Movie Mike gives The Evolution of Adam Sandler (according to his opinion) from his most famous comedic roles, box office bombs to his critically acclaimed dramatic performances. Movie Mike also goes into how Adam Sandler's performance in “Uncut Gems” worked so incredibly well and how it resonated it with him after leaving the theater. Plus Mike's Top 5 List of The Most Anticipated movies of 2020 and a review of “The Irishman” on Netflix by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to Movie Mike's Movie Podcast. My name is
Mike D on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Destro. You
might know me from the Bobby Bones Show, where I
am the resident movie guy, and this is the podcast
I do every single Monday where all I do is
talk about movies. This week, I am talking about the
evolution of Adam Sandler from comedic to dramatic roles. I
recently saw him in Uncut Gems and that movie really
(00:23):
resonated with me in a way I wasn't expecting, and
I think it's all because of his performance in the movie.
So I kind of just want to go through his
roles from the comedic stuff he did in the nineties,
the two thousands and then kind of getting into the
waters where he's just has really bad reviews movie after movie.
So I'll go through all that. Also in my movie
list this week, I have my top five most anticipated
(00:45):
movies of twenty plus i'll give my review of The
Irishman on Netflix, which is a long three and a
half hours that I invested in my life, So a
lot to talk about on this week's episode. Thanks again
for tagging me in your Instagram story, rating and reviewing
the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and subscribing on I Heart Radio.
A lot to cover this week, so let's get into it.
(01:07):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking on MTV
with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network is movie movie podcast.
(01:30):
So to start out this week's show, I wanted to
dedicate an entire segment just to Adam Sandler because I
recently watched Uncut Gems and was really moved by it
in a way that I wasn't expecting because I've loved
Adam Sandler movies for a very long time, and I
grew up in the nineties as a nineties kid, and
he was the biggest thing in comedy. I just remember
(01:54):
going to the video store and renting Um Happy Gilmore,
renting Billy Madison and thinking, man, this is like the
funniest thing I've ever seen. And I would quote the
movies all the time, and those movies just kind of
stuck with me all throughout my life. And I've loved
him from watching him on SNL and kind of seeing
him go from being like that beloved funny guy to
(02:14):
having this career where he's just kind of viewed as
like putting hug bad movies, which is which is really
kind of crazy that he's kind of had his resurgence
now with the success of Uncut Gems and really people
being able to see his range of an actor, because
he's it's not the first serious role he's done, but
it's the most, probably the most acclaimed role that he's
(02:35):
taken on in a very long time. So I wanted
to go through just his career and kind of see
his evolution from being the funny guy and putting out
hit blockbuster comedy movies to also being the guy who
would put out just flop after flop. But I mean,
even with those flops, he was still making a lot
of money, but he has just like a track list
(02:56):
of like the worst reviewed movies on Rotten Tomatoes, and
then now kind of into two thousand and tens of
also continuing those flops, um landing a big Netflix deal
where he put out some movies and now he's kind
of stepping back into these dramatic roles and having some
success where I mean, he really had a really successful,
(03:17):
like quiet, low key nineteen UM now moving into an
entirely different decades. So I kind of want to go
a decade by decade and just look at his work.
So starting in the nineties where he started out doing
stand up comedy in New York City, where he was
going um to college at n y U for acting,
and then in addition to that, he would go out
(03:39):
and do stand up making like ten dollars a night.
You really don't make a lot doing stand up and
especially starting out, so he would go to the club.
He had a professor at n y U who would
you know, teach him acting, and his professor told him
like at one point to quit acting. He's like, man,
you have heart, but you really just don't have it
to be an actor. And he told him, like to
(03:59):
go pursue another path. But starting out in the nineties, like,
he was like broke by the time he got to SNL,
which he was discovered by doing stand up in he
got hired onto SNL and he was twenty three years old.
And the thing about SNL was, you actually don't make
a lot of money on that show. It's basically an
entry level TV job. I've seen a bunch of interviews
with people starting on SNL. The perception is, Oh, you
(04:21):
go on that show, you're on TV, you've made it,
But really you're not making that much money. You do
a show at night that's on once a week, so
it's basically an entry level job. He's doing that for
five years. He's put out some movies in between them,
and the year before he got hired on the SNL
he did a movie called Going Overboard, which I remember
mostly for being in the Dollar Been at Walmart. And
then he also was in air Heads, a movie in
(04:43):
nineteen ninety four where they like break into a radio station,
where he wasn't really the star of that movie, so
his movie career hadn't really taken off. But then he
got fired from SNL in nineteen and it was well
before he received any kind of success at the box office.
So he's twenty eight gets fired from SNL after five
years on the show, along with they also fired Chris Farley,
so they're both down and the dumps together. He had
(05:04):
co wrote and started Billy Madison, which premiered a few
months before he left SNL, and went on to make
a good, solid twenty six million dollars on that, So
after that is where he kind of just has starts
having success. In the nineties, he puts out Happy Gilmore six,
makes forty one million dollars, then the Wedding Singer brings
them another hundred and twenty three million, and The water
(05:25):
Boy in nine makes him one and ninety million, and
then he closes out the nineties with Big Daddy making
two hundred and thirty four million dollars, and at this
point you cannot deny that he is a major Hollywood
star and success. So all that from being fired from
SNL pretty good for him. He also in the nineties
started his own movie production company called Happy Madison, which
(05:46):
just combines his first two movies, Billy Madison and Happy
Gilmore together, and this kind of brings him into the
two thousands where he starts putting out more, you know,
still the same kind of comedic movies like Little Nikki Mr.
Deed's Fifty First States, but he also kind of takes
a step in that direction of becoming a more dramatic,
serious actor, which is really hard for any actor to
do who's mainly starting comedy movies, like very few people
(06:07):
have done it. Aside from Adam Sandler, only other people
I can think of having success or Jim Carey, Ben
Stiller a little bit, but there are very few actors
who can be taken seriously in both the guard. But
he started a movie called Punch Drunk Love, which was
his first really step in this direction, and I remember
kind of being confused seeing him in this role because
you go into it expecting, you know, silly, wacky Adam
(06:30):
Sandler from the nineties, and now he's in this movie
playing this guy named Barry who's trying to find love
and then gets extorted by a phone sex company, and
it's actually a pretty good movie, and you kind of
see this different side of Adam Sandler and you're like, hey,
this actually starts to work. The movie received pretty good
reviews from critics, although I didn't really do so well
at the box office. So while it was a step
in that good direction of him kind of building towards that,
(06:52):
it still wasn't going to be his main thing to
just do dramatic roles. Also in the two thousands, he
started a movie called Spanglish, which was kind of a
mix of comedy and drama and kind of developed this
kind of style that he could balance between of like
still kind of being the regular Adam Sandler he used to.
But then in two thousand seven, he started a movie
called Rain Over Me, which is about a man who
(07:13):
loses his entire family in the September eleventh attack on
New York City and then he runs into his old
college roommate and develops a friendship with him and kind
of rekindles that. And this is the first movie where
you just see full on dramatic Adam Sandler, because there's
no comic relief whatsoever in this movie, and you get
this level of acting and performance from Adam Sandler that
(07:33):
you never thought he could really achieve. So at this point,
I feel he's established as both a comedic and dramatic actor.
I kind of hope he would take on more of
the dramatic roles from here. But then we get into
the two thousand tens, which I kind of dubbed as
the decade of bad reviews because he only has like
two maybe three movies that actually have a fresh rating
(07:54):
on Rotten Tomatoes. And it's also kind of why he
put out that comedy special called Fresh, because he was like,
they're not going to give me a good rating, then
at least I give it to myself. He then starts
putting out movies like Jack and Joe, which is probably
my last draw for watching Adam Sandler movies. That's the
movie where he plays himself as a woman has his
long lost twin al Pacinos in it, which I don't
(08:15):
know how they agreed him to be in that movie,
but this is kind of where I lost faith in
Adam Sandler. And then in two thousand fourteen, he signed
a major movie deal with Netflix. It was a four
movie deal for two hundred and fifty million dollars, and
he put out like four movies on Netflix, which I
ended up thinking, we're all right. His movie The Ridiculous
Six badly reviewed movie, but I thought it was at
(08:37):
least somewhat enjoyable if you're just watching something at home
on Netflix. He also put out The Do Over, Sandy
Wexler and Murder Mystery on Netflix as part of that deal,
which Netflix said that a bunch of people streamed those
movies that were like the highest streamed movies on their
service at the time. So at this point I think
Adam Sandler was just in the mindset of putting out
movies that he finds that are fun to make and
(08:58):
also his audience enjoy. Always he doesn't care about the
critics at this time. He just sees it as, Hey,
this is a business. I'm gonna put out movies. I'm
gonna get my paycheck, and I'll continue my career whether
the critics like it or not. And then in seventeen
he started a movie with Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman
called The Merrowitz Stories, where he's back into taking on
a dramatic role and gets a lot of positive reviews.
