One host finds unexpected richness in Tim Burton’s return to the afterlife. The other finds something closer to despair. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice becomes a useful excuse to talk about late-career filmmaking, repetition, surprise, moviegoing itself, and whether returning to a beloved world can produce new life rather than merely resurrect the old merchandise.
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Oh my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, we're back once again.
Did we ever leave? We did, like Beetlejuice, but now we have returned like Beetlejuice. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to The Film Talk.
I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. The conversation never ends on like Beetlejuice. We're recording this on the opening weekend.
Yes.
Probably going to be like, you know, I don't know, the third or fourth, biggest opening weekend of the year in terms of the numbers of people going to see this film.
Might it be the case for this episode that we could have our largest audience ever?
I believe so because the folks out there, you are listening right now, you can't get enough of that sweet, sweet Beetlejuice content. Hey, folks, don't get me wrong. I loved so many parts of this film.
This is a movie. I love, there are many parts to this film. We'll talk about that.
I'm sure. Gareth and I never discussed the film at a time. We're going this cold.
This is a film. I liked lots of it.
This is a film that answers that immortal question, Gareth, dear listeners, what if you made a sequel to Beetlejuice, and you called it Beetle Beetlejuice, and at the same time you made another sequel to Beetlejuice, let's call it Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and you overlaid them in the same film on a temporal access. Because that's what you get. We get two sequels combined in this picture. You want to tell the listeners out there, we're caught.
Hold on, hold on, we're already, we're like one and a half minutes into the show, we're already double laying things in a temporal access.
Yes, we are.
That's the kind of quality and value you get in The Film Talk.
Is this, are you Carl Sagan?
You know, if only. Imagine being one of the folks that got to decide what to put on that golden disk that went on in the two Voyager missions. The only things that may ever survive humanity.
And you've got some, I think, Louis Armstrong.
And I think an episode of The Film Talk.
That did not get on the golden disk. But there was a Louis Armstrong song. There's a great shot of some hands picking grapes.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, go and say it three times. Tell the listeners what it's about and then we'll get a clip.
Thirty six years after the original Beetlejuice, about a rambunctious and frankly, aggressive ghost played by Michael Keaton.
He's back in Tim Burton's film in which Winona Ryder playing the grown-up daughter of a family at the heart of the original film is the presenter of a paranormal reality TV show where she investigates scary goings-on in people's houses, and she's got
some pain in her life, and her daughter's not doing too well either. Monica Bellucci has stapled herself back together and for some reason agreed to be in this film in which she gets to do so little. I had almost forgotten that she was in it.
The film forgets that she's in it for many stretches.
There's bleak stuff, there's funny stuff, there's at least one surprise cameo, which we won't spoil because it might be the most enjoyable thing in the film.
I don't know what that cameo is. I have no idea what Gareth is. Maybe I went out to the bathroom.
Did I miss a cameo?
I know that I tried to give things a fair win, and I will intend to do that in how we discuss this film. But you may be detecting a tone of at least mild disappointment in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. And I believe we have a clip.
Yes, we do.
In this clip, there's a clip from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Let's listen in.
I know this is a big step for you, but in the words of Dr. Glickman, I'm going to give you the push you need.
First of all, I want you two kids to know, this is a safe space, okay? Feel free to express yourself.
Don't be afraid.
I sense there's an enabler here, but we'll get to that.
You're a figment of my imagination.
Really?
Is this a figment of your imagination? And that is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Jett, you've already said that there were parts of this film and many parts.
Yes.
I get, I know exactly what you're saying, but a first sequel and then a second sequel overlaid on top of the first sequel.
Here's the thing.
Okay.
I'll start with what I liked because in the spirit of meaningful feedback loops that are what you want to use when you want to build bridges and transform conflict.
You're talking about a virtuous circle.
You start with what works. What works for me is the parts that are satirical of hypocrisy in entertainment, hypocrisy in having a public life, hypocrisy in the art world, and superficiality in the art world.
There's a tremendous joke in which social media influencers literally get sucked into their phones. A good visual joke making a meaningful point, and also a critique of superficial therapy culture.
