October 21, 2024 • 46 mins
Mike discusses Ranker’s List of the Top 10 Final Girls of all-time. If you're a fan of horror movies, then you know all about the final girl. She's the woman who survives the killer, and usually kills him or her. Mike weighs in on who should and shouldn’t be on the list and what movies are worth seeing if you haven’t. In the Movie Review, Mike gives his thoughts on Smile 2. He answers the questions he had going into it: Did it improve on the original, was it all about the jump scares and were his trailer predictions right? In the Trailer Park, Mike talks about Nicole Kidman’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” from A24. She plays a business executive who has an affair with a young intern, played by Harris Dickinson.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike, and today I want to
share with you a list of the top ten final
girls in horror movies. Even if you don't know exactly
what a final girl is, I'll explain that run through
the list. I'll give you my picks on who should
have made this list, because there are a couple on
there that I thought, how could they not include these
(00:20):
two people? In the movie review, we'll keep that theme
alive and talk about Smile too. Did it improve upon
the first one? Because I left that first one thing
and ah, that wasn't it. But the trailer for this one,
all the hype around this one was similar. Can they
cash in on that momentum? And in the trailer park
there's a new erotic thriller from Nicole Kidman. She loves
(00:41):
doing erotic thrillers. It's called Baby Girl. We'll talk about that.
Thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed.
Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now
let's talk movies.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners before
in a movie podcast a man with so much movie
knowledge he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses. From
the Nashville podcast Network. This is Movie Mike Movie Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you're a fan of horror like I am, you
already know what the final girl is in a movie,
but if you're not too familiar with it, the final
girl is the woman at the very end who survives
with the killer. She kills him or her in some way.
Sometimes the killer is male, sometimes the killer is female.
The final girl is usually portrayed as somebody who is resourceful, resilient, morally, uptight,
(01:40):
smarter than Oliver appears in this movie because she knows
how to survive. Whenever I think about the final Girl,
it takes me back to the first screen movie in
nineteen ninety six, which obviously some characters from Scream are
going to make this list, But whenever Jamie Kennedy's character
is giving the rules of surviving a horror movie, this
is exactly what I think about.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
There are certain rules that one must abide by in
order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one,
you can never have sex sex even seth okay. Number two,
you can never drink or do drug sin. It's an
extension of number one and number three. Never ever, ever,
under any circumstances say I'll be right back because you
(02:22):
won't be back.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I'm getting another beer. You want one?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, sure, I'll be right back. So the final girl
in any horror movie, I feel like those rules kind
of laid out the blueprint. Even though that movie came
out in nineteen ninety six and there have been final
girls way before that movie came out. I always reference
back that clip to think of what do you need
to do in order to survive a serial killer in
(02:46):
a horror movie. So let's get into this list again.
This is from rinker dot com, so a lot of
people on the internet voted on this list. At number ten,
they have Sally from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre played by
Marilyn Burns nineteen seven twenty four. If you want to
watch The Chainsaw Massacre now, the original one, it's on
Peacock or it's on tub. I have to say I
(03:07):
have become an adopter of tub. It is free. You
do have to watch a significant amount of commercials, but
it's really no different than if you were watching a
movie on TV on cable. Back in the day really
has that same kind of viewing experience. And the great
thing about to B now is before, if you didn't
have an account, you couldn't start a movie back where
(03:30):
you left off if it started from the very beginning,
so you'd have to find your place where you left
off and start the movie again. But now all you
have to do is sign in. The account is free.
I think somebody bought out to be so you can
go and watch all these movies that not all of
them are the best, but look, they have the text
a chainsaw massacre. To me, tob is the streaming equivalent
(03:50):
of the dollar bargain bin at Walmart, which had some
great fines. You had to dig in that thing to
find them. But I remember going to Walmart a lot
and finding some really good d and there are some
great movies. So I don't say that as a slight
to all the content on tub, but if you spend
enough time on it, you can find some gems in there,
and you can watch it for free. In the world
(04:11):
of today, where everything is so expensive, you take what
you can get for free. But this is a fantastic
example of a final girl in a movie. Sally ran
for her life. In this movie, she jumped through two windows.
She went through it in order to survive leather Face,
and what I'm about to say, I don't want to
discredit her journey. How important the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is
(04:36):
to horror, how important leather Face is. It is one
of my favorite movies. It combined all the great things
back in the seventies where it walked that line of
people believing did this actually happen? Is it all made up?
Because I grew up thinking that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre
actually happened in my home state. Even though it's just
loosely based on a serial killer. There's no real leather Face.
(04:58):
But if you have that mis that aura surrounding your film,
it's gonna have a bigger impact once people go see
that in theaters, much like the Blair Witch Project had
success in the nineties of people thinking was this or
was this not real? Even though that whole thing was
entirely fake. That is the beauty of horror. So it
is an important film has one of my favorite final
(05:19):
scenes ever of Leatherface in that sunset, wielding that chainsaw
around It is a beautiful movie. If I go back
and rewatch a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. It is the
one from two thousand and three with Jessica Biel. That
is my Texas Chainsaw Massacre that I grew up with.
Does it have those same qualities like the warmth of
(05:42):
the film. Is it as iconic?
Speaker 4 (05:44):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
But to me, that is one of the first movies
in horror that solidified me as a horror fan as
I was growing up. Watched that movie, I was probably
twelve years old, and at that time I had already
been exposed to all the Halloween movies, all the Chucky movies.
Those movies had already given me nightmares. But it wasn't
until this version of this movie that I had nightmares again.
(06:05):
And I think Jessica Bile is just great in horror.
She's dipped her toes into it in her acting career.
But I wish you would go back and do another
Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. So again, the pick here on
the list is Sally from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre
played by Marilyn Burns. But I'm gonna throw in Jessica
Biel as an honorable mention because I would have put
(06:26):
her in my top ten at number nine is Heather
lang in Camp as herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare,
which came out in nineteen ninety four. If you want
to watch this movie, you have to have slang, which
I don't know anybody who has sling, so you probably
don't have sling, but maybe you do. If not, you
can rent it for three ninety nine wherever you rent
your movies. I feel like Wes Craven's A New Nightmare
(06:49):
was entirely ahead of its time coming out in nineteen
ninety four. It is a pretty meta Freddy Krueger movie
that I did not understand growing up. It is Freddy
Krueger coming into the real world and haunting the real
cast and crew of all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies,
so all of those actors play themselves. I remember watching
(07:11):
this movie as a kid and thinking it was a documentary.
I didn't really get it, and for that reason, I
didn't really enjoy this movie. This is one on the
list that I need to revisit and see if it
holds up. And I feel like now in the twenty twenties,
we are getting more into that meta horror era. With
the last two screen movies really digging into that. But
(07:33):
the first screen movie did that with the clip I
played earlier, they were inside a horror movie talking about
how to survive a horror movie. So I think Wes Craven,
who directed, of course, This New Nightmare in ninety four,
went on to direct Scream. I feel like this was
him kind of dipping his toes in can audiences handle
something this meta? So he drove it more into the
(07:56):
ideology of Scream really being at the forefront of that.
Fran and I think as a whole, the mind of
Wes Craven was so innovated. I love how a lot
of his movies were rooted in practical effects. So I
think that's why a lot of his movies have stood
the test of time over the years. Rip to Wes Craven.
I can respect this at number nine, but I don't
(08:17):
think this version of Nancy and it's not really Nancy
heather Lingencamp in this movie. I don't think I would
have put her in my top ten, but I respect
to pick here from ranker. At number eight is Aaron
Hansen from the movie Your Next played by Sharnie Vinson,
came out in twenty eleven. If you want to watch
Your Next now it is on Netflix. This is an
(08:39):
underrated horror film, so I love it coming in at
number eight. The reason I feel that most people didn't
give Your Next a chance, didn't really have great marketing
when it came out back in twenty eleven, and also
I feel like that's a bad title. Your Next feels
so generic and so empty and doesn't really say anything
(08:59):
about out what makes this movie awesome, what it's about.
It's kind of like The Strangers meets the Purge. Aaron
Hansen is the character here, and all she wants to
do is go out hang out with their boyfriend's family.
They're having a family reunion, and then this group of
mass murderers decide that they want to pick off each
(09:19):
of the family members one by one. I think it's
a great pick because overall of the movie is awesome.
The character Aaron has a fantastic backstory that you learn
about as all these crazy things unfold. If you are
somebody who likes horror movies where the action in it
can actually happen, because you're not really dealing with supernatural events,
You're just dealing with psychos, these crazy killers that have
(09:43):
this fascination with taking people in a very vulnerable state
and exposing them and trying to murder them so that
freaks you out. It will make you never want to
go to any remote house ever again. But the character
of Aaron is very triumphant in this movie, so I
love that. One Umber eight at number seven is the
character Mattie Young from a movie called Hush, played by
(10:05):
Kate Siegel. Came out in twenty sixteen. If you want
to watch Hush, it is on AMC Plus again, another
service that I don't know anybody who has AMC Plus
unless maybe you have cable. You have AMC and they
give you AMC Plus. I've never even seen the app
on my TV. But you can also rent the movie
wherever you rent movies. For the longest time after this
(10:27):
movie came out in twenty sixteen, this was my go
to horror recommendation to anybody looking for something that they
haven't seen before. What Hush is about is the character
Mattie is a deaf, mute woman who gets targeted by
this mass killer. Now, the mass killer in this movie
has a very generic look. It is just this blank,
hockey mass looking thing, kind of like Phantom of the Opera,
(10:51):
kind of like Jason, except it's not really a hockey mask.
There aren't any holes in it or anything. It's just
like this plain, glowy white mask and they wear a hoodie.
So it's creepy enough because there is an absence of
any kind of emotion, much like Michael Myers. But I
wouldn't really look at the character and instantly associate it
with the Hush movie. But she goes out to this
(11:13):
remote house in the woods. Again, why do all these
final girls go out into these houses where there aren't
anybody around? That alone sounds like a nightmare to me.