(09:21):
And then you get the twenty nineteen and uncut Gems
where he kind of blows everybody away myself included five
thousand carrots, three thousand dollars of carrots. That's the thing.
They say, you can see the whole universe. And that's
been all day, I'm telling you, And right, that's the
(09:46):
bad with this one. It was just kind of cool
to see Adam Sandler in a way that I forgot
it was Adam Sandler, Like, he looks a lot different.
He has like these fake teeth in the movie. His
hair is kind of jelled up in a weird way.
And it's about a guy who has an unhealthy addiction
to gambling. So what he's doing is he runs like
a high end jewelry company, but in addition to that,
(10:07):
he's making these really crazy, extravagant bets with other people's money.
So he's essentially just taking jewelry, moving it around, getting
money from one person to bet on these crazy like
NBA parlays that just end up getting him into more
and more trouble. So the whole movie is just really chaotic,
and it's from these two guys named the Safty Brothers
who actually came to Adam Sandler with the idea of
this movie ten years ago, and they're pretty young guys,
(10:29):
but at the time he was doing other stuff and
he never got to meet him. And then eventually the
script came back to him again. He read it and
I was like, this is actually really good, and he
agreed to do it. So what I really like about
this movie is that it's just filled with tension all
the way through. Like I was literally on the edge
of my seat in this movie, and I'm not using
that as a hyper league. I was on the edge
(10:50):
of my seat, slouched down because there's moments in this
where it's so intense I also love that they use
like real people in this movie, meaning that they brought
in like non actors to be actual tough guys in
this movie. I think it gives it a sense of
realism when working with other real actors. It also starts
Kevin Garnett, who's the NBA player, not an actor. He's
playing himself, so you think, oh, it's kind of easy
(11:11):
just to play yourself, but I think it's almost a
harder thing to have to do for somebody who's never
been in a movie before. So essentially what happens in
the movie is he is able to acquire a really
rare and valuable black opal, and it's all because he's
watching like the History Channel, learns about it and then
finds a way to get his hands on one. He
gets it delivered to his shop and then shows it
(11:31):
to Kevin Garnett, who becomes enamored with a thing and
also wants to buy it from him, and then the
movie just kind of escalates from there. So he has
this valuable opal and he's trying to use it to
pay back all his gambling debts. He was like a
hundred thousand dollars to this guy who's just hounding him
throughout the whole movie. Not gonna ruin the movie, but man,
it really gets intense, and I think Adam Sandler just
has a really great way of getting into this role
(11:53):
of this guy who essentially just watches the History channel,
learns about this thing, and thinks he has like the
upper hand on the other jewelers. For some reason. The
movie also takes place in twelve so they made it
a point to kind of make it look like that
time period, which is an interesting thing because I don't
really know what you know for but in this he
kind of see how they stuck to using like the
(12:14):
iPhone that was out at that time. And also, um,
the Weekend is in at the Singer and they made
him like recreate his hairstyle to fit how it was
when he first kind of came out, So I thought
that was a really nice touch. I left the movie
theater exhilarated. Like I said, I was literally on the
edge of my seat, and it moved me kind of
in a way that a movie hasn't done in a while,
(12:34):
and I think it was all because of Adam Sandler's
really great dramatic performance. So I myself am really happy
to see him have such a big hit with this
movie and kind of people taking him serious again. And
it's crazy just to see how he's gone from being
the dope guy on SNL who really suffered with stage
fright at the time. Like the reason he would use
his guitar in like a bunch of comedy bits and
(12:54):
would write those songs is because he suffered with stage
fright and needed to hold something to kind of feel
like he could fall back on it. Going from that
being fired onto and Know and then going on to
star in these big blockbuster comedy movies. Kind of who's
taking a step back and being hit and tortured by
critics with these all these bad reviews and now kind
of having this redefined career as he goes into the twenties.
(13:16):
Is that what we're calling this decade the twenties? But
I would just like to see him really go for
this next decade. And how crazy would it be for
him to go on to win something like an Oscar.
Let's start that campaign now anyway, That is the evolution
of Adam Sandler as told by me. And also I
would give Uncut Gems easily five out of five opals.
It's still in theaters now so you can go check
that out. Um it is a pretty R rated movie.
(13:39):
It has like the seventh most efforts ever in a movie.
So um, if violence and bad language keep you away
from going to see a movie, just a warning on that. Also,
let me know which Adam Sandler you prefer, the guy
who starts in the comedy movies or the one who
takes on these dramatic roles. All right, that's it for
Adam Sandler. Coming up, I'm gonna do my top five
most anticipated movies of and also my review of The
(14:00):
Irishman on Netflix. We're in a brand new year, Welcome
to everybody. So for my movie list this week, I
am looking at my top five most anticipated movies of.
I threw in some reboots, I threw in some sequels,
and just some movies I've been waiting a long time
(14:21):
to see come to fruition. So let's get started. First,
we are going to Top Gun Maverick, which comes out
on June. Yes, we are getting a Top Gun sequel
after thirty one years. Your reputation procedes. You have to
admit I wasn't expecting an invitation back there called Orders Maverick.
(14:42):
Of course you have Tom Cruise back as Maverick, and
then you have Miles Teller, who you know from Whiplash,
will play Goose's son in the movie, and Val Kimmer
is officially back as Iceman. So for what the movie
is about, they haven't released a whole lot of details
about the plot. The story is rumored to explo or
the relationship between human pilots and unmanned drones in the
(15:04):
modern military. So what I pieced together, it looks like
Tom Cruise's character Maverick comes back trying to show the
value of having real life human pilots. So personally, I
am not a Tom Cruise fan. For some reason, his
movies just don't do it for me. I don't really
see him as an action star. However, I am a
fan of him and Top Gun, and I think they
(15:24):
wouldn't bring it back after so long if they didn't
have a really good movie on their hands. And why
I put this on my list and why I'm excited
about this movie is because it seems like they really
went a long way to make this movie look accurate.
It's basically like a love letter to aviation. So there's
not a lot of c G I in this movie.
(15:44):
The aerial footage in this is real aerial footage that
they went out and shot with fighter jet pilots, and
if you look at this footage, it looks amazing. So
essentially what they did it was they put the actors
inside of real fighter jets and they put six different
camera is around him, so you have the front facing camera,
which that shot looks intense because what you're actually seeing
(16:05):
is the actor in the fighter jet and that g
force hitting them, so you see their real reaction to them. However,
they're not all flying the fire jets. They are in
the cockpit with somebody else. The only person who actually
flew a plane during part of this movie was Tom Cruise,
Like he does have his license and he wanted to
make it so realistic that he was trained on how
(16:25):
to fly one of these things, not the really crazy ones,
but he did fly some footage in this movie. But
apparently the actors said it was really intense on scene
and when they're up there, you know they're really feeling
those pounds of force on their body. There's like behind
the scenes footage of them essentially wanting to vomit while
in the air filming this movie. So Paramount was actually
able to make this with cooperation from the military because
(16:47):
after the first Top Gun came out, there was a
huge boost and recruitment in the nineteen eighties for the
Air Force, so they wanted to make the sequel as
accurate as possible, so they went back to the U. S.
Military to ask mission to film inside these fighter jets.
The Pentagon even gave them access to a military base
during filming to allow the cast members to work with
(17:09):
real military personnel. So what you're seeing in the movie
is footage of them really flying in military basis. Was
a real action sequences. So what I think it's really
gonna do for this movie is give us a real
kind of feel of what it's like to be inside
one of those plans from a perspective I've never seen
done in a movie before. I mean, to get that
point of view from the cockpit on the big screen
is the thing I'm just interested to see. So that's
(17:30):
why I put it at number five. At number four,
I had to go with Sonic the Hedgehog, which has
an interesting road to even get out in theaters. So
it's directed by Jeff Fowler, making his directorial debut, stars
James Mars, then Ben Schwartz and Jim Carey as Dr
Real Butt Nick and comes out on February four. I'm
going to give you five seconds to tell me where
(17:51):
it is. Wait, don't hurt of. So the movie is
based on the Sega video game Sonic the Hedgehog, which
I played all the time as a kid. Now I
grew up kind of broke, so my family never had
a Sega, but my cousin down the street did and
that would go all the time to play Sega. I
also loved the Saturday Morning cartoon where Sonic the Hedgehog
was voiced by no other than Jalil White a k. A. Arkle,
(18:14):
and for some reason he loved chili dogs on that
which I never really understood. And after last year success
of Detective Pikachu, I think movie studios now are looking
at video game franchises as a way to kind of
get people in the theaters with a familiar premise already
you already know the character from the video game and
turning it into a movie. So again, not really a
novel approach, just the way to get people more comfortable
(18:35):
and familiar with the character. The interesting thing about this movie, though,
it was supposed to come out last year, but what
happened was is they dropped a trailer where they showed
Sonic and he looked way too realistic that it creud
people out, like his eyes were kind of small and
beedient human looking, and he had human teeth, and a
bunch of people online were just like this looks terrible.
