Dear Friends, they're back! After ten years, Jett & Gareth have restarted the podcast The Film Talk. They never thought they'd do it, but they missed talking to each other about the meaning of movies and the joy they bring.
In this inaugural return episode we review every single Best Picture nominee of the 2024 Academy Awards. This obviously takes some time so they've broken the show into two parts. In this episode they talk about:
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
-
You're gonna get botulism if you keep drinking that.
It's bottled water.
It probably gave some stream just around the corner from here. A bunch of little kids peonin it.
That's why I eat the peppers.
Well, all I'm sayin is, you can't trust a damn thing around here.
Well, folks, we're back. Gareth, dear listeners, it's only been 10 years.
10 years. 10 years, where have you been, Jett, for those 10 years? I've been in an Arctic research station with experimental monkeys.
I'm glad that you're referencing the classic early 70s TV thriller starring Robert Culpin, Eli Wallach, A Cold Night's Death, one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen.
But for the new listener, you may not know what we're talking about. I'm Jett Lowe. This is Gareth Higgins.
10 years ago, we stopped. We had a popular podcast called The Film Talk. Did it for years, over 250 episodes.
And we decided, you know what? That's enough. Podcasts are never gonna take off.
And we quit. We quit the show.
Who listens to podcasts? Who listens to podcasts?
We quit the show, dear listener, one week before the premiere of Serial, which exploded the market.
1:25
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serial/id917918570
And of course, the secret of comedy is as always, timing, but we're back now with our new show.
We miss talking to each other about cinema, about the meaning of movies, what movies are about, not just about the box office or who's in them, but what the themes are actually telling us about our lives, how to live our lives better, at the very
least, I hope. Gareth, are you excited to be back doing the show?
I am excited to be back, partly because I'm excited to be talking to you. And, you know, dear listener, we don't wanna misrepresent. It's not that Jett and I haven't spoken to each other for 10 years.
We haven't spoken.
To quote Martin Sheen apocalypse now, I hardly said a word to Gareth until I said yes to a divorce. And here's the thing, dear listener, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Gareth, we're getting off to a strong start here, folks. We are.
Bear with us.
You've got people thinking that we're divorced.
Well, spiritually, but there's a chance for reconciliation if it could work out for Elizabeth Taylor and the bad guy of 1984, Richard Burton. Great film. If you haven't seen it, then it can work for us.
We did all these shows and I stopped caring and loving about movies, Gareth. And I missed talking to you about films. We've decided, dear listener, we're going to get the band back together and we're going to launch right into in this show.
Every week on the show or approximately every week, we'll do a couple shows free to the public every month. We're going to recommend that one film for you to see. What is that one great piece of cinema?
Because there's an infinite amount of content out there. I hate to use that word, Gareth, streaming services, you know, the Plexus and the Pluto's and the Toobies, what have you.
Content's a horrible word. And yes, we'll recommend one film with each episode starting by thinking about what movies have just been released that week.
But sometimes the movies that have been released in a given week, they're not the ones we're going to recommend, but we might sort of springboard as it were into a film that a new film reminds us of.
And the lens, I think, through which we view cinema, distinctive and overlapping. I don't want to speak for you, Jett, but you know, I think that movies are one of the most important ways that we get to reflect on our lives.
I mean, they are projected dreams for a start, and we do get to see our lives through the eyes of the storytellers and the characters being presented on the screen. And that's one of the reasons that we want to go off the beaten track.
It's one of the reasons that it's so exciting to see movies not in the English language getting popular, getting more access to the wider public. And people seem to be less afraid of subtitles than they used to be.
There are three movies not in the English language that are nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. And so getting sort of a wider perspective on the world through the movies that we watch and a wider perspective about ourselves.
And nobody, and I mean this, I mean this in all sincerity, Jett, divorce reconciliation or otherwise, we did for like nearly the first decade of our friendship. Most of our friendship was recorded and broadcast to the public.
Most of the times we talked to each other were in the context of the podcast. We have spoken a little bit in the last 10 years, but I've missed the opportunity to learn about life and learn about movies from you.
Nobody's taught me more about cinema than you have.
Wow, well, that's a great way to start a new series, folks. It's buttering up your co-host.
Yes.
Do you have anything you want to say to me? Do you need like 20 bucks? I got your books, folks.
If you're new listening to me, I know Gareth and I are professional film content people, Gareth, of course.
Are we professional film content people?
I don't know. I've worked for, I mean, yes, as far as I know, people can always Google us. You know, you bring up a really interesting point.
We're going to talk, this is kind of a special episode, these first couple episodes, because we're going to go through every single one of the best picture nominees, the Oscars, the Oscars as they're colloquially known.
And you bring up an important point about people being more open to subtitles, because of course, think about early film history. Film was much more international and accepted in a kind of a distribution sense.
Films from around the world, especially like imagine Italian and French films in the US, before the advent of sound, right? Because you could just have titles, so you didn't need to speak in the English language, and then sound came in.
And like it destroyed so many things like the mobile camera, film students or film historians will tell you, it also put a real crimp in international films coming to the US. So we've got a whole new slate of exciting pictures.
That sounds like I'm liking Republic pictures of the 40s. We got a young newcomer, Kirk E. Douglas.
He's going to be great.
But here's the thing, David Poland, who does a newsletter called the Hodbund, who examines film business, just said in one of his newsletters, this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest lineup for films competing for Oscars in history.
And here's the thing, I kind of fell out of love with movies. I stopped watching them after we finished the show. And I've gotten back into cinema now in order to do this new show that Gareth and I are doing.
And look at these, I'm just going to list out these 10 best picture nominations, American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, The Zone of Interest.
Folks, there are six bangers here. Six bangers, six incredible films. You're going to have to listen.
Just looking at them and listening and seeing what do you think the six are?
What are the six?
There's six, but when I say bangers, I mean some of the best films I've ever seen.
And the ones that aren't bangers are still, hey, those are pretty good.
Like that's a good one. There's one that's not a banger.
Well, there's definitely one that's not a banger.
I think we're going to agree on that one.
Yeah, I don't think we agree on the same non-banger.
Oh wow, we're non-banger disagreeing.
Yeah.
Oh, that's legal now. It's legal now in certain American states. Well, I think we've got to get right into it.
And I'm going to say one last thing before we go. We're going to go through these Best Picture nominees. We're going to recommend some great bangers to watch.
And I want to say one thing, and that's about going to the movies, Gareth. Because when I was a kid, I didn't realize how lucky I was that right down a short bus ride in the Bay Area in Berkeley, California, there was the UC theater.
And it was big theater, 1200 seats. 1200 seats. They showed two different films every single day.
So like one day would be like a Hitchcock and a Truffaut. The next day would be a Kurosawa and an Ozu. Then it would be an animated film.
Then it would be a Russ Meyer. And it was a communal experience because this was before the age of streaming where you could get whatever you wanted basically. And I missed that experience and I'm hoping to share that with you.
And I'm hoping to share that with the listeners out there. I hope that by watching these films together, that we can have some sort of communal experience, even if we're not in the same place. Does that make sense?
What a lovely idea.
I feel the same way. And I would, in a sense, I'd kind of mirror that by saying, for me, I don't want to get unnecessary.
