Emilia Pérez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked - these are the films we're discussing today Dear Listener. As always Gareth Higgins and Jett Loe agree to disagree, especially about Gareth's shocking pick for best film out of the nominees. Enjoy.
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The Film Talk is brought to you by you folks who listen and help out. Just go to patreon.com/thefilmtalk for details. Now on with the show.
Hello, folks, we're back.
This is exciting. This is the second part of our two-part Oscar nominations 2024-2025 show. I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins.
The conversation never ends. This is The Film Talk. And being in the second part of a two-part thing is tremendously exciting because these days completion is a rarity.
These days, there's things you just want them to be finished. You just want to be able to say, this chapter's over, we're on to the next chapter.
Dear listener, it's a small thing, but by the end of this episode, we will be done with the Oscars for 2025. Or as Jett says, 24, 25, because there is always that complexity when you're talking to people about the history of the Oscars.
Which year do you mean? And in case you don't know, when you say the 2025 ceremony, you're referring to the 2024 year. When you say the 1976 ceremony, you're referring to the 1975 year and so on and so forth.
It's not that complicated.
It's not. I feel like you're making it sound very complicated.
I've definitely been unjustly passed over in movie trivia for answering the question accurately according to the truth, but not according to what was on the card.
Okay. And clearly it still burns, but no worries, you're still here. It's a little reference to I'm Still Here.
I hate to make a flippant joke about something that would be a terrible subject matter of that film, but we're going to start off with a film that maybe might, some might say is flippantly dealing with something that's very serious.
We got five films. In the last, so we did Anora, Brutalist, The Brutalist, The Complete Unknown, Conclave, Doom 2, Doom, Comma, Part 2. This one we're doing Emilia Pérez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked.
And some of these we've talked about in other shows. So I may not feel the need to go on it late. I could just say, eh, just go back to earlier episode.
But Emilia Pérez is not one of those. I have no idea what you're going to say about this most important picture. It's very divided, Gareth, their listeners.
You know, there's that tradition sometimes where a film wins best picture and then time passes and people go, what were they thinking? Right? Films like The Greatest Show on Earth from the 50s, Big Influence on Spielberg.
Films like Crash is probably the most famous example. People were saying, how could this win best picture? Green Book is another, Shakespeare in Love, Beating, Saving Private Ryan.
Emilia Pérez is interesting to me because that backlash has actually already started before the films, before the actual Oscar night and people are asking, how in God's green earth could Emilia Pérez be now?
Can you imagine if Russ Meyers Beyond the Valley of the Dolls got 13 Oscar nominations? I mean, I'm kind of be all for it. I'm not saying Emilia Pérez is bad.
We're going to get to my thoughts in a second, but first I am looking forward to grappling, grappling with your thoughts, best Dr. Gareth Higgins on Emilia Pérez.
Well, Emilia Pérez is directed by Jaco Díaz set in Mexico, although controversially was not shot there. It was shot in Europe for financial tax reasons, and also I think that's the beginning of the controversy.
The more important controversy is that it's a film about a cartel chief who undergoes gender confirmation surgery or gender reassignment surgery, depending on how you prefer to talk about that. And it's also a musical with extravagant dance numbers.
Here's the thing about Emilia Pérez.
Yes, tell us.
I don't think that the film, I don't think it's a bad film. I don't think it's a great film.
Yeah.
I think it's an absolutely well-intended, creative stretch and...
You are a nice man.
Definitely deserves points for originality. I've always been a fan of well-choreographed dance numbers arising spontaneously in the middle of the street, and I've always been a fan of genre mashups.
As you know, I think it was actually one of your favorite films of recent years.
One of my favorite films of recent years is Wonder Woman 1984, which is a satire on the kind of alpha masculine action movies of the 80s, and also a deeply romantic film about grief, love, loss, desire.
I think one of the reasons that a lot of people thought poorly of that film was they hadn't been taught to expect this mashup. It didn't fit within the parameters that they were expecting.
So if you're going to watch Emilia Pérez, go in with an open mind.
The more important controversy to me is the film does appear to imply that gender transition or gender confirmation is also a kind of a moral evolution that a quote unquote bad person can become a good person by transitioning their gender.
Now I think that's actually quite an interesting idea.