There's some good jokes about trauma and mindfulness, but they're made, as it were, from the inside as someone who's dealt with, lives with, works with PTSD. I was not offended by these jokes. They didn't feel like they were punching down.
They felt like people who've experienced the gamut of a tense addressing trauma and things like that might also feel like we're laughing with ourselves. I appreciated that.
Willem Dafoe playing the ghost of an actor who played kind of a cheesy, Beretta. Was that the name of the guy, the TV show? Or was there a show called Beretta with a cop?
Was that the one where he had a-
Robert Blake.
Oh, goodness, Robert Blake.
Where he had a bird on a shoulder. I think that was Beretta. Not Banachek.
Banachek was the insurance investigator.
He plays the ghost of a kind of a curmudgeonly action hero cop who doesn't realize that he's not really that, and that cops don't actually speak that way. That's quite funny.
And there are two sequences on what's called the Platform for the Soul Train that had me almost punching the air with joy. A lot of that's well done. And as in every Tim Burton film, the visual design and the feel of the thing is unique.
It's been designed to within an inch of its life. And sadly, as with at least half of Tim Burton's films, at least half of them, the design overwhelms the story telling.
Or the story telling hasn't been as fleshed out or constructed in a way that feels like anything surprising is ever going to happen.
This film may be more than most big budget intended hits of its kind in recent years felt like a script by numbers in which they'd gone to Robert McKee's story seminar and had simply almost filled in a flow chart in which you just, you know,
everything around the next quarter, including the two alleged twists in the last scene, both of them utterly predictable. And the heaviest feeling I had most of the way through this film.
Yes.
And now I learned what we have come affectionately to refer to as my opening statement with this jet name, Eager to Hear.
You know, I love your opening statements. I'm, you know, because I, what happens is I get to lean back, the audience can't see this.
And watch Dr. Chivago.
I sit back, I watch another movie. Right now, I'm watching the wonderful, well, not wonderful, it's got some problems. The new film by the director of Green Room and Blue Ruin, I'm watching Rebel Ridge right now.
It's looking pretty good. We'll see how it goes.
Jeremy Solnier.
Yes. Is that how you pronounce his name? Yes.
Yes.
So, the happiest feeling I had in this film was really strange. I'm going to ask you a question, Jett.
I'm here to answer all questions, but not about Rebel Ridge because I haven't gotten to the end of it yet.
Okay. How many Ghostbusters movies are there? Just what's your gut reaction?
How many Ghostbusters movies? Don't think about it.
Don't think?
Just say. Fine. So, you're not sure, right?
I'm not sure.
When was the last Ghostbusters movie released?
It's impossible to say now with the condensation of time.
I meant the condensate of time, not the condensation. Time is not dripping on us. The air conditioner of time.
Look at that condensate. You gotta get a new filter for that time. I'm gonna tell you.
That's what happened with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. How, I want to say, was released within a year?
It was about six months ago. Did you see it?
I don't even, if I did, I don't remember it, which probably because I did see it.
Neither do I. I mean, I have to work to try to remember that film. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
I had to work to try to remember it while I was watching it. It just felt like I was watching colorful projected images and sounds on a screen.
You just described a movie.
As flat as can be. Before we were on air, we were talking about something, not the film itself, but the way films are projected. I was watching it in a shoebox room in a multiplex.
Most of the rooms and multiplexes are not designed with the viewer in mind. Screen is too small. It's at the end of a long, like a shoebox.
There's no matting and framing of the image. There's just blank screen on the sides of the image. There used to be curtains.
There used to be a sense of it being something to go to watch a film. The way most films are projected these days, nobody cares. There's no projectionist anymore.
And I don't know what's going on in Tim Burton's mind. And I'm not going to, you know, we've talked often about, it's not a personal critique of the people who make films. It's hard to make a film.
And in some senses it might be, there's ways in which making a big budget film, and certainly a big budget sequel to a beloved classic, might actually be harder than making a small film for which there may be very limited expectations.
But I felt kind of disrespected by this movie. That took it personally? No, I felt like the lack of imagination that had been put into the storytelling was like, what's the point?
Oh my goodness.
What's the point in this?
There is a moment in this where a character gets to say goodbye to the father that they lost when they were very young, and the person who used to be married to this man gets to say goodbye to him.