I'm necessarily bleak, but clearly we are living in a time when a lot of people feel a lot of uncertainty and a lot of people are scared. And there's a lot of very obvious suffering in the world and we don't want to bypass that.
And I think cinema at its best helps us, just like any art form at its best, helps us, if not make sense of our lives, but release some of the tension that some of us feel, or as I've already said, learn from looking at life through the eyes of the
other, and maybe best of all, to enlarge our frame of what is possible. So yeah, I'm absolutely a fan of what usually gets called escapist cinema. I like stories and images and music that transport me to a place that feels better.
That's absolutely true.
I bet that was Maestro. That was Maestro, wasn't it?
Maestro did actually take me somewhere. Maestro definitely took me somewhere. But that's not really what I'm talking about.
It's not so much the escapism as a way of looking at light that reflects back to us on a larger frame of what's possible in life.
I'm interested to hear about your take on the Best Picture nominees for this year and which of them transported you to a better place.
Which of them helped you reflect on your life and which, as you say, is a only a kind of, I think you were saying it's a semi-banger as opposed to a non-banger.
Which one is a semi-banger?
Which one is the semi-banger?
One of them is not a full banger. Okay, well, let's, you know, look, we're gonna, we got so many films to get through. We're gonna break it up into two shows for our inaugural episode is two shows.
So that tells you something.
The whole series might just be two shows.
Very long though. So for the first, dear listener, for the first show, we're gonna do the first five. We're doing this in alphabetical order for your suggestions.
So no favoritism here. Today, we're gonna do American Fiction Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon. We're gonna start right off.
Jeffrey Wright, always a pleasure. Let me tell you, we're gonna talk about Jeffrey Wright. Jeffrey Wright, as an irate novelist in American Fiction.
Listen, Monk.
We'd like to give you a break.
A break.
Just some time off.
Mandatory.
Time off.
It's just, you're already going to Boston for the festival, right? Why don't you just stay there?
Because I hate Boston. My family's there.
Well, you need some time to relax.
You're on edge, man.
You're under the impression that time spent with my family will take the edge off. I'm fine.
You're not fine.
I saw you crying in your car last week.
He punched the steering wheel.
Wow.
You know, if you spent less time spying on me, you could probably write a dozen more novels that people buy in airports with their neck pillows.
Okay, you wanna go, dirty doggy?
Okay, well enjoy Boston.
And as Jeffrey Wright, as Thelonious Monk Ellison, as you would say, a little on the nose, but also making a point in the context of this very interesting and at one level, you could actually call it maybe the most entertaining of the 10 films
nominated for Best Picture. This film is called American Fiction. What did you think?
Well, I know we had that conversation about bangers earlier. I have to tell you, this is not one of the bangers. I would say this is for me the weakest in the whole field.
Now, it wouldn't be in another year, right? I was going back to the old Oscars of like, let's say, I don't know, go back to the 70th Academy Awards, right? It took place in 98.
And the five nominees, they used to do five for Best Picture were Titanic, as good as it gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, and LA Confidential. And American Fiction would have slaughtered right in there.
Middle Brow is pejorative, but this is a crowd-pleasing, funny, witty, light, life-affirming film, the kind of film, again, that would be in a field that is, that has The Full Monty and Good Will Hunting and as good as it gets.
The problem with American Fiction, if we're talking about awards, and maybe that's absurd, it's absurd to try to give awards to artistic endeavors and that's, as Marlon Brando would tell you.
But the problem is it's in a field that includes Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbies, Zone of Interest and Poor Things, Past Lives, some of the most amazing films I've ever seen.
Well, it's a light film that wears its lightness beautifully, wonderful performances. I would have preferred watching it, a six part series because the film feels very choppy. We're seeing scenes, but we're not getting the full scope.
Spoilers, of course, with the show we're going to talk freely and openly, freely and openly about cinema, about the movies. Jeffrey Wright's sister, the comedian, wonderful comedian who plays his sister, passes away.
The film seems to forget about her. If it was a six part series, her death would haunt and enrich the characters in the drama later on. I don't feel that that happens here.
Does that make sense?
It does. And actually, funnily enough, the film, the other film nominated that it reminds me most of is Barbie because it is a film about prejudice and a film about stereotypes. Yes.
And Jeffrey Wright's character is a professor who's trying to teach something meaningful.
He writes books and he gets offered the opportunity to have a best seller by shredding his integrity and writing in a voice that, frankly, ultimately meets the demands of a racist marketplace and of a marketplace where people may want to be seen to
participate in anti-racism, but let's just say haven't exactly understood or internalized what that would actually mean. Nor have I, by the way.
I'm not setting myself up as someone who understands anti-racism either, but the film's kind of satirizing the demands that get put on people in a marketplace that's still dominated by a previous way of doing things. And it does that well.
And I felt, and this is gonna be something I'll probably say a little bit about Barbie too, not Barbie the sequel, but Barbie also, is that its message and the point that it's trying to make is actually so saturated in social media discourse and in
The film felt like-
It felt like a period piece. Did you feel like, oh, wasn't this film made in the 90s?
Yeah, it feels like if it had been made in the 90s, it would have been revolutionary.
Or Iron Man's dad. Iron Man's dad did it with Putney Swope. That's Robert Downey, by the way.
Robert- I don't want to short change this picture. It's a good movie.
Again, in another year, you'll be like, oh yeah, American Fiction.
Yeah, exactly. And it could easily turn into us being churlish about it. I don't think either of us means that way.
It's a really good version of something. And it's more like a TV. It's more suited to, what do they call them?
They don't call them mini series anymore.
Like limited, limited series.
Limited series. Of which, frankly, Jeffrey Wright was in probably the best one ever made, Angels in America, 20 years ago.
Well, can we talk about Jeffrey Wright and the performances because-
Can we just do an entire podcast series dedicated to every performance Jeffrey Wright has ever done?
That's why I eat the peppers. Now, we're going to talk about that in a second. First of all, again, I don't want to, again, in another year, this would stand out stronger for me because everyone is wonderful.
Well, in a certain way, and let's talk about that. I remember when I was watching, I think it must have been my first Tyler Perry picture and there are lawyers in Atlanta, and there's a scene in the lawyer's office.
And I thought to myself, there's something about this, what's going on? And then I realized what it was. The white people were token white people in the back, sitting in the back.
And you know, the Tyler Perry movie set in Atlanta, the characters are black, the reverse of the token black characters. And they do this really well in American fiction.
The naturalism, the lightness, the beauty, the realness of all the characters that are white in the film is great. And then the white people are incredibly broad caricatures.
And that's a great kind of flipping things on that, with the exception of somebody, Jeffrey Wright's agent who's a Puerto Rican, it said very specifically, I would imagine because Puerto Rican is not a state, right? So he's in between states.
He's kind of a liminal character that can transverse the world. But I found, I just want to kind of emphasize how great the superb the acting is in Jeffrey Wright, you know, Felix Leiter in the James Bond pictures.
It's a good life.
It's when he's asked by the Stranger Things Sheriff, the guy that's made up to look like John Bolton in Quantum of Solace, you know, don't-
David, David Harbour.
Thank you, David Harbour. David Harbour asked him, you know, don't drink the water.
