you missed that, also,
if you miss the entire breakdown I did of Robert
Downey Junior coming back to the MCU as Doctor Doom,
(27:05):
all those episodes are on the feed as well. So
that is the List'll come back and give my review
of d D and in the trailer part, we'll talk
about the new Bob Dylan biopic with Timothy Chalomey.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Let's get into It Now. A spoiler free movie review
of Dedi.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
It is a coming of age story of a thirteen
year old and his last summer before starting high school.
Dedy is a movie for anybody who has ever been
a teenager, simple as that. I love coming of age movies,
and there's a very delicate line you need to walk
to tell a story about a thirteen year old. We've
all been there, we've all been teenagers. We know what
the experience is like. You're very angsty, you want to
(27:45):
lash out against your parents, You're navigating all these feelings, relationships,
all these things you're experiencing for the first time. For
me is getting a lot of hair, starting to smell weird,
all those things that go along with being thirteen years old.
The line you have to walk while making a movie
about this is do you want to make it appeal
to thirteen year olds or do you want to make
(28:07):
it appeal to the adult to look back and remember
on what it's like being thirteen. In the case of Diti,
it is making that experience feel very adult, taking everything
into consideration of what you experienced to that time and
validating it, not making it feel less than just very
much giving an adult perspective on what it was like
(28:28):
being thirteen. Because if you think back on that time,
you in your head when you were thirteen saw things
as I'm now older, this is affecting me. Nobody understands me.
You felt in that moment that you were an adult.
You look back later when you're eighteen, twenty, whatever, thirty,
and you think, oh, I was just a dumb kid,
But in that moment, you believe like this is your
(28:50):
whole world. Nobody understands you, your parents don't get you.
So I really love that perspective from this thirteen year
old who isn't a bad kid, but he's not the
best kid. He'd gets into some trouble. And I very
much identified with DEDI in this movie. Oh, because there
were so many aspects of this movie. The very first
(29:11):
thing I want to talk about is I love that
this movie was set in two thousand and eight. I've
talked about on this podcast how I feel my best
year was two thousand and nine, and I would say
my best school year was my senior year, which was
eight to nine. And the reason that is it's because
that was a time in my life where I had
(29:32):
the least amount of responsibility and the most freedom. Senior year,
I could drive. My classes in high school were very
laid back. In my senior year, I had like half days,
so I was looking ahead to college, but I knew
this was the time in my life that I was
just gonna enjoy it, go do things with my friends,
(29:55):
not take things so seriously, because I knew once college started,
then okay, to get to work. Then it's time for
me to start thinking about my future more. Not that
I wasn't thinking about it in high school, but I
allowed myself to be fully engaged in those summer activities,
and that, I believe was that last time I felt
alive in some aspects. And you know, my life is
(30:16):
good now. I just that is a time that I
feel was just so great. And obviously I'm biased because
the mid to late two thousands is where I experienced
a lot of things, But I think that was the
best decade to grow up in and be young, and
d D is a great example of that. It took
me back to things I haven't thought about in ten years,
(30:38):
the MySpace era, which in this movie, DD is friending
people on MySpace, looking up their profiles, At the very
start of the movie, there is a girl he has
a crush on. He goes through MySpace page to learn
things about her. He finds her profile song, which is
a hello goodbye song, takes that song and makes it
his phone ring tone, which that even brought back memories
(30:58):
of how important it was to me to pick the
right ring tone. For me, it was probably like Alkaline Trio,
maybe ransid Newfound Glory, and that was a thing. Callback
tones were a thing. And I also think that was
the best time to be a teenager because for millennials,
we got to experience the early stages of the Internet
(31:20):
where nothing was really that serious. Yet we were still
navigating social media. I had a Zanga page, I had MySpace,
I had Facebook, but at that time, nobody took it
that seriously.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
There weren't influencers and it was kind of.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
The wild West on what went into creating your page
and just friending people. We had a top eight which
were so brutal and was something also shown in this
movie of how you would rank your friends, and I
remember the ultimate thing for me growing up was like
making my crushes top eight and I was like, how
did I get in there?
Speaker 2 (31:53):
What did I do.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
My life is going to change forever because I made
it in their top eight, But it was a brutal thing,
and a lot of what happens in DD has to
do with the technology at that time, very early filmmaking,
because he starts filming with these skateboarders, so it's very
much the introduction of the Internet. But it was almost
like we were all putting on a front at that
(32:16):
time to create these awesome social media profiles via Facebook
and MySpace, which I guess we all kind of do
that now, but I just remembered how important that was
as a teenager to be friends with your crush on
Facebook or MySpace, and just all the politics that went
into that. So I very much felt nostalogic connecting to
DD's story. The other thing that really struck me just
(32:39):
on a personal level, even more so than the MySpace
and the music during that time, which I would say
was my Space core, but also very much Warped Tour core,
where my entire summer was based around how good of
experience I was going to have at warp Tour. But
the soundtrack just kind of mirrored that and was very
(33:00):
much a reflection of two thousand and eight and two
thousand and nine. But the family aspect in this movie
because Dedi is a first generation American. He is from
a Taiwanese family, and he lives with his mom and
his grandma, who is very traditional. They take schoolwork very
seriously because if you don't do good in school, you
(33:22):
won't get into a good college. If you don't get
into a good college, you won't get a good job.
If you don't get a good job, you won't find
a good partner. And a lot of those pressures that
not only his mom and his grandma put on him
in this movie are what he's kind of rebelling against.
And I got that a little bit in my family,
(33:43):
because my parents did want me to go to college,
being a first generation American myself, and it wasn't so
much that there was this pressure that they could show
me off to like my family, which was a thing
in this movie. They wanted to impress their aunts, their uncles,
everybody else in their family. It was just wanted me
to have a better life than they did. So I
(34:04):
identified more with the relationship he had with his mom,
who his dad in this movie really isn't in the picture.
He is working back in their native country to try
to make money to send back to them so they
can live their life. But it was this unique relationship
he had with his mom who was just trying to
do her best, trying to raise her two kids and
(34:25):
feeling like she failed. And it reminded me of a
conversation I had with my mom fairly recently where she
felt bad for what kind of mom she was growing
up to us. And my mom did it finish. I
don't even think she finished elementary school, never made it
to middle school. She came to the United States as
(34:48):
a teenager and did a lot of things just to
make ends meet. One of those beings, she got a
job when I started, probably first or second grade, at
Taco Bell and she's been there ever since. And she
told me she felt like she failed as a mom
because she couldn't provide more for us, because she felt like,
I'm just somebody working at Taco Bell and hearing my
(35:11):
mom have these really human experiences kind of feeling the
way that I feel at times, feeling I failed them.
I never really heard my mom speak in that way
where I always just saw her as my mom, person
who did everything for us. She was kind of like
a superhero in my eyes, and realizing that she was
probably the age I am now at that time when
(35:33):
I was, you know, starting school and she went to
go do that job that I just thought, man like,
we're just humans. We're just trying to survive. And even
somebody like your parents, who you think have it all
figured out, they don't.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
So it made me feel a.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Little bit better about where I am in life, thinking
that my mom didn't know that she was making the
right choice or not. Back when you know, my oldest
brother and older sister were already you.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Know, on the path that they were on.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
They were all good, but still making sure that I
had what I needed to survive. And I think she
feels bad about sometimes the way we grew up that
we didn't have a whole lot, and I never really
saw it as like, oh man, it sucked being poor.
At the time, I feel like not having a lot
growing up, you know, it made me appreciate more of
what I have.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
And it was.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Watching d D that brought all those kind of emotions
up of what it's like to have parents who immigrate
from another country and come here without a whole lot,
trying to keep your heritage alive, but also adapt to
American society, which is what Dedi is trying to do
in this movie, and it's so hard.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Even his name.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
His family calls him Dedi, but to everybody else at school,
he goes by Chris or another nickname. That was kind
of what I experienced too growing up, because Mike's not
my real name and I never really used my full
lead name in school, just because I kind of wanted
to blend in a little bit more. Also, how deed
he did of the music he's into. He's into the
(37:10):
skateboard culture, which was also what I was into growing up,
and being Mexican, people assume that I wouldn't be into that.
