Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave and Dune: Part 2 - these are the films we're discussing today Dear Listener. Of one of these Gareth Higgins says, "It's about 80 percent as good as The Godfather". Listen in and find out what he's talking about, if you can stand our rendition of The Brutalist score.
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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.
Oh, Gareth, I'm a little under the weather, but I think maybe, just maybe, it's Oscar Fever.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is our exciting part one, part one of our Best Picture Nominee shows for the Oscars. Welcome to The Film Talk. I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins.
The conversation never ends. Yes, indeed. Oscar Fever, you may have a temperature, Jett.
I may have a temperature, we may have a temperature. It's that time of year when we get to talk about whether or not the films that have been nominated for Best Picture are any good.
It seems to me that if we split this episode into two parts, two parts. We do them in alphabetical order.
Yes.
That would mean we're talking about Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, and Dune Part 2. I think it would be churlish to say anything other than, yes indeed, they are any good.
I feel they are good. Now, we are splitting our big 10 picture Oscar show into two parts. Gareth is just rattled off.
He's rattled off the first part, what we're going to do today. Then next week, we're going to do Emilia Perez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked.
Which of these two, to start off with, Gareth, which of these two is the stronger, do you think?
Of the two fives?
Yes, is it Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune, Part 2, or is it Emilia Perez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked? Two buckets of movies. What do you reckon?
I think that the best film is on one of the lists and my favorite film is on the other list.
Oh, okay, we'll get to it.
That's what we call a teaser in the industry, folks. Let's get right into it.
We will, of course, in the next episode, we'll talk about the films that should have been nominated but weren't.
In this episode, let's start with Anora, Sean Baker's film, an absolute star-making turn from Mikey Madison about a sex worker stripper who is in what seems to be a two-part film.
The first part is a little bit like a kind of horrifying slapstick comedy. Then the second part is a, to my mind, profoundly thoughtful moving film about someone asserting their own dignity in the face of people who just don't care.
We call that hosting the film talk.
Maybe actually does care. Which one of us doesn't care? Are you saying the first 10 years of The Film Talk were a horrifying slapstick comedy?
Let's get back to Anora.
I believe we have a clip.
We don't have a clip and here's why.
We know in The Film Talk that the listeners, you only have so much time for all the content out there.
They're discerning listeners.
I mean, there's like 15, 20 seasons of Inca Masters. There's a new White Lotus coming out. So we're not going to have clips for all these movies.
If we did, this show would be longer than it's already going to be.
I'm still going to believe that we have a clip even if we don't.
We don't.
I believe we have a clip. I'm still going to believe it.
Fair enough. I appreciate your faith. You know, I pass by, I live in the United States, so I pass by a church every day.
They have those signs, you know, where they put up the black letters on the white boards. Today, I swear to you, dear listeners and Gareth Higgins, the sign said, Prepare for the Rise of the Evil One. And I have a lot of questions with that.
I don't know how to prepare. Rise is the Evil One underneath us. Who is the Evil One?
I tell you who's not the Evil One, director, writer and editor, Sean Baker, who did Anora, which, as Gareth has mentioned, is basically, you can infer from his words, is absolutely fantastic. Now, have you seen the other Sean Bakers?
Have you seen Tangerine? You've seen The Florida Project.
Seen The Florida Project.
Right. Okay. And these films, I mean, so he's got this run, like this one as well, where he's got this amazing theme of destigmatizing sex workers.
It's really something. He does them in a, those other earlier films, more of a documentary style.
This, to me, feels much more mainstream, but he's still using his documentary style tricks, there's real people in this movie, you can tell he's casting real people, like the owner of the candy store, or people that are walking by in Las Vegas.
But it has a documentary realism to it, listeners, while still being hysterically funny and sad.
You know, Gareth, there was a time in my life when I lived in London where I did hang out with sex workers, and the kind of sex workers that had drivers, and they're always Russian, they're always being, you know, minded by big guys, big guys,
Russian minders. To me, the film was like a documentary. But a documentary, to me, is like the greatest Preston Sturges film that Preston Sturges never made. Does that make sense?