Also because I bet the Wi fi isn't really great
out in the woods. But you go outside, it's pitch black,
you can barely see your hand in front of your face,
you hear animals in the entire time I would be
(11:34):
out at a remote house like this, I was thinking,
there's somebody coming around the corner and they're gonna kill me.
Nothing ever good happens in a horror movie in a
remote wooded area. But I love this pick here because
Maddie is a final girl unlike any other, because she
is deaf and mute. She has to find really strategic
(11:54):
ways to fight off her killer because she can't hear
him coming inside the house. She can't even hear he's
right behind her. She can sense it, and of course
some of her other senses are probably heightened, but she
is so smart and so resourceful. And this movie really
doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it
is a very solid horror movie that if you haven't
(12:16):
seen it, I do recommend it unless you have any
vacations or trips planned to a remote cabin somewhere. Otherwise,
don't watch this movie or maybe any other movie on
this list. At number six is Gail Weathers from Scream,
played by Courtney Cox. This movie came out in nineteen
ninety six. If you want to watch Scream the original,
it is available on Max. Max actually has a really
(12:39):
great selection of horror movies right now, the classics. If
I want a classic horror movie, I'm probably going over
to Max. First second, I would probably go over to Hulu.
They're doing Hulu. Weeen over there have some good more
recent movies, but I think if you want the classics
like Scream, the Nightmare on ELM Street movies, those are
all right there on Max. I don't really love Gail
(13:03):
Weathers at number six, at least not Gail Weathers in Scream.
Maybe in the later Scream movies. I feel like Courtney
Cox really came into her own later in the franchise,
But I would have to say I was probably more
of a fan of her parody character in Scary Movie
Gail Hailstorm. Can I put Gail Hailstorm in as an
(13:23):
honorable mention at number six? They're much better final girls
you could have put in that number six slot, but
that's what they have here. At number five is Nancy
from a Nightmare on Elm Street played by Heather Lincoln.
Camp came out in nineteen eighty four. If you want
to watch the original Nightmare on Elm Street, it is
available on Max. Like I've been talking about, I rewatched
it before the interview a couple of weeks ago. In
(13:45):
this movie still holds up. I think what gets overlooked
From a Nightmare on Elm Street is the fact that
Nancy was the original Kevin McAllister from Home Alone. The
way that she defeats Freddie is very innovative. She finds
a way to take him out of the dream world
and bring him into the real world where he can
(14:05):
be defeated, where he is vulnerable, and then she uses
booby traps around the house to take him out, very
much like Kevin McAllister did with the Wet Bandits and
Home Alone with the paint can coming and hitting them
in the head, the door knob and the flamethrower catching
his head on fire. A Nightmare on Elm Street could
have easily turned into the Three Stooges or Home Alone
(14:28):
Before It's Time again Wes Craven being ahead of his
time with the booby traps to take out the killer.
But Nancy is a very underappreciated female character. Really, when
I think about the strongest females in film, you have
to go to the horror genre. That is where the
best and strongest characters are written. It's the entire reason
(14:50):
that there is the term the final Girl, because they
have to do something that is smarter and proved. They
are more capable than anybody else in the movie as
long as they follow those three rules to survive a
horror movie. At number four is Grace from Ready or Not.
This movie came out in twenty nineteen. If you want
to watch it, it is available on Hulu. Grace is
(15:14):
played by Samara Weaving. Another one on this list that
I'm glad has made it at number four in the
top five because to me, this is a top five pick.
It's another case that I feel good movie, bad title,
not great marketing because it is a horror movie. Also
has a kind of campy style. But what this movie
(15:35):
is about. The character Grace gets married at the beginning
of the movie and then finds out she has to
play as part of a tradition to this rich family
that she's marrying into this game where they draw a
card and then as a family, you have to play
that game. And what is Grace pull the hide and
seek card and she thinks, oh, man, are we really
good to play hide and seek? Like a bunch of
(15:55):
five year olds. She wants to impress her new in laws,
plays along with the game, but then discovers that in
this game of hide and Seek, all the other members
of the family have weapons and it is their job
to murder her before the sun comes up. So her
character has to spend the entire movie hiding fighting with
(16:15):
these people, trying to make sure that they don't kill her.
It's a great mix of horror dark comedy, and just
overall a character that you really start to root for.
I love that she starts out very innocent, thinking what
exactly is happening here, and then turns into a total
badass by the end of this movie. It is such
a great character transformation. And they just announced that they
(16:38):
are making a Ready or Not too, with Samara returning
in the role, the original directors of the movie coming back.
I don't really know where the story is gonna go
from here, but I think with all the original people back,
it is going to be something awesome and I feel
like this should be an iconic movie. But again, I
think the marketing for this wasn't the best. The promotion
(16:59):
of the role out even the title of the movie
again just wasn't the best. But her character throughout the
entire movie is wearing this wedding dress. She has on
these Chuck Taylor's that should be a Halloween costume every
single year. So hopefully it can bank on the kind
of cult following it has now going into the sequel
and will become more successful. I can't wait to see
(17:22):
it again. They just announced it, so we probably won't
get it for another two or three years, but I'm
ready for Ready or not two, but that is in
at number four, getting into the top three now. And
number three is Ellen from Alien played by Sigourney Weaver,
came out back in nineteen seventy nine. If you want
to watch this Alien movie, and I think some of
the other ones are on there as well, it's available
(17:42):
on Hulu. I love that meme that was going around
on X whenever the last Alien Romulus movie came out
saying is it safe to say that nobody else has
the name Sigourney? I cannot think of another Sigourney besides
Sigourney Weaver. Alien was a movie that I didn't watch
until maybe like I was teenager. And the reason I
was exposed to Alien is because I used to play
(18:04):
a game called Conquer's Bad Fer Day, which was a
game on at the time N sixty four that was
rated M for mature, and I played it as a
kid because it was exposing me to very not so
kid friendly things. But in that video game, they parodied
a lot of famous movies, and the level on this
game where they parody Alien was one of my favorites.
(18:26):
And then I realized later, oh, that's from a movie,
and maybe it's because of that being the reason and
how I was exposed to this movie that I never
really thought of Alien as a horror movie. Obviously has
a lot of iconic imagery, a lot that they also
pulled into Alien Romulus, and while I do think that
Sigourney Weaver's performance was the success of this story, I
(18:47):
don't really put it in the same category of having
that true final girl definition. To me, even with the
recent editions we've been talking about, I would take Samara
Weaving over Sigourney Weaver on this list. I think the
reason she is probably in at number three is because again,
all of these final Girls have to use some ingenuity
(19:08):
to take out the killer, in this case it being
an alien, and I think her character, Ellen Ripley, has
maybe one of the most memorable and thoughtful ways to
take out her killer, and through that she shows really
how fearless she is. But still I don't think that
his top three worthy. I did really like Kaylee Spainey
and Alien Romulus, who pooled a lot of inspiration from
(19:31):
Sigourney Weaver but also made that character her own. So
I do like the direction that the Alien franchise is
going in. So even though I respect Sigourney Weaver at
number three. I don't love it at number two. Getting
to the heavy hitters, now you have Sidney Prescott from
Scream played by Nev Campbell. Came out back in nineteen
(19:51):
ninety six again and it is available on Max, which
we mentioned earlier. Sidney Prescott is the best modern version
of a final Girl in mind. My opinion, I do
think the screen movies kind of lost their way even
when Wes Craven continued to direct them. Scream four became
the first one that he didn't direct because he passed away,
but that one came out in twenty eleven and he
(20:13):
died in twenty fifteen. But the formula did become a
little stale. That was until, in my opinion, Jenna Ortega
and Melissa Barrera were introduced into the cast. Those movies
rebooted the franchise and also got super meta with referencing
the screen movies and redoing things from that one and
including them here. So wasn't really a remake, wasn't really
(20:36):
a reboot. It was kind of just taking all the
elements of Scream and using gen Z actors to make
you feel that same way when you watch the first
screen movies. So I hate now that the fate of
these movies is really in the balance, that Jenna Ortega
and Melissa Barrera are no longer going to be attached
to them. I hate the way they exited these films,
but it looks like some of the original casts will
(20:57):
still be a part of them. I just don't really
think that there's much left there to really make these
movies interesting, and they lost what was making them work,
what was making the younger audience go to the theater
to watch these movies. Now you're just gonna be trying
to make these movies to people of my generation millennials,
to go and be nostalgia bate. But that really doesn't
work with horror franchises anymore. You gotta keep it new,
(21:19):
you gotta keep it fresh, You got to keep those
actors at the forefront. And Nev Campbell would have been
the best to do it as far as being the
it Final Girl if it wasn't for number one, the
og the original Final Girl. The best Final Girl of
all time according to this list, and according to me,
(21:40):
it is Lrie Strode from Halloween, played by Jamie Lee Curtiz.
Came out in nineteen seventy eight. It is available to
watch on Crackle of all services, Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus.
Even you can watch Halloween on Crackle. I feel like
I've watched maybe two things on Crackle in my life.
Actually I take that. I think it was only one movie,
(22:01):
Joe Dirt I Beautiful Loser, the sequel that nobody asked for,
but it was available as a Crackle original, So you
can go watch Joe Dirt two, and you can go
watch Halloween again. Much like to B Crackle is also
the dollar bin, but maybe not even at Walmart, probably
a like family dollar dollar tree. I would never find
anything good in those bins. It'd always be like really
(22:21):
weird movies or like movie three packs of black and
white horror movies that were made back in the forties.
And the reason I agree with this list why Lourie
Strode is the best final Girl is that final scene
where she is making it her main objective to save
the kids but also save herself make sure they're out
(22:42):
of harm's way, and has the most iconic scene in
any horror movie. It is the blueprint of how to
make a great final act. Luri Strode in the closet
with Michael Myers breaking down the door is a scene
that all turd my brain's chemistry. If there's one scene
in Horror that I wish I could go back and
(23:05):
rewatch for the first time, have my memory erased, just
so I could experience it again, it would be this scene.