I think it's an interesting idea if you look at the question of if someone is not their true self, of course, things are going to be out of whack in their life and you don't have to have dealt with the oppression and the psychological pressure of
being trans in a transphobic society in order to feel out of sorts with who you truly are and what the society around you looks like. When I was watching this film and I started to see, oh, they seem to be implying that this person who's done great
evil, great evil, their gender transition is making them a nicer person. There was a part of me thinking, oh, I don't know about that. And then if I'm really honest, there have been times in my life where I became more of my true self.
And I think I did become a nicer person. And where the film gets really honest is she regresses morally later in the movie. She actually does not stay.
It's not a kind of a simplistic notion that, you know, gender dysphoria, not a nice person, transition, totally nice person. And I received that quite well.
I actually think that the film says some things about what it's like to face the consequences of your actions, the difference between how you treat strangers and how you treat your own family, things like that.
The challenge that's arisen in terms of the offensive tweet that the lead actress, Carla Sofía Gascon, had published in the past is really sad.
And another example of why, another example of how our society is not yet capable of enacting a process of amends when someone is sincerely apologetic for mistakes they've made in the past.
And in a strange ironic sense, that's kind of what's also happening in the film, because the story of the film does not allow Emilia Pérez to be free.
Now, Russ Meyer is a good analogy because it is as camp as all get out, it's as over the top as all get out.
And I'm not going to second guess both the trans people who've expressed offense or discord with the film, or the Mexican people who've said that this is offensive to Mexicans because it wasn't shot there.
At the end of the day, I still think it's an interesting film and it's worth watching.
Well, Gareth, I agree with everything you've just said, which doesn't happen too often on the show. I think you're exactly right. I do want to kind of explore a couple of points.
You talk about folks almost not being able to see what's in front of them because they don't quite have the context.
In Wonder Woman 84, if you're not picking up on what they're doing in the opening scene, which very clearly is like right out of Commando, it's shot in a mall.
And if you're versed in seminal history or it's seen Commando, you would go, oh, I see what they're doing here. And I don't read reviews, I don't see trailers, I stay away from all film news to our listeners. I leave that up to Professor Dr.
Gareth Higgins. The reason I say this is because with Emilia Pérez, I was reminded of an old girlfriend of mine years ago when Chicago came out. It's got Catherine Zeta-Jones, one of the big stars, she likes Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Renee Zellweger.
Renee Zellweger.
Richard Gere.
Richard Gere, it's got the guy from the Paul Thomas Anderson films for Magnolia, The Cellophane Man.
John C.
Reilly.
Okay. My point is, my ex-girlfriend of mine, she and her mom, they went to the movies, they didn't know it was a musical. They're not fans of movie musicals, so they had a miserable time.
I did not know that Emilia Pérez was a musical. Again, I leave it up to Gareth to look at all the film news. Bormac, thank you so much for doing that.
I got you, Gareth Higgins. He does it so I don't have to. When it started, and I'm listening to Zoe Saldana's accent, and then it becomes, she starts singing, I was like, oh no, is this a musical?
And then the staging seemed so bad, and the lyrics were so clumsy, and the Spanish was so strange. I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but I do live in New Mexico. But so I can tell different accents.
I thought, oh, you know what this is? This is like springtime for Hitler. The camera is going to pull back, and we're in a fake movie musical, because this is so poorly done.
And then I realized that's not the case. And as the film goes on, we talk about the idea of good or bad taste.
It seemed in such bad taste to deal with such weighty themes, the kind that Gareth just excommunicated, but also dealing with like disappearances and the horrible violence happening with the cartel drugs.
And the film seemed to have no psychological or philosophical depth with these matters. I began to question the notion of taste and trash. And the more it went on, I thought, you know, this reminds me of, this reminds me of the best of John Waters.
I was just gonna say John Waters.
John Waters, it reminds me of, you know, in Cry Baby and Hairspray, they deal with serious themes.
And John Waters' films, which are fantastic, attacked the very notion of taste. And I wondered, I bet John Waters loved this. And then I looked up and it was on his top 10 for the year.
I was like, yeah, because it transcends the notion of good or bad taste. It just is. It's full throated.