Best supporting mustache.
Don't drink the water because Terry will give you dysentery or what have you. And Jeffrey Wright just says, that's why I eat the peppers. And dear listener, like that right there is a masterclass.
There's not a month goes by when I don't think of Jeffrey Wright saying, that's why I eat the peppers. So for me, whenever he appears on screen, I just perk up, especially in this film. I wanted to spend more time with him.
I wished it was longer. It's a funny film. It's an affecting film.
There's a scene there that is an analog of the gentleman. You can't fight in here. This is the war room.
This is the war room.
When film critics or writers, excuse me, say, we need to listen to black voices.
We can certainly recommend American Fiction.
Of course, and so we do.
Out of the 10, it's not a contest.
But it's not the non-banger for me.
American Fiction is not the non-banger.
American Fiction is not the non-banger.
Does that mean it's a banger? Okay.
Wow.
Okay. Well, we're going to-
It's not a full banger. Then there's hierarchies of bangers.
Well, fair enough. I also want to give a wonderful shout-out to-
A wonderful shout-out.
A wonderful shout-out. Ladies and gentlemen, you know her from the stage and screen. A shout-out to the cinematography by Christina Dunlap, which is bright and poppy and it matches the book covers of Jeffrey Wright's character's books.
And I guess if you're a film professor, you're teaching cinematography, you might have some problems. There are certain shots in the movie I'm watching going, is this this person's first big movie? Because there's like, I would call them errors.
Like that person's not quite lit correctly. That shot was obviously too underexposed. And she is from a background of doing shorts and music videos and perhaps this is her first big film.
But they only had a few days to shoot it and it was very done very quickly. And she did a great job. It's got a beautiful light look.
So I want to give a shout out to Christina Dunlap.
I like to think of you as bright and poppy as well.
Well, I used to be 10 years before the, before our divorce on The Film Talk. Are you ready for Anatomy of a Fall?
Another bright and poppy film.
Don't tell me that's your non-banger.
Absolutely not a non-banger.
What is Anatomy of a Fall, Gareth?
Almost, Anatomy of a Fall is almost a complete banger. Justine Trier's film and, you know, it's, some people say it's just a courtroom drama. It's a whole lot more than that.
It's the best courtroom drama.
It may be the best.
It's the best courtroom drama. It's about a tragedy where a man dies and his widow, played by Sandra Huler, who's in two of the best picture nominees this year. The other one is Zone of Interest.
First noticed her in Tony Erdman, which is one of the hardest kinds of films to make. And that is a comedy that feels like real life. That's both funny and serious.
So if you haven't seen Tony Erdman, please watch Tony Erdman. Anyway, Sandra Huler plays the widow of this man who has died and she's charged with his murder. And do we have a clip?
Man, this woman can act.
Let's listen.
First of all, I don't believe in a notion of reciprocity in a couple. It's naive and frankly, it's depressing. Yes.
And I think discussing it is a waste of time, considering the state you're in, seriously. All this blah, blah, blah here, and more time is gone.
All this time spent chitchatting could be spent in silence, doing whatever you want to do, if only you knew what it is you want.
I want time to stop writing, just the same as you.
Do it. I don't know a single writer who doesn't write just because he has a son and a house and groceries to buy. Stop whining about your scheduling bullshit and drop this logic which comes down to casting blame on me for what you did or didn't do.
I live with you.
I plan my life around you. If I imposed on you what you're imposing on me, neither of us would be able to write.
Don't worry about me. I'll always manage to write.
This is a hell of a motion picture, and I wasn't joking. Arguably, I would say this. Could this be the greatest courtroom drama that you've ever seen?
In the semi-English language, we're talking English language pictures. This film was in several languages, English, French, German. Divert was great.
We all love them.
And the language of the heart.
I don't know. I tried to speak it, but I got a C in the class.
One thing that's really interesting about it is that the question as to whether or not she is responsible for his death and really whether or not a murder has taken place. We're not going to spoil that. That becomes secondary.
What's on trial is their relationship. More than that, what's on trial is the kind of woman she's supposed to be in the eyes of the public. How is a person supposed to react to grief?
How is a person supposed to manifest their consciousness of the power dynamics in a relationship? How is a person supposed to speak about things?
That's beautifully embodied by the fact that there are three languages spoken in this film and there are scenes where she says, I need to say this in English because I don't understand this in the other language.
You could call this film lost in translation. You know you're in a very specific kind of film. In which nothing is wasted.
Everything is there for a reason. So what is her side hustle? Because she's not making a lot of money from her books, even though she's a well-known author.
Her side hustle is translating. And things do get lost in translation. And sometimes we have to decide what to believe.
And everything Gareth said is true, like that's what the film is about. But it's also about how do we believe in anything and how do we decide what to believe? What do we implicitly believe?
And then sometimes we have to choose what to believe, which is a huge part of this film.
Well, and if we don't start from the premise that every single person we're meeting is going through something difficult that we both don't understand and if we knew about it, we'd be kind to them.
The three primary characters in this film, husband, wife and child, stir up our empathy. And frankly, the more we get to know them and the more we get to know about them, the more empathetic we feel. And it's also possible to judge them too.
You know, I have some judgments of the behavior of the adults in this film. They're not aloof judgments.
They're not from a position of I'm better than them, but it's kind of like, oh, yeah, that's kind of cruel that you did that or that's kind of thoughtless that you did that.
Yeah, they're real people. I call them people.
Yes, yes, they're like me. They're like me. They do unconscious things that impact other people.
I've done that three times today. Three times today.
I want to say to my co-worker, Sarah, I'm sorry.
Okay. We have to mention Milo. I don't know how to pronounce his name, and I want to be respectful.
Milo Machado-Graner or Granay, who plays the son in this film, Daniel.
Best child performance maybe ever.
Maybe ever.
Certainly, my favorite performance by a child since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, and a performance that actually reminded me of Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, which is a child who is vulnerable, completely innocent, and knows more
than the adults do, even if he doesn't know that he knows it. There is a scene in this film where he is testifying in the courtroom, and it's all done in close up, and the camera swings from left to right to hear the prosecuting and the defense
counsel, who are in a sense, even though the defense counsel is trying to be supportive of him, they are bombarding him with questions. And all we see is him moving his head to left and right, and the camera moves like we're watching a tennis ball
going across a net back and forth. It's just superficial to say that's an example of the supreme craft in this film. It is one of the most brilliantly edited, most brilliantly shot films. Say again?
It's impeccable.
The craft is impeccable.
Well, the sense of place, that house, I felt like I lived in that house for a while. I felt like I lived in that courtroom.
And it's worth seeing for a hundred reasons, but go see it just for the performance, for Milo's performance as Daniel, one of the great performances.
Well, and so, Sandra, is it Hewler? Is that just an oomad over to you?
Because you believe in this person's fully realized that it's super smart, and you can see the thinking that goes on, let's say when she's in the dock, if it was the UK and not a French courtroom, I don't know what they call it there, where she's
deciding how to present herself. And she knows that we know that she has to do that as well.
And those layers of truth and reality, deciding who you are and what people want or what people expect or will this get me off, maybe I'm innocent, but I still have to play this role in order to get off and get out of this nightmare.
