Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 1: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 2: Now? No, Look, we're going to do this thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to have a conversation.
Speaker 3: From Chicago.
Speaker 4: This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year. I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 1: And in for Adam this week, I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 5: I am recording this fair warning is not really necessary.
Speaker 1: Look Joe six feet.
Speaker 4: That's Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal and the trailer for
Speaker 4: Ariasters Eddington, a film which whisks movie audiences back to
Speaker 4: the magical year of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I am masked up and ready to go.
Speaker 4: Josh cut our review, plus the top five Woaquin Phoenix performances.
Speaker 3: And more ahead. I'm film Spotting.
Speaker 6: This episode is brought to you by dead Man's Wire,
Speaker 6: the new film from Roque Entertainment. Dead Man's Wire is
Speaker 6: the incredible true story of the nineteen seventy seven kidnapping
Speaker 6: that turned an aspiring entrepreneur into an outlaw folk era.
Speaker 6: Directed by legendary filmmaker Gus van Zant, dead Man's Wire
Speaker 6: stars Bill Scarsguard Daker, Montgomery, carry Always and Mahalla with
Speaker 6: Coleman Domingo and al Pacino, now playing in select theaters everywhere.
Speaker 6: January sixteenth.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Film Spotting. It's Pedro Pascal's world, Michael, we
Speaker 4: just live in it, okay.
Speaker 1: And the time it took you to say that sentence, Josh.
Speaker 1: Pedro Pascal started a film podcast and has already already
Speaker 1: got five trillion subscribers, So.
Speaker 4: He's a busy You know, you think you're joking, but
Speaker 4: I bet that's true. Later in the show, you're going
Speaker 4: to have some thoughts, some feelings too, I hope about
Speaker 4: the new Pascal starring Fantastic four First Steps, plus a
Speaker 4: new Golden Brick nominee from me. It's for a deeply
Speaker 4: strange movie called Sunlight, and we'll have a new deeply
Speaker 4: flawed Film Spotting poll question. All that, plus from the
Speaker 4: Film Spotting archive, it's our top five Walking Phoenix performances.
Speaker 4: Adam and I did that one back in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: around the time of the previous Phoenix Ariastor collaboration bo
Speaker 4: Is Afraid, But First Astors Eddington, which opened and wide
Speaker 4: released this weekend and has been the recipient of strongly
Speaker 4: and maybe this is appropriate divisive takes since its debut
Speaker 4: at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Phoenix is
Speaker 4: Joe Cross, a conservative small town sheriff with political ambitions.
Speaker 4: Pedro Pascal is Ted Garcia, the town's incumbent mayor. Oh
Speaker 4: and did we mention that it's twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: So what have you been doing in there? It's takeaway drinks.
Speaker 4: All the town council members.
Speaker 7: That's essential business.
Speaker 2: Well, you can't just call a central business whatever you want.
Speaker 3: It's a city council meeting.
Speaker 4: Wherever city council people congregate.
Speaker 3: It's the mayor's office.
Speaker 2: If I'm inside, then you were open and you have
Speaker 2: a pain customer costs trying up.
Speaker 4: He's aggressive, he's dangerous. He needs to be locked up.
Speaker 2: Your streets.
Speaker 3: No, they're your streets, sheriff.
Speaker 2: They're your streets to keep safe.
Speaker 3: And where is your man?
Speaker 4: To kickstart our Eddington conversation, Michael, I'm going to lean
Speaker 4: on our producer Sam and something he posted recently in
Speaker 4: Discord for film Spotting family members. Just a reminder here,
Speaker 4: listeners that access to the discord is one of the
Speaker 4: benefits of being a family member, So if you haven't
Speaker 4: already signed up, we'd love to have you do that
Speaker 4: over at film spottingfamily dot com. Now, Sam's prompt was this,
Speaker 4: what's the best COVID movie? And by COVID movie, I
Speaker 4: don't necessarily mean a movie that was made during the pandemic.
Speaker 4: I mean a movie that is explicitly or metaphorically reckoning
Speaker 4: with our shared experience as people who lived through the pandemic.
Speaker 4: For example, the first titles I think of our asteroid
Speaker 4: city and white Noise. Well, Michael, Certainly, Eddington, written and
Speaker 4: directed by Ariastor of Hereditary and Midsommar Fame, counts as
Speaker 4: what Sam calls a COVID movie. Set in the small
Speaker 4: New Mexico town of the title, during the spring of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, the film pits Joaquin Phoenix's sheriff Joe Cross,
Speaker 4: a skeptic of the virus in general and of masking
Speaker 4: in particular, against Pedro Pascal's mayor Ted Garcia, who staunchly
Speaker 4: supports mandates requiring masks, limiting customers in grocery stores, and
Speaker 4: establishing six feet of separation in public. Have I triggered
Speaker 4: you enough yet, Michael? The movie expands beyond the standoff
Speaker 4: between these two men. However, to consider how the entire
Speaker 4: community crumbles amidst escalating personal tensions, political posturing, and social
Speaker 4: media fueled conspiracies. Going back to Sam's prompt about COVID movies,
Speaker 4: I unsurprisingly leaned toward Asteroid City if I were looking
Speaker 4: to put a film in the time capsule for future generations.
Speaker 4: Though that's partly because I think Asteroid City touches on
Speaker 4: current anxieties even beyond the pandemic. Now Listeners on the
Speaker 4: film spotting Family discord throughout other titles for pandemic movies,
Speaker 4: such as Steven Soderberg's Kimmy, Sarah Polly's Women Talking, and
Speaker 4: Ryan Johnson's Glass Onion. What say you, Michael about pandemic
Speaker 4: movies in general and Eddington in particular? Is Eddington a
Speaker 4: time capsule film for the pandemic? Or should it be
Speaker 4: left in the dustbin of history largely forgotten?
Speaker 1: And that's kind of how at least half and maybe
Speaker 1: more of the can first responders to Eddington feel like
Speaker 1: to hell with it? I mean, they didn't like it
Speaker 1: in any way, And I think it's actually getting a
Speaker 1: more interesting response here in release, because I'm reading kind
Speaker 1: of a really sharply divided and also I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people stepping up on Reddit or letterboxed two
Speaker 1: and not just so not just mainstream you know, old
Speaker 1: lye critics, but people stepping up and really grappling with
Speaker 1: the fact that they really like a lot of it
Speaker 1: and really kind of hate a lot of it. And
Speaker 1: that's me. Yeah, in that way, it's not It doesn't
Speaker 1: really reflect the the psychic temperature of the pandemic, because
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody, any sane person would feel that
Speaker 1: they were had mixed feelings about you know, the last
Speaker 1: five years, you know, I mean, and it's just nothing
Speaker 1: but fall out of every kind that we're going to
Speaker 1: be studying a generation from now. We barely know what
Speaker 1: it is. But it's hard to it's really hard to
Speaker 1: get extremely recent history sorted out in your mind about
Speaker 1: what captured you know, you know, twenty twenty, or just
Speaker 1: even just sort of like a metaphoric sort of pandemic
Speaker 1: sense of isolation and all the rest of it. I
Speaker 1: do love that somebody brought up Kimmi though, because I
Speaker 1: love Soderberg's Kimmi. If you want to talk about a
Speaker 1: straight ahead, straight ahead meat and potatoes, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of linear mystery thriller, storytelling in a pandemic, shot in
Speaker 1: a pandemic, set in a pandemic with an agoraphobic, pandemically
Speaker 1: paranoid for good reason character trying to solve, you know,
Speaker 1: a rear window type mystery in her Laft without leaving it.
Speaker 1: And I love that about that, and I think that
Speaker 1: film is just a grand, efficient story to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one, but yeah, I mean Eddington, I wrote a
Speaker 1: really squirrely review on that one. I do think I
Speaker 1: was happy to have seen it a second time, frankly
Speaker 1: to kind of help sort it out why. I really
Speaker 1: like a lot of the first two thirds and I
Speaker 1: kind of hate the last forty minutes. Did you feel
Speaker 1: that way?
Speaker 4: Yes, it definitely escalates spirals, goes off the rails, becomes unhinged,
Speaker 4: whatever description you want to use. Purposely, so though, I
Speaker 4: think that's the intent to get us to that point,
Speaker 4: I am in a similar place as you, and maybe
Speaker 4: we can both help each other find a more firm
Speaker 4: position to take at the end of this conversation. I'm
Speaker 4: at a similar place as you in terms of liking
Speaker 4: a lot of it, disliking much of it, not thinking
Speaker 4: that something's work thinking that some things are pretty audacious
Speaker 4: and impressive. I don't have as linear of a response
Speaker 4: where it's a first half second half break. To me,
Speaker 4: though I would agree, I do think the second half
Speaker 4: is weaker, squirrely review. Maybe that's what listeners are going
Speaker 4: to get, because that's how I feel. I went into
Speaker 4: this somewhat dreading it, even though I am a very
Speaker 4: big fan of Hereditary and had positive, if mixed feelings
Speaker 4: about his other films. I just didn't want to go
Speaker 4: back to twenty twenty. I wasn't really ready. I didn't
Speaker 4: know what could be said about it this soon. Maybe
Speaker 4: that's why we're struggling, Michael Is. It's not so much
Speaker 4: that Eddington doesn't have anything to say about it, because
Speaker 4: I did think. I do think I landed on something there,
Speaker 4: But I don't know how helpful it is to capture
Speaker 4: the brain rot and the chaos, and the honestly the
Speaker 4: dysfunction and hatred that we experienced just a few years
Speaker 4: on from the dark heart of the pandemic. I don't
Speaker 4: know what the ultimate value is of an endeavor like that,
Speaker 4: but I found myself surprisingly appreciating the attempt. It's not
Speaker 4: entirely successful. But I did appreciate the attempt and the
Speaker 4: one thing. Let me throw this out at you and
Speaker 4: see if you know there's the one thing, this one
Speaker 4: thing that I kind of landed on it. Maybe this
Speaker 4: is what the movie's trying to do, is just capture
Speaker 4: the fact that in the pandemic, the virus was not
Speaker 4: enough of an enemy for us as human beings. You
Speaker 4: would think, and initially maybe it felt this way that
Speaker 4: could you ask for a more common enemy to unite
Speaker 4: against is a virus?
Speaker 3: But what did we do?
Speaker 4: We just tore each other apart eventually instead, and Eddington,
Speaker 4: to my mind, is capturing how that happened in this
Speaker 4: particular town.
Speaker 3: I think what Astra is trying.
Speaker 4: To do is explore the way distrust, disinformation, and as
Speaker 4: I mentioned, just hatred between people flared during the early
Speaker 4: months of the pandemic. And I don't know if he's
Speaker 4: as successful the microcosm in the first half that he
Speaker 4: offers I think is successful. Maybe that's why you like
Speaker 4: the first half better, where we're getting to learn how
Speaker 4: this particular community responded the macrocosm. I think that he
Speaker 4: also wants this movie to be for America as a whole.
Speaker 4: Maybe even beyond the pandemic, just as a nation. I
Speaker 4: don't know if Eddington is assured enough to pull that off,
Speaker 4: but as an attempt to capture that brain rap that
Speaker 4: you know, really did spread from sea to shiny sea
Speaker 4: in this country. I do think the movie. I do
Speaker 4: think the movie manages that in some pretty effective ways.
Speaker 4: Do we need it now? I'm not so sure about that.
Speaker 4: But did you did that have a hook for you?
Speaker 3: Always?
Speaker 1: Just kind of honestly, I couldn't agree less with you
Speaker 1: on the fact of whether or not it's too soon.
Speaker 1: I think film history is full of you know, maybe foolish,
Speaker 1: hopefully very talented, a lot of them, brilliant film directors
Speaker 1: and screenwriters who take on what is happening right now
Speaker 1: or very recently, and you know, maybe maybe this pandemic
Speaker 1: was simply too wrenching, you know, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people lost a lot of lives in their immediate family
Speaker 1: or friends or whatever. You know, no argument. Absolutely I
Speaker 1: found it not too soon. And in fact, the best
Speaker 1: of this film, which is almost the first two thirds,
Speaker 1: it's really more like not halfway that I feel like
Speaker 1: it was settling for something else, because what happens a
Speaker 1: little past a halfway point, there is an escalation in
Speaker 1: the plot where a certain key character, you know, kicks
Speaker 1: it up a notch to quote Anchorman, and and you know,
Speaker 1: we have a kind of a different, a different, huge
Speaker 1: plot redirection, and it's it's it's very effective, I think,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things Astor does really well.
Speaker 1: And this is also Joaquin Phoenix I think working at
Speaker 1: his best in this film. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: this is this film is Joaquin Phoenix at his best.
Speaker 1: But the best work he does in this film is
Speaker 1: we have we have a characterization of this guy, Joe Cross,
Speaker 1: who doesn't come out as a wildly political really like
Speaker 1: almost inhumanly stubborn caricature of a conservative, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: Nothing like that. It's a much more of a slow
Speaker 1: build and just kind of like, h I don't know
Speaker 1: about the band. I love the I love the tone
Speaker 1: of the first scene where you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just a debate and an argument between two reservation police
Speaker 1: coming off the pueblo and you know, saying to Joe
Speaker 1: and they're both both in their respective you know, law
Speaker 1: enforcement cars, and it's where's your mass Joy says, I
Speaker 1: don't need it? You know, very casual, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it's not like the lines of being
Speaker 1: drawn in the sand. And I think that's why why
Speaker 1: the film is as intriguing as it is for as
Speaker 1: long as it is, because Joe Cross, even if he
Speaker 1: is you know, people disagree all over the place about
Speaker 1: how sympathetic or unsympathetic he is from from scene to scene,
Speaker 1: but he's generally a pretty foolish mediocrity of a man.
Speaker 1: And I think that's asters you know, he's he's not
Speaker 1: running from that, he's leaning into it, and it's up
Speaker 1: to it's up to the actor to make that compelling,
Speaker 1: even if not heroic, you know, but that's a good
Speaker 1: build to that character and very interesting swerves. And then
Speaker 1: know what's happening around that, well, you have you have
Speaker 1: at least four or five and maybe six different subplots
Speaker 1: that all kind of feed what is going on in
Speaker 1: this town. There's this nascent Black Lives Matter movement, very
Speaker 1: small but very mighty in the eyes of the mostly
Speaker 1: younger characters who are kind of newly awakened, let's say,
Speaker 1: by what they have seen on the TV in the
Speaker 1: recent George Floyd murder, up in Minneapolis, and that's why
Speaker 1: this film is set in when it's sad May twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and some of those scenes are better written than others,
Speaker 1: or more germane to the I guess the overall plot.