It has the laughs and the manic energy of Sturges, his greatest work, but it also makes you cry. When I saw it, the audience, people are crying at the end.
It's as if you ever see Sullivan's Travels, the character Sullivan in that film, Satire, he's a director and he does silly films like Ants in Your Pants 1939 and Hey Hey in the Hayloft.
He wants to make a film called Old Brother Where I Art Thou, which is going to be very serious, which of course the Coen brothers used later. But it's like that became a real film with Anora. So it's both incredibly funny.
There's a set piece in the end of the first act, and it's up there with the greatest scenes of screwball comedy. The first is of the 60s, the movies of Blake Edwards. And then it's also devastating emotionally.
People were sobbing at the end. It's a stunning piece of work.
So the set piece scene, I'm assuming you're talking about the scene where they're like restraining her inside the house.
Yes. So dear listeners, please see Anora. Please see Anora.
There's a big long scene in the house goes on for me, 20 minutes. And there's a character trying to get there, and it's frantic, and it's up there with the best of the wacky Preston Sturges films like Lady Eve.
It's also really disturbing because this is a young woman surrounded by men who are abusing her. I mean, that's what's happening. And I get that it's...
Igor would disagree on the abuse.
Well, here's the thing.
I mean, part of that establishes Igor as a different kind of person, a person who does not approve, which is a line that's going to become important in another film that we'll discuss on a future episode.
And of course, we as the audience, you would hope we do not approve of what is happening to her in this scene.
And the films about her claiming her agency from the start and in different ways, the whole way through, up until, I'll not spoil what it is, but the nature of the ending. I'm not going to spoil what it is from a plot perspective.
The nature of the ending here is extraordinary because what I'll say is that there's ruin screen wipers that are moving slowly and they're really the main sound that we're hearing in this scene.
And what appears to be happening is the power dynamics between the two characters in the scene are flipping every couple of seconds as you hear the windscreen wipers go.
Each of these people appears to be almost like a child in innocence and also the person in control of the situation at the same time. Very hard to do. The film is psychologically complex and ultimately very moving to me.
And if I was to predict which film is going to win?
Best Picture at the Oscars this year. It's going to be Green Book.
It's going to be Green Book.
One of the ten that we discussed on this episode. But I think there's a good chance it will be Anora.
Well, you talk about the changing power dynamics and the set piece scene that I mentioned. I hope folks see these movies. I don't know if I want to do the same.
We're not going to spoil them. We want to talk about these movies. So I'm going to assume that people have seen the film.
Janelle Harding has directed a scene in which the characters themselves don't know who's in control at any particular moment and where their power dynamics is constantly shifting from line to line.
And there's that sense of realism that infuses Anora. Have you ever been to a strip club? And that stuff is perfect.
Every little bit, even the wackiness of smoking the marijuana at your lower-rent job at a candy shop is perfect. It feels like a documentary. The fact that it's not is absolutely stunning.
And that end scene is incredible. As those power dynamics go back and forth, we have shot, reverse shot of the actress close-up and they're stunning. The close-ups of Igor and of Annie are stunning.
You feel like you're within their emotional bubble. And the performances are all fantastic. There's no question about that.
And you know what, I love so many little details. You talk about that. It's very simple.
You say, what's that two on the nose? The windshield wiper. You don't have to know that consciously, but it's there.
She's referred to throughout the film as an insect like a butterfly. She's got a butterfly tattoo. She's referred to dismissively as a night butterfly.
And there's a scene where she's in a plane. And the windows behind her, you realize, are like butterfly wings. They make wings behind her.
The whole film is full of little details like that while still having a documentary flavor. And it is uproariously, outrageously funny as well as being tender and tragic.
Yeah, I wouldn't be, I hope it does beat Green Book for Best Picture, because it's a hell of a motion picture. Anora, if you haven't seen it, go see it. Okay, what else we got?