I don't know if I'd want to be in a French courtroom, apparently it's like an improv black box theater where everybody's on the way to stand simultaneously. So I think fans...
Yes, and then in order to be a prosecutor, you just have to be angry about absolutely everything.
Well, and apparently the prosecutor, everybody in the courtroom, even like kind of a crappy detective, has the vocabulary, wit, wisdom, experience of Voltaire.
But for fans of American courtroom drama, I think they'll go to kick out specifically how different it is than how we think of the courtrooms in the United States. But Sandra Huler gives incredible performance. Also the dog.
We've got two great dog performances in these. We've got a great dog performance. We'll talk about the Zone of Interest.
That is Sandra Huler's dog, by the way.
Is it really?
Yes, it is in Zone of Interest.
Look at that. I don't know that that really makes a whole. Well, actually, it does make a difference.
It does make a difference, and it enhances my appreciation of one scene in particular. So I think we're, is there more you want to say about Anatomy of a Fall?
Only the folks after you see it, if you're intrigued by its take on naturalism and how do we parse out the truth? There's recordings in the movie that we have to kind of interpret and figure out.
I'd recommend the film Cachet by, how do you pronounce that guy's name? Hanukkah? Hene?
Michael Hanukkah.
There's a similar vein in there.
There's a great line in Sandra Lewis's.
Not as fun as Anatomy of a Fall.
Well, we all have different definitions of fun, and that's what makes the world go around. I'll end by saying that there's a great line that Sandra Lewis's character says that that recording is not reality.
That recording is not reality, and that just says so much.
What about this recording?
It's real. And also, one last thing about Anatomy of a Fall, because people might look at these things and go, oh, they're art films or what have you.
These films use traditional, a lot of the films that we're talking about here, they all use some form of cinema grammar and cinema structure.
So for instance, Anatomy of a Fall is very smart in that the focus is on Sandra's character and her son, but you also kind of, it's a courtroom drama, so you want to hear, like The Verdict, you want to hear the great summation by the defense lawyer
at the end that she didn't kill her husband. But of course, if you did that, then the focus would be on the defense lawyer, at the end, and you don't want to be on Sandra.
So instead, they place his speech, the defense lawyer's speech, in the middle of the trial, and you actually have the judge say, listen, man, jury, this is not his final summation, and he's doing it.
And that allows you to get that summation that you want from a film like The Verdict, but still placing the emphasis on Sandra Hewler. So very, very smart filmmaking. Anatomy of a Fall, one of the best films I've seen in years.
Definitely a banger.
Definitely a banger.
That's a banger.
Not the non-banger.
Quickly, quickly, quickly.
Quickly, quickly on. Barbie, Barbie. If there's a film that we can predict, most people have heard of and most people have thought something about in the last year.
It's Barbie. What can we say about Barbie?
Let's give it a listen.
We'll listen, yes. Hey Barbie.
Hi, Barbie.
Yeah, Barbie.
I just fell. I'm so embarrassed. Barbie doesn't get embarrassed.
I know. Barbie, I don't even have context for this, but my feet, my heels are on the ground. I'm no longer on tiptoes.
That's okay.
Let me see.
Flat feet!
Stop it, Ken. I'm sorry. I know I'm stereotypical Barbie and therefore don't form conjectures concerning the causality of adjacent unfolding events, but some things have been happening that might be related.
Bad breath this morning, a cold shower, burnt waffle, and falling off my roof.
You're malfunctioning.
What? No, I'm just, I'm...
I've never seen this kind of malfunction before.
It's usually just hair related. You know, you're going to have to visit weird Barbie.
And that is Barbie, of course, a movie written by Greta Gerwig and Noel Bartlett. Bomback, directed by Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. It's very colourful.
It's very bright, bright and poppy.
Yes.
To coin a phrase. And I'm going to say one very positive thing about it. I'm going to say one self-reflective thing about it.
I'm going to say one mildly critical thing about it.
Oh, no.
Oh, no. Yes. So the very positive thing is...
Yes. I've actually forgotten what the positive thing was. Hold on.
I was going to say something.
Well, we'll let you take a break. Oh, no. He's come back.
Yes.
No, no.
Hey, I know what I was going to say.
It's so long since I saw it. It's tremendously entertaining on every level. Absolutely.
Tremendously entertaining. And it's, in a sense, it's like the second hardest kind of film to make.
If the hardest kind of film to make is a comedy that feels like real life, the second hardest kind of film to make is a comedy that doesn't feel like real life, but actually has meaningful things to say about real life.
Of course, Barbie exists in the Barbie world and they do something that's quite ambitious. They collide this fake plastic pink world with the fake plastic pink world of LA.
Now far more interesting would have been if they'd sent her to the Midwest or if they'd come to the Southeast where I live, but that's not the point. It is a tremendously entertaining film, really thoughtfully written and photographed.
The performances are all out 100% commitment and it's both delightfully funny and quite moving in places. That's the very positive thing I want to say.
The self-reflective thing I want to say is that I want to, what I've written down here in front of me is don't review the hype. It's something people do all the time.
They respond to the hype around a movie or they say it got 80% in Rotten Tomatoes, which apparently means it's not a good film, or they review the reviews or they heard somebody say they didn't like a particular thing about it or this happened in the
case of Heaven's Gate, a film where the budget was reviewed and in the minds of I think most people who think about Heaven's Gate, Michael Chimino's 1980 film, they think that was a terrible film because it flopped and actually, Jett, you and I both
think it's a masterpiece. The film never had a chance because people reviewed the hype. Same thing happened with Ishkar.
Well, wait a minute. I remember watching Heaven's Gate with you at one of your homes. You were renting.
At three o'clock in the morning.
You know where this is going, in Hollywood, Northern Ireland.
That's Hollywood with one L. Other L burned down.
The original Hollywood.
The other L burned down.
And you fell asleep.
You fell asleep during Heaven's Gate. I'm just putting that up. It is a metaphor.
I've seen it several times since.
I've seen it several times since.
Okay.
So I don't want to review the hype.
No.
It's too easy to review the hype of Barbie. Then I do have a critical thing to say about it.
Can I just say one thing? I mean, if the listeners get a chance, it depends on where you live. Because I don't live in the big city anymore, folks.
Since we stopped doing the film talk, I moved to the mountains. I lived 7,000 feet up in the East Mountains of New Mexico in between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. My point is I can't get to film festivals like I would like as often.
But that's a reason to go to film festivals when you see a film before it's been sold or there's a distribution deal, so there's no marketing department. So you see these films cold.
And that's a wonderful way to see them because you have no idea what you're going to see. And some of my very best film experiences, film-going experiences have been to see them at film festivals. Try to do it whenever you can, dear listener.
All right, Gareth, what's the one thing you can't stand?
You tend to do that anyway. I mean, you don't read the hype about most stuff anyway, isn't that right?
I never watch trailers. I've got to go in cold. Yeah, I'd love to do that.
I'd love to do that.
Show me how.
I will teach you.
Let's just say this is a curiosity. The opportunity existed in this film to really say something about the multifaceted diversity of gender, and the film makes a serious attempt at doing that.
And part of the point is that there's many ways to be a Barbie, and part of the point is that there's many ways to be a Ken. I'm not particularly bothered by the fact that the film focuses on Barbie and not Ken.