And it is as perfunctory as you, what I'm going to say. You're going to guess what I'm going to say.
No, I'm not, but I'm going to disagree with you about this.
Okay, we'll get there. For me, it's as perfunctory as Tom McCarthy falling off the side of the spaceship in 2012. Whatever ship it was, I don't even remember.
Were there aliens in 2012? The father of this family who are reuniting with John Cusack, and their father falls to his death, and nobody bats an eyelid. So, there's no emotional truth in this film.
It just felt like a waste of energy, and God bless all the people involved in it.
Okay, so they tried their best. Now, listen. Okay.
Thank you for your opening statement. We are live for the debate. We've got Dan Abash from CNN moderating my...
Is your mic turned off when I speak?
I was going to say, you're going to be able to use my mic.
Okay, if I want to be charitable to this film, and I liked a lot about this film, and this film is going to get better the more I think about it, I'm even going to go see it again. I'm going to tell you why.
That scene, we'll just take this as an example, that scene which seems perfunctory, of the great reunion we've been hearing about this dad the whole time, and he's going to reunite with Winona Ryder and his daughter, and they shoot it in a wide shot
No, it's not.
The film, yes, the film is full.
Tim Burton's at his best.
He is compassionate for the vulnerable and compassionate for, I mean, I'm going to use this word advisedly, freaks in the Todd Browning sense of that term.
Yes, when he said his best.
This film has no compassion.
Well, we can talk about that. Okay. Okay.
We can talk about that because, I mean, for folks that are younger than listening, Tim Burton had a real impact in American culture.
I can't speak for, you know, I didn't move overseas until the 90s, but he had a big impact in American culture in the 80s. We are under this suffocating blanket of Reagan and Thatcher as well that said, screw you, I've got mine.
There is no such thing as society to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher's famous comment in a printed interview.
And films like Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Drugstore Cowboy, The Terminator, Blue Velvet, these films show that there is a seedy underbelly to the idea of a bright shining America and there are ways out.
Blue Velvet, of course, you got the pan down, you see the bugs underneath the ground in the opening scene, that there's something rotten at the core of America.
And at its best in those early Burton films, and this is to your point, he showed up the hypocrisy and shallowness of the dominant culture. And then he had these anti-heroes. And it's no coincidence.
You think about all of those successful, lauded, great groundbreaking films of Tim Burton in the early days, they're all named after the main character. It might as well just be called Tim Burton, right?
You got Pee-Wee, then you got Beetlejuice, then you got Batman, you got Edward Scissorhands, you got Ed Wood, they're all named after the main character. And at his best, he was exposing the hypocrisy and shallowness of things.
Then at its worst, it just sort of morphed into, you know, the kind of the cool goth kid who just can't, who is so disdainful of those people whose taste is not as good as theirs.
His, the feeling of disdain curdled for me in his movies into a feeling of contempt.
When you watch something like Mars Attacks, I find it very unsettling because of the seeming contempt that the film has for all its characters, the way that they kill Jack Black, the way the film laughs at, look at these rubes, they don't know art.
And he has terrible tendencies. What was so great for me about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that that contempt was not there. Instead, we're back to the Peavis Pig Adventure of having joy, finding joy in being different.
And that's one of the things that I loved about it. So I'm gonna disagree with you again, that ending scene, the joke is, or the scene about the people being reunited, the joke is, look at these fish that are snapping.
The whole film is peppered with that. That's part of the original Beetlejuice charm. You look in the background, who are the people in the waiting room?
There's like a figure that seems to be based on Joey Chestnut, the competitive hot dog eater. He's got hot dogs stuck in his mouth. That's how he died.
There's someone whose Santa Claus burned to a crisp. That's someone who got stuck in a chimney. Maybe it's a Gremlins reference, maybe not.
But there's a fun playfulness in there that is in this film. Now, I understand that you had problems with it. And they're probably similar problems that I had on a structural film level.
When I made that joke at the top of the show.
We don't have similar problems.
Well, here's the issue. Well, let me tell you. Between us, we've got a lot.
While I was watching Rebel Ridge during your opening statement, I was making a list of my problems. It's pretty long. It's like the list.