Jamie Lee Curtis did a fantastic job as she was
being introduced into the world. Halloween two takes place right
after the events of Halloween one, and growing up, I
would always just watch those back to back every Halloween,
and two isn't as iconic as one, but if you
(23:27):
watch them all together, it makes for a great movie night.
The entire journey that Lorie Strode goes through all of
the movies doesn't really make sense. They kind of change
her character from movie to movie, create this backstory of
her and Michael being related. Are they related? Are they not?
I enjoyed it as they moved into Halloween h two O.
(23:48):
Even though I think people hate that movie, that is
one of my favorite Halloween movies. And then they reintroduced
her again in the twenty eighteen version, which I thought
was fantastic, but I hate how that run ended. Twenty
eighteen was a great reboot Halloween Kills in twenty twenty
one was pretty mid and I completely hated Halloween Ends.
But I can look past all that to go back
(24:09):
to the original Lourie Strode at number one as the
best final girl in all of horror. Come back, I'll
give you my review spoiler free of Smile Too, and
then in the trailer park we'll talk about Nicole Kidman's
new A Rick thriller. Why I say that so weird?
Let's put a smile on that face and get into
(24:31):
it now. A spoiler free movie review of Smile Too.
I had a few questions going into this movie. Is
it going to improve upon the first one? I wasn't
the biggest fan of the first one. I rated that
one a two point five out of five because I
felt that movie came to a screeching halt in the
second and beginning of third act where it got so boring.
(24:52):
It spent so much time focused on the curse and
unraveling the mystery of the curse. If you're not familiar
with Smile it's basically somebody commit suicide in front of
you with the smile on their face, passing along this
curse to you, much like the ring from back in
the day. You have seven days until this curse takes
you out, and it keeps moving from person to person.
(25:13):
I believed in the idea of the first one. If
I were an investor, I would have taken my money
and invested in Smile Too. Knowing that director Parker Finn
had something there had people talking about this movie just
didn't really have the movie down quite yet for me
as a horror movie fan. So is this one going
to improve upon Smile one and really cash in on
(25:35):
that hype? The second question I had is it going
to rely again on jump scares. I find jump scares
to be pretty cheap. When I think about my favorite
moments in horror, it's never around a jump scare, and
they do get me from time to time. You're in
a theater, it's dark, big loud sound has an impact
on you. Watching this movie. I did jump out of
(25:56):
my I mean not fully out of my seat, but
it got me a little bit. My heart rate going
it'll get you. But when I think about my favorite
moments in horror movies, it is never a jump scare.
It's fun, but I feel like it's almost cheat because
you're just taking the audience kind of for granted there,
because yes, they are in this vulnerable state, and if
you played anything really loud and comes out of nowhere,
(26:18):
you're going to scare people. But that's not gonna be
the most memorable thing about your film. You have to
really create an energy and create memorable experiences by building
that tension, not just relying on big loud sound effects
to scare your audience, unless that's all you want and
unless that's really how you get your kicks when going
to a horror movie, but for me, I don't love them.
And the third question is was it going to be
(26:39):
so predictable? And I know this is an annoying thing
about me, but I always like to predict movies after
watching the trailer. That's why on this podcast I do
the trailer bark, and it might be annoying to you
when I'm like, Okay, I see this in this trailer.
They are focusing on these parts. This is what I
think is going to happen in the final act, and
I don't like that because I feel, well, especially in horror,
(27:01):
I want things to come out of nowhere and when
I can pick apart everything that is going to happen
it's just not that enjoyable to me. I feel like
you could be a little bit more imaginative. But I
get why they do it. They're trying to appeal to
a mass audience. So those are my three questions going
into this film. Let's get into what actually Smile two
is about. It takes place six days after the original,
(27:21):
which I like that these movies are tying into each other,
and after watching Smile Too, I really feel like these
are both definitive chapters. They are still inside the same world,
but they have an entirely different feeling, and I think
that is something Smile to really benefited from, because the
entire tone of this movie changed. This one centers around
a pop star named Sky Riley played by Naomi Scott,
(27:43):
who did a fantastic job. She is about to embark
on this big world tour after just going through something
pretty dramatic. It starts out with her going on to
Drew Barrymore's talk show talking about how she appreciates her
fans sticking with her through a really tough time in
her life. Talks about doing drugs, gives a little glimpse
into her dark past, and you learn more about that
(28:05):
as the movie and story develops. This movie is a
big commentary on the pressures of fame, trauma, and overall
what it feels like to go completely crazy and have
nobody believe you. Because everything is writing on this tour
that she's about to go on, because it is going
to be the definitive moment in her career now, because
(28:25):
this tour to her is going to make or break
her career. But she has a lot of things to
get through in order to make it happen. One of
those being a big injury that she is dealing with
that is causing her a lot of pain and not
being able to perform the way she wants to. So
she goes to a drug dealer's house to get some
pain medication, and that is where if you've seen the trailer,
(28:48):
you see Lucas Gage's character there unlive himself, and that
is where the fun begins, because it starts to blend
the line of what is actually happening in the real
world and what is just happening inside her mind and
all these illusions that are being created because of this curse.
My biggest problem with the first one is it spent
so much time talking about this curse and trying to
(29:10):
unravel the secrets, and Smile really try to be a
much more sinister movie than it was, really diving into
the past and had one of my worst tropes in
horror movies of all time is whenever you go on
a big mission to try to figure out what is
happening here, you unravel this secret and you try to
(29:31):
figure it all out before it's too late, then you
have a big lame battle at the end. I hate
that whole driving to another town, another city to talk
to somebody who may have some information on this. And
what Smile Too did was take all that out of
the movie, out of the plot line, and focus more
on sky Riley and how the curse is affecting her,
(29:52):
and you really see her fall into this just manic
state happen and unravel. Piece by p that was just
really fun for me to watch. I do like it.
At the beginning of the movies where the actor comes
on says a little something about the movie thanking you
for coming to the theater, and sometimes I think that
has no effect on me, but Naomi Scott said something
in that that kind of set up my expectations of, Hey,
(30:16):
go on this ride with me join me in the
story of Riley, and I thought about this movie a
little bit different of Okay, I'm gonna take this journey
with this character and experience it the way that they
are experiencing it. And I feel like as the viewer,
if you really let yourself dial into this movie, you
start to feel it too. I will say it does
it kind of like the first one, in a very
(30:37):
slow approach, where you start out just little by little,
and it's really not that scary in the beginning, because
when watching it on the big screen, just having somebody
standing there smiling really isn't that scary. And what do
they do? They still rely on that jump scare. The
biggest moments that came, I would say, in the first
and part of the second act very much rely on
(31:00):
catching you off guard with a big sound effect, and
some of the visuals are pretty bloody and mildly disturbing.
But I would say it doesn't really become to me
a full on horror movie until that second and third act.
In those last forty minutes, it becomes an entirely different
movie when all the chaos starts unfolding, when all of
(31:22):
the big actions starts happening in the sky. That is
when it really gets good. And that is such an
improvement from the first one, because in those last forty
minutes of the first one, all the action was in
those last ten And there was a point in that
movie where I almost fell asleep because there was nothing happening.
It was a lot of dialogue. The entire plot line
of that main character was kind of a snoozefest. But
(31:45):
here you had multiple layers going on with sky Riley,
not only the pressures of needing this tour to work
and having her mom slash manager control all the aspects
of her life, trying to do all these appearances, trying
to just be a human at the same time, where
you have fans trying to approach you, you're trying to
do a meet and greets. That in itself was a
(32:07):
story that I was interested in. And then you have
all these horror elements happening on top of it, of
her going crazy and not being able to know what
is actually happening in real life, really not even knowing
that she has a curse on her because she has
no idea what is happening. That is an entirely different
thing going on at the same time. So combining those
things together really made me invest in her character and
(32:30):
made this movie really entertaining for me. But was it predictable? Yeah,
it was predictable. Hate to say, but I probably predicted
everything that was going to happen in this movie. But
even though it was predictable, it was still enjoyable. I
knew what was coming, I felt it, I could see
it in the writing, just because I feel like this
movie didn't really take a whole lot of risk, but
(32:52):
what it did it did well. So even though it
was predictable, I didn't find myself being unsatisfied with the results.
I actually enjoy living in this world. That felt a
little bit more grounded than the first one. Like I said,
the first one felt like it was trying to be
much more sinister, felt more like a nightmare tale. This
one really felt more like how you and I would
(33:13):
experience this happening to us. So this one just had
much more of an effect on me, so much so
that I had a nightmare after watching this movie that
I too saw certain things happening in my dream where
I was walking by a poster and it was like
a picture of somebody and then suddenly their smile got
(33:33):
really big and I started to freak out thinking that
this was happening to me too. So it definitely had
much more of an effect on me. But what really
made me enjoy this movie was Naomi Scott's performance as
Sky Riley, who is the character that you don't entirely
root for the entire time because she has some good
qualities about her, actually very few when you think about it,
(33:56):
and a lot of bad qualities about her. So I
like movies where you don't present the person going through
all this as somebody who you entirely root for because
she has done some things in her past. I think
for me, I just hate when they have somebody who
is like a global pop star, but they make sure
to say it in every interview. If you think about
the most famous people in music right now, they don't
(34:16):
go on TV shows and everybody's like, welcome global pop sensation.
You just know if Harry Styles goes on a talk show,
if Selena Gomez goes on a talk show, which is
about the level of fame that Sky is in this movie,
they don't need to give any qualifiers of how famous
this person is. And I don't know why that bothers me,
but it does. And how they put so much emphasis
(34:40):
on this world tour like everybody is talking about it.