It's called Barbie, for goodness sake, and maybe there'll be, I mean, I'd be fascinated to see a good sequel about Ken, but clearly part of the point is that Ken has been the center of the story.
We've had the Ken movies.
We've seen many Ken films. Hollywood. Yes, yes.
But the opportunity, it surprised me, and I'm still kind of confounded by this, that LGBTQ plus and queer lives are at best paid lip service too in this film.
There is a character who was presented as trans, but there's not a whole lot of attention given to them. And it just surprised me that queer lives were underplayed in this story that gets so much else right.
I certainly don't want to impute any motive there. I'm genuinely curious about it, and I think it's a gap in this film that is otherwise, for me, a banger.
You know, it is a banger, and I can see, talk about hype and talk about, you know, outrage, people being so upset that critic Ulrich was not nominated for Best Director. Because not only is this a film- She's a great director.
Oh, wonderful director. So full of, the film is so full of life, love, it's a pan to vulnerability and truth that the truth will set you free. It's magnificent on wardrobe, the jokes, the music, everything.
But the fact that she has shepherded this into a film that was paid for by, you know, large corporations and got her, got the Gerwig on the screen. The Gerwig is there.
If you did not, didn't know it was Gerwig, Snow Gerwig mentioned, you had a film festival, you would know it's Gerwig, it's the full Gerwig and Hollywood loves money. That's what it's about. The film's made almost $1.5 billion.
I'm going to say that again, 1.5 billion, I think over 600 domestic in the US, over 800 million around the world overseas. And the fact that she was not nominated is actually kind of shocking, knowing how much money the picture made.
I would give an award just for her joke about Zack Snyder and the Justice League, which was, I literally spit out my Coca-Cola, my Coca-Cola sponsored by Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike. We'll get to that in Killers of the Flower Moon.
But so she is justifiably lauded for shepherding and putting this thing together and making it work at all levels, both artistic, broad entertainment, and also commercially as well.
We'll say one thing. We can't not mention Rhea Pearlman.
We're talking about the impact of someone in a small role. My money, the 1.5 billion is on Anne Roth who has this tiny cameo.
She's a famed customer, wardrobe person, and her confidence, Barbie calls her beautiful and old woman, and the woman goes, yeah, I know, and it's wonderful and things are so bad.
Talk about the marketplace of American Fiction, the world trap and some sort of capitalistic marketplace. That positive affirming confidence from an older woman comes across as radical in Barbie, don't you think?
It's the best park bench scene since ever actually.
Yeah. I know what you were going to say, Forrest Gump.
I was thinking, I was going to make a joke about Forrest Gump, which is a film I like.
Again, this crop of films this year, this crop of film, this yield of films are so good, it makes films like Forrest Gump and others from the 90s, the 2000s seem very quaint. Could I say one thing, speaking of older films?
Yes.
The opening of this picture, there's two movies in this crop, dear listener, of 10, that are directly taken from Stanley Kubrick film from 2001. One uses it at the beginning and the other one uses it at the end.
I won't say what that is, we're going to save that.
I know which one you're talking about.
You know what I'm talking about? I was stunned when that happened. We're not going to talk about that film yet.
I'm in the zone.
I've zoned of being.
I couldn't believe it when it happened, but we'll talk about that.
Yes. The film should have been called The Zone of Linden.
Well, okay, fair enough, but we'll get to that. All right. But you would think that parodies and homages of the apes beginning of 2001 would be played out.
It's been done. It gets done every week. It's a testament to how much Kubrick changed culture and put his imprint on cinema.
But yet it works so well in Barbie with the opening few minutes or homage in 2001. When we see the African desert, I gassed because it is the most accurate reproduction of the opening of 2001. You've ever seen it?
I almost asked myself, are those unused slides? The film students out there listening will know that they didn't shoot it in Africa. Kubrick sent a photographer out to do a film, large film slides, still images of the African desert.
These were then front projected onto the actors. It literally, I wouldn't be surprised. It looks like these were unused slides.
Like they contacted the Kubrick estate and got unused slides. That's how good they were in terms of what they did at the beginning of Barbie.
And also by having Barbie as a model, that she is this transformative figure as the model if it wasn't 2001, is a perfect homage. Dare I say it? Bravo.
All right, let's move on. And hey, let me play the guitar at you. Let's move on.
What's our next picture? It is a contact lens, a shifting contact lens.
Yes.
Involved.
I've, I've, oh, it isn't, it isn't. I was confused there. We're doing these Dear Listener in alphabetical order as, as, as, as you will have figured out by now.
So the next.
Yes.
The next film is The Holdovers. Alexander Payne and David Hemmingson's film with Paul Giamatti, Dave Ienjoy, Randolph, and Dominic Cessa playing.
Breakout Star.
Three people, three people stuck together over the winter holidays. You could call this Christmas with the cranks, but I've never seen that film and I've no idea if I've just said something totally inappropriate.
And they're stuck together over the winter break in the Northeast in 1970. And I will say by way of preface, before we hear a little clip here, is that of the 10 nominees.
This is the non banger.
This is my favorite.
What?
This is my favorite. This is not a non banger. This is a banger with an uppercase B.
It's a perfect merging of quality and entertainment. Seen it three times. Can't wait to see it again.
And boy, oh boy, by the expression on your face, I'm looking forward to the next episode. We'll see you next week, folks. We've run out of time to discuss The Holdovers, the great crowd-pleasing film of 2023.
And it's been great chatting with you, Jett. I hope I see you in another 10 years.
Let's listen to Paul Giamatti and others in The Holdovers.
There'll be just four boys holding over this year.
Oh yes, I know a couple of these reprobates.
Let's be a little more elastic in our assessment, shall we? It's hard enough for them to be away from home on the holidays.
Latitude is the last thing these boys need.
Paul, at your core, you're an excellent teacher. But your approach to the students is rather traditional.
The school was founded in 1797. I thought tradition was our stock and trade.
Then let's call it hide-bound. You know, unwavering, resistant to...
Yes, yes, yes, I know what hide-bound means. I get it. You're still angry that I failed Jordan Osgood.
Senator Osgood was very upset when Princeton rescinded Jordan's acceptance.
Yes, and I've continued to have to deal with the fallout.
Hardy, are we really supposed to let these boys just skate by as long as daddy builds a new gymnasium?
And that is The Holdovers. I'm feeling somewhat tentative now. Unlike you, dear listener, I can see Jett at the moment.
And Jett's eyes are getting wider. And he does have a smile on his face because he is at heart a compassionate man. And as he often said to me in the previous days of the previous iteration of the show, it's hard to make a movie.
And it's hard to make a movie as good as The Holdovers, a film that some people have kind of referred to it as a bit of a mix of A Christmas Carol and The Last Detail Hal Ashby's film made around the same time as this film is set.
And the film looks like it was made around the time that it was set. It has three perfectly balanced central performances. Sometimes when you get a film where there's a trio, one of the performances is kind of like out of whack with the other two.
But these three are beautifully, comprehensively drawn characters. They're all mournfully wounded in their lives and they all help each other. And there's no quick fixes.