It's like the waiting line list in Beetlejuice. Here's the thing. The reason I made that joke about overlaying films on a temporal axis.
There's a twist thing that happens in this movie. And as soon as it happened, I thought, well, wait a minute. This should have been the driving force of the whole film.
Basically, we'll say what happens is that there's a villain that's introduced. You think it's a nice boy. He turns out to be a bad guy.
I'm like, oh, we shouldn't see Beetlejuice until then. We could see Beetlejuice right at the beginning. And then for the first 30 minutes, whatever 35, we don't see Beetlejuice.
Then this happens. The ghost revealed the boyfriend is bad guy and the girl and Liddy Deets' daughter is in trouble. And then what does she have to do?
She has to bring Beetlejuice back. So she's got to make this. She's got to be proactive.
And that's why we get Beetlejuice. We're going to unleash this trickster demon. And that's totally great plot for a whole movie.
Instead, this film has that plot and oddly, a whole other plot with another villain played by Monica Bellucci, who is Beetlejuice's ex-wife. That could be... You're watching that, go, why isn't that Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice?
That should be the third film we get backstory on Beetlejuice. That's a whole other plot. And there's another villain with the great Justin Theroux.
So it is ungainly and overstuffed. But here's my question about that, Karras.
That's a great little quote for the poster.
Here's the thing, Gareth, when's the last time you saw Beetlejuice? How long?
The first Beetlejuice? Probably, I don't know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Same year.
Didn't like it that much.
Okay, but here's the thing, you say classic. You may even say beloved classic. I'm not sure, but you said classic.
Yeah. Watch it again, because I watched it a couple days ago. It's just as ungainly and out of shape plot wise.
The film meanders all over the place. It doesn't have a strong narrative drive, but people love it because once you know the plot, once you've seen it a couple of times, then you can just luxuriate in it. People luxuriate in The Big Lebowski.
When it first came out, people didn't quite get it. What is this? But then once you know what's going to happen, you can just luxuriate in its pleasures, whatever those pleasures are for the film.
While watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I felt, you know what? This film is going to get better the more times you see it, because you're not going to worry about what happens. You're just going to enjoy things like wherever William Defoe is.
A cup of coffee is brought to him. I gaffawed. I laughed out loud right at the end.
William Defoe was there. Big shootout scene. And then the coffee is brought to him again.
It's hysterical. Byrne Gorman as the drunken priest.
Oh, he's great.
Is literally laugh out loud. Now, I don't know if that sentence. Hold on one sec.
We never even said before in the English language, Byrne Gorman was hilariously.
Well, and it's funny, the fact that I actually didn't pick up on him being a whiskey priest as you're suggesting. It's more-
Well, I'm not suggesting. You may tell you the clues.
I was picking up more on his language because it's a satire of the way religious talk so often sounds, particularly to people who are not fully engaged or not, it really sounds like a bad news, but who are not deeply engaged in religious cultures, as
opposed to them completely getting clergy wrong, which is what movies usually do. So, funnily enough, he felt like a more realistic satire of what, as the spouse of a clergy person, my husband would laugh at this as well, rather than being irritated,
which they often are when they see ridiculous portrayals of clergy that are simply inaccurate, such as Clint Eastwood wearing a clerical collar in an independent rural church at the start of Thunderbolt, and Lightfoot and a thousand other examples of
historical inaccuracies in the portrayal of clergy. This is a satire. It gets that part right. I'm having an interesting experience reporting this show chat because we are disagreeing.
Agreeably, as hopefully we always, we were disagreeing, although this time the disagreement is in the direction that I don't think the listener would predict. I really didn't like something that you did. Well, usually it's the other way around.
Yeah.
The thing is that again-
Usually I'm the nicey, nicey, happy, happy, goody, goody.
Strip away the plot. And this is a film in which every couple of minutes I'm laughing out loud. And I was the only one in the theater.
And we can talk about that you mentioned curtains.
Well, we should.
Younger listeners won't know. In the old days, you would go see a movie. There would be a curtain in front of the screen.
And then when it starts, it would open up. So it was an event. And often the image would get projected on the curtain, like the opening bits and pieces.
And then the film would be what Gareth used the word matted off, meaning you wouldn't see gray bars. So now you're just- I'm watching a projected television, as Ciannettino would say it.