That really doesn't happen now unless you're Taylor Swift going
on the Era's tour. Nobody is talking about a world
tour like there's so much pressure. But as an artist,
I think they feel this pressure when they put tickets
on sale, when they go out in these cities, this
is their entire world. They do feel that, I think,
(35:02):
so I think it did portray that of how to
you and I, we see a concert go on sale,
we think do we want to go see that? Do
we want to pay that amount of money? And that
is just something we think about in our week. But
to this artist going on this tour, they can feel that,
they feel if this is going to make or break them.
But I just think that the way they portrayed this
character isn't entirely true to how somebody at this level
(35:24):
would be. But I do think it showed some of
the things they have to deal with, like super obsessed fans,
if you get bad press and how hard it is
to recover from that, and just overall the pressures that
not everybody sees when you just see people on Instagram
or on TV shows. Naomi Scott went all in on
this performance and the movie left nothing on the table,
which is usually my biggest criticism when it comes to
(35:46):
a horror movie that is trying to build a franchise,
leave some things in mystery. But this movie gave you everything.
It went all out, It cranked it up to eleven
and said we're gonna give you the best performance we
can in this movie. So they really capitalize going into
this movie with more momentum, having more people talking. They
still did all the promotion like they did for the
(36:07):
first one, which I think is something that really sets
a movie like this apart. Because there are other good
horror movies that have come out this year. I don't
think this one is the best one, but it's probably
the one that is stuck in more people's minds because
of that promotion. And that's what you have to do
really when it comes down to having a successful horror movie.
(36:28):
Right now, it's all in the promotion. How can you
get people talking? Look at what Terrifier three did? They
put all that press out themselves of saying people were
walking out of the theater vomiting there was nobody vomiting.
That's all marketing, and it went on to beat Joker Too.
I think in order to succeed and set yourself apart,
you have to do things like Smile is doing. Create
(36:49):
that aura not just around the stars of this movie
or even the characters, it's just around the idea of it.
Because you have that image in your mind as somebody smiling,
that poster can terrify you alone. So I found myself
enjoying all two hours of this movie. Definitely a major
improvement on the first one, which that one I give
(37:10):
a two point five out of five. But for Smile Too,
I give it four out of five.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Pop Stars, It's time to head down to movie Mike.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Traylor Paul Christmas movies are my least favorite genre of movie,
New Christmas movies in particular. It is so hard to
create a new classic. And the reason that we all
love Christmas movies is because they were something that we
grew up with and we have this memory attached to
them that we love. So it's all the movies we
(37:46):
rewatch every single year that give us that feeling again,
that feeling of being a kid. But if you break
down exactly what a Christmas movie is the fiber of
a Christmas movie is not good. It's predictable, it's the
same thing over and over. The acting isn't anything that's
going to move you. So as a movie on its own,
(38:09):
they're not great movies. Doesn't mean they're not fun. They
don't bring you back to having good memories. If I'm
just sitting down to watch a movie, I'm only watching
a Christmas movie around Christmas time. I'm not watching them
in March in July. There's a reason they only come
out around the holidays. It is so much a reflection
(38:32):
of the Christmas season, and it's so hard to make
a new classic, and they keep trying. Only movie I
can think of that has come out in the last
twenty five years that has cemented itself as a Christmas
classic that you can watch every single year is Elf.
That is the only one. And a movie that is
twenty plus years old, almost thirty years old at this point,
(38:54):
is still considered a modern classic because it's so hard
to do, and maybe it just takes that amount of
time for a movie to be out out for us
to watch again and again and again every single Christmas
to really cement it as a classic. Much like classic
cars need like twenty twenty five years to be a
classic car. Same thing here applies to movies. So to
really set yourself apart as a new Christmas movie, you
have to do something innovative. And I think that is
(39:16):
what Baby Girl is doing with Nicole Kidman because it
is an erotic thriller centered around Christmas time. So does
it embody the Christmas spirit? No, because it's all about
her playing this character, who is a business executive, has
an affair with a young intern played by Harrison Dickinson,
who was really great in The Iron Claw. I also
liked him a triangle of sadness. This movie happens to
(39:39):
take place around Christmas, and it wasn't until I saw
the trailer and heard the music and saw all the
imagery that I was like, oh man, they might actually
be onto something. So before I get into more about
Baby Girl, here's just a little bit of the trailer.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
We're gonna do this. We need to set some rules
that you and I post agree on. Did you order
this starting with I tell you what to do when
you do it?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Funny fect out guys?
Speaker 4 (40:12):
No, what get on your knees now?
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Is that what you want. You're very young. I don't
want to argue. Oh my gosh, I feel like I
should get out of the room and leave them two together.
I wonder what Nicole Kidman looks for in a script.
Are these movies being pitched to her because they have
her in mind for these parts, or is she actively
seeking out these types of roles. You look back on
(40:40):
the movies and probably more in particular the limited series
that she's done, which I think she in the last
five years has done much better work in limited series
than she has in movies. I feel like the movies
she has done have been a little bit more of
a paycheck because she is at that status. She could
go in make fifteen twenty million dollars on a movie
(41:01):
because you bank on the Nicole Kidman name. And I
think where she's really shown how great of an actor
she is is on all these limited series, everything from
Nine Perfect Strangers, Lioness ex Pats, The Perfect Couple earlier
this year. Because if you look on the movie side,
in the last five years, she's done movies like The Goldfinch, Bombshell,
The Northman Being the Ricardos All Command in The Lost Kingdom.
(41:24):
She did a Family Affair on Netflix earlier this year.
So if I had to take Nicole Kidman in a
limited series versus Nicole Kidman in film, I would take
the limited series. But if you look at her characters
in those limited series, she always kind of goes for
roles like this, and she does them so well of
being this person who is so dominant, a true driving force,
(41:45):
but then also having relationships like this that are toxic
but are so intriguing. And I have to imagine that
a lot of these roles take a bit of a
toll on you as an actor to put yourself through
that mental anguish, And I just wonder where in her
does she go to to get these amazing performances that
she does. And I don't know if she's actively seeking
roles like this because she finds these to be the
(42:08):
most enjoyable, or directors know in order to have these
stories really come to life, they need Nicole Kidman to
portray this character. Living in Nashville, I've actually seen Nicole
Kidman around town in the most random places. I think
both of them have been at the Mall in different
locations of the mall. But the thing about her is
she is so nonchalant. When you run into her, you
(42:28):
wouldn't even know. Because sometimes you see people out in
public and they look famous. They're dressed a certain way,
they have people around them, and you can just tell.
Maybe I don't know exactly what I know them from,
but I can tell that that person is famous. When
I've seen Nicole Kidman out, she looks just like everybody else.
She sticks to her own lane. She doesn't make a
big fuss out of anything, and it looks like just
(42:49):
running into anybody, maybe your friend, your neighbor out at
the mall, but it's Nicole Kidman, Academy Award winning Nicole Kidman,
just doing some shopping at the mall. Now, she has
a much larger bank account to work with than any
of us. While shopping at the mall, I don't really
think she needs to look at price tags, even though
that story came out that she prefers to drive her
SuPAR Rue over the Lamborghini that her husband, Keith Urban
(43:11):
bought her, which is another wild thing because I've seen
them both out together, and you have one a list
movie star on the right, flash TV star, and one
a list country star on the left, And really, when
you see them together. The only defying factor that you
can tell that they are famous is Keith Urban's tattoos
make them look famous. So I just find it crazy
that their level of famous so high and they seem
(43:33):
to be so low maintenance when just hanging out in public.
So back to the movie Baby Girl, which is coming
out on Christmas Day, an erotic thriller on Christmas Day.
Who would have thought, especially with this holiday season being
so so competitive with Sonic and The Lion King. This
is almost the counter programming to that. Because I have
great memories of going to the movie theater around Christmas time.
(43:56):
There is a warmth to it. I think when you're
hanging around your family for more time than you're probably
used to around the holidays, the movies are a good escape,
and there's just the feeling of going to the movie
and watching something where the world has kind of slowed down.
Hopefully you're enjoying some time off and you can go
and relax and watch a movie. And this is not
something I'm used to going to see around that time
(44:17):
of year, something that's probably gonna get my blood boiling
a little bit, because by the looks of this trailer
of Nicole Kinman's character going behind the back of her
husband this dude showing up at her house. I feel
like there's going to be a lot of good cringe
those moments where you're like, oh, man, I can't believe
this is happening, but I cannot look away. And Nicole
Kidman does not shy away from taking very steamy roles,
(44:39):
and just by the looks of this trailer, it looks
like her and Harris Dickison have some very great chemistry,
which is really how you sell this movie anything where
you're really needing as the audience to buy into the romance,
you have to buy into that chemistry. Last holiday season,
it was Sunny Sweeney and Glenn Powell completely keeping everybody
on their toest thinking are they together? Are they not together?
(45:00):
Completely selling that movie and giving that movie a big
life in theaters and even more so once it went
to streaming. I don't know that Baby Girl is going
to be one that everybody's going to be rushing to
watch around the holiday season. But if there is a
name that could do that in a role like this
that I think people are now starting to associate her
with more, I think it could be Nicole Kidman. Again.
(45:20):
Baby Girl is coming out this Christmas on December twenty fifth.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
At that was this week's edition of Movie by Tram or.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Bar and that is gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta
give my listeners shout out of the week, and this
week it is a collective shout out to the movie crew.
Thank you all for voting in the awards for the
best Podcast in Nashville. We came in three guys. That's
pretty good. I'll take it. We did win a couple
(45:49):
of years ago in twenty twenty two, taking home first
place for best Podcast, but twenty twenty four, I'll take
third place. I'm kind of in that place of I'm
just happy to be on the podium because I would
have loved to been up there at number one. But
if we would have landed in number two, I would
have felt like, man, we were so close to number one?