So there's a line in this movie that I won't
ruin because it kind of hit me right in the cut,
and I'll let you experience it. But it was a
reference to his race in a moment where he thought
(37:31):
he was just being a peer, maybe a love interest,
that he was almost reduced to nothing because they pinpointed
what he was based on his race. And I felt
that because sometimes people have told me, hey, you're not
really Mexican, You're kind of white, and I don't even
know what that means just because I have sometimes nerdier tendencies,
(37:54):
sometimes because I lean towards liking punk rock and things
that aren't traditionally Mexican. What is even tradition Mexican. I
always was into what I was into. I don't feel
like I based it around my race. It was just
what I was exposed to and what I liked. But
I was viewed as being different because I wasn't into
traditional things that a person of my race should be into.
(38:17):
So there were just a lot of parallels between how
I felt I grew up, the past I had to navigate,
and what deed had to felt growing up, which I
feel was good for me to see to know that
it you know, it is kind of you. There are
things that are unique to growing up Mexican American, but
I feel like there are a lot of just parallels
with anybody who immigrates from another country to the United States.
(38:41):
So it was cool seeing that I could identify with
somebody else from a different country and know that we
kind of went through those same things. So if you
are like that too, this is definitely a movie you
have to see, especially if you grew up in the
mid to late two thousands, because it's going to feel
like a huge nostalgia trip. They also use AOL a
(39:01):
lot in this movie, which I hadn't thought about in
a really long time. Just those sounds of like sending messages,
adding people, blocking people, sending an away message.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
That brought back a lot of memories.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
I remember the first time I got an AOL account,
I was Alkaline Punk thirteen. Because my favorite band growing
up was Alkaline Trio. I was like, yeah, let's throw
punkin there. Cool number thirteen. I just remember getting on
their messaging people. How much of a thrill that was.
I could crush hours on a dial up connection on AOL.
(39:34):
That was very much a very two thousand and eight experience.
This movie is right under ninety minutes, so if you're
somebody who likes a shorter movie, this is perfect for you.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
At the very start of.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
This movie, I thought it was just gonna be kind
of a coming of age story that I'd already seen before.
But once you really get into it, you start seeing
the dynamic he has with his sister, with his family,
and the fact that a lot happens to DDI in
this life last summer before high school. By that third act,
you are all in invested emotionally and you want to
(40:08):
see more of his story, And by the time it
was over, I was like, oh man, I gotta know
what happens in high school. So this movie only gets
better as it goes along. I easily give it four
out of five friend requests. I think if I put
in my bias of being a first generation Mexican American
and identifying with what DD goes through, I'd probably put
(40:30):
in a point five bias, But I feel good at
giving it a four out of five. That is a
strong four out of five, And I would also put
this in my top five coming of age movies in
the last ten years.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Really enjoyed this movie.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
I think it's going to be a movie that I
keep revisiting, especially once it hits streaming. So if you're
looking for some coming of age movies, definitely check out DD.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
It's time to head down to movie Mike Traylor Paul him.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
At the challow May trying to win his first oscar.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
After watching the trailer to the New Bob Dylan Biopick
called a complete unknown.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
That is how I'm feeling.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
There are a lot of recipes on not recipes, a
lot of ingredients to this recipe inside of this trailer
that are all the makings of what I believe is
what we.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Would call Oscar bait. And it's all right.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Rommi Mallick did it back in twenty nineteen, playing Freddie
Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody got his first Academy Award. Timothy
Shallo mag still a young actor, but I feel the
reason you take on a role like this with a
movie coming out in December, with a director who also.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Did walk the line Ford V.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Ferrari, very familiar with the biopic genre, that to me
is saying that Timothy shallow May wants to win an
Oscar and while watching this trailer, I don't feel it
so far.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
All the statistics that go along with this movie, cast
of characters, the director, those make me think this is
going for being nominated for Best Picture, him being nominated
for Best Actor. But just by the look of it, ooh,
I'm not buying into it just yet, because when he
is in the sunglasses on a stage with the guitar
and the clode, you could convince me that it looks
(42:17):
like Bob Dylan. However, in the moments in this trailer
when he's not wearing sunglasses, I can't help but see
Willy Wanka in there, which leads me to believe that
it is so important what roles actors take on when
because really, for me, even more so than Dune Part two,
I'm starting to associate him with Willy Wonka, which he
did very well also singing that movie. In this biopic,
(42:41):
it is him singing these Bob Dylan songs. I'm sure
he worked with a vocal coach, and I don't think
it's that big of a stretch for him because he
grew up in musical theater. You can go watch videos
of him on YouTube. Belting is little hard out singing
these songs, so it's not unusual for an actor at
this level to take on the actual singing. I'm sure
probably like they did with Bohemian Rhapsody, they bring somebody
(43:04):
in to patch things in. So maybe it's not him
one hundred percent of the time, maybe eighty percent of
the time. So I feel like for those reasons, you
have all the ingredients here of somebody baking up a
cake to win a Best Oscar, not even just to
get nominated. I think he is trying to win and
I will call it just by after watching this trailer
(43:24):
that he will get a nomination. I won't say anything
until I actually see the movie, but I don't have
any reason to deny that this movie is going to
be not good.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Just with my.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Experience with biopics, I always feel like they are a
little bit rushed. I don't love it when they come
out when the person being portrayed is still alive, because
I feel that that person could have a lot of
influence on the movie. I don't think that is the
case here. It was the case with the Queen movie.
Although Freddie Mercury wasn't alive, the guys from the band
(44:00):
was still alive and they were trying to have so
much input in that movie. Sasha Bara Cohen, who was Borat,
was initially supposed to play Freddy Mercury, and he dropped
out because the band wanted him to die halfway through
the movie, and the rest of that film to be
about how they recovered after the loss of Freddy Mercury
would have been a terrible movie. So oftentimes you have
(44:20):
the estate or maybe a daughter some relative kind of
calling some of the shots on how they depict the story.
That is why I don't like it when the person
is still alive for that reason, and I also just
believe it is so hard to take somebody's entire life
story who is so impactful on a genre, on a movement,
(44:42):
which is especially what Bob Dylan was with the protest
songs in the sixties, and put it all into a
two to two and a half hour movie.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
It is really tough to do.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
So I feel like the task is so hard to
be taken on that you're setting yourself up for disaster,
for disappointment. For me, just not enjoying it. Not that
I don't like music. I'm a huge fan of everybody
loves music. Saying you don't like music is like saying
you don't like to breathe. Music in movies, for the
most part, go hand in hand. But I just don't
(45:12):
go into a biopic thinking, ah, this is gonna be
the one where they truly get it. But before I
get into more of my thoughts, we'll look at the
impressive filmography of the director, James Mangold. This movie doesn't
have an official release date yet, it's just coming out
in December. I would assume maybe they queue it up
a little bit before the Christmas run, because we have
(45:33):
some heavy hitters coming out in December, so maybe that's
when they decide to put out this movie right in
time for Oscar season. But here's just a little bit
of the trailer of a Complete Unknown.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I want to tell you a little story.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
A few months back, my friend Woody Guthrie and I
we met a young man. He dropped in on us
out of nowhere, and he played us a song. In
that moment, we got a feeling. We were definite a glimpse.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
So the future. That's all I got so far. Good start.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
So the movie is set in New York nineteen sixties.
You have a nineteen year old Bob Dylan from Minnesota.
He arrives in the West Village. Looks like he is discovered.
In that trailer, you heard the one and only Edward Norton,
who is a great actor. He is playing fellow folk
singer Pete Seeger. You also have El Fanning in this
(46:26):
movie playing Sylvia Russo, who was inspired by Bob Dylan's
real life ex girlfriend, Susie Rotolo. If you are familiar
with this album The Free Wheeland, which has a very
iconic cover, she is the one featured in that picture.
You also have Boyd Holbrook, who I just saw in
The Bike Riders playing Johnny Cash, so pretty decent cast here.
(46:46):
I would say Timothy Shallow may probably getting paid the
majority of the money. He is in that place of
his career where he can take on any role, and
I have to imagine this is a pretty iconic role
for him as as if this movie is successful, this
could be a movie that people associate with him throughout
(47:07):
the rest of his career, because for me, I keep
thinking of him as Willy Wonka, as I was mentioning earlier.
I still don't feel like the Dune franchise has really
attached itself to him. I think it's just hard for
me to differentiate the goofy guy that he is on
SNEL and also see him as this very serious actor,
(47:27):
even though that's really where he got to start early on.