Speaker 1: But I think you know, I am never a guy, Josh,
Speaker 1: who goes to any movie to see them tell me
Speaker 1: to watch movie makers and actors tell me a nice
Speaker 1: linear story. I appreciate it when it's interesting, I guess.
Speaker 1: But it's about forty ninth on my list of why
Speaker 1: I go to the movies. You know, I just I
Speaker 1: like somebody chaos. I mean this you want to talk
Speaker 1: about a chaotic time. I mean, in a way I
Speaker 1: wish this film we're a little more kind of out
Speaker 1: of control and chaotic in those early more realistic, uh
Speaker 1: kind of slyly comic scenes where everybody is kind of
Speaker 1: getting dinged for either their kind of liberal credulousness maybe
Speaker 1: in some characters eyes, or they're sort of like conspiracy
Speaker 1: prone mania or their butt headed conservatism. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all there, and it was all in the country, and
Speaker 1: I like that Astor took it on, so I for me,
Speaker 1: it's not too early, Josh. It's like keep it coming.
Speaker 1: I like topical stuff that forces people into me calling
Speaker 1: you completely wrong in your opinion that it was too
Speaker 1: still to make this move.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and then let me let me clarify that
Speaker 4: a bit. You can still call me wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, it's.
Speaker 1: So, but you're recording this, I mean, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't clarify, you can't correct it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's against the rules. Yeah, no, no, it's obviously
Speaker 4: filmmakers can tackle timely subjects. But for me, I mean Eddington,
Speaker 4: I guess, is it too soon for what Eddington is
Speaker 4: trying to do?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe not to your point, maybe it is more successful
Speaker 4: to your point about the chaos, there is a sequence
Speaker 4: maybe we'll get into in that climax that I think
Speaker 4: absolutely is the where it goes and what happens is
Speaker 4: horrifyingly hilarious. That does capture the chaos of the moment,
Speaker 4: and maybe I can share that in a little later.
Speaker 4: But going back to Phoenix and this character of Joe
Speaker 4: Cross the Sheriff, I agree with you there on the
Speaker 4: characterization of him, because depending where you lived, the conflicts
Speaker 4: that you encountered at that time, maybe we're more like that,
Speaker 4: almost like aggressively passive aggressive about masks, you know, is
Speaker 4: how you and that's how Joe carries himself, right, is like,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to make a big deal about it,
Speaker 4: but I'm also not going to put the mask on.
Speaker 4: But notice this happens in an early scene at a
Speaker 4: grocery store where the employees are keeping an older man
Speaker 4: who's not wearing a mask out, and Joe stops them
Speaker 4: and says, you can't put your hands on him like that,
Speaker 4: and says let him in because the man is claiming
Speaker 4: he can't breathe through the mask. So okay, you know,
Speaker 4: everyone maybe is trying to be reasonable in this crazy situation.
Speaker 4: But then what happens. Then Joe enters the grocery store
Speaker 4: after the man and doesn't put on a mask on either,
Speaker 4: and so we're getting this slow escalation. The mayor is
Speaker 4: in the grocery store shopping, and so they have this confrontation,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, it's very familiar there. It's a
Speaker 4: showdown of claims and counterclaims, facts and rumors, pandering and posturing.
Speaker 4: And I thought that was very smartly handled and written.
Speaker 4: But to your point about you know, Phoenix's performance and
Speaker 4: the characterization of this sheriff notice that he buys the
Speaker 4: older man's groceries as well.
Speaker 1: And there's another moment, and that doesn't I just want
Speaker 1: to interdict, that does not seem like a screenwriter contrivance
Speaker 1: to make him more materially sympathetic. That actually seems it's
Speaker 1: very casually handled to this guy. Yeah, it seems like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's probably part of his thing. Yeah, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: It's it's along the lines of when he tosses the
Speaker 4: bottle of water to the itinerant man, who's who's shuffling
Speaker 4: down the street and seems to be, you know, a
Speaker 4: regular fixture in the town. He you know, it's a
Speaker 4: small part for Emma Stone. I think she only has
Speaker 4: a handful of scenes, probably, But his wife is just stricken,
Speaker 4: and he's very tender. The sheriff is very tender about
Speaker 4: trying to reach her and making space for her. She
Speaker 4: creates these bizarre, creepy dolls that she sells online, and
Speaker 4: we learn early on he's buying them online to kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, give her a boost of encouragement. So there
Speaker 4: are these other sides to the sheriff that I think
Speaker 4: are important, especially to your point as things do escalate,
Speaker 4: and he, you know, he suffers from a particular form
Speaker 4: of brain rot in a particular political direction. At the
Speaker 4: same time, Pascal's mayor you know, the movie pokes at
Speaker 4: him too. He seems to he seems to almost delight
Speaker 4: in the new rules that the pandemic is allowing him
Speaker 4: to show that by following them, how progressive he is,
Speaker 4: you know. So this is this is a little bit
Speaker 4: of an undercutting of that character as well, which I
Speaker 4: think does make the movie richer. And we could list
Speaker 4: a number of other characters who are involved, but this
Speaker 4: thing really broadens out. I was wondering, Michael, a movie
Speaker 4: that came to mind, and maybe I'm way off here.
Speaker 4: You seem to be in the mood of telling me
Speaker 4: when I'm way off, so let me have it. But
Speaker 4: I thought at this point, I thought at this point
Speaker 4: about Robert Eltman's Nashville in the sense of a movie
Speaker 4: that does come to incorporate a very large ensemble cast,
Speaker 4: also wants to, you know, be a cinematic consideration of
Speaker 4: America at a critical juncture, and do it through this
Speaker 4: broad canvas. Now, stylistically, there I can't think of two filmmakers.
Speaker 4: Maybe further apart, right, Astor doesn't have the shaggy, free
Speaker 4: flowing touch that you know Altman does, which made us
Speaker 4: feel like a fly on the wall. Astor is very controlled.
Speaker 4: His films are very controlled, so there's that difference. But
Speaker 4: just in the sense of the broad canvas and trying
Speaker 4: to capture Americana, Nashville did come to mind for me. Yet,
Speaker 4: how far off am I?
Speaker 1: No, No, no, that's you're not. No. I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: jumped on your throat on the other one, but you
Speaker 1: know it's that's my job.
Speaker 3: You're good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Nashville in fact, was just I think
Speaker 1: just part of the Altman retrospective at the Cisco Film Center,
Speaker 1: and I wish i'd seen that seen. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it on the screen since I was a teenager.
Speaker 4: But it's been a long time for me too, so
Speaker 4: I could be off on this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's yeah it. Astor is a different kind
Speaker 1: of I don't want to call him a satirist because
Speaker 1: I think one of the strengths of Eddington is that
Speaker 1: it's not straight up satire. I mean, don't look up.
Speaker 1: I'd agree the Adam McKay meteor, you know, liberal lament
Speaker 1: film that was straight up satire with then sort of
Speaker 1: a sledgehammer dose of pathos as the world's about to
Speaker 1: end at the end, and I didn't like any this
Speaker 1: is a different register. Yeah, and it's and it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a little it's a little slippery almost all
Speaker 1: the way through. And I guess why I did think it,
Speaker 1: you know it, I I sense Astor's need to give
Speaker 1: this picture a satisfying, if outrageously kind of overscaled action climax,
Speaker 1: just to kind of bring it to a head. And
Speaker 1: maybe was always scripted that way. I probably was, but
Speaker 1: to me that the kind of outrageousness does seem to
Speaker 1: me much more puerile, and I guess adolescent need call it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I compared it to like Tarantino,
Speaker 1: a guy who I just don't think has a serious
Speaker 1: storytelling bone in his body. Truly. I think he's got
Speaker 1: great skill and he's often a lot of fun, but
Speaker 1: he you know, to me, it's it's just empty calories, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and and you know, so be it, you know,
Speaker 1: asters much more he'll he'll never have the commercial instincts
Speaker 1: the Tarantino does. And this film. The funny thing about
Speaker 1: where this movie goes, where editing goes, and it's last
Speaker 1: half hour forty minutes or so. It's it's almost as
Speaker 1: if that part of the film exists, so that a
Speaker 1: twenty four could legitimately include some pretty shocking, you know,
Speaker 1: scenes of firearm you know, I mean, like like major
Speaker 1: league heavy duty firearms and fireballs as part of the trailer,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a movie. I mean that trailer
Speaker 1: is very, very crafty, and that it seems to get
Speaker 1: everything about the film, and it might even get a
Speaker 1: traditional action audience a little bit interested in seeing it.
Speaker 1: Now what they get when they go in the door,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe, but they're going to be waiting to way.
Speaker 4: Make it they make it to the fireballs, is I know, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he's not he's a funny guy astor because
Speaker 1: because if I go back to Midsommar, which I really
Speaker 1: again sort of loved the first two thirds, and I thought,
Speaker 1: even if it's a lot like The wicker Man and
Speaker 1: a lot like some other films, you know that that's
Speaker 1: set up, uh where where you really have a film
Speaker 1: it's about this very queasy relationship that you know is
Speaker 1: not destined to work out and it's it's in that movie.
Speaker 1: And Astor is writer director, very very properly hard on
Speaker 1: the on the on this on this worm of a
Speaker 1: male protagonist. And he's a very clear eyed and honest,
Speaker 1: kind of deadpan black humor perspective on on you know,
Speaker 1: on this outrageous, outrageous flaws of your typical American and
Speaker 1: that's what you get in Midsommer, and you also get
Speaker 1: that into Ednington. And I don't think it kills the movie.
Speaker 1: I think that actually, as I say, because Quaquin Phoenix
Speaker 1: is there to slowly build the character. And also the writing,
Speaker 1: as you say, it's not all one note like a
Speaker 1: movie like Don't Look Up. Just you know, they don't
Speaker 1: even have one note. Is too many notes for to
Speaker 1: describe Don't Look Up. And it's treatment of all the
Speaker 1: attitudes and characters, and that I think what you said
Speaker 1: about Emma Stone, yes, but I'm I think I read
Speaker 1: that those scenes differently even after two viewings than you.
Speaker 4: I think his tenderness towards her you're there.
Speaker 1: It's there. I think the tenderness is there, but it
Speaker 1: is more about a guy who's just struggling to try
Speaker 1: to for all the wrote reasons you know, keep this
Speaker 1: difficult and clearly kind of corrosive, corroding marriage together in
Speaker 1: this household where his mother in law. I mean, in
Speaker 1: another way, this movie is just just another mother in
Speaker 1: law joke.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a little like bo as Afraid
Speaker 1: was in some ways, but it's yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: mother issues. Yeah, and it's a little dumb. It's a
Speaker 1: little dumb and reductive about women in general. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little like I just don't get them. It's
Speaker 1: sort of the attitude of the characters. And it might
Speaker 1: it might interest be it might be Arister's you know,
Speaker 1: private struggle. Like many male writer directors to just write dimensional, interesting,
Speaker 1: surprising female characters. And I think, you know, Emma Stone
Speaker 1: does God knows every single thing she could do to
Speaker 1: make that woman more dimensional interesting than she is on
Speaker 1: the page.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a thinly written role. I will say Deirdre
Speaker 4: O'Connell as the mother in law gets maybe more scenes
Speaker 4: than Ada Stone. She certainly appears in the epilogue and
Speaker 4: is crucial to that. We won't give that away, but
Speaker 4: I thought she was fantastic, I mean, making more perhaps
Speaker 4: than what the screenplay provided. As this conspiracy theory obsessed
Speaker 4: mother in law, which is a crucial part of what
Speaker 4: people were, you know, going through, is when you couldn't
Speaker 4: have human connection, it just amped up our inclination to
Speaker 4: turn to digital connections, which is why Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
Speaker 4: plays a prominent role in this movie. I think it's
Speaker 4: pretty sharp about that. I would also say, to counter
Speaker 4: your claim about, you know, the sheriff's feelings towards his wife,
Speaker 4: one of the first videos we see him watching, I
Speaker 4: think it's the very first scene, is a YouTube video
Speaker 4: about someone talking about infertility and how that's hard for
Speaker 4: couples and handling it, and we learn that this is
Speaker 4: part of their difficulty in their marriage at least, if
Speaker 4: not infertility. I think it's just a willingness that he
Speaker 4: does want kids and she's not in an emotional state
Speaker 4: for it. So so yeah, I do think there's more
Speaker 4: of a genuine impetus to him, the sheriff, wanting to
Speaker 4: work out that marriage. But I agree the role that
Speaker 4: Emmastone plays is underwritten. Do you think we should segue
Speaker 4: Michael to a little spoiler? We've been dancing around that
Speaker 4: last third the climax, and I know I do want
Speaker 4: to mention one bit that really did work well for me,
Speaker 4: that chaotic bit, which is also a joke. I found it,
Speaker 4: but I'm not quite sure how So maybe listeners, if
Speaker 4: you haven't seen Eddington yet and don't want to hear
Speaker 4: a few spoiler bits towards the end, you might want
Speaker 4: to jump ahead. If you're going to do that and
Speaker 4: you end up seeing the film and want to let
Speaker 4: us know your thoughts, you can always email us at
Speaker 4: Feedback at filmspawning dot net. As we mentioned, Eddington is
Speaker 4: currently playing in wide release.
Speaker 2: You want things simple and neat. There was some allegations made,
Speaker 2: allegations like what you were in this house? Well, here's
Speaker 2: a quote from you arm yourself.
Speaker 7: I don't mean literal arms.
Speaker 2: I have motive. Oh we need evidence.
Speaker 4: People are going to be looking here now, So Michael,
Speaker 4: let's let's get to, you know, just some general thoughts
Speaker 4: about the ending, the bit in the climax, and this
Speaker 4: is to your point about everyone being skewered all their
Speaker 4: political positions. It's almost like the gunfire which erupts, we
Speaker 4: should say, because at this point the sheriff is being
Speaker 4: pursued by anti fascist assassins who come out of out
Speaker 4: of nowhere, heavily armed, chasing him across town, across the countryside,
Speaker 4: trying to kill him. So he breaks into the gun shop,
Speaker 4: comes out with like a Schwarzenegger style machine gun assembly,
Speaker 4: and just starts laying waste to the whole town.
Speaker 3: In defense.
Speaker 4: Supposedly, there is a bit in that chase Michael, I
Speaker 4: don't know what to make of this. Maybe you can
Speaker 4: help me, except that it seemed to capture the insanity
Speaker 4: of this country, going back from its very beginning. But
Speaker 4: across Sheriff Cross is being chased. He runs on top
Speaker 4: of the roof of the town's history museum, crashes through,
Speaker 4: lands on a display case that also breaks, shatters all
Speaker 4: over the floor, and the case is holding supposedly the
Speaker 4: bones of Geronimo. Now you mentioned the Pueblo commune next door.