Speaking of another motion picture that could also be described as a kind of hell, is your favorite and mine, the rip-roaring family entertainment, The Brutalist, which we talked about in a full episode a couple of weeks ago.
Ed, I believe we have a clip.
What's in this clip, Gary?
I trust your faith in this clip. This is a clip from The Brutalist.
No clip.
In which, let's just imagine it.
Let's just imagine, I want you to imagine to your listener, an enormous slab of marble, and I mean one that's like the size of a mountain and a glass or a bottle of water, and just pour the bottle of water over the side of the marble so that you can
The marbling comes out, hence the name marble.
The marbling comes out.
The Brutalist, after we talked about it, Jett, I do want to revise my opinion.
It's a great film.
It's a great film.
I've been listening to the music.
Can you hum the theme?
And evoking those feelings.
Think the theme for us now.
It's not a hummable theme. It's more of a da-da-da theme.
It's more of a da-da-da.
I'll do it if you do it with me. You first.
I'll do the click-click bit if you do the da-da-da bit.
Flip it around.
Okay. Well, the click-click comes first.
Who's the Guy Pearce in this situation?
The... You go click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click, click-click.
A little more.
It's only... It's only fair. Folks, The Brutalist.
That music is enough.
If that music doesn't sell you on The Brutalist.
Folks, do you love something called The Movies? If you do, go see The Brutalist. I don't know if it's still in theaters.
See it in the biggest format you can. If your TV is not big enough, sit in front of the television. Get right, move your butts right.
You're a foot away and you put on headphones.
If you have any spare concrete slabs lying around the house, put them around the TV so you can feel like you're right. Cinderblocks will do.
Inside it, I said on our show about The Brutalist that in a sense, the film that it reminded me the most of was Ryan's Daughter. That's a film, Jealousy, I returned to a lot for a couple of reasons.
It is a special place in my heart because it's a film made in Ireland, albeit with apparently mostly English actors. It's a film I had watched on television before I saw it in a theater.
I thought it was cheesy melodramatic over the top and a little bit alienating. Sure, yes, it has lovely images in it, but it kind of crumbled for me and felt a bit embarrassing.
But then when I saw it on a substantial screen at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, the American Cinematheque, I realized, oh, this is the difference between an opera and a parody of a Harold Pinter play. And watching it big is what it deserves.
And the melodrama feels, I guess you could say, in the right register. And that was my experience second time watching The Brutalist. I'd watched it on a screener at home.
And certainly I didn't think it was a bad film. I'm loyal to the listener. I wanted to be able to review it.
Okay, so your second feeling.
Did you see it in the cinema?
70 millimeter. We don't all have 70 millimeter privilege. Jett, please check your 70 millimeter privilege.
I'm not saying I've got a 75 millimeter VistaVision set up.
I know it's only shown for a couple of days in the Albuquerque IMAX. I had no idea. I didn't know you went, oh, I did not know you saw it on as a screener.
That's absurd. You have to see it in the biggest... Did you sit your butt right in front of the screen?
You got to get right in there so it takes up your peripheral vision.
I was absorbed by it for sure, or I felt deeply absorbed. I still think it's bleak, but it's also majestic. It's also majestic.
I have no idea if I agree with what it's saying. And I do think that Brady Courbet, who's certainly my mispronounced in our last episode, I do think he is saying something here.
Well, Sidney Lumet, if we go back for the deep cuts for our dear, is he the great New York director? He's probably the great New York director.
Stanley Kubrick was pretty good.
I'm not sure you can really say that Kubrick was a New York director, at least for the last 30 years of his career.
Have you seen Killer's Kiss? That's all I'm saying. No, Sidney Lumet was absolutely fantastic.
So I'm glad that you've come around to The Brutalist. It is magnificent, folks. Again, if you like the movies, go see The Brutalist.
I like it so much. I'm always a huge fan of Brutalist architecture. I went and picked up that Faden book, the famous publishers, called The Brutalists.
It's a nice companion piece. Are you ready to move on to young T-Champs, Timothee Chalamet, T-Champs as I call them, in A Complete Unknown or we're done with The Brutalist?