How many more votes do we need? Could I have
(46:09):
talked about it more, promoted it more, and got us
the number one? But coming in at number three, I'm like,
you know what, I'm just glad we're here because if
I would have looked at the list and it wouldn't
have been listed. I would have felt like, oh man,
this sucks. Maybe it's time to close up shops. So
happy to be on the podium. You're listening to and
are a part of the third best podcast in Nashville.
So thank you everybody for voting, everybody for listening, for
(46:32):
telling a friend, for being subscribed, coming here on release
day which is Mondays or maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whenever
you have time. It means the world to me, So
thank you from the bottom and the depths of my
heart and bowels. 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, and today I want to
share with you a list of the top ten final
girls in horror movies. Even if you don't know exactly
what a final girl is, I'll explain that run through
the list. I'll give you my picks on who should
have made this list, because there are a couple on
there that I thought, how could they not include these
(00:20):
two people? In the movie review, we'll keep that theme
alive and talk about Smile too. Did it improve upon
the first one? Because I left that first one thing
and ah, that wasn't it. But the trailer for this one,
all the hype around this one was similar. Can they
cash in on that momentum? And in the trailer park
there's a new erotic thriller from Nicole Kidman. She loves
(00:41):
doing erotic thrillers. It's called Baby Girl. We'll talk about that.
Thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed.
Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now
let's talk movies.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners before
in a movie podcast a man with so much movie
knowledge he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses. From
the Nashville podcast Network. This is Movie Mike Movie Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you're a fan of horror like I am, you
already know what the final girl is in a movie,
but if you're not too familiar with it, the final
girl is the woman at the very end who survives
with the killer. She kills him or her in some way.
Sometimes the killer is male, sometimes the killer is female.
The final girl is usually portrayed as somebody who is resourceful, resilient, morally, uptight,
(01:40):
smarter than Oliver appears in this movie because she knows
how to survive. Whenever I think about the final Girl,
it takes me back to the first screen movie in
nineteen ninety six, which obviously some characters from Scream are
going to make this list, But whenever Jamie Kennedy's character
is giving the rules of surviving a horror movie, this
is exactly what I think about.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
There are certain rules that one must abide by in
order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one,
you can never have sex sex even seth okay. Number two,
you can never drink or do drug sin. It's an
extension of number one and number three. Never ever, ever,
under any circumstances say I'll be right back because you
(02:22):
won't be back.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I'm getting another beer. You want one?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, sure, I'll be right back. So the final girl
in any horror movie, I feel like those rules kind
of laid out the blueprint. Even though that movie came
out in nineteen ninety six and there have been final
girls way before that movie came out. I always reference
back that clip to think of what do you need
to do in order to survive a serial killer in
(02:46):
a horror movie. So let's get into this list again.
This is from rinker dot com, so a lot of
people on the internet voted on this list. At number ten,
they have Sally from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre played by
Marilyn Burns nineteen seven twenty four. If you want to
watch The Chainsaw Massacre now, the original one, it's on
Peacock or it's on tub. I have to say I
(03:07):
have become an adopter of tub. It is free. You
do have to watch a significant amount of commercials, but
it's really no different than if you were watching a
movie on TV on cable. Back in the day really
has that same kind of viewing experience. And the great
thing about to B now is before, if you didn't
have an account, you couldn't start a movie back where
(03:30):
you left off if it started from the very beginning,
so you'd have to find your place where you left
off and start the movie again. But now all you
have to do is sign in. The account is free.
I think somebody bought out to be so you can
go and watch all these movies that not all of
them are the best, but look, they have the text
a chainsaw massacre. To me, tob is the streaming equivalent
(03:50):
of the dollar bargain bin at Walmart, which had some
great fines. You had to dig in that thing to
find them. But I remember going to Walmart a lot
and finding some really good d and there are some
great movies. So I don't say that as a slight
to all the content on tub, but if you spend
enough time on it, you can find some gems in there,
and you can watch it for free. In the world
(04:11):
of today, where everything is so expensive, you take what
you can get for free. But this is a fantastic
example of a final girl in a movie. Sally ran
for her life. In this movie, she jumped through two windows.
She went through it in order to survive leather Face,
and what I'm about to say, I don't want to
discredit her journey. How important the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is
(04:36):
to horror, how important leather Face is. It is one
of my favorite movies. It combined all the great things
back in the seventies where it walked that line of
people believing did this actually happen? Is it all made up?
Because I grew up thinking that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre
actually happened in my home state. Even though it's just
loosely based on a serial killer. There's no real leather Face.
(04:58):
But if you have that mis that aura surrounding your film,
it's gonna have a bigger impact once people go see
that in theaters, much like the Blair Witch Project had
success in the nineties of people thinking was this or
was this not real? Even though that whole thing was
entirely fake. That is the beauty of horror. So it
is an important film has one of my favorite final
(05:19):
scenes ever of Leatherface in that sunset, wielding that chainsaw
around It is a beautiful movie. If I go back
and rewatch a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. It is the
one from two thousand and three with Jessica Biel. That
is my Texas Chainsaw Massacre that I grew up with.
Does it have those same qualities like the warmth of
(05:42):
the film. Is it as iconic?
Speaker 4 (05:44):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
But to me, that is one of the first movies
in horror that solidified me as a horror fan as
I was growing up. Watched that movie, I was probably
twelve years old, and at that time I had already
been exposed to all the Halloween movies, all the Chucky movies.
Those movies had already given me nightmares. But it wasn't
until this version of this movie that I had nightmares again.
(06:05):
And I think Jessica Bile is just great in horror.
She's dipped her toes into it in her acting career.
But I wish you would go back and do another
Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. So again, the pick here on
the list is Sally from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre
played by Marilyn Burns. But I'm gonna throw in Jessica
Biel as an honorable mention because I would have put
(06:26):
her in my top ten at number nine is Heather
lang in Camp as herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare,
which came out in nineteen ninety four. If you want
to watch this movie, you have to have slang, which
I don't know anybody who has sling, so you probably
don't have sling, but maybe you do. If not, you
can rent it for three ninety nine wherever you rent
your movies. I feel like Wes Craven's A New Nightmare
(06:49):
was entirely ahead of its time coming out in nineteen
ninety four. It is a pretty meta Freddy Krueger movie
that I did not understand growing up. It is Freddy
Krueger coming into the real world and haunting the real
cast and crew of all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies,
so all of those actors play themselves. I remember watching
(07:11):
this movie as a kid and thinking it was a documentary.
I didn't really get it, and for that reason, I
didn't really enjoy this movie. This is one on the
list that I need to revisit and see if it
holds up. And I feel like now in the twenty twenties,
we are getting more into that meta horror era. With
the last two screen movies really digging into that. But
(07:33):
the first screen movie did that with the clip I
played earlier, they were inside a horror movie talking about
how to survive a horror movie. So I think Wes Craven,
who directed, of course, This New Nightmare in ninety four,
went on to direct Scream. I feel like this was
him kind of dipping his toes in can audiences handle
something this meta? So he drove it more into the
(07:56):
ideology of Scream really being at the forefront of that.
Fran and I think as a whole, the mind of
Wes Craven was so innovated. I love how a lot
of his movies were rooted in practical effects. So I
think that's why a lot of his movies have stood
the test of time over the years. Rip to Wes Craven.
I can respect this at number nine, but I don't
(08:17):
think this version of Nancy and it's not really Nancy
heather Lingencamp in this movie. I don't think I would
have put her in my top ten, but I respect
to pick here from ranker. At number eight is Aaron
Hansen from the movie Your Next played by Sharnie Vinson,
came out in twenty eleven. If you want to watch
Your Next now it is on Netflix. This is an
(08:39):
underrated horror film, so I love it coming in at
number eight. The reason I feel that most people didn't
give Your Next a chance, didn't really have great marketing
when it came out back in twenty eleven, and also
I feel like that's a bad title. Your Next feels
so generic and so empty and doesn't really say anything
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about out what makes this movie awesome, what it's about.
It's kind of like The Strangers meets the Purge. Aaron
Hansen is the character here, and all she wants to
do is go out hang out with their boyfriend's family.
They're having a family reunion, and then this group of
mass murderers decide that they want to pick off each
(09:19):
of the family members one by one. I think it's
a great pick because overall of the movie is awesome.
The character Aaron has a fantastic backstory that you learn
about as all these crazy things unfold. If you are
somebody who likes horror movies where the action in it
can actually happen, because you're not really dealing with supernatural events,
You're just dealing with psychos, these crazy killers that have
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this fascination with taking people in a very vulnerable state
and exposing them and trying to murder them so that
freaks you out. It will make you never want to
go to any remote house ever again. But the character
of Aaron is very triumphant in this movie, so I
love that. One Umber eight at number seven is the
character Mattie Young from a movie called Hush, played by
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Kate Siegel. Came out in twenty sixteen. If you want
to watch Hush, it is on AMC Plus again, another
service that I don't know anybody who has AMC Plus
unless maybe you have cable. You have AMC and they
give you AMC Plus. I've never even seen the app
on my TV. But you can also rent the movie
wherever you rent movies. For the longest time after this
(10:27):
movie came out in twenty sixteen, this was my go
to horror recommendation to anybody looking for something that they
haven't seen before. What Hush is about is the character
Mattie is a deaf, mute woman who gets targeted by
this mass killer. Now, the mass killer in this movie
has a very generic look. It is just this blank,
hockey mass looking thing, kind of like Phantom of the Opera,
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kind of like Jason, except it's not really a hockey mask.
There aren't any holes in it or anything. It's just
like this plain, glowy white mask and they wear a hoodie.
So it's creepy enough because there is an absence of
any kind of emotion, much like Michael Myers. But I
wouldn't really look at the character and instantly associate it
with the Hush movie. But she goes out to this
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remote house in the woods. Again, why do all these
final girls go out into these houses where there aren't
anybody around? That alone sounds like a nightmare to me.
Also because I bet the Wi fi isn't really great
out in the woods. But you go outside, it's pitch black,
you can barely see your hand in front of your face,
you hear animals in the entire time I would be
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out at a remote house like this, I was thinking,
there's somebody coming around the corner and they're gonna kill me.