Is it well done? I'll put it to you this way, dear listener. There's a scene about maybe an hour into it, in which Zoe Saldana tells another character, Emilia Pérez, actually, tells her, oh, I'm Mexican.
I was shocked because with her accent, I thought she was from Pittsburgh or something. Do we know, does the director speak Spanish?
Because my Spanish isn't great, and I'm not talking difference here between vosotros versus nosotros, and how Spanish is spoken in Spain versus how it's spoken in Mexico. It's a different grammar.
It just seems so clumsy, but in that clumsiness, if you accept it as almost a primitive work, then it's worth seeing. Does any of that make sense?
It does, and it may also be that sometimes the most, quote unquote, tasteful, the most intentionally tasteful presentations of suffering or of human extremes actually somehow diminishes it because you can't truly portray suffering in something that's
made for entertainment and take it seriously. Unless it's Nickel Boys. Well, that's interesting.
We're going to get to that in a moment, and I'm pretty confident there will be people who will watch this film who honestly will think about trans reality for the first time in their lives, and they'll think about it with some compassionate humanity,
and there will certainly be people who think about the disappeared and murdered at the hands of the cartels, and they'll think about that in a humane and compassionate way for the first time in their lives. Actually, it left me feeling, this is
A movie musical about the Troubles.
Well, here's the thing.
I mean, West Side Story is a movie musical about gang violence, and both cinematic versions of that film treat the sorrow with respect.
There has not been a fully successful, I mean, in terms of the artistically and philosophically successful film about the Troubles. Kneecap actually came pretty close last year, and maybe we'll talk about Kneecap at some point in the future.
I think there's some significant flaws in Kneecap, but where it succeeds, it succeeds better than many others. Frankly, when people ask me, what are the best films about the Troubles? There aren't any.
There are good Irish films that speak about the subterranean realities of the power dynamics in Ireland, but don't take on the Troubles directly, and that way are a much better representation.
I'd recommend Jim Sheridan's film The Field, which is set 50 years before the Troubles began, and actually has more to say about the Troubles than films that were set during that time period. So I'm not even sure what people behind Emilia Pérez.
Do you ever talk about Elephant?
Well, yeah. Elephant is a different kind of film because it's almost like an art installation where, you know, for listeners who haven't seen Elephant by Alan Clark.
And it's really just a series of killings to show both the monstrosity and the mundanity and that every life is equal. So yeah, it's an important film. It doesn't really tell you the story of the Troubles or the story of the power dynamics.
And that's what I mean, but there hasn't really been that film yet.
There was a movie music about the Troubles. Would there be like the big show stopping number where a character stands up and he's singing to himself saying, I'm troubled? I'm just, I don't know.
How do we do? I mean, I'm using comedy to deal with pain, you know, dealing with the pain and the suffering of these horrible, you know, in humanity. But you could see it.
I almost felt, again, the idea of trash. I almost felt like Emilia Pérez, when you have the montage of the disappeared peoples, it's like, we're kind of on that level. But that's Emilia Pérez, see it.
Let's move on. What's the next picture?
We're doing this in alphabetical order and we're moving toward, I'm Still Here is a Brazilian film directed by Walter Salas.
It's a true story about Eunice Paiva and her husband, Rumez Paiva, who was disappeared by the military regime in Brazil in the 1970s and disappeared as a euphemism for tortured, killed, and denied.
The film is about Eunice's experience of this unimaginable terror and loss.
What's different about it from films with similar topics, like Costa Galvarez's film Missing, is that it focuses mostly on her domestic life, her life with her family, not so much on the kind of what you might call the thriller or the investigative
elements of what she went through for decades afterwards, trying to get the regime and the representatives of the regime and the descendants of the representatives of the regime to admit what they've done, but more about what it might be like to live
with such titanic terror, having visited you in your own home. Fernando Torres is the lead actor in this film. It's, for me, the great performance of the year, and it is the best of the 10 Best Picture nominees for me. Oh my goodness.
That's what it is.
This is a shocking twist, dear listeners.
I know, because I don't think I had not seen it. I had not seen it when we did our first of the two part show. This is the best picture.
Oh no. Not the best picture of the year. It's the best of the 10 nominated pictures.
It's so subtle.
Because Challenger's is the best picture.
Challenger's was not nominated. Yes, it's not the best picture. No, Joker.