Well, you'll never be done with The Brutalist. I'm ready to move on to A Complete Unknown also.
Da da da da. Like, stop it.
A Complete Unknown. This is the Bob Dylan biopic.
Is there any music in A Complete Unknown?
No, oddly enough. No, there's tons. It's wall to wall singing.
It's T-Champs, our boy, Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. And we do not have a clip because we put a clip, we'd probably get some sort of copyright infringement. You loved A Complete Unknown.
Did I?
No, I loved the Pete Seeger story and the Woody Guthrie story and a fair amount of the Bob Dylan story.
And I still felt it didn't explore enough Dylan's creative process and what his work meant to him, never mind what it meant to people who understood it.
I wish, I actually really do wish The Film had been marketed and titled in such a way that it said you were going to get not, you're not going to get deep biographical information about Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
You're going to get more about Dylan and that, but it really is about the three of them. It's about generational change. It's about the whole 20th century in US in Americana music.
The place where I feel it's kind of the weakest is on exploring the creative process and the meaning of Dylan's work. Still enjoyed watching it and I honestly, the highlights of that film for me were all about Pete Seeger.
You know, I'm just thinking, and I agree with you completely. I think the highlights were Pete Seeger as well. I'm gonna talk about that in a second.
You know, sometimes it's hard to do these biopics, biopics when somebody has such a huge life, right? And so I was thinking of Michael Mann's, Ali, these big spectacles. You kind of want to say, well, wait a minute, let's just do one night.
Let's just do one day. What if they had just done this movie, but it was just a couple of days of the Newport Folk Festival? And the entire film, we can still do all the stuff.
We do all the stuff. Everybody's there, Joan Baez is there. They bring the Judas bit in from the English concert.
And bam, they're, oh, no, you know what? Here's what you do. You don't watch it.
Instead, you watch, you watch, I'm Not There, the other Dylan. And after you watch I'm Not There, that's the one where everybody plays a different version of Dylan. You got your Cate Blanchett and your Heath Ledger and Richard Gere.
You watch I'm Not There. And then right after that, you watch the two songs that Timothee Chalamet did on Sonnet Alive, his two favorite Bob Dylan songs. That's what you need.
You don't need to watch A Complete Unknown. If you like the look of it, the same look as the director's previous film, the Indiana Jones and the Destiny Dial movie, looks the same. Just put that on the background.
You got Tim T. Champs playing the songs on SNL. Watch Cate Blanchett.
I'm Not There. And you're done. Job done.
Don't forget the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
Hey, you know one of the things?
I do want to say one thing about Ed Norton. He plays Pete Seeger. It's fantastic.
He's so great. And the only thing, I did mention this in the last show, to me, it gets even better if you think about, he plays such a gentle character, Gareth. Think about, watch the movie if you do want to watch the movie.
And I want you to think, dear listener, that his intense gentleness in the movie, the reason why he's so gentle is because he's got to keep himself from getting angry because he's actually secretly Bruce Banner from The Hulk in that Marvel movie he
did. And if you do it, it's great. Complete Unknown. Dear listener, you know what to do.
Conclave. We're moving on. Conclave.
There's no time. We're moving on. Quickly, quickly, quickly.
Conclave, a whole film about belief and doubt and how the difference, the opposite of faith is-
Prepare for the rise of the evil one.
What is the opposite of faith?
The opposite of doubt is not certain. Yeah, the opposite of faith is certainty.
The opposite of faith is certainty.
Yes, the opposite of faith.
Prepare for the rise of the evil one.
As you know, Jett, I was raised in a very Christian culture.
Some of it actually seemed to try to embody the teachings of Jesus, and some of it was culturally Christian, and some of it was Christianist in the sense of trying to dominate people's lives with a cultural form of Christianity that probably owed
more to the middle class mores of the Victorian era than it did to prioritizing, devoting yourself to love, and loving your neighbor as yourself. This is a very natural thing.