Speaker 4: There is a thread acknowledging you know that part of
Speaker 4: America clearly originally the original indigenous peoples who lived here.
Speaker 4: That's a thread in this movie. And something about that
Speaker 4: bit where Cross is laying among the bones and then
Speaker 4: has to get up with his guns and still run
Speaker 4: out and try to take down his assassins. I don't
Speaker 4: I don't know what it says. I don't know what
Speaker 4: it means to say, but it seemed apropos for our
Speaker 4: current moment and as I said, the country's history. That's
Speaker 4: where I think Eddington is doing something that makes me
Speaker 4: at least glad I gave it a shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: What did you make of that whole sequence or the
Speaker 4: climax in general.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's that part of the sequence where we
Speaker 1: never really see any of the assassins in close up.
Speaker 1: I think I might be wrong on it, but I
Speaker 1: don't think so. So, I mean they're basically anonymous and
Speaker 1: gamer type assassins, right, Yeah, it's also kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: I never, I never, I never think that's the strength
Speaker 1: in narrative filmmaking. I think that's an immediate weakness because
Speaker 1: it makes it makes it easier to just sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, get off on the killing, which I you know,
Speaker 1: we've you know, the whole industry is built on that
Speaker 1: to some degree. But uh, I think the way that
Speaker 1: scene is staged and edited and timed, it it leans
Speaker 1: into the many, many too many times we've seen exactly
Speaker 1: that sort of thing played for straight laughs in a
Speaker 1: much lighter film, And so I think the audience doesn't
Speaker 1: know if you know what what what it's. It's it's
Speaker 1: a somewhat insecure a bit of that sequence. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, to your point, Astor doesn't quite really know
Speaker 1: how he wants to come off. I think just in
Speaker 1: that bit, uh, you know what I thought of I mean,
Speaker 1: I discus I've just seen the play recently, what I
Speaker 1: thought it was. I mean, this is this is sort
Speaker 1: of just the fact that he's landing on the bones
Speaker 1: of First Nation people who were there before all any
Speaker 1: of these idiot white people came along, just are shooting
Speaker 1: up their town, a town with the absolute palest whitest
Speaker 1: name in the history of fictional cities in film, Eddington,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'd love to get the backstory on
Speaker 1: the probably halpless military figure that it's named after. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a maybe there's a short film in that.
Speaker 1: So maybe there's a Tracy Let's play called The Minutes
Speaker 1: that premier here at Steppenwolf, played on Broadway, and it's
Speaker 1: got a very similar kind of dynamic about these foolish,
Speaker 1: blinkered small town white sort of politicos just kind of
Speaker 1: going about their business and in a way that gets
Speaker 1: increasingly sinister, and it all kind of ends with this
Speaker 1: sort of second layer of history kind of eating them,
Speaker 1: eating them up on stage. I don't want to lay
Speaker 1: it out to uh too completely, but and it's all
Speaker 1: about the people that were there first. And yes, it's
Speaker 1: an effective moment, and it's also a little unexamined or
Speaker 1: it kind of needs a yes and improv prompt at
Speaker 1: that point, like yes, okay, good and and we don't
Speaker 1: really get that because it's an action set. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean at that point, astor probably realized, Okay, this
Speaker 1: just has to kind of I have this thing carved up.
Speaker 1: In the eight beats, they're all increasingly violent and fatal
Speaker 1: and bloody, and you know, we just got to keep
Speaker 1: it going at this point. But I don't love I
Speaker 1: just don't love the way that movie, inevitably, I suppose,
Speaker 1: goes where it goes, and in sort of a way
Speaker 1: that again, if you see the trailer, you're really you're
Speaker 1: really I don't want to pin it on a twenty
Speaker 1: fours marketing, but it's just it's just promising a different
Speaker 1: movie than you get. And I think this movie really
Speaker 1: does get at a lot of what we still feel.
Speaker 1: And this is why I don't even look at it
Speaker 1: like recent history, Josh. I think you know how many
Speaker 1: people died last week of COVID in this country. I
Speaker 1: don't know, hundreds, maybe maybe more than a thousand. Is
Speaker 1: there always another viral threat seemingly these days. Yes, So
Speaker 1: to me, it just plays like it happens to be
Speaker 1: specific recent history, May twenty twenty. It also feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're not over with this. It's not
Speaker 1: you know, in that regard, It's not well in every regard.
Speaker 1: This movie is not the best Years of our lives right.
Speaker 1: Came out in nineteen forty six, a year after the war,
Speaker 1: and the whole movie is about people coming home from
Speaker 1: the war like that. You know, it's set in you know,
Speaker 1: it's set basically one year back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, great example to prove your point about it, you know,
Speaker 4: not being too soon. That is absolutely not a too
Speaker 4: soon movie for sure.
Speaker 1: One other thing I'll say, structurally, this is one of
Speaker 1: the few movies where I would say there's enough set
Speaker 1: up in the first three fifths that the film actually
Speaker 1: feels like it could be longer, could be two two
Speaker 1: hour chunks, it could be a four hour picture. I
Speaker 1: suspect that what he wrote initially was longer. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He's probably talked about, you know, whether or not it
Speaker 1: was ever much longer. The cut was three and a
Speaker 1: half hours instead of whatever it is two and a half.
Speaker 1: It's two and a half. But it does feel like
Speaker 1: it's either you know, this is one of the rare
Speaker 1: ones where it's like, you know, just not necessarily to
Speaker 1: clean up the mess of it, but to actually let
Speaker 1: some of the things flesh out. You know, it could
Speaker 1: have been longer, and there's something a little off about
Speaker 1: the length. So what do you think, do you think
Speaker 1: it's or did you feel like enough already?
Speaker 4: A little bit, But it also goes back to me
Speaker 4: for me, to the Altman thing a little bit, where
Speaker 4: you know, some of his movies you feel like, if
Speaker 4: not longer, you know, would be fantastic series where you
Speaker 4: could spend a little more time with some of these
Speaker 4: characters who just walk through and you become you know,
Speaker 4: you they grab your attention and you want to learn
Speaker 4: more about them. I mean, that's to those films credit, right,
Speaker 4: that's finding richness in small moments. But here, you know,
Speaker 4: we meet these kids, these teenagers. Those are interesting stories,
Speaker 4: you know, I think the Sheriff's deputies are interesting stories
Speaker 4: we only get little bits of and more about the
Speaker 4: marriage the movie I feel I could use. We've talked about,
Speaker 4: you know, Ema Stone being underused. So yeah, so before
Speaker 4: we wrap up here, we've worked through a few things.
Speaker 4: Do you feel stronger in terms of a little less squirrely?
Speaker 4: Let me say, would you say you are overall favorable
Speaker 4: on the film or more favorable I am than maybe
Speaker 4: after you saw it. Okay, I'm gonna go favorable as well.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm willingly saw twice. I am wildly conflicted
Speaker 1: about some of it. I do not like, you know,
Speaker 1: the impulse to just deliver, you know, the kind of
Speaker 1: somewhat weightless ultra violence at the end, and then it
Speaker 1: doesn't somehow it doesn't override everything I think the movie
Speaker 1: does not neat and tidy, but very intriguing ambiguities and
Speaker 1: tonal switches. No, I'm favorable. I want three stars, but
Speaker 1: star ratings mean nothing with a film like this. But yes,
Speaker 1: I would say check it out.
Speaker 3: About it totally?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, well I will give it a conflicted a
Speaker 4: conflicted recommendation from me as well. Eddington is currently playing
Speaker 4: in wide release. If you see it and agree or disagree,
Speaker 4: let us know feedback at film spotting dot net. Listening
Speaker 4: is the number one thing you can do to support
Speaker 4: an independently produced show like ours. Here are a couple
Speaker 4: of other things you can do to help us out.
Speaker 4: Take a minute to give us a rating or a
Speaker 4: review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 3: Feel free to do this.
Speaker 4: If you're a brand new listener, just one show under
Speaker 4: your belt, you have something you want to share, leave
Speaker 4: that review. Hey, if you've been listening for twenty years
Speaker 4: and you've never left a review, maybe now's the time.
Speaker 4: Every new review helps us reach new listeners. Another way
Speaker 4: to support us, you can join the film Spotting Family
Speaker 4: at film spottingfamily dot com. We want to thank family
Speaker 4: member Jason Monholland from Oklahoma City. If if you want
Speaker 4: to follow Jason on letterbox, you can find him at
Speaker 4: Sooner Moondog. So Michael, we have a little bit of
Speaker 4: a questionnaire we ask new family members to fill out
Speaker 4: if they so desire when they join the family. Jason
Speaker 4: did that for us, so I want to share some
Speaker 4: of his responses here. We ask you know when they
Speaker 4: started listening, if they remember their first show, and he says,
Speaker 4: it's been so long, I can't remember when I started listening. Well,
Speaker 4: thanks for sticking with us for a while, Jason. His
Speaker 4: favorite reviewer segment. Jason says, one that sticks out is
Speaker 4: the methodical way you broke down Killers of the Flower Moon.
Speaker 4: I love it when you guys geek out about a
Speaker 4: film or a filmmaker. What review did we get wrong?
Speaker 4: I struggle to recaller review I strongly disagree with, which
Speaker 4: means that either the show has started affecting the way
Speaker 4: I watch movies, or that we share similar viewpoints, in
Speaker 4: which case I commend you on your impeccable tastes. It's
Speaker 4: always always encouraging to hear that the indoctrination is taking
Speaker 4: effect among our listeners. All right, Jason on Letterbox, As
Speaker 4: I said, here's his top four films listed there, eight
Speaker 4: and a half, The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Mononoke, and
Speaker 4: Rear Window. Any issues with any of those titles, Michael.
Speaker 1: Oh, heck no, heck no, I mean I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were just true everything.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, you know the way, well you get the
Speaker 4: Michael Phillips Seal of approval. Jason a favorite movie he
Speaker 4: revisited recently alien a random film or filmmaker that you love,
Speaker 4: Terry Gilliams, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and a movie
Speaker 4: he credits with becoming a cinophile, Akira kurosawas seven Samurai.
Speaker 4: One last question that Jason answered for us a book
Speaker 4: about movies or movie making. He said, the easy answer
Speaker 4: is Ebert's Great Movies, But I will mention a book
Speaker 4: I got from the book Fair as a young upcoming
Speaker 4: centophile that stuck with and ignited a curiosity about film
Speaker 4: move monsters, monster makeup, and monster shows to put on
Speaker 4: by Alan Ormsby. Thanks for the recommendation, Jason, I am
Speaker 4: unfamiliar with that one. Thank you again for joining the
Speaker 4: Film Spotting Family. If you would like to join the
Speaker 4: Film Spotting Family, just go to Film Spotting Family dot com.
Speaker 9: This episode is brought to you by Peloton break through
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Speaker 10: Thisay Summer, Marvel Studios invite you to the cinematic event
Speaker 10: of the year with everything from.
Speaker 1: Action You Awesome, Stink You to romance kis for luck.
Speaker 1: Be careful There.
Speaker 4: Pedro Pascal again in the trailer for Fantastic four First Steps,
Speaker 4: which arrives in theaters this weekend. This is the third
Speaker 4: attempt to bring the Fantastics to the screen, at least
Speaker 4: in a version that isn't widely hated by audiences and critics.
Speaker 4: There was two thousand and five's Chris Evans starring Fantastic Four,
Speaker 4: and then it's two thousand and seven sequel Rise of
Speaker 4: the Silver Surfer. Here's Roger Ebert weihine in should be
Speaker 4: ashamed to show itself in the same theaters as good
Speaker 4: superhero movies. And yes, I remember the competition was strong
Speaker 4: around two thousand and five and two thousand and seven.
Speaker 4: Ten years later we got Miles Teller and Michael B.
Speaker 4: Jordan's turn. That one fared even worse. Here's a review
Speaker 4: we dug up. Everyone on screen speaks in a flat,
Speaker 4: earnest monotone, bordering on openly not giving a rip. It's
Speaker 4: a choice, a boring one, but a choice. Do those
Speaker 4: words sound familiar, Michael.
Speaker 1: Folks, I think that's a little detritis that floated off
Speaker 1: a one star review in The Tribune.
Speaker 3: Yes, one star from Michael Phillips.
Speaker 4: Yes, you did not enjoy that one. Well, another ten
Speaker 4: years have passed and they're back. We have Pascal's Mister Fantastic,
Speaker 4: Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm,
Speaker 4: and even Muss Backrex the Thing. But this one the
Speaker 4: first Fantastic Four produced by Marvel Studios. It's directed by
Speaker 4: Matt Shackman. Is in the space age nineteen sixties, when
Speaker 4: the quartet first appeared in comics. So Michael, I saw
Speaker 4: those first two Fantastic Four movies. Also not a fan.
Speaker 4: I skipped the twenty fifteen one and didn't make it
Speaker 4: to this latest iteration. So you are our Fantastic Four correspondent.
Speaker 4: Is the third time the charm.
Speaker 1: It is I mean, I mean it's not great. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's any way you can actually make
Speaker 1: great super hero cinema in within the Marvel Studios realm
Speaker 1: right now, Uh, this far into the collective cultural fatigue.
Speaker 1: We maybe we might I'll say might might be feeling
Speaker 1: as a populace. But this one's good and it has
Speaker 1: some of that conspicuously lighter spirit of let's say, the
Speaker 1: first ant Man film with Paul Rudd. Uh that that
Speaker 1: that to me felt like a relief when it came,
Speaker 1: because it was it wasn't It wasn't about yet another
Speaker 1: apocalyptic sort of universe crushing scenario. Is more just about
Speaker 1: like regional trouble, you know, with the ant Man fighting
Speaker 1: the forces of darkness. All.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 1: I like that film, and I like this one too.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's the first film in a while I've
Speaker 1: seen from Marvel Studios in a quite a while that
Speaker 1: actually gives you some images to remember rather than just
Speaker 1: sort of a general wash of fan service. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's actually really sharply production design for once. It's not
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's not production design that gets completely smothered
Speaker 1: by every other visual element, you know, the via, the
Speaker 1: visual compiled, the digital compositing, the green screen stuff, all that.
Speaker 1: It actually is a really tasty look at Manhattan the sixties.