And there's gray bars on the side because the shape of what 16 by 9 or 2.3 to 1, whatever is not the same shape as the area in the theater. And it's not matted off properly.
When it was matted off properly with curtains, you had this full on experience because the edges were black and now they're not. Now I was the only one in the theater and I was still laughing.
So I want to go see this again with like a full crowd, right? All the theaters around me, you can reserve seats. You can see how many seats are sold.
I'm gonna go see it maybe tonight. We're recording this Saturday night opening weekend. Because, you know, for every every couple of minutes, I'd be like, oh, this isn't that good.
And then there would be something hysterical that would happen, like a Burn Gorman, you know, popping off with these, you know, ridiculous mafouflus, mafouflus? That's not, I think he's a character. I think he's a really old guy in the Bible.
Well, yeah. And the only time Dr. Zeus illustrated the Bible, he had the character of mafouflus.
You know the word I'm trying to say. It is, what is the word I'm trying to say?
You know, Elysium Fields is spelled differently than the way they spell it in the film, but that's...
That was a disappointment with Matt Damon. People are really hoping for something more. Is that Elysium?
Let's talk. So this film has real pleasures. I feel like you didn't tune in to the pleasures.
I didn't feel...
I experienced some of the pleasures.
I did not. You gotta feel more pleasures. The film is about pleasure.
My mother gave me Richard Harris' album when...
Well, she didn't give it to me. In A Sign of Things to Come, I purloined it from her when I was about seven years old. And I know MacArthur's MacArthur part, Back, Back, Forward, All Directors.
I love that song. I'm glad they used it. That's delightful.
Made me laugh. Chuckle, chuckle. The cameo that you obviously either were at the bathroom for or didn't realize was a cameo, made me laugh.
What cameo was this?
I'm not going to spoil it.
No, spoil it.
Tell me now. This is one of the pleasures because this is like eating a rich cake.
Are you going to bleep this? Bleep this? What?
Bleep this name?
What is the name? I'm not going to bleep. That's more production time.
Danny DeVito.
Oh, well.
He didn't know he was going to be in it.
No, I didn't.
I didn't know anybody. I knew I don't watch trailers. I didn't know Danny DeVito was going to be here.
You knew Michael Keaton was going to be in it.
I knew that was it.
That's another reason why you enjoyed the film more than I did.
It's full of rich pleasures.
Let's talk about some of these pleasures of the performances. Willem Dafoe, fantastic. Justin Theroux, fantastic.
Michael Keaton, virtuoso. Ladies and gentlemen, Gareth is making some faces.
I love these people. I love these people. I just felt the thing was flat.
Got to see it again.
No, you don't.
I'd see it again.
Look, there's a Mario Bava reference. They refer you to folks out there. If you haven't seen the Italian films of Mario Bava, go see what is it?
Black Sunday. Go see Planet of the Vampires.
Go see that great anthology film he did with Boris Karloff, The Name Escapes Me, because there is a whole, there is a, you tell me you didn't like the pleasure of all of a sudden Michael Keaton, Beetlejuice starts talking in Italian and they cut to
Was it not Spanish?
Maybe it was Spanish.
No, he does Italian later. I'm sorry. Yeah.
That was great.
Romance language.
It's, there's, there's this, I know you were well aware of this phrase because I think it can apply to the role I play on The Film Talk sometimes.
And that is, I think it can be less than the sum of its parts. And there are wonderful parts in this film. And the person who's chiefly responsible for assembling those parts has made wonderful films.
We talked before in planning the show that could we, could we talk about our, you know, our one favorite Tim Burton film other than this? And I'll tell you, I went back and looked through his filmography and I can't limit it to one.
I have seven favorite Tim Burton films.
Planet of the Apes, of course.
Nope.
Number one, Planet of the Apes. To quote Mark Wahlberg in this film, never send an ape to do a man's job. Do you know there's a scene in Planet of the Apes in which the heroes are getting-
There are, there are many scenes in Planet of the Apes. The camera's locked. Many, many, many scenes.