(18:56):
Which last year Cats had a problem with people not
liking their c g I, where they went back in
refix it and reput the movie out. So Sonic the
hedgehot kind of got ahead of it here and said, Okay,
people aren't liking this version of Sonic, they went back
and retooled them. They made his eyes more cartoony, like
the character that we know, and they also changed the teeth,
(19:17):
which makes them look a lot more friendlier and like
a cartoon character rather than just some alien. So I'm
excited for this mainly for the nostalgia factor, but also
just to see how Jim Carrey pulls off a dr
Robut Nick, that's why I put it at number four.
At number three is a movie a lot of people
were asking for for a really long time, and now
it's finally here. I'm talking about Black Widow starring Scarlett Johansson,
(19:40):
directed by Kay Shortland, female director, which will be opening
on May one. I've lived a lot of lives, but
I'm done running from my past. So Scarlett Johanson, who's
Black Widow a k a. Natasha Romanov, is finally getting
her own movie. And this is Marvel's and this is
the way Marvel is kicking off. It's Phase four. So
(20:00):
what Phase four is everything that has come after the
last Avengers movie and their leap intol like this whole
new part of the universe. So what this movie is
is actually a prequel to Scarlett Johansson's character. And while
the trailer has been out for a while now, there's
not a whole lot of story on what the plot
is going to be about, aside from the time frame
it takes place in. So chronologically, this movie takes place
(20:24):
after Captain America Civil War and then right before Avengers
Infinity War. To catch you up just about what was
happening with Black Widow during that time. Civil War ended
with Black Widow on the run after helping Captain America
escape you know Iron Man when he's kind of trying
to prosecute him. So after that her character was in
hiding until Standos came around in Infinity War, which forced
her to come out of hiding and helped the Avengers.
(20:46):
They do give us a look at the bad guy
in the movie named task Master. You also have David
Harbor who plays as the Sheriff, and Stranger Things as
the Red Guardian, and also a very rumored cameo by
Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. Since is a
prequel and takes place before Avengers Community War, it is
a possibility. Another cool thing about this movie as Scarlett
(21:07):
Johansson has reportedly made fifteen million for this role, which
is the same amount of money that Chris Evans made
playing Captain America and Chris Hemsworth made playing Thor in
their own movies. So we're getting equal pay here and
just for comparison here, Like in Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman
made two million dollars to starring that first solo movie,
and Brie Larson made five million dollars to starring Captain Marvel,
(21:29):
which also required her to sign a seven movie deal
with Marvel. So I think Marvel right now isn't a
bit of a transition period. With The Avengers pretty much
being over, they're kind of looking for their next big
thing and where to take the franchise, which I think
this will be a big building gear for Marvel. They
don't have as many titles coming out this year, and
there's also a larger gap in between movies as there
(21:50):
has been since probably, but I think this could be
a really big movie, and I'm excited for Scarlett Johanson
to finally beginning her solo movie. That's why I put
it at number three. And it looks like I'm staying
with the theme of female leads and comic book movies
because at number two I have Birds of Prey and
The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn long title. It's
(22:12):
directed by Kathyn Yes, another female director directing a female
starring comic book movie, opening on February seven, and Margot
Robbie back as Harley Quinn. It's psycho Chip never calling
them the check broad Lady. So Hargara Robbie as Harley
Quinn made her big screen debut in The Steen Suicide Squad,
(22:35):
which was an overall poorly rated movie, but I do
feel like she was the one shining light that DC
had in this movie and the ability to take her
out of that and place her into her own movie,
which is kind of a Suicide Squad sequel in a
way because it takes place right after that movie. But
yet they're also making Suicide Squad two, so I think
they're just trying to bridge the gap with having a
(22:57):
hit in between. So where this movie takes place, it's
right after a Suicide Squad. There's a brand new villain
named Black Mask, and the main plot of the movie
is that Harley Quinn and the rest of the Birds
of Prey, which is like this gang of girls, they
team up together to protect a young girl who came
across a diamond that belongs to Black Mask, and it
just so happens that that young girl is named Cassandra Caine,
who turns out to be bad Girl. There's also rumored
(23:19):
to be a Joker cameo, which was played by Jared
Letto in the first Suicide Squad. Probably the worst portrayal
ever of Joker. He I thought he was just too cartoony,
too weird, and didn't really add anything to the movie.
I felt like they just put the Joker in there
to get kind of people interested in the movie. The
reason I'm excited about this movie though, is because it's
rated are Suicide Squad was rated PG thirteen, and I
(23:41):
think that really hurt the movie because it came out
after Deadpool was such a big hit. And if you
don't remember Deadpool, the first one star Ryan Reynolds, and
it really was the first R rated Marvel movie. Was
more violent. There was cursing, and it just fit. And
after that came out, d C was kind of like,
oh no, that was actually a big sick tess and
we're kind of trying to tell a more grittier style movie,
(24:03):
but we have a PG thirteen rating. They went back
and did some reshoots to kind of pump up the
comedy a bit, but they still refrain from making that
leap into an R rated movie because with these comic
book movies, you want them to be entertaining two adults,
but you also want to consider that you want to
get everybody in the theater, which means if it's an
R rated movie, you lose out on the kid audience. Now,
(24:24):
I did some research on the movie numbers. I couldn't
find exactly how much Margot Robbie was played for the
first one, but she wasn't the main character in that,
so I don't think it would be comparable. But she
did take home between nine and ten million dollars playing
Harley Quinn in this one. So while I'm not the
biggest DC comics fan, I love a good R rated
comic book movie and that's why I put this at
(24:44):
number two. But before I get into my number one
most anticipated movie of I want to give some honorable mentions.
These didn't quite make the list either because there's no
trailer out, not many details on the plot, or I'm
just on the fence whether or not they're going to
be good, But I think they do to serve a
shout out. Coming out on August twenty one, this Bill
and Ted Faced the Music, which I think will just
(25:06):
be a fun movie. You also have coming out on
March seven is the live action Mulan, which I've gone
back and forth on how I feel about that trailer.
I think this one may be the one that kind
of ends the trend of these successful live action Disney remakes,
just because this one doesn't have really the charm of
the cartoon at all. It almost just looks like a
straight up Disney war movie, which I don't know how
(25:27):
audiences are going to receive that. Like the good thing
about the cartoon Milan is there were some comic relief
with Eddie Murphy as the dragon, but this one there's
no dragon. You also have coming out on March twenty
A Quiet Place Part two, and then on November sixty
have Marvel's Eternals, which is kind of their new Avengers,
but there's no trailer out really not a whole lot
of details aside from the cast who's in it. So
(25:49):
it just barely missed my list and at number one
my most anticipated movie of I'm staying in the theme
of female comic book characters. Also direct did by females,
It's wonder Woman starring Galghadad, directed by Patty Jenkins, who
did the first one, opening on June five, A right,
(26:12):
that's just a trash can ash can ye, so kind
of like Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad. Wonder Woman also
made her debut in what is just a pretty badly
reviewed movie, Batman Versus Superman, which I've never walked out
during a movie. But what I do is I fall
asleep during movies when they're boring, and that is a movie.
I took a good two minute napin woke up and
(26:36):
still not much had happened. The one shining light in
that movie was wonder Woman, and from that she got
her own movie, which actually has one of the highest
ratings for any superhero movie ever made. So when this one,
she's fighting not one but two villains. One is her
former friend turned villain played by Kristin Wig and the
other is this business guy villain played by Pedro Pascal,
(26:56):
who you know from The Mandalorian. He was also in
Narcos and Game of Thrones. So it's called wonder Woman
four because it takes place well in nineteen eighty four,
and you also have Chris Pine coming back as the
love interest. So initially what DC was gonna do was
the same thing Marvel was doing, where everybody would have
their own movie and it would lead up to like
Everybody joined together and like the Avengers. So they had
(27:18):
Justice League, which turned out to be a major flop,
and wonder Woman again was the only good part in that.