Speaker 1: If in an alternate universe, if the designers of Tomorrow
Speaker 1: Land redid Manhattan so that there's an awful lot of
Speaker 1: skyscrapers that don't really exist on the never did exist
Speaker 1: on the skyline. But you know, so you know, alongside
Speaker 1: this Chrysler building and the pan Am building, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you get you get these kind of wonderful wonderful you know,
Speaker 1: what if, what if? The what if? You know, the
Speaker 1: jet Age, space Age. It's great, and there's kind of
Speaker 1: it's a movie that really trusts, maybe maybe to to
Speaker 1: a fault, the hangout factor. The audience might feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't mind hanging out with these four Fantastic four
Speaker 1: as they sort of struggle through through various issues about
Speaker 1: it's increasingly serious about like, okay, you know, are we
Speaker 1: really going to deal with this ethical dilemma of doing
Speaker 1: what the nemesis in this story is asking, which involves
Speaker 1: a new family member, and it's a big issue. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it, but I did sense that
Speaker 1: people were relaxing into enjoying it more than I've maybe
Speaker 1: experienced in a lot of marvels lately. Pedro Pascal's good.
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of It's the first performance I've
Speaker 1: seen it. It didn't seem surprising in any way it's
Speaker 1: a very steady, methodical performance. He's a very serious character.
Speaker 1: But it's Vanessa Kirby that really kind of takes off
Speaker 1: a little bit in this one. And you know, not great,
Speaker 1: but good, solidly good. And you know, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a Superman, which I also I know I like
Speaker 1: Superman more than you did. You didn't like it at all,
Speaker 1: but I think we hated the same things about it,
Speaker 1: the fact that it had that sort of crushing, punishing,
Speaker 1: sort of like jokey sadism running through it, and that's
Speaker 1: James Gunn at his worst. But I did like a
Speaker 1: lot of the other bits of Superman that maybe most
Speaker 1: people wouldn't go to a movie four like in fact,
Speaker 1: like the fact that there's a really interesting argument between
Speaker 1: Lois Lane and Clark Kent at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: picture that's all about like how do we sell how
Speaker 1: do we solve our relationship issues? And that scene is
Speaker 1: not a joke, and it actually is like it's buying in,
Speaker 1: you know, buying into the and and there's there's some
Speaker 1: of that, there's some of that even Superman very up
Speaker 1: and down film and kind of neurotically uneven and fantastic
Speaker 1: four is much more confident and sort of just a gratifying,
Speaker 1: pretty good picture all the way through. And look, I
Speaker 1: didn't you know these days. I'll take it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Superman, I'll admit part of the reason, but I'm
Speaker 4: still recovering part of the reason I didn't make it
Speaker 4: to Fantastic for But with your recommendation, and you know,
Speaker 4: people being relatively high on thunderbolts, I might maybe I'm
Speaker 4: getting nudged, nudged back into the MCU here my Well,
Speaker 4: we'll see what happens. Fantastic four First Steps is currently
Speaker 4: playing in wide release. If you see it and agree
Speaker 4: or disagree with Michael's take, let us know feedback at
Speaker 4: filmspotting dot net.
Speaker 7: What Hi, Okay, No, I gotta get to Colorado.
Speaker 5: I gotta drop myself off the lake and then you're
Speaker 5: gonna have your band back.
Speaker 4: I'm not letting some birthday clown take me to Colorado.
Speaker 1: A birthday clown.
Speaker 3: This is my vehicle.
Speaker 1: I need you to stop driving in Oh.
Speaker 4: That's from the trailer for Sunlight from writer, director, and
Speaker 4: star Nina Kanti. Kanti plays Jane, and she's not, as
Speaker 4: she states, a birthday clown, but she is dressed in
Speaker 4: a full body monkey costume, which yeah, she wears for
Speaker 4: most of the movies runtime. Michael, you know, I'm fascinated
Speaker 4: with manimals. We did up Top five manimals together years ago,
Speaker 4: one of you know, clearly the best top fives in
Speaker 4: the show's history. I don't know if I'd actually go
Speaker 4: a manimal direction here with Sunlight. It's not why I
Speaker 4: am nominating it for our Golden Brick Award. Let me
Speaker 4: just put it that way, But I do want to
Speaker 4: throw Sunlight into the ring for a Golden Brick because, boy,
Speaker 4: we talk about, you know, looking for movies to consider
Speaker 4: for this award having original vision and taking bold strokes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: how about a movie by a ventriloquist comedian of sorts
Speaker 4: who is writing it, co writing it, directing and starring
Speaker 4: in a monkey costume. Just the fact that this works, Michael,
Speaker 4: that this isn't an abject disaster, I think is worth admiring.
Speaker 4: And it is much better than that. This film really
Speaker 4: worked for me. Uh, and it is all about to
Speaker 4: my mind, Contie's performance in some ways, you can tell
Speaker 4: it's a first film, and you know, maybe gets a
Speaker 4: little too easily cheery at the end. But this performance
Speaker 4: she gives as Jane, the woman behind the mask is
Speaker 4: it's alarmingly entertaining and works on a number of levels.
Speaker 4: The idea here Jane is basically fleeing an abusive relationship,
Speaker 4: and you sense that past in the physicality of the
Speaker 4: performance and in the way that Monkey she calls herself.
Speaker 4: Monkey is assertive, crude, and irrationally confident in the ways
Speaker 4: that Jane can't otherwise be. She also speaks I think
Speaker 4: what's supposed to be a vaguely British accent, which is
Speaker 4: very funny. But most of the humor comes down to
Speaker 4: that physicality. There are details like, you know, Jane just
Speaker 4: resting her head on the dashboard of this vehicle. She
Speaker 4: falls in with a man who's actually co wrote the film.
Speaker 4: It's the co star here, Shanoah Allen. He's playing a
Speaker 4: radio personality who's on the road and she falls in
Speaker 4: with him and she's in his motor home. And when
Speaker 4: she just lays her head on the dashboard, there's something
Speaker 4: melancholy funny about this mask doing it, and the mask
Speaker 4: in general works. It has dead eyes and whenever she
Speaker 4: looks at the camera, it's almost like a Rorschack test
Speaker 4: for the audience, for the viewer trying to read what
Speaker 4: she might be thinking of what we're thinking about her.
Speaker 4: But then comedy too. You know, she keeps her flip
Speaker 4: phone in the monkey suit, so she has to zip
Speaker 4: it down to get her phone out. When she gets hot,
Speaker 4: she dumps some ice in the suit, and then there's
Speaker 4: pathos as well, as we realize how severe the personality
Speaker 4: split between Jane and Monkey has become, how it's escalating
Speaker 4: and becoming something that's actually concerning. So this is it's
Speaker 4: a cringe free ventriloquism movie that made me genuinely laugh
Speaker 4: and I found moving, and that is a rare accomplishment that, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think does make it worthy of a golden bricknut.
Speaker 1: I know two people who would have jolly will agree
Speaker 1: with you, and I really wish I'd seen some time
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But my brother and his wife,
Speaker 1: my brother and sister in law, saw this. They live
Speaker 1: in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The film was filmed in Albuquerque,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and enquirens And so I think I think
Speaker 1: it's that second filmmaker you mentioned came and introduced it
Speaker 1: in this tiny, little, wonderful little art house theater that
Speaker 1: Albuquerque is sustaining quite nicely. And they loved it. They
Speaker 1: thought exactly the same. I mean, they laughed a lot.
Speaker 1: They couldn't believe that the premise didn't dry out after
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, and by the end they were quite quite
Speaker 1: touched by it. So it's, you know, it's what you're
Speaker 1: describing sounds. Remember that film Frank with Michael Fassbender and
Speaker 1: Domin All, which was quite good, quite good, right, And
Speaker 1: it's that whole thing about sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: a bit about sort of like cloaking your identity but
Speaker 1: you know behind some crazy mask of you know, an
Speaker 1: artificial front, right and yet finding a weird sort of
Speaker 1: freedom minute. And you know, this is a simple idea,
Speaker 1: but it's a workable one. But I you know, your
Speaker 1: recommendation on top of brother and sister and my sister law,
Speaker 1: I'm going to check it out good.
Speaker 4: I'm glad it's getting some good word of mouth.
Speaker 3: That was probably Yeah.
Speaker 4: Who I mentioned Shanoah Allen Kanti's creative partner you know
Speaker 4: offscreen as well in other pursuits, but did co write
Speaker 4: Sunlight with her and also co stars in the film.
Speaker 4: So Sunlight had a limited theatrical run this month, but
Speaker 4: it is available now on streaming services. Just came out
Speaker 4: this week, so if it sounds intriguing to you, check
Speaker 4: it out. And as far as the Golden Brick goes,
Speaker 4: we have a healthy list of nominees at this point.
Speaker 4: If you want to see other titles on there, go
Speaker 4: to Film spotting dot net slash Bricks. Next week, Adam
Speaker 4: is going to be back and we have a big
Speaker 4: task ahead of us. We are going to indulge in
Speaker 4: a Pantheon Project review of nineteen seventy five's One Flew
Speaker 4: Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It is the film's fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 4: It's been quite some time since I've seen it, so
Speaker 4: we'll dig deep into that one, and we're gonna pair
Speaker 4: it with our top five Jack Nicholson performances. Michael springing
Speaker 4: this a little bit on you. I know I had
Speaker 4: mentioned we were going to talk Joaquin Phoenix performances on
Speaker 4: this show, but just top of your head, do you
Speaker 4: have a go to favorite Nicholson performance or maybe a
Speaker 4: less praised one that I should try to catch up
Speaker 4: with as homework that you don't think folks talk about enough.
Speaker 1: Gosh, yeah, thanks for the thanks for the warning on that, Josh.
Speaker 4: You usually just go with the favorite, Just go with
Speaker 4: the favorite, take the easy way out.
Speaker 1: Usually I devote a spa month to working these things
Speaker 1: out privately.
Speaker 4: But oh, as do I mean, that's our process.
Speaker 1: I really It was seventy four, I think, or seventy
Speaker 1: three when I saw the last detail. Seventy four I
Speaker 1: think Robert Towns script. Yes, that was you know, that
Speaker 1: was especially bracing to see your first as a probably
Speaker 1: too young I saw a lot of our rated movies
Speaker 1: that year. That's kind of when it all started for me.
Speaker 1: But that was Nicholson. Nobody considered him anything anything predictable
Speaker 1: or familiar at that point. He was an established, you know,
Speaker 1: presence for sure, but that he's great in the last detail,
Speaker 1: and he just drives the movies excellent, I think, in
Speaker 1: a smaller role that I think I saw. I saw
Speaker 1: the film like it, don't love it, Reds saw it
Speaker 1: recently again from is That eighty one? I think from
Speaker 1: Warren Baties film about John Reid and you know Dyan Keto,
Speaker 1: and Nicholson plays Eugene O'Neill and he loses almost all
Speaker 1: of what you might call the nicholsonisms in this This
Speaker 1: very the stern and very careful performance, full of charisma.
Speaker 1: He's really a great, a great addition to that on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, those two, those two, all right.
Speaker 4: Last detail is homework that I recently did and it
Speaker 4: was quite amazing. I'm comparing it to my experience with
Speaker 4: Gene Hackman and al Pacino and Scarecrow when we did
Speaker 4: our top five Hackman scenes. I caught up with Scarecrow
Speaker 4: for the first time and you know, just felt horrible
Speaker 4: for taking so long. Similarly with the last detail, it
Speaker 4: paid off and very likely will a Nicholson scene from
Speaker 4: the last detail show up on my list. So that
Speaker 4: is coming up next week. If you want to see
Speaker 4: our schedule of all our future shows, you can check
Speaker 4: that out at filmspotting dot net slash episodes. Michael, you know,
Speaker 4: I've been doing Ebert Interrupt thiss out in Boulder, Colorado
Speaker 4: at the Conference on World Affairs for a number of
Speaker 4: years now, and yeah, brought it a version of it,
Speaker 4: Cinema interruptis to Chicago last December, and am doing it
Speaker 4: again just next month at the Gene Sisco Film Center.
Speaker 4: Have you I don't think you I've ever had a
Speaker 4: chance to see Roger do interrupt this at Boulder, to do.
Speaker 1: All those, Yeah, I'd love to do one a year
Speaker 1: or sometime.
Speaker 4: That would be great. That would be great. I hope
Speaker 4: to do many more. But yeah, one of my great
Speaker 4: regrets is not getting out to Boulder to do that
Speaker 4: when Rodribert was doing it. But yeah, an honor to
Speaker 4: be able to continue the tradition and have a version
Speaker 4: of it here in Chicago. So, as I mentioned, it's
Speaker 4: going to be August eleven through fourteen, and we are
Speaker 4: diving deep into nineteen ninety Two's the Player. It's part
Speaker 4: of the Film Center's Altman Centennial series Interrupt This is
Speaker 4: four days of communal film criticism. That's how I've been
Speaker 4: describing it to people. We basically will watch The Player
Speaker 4: in its entirety on day one and then come back
Speaker 4: started at the beginning, and for subsequent days make our
Speaker 4: way through it scene by scene, and folks can yell, stop,
Speaker 4: ask a question, make a comment at any time. So
Speaker 4: it's possible to come for all four days. Buy a
Speaker 4: ticket package for that, that would be awesome. Make it
Speaker 4: a journey, make it a team effort, join me on that.
Speaker 4: But if you can only pop in for one day.
Speaker 4: Single day tickets are also available. You can get either
Speaker 4: of those at Cisclfilmcenter dot org. Slash Interruptis.
Speaker 1: Can I ask how it went with Phantom Thread?
Speaker 4: Oh, just as you can imagine a perfect movie for
Speaker 4: Interruptis where you can dive deep in every aspect, the cinematography,
Speaker 4: that wonderful score, and the performances, but also that relationship
Speaker 4: between Alma and Reynolds, which you know, four days debating
Speaker 4: that with folks, and I don't think we're any closer
Speaker 4: to understanding the true nature of that relationship.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Phantom Thread. Fantom Thread was perfect.
Speaker 4: The Player a little different in terms of what we'll
Speaker 4: be dissecting, but I know those those Altman zooms. I'm
Speaker 4: going to spend some time on all the movie references
Speaker 4: that are in there. I'm going to show some bonus
Speaker 4: material from some of the films, the posters that are
Speaker 4: in the background. So I think the Player will be
Speaker 4: a different interrupt Us experience than Phantom Thread, but an
Speaker 4: equally rewarded one.
Speaker 3: So it's great to do that in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Again, if anyone wants tickets, go to Ciscofilmcenter dot org.
Speaker 4: Slash interrupt us This week on our sister podcast, The
Speaker 4: Next Picture Show, looking at cinema's present via its past.
Speaker 4: They've got a new pairing and it's more Superman talk.