Nothing ever good happens in a horror movie in a
remote wooded area. But I love this pick here because
Maddie is a final girl unlike any other, because she
is deaf and mute. She has to find really strategic
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ways to fight off her killer because she can't hear
him coming inside the house. She can't even hear he's
right behind her. She can sense it, and of course
some of her other senses are probably heightened, but she
is so smart and so resourceful. And this movie really
doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it
is a very solid horror movie that if you haven't
(12:16):
seen it, I do recommend it unless you have any
vacations or trips planned to a remote cabin somewhere. Otherwise,
don't watch this movie or maybe any other movie on
this list. At number six is Gail Weathers from Scream,
played by Courtney Cox. This movie came out in nineteen
ninety six. If you want to watch Scream the original,
it is available on Max. Max actually has a really
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great selection of horror movies right now, the classics. If
I want a classic horror movie, I'm probably going over
to Max. First second, I would probably go over to Hulu.
They're doing Hulu. Weeen over there have some good more
recent movies, but I think if you want the classics
like Scream, the Nightmare on ELM Street movies, those are
all right there on Max. I don't really love Gail
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Weathers at number six, at least not Gail Weathers in Scream.
Maybe in the later Scream movies. I feel like Courtney
Cox really came into her own later in the franchise,
But I would have to say I was probably more
of a fan of her parody character in Scary Movie
Gail Hailstorm. Can I put Gail Hailstorm in as an
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honorable mention at number six? They're much better final girls
you could have put in that number six slot, but
that's what they have here. At number five is Nancy
from a Nightmare on Elm Street played by Heather Lincoln.
Camp came out in nineteen eighty four. If you want
to watch the original Nightmare on Elm Street, it is
available on Max. Like I've been talking about, I rewatched
it before the interview a couple of weeks ago. In
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this movie still holds up. I think what gets overlooked
From a Nightmare on Elm Street is the fact that
Nancy was the original Kevin McAllister from Home Alone. The
way that she defeats Freddie is very innovative. She finds
a way to take him out of the dream world
and bring him into the real world where he can
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be defeated, where he is vulnerable, and then she uses
booby traps around the house to take him out, very
much like Kevin McAllister did with the Wet Bandits and
Home Alone with the paint can coming and hitting them
in the head, the door knob and the flamethrower catching
his head on fire. A Nightmare on Elm Street could
have easily turned into the Three Stooges or Home Alone
(14:28):
Before It's Time again Wes Craven being ahead of his
time with the booby traps to take out the killer.
But Nancy is a very underappreciated female character. Really, when
I think about the strongest females in film, you have
to go to the horror genre. That is where the
best and strongest characters are written. It's the entire reason
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that there is the term the final Girl, because they
have to do something that is smarter and proved. They
are more capable than anybody else in the movie as
long as they follow those three rules to survive a
horror movie. At number four is Grace from Ready or Not.
This movie came out in twenty nineteen. If you want
to watch it, it is available on Hulu. Grace is
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played by Samara Weaving. Another one on this list that
I'm glad has made it at number four in the
top five because to me, this is a top five pick.
It's another case that I feel good movie, bad title,
not great marketing because it is a horror movie. Also
has a kind of campy style. But what this movie
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is about. The character Grace gets married at the beginning
of the movie and then finds out she has to
play as part of a tradition to this rich family
that she's marrying into this game where they draw a
card and then as a family, you have to play
that game. And what is Grace pull the hide and
seek card and she thinks, oh, man, are we really
good to play hide and seek? Like a bunch of
(15:55):
five year olds. She wants to impress her new in laws,
plays along with the game, but then discovers that in
this game of hide and Seek, all the other members
of the family have weapons and it is their job
to murder her before the sun comes up. So her
character has to spend the entire movie hiding fighting with
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these people, trying to make sure that they don't kill her.
It's a great mix of horror dark comedy, and just
overall a character that you really start to root for.
I love that she starts out very innocent, thinking what
exactly is happening here, and then turns into a total
badass by the end of this movie. It is such
a great character transformation. And they just announced that they
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are making a Ready or Not too, with Samara returning
in the role, the original directors of the movie coming back.
I don't really know where the story is gonna go
from here, but I think with all the original people back,
it is going to be something awesome and I feel
like this should be an iconic movie. But again, I
think the marketing for this wasn't the best. The promotion
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of the role out even the title of the movie
again just wasn't the best. But her character throughout the
entire movie is wearing this wedding dress. She has on
these Chuck Taylor's that should be a Halloween costume every
single year. So hopefully it can bank on the kind
of cult following it has now going into the sequel
and will become more successful. I can't wait to see
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it again. They just announced it, so we probably won't
get it for another two or three years, but I'm
ready for Ready or not two, but that is in
at number four, getting into the top three now. And
number three is Ellen from Alien played by Sigourney Weaver,
came out back in nineteen seventy nine. If you want
to watch this Alien movie, and I think some of
the other ones are on there as well, it's available
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on Hulu. I love that meme that was going around
on X whenever the last Alien Romulus movie came out
saying is it safe to say that nobody else has
the name Sigourney? I cannot think of another Sigourney besides
Sigourney Weaver. Alien was a movie that I didn't watch
until maybe like I was teenager. And the reason I
was exposed to Alien is because I used to play
(18:04):
a game called Conquer's Bad Fer Day, which was a
game on at the time N sixty four that was
rated M for mature, and I played it as a
kid because it was exposing me to very not so
kid friendly things. But in that video game, they parodied
a lot of famous movies, and the level on this
game where they parody Alien was one of my favorites.
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And then I realized later, oh, that's from a movie,
and maybe it's because of that being the reason and
how I was exposed to this movie that I never
really thought of Alien as a horror movie. Obviously has
a lot of iconic imagery, a lot that they also
pulled into Alien Romulus, and while I do think that
Sigourney Weaver's performance was the success of this story, I
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don't really put it in the same category of having
that true final girl definition. To me, even with the
recent editions we've been talking about, I would take Samara
Weaving over Sigourney Weaver on this list. I think the
reason she is probably in at number three is because again,
all of these final Girls have to use some ingenuity
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to take out the killer, in this case it being
an alien, and I think her character, Ellen Ripley, has
maybe one of the most memorable and thoughtful ways to
take out her killer, and through that she shows really
how fearless she is. But still I don't think that
his top three worthy. I did really like Kaylee Spainey
and Alien Romulus, who pooled a lot of inspiration from
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Sigourney Weaver but also made that character her own. So
I do like the direction that the Alien franchise is
going in. So even though I respect Sigourney Weaver at
number three. I don't love it at number two. Getting
to the heavy hitters, now you have Sidney Prescott from
Scream played by Nev Campbell. Came out back in nineteen
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ninety six again and it is available on Max, which
we mentioned earlier. Sidney Prescott is the best modern version
of a final Girl in mind. My opinion, I do
think the screen movies kind of lost their way even
when Wes Craven continued to direct them. Scream four became
the first one that he didn't direct because he passed away,
but that one came out in twenty eleven and he
(20:13):
died in twenty fifteen. But the formula did become a
little stale. That was until, in my opinion, Jenna Ortega
and Melissa Barrera were introduced into the cast. Those movies
rebooted the franchise and also got super meta with referencing
the screen movies and redoing things from that one and
including them here. So wasn't really a remake, wasn't really
(20:36):
a reboot. It was kind of just taking all the
elements of Scream and using gen Z actors to make
you feel that same way when you watch the first
screen movies. So I hate now that the fate of
these movies is really in the balance, that Jenna Ortega
and Melissa Barrera are no longer going to be attached
to them. I hate the way they exited these films,
but it looks like some of the original casts will
(20:57):
still be a part of them. I just don't really
think that there's much left there to really make these
movies interesting, and they lost what was making them work,
what was making the younger audience go to the theater
to watch these movies. Now you're just gonna be trying
to make these movies to people of my generation millennials,
to go and be nostalgia bate. But that really doesn't
work with horror franchises anymore. You gotta keep it new,
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you gotta keep it fresh, You got to keep those
actors at the forefront. And Nev Campbell would have been
the best to do it as far as being the
it Final Girl if it wasn't for number one, the
og the original Final Girl. The best Final Girl of
all time according to this list, and according to me,
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it is Lrie Strode from Halloween, played by Jamie Lee Curtiz.
Came out in nineteen seventy eight. It is available to
watch on Crackle of all services, Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus.
Even you can watch Halloween on Crackle. I feel like
I've watched maybe two things on Crackle in my life.
Actually I take that. I think it was only one movie,
(22:01):
Joe Dirt I Beautiful Loser, the sequel that nobody asked for,
but it was available as a Crackle original, So you
can go watch Joe Dirt two, and you can go
watch Halloween again. Much like to B Crackle is also
the dollar bin, but maybe not even at Walmart, probably
a like family dollar dollar tree. I would never find
anything good in those bins. It'd always be like really
(22:21):
weird movies or like movie three packs of black and
white horror movies that were made back in the forties.
And the reason I agree with this list why Lourie
Strode is the best final Girl is that final scene
where she is making it her main objective to save
the kids but also save herself make sure they're out
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of harm's way, and has the most iconic scene in
any horror movie. It is the blueprint of how to
make a great final act. Luri Strode in the closet
with Michael Myers breaking down the door is a scene
that all turd my brain's chemistry. If there's one scene
in Horror that I wish I could go back and
(23:05):
rewatch for the first time, have my memory erased, just
so I could experience it again, it would be this scene.
Jamie Lee Curtis did a fantastic job as she was
being introduced into the world. Halloween two takes place right
after the events of Halloween one, and growing up, I
would always just watch those back to back every Halloween,
and two isn't as iconic as one, but if you
(23:27):
watch them all together, it makes for a great movie night.