And with Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill backing out as
Batman and Superman, you're left with really just Wonder Woman
and Aquaman. For them to rely on. Not only that,
but now Galga Dot is getting paid, which there was
a lot of controversy with what she got paid for
(27:38):
the first one, where she only made three hundred thousand
dollars compared to Henry Cavill who got paid like twenty
million dollars to play Superman. She was making a fraction
of that. So here she's getting ten million dollars to
come back as Wonder Woman, which is a pretty significant
bump in pay. But I think that the fact that
she's really carrying DC right now, they need to give
(27:59):
her more money, like double that for a Wonder Woman.
So I'm just excited to see the continuation of Wonder
Woman's story with Galgha Dot and that is why I
put it as my number one most anticipated movie of
That is my top five list of the week. Let
me know what you thought about my picks, and if
there's a movie you're looking forward to one that maybe
I missed, let me know. All right, gonna get into
it now. My review of The Irishman, which you can
(28:21):
watch on Netflix. That is, if you have an extra
three hours and twenty nine minutes to spare well, the
movie is actually three hours and twenty minutes. There's an
entire nine minutes of just credits because this movie is
so long, so I set aside some time to really
take in this movie. From Martin Scorsese, who is a
legendary director, which you would know from Casino, The Wolf
of Wall Street and my favorite Good Fellas. This movie
(28:42):
is actually based on a real story. It's based on
a memoir called I Heard You Paint Houses, and it's
about a mob hitman played by Robert de Niro and
its possible involvement with the killing of a guy named
Jimmy Hoffa. I got a lot to say about this one,
so before we get into it, here's a clip of
the irishman only tweet people in the world I wanted
ease and only one of them as Irish and how
(29:03):
strong I made you. So I did a lot of
research on this movie, not only on how accurate it
is to portraying the real events, but also how long
this movie took to be made, because it was actually
in development since two thousand and seven, and it kind
of had a whole different plot in the beginning, Like
Tara Reid was supposed to be the love interest in
this glad they didn't go with her. Joe Petchy, who's
in the movie, who you would know from also in
(29:24):
Good Fellas. He was also the bad guy in Home Alone,
but he said no to Martin Scorsese fifty times before
finally agreeing to be in this, And he hasn't been
in a movie in over ten years. And not only
is it Martin Scorsese's longest film to date at two
hundred and nine minutes, it's also one of his most
expensive movies ever, with the budget of a hundred and
fifty nine million, which is pretty expensive. And it finally
(29:47):
got the green light from Netflix, which I think it's
so long because it's essentially a director's cut because Netflix,
I don't think they're gonna tell Martin Scorsese, hey, you
need to trim it down a bit. They're pretty exciting
to get a Martin Scorsese film the directly on Netflix.
So at three hours and twenty nine minutes, that is
the director's cut, Martin Scorsese saying, if you want my movie,
you get it in its entirety. As a director, I'm
(30:09):
a fan of the guy, but personally I think he's
just maybe a little old and cranky because he's the
guy who said Marvel movies aren't real movies, that they're
non films. And I get it. If you're making really
epic crime dramas like Martin Scorsese, and then you see
movies like The Avengers making tons of money, you may
feel like your craft is taking back a bit because
people are seeing these is like really big blockbusters. But
(30:29):
for him it's like, no, it's an old school storytelling,
very cinematic, you know, all these other just classic movie
telling elements, and when he sees those big things, he
wants to take a stab at them, And I think
it just makes him look old and kind of dated.
And I also think it's just kind of interesting that
he had agreed to put it solely on Netflix. I
think if you're arguing that movies like Marvel, I think
(30:51):
if you're making the argument that Avengers movies are films,
and you're putting something directly on a streaming service, well
you could argue, well, then you could kind of say,
if a movie doesn't go in theaters at a full release,
is it really a movie? Martin Scorsese because he was
even getting mad at people and telling them not to
watch his movie on your phone because Netflix. It's available
(31:11):
on your phone. People are gonna watch this wherever. And
he's like, no, you gotta sit down and know, Martin Scorsese,
if your movie is on Netflix, people are gonna watch
it on their laptop, on their phone. That is the
beauty of Netflix. So really, my only problem with his
is he can't pick and choose how he feels about
changes in cinema. Okay, so that's my quick Martin Scorsese
ran before I get into this review. I actually enjoyed
(31:33):
the movie. So the backstory on this it's based on
a guy named Frank Sharon, a k a. The Irishman,
who was an American labor union official accused of having
links to the Buffalino crime family. And the whole movie
is based on a book called I Heard You Paint
Houses and told from the perspective of Robert de Niro's character,
who was involved in all these crimes in the movie.
So the book was written by a guy named Charles
(31:55):
Brandt who wrote the memoir about Frank Sharon, who claimed
that he killed between twenty five and thirty people, although
he couldn't remember an exact number, so he basically confessed
all this stuff. And this guy put it in a memoir,
and the guy, Frank Shearon, actually died the year after
this memoir came out, and it was never actually revealed
how accurate everything he confessed to was because he was
(32:16):
never actually convicted of any murder. Because it covers a
lot of history in the movie, everything from like the
Mafia and Washington Ties, also touches on Castro's rise in
Cuba and the CIA's attempts to overthrow him. It also
talks about the mob connection between JFK's assassination, and then
it kind of wraps up in the mob wars of
the nineteen sixties and seventies. It's basically like the mobster
(32:37):
version of Forrest Gump, told in the style of Good Fellas.
The cast is also amazing, and they're all in their seventies.
You have Robert de Niro at seventy six, Joe Pesci
also at seventy six, and Albacino at seventy nine. The
problem I did have with them being so much older
is they do the flashback scenes, but in the flashback
scenes they d aged them, so essentially they're playing the
(32:59):
same age as they did in Good Fellas, but now
they have digitally reaged them to make them look younger,
and it's been used in movies before. I remember whenever
Robert Downey Jr. Showed a younger version of himself as
Iron Man, they were able to do that in a
way where it was okay, unbelievable, but it was also
for a shorter amount of time that was like maybe
a two minute scene, where in this movie almost the
(33:22):
entire thing is Robert de Niro as a younger version
of himself, So it's just a bit distracting, like seeing
his face like with the wrinkle smooth out. I think
the real story kind of comes out in the last
hour of it. I think underneath the surface of the movie,
what you get is a story about a guy aging,
getting older, dealing with lost sin and regret. So while
(33:42):
it was a daunting three hours in twenty nine minutes,
I think the movie was entertaining. Now I'm not gonna
say that it didn't feel like three hours in twenty
nine minutes. No matter how entertaining it was, it did
feel that long. So I think that takes a little
bit away from it. I think it could have been
chopped down. There were some parts of the story that
just really didn't need to be explored. I felt it
(34:04):
was just kind of boasting that really long run time.
But it is an entertaining movie. You kind of have
to take it in as like you're binge watching an
entire TV showed once. So maybe breaking it up into
like our increments would kind of make it a little
easier to chew and maybe more enjoyable. I watched it
all at once, just because I wanted to take it
all in, but I did find myself at points of
like an hour and a half in thinking Okay, this
(34:26):
movie has to be wrapping up by now, and no,
there were still a solid two hours left. So I
would rate at three point five out of five Hitman,
which if it were an hour lesson runtime, would easily
bump it up to four. But I think it's just
too long. So if you're a fan of Wolf of
Wall Street, if you're a fan of good Fellows, I
do think you will enjoy this movie. My suggestion is
(34:48):
just to kind of break it down into more watchable chunks.
The beauty of it is it is on Netflix, so
you can kind of pick it back up and start
as you want, and if you really want to stick
into Martin Scorsese. Watch the entire thing on your iPad.
All right, and that's the show for this week. Thanks
so much for checking out this episode. It really means
a lot when you guys are tagging me in your
Instagram story. So I'm gonna give a shout out over
(35:09):
the week to at Lauren Elizabeth three sixteen, who tagged
me that she was listening to the show last week.
Oh yeah, do to get a shout out is tagged
me in your Instagram story, just a screenshot that you're listening.
I'll repost those throughout the week and then give you
a shoutout on next week's episode. If you're listening on
Apple Podcast, it would really mean a lot to me
if you rate and review the podcast because as a
brand new podcast, it gives me a little boost for
(35:31):
other people to discover it and hop in on the
action too. So if you don't mind doing that, And
if you're listening on I Heart Radio, just hit follows.
You get brand new episodes every single Monday. I also
have an email that I'll start taking questions on next week.
It's movie Mike d at gmail dot com. Any movie
questions you have or topics you think I should cover.