It happens all over the place, and I think it's to do with stages of development. The problem is that cultures can become corroded, and people get stuck in doing things the way they were always done.
The apocryphal story of the family who are baking a ham for the first time, and the person doing the cooking cuts off a third of the ham and discards it, and then puts two-thirds of the ham in the oven, and another person says, Why are you doing
that? And they said, That's how you cook ham. And the other person says, Nope, that's not how you cook ham. And they said, Well, that's how my mother did it, so calls the mother.
And she says, That's how my mother did it, so calls the grandmother. And it turns out she didn't have an oven big enough to bake a full ham.
And there is so much in religion, in culture, in politics, that is simply a replication of a previous generation didn't have a pot big enough, right?
And I think that when people talk about politics as the art of the possible, and in this film, Conclave, the astonishing line, the church is what we do tomorrow, the church is what happens tomorrow, there would be a lot of people who are frightened
of that kind of idea because it's expensive, it's threatening, it's risky, because it means having to let go of certainty. But when people say politics is the art of the possible or the church is what we do tomorrow, I think this actually could
serve, should serve as a kind of a motto for how we need to be in this moment where old certainties are being asserted forcefully by people who, whatever their motivations are, whatever they really think they're doing, what seems obvious to me and I
think is obvious to you is they are simply replicating, they didn't have a pot big enough to imagine a more inclusive world, a world in which there's enough to go around for everybody, a world in which somebody different, someone who doesn't look or
feel like the previous forms of leadership might actually be exactly who we need right now. That's what Conclave is about. The fact that it does it with a skill and a craft, and I'll invoke ham again, high-class ham. It's the best joint of ham you've
ever eaten. Edward Berger is a tremendous director. Ray finds fantastic performance in this along with everybody else. It's about 80 percent as good as The Godfather to me.
It falls short because it is a little bit, there's a kind of an almost comic element to it that kind of just makes it, brings it down a notch. But I love this film. It is my favorite of the ten films nominated for Best Picture.
I don't think it's the best one, but I've seen it three times. I'll see it again.
And I urge people to see it if you need comforted by the idea that there are ways of reimagining our world and of transcending and including the best of tradition without being corroded by it.
Well, I think you're in the pocket of Big Conclave. You know, 80% as good as The Godfather. It's like you're watching TV like the old soap opera like Dynasty and saying, this is 80% as good as Dostoevsky.
We're disagreeing. I love your Ham Story pot. Well, you know, I remember Steve Jobs had something about how when he was young, he realized, looked around and realized it was all created, right?
Everything is a construct, which means it's all malleable. Like how we do things is something that we have decided on. It's not the way they have to be.
And perhaps in this particular poetic, political moment, I did say poetic, political moment, it's a poetry of bleakness, genuine bleakness. If we look around and say, this is not the way things have to be, we can change them.
We can mold the world in our own image. And now I'm sounding like the people that are doing the things at the federal level. Take everything back that I just said.
80% of The Godfather, it's more like, what if The Da Vinci Code was good? Or what if an egg at the Christie, what if an egg at the Christie, what if an egg at the Christie movie was good?
What if The Da Vinci Code was good is going in one direction and 80% of The Godfather is going in the other direction and maybe they can meet and be a happy medium.
I would ask Cardinal Benitez to adjudicate between us on this and they would say something utterly profound, I am sure.
I'm not saying don't go see it. Conclave is like Gareth talks about ham. You want a quality sandwich.
You put a lot of mustard, maybe put a little dash of horseradish, some salt, some pepper. It's not going to be good for you. It's going to be tasty, though.
You're glad you ate it. Maybe you're going to feel a little overstuffed afterwards. But that's okay.
What's our last film?
Well, hold on. Before we quickly, quickly, quickly move on, to quote my favorite film critic. You're saying that it's a good quality sandwich.
You also did say, and I wouldn't quote you on this if you hadn't said it in public.