The entire journey that Lorie Strode goes through all of
the movies doesn't really make sense. They kind of change
her character from movie to movie, create this backstory of
her and Michael being related. Are they related? Are they not?
I enjoyed it as they moved into Halloween h two O.
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Even though I think people hate that movie, that is
one of my favorite Halloween movies. And then they reintroduced
her again in the twenty eighteen version, which I thought
was fantastic, but I hate how that run ended. Twenty
eighteen was a great reboot Halloween Kills in twenty twenty
one was pretty mid and I completely hated Halloween Ends.
But I can look past all that to go back
(24:09):
to the original Lourie Strode at number one as the
best final girl in all of horror. Come back, I'll
give you my review spoiler free of Smile Too, and
then in the trailer park we'll talk about Nicole Kidman's
new A Rick thriller. Why I say that so weird?
Let's put a smile on that face and get into
(24:31):
it now. A spoiler free movie review of Smile Too.
I had a few questions going into this movie. Is
it going to improve upon the first one? I wasn't
the biggest fan of the first one. I rated that
one a two point five out of five because I
felt that movie came to a screeching halt in the
second and beginning of third act where it got so boring.
(24:52):
It spent so much time focused on the curse and
unraveling the mystery of the curse. If you're not familiar
with Smile it's basically somebody commit suicide in front of
you with the smile on their face, passing along this
curse to you, much like the ring from back in
the day. You have seven days until this curse takes
you out, and it keeps moving from person to person.
(25:13):
I believed in the idea of the first one. If
I were an investor, I would have taken my money
and invested in Smile Too. Knowing that director Parker Finn
had something there had people talking about this movie just
didn't really have the movie down quite yet for me
as a horror movie fan. So is this one going
to improve upon Smile one and really cash in on
(25:35):
that hype? The second question I had is it going
to rely again on jump scares. I find jump scares
to be pretty cheap. When I think about my favorite
moments in horror, it's never around a jump scare, and
they do get me from time to time. You're in
a theater, it's dark, big loud sound has an impact
on you. Watching this movie. I did jump out of
(25:56):
my I mean not fully out of my seat, but
it got me a little bit. My heart rate going
it'll get you. But when I think about my favorite
moments in horror movies, it is never a jump scare.
It's fun, but I feel like it's almost cheat because
you're just taking the audience kind of for granted there,
because yes, they are in this vulnerable state, and if
you played anything really loud and comes out of nowhere,
(26:18):
you're going to scare people. But that's not gonna be
the most memorable thing about your film. You have to
really create an energy and create memorable experiences by building
that tension, not just relying on big loud sound effects
to scare your audience, unless that's all you want and
unless that's really how you get your kicks when going
to a horror movie, but for me, I don't love them.
And the third question is was it going to be
(26:39):
so predictable? And I know this is an annoying thing
about me, but I always like to predict movies after
watching the trailer. That's why on this podcast I do
the trailer bark, and it might be annoying to you
when I'm like, Okay, I see this in this trailer.
They are focusing on these parts. This is what I
think is going to happen in the final act, and
I don't like that because I feel, well, especially in horror,
(27:01):
I want things to come out of nowhere and when
I can pick apart everything that is going to happen
it's just not that enjoyable to me. I feel like
you could be a little bit more imaginative. But I
get why they do it. They're trying to appeal to
a mass audience. So those are my three questions going
into this film. Let's get into what actually Smile two
is about. It takes place six days after the original,
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which I like that these movies are tying into each other,
and after watching Smile Too, I really feel like these
are both definitive chapters. They are still inside the same world,
but they have an entirely different feeling, and I think
that is something Smile to really benefited from, because the
entire tone of this movie changed. This one centers around
a pop star named Sky Riley played by Naomi Scott,
(27:43):
who did a fantastic job. She is about to embark
on this big world tour after just going through something
pretty dramatic. It starts out with her going on to
Drew Barrymore's talk show talking about how she appreciates her
fans sticking with her through a really tough time in
her life. Talks about doing drugs, gives a little glimpse
into her dark past, and you learn more about that
(28:05):
as the movie and story develops. This movie is a
big commentary on the pressures of fame, trauma, and overall
what it feels like to go completely crazy and have
nobody believe you. Because everything is writing on this tour
that she's about to go on, because it is going
to be the definitive moment in her career now, because
(28:25):
this tour to her is going to make or break
her career. But she has a lot of things to
get through in order to make it happen. One of
those being a big injury that she is dealing with
that is causing her a lot of pain and not
being able to perform the way she wants to. So
she goes to a drug dealer's house to get some
pain medication, and that is where if you've seen the trailer,
(28:48):
you see Lucas Gage's character there unlive himself, and that
is where the fun begins, because it starts to blend
the line of what is actually happening in the real
world and what is just happening inside her mind and
all these illusions that are being created because of this curse.
My biggest problem with the first one is it spent
so much time talking about this curse and trying to
(29:10):
unravel the secrets, and Smile really try to be a
much more sinister movie than it was, really diving into
the past and had one of my worst tropes in
horror movies of all time is whenever you go on
a big mission to try to figure out what is
happening here, you unravel this secret and you try to
(29:31):
figure it all out before it's too late, then you
have a big lame battle at the end. I hate
that whole driving to another town, another city to talk
to somebody who may have some information on this. And
what Smile Too did was take all that out of
the movie, out of the plot line, and focus more
on sky Riley and how the curse is affecting her,
(29:52):
and you really see her fall into this just manic
state happen and unravel. Piece by p that was just
really fun for me to watch. I do like it.
At the beginning of the movies where the actor comes
on says a little something about the movie thanking you
for coming to the theater, and sometimes I think that
has no effect on me, but Naomi Scott said something
in that that kind of set up my expectations of, Hey,
(30:16):
go on this ride with me join me in the
story of Riley, and I thought about this movie a
little bit different of Okay, I'm gonna take this journey
with this character and experience it the way that they
are experiencing it. And I feel like as the viewer,
if you really let yourself dial into this movie, you
start to feel it too. I will say it does
it kind of like the first one, in a very
(30:37):
slow approach, where you start out just little by little,
and it's really not that scary in the beginning, because
when watching it on the big screen, just having somebody
standing there smiling really isn't that scary. And what do
they do? They still rely on that jump scare. The
biggest moments that came, I would say, in the first
and part of the second act very much rely on
(31:00):
catching you off guard with a big sound effect, and
some of the visuals are pretty bloody and mildly disturbing.
But I would say it doesn't really become to me
a full on horror movie until that second and third act.
In those last forty minutes, it becomes an entirely different
movie when all the chaos starts unfolding, when all of
(31:22):
the big actions starts happening in the sky. That is
when it really gets good. And that is such an
improvement from the first one, because in those last forty
minutes of the first one, all the action was in
those last ten And there was a point in that
movie where I almost fell asleep because there was nothing happening.
It was a lot of dialogue. The entire plot line
of that main character was kind of a snoozefest. But
(31:45):
here you had multiple layers going on with sky Riley,
not only the pressures of needing this tour to work
and having her mom slash manager control all the aspects
of her life, trying to do all these appearances, trying
to just be a human at the same time, where
you have fans trying to approach you, you're trying to
do a meet and greets. That in itself was a
(32:07):
story that I was interested in. And then you have
all these horror elements happening on top of it, of
her going crazy and not being able to know what
is actually happening in real life, really not even knowing
that she has a curse on her because she has
no idea what is happening. That is an entirely different
thing going on at the same time. So combining those
things together really made me invest in her character and
(32:30):
made this movie really entertaining for me. But was it predictable? Yeah,
it was predictable. Hate to say, but I probably predicted
everything that was going to happen in this movie. But
even though it was predictable, it was still enjoyable. I
knew what was coming, I felt it, I could see
it in the writing, just because I feel like this
movie didn't really take a whole lot of risk, but
(32:52):
what it did it did well. So even though it
was predictable, I didn't find myself being unsatisfied with the results.
I actually enjoy living in this world. That felt a
little bit more grounded than the first one. Like I said,
the first one felt like it was trying to be
much more sinister, felt more like a nightmare tale. This
one really felt more like how you and I would
(33:13):
experience this happening to us. So this one just had
much more of an effect on me, so much so
that I had a nightmare after watching this movie that
I too saw certain things happening in my dream where
I was walking by a poster and it was like
a picture of somebody and then suddenly their smile got
(33:33):
really big and I started to freak out thinking that
this was happening to me too. So it definitely had
much more of an effect on me. But what really
made me enjoy this movie was Naomi Scott's performance as
Sky Riley, who is the character that you don't entirely
root for the entire time because she has some good
qualities about her, actually very few when you think about it,
(33:56):
and a lot of bad qualities about her. So I
like movies where you don't present the person going through
all this as somebody who you entirely root for because
she has done some things in her past. I think
for me, I just hate when they have somebody who
is like a global pop star, but they make sure
to say it in every interview. If you think about
the most famous people in music right now, they don't
(34:16):
go on TV shows and everybody's like, welcome global pop sensation.
You just know if Harry Styles goes on a talk show,
if Selena Gomez goes on a talk show, which is
about the level of fame that Sky is in this movie,
they don't need to give any qualifiers of how famous
this person is. And I don't know why that bothers me,
but it does. And how they put so much emphasis
(34:40):
on this world tour like everybody is talking about it.
That really doesn't happen now unless you're Taylor Swift going
on the Era's tour. Nobody is talking about a world
tour like there's so much pressure. But as an artist,
I think they feel this pressure when they put tickets
on sale, when they go out in these cities, this
is their entire world. They do feel that, I think,
(35:02):
so I think it did portray that of how to
you and I, we see a concert go on sale,
we think do we want to go see that? Do
we want to pay that amount of money? And that
is just something we think about in our week. But
to this artist going on this tour, they can feel that,
they feel if this is going to make or break them.