(35:52):
I'm gonna pull something from that to talk about next week,
so send them in now. I'll talk to you again
next Monday. Thanks so much for listening. Later, Tilt Ti
Welcome back to Movie Mike's Movie Podcast. My name is
Mike D on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Destro. You
might know me from the Bobby Bones Show, where I
am the resident movie guy, and this is the podcast
I do every single Monday where all I do is
talk about movies. This week, I am talking about the
evolution of Adam Sandler from comedic to dramatic roles. I
recently saw him in Uncut Gems and that movie really
(00:23):
resonated with me in a way I wasn't expecting, and
I think it's all because of his performance in the movie.
So I kind of just want to go through his
roles from the comedic stuff he did in the nineties,
the two thousands and then kind of getting into the
waters where he's just has really bad reviews movie after movie.
So I'll go through all that. Also in my movie
list this week, I have my top five most anticipated
(00:45):
movies of twenty plus i'll give my review of The
Irishman on Netflix, which is a long three and a
half hours that I invested in my life, So a
lot to talk about on this week's episode. Thanks again
for tagging me in your Instagram story, rating and reviewing
the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and subscribing on I Heart Radio.
A lot to cover this week, so let's get into it.
(01:07):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking on MTV
with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network is movie movie podcast.
(01:30):
So to start out this week's show, I wanted to
dedicate an entire segment just to Adam Sandler because I
recently watched Uncut Gems and was really moved by it
in a way that I wasn't expecting because I've loved
Adam Sandler movies for a very long time, and I
grew up in the nineties as a nineties kid, and
he was the biggest thing in comedy. I just remember
(01:54):
going to the video store and renting Um Happy Gilmore,
renting Billy Madison and thinking, man, this is like the
funniest thing I've ever seen. And I would quote the
movies all the time, and those movies just kind of
stuck with me all throughout my life. And I've loved
him from watching him on SNL and kind of seeing
him go from being like that beloved funny guy to
(02:14):
having this career where he's just kind of viewed as
like putting hug bad movies, which is which is really
kind of crazy that he's kind of had his resurgence
now with the success of Uncut Gems and really people
being able to see his range of an actor, because
he's it's not the first serious role he's done, but
it's the most, probably the most acclaimed role that he's
(02:35):
taken on in a very long time. So I wanted
to go through just his career and kind of see
his evolution from being the funny guy and putting out
hit blockbuster comedy movies to also being the guy who
would put out just flop after flop. But I mean,
even with those flops, he was still making a lot
of money, but he has just like a track list
(02:56):
of like the worst reviewed movies on Rotten Tomatoes, and
then now kind of into two thousand and tens of
also continuing those flops, um landing a big Netflix deal
where he put out some movies and now he's kind
of stepping back into these dramatic roles and having some
success where I mean, he really had a really successful,
(03:17):
like quiet, low key nineteen UM now moving into an
entirely different decades. So I kind of want to go
a decade by decade and just look at his work.
So starting in the nineties where he started out doing
stand up comedy in New York City, where he was
going um to college at n y U for acting,
and then in addition to that, he would go out
(03:39):
and do stand up making like ten dollars a night.
You really don't make a lot doing stand up and
especially starting out, so he would go to the club.
He had a professor at n y U who would
you know, teach him acting, and his professor told him
like at one point to quit acting. He's like, man,
you have heart, but you really just don't have it
to be an actor. And he told him, like to
(03:59):
go pursue another path. But starting out in the nineties, like,
he was like broke by the time he got to SNL,
which he was discovered by doing stand up in he
got hired onto SNL and he was twenty three years old.
And the thing about SNL was, you actually don't make
a lot of money on that show. It's basically an
entry level TV job. I've seen a bunch of interviews
with people starting on SNL. The perception is, Oh, you
(04:21):
go on that show, you're on TV, you've made it,
But really you're not making that much money. You do
a show at night that's on once a week, so
it's basically an entry level job. He's doing that for
five years. He's put out some movies in between them,
and the year before he got hired on the SNL
he did a movie called Going Overboard, which I remember
mostly for being in the Dollar Been at Walmart. And
then he also was in air Heads, a movie in
(04:43):
nineteen ninety four where they like break into a radio station,
where he wasn't really the star of that movie, so
his movie career hadn't really taken off. But then he
got fired from SNL in nineteen and it was well
before he received any kind of success at the box office.
So he's twenty eight gets fired from SNL after five
years on the show, along with they also fired Chris Farley,
so they're both down and the dumps together. He had
(05:04):
co wrote and started Billy Madison, which premiered a few
months before he left SNL, and went on to make
a good, solid twenty six million dollars on that, So
after that is where he kind of just has starts
having success. In the nineties, he puts out Happy Gilmore six,
makes forty one million dollars, then the Wedding Singer brings
them another hundred and twenty three million, and The water
(05:25):
Boy in nine makes him one and ninety million, and
then he closes out the nineties with Big Daddy making
two hundred and thirty four million dollars, and at this
point you cannot deny that he is a major Hollywood
star and success. So all that from being fired from
SNL pretty good for him. He also in the nineties
started his own movie production company called Happy Madison, which
(05:46):
just combines his first two movies, Billy Madison and Happy
Gilmore together, and this kind of brings him into the
two thousands where he starts putting out more, you know,
still the same kind of comedic movies like Little Nikki Mr.
Deed's Fifty First States, but he also kind of takes
a step in that direction of becoming a more dramatic,
serious actor, which is really hard for any actor to
do who's mainly starting comedy movies, like very few people
(06:07):
have done it. Aside from Adam Sandler, only other people
I can think of having success or Jim Carey, Ben
Stiller a little bit, but there are very few actors
who can be taken seriously in both the guard. But
he started a movie called Punch Drunk Love, which was
his first really step in this direction, and I remember
kind of being confused seeing him in this role because
you go into it expecting, you know, silly, wacky Adam
(06:30):
Sandler from the nineties, and now he's in this movie
playing this guy named Barry who's trying to find love
and then gets extorted by a phone sex company, and
it's actually a pretty good movie, and you kind of
see this different side of Adam Sandler and you're like, hey,
this actually starts to work. The movie received pretty good
reviews from critics, although I didn't really do so well
at the box office. So while it was a step
in that good direction of him kind of building towards that,
(06:52):
it still wasn't going to be his main thing to
just do dramatic roles. Also in the two thousands, he
started a movie called Spanglish, which was kind of a
mix of comedy and drama and kind of developed this
kind of style that he could balance between of like
still kind of being the regular Adam Sandler he used to.
But then in two thousand seven, he started a movie
called Rain Over Me, which is about a man who
(07:13):
loses his entire family in the September eleventh attack on
New York City and then he runs into his old
college roommate and develops a friendship with him and kind
of rekindles that. And this is the first movie where
you just see full on dramatic Adam Sandler, because there's
no comic relief whatsoever in this movie, and you get
this level of acting and performance from Adam Sandler that
(07:33):
you never thought he could really achieve. So at this point,
I feel he's established as both a comedic and dramatic actor.
I kind of hope he would take on more of
the dramatic roles from here. But then we get into
the two thousand tens, which I kind of dubbed as
the decade of bad reviews because he only has like
two maybe three movies that actually have a fresh rating
(07:54):
on Rotten Tomatoes. And it's also kind of why he
put out that comedy special called Fresh, because he was like,
they're not going to give me a good rating, then
at least I give it to myself. He then starts
putting out movies like Jack and Joe, which is probably
my last draw for watching Adam Sandler movies. That's the
movie where he plays himself as a woman has his
long lost twin al Pacinos in it, which I don't
(08:15):
know how they agreed him to be in that movie,
but this is kind of where I lost faith in
Adam Sandler. And then in two thousand fourteen, he signed
a major movie deal with Netflix. It was a four
movie deal for two hundred and fifty million dollars, and
he put out like four movies on Netflix, which I
ended up thinking, we're all right. His movie The Ridiculous
Six badly reviewed movie, but I thought it was at
(08:37):
least somewhat enjoyable if you're just watching something at home
on Netflix. He also put out The Do Over, Sandy
Wexler and Murder Mystery on Netflix as part of that deal,
which Netflix said that a bunch of people streamed those
movies that were like the highest streamed movies on their
service at the time. So at this point I think
Adam Sandler was just in the mindset of putting out
movies that he finds that are fun to make and
(08:58):
also his audience enjoy. Always he doesn't care about the
critics at this time. He just sees it as, Hey,
this is a business. I'm gonna put out movies. I'm
gonna get my paycheck, and I'll continue my career whether
the critics like it or not. And then in seventeen
he started a movie with Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman
called The Merrowitz Stories, where he's back into taking on
a dramatic role and gets a lot of positive reviews.