But I think it's once you start taking on those
big blockbusters that more and more people are seeing. Those
are the ones that people are really going to start
associating you with. So this movie is successful, if he
gets nominated or if he ends up winning for Best Actor,
this could be a real career defining movie.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
For him.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
The movie is directed by James Mangold, who most recent
film includes Indiana Jones and The Dialogue Destiny, which I
actually believe was a pretty good movie that the box
office did a little dirty, primarily because nobody really asked
for the continuation and the finale of Indiana Jones. But
if you have Disney Plus and haven't seen it yet
(48:09):
looking for something to watch over a weekend, and you're
a fan of Harrison Ford and maybe you'll like the
early on Indiana Jones movies. I still think it is
a fun time. It just came out at a really
weird kind of cross pass between a lot of good
summer movies. Last year, James Mangold also did Four to
Be Ferrari, fantastic movie, but I mean anything with Matt
(48:29):
Damon and Christian Vale is going to be great. My
favorite credit of his is he directed Logan with Hugh Jackman,
what I believe is a top five comic book movie
of all time. He also did The Wolverine and before
that did Walk the Line, one of the best music
bio picks of all time, easily top three for me,
(48:52):
and I think if it wasn't for the fact that
at Mexican and La Bamba and Selina will always outrank
everything on my list. It would probably be number one,
but it would go La Bamba Selena and then Walk
the Line because I love that movie so much. And
if you look at a movie like Walk the Line
with Joaquin Phoenix, who also did a lot of the
(49:12):
singing in that movie, and see how well James Mangole
told Johnny Cash's story in that, I think if he
can take that same formula and adapt it to Bob
Dylan's life, then this is going to be a home
run hit. The thing is, I don't really know a
whole lot about all of the hardships and just career
(49:33):
ups and downs that Bob Dylan went through. When you
look at Johnny Cash and Walk the Line, dude had
a lot of demons starting out from his childhood, his
battle with drugs, leaven his wife, all the pills, the
music playing in prisons. There are so many just polarizing
things about Johnny Cash's career. After watching a complete Unknowns trailer,
(49:58):
I don't know what the means of this story is
going to be. So I'm wondering what the meat of
this story is going to be. By the description of
the movie, it says it'll focus on his early rise
to fame, his infamous performance at the Newport Folk Festival,
and the aftermath of that. But it is based on
the twenty fifteen book Dylan Goes Electric, which is about
(50:19):
the controversy surrounding the switch to electrically amplified instrumentation by
Bob Dylan. If I had to list my top three
Bob Dylan songs of all time, you might want to
get out the basic B meter because I'm not too
familiar with his music. I honestly know it primarily from
watching movies. I can tell anytime it is his voice
(50:40):
on a movie soundtrack. I was also in high school
in an indie band where I played drums and my
friend and lead singer and songwriter in that band, we
were called Lynn Haven. We were mildly popular in high school.
But he was so almost like a Bob Dylan Stan
heavy inspiration on his Songwride, his singing style, he had
(51:01):
the harmonica and everything, so from him. I was exposed
to some of Bob Dylan's music, but it really hasn't
been until I think it was I was rewatching The
Watchmen and I heard a Bob Dylan song in that
that maybe want to go listen to some of his music.
This was just a few months ago, So my top
three Bob Dylan songs would be at number three, blowing
in the Wind. I know these are also basically his
(51:23):
biggest hits that he's ever had. At number two would
be Like a Rolling Stone, and at number one would
be The Times They are a change in which if
you go watch The Watchman, which is Zack Snyder's best
movie and the only reason he really continues to make
movies is because everybody remembers The Watchmen in probably three
hundred but at the start of that movie, in the
opening credits, they're showing all of this protest footage and
(51:46):
how the Watchmen superheroes were connected to that, and they
were playing that song over the top of it, and
I thought that was a really great use of music
and opening credits, something that doesn't really happen a whole
lot anymore. So I think his music is just associated
with that kind of imagery, maybe even been overused just
a little bit. So again I'm hesitant about this because
(52:09):
biopics have never been my favorite. It is hard for
me to see Timothy Chalomey and a more serious role
right now, and that's probably unfair, but I still like
him as an actor, I like him as a person,
and I'm a pretty big fan of James Mangold again.
That movie is coming out this December.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Jeez.
Speaker 4 (52:28):
And that was this week's edition of movie Line Tramer
Bar and.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
That is gonna do it for another episode here of
the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my
listener shout out of the week. How do you get
a listener shout out of the week? Well, all you
have to do is comment on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook x Instagram.
Let me know how you felt about that week's episode.
You can send me a suggestion of a topic you
(52:54):
think I should cover, a movie you think I should watch.
And if you listen on Monday, which is released, a
post a little screenshot, maybe take a picture of your
car radio of you listening to that week's episode, Tag
me in it. I'll repost you on my Instagram story
and then give you a shout out the following week.
But for this week's listener shout out, we're going over
(53:15):
to Facebook and it goes to Ashley B who wrote
Kelsey the Simpsons is the absolute worst ride from motion sickness.
I'm sure you know now lol. So thank you, actually
B for validating Kelsey and what we were talking about
last week of how I drug her to California to
get on the Simpsons ride even though she didn't want to,
(53:36):
and it was in that moment and also us taking
a picture with Bart and Lisa at least two people
dressed as Bart Lisa in big costumes that.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
I realized, Oh, this girl is the one.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
She's down for Simpsons, which is one of my favorite
shows of all time. That means she can now enter
my life and I knew she was the one. So
thank you, actually B for that comment. For listening to
last week's episode, Thank you right now listening in your car,
listening in your earbuds wherever this episode may find you.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Thank you for being subscribed, Thank you
Speaker 1 (54:06):
For telling a friend, And until next time, go out
and watch good movies and I will talk to you
later
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today we're talking about the
top ten highest grossing R rated movies of all time.
I'll give you what I consider the best, the worst,
the first R rated movie I ever saw, Oh Boy,
that was traumatizing. In the movie review, we'll be talking
about d D, which is a coming of age movie
set in the late two thousands in the trailer park.
(00:22):
We'll take a look at a movie called A Complete Unknown,
better known as the Bob Dylan Biopic, with Timmy tim
Timothy Shallowmet playing Bob Dylan. I have a history of
not enjoying biopicks because I often feel they're rushed, even
more so when the person is still alive at the
time the movie comes out. So not looking good for
this movie as of now. But thank you for being here,
(00:43):
Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday
Morning Movie crew.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And now let's talk movies.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
much movie knowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
He's basically like a walking IMTB. With Glasses from the
Nashville podcast network. This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
One of the biggest headlines since dead Pula Wolverine came out,
all the box office records it has broken. In my opinion,
the biggest record is becoming the highest grossing R rated
movie in the United States, beating out The Passion of
the Christ. And I want to get into this full
top ten list because oddly, when looking at the top
(01:34):
ten highest grossing R rated movies in the US, they
are all pretty vastly different. And when I consider what
goes into making an R rated movie, I think you
would start to fall into some of the same type
of genre. For me, I feel like the R rated
genre is dominated by horror, especially now in today's market,
where I feel like studios are hesitant to put out
(01:56):
an R rated movie because you are limiting your audience,
and you don't want to reduce your audience right now.
You want as many people to go and see your
movie as possible. So I think it is amazing that
Deadpool and Wolverine has already crossed that mark. So we'll
get into that top ten list. But my history with
R rated movies, We're gonna do first, Last, regretful, worst,
(02:20):
and greatest R rated movie of all time. The first
R rated movie I ever saw. I was seven years.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Old in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
This movie came out in nineteen eighty eight and is
regarded as the movie that almost traumatized me forever. It
was child's play. The reason I watched this movie at
seven years old. The reason I was really exposed to
so many things so early on is because I have
an older brother and an older sister who are seven
and nine years older than me, so they were probably
(02:50):
fifteen fourteen years old in that age range, and I
was always exposed to things that they were exposed to
just because I was around. I wanted to be with him,
and my parents were okay with it for the most part.
I think the problem my parents had was nudity. They
could do and deal with us watching bloody and violent things.
That was okay with him. They were used to that.