Speaker 3: So yes, listeners.
Speaker 4: If you were disappointed at my take and Adam's take,
Speaker 4: we were both pretty down on James Gunns Superman and
Speaker 4: Michael's previous relative endorsement of it. If you want more,
Speaker 4: perhaps you'll find support from the Next Picture Show. They're
Speaker 4: going to be talking about the new Superman in relation
Speaker 4: to the nineteen seventy eight Richard Donner Superman.
Speaker 3: Now that's a film.
Speaker 4: We did our top five Superman moments Michael on last
Speaker 4: week's show and gave the seventy eight Superman a lot
Speaker 4: of love, trying to make up for not loving the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five. Now it's the Next Picture Show, folks
Speaker 4: turn to I've Into Superman. New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Speaker 4: You can get them wherever you get your podcasts. And
Speaker 4: for more Next Picture Show related content, listen to Keith
Speaker 4: Phipps new podcast, The Laser Age. Keith, of course, one
Speaker 4: of the Next Picture Show hosts. Yeah, I've listened to
Speaker 4: Keith's first episode, enjoyed it. Quite a bit. This series
Speaker 4: is exploring science fiction films from the second half of
Speaker 4: the twentieth century. Again, you can find that wherever you
Speaker 4: get your podcasts.
Speaker 12: Sixty years of Whistler Black Home, two legendary mountains, thousands
Speaker 12: of stories, ski and ride, legendary terrain and experienced world
Speaker 12: class snowsport events, concerts at the edge of the mountain,
Speaker 12: gravity defining fire and ice shows and more. This winter,
Speaker 12: go beyond plan your trip to Whistler Blackhome.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before?
Speaker 5: I know your face?
Speaker 4: Get out till I call my servant.
Speaker 11: You know, I'm a Desmond.
Speaker 8: Used to be in silent pictures, used to be big.
Speaker 1: I am big.
Speaker 6: It's the pictures that got no.
Speaker 4: It is time for another deeply flawed film spotting pole
Speaker 4: question that was who else? Glorious Swanson with William Holden
Speaker 4: and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard is another film
Speaker 4: that will be getting the Pantheon Project treatment in a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks. We've been doing a lot of Wilder
Speaker 4: this summer. We just revisited The Apartment a few shows ago,
Speaker 4: thinking about these two Wilder films. Michael, I'm gonna. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna ask you a very tough question, or maybe it's
Speaker 4: very easy for you. You can only pick one. You
Speaker 4: can only have one, The Apartment or Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 1: What is this July madness? I don't want to do
Speaker 1: that kind of up stupid, stupid.
Speaker 4: You only participate in such things during film spotting madness,
Speaker 4: and even then it's more bigrudgingly than I do. So
Speaker 4: I guess you.
Speaker 3: I guess you're just not gonna answer, are you?
Speaker 1: No? I will, I will? I think. I think Sunset
Speaker 1: Boulevard is the greater film. But I I really love
Speaker 1: The Apartment, and I love how The Apartment feels to
Speaker 1: a new generation seeking some sort of bittersweet romantic comedy
Speaker 1: that isn't all just a bunch of fall de all,
Speaker 1: you know, a romantic comedy that really earns, you know,
Speaker 1: both the laughs and sort of the pathos. People. There's
Speaker 1: a new generation. Every twenty minutes, there's a new twenty
Speaker 1: two or twenty nine year old or fifteen year old
Speaker 1: that discovers The Apartment and they, maybe forever, maybe just
Speaker 1: for that year, it is their new favorite film. And
Speaker 1: I love that. So it's a tie. Josh, Sorry, Oh
Speaker 1: it's a tie.
Speaker 4: Oh, I see that's not allowed. You will be getting
Speaker 4: a letter from our attorney. But I can't attest to
Speaker 4: your experience because for this conversation we had this rewatch.
Speaker 4: Both my daughters really enjoyed the apartment as well. And
Speaker 4: maybe it's recency by but I am going to make
Speaker 4: a pick, and I'm going to go with the apartment. Nevertheless,
Speaker 4: I am excited about revisiting Sunset Boulevard. Maybe I'll change
Speaker 4: my answer, and that is the film that is inspiring
Speaker 4: our new poll question. Actresses plain actresses who are going
Speaker 4: through it. So that is producer Sam way of limiting
Speaker 4: this poll to performances that share. You know, they have
Speaker 4: some anks to them, so he didn't want to He
Speaker 4: didn't want to include comedies or musicals. He didn't want
Speaker 4: to include apparently Dustin Hoffman as Tutsie. So it's actresses,
Speaker 4: plain actresses who are going through it. Michael, I believe
Speaker 4: you have the options, the pole options there in front
Speaker 4: of you. Would you mind reading through those for us?
Speaker 1: I'd be honored. Josh Betty Davis, all about Eve Jenner, Rowlands,
Speaker 1: Opening Night, Glorius Wanson, Sunset Boulevard Juliet Binoche, The Clouds
Speaker 1: of Sils Maria Laura dern Inland Empire Good Choice, Naomi Watts,
Speaker 1: Maul Holland Drive List, Natalie Portman May December, Scarlett Johansson
Speaker 1: Asteroid City. That's a good list or other And I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear if somebody come up with a good
Speaker 1: There's others in that category, but that's a great list.
Speaker 4: It has your approval. Will it get a vote from you?
Speaker 4: Do you have an obvious choice? I'll say while you're thinking.
Speaker 4: For me, I think I'm gonna have to go with
Speaker 4: Genner Rowlands. I know a woman under the Influence is
Speaker 4: the broadly acclaimed consensus choice for her career performance, but man,
Speaker 4: is she incredible in Opening Night? So I think that's
Speaker 4: where I would go. How about you, Michael Boy.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that for decades, so I'd have to
Speaker 1: see it again to kind of see where it falls
Speaker 1: on the list for any But you know, I guess
Speaker 1: if I'd had to go, if I had to go
Speaker 1: for nineteen fifty's, it's either all about ev or Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd probably go Betty Davis actually, uh, and
Speaker 1: I'd probably go for more more modern. I'd probably go
Speaker 1: Nailmi watch because I just you know, I think that
Speaker 1: you know that that what she has to do in
Speaker 1: Mulholland Drive is make sense of two very different psychees
Speaker 1: and it's, uh, it's great work. So yeah, that's very
Speaker 1: a fruitful, A fruitful list Sam, Sam, Yeah.
Speaker 4: A fruitful less okay, And and yet you're still trying
Speaker 4: to square them out of it. I see, Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 4: I am listeners who can vote, who can just choose,
Speaker 4: who could just choose one who could be disciplined. You
Speaker 4: can do that, and you can also leave a comment
Speaker 4: at film spotting dot net. We're going to share results
Speaker 4: and some feedback in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 8: I am so sorry.
Speaker 12: From what your daddy passed down to you, but I
Speaker 12: wanted a child the greatest gift of my life.
Speaker 2: I'm visiting my.
Speaker 4: That's Joaquin Phoenix and bo Is Afraid from director Ari
Speaker 4: Astor back in twenty twenty three. Adam and I use
Speaker 4: the occasion of bo to share our top five Phoenix performances,
Speaker 4: with Phoenix reuniting with Astor again in Eddington. We are
Speaker 4: reuniting you, the listener, with this top five But before
Speaker 4: we get to that, Michael, since you're here, only natural
Speaker 4: to ask if there are any favorite Joaquin Phoenix performances
Speaker 4: you'd like to talk about.
Speaker 1: MM. Yeah, yeah, there's a few. There's Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I like the ones for me, the ones that require
Speaker 1: to him a different side than than the more obvious
Speaker 1: sort of strangulated torment, you know, the one, the stuff
Speaker 1: that wins oscars, you know, vis A v. Joker. Let's say,
Speaker 1: I actually really like this. It's super solid work and
Speaker 1: walk the line, and he turned out to be a
Speaker 1: very good choice for that Johnny biopic. I think The
Speaker 1: Master is really inventive work that daringly starts on such
Speaker 1: an extreme note of distress with that character Freddie Quell,
Speaker 1: that the movie can barely recover from it, but somehow
Speaker 1: it does. And so it is Phoenix. I really love
Speaker 1: his work with Spike Jones on Her, which I am
Speaker 1: due for a rewatch, but I haven't seen it since
Speaker 1: it came on, I think all the way through. But
Speaker 1: another one I'd utterly forgotten, and this is the other
Speaker 1: one i'd mentioned. Another one I'd almost forgot is Lynn
Speaker 1: Ramsey's You Were Never Really Here Where that's much more
Speaker 1: of a I mean, that's an explosively violent picture, and
Speaker 1: I had you know, it's only since twenty seventeenths only
Speaker 1: been eight years since I've seen it, but I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't retain much of a clear memory of it,
Speaker 1: but rereading it, his work is really good in that
Speaker 1: and I just think he is. One of the best
Speaker 1: things about Phoenix is he really seeks out and responds
Speaker 1: to a variety of directors that he may lock horns
Speaker 1: with half the time. I don't know. I suspect he does,
Speaker 1: but that's what's keeping him reasonably more than reasonably, that's
Speaker 1: what's keeping him vital and worth seeing what he's up
Speaker 1: to next. The one thing he can't do, Josh, you
Speaker 1: want to hear it. The one thing that I think
Speaker 1: will never get from Watkin Phoenix, the one thing he
Speaker 1: doesn't have. And no actor has everything or can do
Speaker 1: everything or anything. He doesn't have great verbal facility. I
Speaker 1: think he knows how to use his voice beautifully in
Speaker 1: a lot of different keys and for different kind of
Speaker 1: shades of character. But when you see something like Inherent Weiss,
Speaker 1: which is all about that, that's what I was thinking
Speaker 1: to play. Yeah, he's not a guy who can spin
Speaker 1: out a lot of crazy gobblybook crisply. You know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have that. It's just it's something. It's just part
Speaker 1: of its just the physical equipment you're born with. Part
Speaker 1: of it is the training you either have or have
Speaker 1: don't have as a screen actor. It's the one thing
Speaker 1: he's you know, it's it's the one thing in almost
Speaker 1: every kind of film he's done. He's done almost every
Speaker 1: genre where if he has to do that where he
Speaker 1: has to really propulsively zip through a scene, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot about just how fast you can handle the
Speaker 1: language and sling it, you know, in another character's direction.
Speaker 1: He's not the guy. And that's an interesting interesting I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it a drawback, but because you know, he
Speaker 1: is just like every other really good actor on the planet.
Speaker 1: He cannot do everything equally well. But those are those
Speaker 1: are some of the ones I think very fondly of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now, can I pay you a licensing fee or
Speaker 4: something and use the phrase strangulated torment to describe Phoenix
Speaker 4: going forward? Because I think that's just perfect that that
Speaker 4: is what he specializes in, especially in something like The Master,
Speaker 4: and it's just so so good at evoking that sort
Speaker 4: of experience. Look at your fee structure, Michael, and get
Speaker 4: back to me, because I do want to I do
Speaker 4: want to use that phrase at some point. Now, speaking
Speaker 4: of her, which you called out as listeners will hear,
Speaker 4: that was a performance that we excluded from our top
Speaker 4: five list, Michael, And that's where Phoenix played Theodore of
Speaker 4: course and Spike Jones is her. The reason we did
Speaker 4: that is because we had devoted a bonus episode to
Speaker 4: that film for its tenth anniversary, which I think was
Speaker 4: right around the time we did this top five list,
Speaker 4: So there was a lot of talk about Phoenix's performance
Speaker 4: in her on that bonus episode. We did repost that
Speaker 4: her review in our main podcast feed this week, so
Speaker 4: you can find that wherever you get your podcasts. And
Speaker 4: you know, if you want to make sure you always
Speaker 4: get our monthly bonus episodes, just join the film Spotting
Speaker 4: Family at film spottingfamily dot com. All right now, from
Speaker 4: April twenty twenty three, here are our top five Joaquin
Speaker 4: Phoenix performances.
Speaker 7: We are ready to dive into this top five look
Speaker 7: at our favorite performances by someone who is one of
Speaker 7: the best actors, if not the best actors working today.
Speaker 7: We do have one disclaimer. We're setting aside one film
Speaker 7: that would have definitely made both of our lists, one
Speaker 7: performance by Joaquin Phoenix. And that's not because it's been
Speaker 7: talked about a lot over the course of the show's history.
Speaker 7: It's actually because we're going to be talking about it
Speaker 7: coming up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have our next bonus show for film Spotting
Speaker 4: family members focusing on Her, the ten year old. It's
Speaker 4: the tenth anniversary of Spike Jones's Her Believe it or Not,
Speaker 4: so that was one reason we wanted to revisit it.
Speaker 4: Also considering Joaquin Phoenix for this top five, and with
Speaker 4: bo as Afraid, we thought it'd be another good chance
Speaker 4: to take a look at her. And of course we're
Speaker 4: living right now, not only in the Age of Ai
Speaker 4: but Chet GPT, so that plot is going to have
Speaker 4: a lot of resonance for us, I think, and we
Speaker 4: will be spent a fair amount of time talking about
Speaker 4: Phoenix's performance in Her, So we are setting that aside,
Speaker 4: putting it in the penalty box for this list. Officially,
Speaker 4: though I think we can say, Adam, it would be
Speaker 4: on both of our last.
Speaker 7: Otherword, yes, one of his best performances as Theodore in
Speaker 7: her without a doubt. Let's get into our list, though,
Speaker 7: I can't wait to hear what you've got at number five.
Speaker 4: All right, I am going sort of back to the
Speaker 4: beginning with Jimmy Emmett from To Die For Now. Phoenix
Speaker 4: had been in a number of pictures before, so this
Speaker 4: isn't exactly his first or second role even, but it
Speaker 4: was his breakout Gus Vinceyan's nineteen ninety five satire about
Speaker 4: fame and celebrity. Phoenix's Jimmy is one of the high
Speaker 4: schoolers who falls under the spell of Nicole Kidman's aspiring
Speaker 4: TV reporter. She seduces him, manipulates him into killing her husband.
Speaker 2: Didn't you just get a divorce and then you get
Speaker 2: the conte and he get the car.
Speaker 9: Quality from me?
Speaker 2: Listen, I really think I'm just a kid, But.
Speaker 8: I can never do anything bad to you or I
Speaker 8: ever hurt you. A guy that does that to someone
Speaker 8: like you doesn't deserve to live.
Speaker 1: That's the cheesy.
Speaker 8: Doesn't deserve to live.
Speaker 9: No, I suppose you're right he doesn't.