The camera is locked down and we have kind of a tableau and we see our heroes Mark Wahlberg and some other people and they're there in the middle of the frame and then they run out and then coming, you know, on the right side of the frame and then
the apes come on the left, go, ooh, where are they? And it feels like an Ed Wood film. And you know what, can we just say one thing, I will say one thing about Monica Bellucci in this completely superfluous plot.
In Ed Wood, one of my favorite Tim Burton film, there's jokes made about some of the characters, like why is he walking in hallways and he's having struggles.
Monica Bellucci, like the film forgets she's in it and then you just hear walking down hallways all the time. It's almost like it's a homage to bad cinema. So I kind of enjoy that.
But tell me about your favorite Tim Burton films.
Oh, Ed Wood, Big Fish, Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow, Batman, Batman Returns, and Edward Scissorhands.
What about Planet of the Apes?
They're all fantastic films. And I think there's something that unites them. You already made this point about, it's an interesting point, it might well be that his best films are the ones that are named after the main character.
And even Big Fish is named after the main character of that movie. I think there's a deeper piece, and that is when they're based, for the most part, when they're based on pre-existing death. Batman, obviously.
Sweeney Todd, obviously. Sleepy Hall, the script for Edward Scissorhands is extraordinary.
And Ed Wood, the script, they literally just, they optioned some books about his life, and they wrote on index cards all the great anecdotes, and you put the index cards up on a wall, and then you arrange them to make the plot, and it's fantastic.
And there's a humanity to all of them. And I did think, I went back and rewatched Big Fish, because I think if you had asked me before today, what's my favorite of all, I would have said Big Fish.
I've changed my mind slightly for, I think, a good reason. The reason I loved Big Fish, and the reason I think it's his best story, is it's a story about storytelling. The whole film is about two different ways of telling the story about your life.
There's the kind of blunt, here's one fact after another, and then there's the mythic version of the story.
And of course, the way the film ends, is it mingles those and says, you can actually have, you can, there can be a poetic or a mythical, a mythic truth alongside the kind of blunt facts of a life.
And so I've always thought that the reason that was what I had thought of as his best film was because he's kind of forced to think more about storytelling as he goes. And I don't know, maybe if Tim Burton says to this, he's deeply offended.
I don't want to offend him. I'd love to have a conversation with him about what he thinks about storytelling.
But the reason I take a step back from thinking Big Fish is the best, having watched it again this morning, the it's so strange because at one level, it's his lightest film, it's his airiest film. And it's just far too bright.
If it had actually been shot the way most of his films look, with a bit more darkness in it, I think it would be a better movie. So if you're going to push me, what's Tim Burton's best film?
Planet of the Apes.
It's Batman.
Oh.
And it's Batman partly because he's only, what, three films into his career at that point.
Three feature films. Well, he had done the Shelley Duvall stuff and some other bits and pieces.
Yeah, he'd done episodic TV and short films. He's only three features into his career at that point. You remember the massive anticipation and the pressure.
And he prior, you know, pre-internet fanboy pushback when Michael Keaton was cast as Bruce Wayne.
But that film, given how early he is in his career, the imagination and the way it looks and it feels, and it also makes some potshots about political corruption and, you know, top-down authoritarianism, stuff like that.
The fact that I stood in line for three hours from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the 11th of August, 1989, outside the Strand Cinema to see it on opening day is either icing on the cake or blinds me completely to its flaws as a movie of deep affection for it.
The guy has made some great films. I might, I might see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice again, because you know, you seem to be thinking of it as the next Andre Rublev.
Oh, okay, Captain Strawman. Listen, listen. No, I stand by what I said.
Once throw away...
You're sitting, stand. If you're going to say that you stand by it, would you please stand for the listener?
In my mind, I'm always standing.
I want to let you know, dear, that Jett is declining to stand.
In my mentally, I'm standing. It helps for my psychic posture. I would stand for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the one in which we have the fleshed out story of Monica Bellucci.
And don't forget, she is made of parts. This film is all about parts, and she is made of parts and staples herself together, much like the seems to screenplay.
Go see it again with a big crowd and when there's no expectations, and just enjoy or invite friends over when it comes out on streaming or Cube or whatever, or the Triangle Pyramid device of the future, whatever it comes out on, because it's full of
just incidental pleasures every couple of minutes, which the first film is as well. And it's such an inventive world that was conjured up. No pun intended on the first film, or it was sort of like this, nobody had seen anything like it before.