(03:12):
We would even watch old school eighties Mexican movies with
people getting shot and cut up, and that was fine
with them. But when it came to anything showing a nipple,
we were not exposed to that. And we'll get into
one of the movies later on this list. That was
traumatizing for everybody in that picture. But I always wanted
to be just like my brother, just like my sister,
(03:33):
and for that reason is why I was what was
considered to be a lot more of a mature kid
growing up. My teachers would be like, there's something about
Mikey here that he just doesn't really interact with all
the other kids the same way. He speaks differently. He's
a little bit of an outcast and was always viewed
as being much I don't want to say older and wiser,
(03:55):
but I had an older soul just because I was
used to being around two older all the time, and
that probably has a lot to do with some of
my trauma from my early years. But what came along
with that is I watched a lot of movies I
was not supposed to watch. And the way we watched
Child's Play is we used to go to Walmart, and
there was a video store connected to our Walmart back
(04:17):
in the nineties. I don't even think it made it
to the two thousands. It wasn't even a name brand
video store like Blockbuster or anything. I really never went
to Blockbuster as a kid. Their prices were astronomical for us.
We never had a membership card, so I don't really
get nostalgic for Blockbuster.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
The other video.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Store in town and walks of Hatchie, we had a
place that was just called the video store and you
could go rent movies for a dollar. They would have
these little hooks on the wall with a number written
on them. They were like these little coin medallion things,
and you would take it off the wall on any
movie you wanted to rent and then just go up
to the cashier and give them all these little coins
(04:58):
and they would go get the VHS or the DVD
for you. That is was probably our primary source of
video rental after the video store inside of the Walmart
could put But the first time we ever went and
rented a movie from this Walmart video rental place, I
had my cousins in town from Memphis and we wanted
(05:19):
to rent some movies, and that was really the only
way we could convince my mom to allow us to
rent something because we just never paid for that. If
we were going to get a movie in any capacity,
we would buy it from the flea market. That way
we could keep it forever and watch it for years
to come, which we did it with a lot of
our vhs, but convinced her to do it. And I
don't know why she let us rent Child's Play. Maybe
(05:42):
she didn't really know what it was. Maybe it's because
Chucky is on the cover and it looks like it
could be a movie for kids.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
There's a doll on it.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I don't know if that was really going on back
in the eighties and nineties where people were confused about
what Chucky was, but maybe it got past my parents.
And we also rented one more VHS that night, and
it was a ThunderCats VHS. I think it was just
episodes of ThunderCats from the eighties, and I remember my
brother being a big fan of that show, and it
(06:09):
blew our mind that it was available to watch it home,
back when you had to watch everything on regular TV.
But we rent a Child's Play, watched it on a
Friday night, and by late Friday night, I was traumatized.
It freaked me out so bad. I thought all of
my toys were going to come to life. The first
kill in this movie is just burned into my head
(06:33):
as being one of the gnarliest things I ever witnessed
as a kid, and I was so freaked out by
the end of this movie that I was so glad
that we had also rented ThunderCats because it was kind
of a palate cleanser and I still need that to
this day. If I watch a really dark show, like
I was just watching The Boys on Amazon, and not
that that show would give you nightmares, but there are
(06:54):
some very graphic and violent images that if I watched
that show right before bed, it could creep to.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
My dreams and I have nightmares.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So sometimes I'll throw in an episode of Dragon ball
Z in between, so I don't have that as the
last thing I watched. But luckily we had a VHS
tape of ThunderCats. I watched that after Child's Play, but
Sdelle ended up having nightmares. So that was the first
ever R rated movie I watched back when I was
seven years old in nineteen ninety eight. Last R rated
(07:21):
movie I watched in theaters was Deadpool in Wolverine. Streaming
at home, it was probably Late Night with the Devil Love.
That horror movie still in my running for the best
horror movie of the year. That movie, in my mind
is battling out right now with Long Legs as taking
that number.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
One spot.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Most regretful R rated movie I ever watched was also.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
In nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Another movie we got from the Walmart video rental store,
and it was Beloved, starring Oprah and Danny Glover. I
don't know what possessed my mom to want to rent
this movie. This was a pick from my mom. And
if you listen to this podcast, you know that my
mom oddly loves horror movies. Really, the genre she leans
(08:03):
into most is horror movies, and it doesn't matter if
it's overle gory, if it's I would say she leans
more towards like a possession type movie, anything related with
any kind of exorcism Laorna. She loves Annabelle in the
Conjuring series. She is all about the horror genre. Second
(08:25):
favorite genre of movie for her is probably animated when
it comes to Pixar movies, Coco being one of her
favorite movies of all time. In that third category, it
would definitely be comedies from the nineties. But for some
reason she wanted to rent Beloved, And maybe it was
because Oprah's talk show was much more popular in the nineties.
(08:46):
And I don't know if she did an entire segment
promoting this movie or had people on her show to
talk about it. But for some reason, when this movie
came out on VHS, my mom wanted to rent it.
And if you've never seen Beloved, it is a very
stirring and weird movie that's part drama, part fantasy horror,
and we were not.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Prepared for this type of movie.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
If you've ever went blind to a film, this is
not one to go in blind on that you watch
with your parents, and you probably have a story like
this of hey, let's all go watch this movie as
a family. It's our rated, but it'll be okay, and
then bam, you get a wiener on the screen, you
get people hooking up, you get something that is going
(09:29):
to traumatize your experience that you were not expected to
see with.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Your mom and dad. Beloved is one of them.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Again, if you're not familiar with this movie, it has
full frontal nudity, and my seven year old self was
exposed to that with my mom for the very first time.
I think my mom gasped in sheer terror of what
was happening on this screen. That paired with the fact
that we didn't really understand what was going on in
(09:57):
this movie. It was hard for us to comprehend not
movie we should have watched together as a family, But
that scene came out of nowhere, and I will never
forget it, much like I never forgot the first time
I saw Child's Play. So the one regretful R rated
movie I have is beloved from nineteen eighty eight. I
feel like, now, as an adult thirty three years old,
(10:18):
I should revisit that movie to see if I understand
it a little bit more. Now people say you have
to read the book before watching that movie to understand it.
Maybe that would have helped, but still I regret that
R rated movie. The worst R rated movie I've ever
seen has to go to Showgirls, and this was back
when Elizabeth Berkeley was primarily known as Jesse Spanno on
(10:40):
Saved by the Bell and a lot of actors have
this journey where you get known for something so wholesome
and something associated with your childhood or just a very
family friendly show. You want to shake that. You want
to do something different. You want to show people that
I'm not that character anymore. I could do more adult,
(11:01):
mature things. And I think that's the idea that Elizabeth
Berkeley had going into Showgirls. What I don't like about
R rated movies like this. It's one thing to show nudity,
but when you're just showing it for the sake of
showing it and making it R rated, making it raunchy
and being just so shocking, it is probably the worst
(11:21):
thing you can do. Just looking at the acting in
this movie, I don't understand how at any point while
filming this they actually thought it was going to be good.
Elizabeth Berkeley's character in this movie is so chaotic, so
overly dramatic, she makes no sense. She goes from trying
(11:42):
to be sweet and inviting to just blowing up on people,
stabbing people in the back. And on top of that,
why you can't take it seriously is everybody's naked all
the time. And I get it, it's a movie called
Showgirls set in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
But I believe it was overly R.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Rated just for the sake of doing you can get
almost got slapped with the NC seventeen rating, which is
a whole other episode of this podcast. But worst R
rated movie I've ever seen, Ghosts to Showgirls, greatest R
rated movie I've ever seen. Mentioning earlier, I believe that
the R rated category belongs to the horror film. When
(12:20):
I thought of R rated movies I wanted to see
as a kid go to the theater and experience that I
couldn't get into. It was always a horror movie, with
the exception of the teen comedy about people hooking up
that came later in the mid two thousands. But I
still feel and believe that the genre is owned by
(12:42):
scary and horror movies because sometimes it's odd why other
movies get categorized as R rated movies. And when we
talk about the highest grossing R rated movies of all time,
a lot of the times it is due to language,
using of the F word explicitly, and then often just
because you see a nipple or a butt, they throw
(13:02):
R rating on it. For me, that doesn't really always
warrant an R rating. They may have changed the guidelines
a little bit, but usually you get the one F bomb,
a handful of S words to keep that PG thirteen ratings,
so they use them very very cautiously, but you get
any amount of skin and bam R rated. So with that,
(13:22):
I go back to a classic which actually has sub nudity,
but it is Halloween, which was one of my favorite
scary movies growing up and still one of my favorites
of all time. Change the landscape of horror in the
late seventies going into the eighties. I think other horror
franchises like Friday the Thirteenth Nightmare on Elm Street greatly
(13:43):
benefited from the success of Halloween. So that is my
favorite R rated movie of all time. Getting now into
the list of the top ten highest grossing R rated
movies in the United States at number ten from two
thousand and nine is The Hangover. I believe that this
is the last R rated movie that we all experienced
(14:04):
as a nation. Seems like there were so many in
the late nineties movies like American Pie early two thousands,
knocked Up, forty year old Virgin, Old School, But now
those movies have kind of dried up. And I'm talking
about the genre of movies that we all watched and quoted.