Joker's the best picture of the year.
Oh, okay.
Challenger's is the third best picture of the year.
Anyway, I'm Still Here. Dear listeners, you're experiencing this at the exact same time I am. I am shocked to hear that Gareth says, I'm Still Here is his...
You think this is the best picture of the 10? Better than Anorah, The Brutalist, and Nickel Boys. I'm Still Here.
Don't get me wrong. You know what I'm Still Here is? It's fine.
Oh, I knew you were going to say that.
It's a classic Jett It's Fine film.
It is fine. It is fine. There's one good shot in it in which as the mother is trying to rub the stench and horror of the jail off of her, we don't see her nude until we cut to the POV of her child, we can see her mom exposed and frail.
That's great. It's fine. If this is maybe the weakest out of the 10.
If the old days you would have five pictures dominated for best picture, I don't see how this would make the cut because you'd get Anorah, the rudest, Nickel Boys, Wicked, maybe Dune II or Conclave, Complete Unknown. I am just shocked by this.
It's a fine motion picture. It's the middle brow by the numbers. Sounds terrible, but in a good way, they're trying to get this message out.
They're trying to appeal to a broad selection of folks. It's the kind of film that people complain not made any more, that kind of middle brow picture. And that's fine, but it is.
I cried at the end. I got teary. Not just at the excellence of the old age makeup, which is superb, but there is nothing about it.
In this field of films like Nickel Boys, The Puglis, and Anor that elevates it.
You know that in the last scene, it's not Fernando Torres playing the character.
Then, I retract what I'm saying about that amazing old age makeup. Now, it's gone down.
So, my dear Fred, right? I'm going to strongly advocate for this film. So, there are two scenes.
The bulk of the film is set in the early 70s, and then there's a scene set, I think, maybe 1996 and then a scene maybe another 10 or 15 years later. In the penultimate scene, it's Fernando Torres with older age makeup.
But in the very last scene where the character is using a wheelchair and is so enveloped in dementia that she doesn't speak anymore, that's Fernando Torres' own mother, the great Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro, playing her.
Well, that's great.
She doesn't need old age makeup. She doesn't need...
That's great. It's like watching, when you watch The Limey and they use shots of Terrence Stamp from...
From Poor Cow. From Kenwood's Poor Cow.
That's great. I think that's great. But here's the thing, I'm just shocked at this because the film is fine.
It's well crafted, it's well made. I'm glad I saw it. I'd recommend the listeners out there to see it.
But films like Nora and especially Nickel Boys are just on a different level in terms of filmmaking craft and also philosophical depth and nuance about the human condition. That's all I'm saying.
It's great to see a story about holding together a familial domestic life. We think about the emotional familial labor women have to go through unrecognized.
It's great to see that and especially in that time too, there's these scenes where she can't get money out, because their husband controlled all the finances. It's well meaning and succeeds. It's exactly what it wants to be.
It's not saying it's a bad film. It's just not on the level of films there are elevating the cinematic art like Anora and Nickel Boys. If we're going to do this absurd exercise of saying one film is better than another, which is fundamentally absurd.
So a tagline that we had for the old iteration of this show when we didn't have to have the makeup that we wear now to de-age ourselves was they agree to disagree.
And I am so passionate about this film. I'm going to go one more round, and then we'll move to Nickel Boys. And I want to advocate that I'm Still Here is a much better, much more nuanced film than you're giving it credit for.
We've never seen, I've certainly never seen a portrayal of a person who after they find out that their spouse has been killed and disappeared, that she is told by the representatives of the liberation movement, you can't tell anybody, including your
children. And then she takes her children out for ice cream, which is a scene that mirrors a scene earlier in the film, which has shown the happiness of this family having ice cream in the same place.
I've never seen a portrayal of a character having to hold the weight of that. As for there being only one good shot in this film, I'm going to suggest there's at least two other good shots.
There's at least two other good shots.
This sense of place, the sense of place in this film, the fact that their apartment or their house is so close to the beach, and then between the beach and their house is this road that we see military vehicles more and more ominously.
In the early part of the film, we see more of them there, and there's this sense of creeping dread.
And then the very end of the film, the coda to this film, through the end credits, is one of the most moving I've ever seen, where we see a camera just retreating from the empty house that they had to leave.