It's like, well, there's an afterlife, but it's also kind of alien. What are these worms? Like at one point, they go to the film, they go to Saturn and this one.
I like the worms.
I like the worms.
The sad worms are good. How do you stay in before we end up?
You don't often get one year with two films of sand worms.
I'm sure there's people that are going to prefer these worms to the other worms. You know, I love me some David Lynch worms, and I'm not even talking about Doom.
I'm thinking of... Here's the thing.
You're my biggest complaint with this movie, and it's not about... It has to do with modern movie making, in which, dear listeners, if you're not...
Nice alliteration there.
Nice alliteration. If you're not in the business, you may not be aware of how much post-processing is going on actors' faces now with digital smoothing.
And what that means is even if you've seen some of the bullet train, I know there were some screw-ups on that one, when you got the close-ups of Brad Pitt, they're doing digital smoothing, they're taking out the wrinkles, and sometimes they screw up
a little bit. You know, if you have more time to work on them more. But at this point, if you go see a big budget Hollywood movie, I'm using that generic term Hollywood movie, everybody's face is being processed.
And in this one, Catherine O'Hara, God bless, both her and Winona Ryder have lots of makeup on, of course.
But there's so much digital processing smoothing going on, let's say with Catherine O'Hara, that she appears to be the same age as Winona Ryder. And it's actually really distracting. Now of course they did that in the old days.
They would famously put some nylons over the lens, right? You put some vaseline in the lens, go watch Casablanca or Hitchcock Picture, and every time they cut to someone who's a female woman, all of a sudden she's got this gauzyness.
Or look at Star Trek, the original series. There's Captain Kirk, their bones is looking pretty rough. And then they cut to someone who's a woman, and all of a sudden there's a glow.
It's because they're literally putting the equivalent of nylon stockings, a version of that little less heavy over the lens when they shoot women. And now they're doing that with technology, but I found that really distracting. That's my only note.
That's my only note. And on the flip side, you're getting- Yes.
Interestingly enough, perhaps not interesting at all, but interesting for me, you naming your one complaint has provoked me to think of something really good about this film that I haven't mentioned.
That's why we do the show.
And I'm going to tell you, this is the way it works.
Okay.
It's like Challengers.
You've lobbed the ball over the net.
Which one of us is Zendaya?
Challengers is the film of the year, right?
Yeah, probably.
Thus far, probably. Okay.
That or Planet of the Apes?
You've lobbed the ball. I'm going to hit it back and say Winona Ryder in this film is fantastic because she is actually playing the grown up version of the character that she played in the first film.
She doesn't feel like other characters that she's played, which is pretty much what everybody else does.
And dear listener, if you could only see Jett's face, if you could only see, he actually looks, he looks like the face of one of those characters in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice whose eyes pop almost beyond their head.
Are you going to tell us, are you going to tell us you don't like Winona Ryder's fantastic performance?
I was not going to mention her because there's enough cruelty in the world. Winona Ryder in this movie, I wasn't going to say anything. She stands out, I'll say that, from everybody else.
Oh mercy, oh mercy.
And the reason she stands out, it's not that she's a bad actress.
It's that maybe she did she retire after, you know, she had some struggles and some problems. People like Willem Dafoe or Justin Theroux or Catherine O'Hara, I've been busy working actors their entire lives.
And Stranger Things.
And she has the same issue with Stranger Things. It's not that she's acting badly. She's not an actor.
She's fantastic in this film.
She, every scene with her is the worst.
It derails the film.
I think it's the best performance she's given since The Age of Energy.
It, well, I'll have to go revisit that.
Oh, you should. That's a magnificent movie.
No, I thought she was, no, I thought she almost sinks the film. Again, not because she's bad, because she's not acting in the traditional sense.
She doesn't have the toolset, that of Defoe or Thoreau or Catherine O'Hara or the actress who plays her daughter does.
Jenna Ortega.
Ortega. It's really, it's not, I'm not going to say embarrassing because, you know.
But you just did.