You also did say that while you were watching Conclave, you had to very much in the mode of Kerry Elwes in The Princess Bride or Warren Beatty in The Parallax View, or the great Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie when Mel Brooks is trying to
brainwash him. You had to almost physically resist the experience that the film was enacting upon you. That sounds better than a good sandwich.
I almost had a deep spiritual experience that connected me with all things that you might call God. But also, as I think I mentioned on the show, I had just previously the day before broken free ribs and they gave me a bunch of opioids.
So I'm just, and this is no insult to those people like Gareth feel a great connection to things, whereas I could understand that on an intellectual level. But there's no feeling of it.
But what in Conclave I had the feeling sort of creeping in of that religious experience. And I was like, oh, I get it now. And I almost became a believer.
But you know what I really believe in? The music of Toto in David Lynch's Dune as applied to Dune, comma, Part 2. Tell us about Dune Part 2, Gareth.
Dune Part 2 is the second of what might be 10,000 parts.
And I mean, yeah, it's fantastic.
It's a, it's a, let me, let me say this.
Yeah.
The first time I saw what I think is happening in Dune and Dune Part 2, is when I went to see 12 Monkeys, I guess 1996, Terry Gilliam's film that's, that's a homage to Chris Markers film La Jetée with Bruce Willis, a highly underrated dramatic actor
He's great in striking distance as well and we're re-rising.
I remember coming out of, of 12 Monkeys and thinking, wow, Terry Gilliam managed to get a studio to give him them a kind of a blockbuster budget to make an art film.
And Denis Villeneuve has done that to the nth degree with Dune and Dune Part 2.
Thunderous, Thunderous like The Brutalist, Bleak like The Brutalist, complex in its ideas, superb performances throughout, even when they're hamming it up, Javier Bardem's excitement at the recognition of the new Messiah is a crowd-pleasing delight.
They're a more horrifying shot in modern cinema than the close-up of Javier Bardem as he decides to believe, or as he believes, as if he did not push away the faith impulse in Conclave like I did. It's a horrific shot.
Yes, there is a more horrifying shot.
I don't think so. It's horrific.
Rarely in a film of this scale. I'm actually thinking of the scenes in Under the Skin when when Scarlett Johansson's character beckons men who go into the kind of, you know, drown and become one with the oil.
That's maybe the most horrifying shot I've seen. But that's a small or a film small in scale. There's it's pretty rare that a movie of this scale with with this intended large audience is this interesting.
And I haven't read the books. You've read the books.
I've read the first one probably. I've read the first one three times. Second one, I've tried multiple times, go always, then can't get through it.
Try it again after watching the first Dune. This first Dune, the new Dune, couldn't get through it.
What do you think's going on there? You just think that the book's not good?
Not good. Books are not good.
The first one is. What's the point for you of the Dune universe?
I guess you could call it. I would say it's advocating for what I did in Conclave. That you have to resist that desire for a spiritual impulse that might lead you to believe in messiah figures at a fundamental level.
And that's what made, for me, that made the first film better, watching the second one. And what was so surprising about the first one is the first film opens not with young Paul Atreides, played by our boy T. Champs.
It opens with Zendaya, wondering who's the next colonizer going to be. And the film then ends on a shot of Zendaya after she sees, oh, this is just another colonizer. Off he goes, leading these people, using religion to enact his dreams of power.
So that's what that's fundamentally what it's about. This version anyway. And the other one too.
David Lynch's maybe not so much. Yeah.
All right. Well, that's Dune too. So those are the first five.
You just attacked my faith.
Well, no, no, you haven't, actually.
You haven't, because I think that there's, you know, like faith, tradition, reason and experience, all they should work together as a kind of a mutually self-critical mirroring process.
The problem is not so much that people might believe in a messiah. It's when they, first of all, suspend, I'm not sure I want to say reason, when they suspend thinking about this, and they make the judgments in isolation.
And then, of course, what do you want your messiah to do? Do you want your messiah to save your people and destroy everybody else, or save your people and just ignore everybody else?
Is it falling victim to certainty? Is that the problem? The people fall victim to certainty?