They were in constant rotation on TBS, so you could
(14:25):
not miss these movies. The last one, I feel had
that same level of impact and that same giant footprint
was The Hangover, and I believe is the only comedy
I've ever seen in theaters twice. I loved it that much.
That is in at number ten. At number nine is
the Matrix reloaded from two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I was never too.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Huge into all of the Matrix movies. They went a
little bit over my head. When the first one came
out in ninety nine, I was still eight years old.
I enjoyed the parodies of the Matrix more than I enjoyed.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
The actual mo movies.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
But what I could respect is what they did for
film at the turn of the century. Coming out in
ninety nine, going into the two thousands, this was so
influential on all different types of filmmaking, primarily in the
sci fi genre, but also in action movies. This movie
was so cool and futuristic. It pushed the envelope when
(15:20):
it comes to special effects. The problem that The Matrix
ended up having is the first one was so good.
It was so hard to make a decent sequel.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
To these movies.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
They even tried it again back in twenty twenty one,
and it wasn't that any of those sequels were inherently bad.
It was almost as if the Matrix should have stood
as a one and done. But obviously having that much
success with the sequel from two thousand and three, making
this list. You're gonna chase that money, You're gonna put
Keanu Reeves.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Back in that leather.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So I respect this franchise for what it did, But
out of every movie on this list, it is probably
my lead's favorite. At number eight from twenty eighteen is
Deadpool two. Out of every movie on this list, I
think this one has no reason to be here. It
kind of snuck in there, and it really rode the
success of Deadpool One, which was so polarizing and one
(16:17):
that wasn't expected to catch on as much as it did.
But this sequel just did not live up to that.
So with that said, I have more respect for the
Matrix reloaded than I do Deadpool two. It is a
fine movie, but easily the weakest now in that trilogy
to date. But at number eight is Deadpool two. At
number seven from twenty seventeen, is it This movie kind
(16:38):
of rattled me. I think that's a little rare coming
out in twenty seventeen. I was twenty six. I was
pretty jaded at this point when it comes to R
rated horror movies, and the original movie was always creepy
to me, and I don't really have a phobia of clowns.
I never found the original one to be that scary,
aside from the scene wherever a Wise would open up
(17:01):
his mouth and you'd see all the teeth and he
would look real demonic. That scene got me a little
bit as a kid. But I feel like Pennywise in
that movie was so just felt like a birthday party
clown and was so comical looking to me for the
most part that I never found it to be that scary.
When it came to twenty seventeen, it, oh my gosh,
(17:24):
they turned it up so much and they were really
able to make him, in my eyes, be the version
he needed to be to be truly terrifying. The third
act in it is one of the best third acts
in any horror movie from the twenty tens. That final showdown,
that final fight where Pennywise goes all out to try
(17:45):
and kill these kids, to try and terrify them and
also in turn.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Terrify you as the viewer.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I remember getting actually heated in my seat, like physically hot,
because my mind couldn't really comprehend all of these insane
images with all the blood, and I thought Bill Skarsgard
did a fantastic job as Penny wise, I'm glad this
movie made it on this list at number seven. At
number six is well before the number one movie. The
(18:15):
latest entry from twenty twenty three is Oppenheimer. I'm still
surprised by how well this movie did.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
I still really enjoyed it. In my eyes.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I still believe it is a five out of five
how I rated it last summer. I really think the
reason this movie was so successful was because of the
Barbenheimer promotion. That wasn't even a real promotion. It was
just that hype of two very different movies coming out
on the same weekend, and people just ended up watching
(18:47):
them both. You'll never experience that again. Because I feel
as good of a movie as Oppenheimer is, it wouldn't
have been successful if it did not come out the same.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Weekend as Barbie.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
It wouldn't because on paper, there is nothing that tells
me that it would have the same effect if it
came out on a different weekend, even a week after,
much less in a different season, which it could have
easily not come out in the summer and come out
in the fall and really leaned into the Oscar season.
But the movie is three hours long, diving into the
(19:23):
life and the mind of a very unorthodox historical figure.
But it was also the fact that I watched this
movie in seventy milimeter Imax, so I was engulfed in
the screen and fully had my attention on every single
frame of this movie. I feel like for the people
who waited and watched it at home, Oh man, I
don't know if the story came across the same way,
(19:44):
because I feel that three hour movies are a lot
easier to do and take in and not be distracted
if you go see them in a theater then if
you see them at home. But now, rounding out the
top five at number five from twenty nineteen is Joker.
It's a masterpiece. Very rarely do I call a movie
a masterpiece, but for the longest time, I love this
(20:05):
movie so much After seeing it in theaters that year,
which twenty nineteen one of the best years in film
of all time and the last great year we've had.
Twenty twenty three got really close there for a second,
but then the writers an actor strike just kind of
took the wind out of its sales. Twenty twenty four
has been a big rebuilding year. I think twenty twenty
(20:27):
five is going to be the only year in recent
history that could rival twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
But for the longest time, after.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Watching Joker in theaters, which I believe was just one
of the best experience I've had watching an R rated
movie in theaters, I never wanted to watch it again.
And it wasn't until recently, maybe twenty twenty one or
even early twenty twenty two, that I watched it again
for the second time, because I didn't want to ruin
that experience. Sometimes there comes a movie where you love
(20:59):
so much, you know if you go back and rewatch it,
you're gonna point out plot holes, You're gonna find things
to critique, and those will be movies that I will
not go back and rewatch. And it's usually the movies
I end up rating a five out of five and
don't want to find those little things that I can
go back and nitpick or think, oh, maybe that wasn't
as good as the first time I saw it. But
(21:19):
Joker was that for a very long time. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
If Joker Too could live up to those expectations.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
They put out the latest trailer in the last two
to three weeks, and I'm hoping that it's not the
exact same thing as part one, which is always hard
when you make a sequel. You want to give people
what they loved about the first one, but also give
them something that they had no idea they wanted, and
that is the kiss of death when it comes to
(21:48):
making a sequel to as beloved a movie like Joker.
Although I feel like you have to be in a
certain headspace to watch this movie, it's also a movie.
I don't think it's for everyone. Before those people who
like R rated movies that are in the comic book world,
I think it's perfection. So how can Joker two still
(22:09):
appease those fans while also giving them something different and
not alienating other people from.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Watching this movie?
Speaker 1 (22:16):
The really tough thing to do, but I think Todd Phillips,
Joaquin Phoenix, and Lady Gaga can pull it off. Still
super excited for Joker two, but Joker one comes in
at number five at number four from twenty fourteen American Sniper.
Out of all the films on this list, this one
is the most surprising, and when looking at all the
different genres in this top ten, you have superhero movies,
(22:38):
you have horror movies, you have bio picks, you have
horror movies again, comedy in there, but this is the
only war and action movie the real life story of
US Navy Seal Chris Kyle played by Bradley Cooper. And
the reason I love this movie is not only did
it show the dark and off full side of war,
(23:01):
it also focused on the PTSD of war and when
soldiers go fight for our country and then come back
home and are expected just to click back into society.