Speaker 4: What's interesting to me about this performance, especially looking through
Speaker 4: the lens of the rest of Phoenix's career, is that
Speaker 4: right from the start, he had no interest in audience sympathy,
Speaker 4: did not seem like something that he cared about was
Speaker 4: on his radar at all, Yet he nevertheless gets it somehow.
Speaker 4: In this character, we do have a bit of sympathy
Speaker 4: for Jimmy Emmett, even though he's a messy kid making
Speaker 4: bad decisions. Phoenix brings that out in us while being
Speaker 4: completely committed to those more negative.
Speaker 3: Aspects of the character.
Speaker 4: I did turn to social media to help me make
Speaker 4: some of these other Phoenix performance picks, just to see
Speaker 4: beyond her, you know, and some of the other obvious ones,
Speaker 4: what people's favorites were. And I got a few interesting responses.
Speaker 4: When it came to Jimmy Emmett here a few people
Speaker 4: who also picked it. Adam Rupert touched on this audience
Speaker 4: sympathy quality on Facebook said that scene where he's shaking
Speaker 4: so bad while being questioned by the police heartbreaking, and
Speaker 4: then over on Twitter, Marissa Jude, she's at Marissa Jude
Speaker 4: here said, Phoenix reminded me of Juliet Lewis's performance in
Speaker 4: Cape Fear. The exquisite and nuanced expression of vulnerability and
Speaker 4: desire that seems unteachable well said by both. I love
Speaker 4: that comparison to Juliet lewis also one of those just
Speaker 4: deeply uncomfortable, unsettling breakout performances from a younger performer, and
Speaker 4: I think it does apply to what Phoenix is doing
Speaker 4: here as Jimmy Emma in to.
Speaker 7: Die for an honorable mention for me one that was
Speaker 7: a strong contender for my top five, And you're right,
Speaker 7: the performance that surely put him on the map for
Speaker 7: a lot of viewers put him on the map for me.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 7: I had seen him first as Leaf Phoenix, then in
Speaker 7: Space Camp in the mid eighties, but I wasn't paying
Speaker 7: a whole lot of attention then to him as someone
Speaker 7: who I thought would be one of the best actors
Speaker 7: of his generation. But you're correct, and the listener is
Speaker 7: correct that he plays a character who shouldn't be heartbreaking,
Speaker 7: but is. He's a killer, and we have to buy
Speaker 7: that he's going to make the leap he does. As
Speaker 7: a character, he's naive, certainly, he's malleable, he's gullible in
Speaker 7: that way, but he doesn't seem overly dangerous. And for
Speaker 7: him then to get to that point where he is
Speaker 7: going to murder Matt Dillon's character. We have to buy that,
Speaker 7: and we by it because Phoenix makes him damaged enough
Speaker 7: that you can go there as quickly as you do
Speaker 7: with him. But then he also plays him as an innocent,
Speaker 7: so that he just becomes part of this tragic, manipulative
Speaker 7: web of Kidman's character. He's another victim in at all.
Speaker 4: I wonder if damaged is going to come up quite
Speaker 4: a bit on our lists. That word, that's a good one,
Speaker 4: that fits absolutely.
Speaker 7: My number five Walking Phoenix performance is the performance that
Speaker 7: earned him the first of his four Academy Award nominations.
Speaker 3: He did not win.
Speaker 7: We know he won for a performance that might come
Speaker 7: up later on one of our lists, Josh. This was
Speaker 7: his Best Supporting Actor nominated turn as comedists in Ridley
Speaker 7: Scott's Gladiator, and I googled this just Gladiator Comedists earlier
Speaker 7: today to get a little bit of background on the
Speaker 7: real life person that he was portraying. Not that it matters,
Speaker 7: but I was curious because I hadn't read anything, and
Speaker 7: this is the first thing that popped. Commodist was a
Speaker 7: terrible ruler by virtually any standard. His fictionalized depiction as
Speaker 7: a mad emperor in the film Gladiator actually plays down
Speaker 7: some of his less believable excesses while giving him a
Speaker 7: nobler death. So just keep that in mind, Josh, that
Speaker 7: that sniveling, conniving, evil little baby that Joaque in Phoenix
Speaker 7: plays is actually exhibiting some restraint.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he's underplaying at apparently right underplaying it.
Speaker 7: We joke. I do genuinely enjoy the theatricality of their performance.
Speaker 7: I think it's a nice counter to the untheatricality of
Speaker 7: Russell Crowe's performance. We get one great moment I always
Speaker 7: see in my head where comedist is watching a battle
Speaker 7: and there's a big blood spurt and he lets out
Speaker 7: this lusty response with his tongue hanging out and he's
Speaker 7: kind of grinning his teeth and growling at the response.
Speaker 7: But in general, that character, the way Phoenix portrays him,
Speaker 7: is anksier than Robert Pattinson in The Batman and Adam
Speaker 7: Driver in any of those Star Wars movies combined. He
Speaker 7: is so quiet and deliberate, it's as if it's wrenching
Speaker 7: him to even speak. It pains him so much. And
Speaker 7: he's a weak character. He's more than that. He's evil.
Speaker 7: But Phoenix really does give him some dimension. We see
Speaker 7: the emotional havoc. It reeks on him to be weak,
Speaker 7: to not live up to his father's image or to
Speaker 7: his father's expectations, and Phoenix amplifies, I think, his self awareness.
Speaker 8: Even then it was as if you didn't want me
Speaker 8: for your.
Speaker 3: Son, Cominos, you go too far.
Speaker 2: The faces off the god waste. Please you can make
Speaker 2: you proud.
Speaker 8: Kind what one fullock?
Speaker 7: You will just help me, Phoenix with Richard Harris there
Speaker 7: as Marcus Aurelius, one full hug. Josh pressed me to
Speaker 7: your chest and held me tight. That's that's all he's
Speaker 7: longed for. I guarantee you that Russell Crowe's Maximus is
Speaker 7: never saying the word hug in a Gladiator, and we
Speaker 7: don't expect any characters to say the word hug in
Speaker 7: a lot of Gladiator type movies. But when he says,
Speaker 7: all I've ever wanted was to live up to you, Caesar, father,
Speaker 7: you believe him, You really believe the emotional depth of that.
Speaker 4: I have not seen Gladiator since it came out when
Speaker 4: I liked it well enough, But it's interesting, you know
Speaker 4: how careers have gone in terms of the stars and
Speaker 4: so forth. The reason I would rewatch Gladiator now is
Speaker 4: to reconsider that woking Phoenix performance, just how his career
Speaker 4: has ascended, Russell Crows, Russell Crows has tailed off, and
Speaker 4: you wouldn't think that. Yeah, I'm gonna go look at
Speaker 4: Gladiator again for the acting necessarily, but that is what
Speaker 4: still intrigues me, and maybe I'll have to do a
Speaker 4: revisit for that, all right. Number four for me is
Speaker 4: Merril hess in signs. This is Phoenix in likable mode
Speaker 4: in m Night Shyamalan's Alien Invasion thriller. Likable mode is
Speaker 4: something he can do and does on occasion. Not very often, however,
Speaker 4: but it's kind of fun and rewarding when he pulls
Speaker 4: it out of his tool kit. I also like here
Speaker 4: how he effortlessly slips into what is essentially an ensemble piece.
Speaker 4: I mean, Mel Gibson is the lead, of course, but
Speaker 4: this is an ensemble drama in a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: and Phoenix comes in to do things you might not expect,
Speaker 4: to lighten the mood, lighten the movie's edges a little bit.
Speaker 4: He just has a wonderfully light comic touch, and I
Speaker 4: think it's probably best displayed when he gives the response
Speaker 4: to Mel Gibson and his long soliloquy about miracles or coincidences.
Speaker 4: This is an occasion of Shyamalan, I think, also kind
Speaker 4: of undercutting himself and being aware of his grund eloquent
Speaker 4: tendencies with this soliloquy here. But then in comes Phoenix.
Speaker 4: Merrill has given this whole speech some you know, probably
Speaker 4: not so deep thought, and he decides he's a miracle
Speaker 4: man who was at this party.
Speaker 8: Once I'm on my couch with the random McKinney. She's
Speaker 8: just sitting there looking beautiful, staring at me. I go
Speaker 8: to leave him and kiss her. Realize I've got side.
Speaker 8: Turn do you have the gum stuff in the paper?
Speaker 8: Come next to the sofa and turn around. Random McKinney
Speaker 8: throws up all over herself. I knew this a cand
Speaker 8: it happened. It was a miracle. I could have been
Speaker 8: kissing her when she threw up. Now I want to
Speaker 8: scar me for life.
Speaker 4: Meryl is the sort of part that this movie, you know,
Speaker 4: signs didn't really need Meryl necessarily, but because of Phoenix's
Speaker 4: performance now when I think about it, I can't imagine
Speaker 4: the film without him, you know, just because of the
Speaker 4: contributions he makes and again the different vibes he brings
Speaker 4: to this film. Another fan of this performance is Aaron
Speaker 4: Bergstrom over on Twitter at Aaron Bergstrom. He wrote, Phoenix
Speaker 4: is so often associated with playing weirdos, often dangerous ones.
Speaker 4: So when I look back at his performance as a
Speaker 4: well meaning fella like Meryl, I appreciate how good he
Speaker 4: is at depicting loyalty and bravery. So yeah, maybe a
Speaker 4: simpler character than some of the others he plays, but
Speaker 4: he plays it just right.
Speaker 7: He does very good in that scene, very good in
Speaker 7: that film. Interesting that we've got back to back choices
Speaker 7: in which we hear Joaquin Phoenix whispering primarily very very
Speaker 7: quietly different circumstances, and Merrill not exactly an evil character.
Speaker 7: My number four, I've got another weirdo, definitely one of
Speaker 7: Woking Phoenix's weirdos. And you were talking about him in
Speaker 7: terms of whether he plays characters who are likable or unlikable.
Speaker 7: This is one who I don't even know where to
Speaker 7: put him on that scale. And it's not because he's
Speaker 7: got things about him that make him someone that you
Speaker 7: really respond to favorably and even aspire to be like.
Speaker 7: That's not the case at all. But he also isn't
Speaker 7: so bad that you despise him ever, either.
Speaker 3: He's just an.
Speaker 7: Immensely flawed character. And that character is Leonard Creditor in
Speaker 7: James Gray's Two Lovers. So multiple collaborations with James Gray.
Speaker 7: I'm going with his performance as Leonard in Two Lovers.
Speaker 7: What a trip down memory lane. It was Josh reminding
Speaker 7: myself about this film, this performance, and the context around it.
Speaker 7: I had completely forgotten that Two Lovers, the movie and
Speaker 7: this performance were totally overshadowed at the time by the
Speaker 7: Shenanigans surrounding the filming of I'm Still Here, which would
Speaker 7: come out two years later, or actually just a little
Speaker 7: over a year later. In terms of when we reviewed
Speaker 7: this film Two Lovers on the show was February twenty seventh,
Speaker 7: two thousand and nine. That infamous David Letterman appearance was
Speaker 7: February eleventh, two thousand and nine, so this was all
Speaker 7: in the wake of that, and people were really watching
Speaker 7: Two Lovers thinking it was Woquin Phoenix's swan song from acting.
Speaker 7: It was supposedly his final performance as an actor because
Speaker 7: he was retiring to become a rapper, and with all
Speaker 7: of that, he had apparently completely lost his mind.
Speaker 10: So here's my hope that after some time off and
Speaker 10: I think you're taking a little time off tonight.
Speaker 3: I I'm hopeful that you will.
Speaker 10: Reconsider and and come back to acting because you're just
Speaker 10: you know, there's nobody really better than you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still like.
Speaker 13: I say never, right, I don't I don't know, I
Speaker 13: don't know what, I don't know if, I don't know
Speaker 13: what will happen.
Speaker 1: But you you are You're not gonna act anymore? No, huh?
Speaker 3: Why is that?
Speaker 1: Mmm?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean you have given up some thought.
Speaker 3: This will come up some more.
Speaker 7: But going through my notes, it was amazing because I
Speaker 7: look back on these different films that have been reviewed
Speaker 7: on the show, how many times I'd use synonyms to
Speaker 7: describe his characters and movies. In this case, it was
Speaker 7: talking about a character who was always kind of floating
Speaker 7: through these scenes, disconnected from everything that the movie itself
Speaker 7: has an ethereal quality to it. It's basically a fable.
Speaker 7: You could apply similar words and phrases to Bo's Afraid
Speaker 7: or to some of these other performances that we'll probably
Speaker 7: talk about for those who don't remember. Two lovers. It's
Speaker 7: pretty much what the name suggests. It's a movie about
Speaker 7: a love triangle. Leonard is involved with two different women.
Speaker 7: One who really wants to take care of him and
Speaker 7: wants to love him, and he's too neurotic to let
Speaker 7: her do it. That's Vanessa Shaw's character. And then there's
Speaker 7: another woman who he wants to take care of and
Speaker 7: she's the one with the issues in allowing him to
Speaker 7: do that. That's Gwyneth Paltrow's character. But there's a melancholy
Speaker 7: to Leonard that makes him endearing or certainly endearing enough.
Speaker 7: And there's an intimacy that Gray captures with Phoenix and
Speaker 7: these women that is really striking in the way Phoenix
Speaker 7: can often be intimate on screen and also make you
Speaker 7: a little bit uncomfortable at the same time, there's an
Speaker 7: intensity to these intimate scenes that can be both off
Speaker 7: putting and something that also brings you in. And what
Speaker 7: really stands out about Phoenix in this role, but again,
Speaker 7: I'm sure many others we might get to. He's someone
Speaker 7: who's utterly uninterested in vanity. He has no interest in
Speaker 7: being cool on screen, and Leonard is not cool, and
Speaker 7: he also has no interest in being conventionally masculine, which
Speaker 7: is also one of the things that I think really
Speaker 7: does define Phoenix as a fascinating performer. He's volatile, but
Speaker 7: the softer and the more vulnerable he is on screen,
Speaker 7: the more interesting he is. And that's certainly the case
Speaker 7: here with Leonard in Two Lovers.
Speaker 13: If I got to know you that I wouldn't love you,
Speaker 13: But I do know you, and I love you a
Speaker 13: little more.
Speaker 2: I understand you, Michelle. I'm up too.
Speaker 6: I'll never walk with from you.
Speaker 2: I left, I never do.
Speaker 3: I take you well.
Speaker 4: You went with the one Waquin Phoenix James Gray collaboration
Speaker 4: I have not seen, but I've liked the other two,
Speaker 4: so I'm going to assume you're right in this pick.
Speaker 4: Adam I especially like him in The Yards. I can
Speaker 4: still picture kind of his devilish face in that one.