There's a gorgeous scene in an open air bookstore where the snow is falling magically around them. And frankly, every scene has some degree of perfection in it.
You might watch this film and think, OK, it's a gentle, slightly bleak comedy about unhappy people finding a little bit of happiness over the winter holidays, to which I would say, well, isn't that enough? But I'd also say, go a little deeper.
This film is very clear in its critique of oppressive political structures, of racism, of the kind of the way in which certain types of men and certain kinds of elite ways of men thinking about themselves just wreak havoc wherever they go, and just
because they're wearing a suit and tie and have a nice office, isn't enough to disguise the harm they're doing in other people's lives. And that at the end of the day, the only hope for human beings is if we drop the mask and are prepared to try and
look behind this kind of what we project out into the world that may look strong, may look powerful, may look confident, may look angry, but underneath it all, there is always a vulnerable story waiting to get out. I could say more, but I'm feeling
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm eager to hear what you have to say about this potential non-banger.
Is this the non-banger?
My friend, this is a... That was a beautiful description. I would love to see that film.
It's a beautiful description of an entirely different movie.
This is not...
No, no, no. Well, listen, Alexander, for me, this goes back to like expectations. We were talking about film festivals.
I love the films of Alexander Payne. I love... About Schmidt, I loved Election, loved Sideways, loved The Descendants.
I loved Nebraska. I loved... People didn't like downsizing.
I loved it. So my expectations... Amazing.
So my expectations were very high. So I was betrayed by my own expectations. This is a warm, subtle, gentle, beautiful film that is infused with a sense of longing.
I guess we could call it... The Greeks called it nostalgia. And that's the thing that interests me most about the film.
I'm not going to say it's slight or that it's thin. It's gentle and it's light. And maybe if there were only five best picture nominees, like there used to be, maybe this wouldn't be in there, like American Fiction wouldn't be in there.
The best picture nominees would be Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, Zone of Interest, Killers of the Flower Moon, what have you. The nostalgia aspect interests me. I want to just say we're running long.
We got a lot of movies to get. You talked about the fact that, said in the 70s, around the time, let's say, The Last Detail, Hal Ashby. And the idea of it being shot in the 70s is interesting to me.
And I would ask you, why do this? Because I was reminded of Stranger Things. You watch Stranger Things, Big Hit, when it came out.
And you got the opening credits, and they got film grain in there, and they got music that sounds like it was done by John Carpenter.
And when Stranger Things started, the phenomenon, it seemed as if they were saying, not only is it set in the 80s, but it was actually shot then.
But they didn't hold true to it because there's these beautiful large drone shots of the Evo building where Matthew Modine works in.
And if it was made in the 80s, you wouldn't get those shots because you couldn't afford a helicopter for a B-movie like this. It's a big deal. Newer viewers of movies will not realize what a big deal was to have a helicopter.
That was a big deal when you saw those opening shots of The Shining. That was a big deal when you had the shot going into a train in Silver Streak, the always entertaining Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor film.
Though if you see it now, less Richard Pryor than you think.
And also more black face than you remember.
Well, I think that's the memorable. I would disagree.
I would also say that this is the only podcast where anybody has ever mentioned The Shining and Silver Streak as being of a piece with each other.
Well, I mean, you know, that's something that I can take with me. But on the tombstone, thank you, sir. So here's the thing with The Holdovers, right?
Because the cinematographer and Alexander Payne had discussions, like do we shoot this on film? Do we want to shoot this as if this was done in the 1970s? Now, I'm going to mangle their listener, the cinematographer's name.
Are you ready for it, Gareth? I can spell it out for you.
I don't know that I'm ready, but I'm open.
First name is E-I-G-I-L. Uh-huh. Agle?
Last name, B-R-Y-L-D. Do you want to say that?
I'm not going to try it, but it would be great to have them on the show. Danish.
She's Danish. She's a great cinematographer, but they had discussions about shooting on film. You go through a production process, and they thought, no, we're going to do it digitally.
But here's the thing. They went through and did all sorts of post-production to make it feel like it was shot in the 70s. I'm not talking about just slapping on a film grain filter.
There's very expensive, actually, I don't recall the name of it, but I know what it is.
There's a very specific technique you can pay by the minute where the company, the software will analyze the frame and figure out where to add the film grain based upon like 1970 this and that.
They actually even added gate weave, which is amazing when you think about it. If you don't have that dear listener in the old days of film, it's running fast, fast, fast through a gate in the film camera. And then it's projected through a gate.
They actually added that as well. And my question is why do this?
And so that tells me somehow that thematically the idea of nostalgia, of wanting to go back to another time, for instance, the time of Giamatti's youth when he was a student at the school.
He didn't leave the school, he came back and worked there, is paramount. So I think that's a really interesting idea. I like that, that we're going to infuse the very medium of the recording device itself when it goes into post-production.
We're going to infuse it even if the viewer does not realize it with that sense of nostalgia. So the film is nostalgic for a pre-iPhone time. It's nostalgic for a pre-digital time, even though they shot it digitally.
It's nostalgic for the films of Hal Ashby, which is really nice. It's just not as great as I thought it was going to be. So it's non-banger for me.
Hey, maybe we should rename this podcast Banger Non-Banger. Is it a banger?
Let's not call it Banger Non-Banger. I hear you on all that. I won't try.
I mean, it's one of those ones where sometimes the knowledge of how something was done enhances and sometimes it detracts.
I'd advocate for The Holdovers being a much deeper film than you experienced it as, and that it's not just a homage, that it's actually wise. The first words we hear in this film are off screen, and the words are, in the beginning was the word.
Remember, the text is what you're concentrating on. Make the text part of the music. And then we see the choir at the school rehearsing A Little Town of Bethlehem.
And make the text part of the music is just, it's an exquisite phrase about how wisdom has really arrived at and how you could be dedicated in your career to education, which at its highest is about liberating people to find the genius within.
And you can have all these resources.
And in the resources, I mean, in the case of the characters in this film, these books, and you can read these books and you could be immersed in these books, but they can never activate their meaning in you, which is the same thing with movies.
It's one of the things that I find challenging about a lot of film criticism is that there's people who are so brilliant at understanding and analyzing how a film does what it does, but then the conversation never gets further than that.
Something I've always enjoyed about our conversations is that whether we succeed in getting there or not and whether we agree with each other or not, for me, it's always been about learning how does this film help me live better?
Well, yes.
The Holdovers does that for me in a more entertaining way than any other Best Picture nominees do. It doesn't do it as profoundly as the next film we're about to discuss, but maybe we're not ready to discuss that film yet.
Did you want to say more about The Holdovers?
Well, just that I think looking at these films and reading them as closely as we have and seeing them the way that we did. And actually, I'm going to talk about that on our next show, how I'm actually viewing these movies and why that matters to me.
Do these films illuminate your life? Which of these films illuminate your life and help you live better? And I found in this crop of Best Picture nominees more of those kind of films that I've ever experienced in a short period of time in my life.
It's so great.
Holdover is not one of them, but I appreciate what you're saying.
It's a good film. We recommend it.
Next in our alphabetical list. And did we tell last year that we're doing, yes, we're doing two episodes about the 10 Best Picture nominees, because there are 10 of them.