No, if someone is tone deaf and they don't know it when they're singing, you don't want to say, you don't want to embarrass them. I don't think, I don't think she's an actress in this film. Maybe she's had a great time.
So we're going to agree to disagree. Now I'm rethinking Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
She wasn't so great. Here's the thing. I'm going to ask you, Jett, to reduce the focus to zero in laser-like on one, the one Tim Burton film.
If you don't watch one again and you had to watch it once every 22 months, which one would it be?
And I'll do the same for, I'll hold myself to the same standard and say, the films of Tim Burton that I've liked the most have been the ones in which the protagonist is actually discovering their purpose and meaning in life, chief among them being
Big Fish and the one I would revisit every 22 months. If I was limited to do so, it would be Batman.
I'd go with Ed Wood. It's a perfect film in the sense that I can't, it's hard to come up with films like, what films are perfect? There's not a misstep.
Everything is exactly in the right place. Everything does exactly what it should be doing. Maybe the good, the bad and the ugly.
I feel bad by the way, dear listener, about what I just said about One Noted Writer. So I'm going to see it again and maybe my mind will be changed. And I'm going to watch The Age of Innocence.
The greatest gangster movie that Scorsese ever made.
Oh, that's a hot take.
Any final thoughts on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?
Nope.
Well, does it lead in to our bonus episode we're going to be putting out in a few days? Dennis Quaid as Reagan.
As Reagan. Does it lead into that? Well, he was still good.
Lord, Reagan was still president when Beetlejuice was released.
This is what I'm saying at the top of the show. Why it was a tonic to Reagan and Reaganism. Folks, if you subscribe, patreon.com/thefilmtalk, you can get bonus episodes.
We're going to talk about Reagan because Gareth really wanted to talk about Reagan. So yours truly, Gareth's friend had to go see Reagan. So we're going to talk about that.
It's been a fun show, Gareth. I feel we've learned a little something about each other possibly.
Perhaps we have even grown.
Are you going to see Beetlejuice again? Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice again. Will you go back?
I will, yes, because you've made the case.
You've made the, I will watch it with other people. I will watch it with other people. And this is a plea from the depths of my being to the developers out there who are building movie theaters.
Can you please consider building the movie theater with the projection of movies in mind?
I don't know if movie theaters are ever going to be built again.
That would be making the screen bigger than the field of vision of the audience, organizing the chairs in such a way that you can actually see the screen. The seats. And then to those of you who run, I'd pay more.
I would pay more. Those of you who run theaters, if you have 30 screenings a day of the same movie, nobody's going to have fun watching that movie.
And they're not going to come back to do it again, as often as they used to, because they'll say nobody's in the room with me. And there is a film like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice warrants the communal experience. I do think it would have moved.
I was a star rating kind of guy. It would have moved from a two to a three star movie, had I seen it with a large audience who were all having fun together.
And to those of you who are running movie theaters that have fewer resources, little independent art house movie theaters, thank you so much for everything you do.
Even if the screen wasn't designed with the audience in mind, we know your heart is in the right place. And I'm naming no particular art houses for which I feel the deepest affection.
Well, you know, I think The Film Talk is designed with the audience in mind. I hope folks, you out there who are listening right now, got something out of today's show. I'm going to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice again.
And so I feel bad about what I said about Winona Ryder's work. I'm going to see it again. Don't forget you can subscribe to the show via patreon.com/thefilmtalk.
You want to hear about Reagan and all other and other bonus shows like talking about the great Larry Cohen's Q, Quetzalcoatl, The Winged Serpent and others. Also on Facebook at facebook.com/thefilmtalk. It's been a good show.
Our voices have gotten very big, but very, I don't know.
It's not morose. What's the gentle? Is it gentle?
Quiet? It's like we're like Gary Cole. We're like Gary Cole on that show where he was like late night DJ.
I don't know.
Midnight caller.
Midnight callers.
I don't know. I'm taking... Caller, we got line number two.
We've got line number two.
It's Gareth Higgins and he's saying that, I hope that like Jett's perspective on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, that this episode has given you some rich pleasures at least every couple of minutes.
It's been a good show, folks. I've been Jett Loe.
I've been that self-same aforementioned Gareth Higgins and we'll keep talking.
Next time, for Reagan.