Speaker 4: So yeah, these two have been really strong collaborators. My
Speaker 4: number three pick is with another filmmaker he has worked
Speaker 4: with twice now, and that would be Paul Thomas Anderson.
Speaker 4: Here at number three, I have Larry Dox Bortello from
Speaker 4: Inherent Vice. We've touched on a little bit his comedic abilities,
Speaker 4: and I think this is the movie of all of
Speaker 4: his that I've seen that puts them on display the most.
Speaker 4: This adaptation of Thomas Pinchon's comic Gumshoe novel. It's set
Speaker 4: against the druggy beach scene of nineteen seventy California. Doc
Speaker 4: Sportello is this hazy private detective just ekeing out a
Speaker 4: living of sorts in a beach shack just a few
Speaker 4: blocks from the ocean, and as happens in these sort
Speaker 4: of tales, he gets caught up in a rabbit hole
Speaker 4: of an investigation. Phoenix has so much fun with the
Speaker 4: curly qu noir dialogue here and the chance to play
Speaker 4: really this adult fool who's sometimes smarter than he's presenting
Speaker 4: himself and a lot of times not or or let's
Speaker 4: just say not in complete control of his faculties. And
Speaker 4: just watching Phoenix have fun with that is such a blast.
Speaker 4: So many of the laughs come from observing Doc trying
Speaker 4: to focus in the midst of these increasingly ridiculous conversations
Speaker 4: with all sorts of characters, and this includes Josh Brolin's
Speaker 4: Lieutenant Detective Bigfoot Bjornson, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Big and smashed on my door, kwawn.
Speaker 11: After a long and busy day of civil rights violations.
Speaker 11: I found myself in the neighborhood and compelled to drop
Speaker 11: in just to check and see the current state of affairs.
Speaker 11: Mild stomping grounds, seeing as your effort to keep lines
Speaker 11: of communication had been limited.
Speaker 8: To say the least.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've been busy.
Speaker 11: I'm trying to figure out which side of the zigzag
Speaker 11: paper is the sticky sign.
Speaker 4: This is not just a comedic performance, though a few
Speaker 4: listeners mentioned when they made this pick some of the
Speaker 4: other qualities that appealed to them about the performance. Andrew
Speaker 4: Bodenbach on Facebook said, He's hilarious and ridiculous, but what
Speaker 4: really hits is how compassionate he is.
Speaker 3: He really cares about people.
Speaker 4: I think you do feel that. And here's from Jeremy S.
Speaker 4: Wade at American Weight on Twitter. You just really want
Speaker 4: that poor son of a bitch to get a win.
Speaker 4: And this kind of speaks, I think, more to the
Speaker 4: you come around to his character's side so often, despite
Speaker 4: all evidence to the contrary, that that's where you should be,
Speaker 4: and there's a little bit of that element here in
Speaker 4: Dox Bartello as well. It's also fun to think about
Speaker 4: this being the performance. Going back to the idea of collaborations,
Speaker 4: this being the performance and the character that he and
Speaker 4: Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to explore together after working on
Speaker 4: The Master. So interesting choice. I don't want to get
Speaker 4: ahead of myself, so I'll leave that there.
Speaker 7: And I don't want to get ahead of myself either, Josh,
Speaker 7: so I will also leave Larry Knox Bortello right there
Speaker 7: and go to my number three walking Phoenix performance, a
Speaker 7: performance in a film that no one will apply the
Speaker 7: words fun to or blast to, like you just did
Speaker 7: with Inherent Vice.
Speaker 3: But one connection.
Speaker 7: You've got Phoenix in your number three, chasing down a
Speaker 7: missing girl in a complex conspiracy, and so do I.
Speaker 7: But Joe from Lynn Ramsey's twenty seventeen film You Were
Speaker 7: Never Really Here is definitely not the teddy bear, the
Speaker 7: compassionate teddy bear that Doc Sportello is. And Joe suffers
Speaker 7: from something that Doc doesn't, which is severe trauma. So
Speaker 7: you've got a character who is all about repression and
Speaker 7: is all about withholding other than the blunt acts of
Speaker 7: violence that he carries out. He's not demonstrative, he's certainly
Speaker 7: not vocal. He barely speaks. This has to be the
Speaker 7: fewest lines the Phoenix has in any one of his performances.
Speaker 7: He's a big physical presence, like with bo Is Afraid.
Speaker 7: He put on weight for this role, and he certainly
Speaker 7: carries it. It's it's not a weight that manifests itself,
Speaker 7: certainly in muscle or as if he's been hitting the
Speaker 7: gym a lot. He is someone who carries a big
Speaker 7: burden and needs a big frame to do it. And
Speaker 7: yet somehow Phoenix may makes him feel like a ghost,
Speaker 7: like he's incapable of leaving a footprint. He's just moving
Speaker 7: through the world, almost invisible to everyone around him. A
Speaker 7: line that has always stuck with me from that film
Speaker 7: is when a character says, and if I remember the
Speaker 7: context right, they're not using it negatively. I think they
Speaker 7: may need his skills. They say, I hear you're brutal,
Speaker 7: and Phoenix says, I can be. And something about the
Speaker 7: kind of flat delivery of that the succinct screen writing
Speaker 7: there just having him say I can be. It's a
Speaker 7: case where Phoenix in the performance could indicate in that
Speaker 7: line reading or with some kind of physicality or something
Speaker 7: on his face before during after he says it. He
Speaker 7: could indicate that well he's not really a monster. He
Speaker 7: doesn't want to be brutal, but sometimes he has to be.
Speaker 7: And again, he's not someone who's interested in being cool
Speaker 7: on screen. He's not someone who's interested, it would seem,
Speaker 7: in indicating those things.
Speaker 3: To the audience.
Speaker 7: He's he's willing to play Joe for exactly who he
Speaker 7: is and his future actions, his choices will determine what
Speaker 7: we ultimately think of him. How many Josh Killer Seeks
Speaker 7: Redemption movies have we seen? I don't know if we've
Speaker 7: done that top five before. We probably have, like Assassins
Speaker 7: with a Heart of Gold or something. It's a well
Speaker 7: worn convention at this point, and Phoenix gives any beat
Speaker 7: that might feel familiar a completely different spin.
Speaker 13: Gets your name, Scott, mister Rogers that I'm to ask
Speaker 13: you some questions. Please be inlest with me, HI security.
Speaker 13: How many are there? Huh so one more than one?
Speaker 1: Two?
Speaker 8: Two?
Speaker 2: Where?
Speaker 5: Where?
Speaker 8: Oh god sez the front door?
Speaker 1: Second guy on the top floor?
Speaker 8: Where's the playgrounds? Thinking that these girls, therefore.
Speaker 7: He makes this character Joe a truly enigmatic one, and
Speaker 7: that he makes some choices sometimes that are confusing or
Speaker 7: bewildering or troubling or upsetting, but you don't ever actually
Speaker 7: question him as a man. And I think that's where
Speaker 7: the term damaged. We'll come back into play here at
Speaker 7: least one more time as a damaged man.
Speaker 4: That's the word that pops up here. I'm just pulling
Speaker 4: up my review and I liked it a little less
Speaker 4: than you, but did appreciate how the filmmaking aligned itself
Speaker 4: with Phoenix's performance and the character's headspace right when Ramsey
Speaker 4: using just a lot of impressionistic imagery, and I think
Speaker 4: of that the haunting sound design as well.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I wrote how this is all.
Speaker 4: Geared toward evoking Joe's deranged, damaged point of view.
Speaker 1: So there it is.
Speaker 7: We do have two more a reminder we set her
Speaker 7: and Theodore aside, although we both love those performances. We're
Speaker 7: going to talk about that movie coming up soon in
Speaker 7: some bonus content for film spotting family members.
Speaker 3: What do you have at number two? This might be
Speaker 3: where you want to go get some more popcorn and
Speaker 3: something to drink. Maybe look for a.
Speaker 4: Lid, an elusive lid, because it's Arthur Fleck in joker.
Speaker 4: I do think that Phoenix has a talent above all
Speaker 4: for miserableness, and to me, this is one of his
Speaker 4: most fascinating ones. Arthur Fleck the movie itself, we don't
Speaker 4: need to re litigate it. I know I'm one of
Speaker 4: the few people who take it seriously. I'll say I
Speaker 4: still feel okay about that. A couple of years on.
Speaker 4: I think we've only seen more disgruntled individuals lashing out
Speaker 4: at society that hasn't lightened up in recent years. So
Speaker 4: I think this movie resonates in that way. And I
Speaker 4: also think that that is what connects with Phoenix's performance.
Speaker 4: Arthur Fleck is both a symptom and a symbol of
Speaker 4: societal breakdown in Joker, and that is something that Phoenix
Speaker 4: communicates through a performance of operatic physicality.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I like the movie.
Speaker 4: There's a lot there, but for me, it's Phoenix who
Speaker 4: is the centrifugal force, and I am mesmerized by his
Speaker 4: carefully choreographed but seemingly chaotic clumsiness in this movie. That's
Speaker 4: also what makes this a somewhat funny performance. I think
Speaker 4: of him running down the streets or hallways, his limbs
Speaker 4: all askew. He's not, but he might as well be
Speaker 4: wearing clown shoes. That's how he runs. I think about
Speaker 4: him slipping and fumbling with the gun on the subway
Speaker 4: in that sequence where he's trying to defend himself from
Speaker 4: his attackers. And then yeah, the dance on those steps.
Speaker 4: I love so much, the dance and then his comic
Speaker 4: scrambling away when the cops come interrupt him in undercut.
Speaker 4: The whole scene, now, as outward is so much of
Speaker 4: this is Phoenix. This is the thing he does. We've
Speaker 4: touched on a number of times. He internalizes all of
Speaker 4: this as well, so you're getting both. He's using physicality
Speaker 4: to convey and internal brokenness, and we get another man
Speaker 4: whose wires just seem to be crossed, and in this movie,
Speaker 4: he's stuck in a society that doesn't care at all
Speaker 4: to even bother trying to uncross them.
Speaker 5: He just asked the same questions every week, how's your job?
Speaker 5: Are you having any negative thoughts? All I have are
Speaker 5: negative thoughts, But you don't listen anyway. I said, for
Speaker 5: my whole life, I didn't know if I even really existed,
Speaker 5: But I do, and people are starting to notice.
Speaker 4: I heard from Anton varfort Over on Twitter who said
Speaker 4: Joker is good. I think there is a vulnerability or
Speaker 4: maybe even something damaged there. It is to Woking that
Speaker 4: makes him work especially well in those kind of roles.
Speaker 4: I don't think the movie was amazing, but it wasn't
Speaker 4: just a King of Comedy ripoff. So yep, I'm going
Speaker 4: with Arthur Fleck my number two. I think, you know, technically,
Speaker 4: if we were including her, I'd probably have it up
Speaker 4: this high and Joker would be at three. But for now,
Speaker 4: it's my number two Walking Phoenix performance.
Speaker 7: Yeah, let's just go ahead and keep this positive. I'm
Speaker 7: not gonna rehash any in my comments about not only
Speaker 7: the film, but actually it turns out.
Speaker 3: I didn't even really like Walking Phoenix performance, and terrible, terrible.
Speaker 7: To me, especially after preparing for this list, is genuinely
Speaker 7: unthinkable because I think he can pull off the impossible,
Speaker 7: and yet Joker was too much for Walking Phoenix. In
Speaker 7: this case, I've got at number two a performance that
Speaker 7: you already mentioned. Some crossover here Paul Thomas Anderson Larry
Speaker 7: Dox Sportello from a Inherent Vice, which contains what is
Speaker 7: still probably my funniest moment in any Paul Thomas Anderson film,
Speaker 7: when early in the movie he's talking to Jenna Malone's
Speaker 7: character at her kitchen table, she's recounting her heroin use
Speaker 7: and getting pregnant. She shows a picture of little Amethyst,
Speaker 7: which Phoenix's doc responds to.
Speaker 8: This way, this is.
Speaker 6: What we had her looking like. Everybody helpfully pointed out
Speaker 6: how the heron was actually coming through my breast milk.
Speaker 7: But m h, now, I don't know that I've seen
Speaker 7: one used myself in the wild. But not surprisingly, if
Speaker 7: you search in Hairent Vice scream or Joaquin Phoenix screaming,
Speaker 7: all the gifts pop up. This is a ready made
Speaker 7: meme moment, but it's really brilliant acting. I mean Malone,
Speaker 7: she doesn't flinch at all what he screams like that.
Speaker 7: She does say I, I don't know if you have
Speaker 7: the stomach for it before she hands him the photo,
Speaker 7: so she knows that the picture is horrifying because she
Speaker 7: was breastfeeding but using heroin at the time, but it's
Speaker 7: still her baby. And you still expect that Doxportello will
Speaker 7: react by repressing whatever his instinctual reaction is. You actually
Speaker 7: think he'll do what he does right after he screams,
Speaker 7: which is he looks again at the photo, even though
Speaker 7: he doesn't want to. He looks again at the photo
Speaker 7: almost like he's he's assessing it, and he says mm hm,
Speaker 7: and he's very clinical about it, but he can't help it.
Speaker 7: He's so horrified. He lets out that scream and then
Speaker 7: it just immediately closes up. And I laugh every time
Speaker 7: I see it, and I do just love this gumshoe
Speaker 7: character who's in, as you said, this labyrinthine pinsion world
Speaker 7: of early seventies LA. In the setup to our review
Speaker 7: of this film, I described it this way. I said,
Speaker 7: take the big Lebouse, he's perpetually stone protagonists. Add the
Speaker 7: anachronistic absurdity and culture clashing of Altmans along Goodbye, Mix
Speaker 7: in the borderline nonsensical plot machinations of the Big Sleep,
Speaker 7: and top it all off with the pervasive corruption of Chinatown.
Speaker 7: That's what you get with this film. And there's some
Speaker 7: pretty strong touchstones there. Not surprising that I love this
Speaker 7: movie as much as I do. And I think one
Speaker 7: of his real gifts we've talked about a few of them,
Speaker 7: is that he's able to embody these characters who do
Speaker 7: kind of straddle these different these different worlds. He so
Speaker 7: naturally exudes being a man out of time, even literal
Speaker 7: time with this character and others in terms of the
Speaker 7: pace of his movements, his manner of speaking. He always
Speaker 7: moves at his own pace and often doesn't verbally respond
Speaker 7: in moments that you think a woking Phoenix character would.