So the ratings are going to be down this year, the Academy, next year they're going to make it 25. Every film automatically.
Every film will be automatically nominated.
Did you know that they re-released Big Lebowski to select theatres in 2023? It made three times the amount of money as Tar. Just putting that out there.
Well, they're both great films in their own way.
Dear listener, you may be saddened or indeed relieved to know that this is the last film we'll be discussing in this episode. If somehow you're being required to listen to this episode, it's nearly over.
And if you're enjoying it, which we hope you are, it's kind of fun to be back. And we're going to discuss Killers of the Flower Moon. Jett, will you tell us a little bit about Killers of the Flower Moon?
And then we'll have a clip, and then I'm going to ask you a question about Killers of the Flower Moon. Sure.
Killers of the Flower Moon.
And I know you'll be honest.
Just call it America the Movie. Founded on great criminality.
Let's listen.
You live with your uncle?
Yes.
Since I can remember. Why did you come here?
For what? To live here.
Yes, I live here.
Why?
Oh, for my uncle. I work with him. Are you scared of him?
My brother?
Who? Your uncle. No, he's a king of the Osage Hills.
He's the nicest man in the world.
So that is Killers of the Flower Moon, directed, of course, by Martin Scorsese, drawn from the book by David Gran, and featuring, I mean, we'll get into this, but gotta say it upfront, just one of the most astonishing breakout performances, and one
of the most astonishing performances I've ever seen from Lily Gladstone. And there's some other actors in it as well, you may have heard of, but Jett, I would like to ask you, and it's a risk, I'd like you to risk.
We don't talk about the shows before we do them.
We don't, so risk the trust that has existed between us for 19 years. Are you willing to risk that trust by being open to responding honestly to this question?
I'm always here to respond honestly to all questions.
Are you willing to tell the listener what you texted me when you were still in the middle of watching Killers of the Flower Moon?
Oh boy, okay. All right, I'm going to do it here. Should I bring this up or you've got it there?
Hold on, let me just take a look because my feeling is about the film.
Yes, don't worry. I'm going to be fair. I have a follow up question.
Did you change the listener?
So you watched it at home?
Yes, I did.
Okay, yes. This past Saturday at 6, 10 p.m. I texted you still watching Killers.
Boy, it's long. The problem so far is that it has no narrative drive. It's just one scene after another.
Thank you for your honest response.
Could you tell people what my response to that text message was?
You say, I hear you, but I felt completely differently seeing it in a theater twice. I think the point is the idea of almost as thick as molasses one oppression after another, and Molly's almost too tired to feel anger anymore.
And I respond, yeah, well, I'm only halfway through. I should have seen it in a theater.
So approximately a couple of hours later, you called me on the phone.
I did.
You called me on the phone. Would you like to tell the listener or character, well, could you characterize that phone call for the listener?
It's a masterpiece. It's one of the greatest films I've ever seen. When I texted Gareth earlier in my defense, I did not realize what Scorsese was doing.
You could, this is a very long film. You could put an intermission in there. Here's what you do, dear listener.
Two thirds of the way through, you introduce the Jesse Plemons character. He comes in about that way. He's a little narrative turn happens.
Do the intermission there. That's where you do the intermission. So you have some suspense, oh, the FBI is going to come in.
You watch two hours of oppression, now there's going to be some change.
It's an incredible, astonishing document that explores the deep systemic criminality, venality, avarice, and greed that is the United States, the country that puts on this smiley, happy face.
It says, they're a friend to everyone, a friend to the Osage people. Robert De Niro, performance, I guess I kind of want to call him Louis Seyfier, the early years.
But it's an astonishing document, it's an astonishing film that just gets better and better and then ends with an incredible wallop, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, which made me think, oh wow, is that it for Scrivdor Sezi because he's done
it now? Is that just him saying goodbye?
And I think I'd like to talk about that in, we got to talk about it and let's, dear listener, if you have not seen Killers of the Flower Moon, go and watch it before you listen to the rest of this part of the discussion because we can't talk about it
meaningfully without spoiling the ending of the film. The reason I asked you those questions was not to put you on the spot, but it was to kind of illustrate, I've had this experience multiple times in my life where I've been partway through a film
and I thought, eh, and maybe even I've got to the end of the film and I thought, meh, and then somebody I trust speaks to me about it and I think, gosh, I watched that with entirely different lens. I go back and watch it again and discover, I've just
That's what I'm going to tell you about Poor Things.
I have a feeling that Poor Things is not your banger and we're going to talk about that in the next show.
I couldn't possibly comment about Poor Things at this point. You'll have to wait for the next episode.
I think it is, when I saw it, even this word best, the word best only tells you so much, but I do think it may be Scorsese's best film or the culmination of everything that Martin Scorsese has been thinking about and trying to say and what he has
learned and changed with over the years. People are pretty well aware that this particular film itself went through changes in the development phase and they changed the emphasis of who the film is about.
I think it's important to acknowledge that that's not the only change that Martin Scorsese has had in his life. He didn't just start changing when he was 77, four years ago, when they were deep in pre-production, this film.
This is a person who has been growing and curious throughout the time that I've been aware of him. And I've been reading interviews with him probably for 35 years since I was, since I was a, I was going to say, was I a teenager, 35? Yes, I was.
I was 14, 35 years ago. So I like people who are curious. I like people who are growing and I like people who are willing to self-reflect about the impact of their actions.
That's what I would hope to be true by the end of my life.
And this film is a self-reflection by an artist and a citizen about the reality of his nation and of the impact of his work and of the larger backdrop of what it means to be an artist with a platform of any size, never mind the size and the scope and
the scale of the platform. That's of course says he has.
I don't want to say anymore without also acknowledging that there are people who feel that this film, while it's a better version of the kind of story that it's telling, has omitted centering Native American and Indigenous voices.
Now, most of those critiques that I've read have come from white people who I think are well intended in asking the same kinds of questions that have been asked forever by Native American people about the portrayal of Native American and Indigenous
people in movies. I've only read one of those critiques coming from a person who is themselves a Native person. I would never want to second guess the critique being offered by any Native people who feel like this film has missed the mark.
But as far as the critique coming from white people and white people like me, I think they failed to understand the film is not called Victims of the Flower Moon. The film is called Killers of the Flower Moon.
I don't think Martin Scorsese felt that he had the right to try to tell the story of the Osage. And so what they do instead, instead of him trying to pretend that he knows how to tell an Indian story, they do something that's really quite rare.
This film has at least three protagonists, De Niro DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone's character. And then later in the last third, you get Jesse, you get Jesse Platham's.
Lily Gladstone's character Molly Burkhardt is the most complex portrayal of a Native American person that there's ever been in a film made by a non-Native person or what it's worth.
It's not up to me to judge how much it's worth globally or in terms of the story of the nation and the story of the oppression and misrepresentation of Native American people. But for me, I learned more in this film.
I experienced something deep and profound and the acknowledgement and apology with which the film ends is something I truly don't think I've ever seen in any other film. I've said a lot. Thank you for your patience.
Eager to hear from you, my friend, Jett.
That's the new title of the show, dear listener.
The man who changed his mind.
Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your patience. What are you talking about?
What story is being told? I mean, these are films made by individuals, made by artists. These are the stories that Crisesi has drawn to crime stories.