But I just think that the way they portrayed this
character isn't entirely true to how somebody at this level
(35:24):
would be. But I do think it showed some of
the things they have to deal with, like super obsessed fans,
if you get bad press and how hard it is
to recover from that, and just overall the pressures that
not everybody sees when you just see people on Instagram
or on TV shows. Naomi Scott went all in on
this performance and the movie left nothing on the table,
which is usually my biggest criticism when it comes to
(35:46):
a horror movie that is trying to build a franchise,
leave some things in mystery. But this movie gave you everything.
It went all out, It cranked it up to eleven
and said we're gonna give you the best performance we
can in this movie. So they really capitalize going into
this movie with more momentum, having more people talking. They
still did all the promotion like they did for the
(36:07):
first one, which I think is something that really sets
a movie like this apart. Because there are other good
horror movies that have come out this year. I don't
think this one is the best one, but it's probably
the one that is stuck in more people's minds because
of that promotion. And that's what you have to do
really when it comes down to having a successful horror movie.
(36:28):
Right now, it's all in the promotion. How can you
get people talking? Look at what Terrifier three did? They
put all that press out themselves of saying people were
walking out of the theater vomiting there was nobody vomiting.
That's all marketing, and it went on to beat Joker Too.
I think in order to succeed and set yourself apart,
you have to do things like Smile is doing. Create
(36:49):
that aura not just around the stars of this movie
or even the characters, it's just around the idea of it.
Because you have that image in your mind as somebody smiling,
that poster can terrify you alone. So I found myself
enjoying all two hours of this movie. Definitely a major
improvement on the first one, which that one I give
(37:10):
a two point five out of five. But for Smile Too,
I give it four out of five.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Pop Stars, It's time to head down to movie Mike.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Traylor Paul Christmas movies are my least favorite genre of movie,
New Christmas movies in particular. It is so hard to
create a new classic. And the reason that we all
love Christmas movies is because they were something that we
grew up with and we have this memory attached to
them that we love. So it's all the movies we
(37:46):
rewatch every single year that give us that feeling again,
that feeling of being a kid. But if you break
down exactly what a Christmas movie is the fiber of
a Christmas movie is not good. It's predictable, it's the
same thing over and over. The acting isn't anything that's
going to move you. So as a movie on its own,
(38:09):
they're not great movies. Doesn't mean they're not fun. They
don't bring you back to having good memories. If I'm
just sitting down to watch a movie, I'm only watching
a Christmas movie around Christmas time. I'm not watching them
in March in July. There's a reason they only come
out around the holidays. It is so much a reflection
(38:32):
of the Christmas season, and it's so hard to make
a new classic, and they keep trying. Only movie I
can think of that has come out in the last
twenty five years that has cemented itself as a Christmas
classic that you can watch every single year is Elf.
That is the only one. And a movie that is
twenty plus years old, almost thirty years old at this point,
(38:54):
is still considered a modern classic because it's so hard
to do, and maybe it just takes that amount of
time for a movie to be out out for us
to watch again and again and again every single Christmas
to really cement it as a classic. Much like classic
cars need like twenty twenty five years to be a
classic car. Same thing here applies to movies. So to
really set yourself apart as a new Christmas movie, you
have to do something innovative. And I think that is
(39:16):
what Baby Girl is doing with Nicole Kidman because it
is an erotic thriller centered around Christmas time. So does
it embody the Christmas spirit? No, because it's all about
her playing this character, who is a business executive, has
an affair with a young intern played by Harrison Dickinson,
who was really great in The Iron Claw. I also
liked him a triangle of sadness. This movie happens to
(39:39):
take place around Christmas, and it wasn't until I saw
the trailer and heard the music and saw all the
imagery that I was like, oh man, they might actually
be onto something. So before I get into more about
Baby Girl, here's just a little bit of the trailer.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
We're gonna do this. We need to set some rules
that you and I post agree on. Did you order
this starting with I tell you what to do when
you do it?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Funny fect out guys?
Speaker 4 (40:12):
No, what get on your knees now?
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Is that what you want. You're very young. I don't
want to argue. Oh my gosh, I feel like I
should get out of the room and leave them two together.
I wonder what Nicole Kidman looks for in a script.
Are these movies being pitched to her because they have
her in mind for these parts, or is she actively
seeking out these types of roles. You look back on
(40:40):
the movies and probably more in particular the limited series
that she's done, which I think she in the last
five years has done much better work in limited series
than she has in movies. I feel like the movies
she has done have been a little bit more of
a paycheck because she is at that status. She could
go in make fifteen twenty million dollars on a movie
(41:01):
because you bank on the Nicole Kidman name. And I
think where she's really shown how great of an actor
she is is on all these limited series, everything from
Nine Perfect Strangers, Lioness ex Pats, The Perfect Couple earlier
this year. Because if you look on the movie side,
in the last five years, she's done movies like The Goldfinch, Bombshell,
The Northman Being the Ricardos All Command in The Lost Kingdom.
(41:24):
She did a Family Affair on Netflix earlier this year.
So if I had to take Nicole Kidman in a
limited series versus Nicole Kidman in film, I would take
the limited series. But if you look at her characters
in those limited series, she always kind of goes for
roles like this, and she does them so well of
being this person who is so dominant, a true driving force,
(41:45):
but then also having relationships like this that are toxic
but are so intriguing. And I have to imagine that
a lot of these roles take a bit of a
toll on you as an actor to put yourself through
that mental anguish, And I just wonder where in her
does she go to to get these amazing performances that
she does. And I don't know if she's actively seeking
roles like this because she finds these to be the
(42:08):
most enjoyable, or directors know in order to have these
stories really come to life, they need Nicole Kidman to
portray this character. Living in Nashville, I've actually seen Nicole
Kidman around town in the most random places. I think
both of them have been at the Mall in different
locations of the mall. But the thing about her is
she is so nonchalant. When you run into her, you
(42:28):
wouldn't even know. Because sometimes you see people out in
public and they look famous. They're dressed a certain way,
they have people around them, and you can just tell.
Maybe I don't know exactly what I know them from,
but I can tell that that person is famous. When
I've seen Nicole Kidman out, she looks just like everybody else.
She sticks to her own lane. She doesn't make a
big fuss out of anything, and it looks like just
(42:49):
running into anybody, maybe your friend, your neighbor out at
the mall, but it's Nicole Kidman, Academy Award winning Nicole Kidman,
just doing some shopping at the mall. Now, she has
a much larger bank account to work with than any
of us. While shopping at the mall, I don't really
think she needs to look at price tags, even though
that story came out that she prefers to drive her
SuPAR Rue over the Lamborghini that her husband, Keith Urban
(43:11):
bought her, which is another wild thing because I've seen
them both out together, and you have one a list
movie star on the right, flash TV star, and one
a list country star on the left, And really, when
you see them together. The only defying factor that you
can tell that they are famous is Keith Urban's tattoos
make them look famous. So I just find it crazy
that their level of famous so high and they seem
(43:33):
to be so low maintenance when just hanging out in public.
So back to the movie Baby Girl, which is coming
out on Christmas Day, an erotic thriller on Christmas Day.
Who would have thought, especially with this holiday season being
so so competitive with Sonic and The Lion King. This
is almost the counter programming to that. Because I have
great memories of going to the movie theater around Christmas time.
(43:56):
There is a warmth to it. I think when you're
hanging around your family for more time than you're probably
used to around the holidays, the movies are a good escape,
and there's just the feeling of going to the movie
and watching something where the world has kind of slowed down.
Hopefully you're enjoying some time off and you can go
and relax and watch a movie. And this is not
something I'm used to going to see around that time
(44:17):
of year, something that's probably gonna get my blood boiling
a little bit, because by the looks of this trailer
of Nicole Kinman's character going behind the back of her
husband this dude showing up at her house. I feel
like there's going to be a lot of good cringe
those moments where you're like, oh, man, I can't believe
this is happening, but I cannot look away. And Nicole
Kidman does not shy away from taking very steamy roles,
(44:39):
and just by the looks of this trailer, it looks
like her and Harris Dickison have some very great chemistry,
which is really how you sell this movie anything where
you're really needing as the audience to buy into the romance,
you have to buy into that chemistry. Last holiday season,
it was Sunny Sweeney and Glenn Powell completely keeping everybody
on their toest thinking are they together? Are they not together?
(45:00):
Completely selling that movie and giving that movie a big
life in theaters and even more so once it went
to streaming. I don't know that Baby Girl is going
to be one that everybody's going to be rushing to
watch around the holiday season. But if there is a
name that could do that in a role like this
that I think people are now starting to associate her
with more, I think it could be Nicole Kidman. Again.
(45:20):
Baby Girl is coming out this Christmas on December twenty fifth.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
At that was this week's edition of Movie by Tram or.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Bar and that is gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta
give my listeners shout out of the week, and this
week it is a collective shout out to the movie crew.
Thank you all for voting in the awards for the
best Podcast in Nashville. We came in three guys. That's
pretty good. I'll take it. We did win a couple
(45:49):
of years ago in twenty twenty two, taking home first
place for best Podcast, but twenty twenty four, I'll take
third place. I'm kind of in that place of I'm
just happy to be on the podium because I would
have loved to been up there at number one. But
if we would have landed in number two, I would
have felt like, man, we were so close to number one?
How many more votes do we need? Could I have
(46:09):
talked about it more, promoted it more, and got us
the number one? But coming in at number three, I'm like,
you know what, I'm just glad we're here because if
I would have looked at the list and it wouldn't
have been listed. I would have felt like, oh man,
this sucks. Maybe it's time to close up shops. So
happy to be on the podium. You're listening to and
are a part of the third best podcast in Nashville.
So thank you everybody for voting, everybody for listening, for
(46:32):
telling a friend, for being subscribed, coming here on release
day which is Mondays or maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whenever
you have time. It means the world to me, So
thank you from the bottom and the depths of my
heart and bowels. And until next time, go out and
watch good movies and I will talk to you later.
Host
Mike D
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