So, the other side is, do you want the messiah, in a sense, to call forth loving, creative, courageous energy within you, so that you go about your life asking yourself, where do I have power and resources, whether I believe I earned them or not, and
how can I use them to serve the common good, and where do I have needs that are legitimate, and who are the safe or the brave, or at least the compassionate people that I can ask for help. My belief about, I mean, let's get into it.
My belief about Jesus is that most of what Jesus came to do has been singularly misunderstood by most religious traditions for 2,000 years. And in a sense, that's kind of the point.
There's still time.
There's still.
It is kind of the point that we're supposed to move from domination to partnership, and not just partnership with other human beings, but partnership with God, whatever God is, and partnership with all living beings, this generatively expansive way
of being in the world. And it's antithetical to service to the common good, to go around trying to dominate people. People do it for very natural reasons. They do it because a tradition has been handed down to them.
And we need interventions in our lives.
Can cinema intervene? Can it help? I feel a film like Conclave can help.
A film like The Brutalist can help. A film like Adora can help. A film like Dune, Part 2, can help.
Complete Unknown, not so much.
A Complete Unknown can help.
It can help.
Edward Norton can help. AKA. Bruce Banner can help.
As you know, the great 20th century philosopher, Lex Luthor, said some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's just a simple adventure story.
Other people can read The Back of the Chewing Gum Rapper and unlock the secrets of the universe. I am not here. I don't think we're here to judge where people get their help from as long as it's authentic help.
You know, if you come away from, you could come away from Conclave thinking, I want to be Pope, right? That's probably not what Conclave is trying to get you to think.
What Conclave is asking to do is, where do you need to expand your horizons in terms of where you judge spiritual authority can come from? Because there are some people who think women can't speak with spiritual authority.
There are some people who think that people who are not white, don't have the same kind of spiritual authority as other people.
It's called the Trump administration.
There is a, well, the line between good and evil runs down the center of every, I should correct myself on that.
I don't think Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil runs down the exact center of every human being because it's not that we're all 50% good and 50% bad.
But there are a lot of people out there who I think are at the very least confused about the nature of reality. They are confused about the nature of what human beings are here for.
We are here to cooperate with each other, not to dominate each other, and not to be dominated.
I don't know why would you think that? Why, I mean, no offense, you sound certain in that. That's why humanity, there may be no reason what's at all.
There's no reason possibly.
Sure, there may be no reason. Clearly, you'd want to put your bet on the one that maximizes the possibilities of good for everybody. We're not here to build another conclave full of elite people on the right side of the line.
This is getting way more philosophical than we usually do, Jett.
These themes are always there. Sometimes, they come out in our reviews of films like Wicked, and sometimes, they don't. So of these five films, Nora, Brutalist, Complete Unknown, Your Buddy Conclave, Dune, Part 2.
Well, Conclave is my favorite.
I think Anora is the best. If I was to split my top 10 films from last year into alphabetical order and pick the top five, what's missing from this list is all we imagine as light, and evil does not exist.
If you like your alphabetized lists to omit the definite article, The Bike Riders would be on the list as well. What about you? What's the best and what's your favorite?
I'm saving that for our next show.
We're going to talk about Amelia Perez, I'm still hearing Nickel Boys, Substance and Wicked, and then I kind of want to put in, I've got some ideas there. Something else that kind of tangentially fits right in there. I like to do a little teaser.
Any final words, Gareth? I feel that we've learned a little, we've laughed, we've loved.
Yeah, I knew you were going to do the song. Folks, if you haven't seen The Brutalist or seen the trailer for The Brutalist, I want you to know that Jett and I are doing well. We're just singing the song.
We're just singing a song. We're claiming the bright side.
Listen, I don't know about you folks, dear listener Gareth, I'm busy over here preparing for the rise of The Evil One. Thank you so much for listening. We're going to do a part two next week.
I love each and every one of you and that's a certainty. I've been Jett Loe.
I've been Gareth Higgins. I love you too and I love you as well, Jett. We'll keep talking next time.