And one of the things that marks this film out as a step above many similar films is there's no catharsis in it.
But the end of this film, it's not a spoiler, if you read about Eunice Paiva's life, you'll discover that the Brazilian government eventually did acknowledge that her husband was dead.
And in fact, on the day the Oscar nominations were announced, the story moved further still whenever the government acknowledged that he had likely been violently killed. It's not played for catharsis. There's still mournfulness in that.
And I think it honors the suffering of this character and people like her. And I hope we open another chance. I'm Still Here, the best of the best picture nominees.
It does all that.
It does exactly what it sets out to do. It's just filmic level. Nowhere near in the same.
Again, we're going to put things in high and low, which is absurd. This is the film you've seen this film. I feel like we get this film every 10 years or so.
It's here a bunch of times, and it's well made. Hey, you're there at the hotel, okay? And you don't want to go out.
You're not feeling good. Maybe you're under the weather. You got a cold.
What's on the HBOs? Oh, I'm Still Here is on. I will watch this.
Absolutely go ahead and see that film. Again, I'm being flippant, and I feel terrible now, because this is the film that deals with great human suffering in a more adult way than, say, Emilia Pérez. Nickel Boys, next one up, Nickel Boys.
I'm still in shock, by the way. But anyway, let's move on to Nickel Boys.
Also, Nickel Boys, another film that deals with great human suffering, and one would say, advances the language of cinema.
Yeah, absolutely. Cinema has always flirted with this idea of doing first person, right? Whereas you become the camera.
The camera is me. I am a camera, as the famous title of the Russian experimental film from the early part of the 20th century is. I am a Kino.
I am a camera. Orson Welles famously did not do Heart of Darkness. He was going to do a first person version of Heart of Darkness before Citizen Kane was put into production.
He abandoned even, you can see the storyboards where how he would explain in an opening monologue basically to the audience, giving them some understanding of the grammar of what you're about to see.
That the I, capital I becomes the I's and the I in the human language becomes the I and the human body becomes the camera.
Now, without Heart of Darkness, I would love to have seen it, but Welles' great genius was in editing, almost of this variety of geniuses. He was a great one, I think, was editing.
So we would have lost that if the whole thing was set in first person perspective. And there's been, got that detective movie with Philip Marlowe, played by Alan Ladd, did a first person perspective thing.
Nickel Boys is the most successful version of this I've ever seen, where we cut back and forth very cleverly between different characters. It also does become third person as well. You are enveloped in the life of these people.
You know, before I went to see Nickel Boys, I walked by, I saw it this morning, I walked by my kiddo Gavin, and he was in VR goggles. And he's standing in the living room waving his arms. You can't see me.
He almost tripped over the cat, Laszlo and the dog, Fitzroy. But he is immersed. He is in this VR world and Nickel Boys does all that, but without the added complexity of having a computer you have to wear on your face.
Where you are immersed in this world. After watching Nickel Boys, I felt transformed. I felt it does what all great art does, which is to change how you see the world.
After sitting there intensely staring through the lives of others, first-person perspective of Nickel Boys, I now see the world differently, my place in it. That way it succeeds as a piece of great artwork.
You mentioned something like Elephant being shown in a gallery. This has that feeling. It's four by three aspect ratio or roughly that's not widescreen.
You can imagine it being projected in a gallery, and it has some of the language of classic art films, but it changes my perspective. That's why, again, not to downplay Gareth and I tease each other, maybe I tease him more than he teases me.
I apologize for being flippant about I'm Still Here, but Nickel Boys impacted me so much that I wouldn't even put a very well-done successful motion picture like I'm Still Here, in that league. I think it's a tremendous achievement.
I think it does what novels have done for years, which is put yourself, make you feel as if you are that person. And again, this is a story that deals with great injustice, systemic injustice.
Well, yeah, so that's what I was going to ask you to speak to. It's directed by Mel Ross and it's based on a novel by Colson Whitehead, who also wrote The Underground Railroad, which is...
Have you seen The Underground Railroad series, Barry Jenkins series?
You know, if I'm in a hotel room, I don't feel like going out or the weather. Come on, come on. I'm still here.
I have not seen it, but I will see it.
Okay.
Was it directed by... Again, no film knowledge. Was it directed by...