(09:21):
And then you get the twenty nineteen and uncut Gems
where he kind of blows everybody away myself included five
thousand carrots, three thousand dollars of carrots. That's the thing.
They say, you can see the whole universe. And that's
been all day, I'm telling you, And right, that's the
(09:46):
bad with this one. It was just kind of cool
to see Adam Sandler in a way that I forgot
it was Adam Sandler, Like, he looks a lot different.
He has like these fake teeth in the movie. His
hair is kind of jelled up in a weird way.
And it's about a guy who has an unhealthy addiction
to gambling. So what he's doing is he runs like
a high end jewelry company, but in addition to that,
(10:07):
he's making these really crazy, extravagant bets with other people's money.
So he's essentially just taking jewelry, moving it around, getting
money from one person to bet on these crazy like
NBA parlays that just end up getting him into more
and more trouble. So the whole movie is just really chaotic,
and it's from these two guys named the Safty Brothers
who actually came to Adam Sandler with the idea of
this movie ten years ago, and they're pretty young guys,
(10:29):
but at the time he was doing other stuff and
he never got to meet him. And then eventually the
script came back to him again. He read it and
I was like, this is actually really good, and he
agreed to do it. So what I really like about
this movie is that it's just filled with tension all
the way through. Like I was literally on the edge
of my seat in this movie, and I'm not using
that as a hyper league. I was on the edge
(10:50):
of my seat, slouched down because there's moments in this
where it's so intense I also love that they use
like real people in this movie, meaning that they brought
in like non actors to be actual tough guys in
this movie. I think it gives it a sense of
realism when working with other real actors. It also starts
Kevin Garnett, who's the NBA player, not an actor. He's
playing himself, so you think, oh, it's kind of easy
(11:11):
just to play yourself, but I think it's almost a
harder thing to have to do for somebody who's never
been in a movie before. So essentially what happens in
the movie is he is able to acquire a really
rare and valuable black opal, and it's all because he's
watching like the History Channel, learns about it and then
finds a way to get his hands on one. He
gets it delivered to his shop and then shows it
(11:31):
to Kevin Garnett, who becomes enamored with a thing and
also wants to buy it from him, and then the
movie just kind of escalates from there. So he has
this valuable opal and he's trying to use it to
pay back all his gambling debts. He was like a
hundred thousand dollars to this guy who's just hounding him
throughout the whole movie. Not gonna ruin the movie, but man,
it really gets intense, and I think Adam Sandler just
has a really great way of getting into this role
(11:53):
of this guy who essentially just watches the History channel,
learns about this thing, and thinks he has like the
upper hand on the other jewelers. For some reason. The
movie also takes place in twelve so they made it
a point to kind of make it look like that
time period, which is an interesting thing because I don't
really know what you know for but in this he
kind of see how they stuck to using like the
(12:14):
iPhone that was out at that time. And also, um,
the Weekend is in at the Singer and they made
him like recreate his hairstyle to fit how it was
when he first kind of came out, So I thought
that was a really nice touch. I left the movie
theater exhilarated. Like I said, I was literally on the
edge of my seat, and it moved me kind of
in a way that a movie hasn't done in a while,
(12:34):
and I think it was all because of Adam Sandler's
really great dramatic performance. So I myself am really happy
to see him have such a big hit with this
movie and kind of people taking him serious again. And
it's crazy just to see how he's gone from being
the dope guy on SNL who really suffered with stage
fright at the time. Like the reason he would use
his guitar in like a bunch of comedy bits and
(12:54):
would write those songs is because he suffered with stage
fright and needed to hold something to kind of feel
like he could fall back on it. Going from that
being fired onto and Know and then going on to
star in these big blockbuster comedy movies. Kind of who's
taking a step back and being hit and tortured by
critics with these all these bad reviews and now kind
of having this redefined career as he goes into the twenties.
(13:16):
Is that what we're calling this decade the twenties? But
I would just like to see him really go for
this next decade. And how crazy would it be for
him to go on to win something like an Oscar.
Let's start that campaign now anyway, That is the evolution
of Adam Sandler as told by me. And also I
would give Uncut Gems easily five out of five opals.
It's still in theaters now so you can go check
that out. Um it is a pretty R rated movie.
(13:39):
It has like the seventh most efforts ever in a movie.
So um, if violence and bad language keep you away
from going to see a movie, just a warning on that. Also,
let me know which Adam Sandler you prefer, the guy
who starts in the comedy movies or the one who
takes on these dramatic roles. All right, that's it for
Adam Sandler. Coming up, I'm gonna do my top five
most anticipated movies of and also my review of The
(14:00):
Irishman on Netflix. We're in a brand new year, Welcome
to everybody. So for my movie list this week, I
am looking at my top five most anticipated movies of.
I threw in some reboots, I threw in some sequels,
and just some movies I've been waiting a long time
(14:21):
to see come to fruition. So let's get started. First,
we are going to Top Gun Maverick, which comes out
on June. Yes, we are getting a Top Gun sequel
after thirty one years. Your reputation procedes. You have to
admit I wasn't expecting an invitation back there called Orders Maverick.
(14:42):
Of course you have Tom Cruise back as Maverick, and
then you have Miles Teller, who you know from Whiplash,
will play Goose's son in the movie, and Val Kimmer
is officially back as Iceman. So for what the movie
is about, they haven't released a whole lot of details
about the plot. The story is rumored to explo or
the relationship between human pilots and unmanned drones in the
(15:04):
modern military. So what I pieced together, it looks like
Tom Cruise's character Maverick comes back trying to show the
value of having real life human pilots. So personally, I
am not a Tom Cruise fan. For some reason, his
movies just don't do it for me. I don't really
see him as an action star. However, I am a
fan of him and Top Gun, and I think they
(15:24):
wouldn't bring it back after so long if they didn't
have a really good movie on their hands. And why
I put this on my list and why I'm excited
about this movie is because it seems like they really
went a long way to make this movie look accurate.
It's basically like a love letter to aviation. So there's
not a lot of c G I in this movie.
(15:44):
The aerial footage in this is real aerial footage that
they went out and shot with fighter jet pilots, and
if you look at this footage, it looks amazing. So
essentially what they did it was they put the actors
inside of real fighter jets and they put six different
camera is around him, so you have the front facing camera,
which that shot looks intense because what you're actually seeing
(16:05):
is the actor in the fighter jet and that g
force hitting them, so you see their real reaction to them. However,
they're not all flying the fire jets. They are in
the cockpit with somebody else. The only person who actually
flew a plane during part of this movie was Tom Cruise,
Like he does have his license and he wanted to
make it so realistic that he was trained on how
(16:25):
to fly one of these things, not the really crazy ones,
but he did fly some footage in this movie. But
apparently the actors said it was really intense on scene
and when they're up there, you know they're really feeling
those pounds of force on their body. There's like behind
the scenes footage of them essentially wanting to vomit while
in the air filming this movie. So Paramount was actually
able to make this with cooperation from the military because
(16:47):
after the first Top Gun came out, there was a
huge boost and recruitment in the nineteen eighties for the
Air Force, so they wanted to make the sequel as
accurate as possible, so they went back to the U. S.
Military to ask mission to film inside these fighter jets.
The Pentagon even gave them access to a military base
during filming to allow the cast members to work with
(17:09):
real military personnel. So what you're seeing in the movie
is footage of them really flying in military basis. Was
a real action sequences. So what I think it's really
gonna do for this movie is give us a real
kind of feel of what it's like to be inside
one of those plans from a perspective I've never seen
done in a movie before. I mean, to get that
point of view from the cockpit on the big screen
is the thing I'm just interested to see. So that's
(17:30):
why I put it at number five. At number four,
I had to go with Sonic the Hedgehog, which has
an interesting road to even get out in theaters. So
it's directed by Jeff Fowler, making his directorial debut, stars
James Mars, then Ben Schwartz and Jim Carey as Dr
Real Butt Nick and comes out on February four. I'm
going to give you five seconds to tell me where
(17:51):
it is. Wait, don't hurt of. So the movie is
based on the Sega video game Sonic the Hedgehog, which
I played all the time as a kid. Now I
grew up kind of broke, so my family never had
a Sega, but my cousin down the street did and
that would go all the time to play Sega. I
also loved the Saturday Morning cartoon where Sonic the Hedgehog
was voiced by no other than Jalil White a k. A. Arkle,
(18:14):
and for some reason he loved chili dogs on that
which I never really understood. And after last year success
of Detective Pikachu, I think movie studios now are looking
at video game franchises as a way to kind of
get people in the theaters with a familiar premise already
you already know the character from the video game and
turning it into a movie. So again, not really a
novel approach, just the way to get people more comfortable
(18:35):
and familiar with the character. The interesting thing about this movie, though,
it was supposed to come out last year, but what
happened was is they dropped a trailer where they showed
Sonic and he looked way too realistic that it creud
people out, like his eyes were kind of small and
beedient human looking, and he had human teeth, and a
bunch of people online were just like this looks terrible.