And this was the first time I saw it depicted
in a way that it really registered with me. How
somebody can go overseas and do something that's just so
(23:24):
beyond what I can comprehend, and you imagine the toll
it takes on your brain, on your body, seeing some
of the most awful things you could see as a
human being, and come back and know that people appreciate
what you did, which I'll just say, shout out to
our military. And even though US as civilians can sing
you our praises, we just can't comprehend it because we
(23:46):
didn't go through it. And in this movie showing his character,
showing Chris Kyle having to come back and adjust the
family life. Oh, the scene with him and his daughter
like just him holding her in her arms, and you
hear it in his head that he hears all this
war going on. That is a scene that really sets
in with me that you're expected to go to war
(24:06):
and come back and just have a normal life where
you're just going to the grocery store and taking away
all those awful images from your head. So I love
that the movie shine light on that. And it also
had one of the most intense scenes where you could
hear Bradley Cooper's heartbeat, and I just remember the entire
theater being so silent in that moment where you could
(24:27):
just hear the popcorn hitting the floor. So I was
pleasantly surprised to see American Sniper at number four. Moving
on to the top three at number three is twenty
sixteen's Deadpool, an unexpected hit from a.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Mid comic book character.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Deadpool was by no means one of the best Marvel offerings,
but that is kind of the history of the success
of Marvel. After so early on they sold off all
the movie rights to their best characters and had to
do what really no other studio could do and build
an entire billion dollar company off of their lesser known characters.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
So I'll take all the bad.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Marvel movies we got in the early and mid two thousands,
because all of those gave birth to what is known
now as our MCU. But then rounding out the top
two at number two is The Passion of the Christ
from two thousand and four. If you missed the episode
where I talked about where I watched this movie for
the first time, I'll take you back to two thousand
and four Janajuato, Mexico. We had just bought I think
(25:33):
I got it for Christmas. Was our first ever portable
DVD player that we all used as a family, and
it wasn't a nice one. We got it from Walmart.
It was probably like fifty bucks, so very bottom of
the line portable DVD player. The battery life was terrible.
I had to keep it on the chargers of the
entire time. But we went to Mexico for Christmas in
(25:55):
two thousand and four, went to a Mexican flea market
and bought a bunch of bootleg DVDs. And bootleg DVDs
in the two thousands were not straight video rips. It
was somebody going into a theater and filming the entire
movie on a handheld video camera and that is how
I watched Passionate the Christ on a bootleg DVD. My
(26:16):
mom had a moral dilemma with it, so eventually we
ended up watching it on normal DVD.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
But she still struggles with.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
This movie because it is hard for her to see
the story just unfold in an R rated fashion, and
that was with even her knowing what was coming, because
she read the book before watching this movie, which I
think most people did right the Bible. At number one
is Deadpool and Wolverine now taking that number one spot.
If you missed it last week here on the feed,
(26:44):
I put up my spoiler. Yes, the version of the
review with all the spoilers talked about my favorite cameos.
I feel like I've mentioned and talked about my feelings
of Deadpool and Wolverine enough. But if you missed that, also,
if you miss the entire breakdown I did of Robert
Downey Junior coming back to the MCU as Doctor Doom,
(27:05):
all those episodes are on the feed as well. So
that is the List'll come back and give my review
of d D and in the trailer part, we'll talk
about the new Bob Dylan biopic with Timothy Chalomey.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Let's get into It Now. A spoiler free movie review
of Dedi.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
It is a coming of age story of a thirteen
year old and his last summer before starting high school.
Dedy is a movie for anybody who has ever been
a teenager, simple as that. I love coming of age movies,
and there's a very delicate line you need to walk
to tell a story about a thirteen year old. We've
all been there, we've all been teenagers. We know what
the experience is like. You're very angsty, you want to
(27:45):
lash out against your parents, You're navigating all these feelings, relationships,
all these things you're experiencing for the first time. For
me is getting a lot of hair, starting to smell weird,
all those things that go along with being thirteen years old.
The line you have to walk while making a movie
about this is do you want to make it appeal
to thirteen year olds or do you want to make
(28:07):
it appeal to the adult to look back and remember
on what it's like being thirteen. In the case of Diti,
it is making that experience feel very adult, taking everything
into consideration of what you experienced to that time and
validating it, not making it feel less than just very
much giving an adult perspective on what it was like
(28:28):
being thirteen. Because if you think back on that time,
you in your head when you were thirteen saw things
as I'm now older, this is affecting me. Nobody understands me.
You felt in that moment that you were an adult.
You look back later when you're eighteen, twenty, whatever, thirty,
and you think, oh, I was just a dumb kid,
But in that moment, you believe like this is your
(28:50):
whole world. Nobody understands you, your parents don't get you.
So I really love that perspective from this thirteen year
old who isn't a bad kid, but he's not the
best kid. He'd gets into some trouble. And I very
much identified with DEDI in this movie. Oh, because there
were so many aspects of this movie. The very first
(29:11):
thing I want to talk about is I love that
this movie was set in two thousand and eight. I've
talked about on this podcast how I feel my best
year was two thousand and nine, and I would say
my best school year was my senior year, which was
eight to nine. And the reason that is it's because
that was a time in my life where I had
(29:32):
the least amount of responsibility and the most freedom. Senior year,
I could drive. My classes in high school were very
laid back. In my senior year, I had like half days,
so I was looking ahead to college, but I knew
this was the time in my life that I was
just gonna enjoy it, go do things with my friends,
(29:55):
not take things so seriously, because I knew once college started,
then okay, to get to work. Then it's time for
me to start thinking about my future more. Not that
I wasn't thinking about it in high school, but I
allowed myself to be fully engaged in those summer activities,
and that, I believe was that last time I felt
alive in some aspects. And you know, my life is
(30:16):
good now. I just that is a time that I
feel was just so great. And obviously I'm biased because
the mid to late two thousands is where I experienced
a lot of things, But I think that was the
best decade to grow up in and be young, and
d D is a great example of that. It took
me back to things I haven't thought about in ten years,
(30:38):
the MySpace era, which in this movie, DD is friending
people on MySpace, looking up their profiles, At the very
start of the movie, there is a girl he has
a crush on. He goes through MySpace page to learn
things about her. He finds her profile song, which is
a hello goodbye song, takes that song and makes it
his phone ring tone, which that even brought back memories
(30:58):
of how important it was to me to pick the
right ring tone. For me, it was probably like Alkaline Trio,
maybe ransid Newfound Glory, and that was a thing. Callback
tones were a thing. And I also think that was
the best time to be a teenager because for millennials,
we got to experience the early stages of the Internet
(31:20):
where nothing was really that serious. Yet we were still
navigating social media. I had a Zanga page, I had MySpace,
I had Facebook, but at that time, nobody took it
that seriously.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
There weren't influencers and it was kind of.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
The wild West on what went into creating your page
and just friending people. We had a top eight which
were so brutal and was something also shown in this
movie of how you would rank your friends, and I
remember the ultimate thing for me growing up was like
making my crushes top eight and I was like, how
did I get in there?
Speaker 2 (31:53):
What did I do.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
My life is going to change forever because I made
it in their top eight, But it was a brutal thing,
and a lot of what happens in DD has to
do with the technology at that time, very early filmmaking,
because he starts filming with these skateboarders, so it's very
much the introduction of the Internet. But it was almost
like we were all putting on a front at that
(32:16):
time to create these awesome social media profiles via Facebook
and MySpace, which I guess we all kind of do
that now, but I just remembered how important that was
as a teenager to be friends with your crush on
Facebook or MySpace, and just all the politics that went
into that. So I very much felt nostalogic connecting to
DD's story. The other thing that really struck me just
(32:39):
on a personal level, even more so than the MySpace
and the music during that time, which I would say
was my Space core, but also very much Warped Tour core,
where my entire summer was based around how good of
experience I was going to have at warp Tour. But
the soundtrack just kind of mirrored that and was very
(33:00):
much a reflection of two thousand and eight and two
thousand and nine. But the family aspect in this movie
because Dedi is a first generation American. He is from
a Taiwanese family, and he lives with his mom and
his grandma, who is very traditional. They take schoolwork very
seriously because if you don't do good in school, you
(33:22):
won't get into a good college. If you don't get
into a good college, you won't get a good job.
If you don't get a good job, you won't find
a good partner. And a lot of those pressures that
not only his mom and his grandma put on him
in this movie are what he's kind of rebelling against.
And I got that a little bit in my family,
(33:43):
because my parents did want me to go to college,
being a first generation American myself, and it wasn't so
much that there was this pressure that they could show
me off to like my family, which was a thing
in this movie. They wanted to impress their aunts, their uncles,
everybody else in their family. It was just wanted me
to have a better life than they did. So I
(34:04):
identified more with the relationship he had with his mom,
who his dad in this movie really isn't in the picture.