Barry Jenkins. Barry Jenkins.
Yes. And absolutely extraordinary. Nickel Boys is absolutely extraordinary, too.
It's about one boy in particular, but two boys generally who are abducted effectively into a torture institution. What would be called a kind of a home for wayward boys. It's based on a real place.
And it's about the torment they undergo and their friendship.
And I actually, I'd like not to spoil this because I suspect it's likely to be the film that's been least seen of all the 12 nominees because it hardly, I mean, I think it's an Amazon film.
There's 10 nominees.
Hardly, hardly got a, did I not say 10?
You said 12. Did I say five?
Okay, well, there should have been 12 because Joker and all we imagine as like should have been. Challengers. Challenges is in a category of its own.
So, you know, it hardly got a theatrical release at all. And I also suspect because of the nature of it being different and feeling experimental, a lot of people will start it and switch it off after five or 10 minutes.
I know that the dear listener of The Film Talk is much more discerning than that. And you will make it through to the end of Nickel Boys. But I don't want to spoil it.
I do just want to say this.
When you said earlier that it's first person and it parts when it's third person, what's astonishing to me about that section of the film that you're referring to, is when you realize who the third person is, whose place you as the audience member
are taking, and you don't know until very, very close to the very end of the film. Why we are, at that point of the film, we're seeing the back of somebody's head and we're watching, and then I could almost cry right now to think about what the f-
I mean, yeah. How the film is for me as a white person and someone who's never experienced anything remotely like what the characters in this film are experiencing.
The-
the surprise privilege of being able to look back on the last few moments of that film and- and say to myself, oh, that is a tiny glimpse into an experience that I know nothing about. And I didn't even know I was having it at the time.
Yes.
that is the mark of a very special film indeed.
Yeah. I can only imagine what's- what someone who has more legitimacy to say that they identify with these characters, um, might feel in watching it.
Um, it is a magnificent film.
But you're going with the- the- with I'm-
with I'm Still Here.
I don't think that Walter Salles or Romel Ross are-
are-
are fighting with each other over whether or not the- you know, which of their film about, about, um, systemic injustice- systemic courage in the-
in the face of- of systemic injustice is-
is better.
there's room for both Nickel Boys and I'm Still Here. And Emilia Pérez. Shall we move on to, um-
Is there room for The Substance for you?
How about that?
It's- it's very interesting. Very interesting, dear listener, because, you know, as-
as you know, about- about, I guess, uh, 15 years ago, the- the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed their rules so that they could nominate up to 10 films as best picture.
It's widely believed. The reason they did that is because Christopher Noland's film The Dark Knight, the second of the- of the-
his Batman trilogy was not nominated as best picture. And so they expanded the- the parameters to allow a film like The Dark Knight to be nominated.
And I think that's generally been a good thing because it has allowed for films like I'm Still Here, uh, and, uh, maybe The Brutalist and so on, and- and certainly Nickel Boys to be nominated as- as best picture.
And the best thing about the Oscars for me has always been, it can bring attention to films that would otherwise not be seen. The intriguing thing this year, uh, in the-
in the case of The Substance is, is they've clearly changed the rules to allow nine films to be nominated and one Twilight Zone episode with all the deleted scenes put back in. Uh, because The Substance is-
Substance is one of the best Twilight Zone episodes never made and the 20 minutes of story and meaning in this film, uh, are really worth it. Are really worth it. The film for some reason is two hours and 20 minutes long.
And there's nothing wrong-
There's nothing wrong with this stylistic exercise.
Hold on, hold on. Um, while its central performance from Demi Moore is fantastic, and, uh, Margaret, uh, uh, Qualley, uh, as- as her, I don't know, alter ego, nemesis, twin best friends, greatest-
greatest enemy is also fantastic. I really didn't feel that there was more- there was enough story to sustain much more than 20-
a 25-minute Twilight Zone episode. One caveat being the premise does give way to a surprise that I wasn't expecting. Uh, and that is the tension between the two characters at the heart of The Substance.
But here I am, I'm- I'm waxing about this film before we've even said what it's about. So Jett, will you please tell us what is The Substance, uh, uh, about despite the fact that it's not very good?
Oh, my goodness.