(18:56):
Which last year Cats had a problem with people not
liking their c g I, where they went back in
refix it and reput the movie out. So Sonic the
hedgehot kind of got ahead of it here and said, Okay,
people aren't liking this version of Sonic, they went back
and retooled them. They made his eyes more cartoony, like
the character that we know, and they also changed the teeth,
(19:17):
which makes them look a lot more friendlier and like
a cartoon character rather than just some alien. So I'm
excited for this mainly for the nostalgia factor, but also
just to see how Jim Carrey pulls off a dr
Robut Nick, that's why I put it at number four.
At number three is a movie a lot of people
were asking for for a really long time, and now
it's finally here. I'm talking about Black Widow starring Scarlett Johansson,
(19:40):
directed by Kay Shortland, female director, which will be opening
on May one. I've lived a lot of lives, but
I'm done running from my past. So Scarlett Johanson, who's
Black Widow a k a. Natasha Romanov, is finally getting
her own movie. And this is Marvel's and this is
the way Marvel is kicking off. It's Phase four. So
(20:00):
what Phase four is everything that has come after the
last Avengers movie and their leap intol like this whole
new part of the universe. So what this movie is
is actually a prequel to Scarlett Johansson's character. And while
the trailer has been out for a while now, there's
not a whole lot of story on what the plot
is going to be about, aside from the time frame
it takes place in. So chronologically, this movie takes place
(20:24):
after Captain America Civil War and then right before Avengers
Infinity War. To catch you up just about what was
happening with Black Widow during that time. Civil War ended
with Black Widow on the run after helping Captain America
escape you know Iron Man when he's kind of trying
to prosecute him. So after that her character was in
hiding until Standos came around in Infinity War, which forced
her to come out of hiding and helped the Avengers.
(20:46):
They do give us a look at the bad guy
in the movie named task Master. You also have David
Harbor who plays as the Sheriff, and Stranger Things as
the Red Guardian, and also a very rumored cameo by
Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. Since is a
prequel and takes place before Avengers Community War, it is
a possibility. Another cool thing about this movie as Scarlett
(21:07):
Johansson has reportedly made fifteen million for this role, which
is the same amount of money that Chris Evans made
playing Captain America and Chris Hemsworth made playing Thor in
their own movies. So we're getting equal pay here and
just for comparison here, Like in Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman
made two million dollars to starring that first solo movie,
and Brie Larson made five million dollars to starring Captain Marvel,
(21:29):
which also required her to sign a seven movie deal
with Marvel. So I think Marvel right now isn't a
bit of a transition period. With The Avengers pretty much
being over, they're kind of looking for their next big
thing and where to take the franchise, which I think
this will be a big building gear for Marvel. They
don't have as many titles coming out this year, and
there's also a larger gap in between movies as there
(21:50):
has been since probably, but I think this could be
a really big movie, and I'm excited for Scarlett Johanson
to finally beginning her solo movie. That's why I put
it at number three. And it looks like I'm staying
with the theme of female leads and comic book movies
because at number two I have Birds of Prey and
The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn long title. It's
(22:12):
directed by Kathyn Yes, another female director directing a female
starring comic book movie, opening on February seven, and Margot
Robbie back as Harley Quinn. It's psycho Chip never calling
them the check broad Lady. So Hargara Robbie as Harley
Quinn made her big screen debut in The Steen Suicide Squad,
(22:35):
which was an overall poorly rated movie, but I do
feel like she was the one shining light that DC
had in this movie and the ability to take her
out of that and place her into her own movie,
which is kind of a Suicide Squad sequel in a
way because it takes place right after that movie. But
yet they're also making Suicide Squad two, so I think
they're just trying to bridge the gap with having a
(22:57):
hit in between. So where this movie takes place, it's
right after a Suicide Squad. There's a brand new villain
named Black Mask, and the main plot of the movie
is that Harley Quinn and the rest of the Birds
of Prey, which is like this gang of girls, they
team up together to protect a young girl who came
across a diamond that belongs to Black Mask, and it
just so happens that that young girl is named Cassandra Caine,
who turns out to be bad Girl. There's also rumored
(23:19):
to be a Joker cameo, which was played by Jared
Letto in the first Suicide Squad. Probably the worst portrayal
ever of Joker. He I thought he was just too cartoony,
too weird, and didn't really add anything to the movie.
I felt like they just put the Joker in there
to get kind of people interested in the movie. The
reason I'm excited about this movie though, is because it's
rated are Suicide Squad was rated PG thirteen, and I
(23:41):
think that really hurt the movie because it came out
after Deadpool was such a big hit. And if you
don't remember Deadpool, the first one star Ryan Reynolds, and
it really was the first R rated Marvel movie. Was
more violent. There was cursing, and it just fit. And
after that came out, d C was kind of like,
oh no, that was actually a big sick tess and
we're kind of trying to tell a more grittier style movie,
(24:03):
but we have a PG thirteen rating. They went back
and did some reshoots to kind of pump up the
comedy a bit, but they still refrain from making that
leap into an R rated movie because with these comic
book movies, you want them to be entertaining two adults,
but you also want to consider that you want to
get everybody in the theater, which means if it's an
R rated movie, you lose out on the kid audience. Now,
(24:24):
I did some research on the movie numbers. I couldn't
find exactly how much Margot Robbie was played for the
first one, but she wasn't the main character in that,
so I don't think it would be comparable. But she
did take home between nine and ten million dollars playing
Harley Quinn in this one. So while I'm not the
biggest DC comics fan, I love a good R rated
comic book movie and that's why I put this at
(24:44):
number two. But before I get into my number one
most anticipated movie of I want to give some honorable mentions.
These didn't quite make the list either because there's no
trailer out, not many details on the plot, or I'm
just on the fence whether or not they're going to
be good, But I think they do to serve a
shout out. Coming out on August twenty one, this Bill
and Ted Faced the Music, which I think will just
(25:06):
be a fun movie. You also have coming out on
March seven is the live action Mulan, which I've gone
back and forth on how I feel about that trailer.
I think this one may be the one that kind
of ends the trend of these successful live action Disney remakes,
just because this one doesn't have really the charm of
the cartoon at all. It almost just looks like a
straight up Disney war movie, which I don't know how
(25:27):
audiences are going to receive that. Like the good thing
about the cartoon Milan is there were some comic relief
with Eddie Murphy as the dragon, but this one there's
no dragon. You also have coming out on March twenty
A Quiet Place Part two, and then on November sixty
have Marvel's Eternals, which is kind of their new Avengers,
but there's no trailer out really not a whole lot
of details aside from the cast who's in it. So
(25:49):
it just barely missed my list and at number one
my most anticipated movie of I'm staying in the theme
of female comic book characters. Also direct did by females,
It's wonder Woman starring Galghadad, directed by Patty Jenkins, who
did the first one, opening on June five, A right,
(26:12):
that's just a trash can ash can ye, so kind
of like Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad. Wonder Woman also
made her debut in what is just a pretty badly
reviewed movie, Batman Versus Superman, which I've never walked out
during a movie. But what I do is I fall
asleep during movies when they're boring, and that is a movie.
I took a good two minute napin woke up and
(26:36):
still not much had happened. The one shining light in
that movie was wonder Woman, and from that she got
her own movie, which actually has one of the highest
ratings for any superhero movie ever made. So when this one,
she's fighting not one but two villains. One is her
former friend turned villain played by Kristin Wig and the
other is this business guy villain played by Pedro Pascal,
(26:56):
who you know from The Mandalorian. He was also in
Narcos and Game of Thrones. So it's called wonder Woman
four because it takes place well in nineteen eighty four,
and you also have Chris Pine coming back as the
love interest. So initially what DC was gonna do was
the same thing Marvel was doing, where everybody would have
their own movie and it would lead up to like
Everybody joined together and like the Avengers. So they had
(27:18):
Justice League, which turned out to be a major flop,
and wonder Woman again was the only good part in that.