He is working back in their native country to try
to make money to send back to them so they
can live their life. But it was this unique relationship
he had with his mom who was just trying to
do her best, trying to raise her two kids and
(34:25):
feeling like she failed. And it reminded me of a
conversation I had with my mom fairly recently where she
felt bad for what kind of mom she was growing
up to us. And my mom did it finish. I
don't even think she finished elementary school, never made it
to middle school. She came to the United States as
(34:48):
a teenager and did a lot of things just to
make ends meet. One of those beings, she got a
job when I started, probably first or second grade, at
Taco Bell and she's been there ever since. And she
told me she felt like she failed as a mom
because she couldn't provide more for us, because she felt like,
I'm just somebody working at Taco Bell and hearing my
(35:11):
mom have these really human experiences kind of feeling the
way that I feel at times, feeling I failed them.
I never really heard my mom speak in that way
where I always just saw her as my mom, person
who did everything for us. She was kind of like
a superhero in my eyes, and realizing that she was
probably the age I am now at that time when
(35:33):
I was, you know, starting school and she went to
go do that job that I just thought, man like,
we're just humans. We're just trying to survive. And even
somebody like your parents, who you think have it all
figured out, they don't.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
So it made me feel a.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Little bit better about where I am in life, thinking
that my mom didn't know that she was making the
right choice or not. Back when you know, my oldest
brother and older sister were already you.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Know, on the path that they were on.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
They were all good, but still making sure that I
had what I needed to survive. And I think she
feels bad about sometimes the way we grew up that
we didn't have a whole lot, and I never really
saw it as like, oh man, it sucked being poor.
At the time, I feel like not having a lot
growing up, you know, it made me appreciate more of
what I have.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
And it was.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Watching d D that brought all those kind of emotions
up of what it's like to have parents who immigrate
from another country and come here without a whole lot,
trying to keep your heritage alive, but also adapt to
American society, which is what Dedi is trying to do
in this movie, and it's so hard.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Even his name.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
His family calls him Dedi, but to everybody else at school,
he goes by Chris or another nickname. That was kind
of what I experienced too growing up, because Mike's not
my real name and I never really used my full
lead name in school, just because I kind of wanted
to blend in a little bit more. Also, how deed
he did of the music he's into. He's into the
(37:10):
skateboard culture, which was also what I was into growing up,
and being Mexican, people assume that I wouldn't be into that.
So there's a line in this movie that I won't
ruin because it kind of hit me right in the cut,
and I'll let you experience it. But it was a
reference to his race in a moment where he thought
(37:31):
he was just being a peer, maybe a love interest,
that he was almost reduced to nothing because they pinpointed
what he was based on his race. And I felt
that because sometimes people have told me, hey, you're not
really Mexican, You're kind of white, and I don't even
know what that means just because I have sometimes nerdier tendencies,
(37:54):
sometimes because I lean towards liking punk rock and things
that aren't traditionally Mexican. What is even tradition Mexican. I
always was into what I was into. I don't feel
like I based it around my race. It was just
what I was exposed to and what I liked. But
I was viewed as being different because I wasn't into
traditional things that a person of my race should be into.
(38:17):
So there were just a lot of parallels between how
I felt I grew up, the past I had to navigate,
and what deed had to felt growing up, which I
feel was good for me to see to know that
it you know, it is kind of you. There are
things that are unique to growing up Mexican American, but
I feel like there are a lot of just parallels
with anybody who immigrates from another country to the United States.
(38:41):
So it was cool seeing that I could identify with
somebody else from a different country and know that we
kind of went through those same things. So if you
are like that too, this is definitely a movie you
have to see, especially if you grew up in the
mid to late two thousands, because it's going to feel
like a huge nostalgia trip. They also use AOL a
(39:01):
lot in this movie, which I hadn't thought about in
a really long time. Just those sounds of like sending messages,
adding people, blocking people, sending an away message.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
That brought back a lot of memories.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
I remember the first time I got an AOL account,
I was Alkaline Punk thirteen. Because my favorite band growing
up was Alkaline Trio. I was like, yeah, let's throw
punkin there. Cool number thirteen. I just remember getting on
their messaging people. How much of a thrill that was.
I could crush hours on a dial up connection on AOL.
(39:34):
That was very much a very two thousand and eight experience.
This movie is right under ninety minutes, so if you're
somebody who likes a shorter movie, this is perfect for you.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
At the very start of.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
This movie, I thought it was just gonna be kind
of a coming of age story that I'd already seen before.
But once you really get into it, you start seeing
the dynamic he has with his sister, with his family,
and the fact that a lot happens to DDI in
this life last summer before high school. By that third act,
you are all in invested emotionally and you want to
(40:08):
see more of his story, And by the time it
was over, I was like, oh man, I gotta know
what happens in high school. So this movie only gets
better as it goes along. I easily give it four
out of five friend requests. I think if I put
in my bias of being a first generation Mexican American
and identifying with what DD goes through, I'd probably put
(40:30):
in a point five bias, But I feel good at
giving it a four out of five. That is a
strong four out of five, And I would also put
this in my top five coming of age movies in
the last ten years.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Really enjoyed this movie.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
I think it's going to be a movie that I
keep revisiting, especially once it hits streaming. So if you're
looking for some coming of age movies, definitely check out DD.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
It's time to head down to movie Mike Traylor Paul him.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
At the challow May trying to win his first oscar.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
After watching the trailer to the New Bob Dylan Biopick
called a complete unknown.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
That is how I'm feeling.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
There are a lot of recipes on not recipes, a
lot of ingredients to this recipe inside of this trailer
that are all the makings of what I believe is
what we.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Would call Oscar bait. And it's all right.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Rommi Mallick did it back in twenty nineteen, playing Freddie
Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody got his first Academy Award. Timothy
Shallo mag still a young actor, but I feel the
reason you take on a role like this with a
movie coming out in December, with a director who also.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Did walk the line Ford V.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Ferrari, very familiar with the biopic genre, that to me
is saying that Timothy shallow May wants to win an
Oscar and while watching this trailer, I don't feel it
so far.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
All the statistics that go along with this movie, cast
of characters, the director, those make me think this is
going for being nominated for Best Picture, him being nominated
for Best Actor. But just by the look of it, ooh,
I'm not buying into it just yet, because when he
is in the sunglasses on a stage with the guitar
and the clode, you could convince me that it looks
(42:17):
like Bob Dylan. However, in the moments in this trailer
when he's not wearing sunglasses, I can't help but see
Willy Wanka in there, which leads me to believe that
it is so important what roles actors take on when
because really, for me, even more so than Dune Part two,
I'm starting to associate him with Willy Wonka, which he
did very well also singing that movie. In this biopic,
(42:41):
it is him singing these Bob Dylan songs. I'm sure
he worked with a vocal coach, and I don't think
it's that big of a stretch for him because he
grew up in musical theater. You can go watch videos
of him on YouTube. Belting is little hard out singing
these songs, so it's not unusual for an actor at
this level to take on the actual singing. I'm sure
probably like they did with Bohemian Rhapsody, they bring somebody
(43:04):
in to patch things in. So maybe it's not him
one hundred percent of the time, maybe eighty percent of
the time. So I feel like for those reasons, you
have all the ingredients here of somebody baking up a
cake to win a Best Oscar, not even just to
get nominated. I think he is trying to win and
I will call it just by after watching this trailer
(43:24):
that he will get a nomination. I won't say anything
until I actually see the movie, but I don't have
any reason to deny that this movie is going to
be not good.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Just with my.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Experience with biopics, I always feel like they are a
little bit rushed. I don't love it when they come
out when the person being portrayed is still alive, because
I feel that that person could have a lot of
influence on the movie. I don't think that is the
case here. It was the case with the Queen movie.
Although Freddie Mercury wasn't alive, the guys from the band
(44:00):
was still alive and they were trying to have so
much input in that movie. Sasha Bara Cohen, who was Borat,
was initially supposed to play Freddy Mercury, and he dropped
out because the band wanted him to die halfway through
the movie, and the rest of that film to be
about how they recovered after the loss of Freddy Mercury
would have been a terrible movie. So oftentimes you have
(44:20):
the estate or maybe a daughter some relative kind of
calling some of the shots on how they depict the story.