This is the guy that did Goodfellas and did Casino and did Main Street.
Oh, did he do Goodfellas and Casino?
He did. Many people are not aware of this, but they're speaking highly of him all the time.
Up and coming. Up and coming.
Up and coming.
He'll go far.
New talent, great onscreen presence, two cameos in Taxi Driver. These are the stories that he's drawn to.
This is the subject that is the foundation, a nation that he's from, that he lives and breathes and has rewarded him with great success, is a nation founded on vast criminality.
And we got to talk about the ending of The Motion Picture, which literally had my, I draw, jaw hit the floor.
And this is the big spoiler.
Sure, skip. Please watch the film first, dear listener, if you haven't seen it. The film cuts right at the end to a radio show reenactment with white people.
It's sort of a 1940s, it seems, it's kind of a historical 1940s reenactment, kind of Woody Allen radio days, basically, reenactment of the story we've seen. And this does so many things.
One, it's positing or asking questions about a criminal marketplace that we live in that turns crime into entertainment.
And it's showing you that our fascination with true crime podcasts and true crime documentaries is not a new phenomenon people are clenching their pearls about. It is part of America.
You take the crime, you take the crime and you turn it into entertainment. Cowboys and Indians, the genocide of a people repackaged for your entertainment. And we have Jack White playing one of the villains, Ernest played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
This is a Lucky Strike radio hour. And guess what? He asks, could you give me one of those lucky strikes?
So not only is it criminality package of entertainment, it's also used to sell. It's used to sell an addictive substance. And just when I thought, Gareth, that I couldn't be more astonished, oh my God, what a commentary.
Then comes the director himself speaking to you. Alfred Hitchcock had his cameos.
Looking right into your eyes.
And he talks about what we have just seen. And I think you maybe in a phone call said it was a mea culpa.
You're literally watching a great artist try to explain in real time his thinking about his art, about the United States, about crime, his culpability. Tears are running down my face. It's one of the great pieces of American art that I've ever seen.
And it's also not the last scene because he knows well enough that then, to have ended it there would be to negate the self-reflection.
And he's not beating himself up. I think he has healthy enough psychological boundaries. What he's saying is you cannot tell a story like this in this way without running the risk of diminishing the people in the story.
And I am a representative, maybe the chief representative, certainly one of them, of an industry that has not been an adequate, equitable relationship with many of the people whose stories it has tried to tell.
He knows that to end it at that point would be to negate the self-reflection that he's just engaged in. He's not actually having the last word. The last word in this film is a powwow shot from above.
The camera kind of receding into the sky. It's very, very similar to a shot in Cundin, Scorsese's film, up at the Dalai Lama, intensely moving. And as you were quoting my text earlier saying that the film is this kind of drip feed relentlessness.
And I understand why you felt initially that it was just one scene after the other. I think that was the point that for Molly Burkhart and her people, it was just one thing after the other.
The point where she's so exhausted, she can hardly bring herself to feel the anger anymore. The film made me angry and the film moved me. And also as a lover of film, so delighted and grateful to be alive at a time when such things are being made.
Last word I have on Killers of the Flower Moon, I don't want to forget the truly great Robbie Robertson.
Beautiful score, died just before the film was released and his collaboration with Scorsese over nearly 50 years and the movies is one of the great director, composer collaborations.
I'm happy to say, Killers of the Flower Moon, while not my favorite of the 10 Best Picture nominees, it might be the best.
It might be the best.
We have a second part to come on.
We do have a second part.
No spoilers for the next episode.
One argument for it being the best is, one of the criticisms that's come across on this film is that if folks say, oh, there's a small criminal gang run by Robert De Niro, but in reality, many more people were complicit in the murder of the Osage
Indians. Scorsese's solution to this issue is not to deal with it in a words spoken aloud script thing aspect. It's when Leonardo DiCaprio comes in to meet with Brendan Fraser. Surprised Brendan Fraser didn't know he was in it.
I was like, oh, that's a welcome presence. And we see a dark, supple, cool room, like something out of Grail and Poe. And there's the whole community.
There's all the little minor character actors, everybody who had one line or two lines in the film, and they're all standing there in the darkness. And that is a visual representation. It's almost like Caravaggio.
It's incredibly shot. It's a representation of the whole culpability of the community. Huge shout out to the cinematographer.
We also did Barbie, same year. We did Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon. There's a two-four.
That's Rodrigo Prieto.
It is, yes.
Incredible work. Boy, we've run long. We've got to get out of here.
We got an episode two coming up. Folks want to contact us. There's going to be a lot of segments.
There's going to be all sorts of fun bits of business and segments, dear listener in the show. One of them is called Everybody's a Critic. So you can email us or leave a voicemail message.
If you disagree with Gareth, you've got some insights, or disagree with me for that matter, if you've got some insights for us, because we're not going to catch everything, folks, you can email us at info at thefilmtalk.org.
That's info at thefilmtalk.org and leave us a little message. Or you can actually leave a voice message, modern technology. Just go to speakpipe.com/ The Film Talk.
That's speakpipe.com/ The Film Talk. Also, don't forget, we've got those bonus episodes every month. We'll do two free episodes at least per month and at least one bonus episode, which we talk about things.
Maybe films we are not recommending, but all sorts of different aspects of cinema we're going to examine. You just go to our Patreon page. That's patreon.com/ The Film Talk, patreon.com/ The Film Talk.
And of course, don't forget, if you're using an Apple device, you can subscribe for the bonus episodes right through your Apple device. If you want to talk with us and other fans of the show, you can go to facebook.com/ The Film Talk.
Oh, so many links. facebook.com/ The Film Talk. And if you want to spy on me, if you want to stalk me on what I'm watching, you can always follow me on threads, folks.
threads.net at Jett X Low. So if you're on threads, if you're on the threads, I'm at Jett X Low.
It's been good to have this conversation. You know, you feel like we're back?
I do feel like we're back. Back where, you may ask. When we did the show originally, we originated in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
We were in Hollywood, Northern Ireland. Then I moved to Nashville.
Nashville.
Now I'm in the 7,000 feet up in the mountains here in New Mexico.
I'm in North Carolina.
You're in North Carolina. Things change.
But we've never left cinema. The movies. We've never left cinema.
That's what we call that.
We call it the show. We've never left.
We've never.
You can't. We're like the houseguest watching TV, watching Tubi on the, on the TV, on your couch, not leaving. Folks, this has been a fantastic show.
We got to get out of here.
It has been. If you do say so yourself, it's been a fantastic show.
It's been a great show. Well, next week, the new, new next, next episode, Maestro, Oppenheimer, past lives, poor things.
Hold on, we got the non, just for clarity, you identified the Holdovers as the non banger.
There's another non banger.
There's another non banger. My non banger was not in this episode.
There's a non banger. It's got to be Oppenheimer, right?
I'm not going to say. There's a lot of, no, hold on. There's a lot of bangs in Oppenheimer.
Or poor thing.
Oh, is that what passes for comedy now? We were funny in the old.
That's a whole film about bangs.
Folks, it's been a great show. Thank you so much for listening. I've been Jett Lo.
I've been Gareth Higgins, and we will keep talking next time.