Speaker 7: He's he's processing, he's experiencing it. You experience it in
Speaker 7: real time with Phoenix's character. So I'm with you in
Speaker 7: my appreciation. I have it even higher Dox Portello at
Speaker 7: number two. A lot of processing going on by document
Speaker 7: of processing, indeed, and that brings us to our number one,
Speaker 7: which is not a surprising pick, but we think it's
Speaker 7: the right pick obviously, and it's a joint number one
Speaker 7: pick there. There can only be one here if we're
Speaker 7: talking about Phoenix, and it turns out if we're talking
Speaker 7: about Phoenix and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean in The Master as Freddi Quell. It's
Speaker 4: a character you immediately know when you first see him
Speaker 4: in that movie you're not going to take your eyes
Speaker 4: off him, partly because you don't want him out of
Speaker 4: your sight for what he will do if he's out
Speaker 4: of your range of vision, so discomfaning, so unnerving. Maybe
Speaker 4: the character that tests the theory the most of Phoenix,
Speaker 4: somehow ill attracting the audience's interest and sympathy. I think
Speaker 4: Freddie Quell pushes that the most, and it's only maybe
Speaker 4: having Philip Seymour Hoffmann's Master as something of an antagonist
Speaker 4: that allows that to happen. I think once we see
Speaker 4: how Freddy is being manipulated a little bit, we maybe
Speaker 4: begin to feel a little more sorry for him. But
Speaker 4: this is a broken, dangerous, scarred man. And I remember
Speaker 4: my first impression of The Master, a movie I've revisited
Speaker 4: a number of times, but coming away from it that
Speaker 4: first screening was Phoenix's face and what he did to it.
Speaker 4: I don't know how he transformed physically so much. You know,
Speaker 4: we talk about losing weight gaining weight for actors. I wrote,
Speaker 4: his face was withered and warren. Particularly when he scowls,
Speaker 4: it's almost as if his cleft lip has spread so
Speaker 4: that rivulets now also cross his cheeks, his brow, his chin,
Speaker 4: And that also is a physical man inifestation again of
Speaker 4: what's inside. It's like all of this torture is bubbling
Speaker 4: and seeping out, and it's coming out in his face.
Speaker 4: It's also coming out, and how Freddie walks, how Phoenix
Speaker 4: carries himself. I want to get to this when we
Speaker 4: talk about his performance in Her. There's some interesting examples
Speaker 4: of just, you know, his gait as an actor, and
Speaker 4: we see it here more than anywhere else. I think
Speaker 4: it's just this mask of torment that Phoenix wears and
Speaker 4: spreads to the rest of his body, and of course
Speaker 4: it does explode into violent physicality at times. I think
Speaker 4: one of the movies' first indications of this is that
Speaker 4: incredibly odd and uncomfortable scene where Freddie is working as
Speaker 4: a photographer at the department store when he gets back
Speaker 4: from the war, and he just lets his rage seep
Speaker 4: out into this passive, aggressive session with a client.
Speaker 3: I'm starting to sweat.
Speaker 2: You need to shut up, you need to move the gun.
Speaker 8: You need to shut up, you need to back off,
Speaker 8: sit down. I'm very sorry.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get the landing right. He must understand
Speaker 2: you want to get the radio.
Speaker 4: You can hear the simmering confrontation there. But there's also,
Speaker 4: of course in what Phoenix does again the actions. There's
Speaker 4: the slow shoving of that hot lamp towards the man's face,
Speaker 4: then the choke like tightening of the tie, and of
Speaker 4: course again that scowling look he has at the very
Speaker 4: beginning of the scene, just utter disdain for this guy.
Speaker 4: You know, he hates this man. We could speculate on
Speaker 4: the reasons. I think the movie goes on to give
Speaker 4: us a few of them, but immediately Freddy Quell hates
Speaker 4: this man. It's going to go badly for him. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm with you, master crowning achievement at this point in
Speaker 4: his career. Just a perfect marriage of the physical and
Speaker 4: the psychological that he's so good.
Speaker 7: At rewatching that scene today. I don't think it's an
Speaker 7: accident that the actor, if you look closely, the actor
Speaker 7: really resembles Philip Seymour Hopkins Lancaster. So it's it's foreshadowing
Speaker 7: the relationship he's going to have with that man as well,
Speaker 7: Lancaster DoD And we do get this seemingly unprovoked response,
Speaker 7: this disdain for this character. But it all starts when
Speaker 7: he asks him about who it's for. He says it's
Speaker 7: for his wife. This is this is the virile American
Speaker 7: male who is the domesticated version of a man that
Speaker 7: Freddy Quell can never be right. And it makes sense
Speaker 7: on some level that then that's going to be his
Speaker 7: instinctive response to him. And this movie is dealing with
Speaker 7: a lot of those subjects and those themes in a
Speaker 7: way that is not spelled out. But I really feel
Speaker 7: that Freddy Quell is carrying the burden of post war
Speaker 7: America on his shoulders, on his pretty slight shoulders here, Yeah,
Speaker 7: very thin and way more frail coming back from the war.
Speaker 7: And the way I described his character at the time
Speaker 7: was he's like an arthritic fist. You know, he's just
Speaker 7: crumpled up.
Speaker 3: You see it in that scene.
Speaker 7: It's as if every part of him is in pain.
Speaker 7: I think he does remark at some point that he's
Speaker 7: got stomach pain. But you watch him in that scene
Speaker 7: when he's getting the camera ready, pretty Quill acts as
Speaker 7: if he's perpetually experiencing heartburn, a terrible taste in his mouth,
Speaker 7: that as if he is always suffering or experiencing some pain,
Speaker 7: And you watch his mannerisms in that scene or throughout
Speaker 7: the movie, is Freddy. I really think a lot of
Speaker 7: lesser actors who tried to embody that character, tried to
Speaker 7: evoke those feelings and the type of phrasing that we're
Speaker 7: summoning here. They would make him overly theatrical. They would
Speaker 7: make him feel like a character, wouldn't feel natural, and
Speaker 7: it wouldn't have the power that it has. The putting
Speaker 7: his hand on his hips, the slouching that he does
Speaker 7: with his shoulders, in the facial reactions, all the things
Speaker 7: were saying, Phoenix makes it feel almost like Freddie Quell
Speaker 7: may have come out of the womb that way to
Speaker 7: go back to bow is afraid. We know that's probably
Speaker 7: not the case. That the war and his experience is
Speaker 7: there had to shape him somewhat into, if not completely,
Speaker 7: into the man that we see now, this broken man
Speaker 7: that we see now. But he makes it feel as
Speaker 7: if this is his life experience, and we don't ever
Speaker 7: we never questioned it. I never questioned it.
Speaker 3: Enough performance you'd pass this guy in the street.
Speaker 4: You know, that's like a very basic litmus test you
Speaker 4: can give to any sort of reality based performance. At
Speaker 4: least can I imagine myself passing this guy in the street,
Speaker 4: And in Freddy Quayle's case, absolutely, and you would know
Speaker 4: by all of those things you described Phoenix doing that
Speaker 4: can innicates you'd want to step aside, right it's just
Speaker 4: like this.
Speaker 3: Chances ire'll pass this guy, it'll be fine. Chances are
Speaker 3: more likely it won't.
Speaker 7: Be Yeah, even if he's not being assault of himself
Speaker 7: and no, no moment.
Speaker 3: How he's carrying himself, just the energy. Yep.
Speaker 7: Those are our top five walk in Phoenix performances. Any
Speaker 7: honorable mentions, Josh, do you like to throw in?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think we should get to this one because I
Speaker 4: saw this come up a lot on social media. People
Speaker 4: are big fans of the film, Come on, come on.
Speaker 4: And his performance as Johnny this is from writer director
Speaker 4: Mike Mills, and this is another nice guy Phoenix role.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: He's this single, kind of emotionally reserved uncle of a
Speaker 4: young boy and he ends up caring for the boy
Speaker 4: while his mother and father are going through this difficult patch.
Speaker 4: The boys played by Woody Norman. They have great chemistry
Speaker 4: together and it's a very generous and light turn. I
Speaker 4: think that is as good as the other stuff he's done.
Speaker 4: Maybe just not isn't the epitome to me of what
Speaker 4: Phoenix is like. So it didn't quite make the cut.
Speaker 2: Maybe we can just take this process slowly and and yeah,
Speaker 2: see how it feels.
Speaker 1: M H.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm just really sorry that your children died.
Speaker 2: You know, only I can do that part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I told you that's how me and mom do it.
Speaker 2: If it makes sense for your mom to do that,
Speaker 2: that's cool, But it doesn't make sense to me. That's
Speaker 2: what I was explaining to you, because it's ridiculous. It's sad.
Speaker 4: From April twenty twenty three, those were our top five
Speaker 4: Joaquin Phoenix performances. You can see our picks and more
Speaker 4: top fives at film spotting dot net slash lists.
Speaker 3: Michael. That does it for us listeners.
Speaker 4: If you'd like to connect with us on social media,
Speaker 4: you can find Adam and the show on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 4: and letterbox at film Spotting, I'm at Larson on film
Speaker 4: At all those places, as well as Blue Sky, we
Speaker 4: are independently produced and listener supported. You can support the
Speaker 4: show by joining the film Spotting Family at film spottingfamily
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Speaker 4: also get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access
Speaker 4: to the entire show archive. For show t shirts and
Speaker 4: other merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop now.
Speaker 4: In that film Spotting archive, you will find reviews of
Speaker 4: all three previous ariastorfilms, so bo Is Afraid on Show
Speaker 4: nine seventeen, Midsomars seven thirty six, and Hereditary on six
Speaker 4: eighty five. I'm going to do a quick ranking here, Michael,
Speaker 4: just because I recently revised my Ariaster ranking on Letterboxed,
Speaker 4: I still have Hereditary up at the top. Maybe it's
Speaker 4: the horror fan in me just love that movie so much.
Speaker 4: I think I have bos Afraid next. I think that's
Speaker 4: where I put it because it and Eddington are close
Speaker 4: in that. Something's worked for me. Some things don't. But
Speaker 4: I love the swings they're taking. Midsomar I am positive on,
Speaker 4: but I thought was the least successful. Do you have
Speaker 4: a clear favorite of his, Michael, or have you seen
Speaker 4: all four?
Speaker 1: It's a good I have. It's a good question. I
Speaker 1: haven't revisited Hereditary because you know it's for me. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't be an easy revisit, although it's very good, I think,
Speaker 1: and unnerving as all hell. But don't I don't. I
Speaker 1: got to think about that in a funny way. The
Speaker 1: movies themselves are so internally uneven and arguably inconsistent, Yet
Speaker 1: he is consistently worth the provocations. You know, I mean
Speaker 1: I I's a good sign.
Speaker 3: I think I feel the same way. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I'm realizing now, Michael, you're basically coming away from
Speaker 4: this recording with a homework assignment that's pretty hefty. So
Speaker 4: I want your ariost ranked list. I want you to
Speaker 4: choose between the apartment in Sunset Boulevard, and then I
Speaker 4: want you to vote in the film spotting poll about
Speaker 4: actresses playing actresses who are going through it?
Speaker 3: Okay, you got all that? Do you write all that
Speaker 3: in your.
Speaker 1: Noble all right, Yeah, I'll do it. It'll be the
Speaker 1: last time I remember darken these doors again.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's next week, all right, on streaming and
Speaker 3: v o D right now.
Speaker 4: Recently released is Happy Gilmore two. This has apparently Betty Safty, Haley,
Speaker 4: Joel Osmond, Margaret Qually, Travis Kelcey and Bad Bunny. Make
Speaker 4: of all that what you will? In wide release The
Speaker 4: Fantastic Four First Steps recommended by Michael Phillips. Also in
Speaker 4: wide release, Oh Hi. This stars Molly Gordon from Shiva, Baby,
Speaker 4: Theater Camp and of course The Bear. She plays a
Speaker 4: woman who goes on a romantic get away with a
Speaker 4: new boyfriend played by Logan Lherman. Next week, Adam is
Speaker 4: back and we will be doing a Pantheon Project review
Speaker 4: of One Flew Over the Huku's Nest in honor of
Speaker 4: its fiftieth anniversary, and we're also tackling our top five
Speaker 4: Jack Nicholson scenes. Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe
Speaker 4: Deso and Sam van Holgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe,
Speaker 4: this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempenar.
Speaker 4: Special thanks to everyone at wb easy Chicago. More information
Speaker 4: is available at wbeazy dot org and special special thanks
Speaker 4: to Michael Phillips for helping me wade through my conflicted
Speaker 4: thoughts about Eddington. Michael, any work you've been up to
Speaker 4: coming out, things you're looking forward to that listeners should
Speaker 4: keep an eye out for.
Speaker 1: I mean, every almost every week over a classical WFMT
Speaker 1: ninety eight point seven FM here in Chicago, I introduce
Speaker 1: and host the first segment of the weekly program. Soundtrack
Speaker 1: a great array of film music, mostly film, TV, some
Speaker 1: video games, but mostly film. And you know, I'm working
Speaker 1: on just all kinds of fascinating stuff, including I Think
Speaker 1: what I Hope is going to be a piece that
Speaker 1: allows me to stretch out a bit and actually take
Speaker 1: time to do a proper Kim Novak interview and profile.
Speaker 1: She's getting a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice International
Speaker 1: Film Festival. I've been lucky enough to get invited back
Speaker 1: to Venice to be on this sort of off off
Speaker 1: the main slate side panel called the Bi and Ali
Speaker 1: College Cinema. Several critics in the country are going over
Speaker 1: to could reconvene and do that, and I'd like to.
Speaker 1: I'd like to, and I'll just talk process right here.
Speaker 1: I don't care if it doesn't work out. You guys
Speaker 1: are all friends. I'm trying to get. I may try
Speaker 1: to get out to Oregon, where miss Novak lives and
Speaker 1: has lived for many decades now, and do a do
Speaker 1: a minute interview away from the red carpet first and
Speaker 1: then catch up with her. So I'd love to. I'd
Speaker 1: love to do that. She is one hundred percent of Chicago,
Speaker 1: a really great, very bittersweet and anyways Chicago story, and
Speaker 1: I love it that she's getting the recognition now for
Speaker 1: one of the most unusual big stars Hollywood ever produced.
Speaker 4: Sounds like an incredible project, So all the best with
Speaker 4: that and safe travels to Venice. Thanks again for joining
Speaker 4: me here. Thanks Josh, it was fun for film spotting.
Speaker 4: I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. The burn.
Speaker 7: Film Spotting is listeners supported. Join the film Spotting Family
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Speaker 7: the first time, all in one place, the entire film
Speaker 7: spotting archive going back to two thousand and five. That's
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Speaker 8: Pannably