That is why I don't like it when the person
is still alive for that reason, and I also just
believe it is so hard to take somebody's entire life
story who is so impactful on a genre, on a movement,
(44:42):
which is especially what Bob Dylan was with the protest
songs in the sixties, and put it all into a
two to two and a half hour movie.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
It is really tough to do.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
So I feel like the task is so hard to
be taken on that you're setting yourself up for disaster,
for disappointment. For me, just not enjoying it. Not that
I don't like music. I'm a huge fan of everybody
loves music. Saying you don't like music is like saying
you don't like to breathe. Music in movies, for the
most part, go hand in hand. But I just don't
(45:12):
go into a biopic thinking, ah, this is gonna be
the one where they truly get it. But before I
get into more of my thoughts, we'll look at the
impressive filmography of the director, James Mangold. This movie doesn't
have an official release date yet, it's just coming out
in December. I would assume maybe they queue it up
a little bit before the Christmas run, because we have
(45:33):
some heavy hitters coming out in December, so maybe that's
when they decide to put out this movie right in
time for Oscar season. But here's just a little bit
of the trailer of a Complete Unknown.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I want to tell you a little story.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
A few months back, my friend Woody Guthrie and I
we met a young man. He dropped in on us
out of nowhere, and he played us a song. In
that moment, we got a feeling. We were definite a glimpse.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
So the future. That's all I got so far. Good start.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
So the movie is set in New York nineteen sixties.
You have a nineteen year old Bob Dylan from Minnesota.
He arrives in the West Village. Looks like he is discovered.
In that trailer, you heard the one and only Edward Norton,
who is a great actor. He is playing fellow folk
singer Pete Seeger. You also have El Fanning in this
(46:26):
movie playing Sylvia Russo, who was inspired by Bob Dylan's
real life ex girlfriend, Susie Rotolo. If you are familiar
with this album The Free Wheeland, which has a very
iconic cover, she is the one featured in that picture.
You also have Boyd Holbrook, who I just saw in
The Bike Riders playing Johnny Cash, so pretty decent cast here.
(46:46):
I would say Timothy Shallow may probably getting paid the
majority of the money. He is in that place of
his career where he can take on any role, and
I have to imagine this is a pretty iconic role
for him as as if this movie is successful, this
could be a movie that people associate with him throughout
(47:07):
the rest of his career, because for me, I keep
thinking of him as Willy Wonka, as I was mentioning earlier.
I still don't feel like the Dune franchise has really
attached itself to him. I think it's just hard for
me to differentiate the goofy guy that he is on
SNEL and also see him as this very serious actor,
(47:27):
even though that's really where he got to start early on.
But I think it's once you start taking on those
big blockbusters that more and more people are seeing. Those
are the ones that people are really going to start
associating you with. So this movie is successful, if he
gets nominated or if he ends up winning for Best Actor,
this could be a real career defining movie.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
For him.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
The movie is directed by James Mangold, who most recent
film includes Indiana Jones and The Dialogue Destiny, which I
actually believe was a pretty good movie that the box
office did a little dirty, primarily because nobody really asked
for the continuation and the finale of Indiana Jones. But
if you have Disney Plus and haven't seen it yet
(48:09):
looking for something to watch over a weekend, and you're
a fan of Harrison Ford and maybe you'll like the
early on Indiana Jones movies. I still think it is
a fun time. It just came out at a really
weird kind of cross pass between a lot of good
summer movies. Last year, James Mangold also did Four to
Be Ferrari, fantastic movie, but I mean anything with Matt
(48:29):
Damon and Christian Vale is going to be great. My
favorite credit of his is he directed Logan with Hugh Jackman,
what I believe is a top five comic book movie
of all time. He also did The Wolverine and before
that did Walk the Line, one of the best music
bio picks of all time, easily top three for me,
(48:52):
and I think if it wasn't for the fact that
at Mexican and La Bamba and Selina will always outrank
everything on my list. It would probably be number one,
but it would go La Bamba Selena and then Walk
the Line because I love that movie so much. And
if you look at a movie like Walk the Line
with Joaquin Phoenix, who also did a lot of the
(49:12):
singing in that movie, and see how well James Mangole
told Johnny Cash's story in that, I think if he
can take that same formula and adapt it to Bob
Dylan's life, then this is going to be a home
run hit. The thing is, I don't really know a
whole lot about all of the hardships and just career
(49:33):
ups and downs that Bob Dylan went through. When you
look at Johnny Cash and Walk the Line, dude had
a lot of demons starting out from his childhood, his
battle with drugs, leaven his wife, all the pills, the
music playing in prisons. There are so many just polarizing
things about Johnny Cash's career. After watching a complete Unknowns trailer,
(49:58):
I don't know what the means of this story is
going to be. So I'm wondering what the meat of
this story is going to be. By the description of
the movie, it says it'll focus on his early rise
to fame, his infamous performance at the Newport Folk Festival,
and the aftermath of that. But it is based on
the twenty fifteen book Dylan Goes Electric, which is about
(50:19):
the controversy surrounding the switch to electrically amplified instrumentation by
Bob Dylan. If I had to list my top three
Bob Dylan songs of all time, you might want to
get out the basic B meter because I'm not too
familiar with his music. I honestly know it primarily from
watching movies. I can tell anytime it is his voice
(50:40):
on a movie soundtrack. I was also in high school
in an indie band where I played drums and my
friend and lead singer and songwriter in that band, we
were called Lynn Haven. We were mildly popular in high school.
But he was so almost like a Bob Dylan Stan
heavy inspiration on his Songwride, his singing style, he had
(51:01):
the harmonica and everything, so from him. I was exposed
to some of Bob Dylan's music, but it really hasn't
been until I think it was I was rewatching The
Watchmen and I heard a Bob Dylan song in that
that maybe want to go listen to some of his music.
This was just a few months ago, So my top
three Bob Dylan songs would be at number three, blowing
in the Wind. I know these are also basically his
(51:23):
biggest hits that he's ever had. At number two would
be Like a Rolling Stone, and at number one would
be The Times They are a change in which if
you go watch The Watchman, which is Zack Snyder's best
movie and the only reason he really continues to make
movies is because everybody remembers The Watchmen in probably three
hundred but at the start of that movie, in the
opening credits, they're showing all of this protest footage and
(51:46):
how the Watchmen superheroes were connected to that, and they
were playing that song over the top of it, and
I thought that was a really great use of music
and opening credits, something that doesn't really happen a whole
lot anymore. So I think his music is just associated
with that kind of imagery, maybe even been overused just
a little bit. So again I'm hesitant about this because
(52:09):
biopics have never been my favorite. It is hard for
me to see Timothy Chalomey and a more serious role
right now, and that's probably unfair, but I still like
him as an actor, I like him as a person,
and I'm a pretty big fan of James Mangold again.
That movie is coming out this December.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Jeez.
Speaker 4 (52:28):
And that was this week's edition of movie Line Tramer
Bar and.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
That is gonna do it for another episode here of
the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my
listener shout out of the week. How do you get
a listener shout out of the week? Well, all you
have to do is comment on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook x Instagram.
Let me know how you felt about that week's episode.
You can send me a suggestion of a topic you
(52:54):
think I should cover, a movie you think I should watch.
And if you listen on Monday, which is released, a
post a little screenshot, maybe take a picture of your
car radio of you listening to that week's episode, Tag
me in it. I'll repost you on my Instagram story
and then give you a shout out the following week.
But for this week's listener shout out, we're going over
(53:15):
to Facebook and it goes to Ashley B who wrote
Kelsey the Simpsons is the absolute worst ride from motion sickness.
I'm sure you know now lol. So thank you, actually
B for validating Kelsey and what we were talking about
last week of how I drug her to California to
get on the Simpsons ride even though she didn't want to,
(53:36):
and it was in that moment and also us taking
a picture with Bart and Lisa at least two people
dressed as Bart Lisa in big costumes that.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
I realized, Oh, this girl is the one.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
She's down for Simpsons, which is one of my favorite
shows of all time. That means she can now enter
my life and I knew she was the one. So
thank you, actually B for that comment. For listening to
last week's episode, Thank you right now listening in your car,
listening in your earbuds wherever this episode may find you.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Thank you for being subscribed, Thank you
Speaker 1 (54:06):
For telling a friend, And until next time, go out
and watch good movies and I will talk to you
later
Host
Mike D
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