And with Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill backing out as
Batman and Superman, you're left with really just Wonder Woman
and Aquaman. For them to rely on. Not only that,
but now Galga Dot is getting paid, which there was
a lot of controversy with what she got paid for
(27:38):
the first one, where she only made three hundred thousand
dollars compared to Henry Cavill who got paid like twenty
million dollars to play Superman. She was making a fraction
of that. So here she's getting ten million dollars to
come back as Wonder Woman, which is a pretty significant
bump in pay. But I think that the fact that
she's really carrying DC right now, they need to give
(27:59):
her more money, like double that for a Wonder Woman.
So I'm just excited to see the continuation of Wonder
Woman's story with Galgha Dot and that is why I
put it as my number one most anticipated movie of
That is my top five list of the week. Let
me know what you thought about my picks, and if
there's a movie you're looking forward to one that maybe
I missed, let me know. All right, gonna get into
it now. My review of The Irishman, which you can
(28:21):
watch on Netflix. That is, if you have an extra
three hours and twenty nine minutes to spare well, the
movie is actually three hours and twenty minutes. There's an
entire nine minutes of just credits because this movie is
so long, so I set aside some time to really
take in this movie. From Martin Scorsese, who is a
legendary director, which you would know from Casino, The Wolf
of Wall Street and my favorite Good Fellas. This movie
(28:42):
is actually based on a real story. It's based on
a memoir called I Heard You Paint Houses, and it's
about a mob hitman played by Robert de Niro and
its possible involvement with the killing of a guy named
Jimmy Hoffa. I got a lot to say about this one,
so before we get into it, here's a clip of
the irishman only tweet people in the world I wanted
ease and only one of them as Irish and how
(29:03):
strong I made you. So I did a lot of
research on this movie, not only on how accurate it
is to portraying the real events, but also how long
this movie took to be made, because it was actually
in development since two thousand and seven, and it kind
of had a whole different plot in the beginning, Like
Tara Reid was supposed to be the love interest in
this glad they didn't go with her. Joe Petchy, who's
in the movie, who you would know from also in
(29:24):
Good Fellas. He was also the bad guy in Home Alone,
but he said no to Martin Scorsese fifty times before
finally agreeing to be in this, And he hasn't been
in a movie in over ten years. And not only
is it Martin Scorsese's longest film to date at two
hundred and nine minutes, it's also one of his most
expensive movies ever, with the budget of a hundred and
fifty nine million, which is pretty expensive. And it finally
(29:47):
got the green light from Netflix, which I think it's
so long because it's essentially a director's cut because Netflix,
I don't think they're gonna tell Martin Scorsese, hey, you
need to trim it down a bit. They're pretty exciting
to get a Martin Scorsese film the directly on Netflix.
So at three hours and twenty nine minutes, that is
the director's cut, Martin Scorsese saying, if you want my movie,
you get it in its entirety. As a director, I'm
(30:09):
a fan of the guy, but personally I think he's
just maybe a little old and cranky because he's the
guy who said Marvel movies aren't real movies, that they're
non films. And I get it. If you're making really
epic crime dramas like Martin Scorsese, and then you see
movies like The Avengers making tons of money, you may
feel like your craft is taking back a bit because
people are seeing these is like really big blockbusters. But
(30:29):
for him it's like, no, it's an old school storytelling,
very cinematic, you know, all these other just classic movie
telling elements, and when he sees those big things, he
wants to take a stab at them, And I think
it just makes him look old and kind of dated.
And I also think it's just kind of interesting that
he had agreed to put it solely on Netflix. I
think if you're arguing that movies like Marvel, I think
(30:51):
if you're making the argument that Avengers movies are films,
and you're putting something directly on a streaming service, well
you could argue, well, then you could kind of say,
if a movie doesn't go in theaters at a full release,
is it really a movie? Martin Scorsese because he was
even getting mad at people and telling them not to
watch his movie on your phone because Netflix. It's available
(31:11):
on your phone. People are gonna watch this wherever. And
he's like, no, you gotta sit down and know, Martin Scorsese,
if your movie is on Netflix, people are gonna watch
it on their laptop, on their phone. That is the
beauty of Netflix. So really, my only problem with his
is he can't pick and choose how he feels about
changes in cinema. Okay, so that's my quick Martin Scorsese
ran before I get into this review. I actually enjoyed
(31:33):
the movie. So the backstory on this it's based on
a guy named Frank Sharon, a k a. The Irishman,
who was an American labor union official accused of having
links to the Buffalino crime family. And the whole movie
is based on a book called I Heard You Paint
Houses and told from the perspective of Robert de Niro's character,
who was involved in all these crimes in the movie.
So the book was written by a guy named Charles
(31:55):
Brandt who wrote the memoir about Frank Sharon, who claimed
that he killed between twenty five and thirty people, although
he couldn't remember an exact number, so he basically confessed
all this stuff. And this guy put it in a memoir,
and the guy, Frank Shearon, actually died the year after
this memoir came out, and it was never actually revealed
how accurate everything he confessed to was because he was
(32:16):
never actually convicted of any murder. Because it covers a
lot of history in the movie, everything from like the
Mafia and Washington Ties, also touches on Castro's rise in
Cuba and the CIA's attempts to overthrow him. It also
talks about the mob connection between JFK's assassination, and then
it kind of wraps up in the mob wars of
the nineteen sixties and seventies. It's basically like the mobster
(32:37):
version of Forrest Gump, told in the style of Good Fellas.
The cast is also amazing, and they're all in their seventies.
You have Robert de Niro at seventy six, Joe Pesci
also at seventy six, and Albacino at seventy nine. The
problem I did have with them being so much older
is they do the flashback scenes, but in the flashback
scenes they d aged them, so essentially they're playing the
(32:59):
same age as they did in Good Fellas, but now
they have digitally reaged them to make them look younger,
and it's been used in movies before. I remember whenever
Robert Downey Jr. Showed a younger version of himself as
Iron Man, they were able to do that in a
way where it was okay, unbelievable, but it was also
for a shorter amount of time that was like maybe
a two minute scene, where in this movie almost the
(33:22):
entire thing is Robert de Niro as a younger version
of himself, So it's just a bit distracting, like seeing
his face like with the wrinkle smooth out. I think
the real story kind of comes out in the last
hour of it. I think underneath the surface of the movie,
what you get is a story about a guy aging,
getting older, dealing with lost sin and regret. So while
(33:42):
it was a daunting three hours in twenty nine minutes,
I think the movie was entertaining. Now I'm not gonna
say that it didn't feel like three hours in twenty
nine minutes. No matter how entertaining it was, it did
feel that long. So I think that takes a little
bit away from it. I think it could have been
chopped down. There were some parts of the story that
just really didn't need to be explored. I felt it
(34:04):
was just kind of boasting that really long run time.
But it is an entertaining movie. You kind of have
to take it in as like you're binge watching an
entire TV showed once. So maybe breaking it up into
like our increments would kind of make it a little
easier to chew and maybe more enjoyable. I watched it
all at once, just because I wanted to take it
all in, but I did find myself at points of
like an hour and a half in thinking Okay, this
(34:26):
movie has to be wrapping up by now, and no,
there were still a solid two hours left. So I
would rate at three point five out of five Hitman,
which if it were an hour lesson runtime, would easily
bump it up to four. But I think it's just
too long. So if you're a fan of Wolf of
Wall Street, if you're a fan of good Fellows, I
do think you will enjoy this movie. My suggestion is
(34:48):
just to kind of break it down into more watchable chunks.
The beauty of it is it is on Netflix, so
you can kind of pick it back up and start
as you want, and if you really want to stick
into Martin Scorsese. Watch the entire thing on your iPad.
All right, and that's the show for this week. Thanks
so much for checking out this episode. It really means
a lot when you guys are tagging me in your
Instagram story. So I'm gonna give a shout out over
(35:09):
the week to at Lauren Elizabeth three sixteen, who tagged
me that she was listening to the show last week.
Oh yeah, do to get a shout out is tagged
me in your Instagram story, just a screenshot that you're listening.
I'll repost those throughout the week and then give you
a shoutout on next week's episode. If you're listening on
Apple Podcast, it would really mean a lot to me
if you rate and review the podcast because as a
brand new podcast, it gives me a little boost for
(35:31):
other people to discover it and hop in on the
action too. So if you don't mind doing that, And
if you're listening on I Heart Radio, just hit follows.
You get brand new episodes every single Monday. I also
have an email that I'll start taking questions on next week.
It's movie Mike d at gmail dot com. Any movie
questions you have or topics you think I should cover.
(35:52):
I'm gonna pull something from that to talk about next week,
so send them in now. I'll talk to you again
next Monday. Thanks so much for listening. Later, Tilt Ti
Host
Mike D
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