Okay, listen. Who amongst us has not imagined, dear listener, what Re-Animator, Re-Animator would be like if you had Demi Moore instead of Barbara Crampton? And I love Barbara Crampton.
Don't get me wrong. I follow her on threads. What's The Substance about?
It's body horror, meaning what is the horror of being a woman whose body is objectified? You live in a society where you are a piece of meat to be ground up into a male capitalistic gaze. That's what The Substance is about.
It's worth watching, but if you don't like gore, it is very gory. If you like Re-Animator and From Beyond, you'll love The Substance. Go see it.
That's my recommendation.
Do you have a word for Dennis Quaid in The Substance?
Not that great. I feel like, was he like a last-minute replacement desk?
For Ray Liotta?
Oh, that makes a lot more sense because, dear listener, it feels like possibly he did not have much time to think about how he was going to portray the character. So he came up with a couple of ideas and probably had to do it very quickly.
He would be my guess and Dennis Quaid, I loved him in The Big Easy. Him, Ned Beatty, Elizabeth Barkley. Is that her name?
A wonderful film set in New Orleans.
Is it not a-
Not so much great.
I've never seen The Big Easy.
You should see it. It's great. Especially if you love Ned Beatty too.
It's great. So I feel like Dennis Quaid maybe didn't have as much time as he needed. Probably doing the big quest tour for Reagan or whatever.
But I've always enjoyed him as an actor. But that aside, it is a cartoon-esque film, so his portrayal is cartoony. The Substance, go see it.
If you like, we animate them from beyond. If you don't, then you don't need to see The Substance.
Moving to the last film nominated for Best Picture this year, and that's a film that we did a whole big episode on.
We were both delighted by, and we both have the same problem with this film, and that is Wicked, or as it was called at the time, Wicked Part One. Tell us about Wicked Part One, Jett. What's right about it, and what's wrong with it?
What you got to do is you got to subscribe to The Film Talk.
You can do it on Patreon, or you can do it on Apple or Spotify. I think it's even on my YouTube channel. I don't think that gets any views, because why would anybody go there?
So I've said all I need to say about Wicked. I'm looking forward to Wicked, comma, Part Two. What's it called, Wicked the End?
Wicked the New Beginning?
Wicked for Good. What I'll say about Wicked was, it's exhilarating enough that I'm delighted. I saw it three times in a theater.
It's probably the film that's closest to making me feel the way the original Superman did. It has two magnificent central performances in the form of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
Great musical numbers, great set pieces, and the design of the tangible physical goods in the film, put it that way, are the things that are intended to look like tangible physical goods is pretty great.
And there's a real problem in how the thing looks. It may look better at home. I'm sure, Jett, as you've said before, there will be people who tweak it, try to change the way the color of the thing looks.
Because for some reason, they really messed up how the color of this film looks. It doesn't look...
It was intentional. These are intentional color grading choices.
And lighting choices. It was inadvertent errors. The place where it looks the best is once they get to the Emerald City, particularly that long corridor going down to the Wizards' lair.
I really wish it looked a bit more real. Unfortunately, it looks plastic. That doesn't detract strongly enough from the story, the performances and the joy of the thing.
And I'm glad I can't remember literally anything about the time I went to see Wicked in the West End in London. I've seen the entire stage show. I have no memory of it at all.
So, I have no idea what happens in the second part later this year, which I'm sure we'll talk about come November.
Well, this has been interesting, Gareth. I got shocking news about I'm Still Here. Can I just say one more thing?
And I apologize for being flippant. It's just my way. We think about films like I'm Still Here and Emilia Pérez and Nickel Boys that are dealing with systemic injustice, systemic horror, systemic cruelty.
And we're living right now at a time in the United States in which people are rightly upset and they're rightly scared about what's going on in the country. And I wanted to end on a note of optimism.
The other day, I do a variety of different things to our listeners, right? I work for a university and I do this and that. I was shooting a show that the Ted Danson hosts.
And the segment of the show was on petroglyphs. The deals was sort of preserved petroglyphs. And these are ancient.
Thousands could be 5,000, 10,000-year-old markings on rocks here in New Mexico. And I had never been to this location before. Here's the thing.
I had driven up and down this road in northern New Mexico. It's on the road to Taos, New Mexico, right before a little town called Taos to work, a gas station with some homes and a winery called Velarde.
I had gone back and forth hundreds of times over the decades. This was the first time I ever made a left across the Rio Grande right before we get to this little town of Velarde.
And there was a property, maybe about 150 acres, under lock and key, a woman, a family that owned it donated to her preservation society. And there is where I was shooting this Ted Danson thing. There were thousands of petroglyphs.
These are markings, some very intricate artwork, almost narrative stories carved in the rocks. And they're thousands of years old. And you know what?
They're still there. Those people still exist. They went through their trials and their tribulations.
And their work still stands thousands of years later. And it's everywhere. You just got to make a left on that road that you've been traveling down all your life.
And it filled me with a sense of great optimism. So I just wanted to, in the face of what's happening in the United States right now, what we're dealing with, films like I'm Still Here, Emilia Pérez, Nickel Boys, To Deal With Injustice.
I just wanted to end on that. There's a clip of Martin Luther King in Nickel Boys where he says, no lie can live forever. No lie can live forever.
So there's reason for hope and optimism in journalism.
And what I'd like to, thank you for saying that. I'd like to kind of wrap up by, I mean, we do have to define between the two of us, which film you think is going to win, which film you think should win, and some films that weren't nominated at all.
But looking at these, so many of them call forth compassion, empathy, and some of them even demand an action. So I'll go through them again. I'll go through the titles one more time.
And let's see which we think is going to win.
Oh, it's tough.
Which we think should win. And then what are some films that weren't nominated?
So, Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Fonklave, Dune II, Emilia Pérez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked, Jett, what do you think is gonna win?
Imagine if they open the envelope, whoever does it, Warren Beatty, they may not be inviting them back, but let's say he opens it up and it's The Substance. In the old days, I've won two of your competitions by guessing all the winners, right? Yes.
I have no idea anymore. Who do I think is gonna win? I could see I'm Still Here, your favorite winning.
I could see Nickel Boys winning and I could see Anora winning.
No, no. I don't think the Brutalists is gonna win. I think there's a chance Anora could win.
I actually think Anora voters and Brutalist voters will cancel each other out and Conclave will win.
Oh, I forgot about... Did you even mention Conclave?
I was not trying to pull... I wasn't trying to pull what's he called, Cardinal, who's the dodgy Cardinal in Conclave?
I think they're all dodgy, but that's just me.
The Smoking Cardinal. Oh, they're vaping. Yeah, I think Conclave might win.
And I'd like to see... I mean, I'd be delighted with that film, a tremendously humane things to say to the world right now. And I'd like to see I'm Still Here win.
What would you like to see?
I forgot about Conclave in Dune, in Drama Part 2. Yeah, actually, now that I think about it, yeah, Conclave will probably win. It's like the Academy favorite, because people that vote for Nora and The Brutalist will counsel each other out.
And I've said it twice already on the show, challengers should be in there.
Challengers should be in there. All we imagine is like Joker folio, the robot dream, Sing Sing, Evil Does Not Exist, Rebel Ridge and small things like these. I agree with everything you've said.
Other than those 10 that weren't nominated, this is a great list.
What if the next year they'll expand it to 20?
Are you going to watch the Oscars?
We could do a live stream. Do you want to do a live stream for the Patreon supporters?
I think I'm actually going to be at the Conclave.
I think it will be hanging out.
I think actually, now this is an idea. The Oscars should be, the best picture should be decided by a Conclave.
I think it already is.
They're not allowed out until the right, use ranked order voting, the smoke. That's a suggestion. I know that the, that many of the governors of the Academy listen avidly to The Film Talk and that's our humble suggestion.
And if you decide to use that, you don't even need to credit us. We're just happy to share good ideas for the sake of the good.
I don't know if that suggestion is going to increase ratings. We'll see what happens. Well, then listen, I hope you enjoyed the show.
Gareth, I might live stream. I'm not sure where either one of us is going to be on the date, like what part of the country or which country or all that business. We'll see what we can do.
Thank you so much for listening. Even though, of course, Gareth was wrong about I'm Still Here. Still worth watching.
You're there in the hotel room. It comes on.
Absolutely watch it. It's important.
Thanks for listening. I've been Jett Loe.
I've been Gareth Higgins. We'll keep talking next time.