Speaker 1: Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie
Speaker 1: subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits.
Speaker 1: See any standard 2D movie, anytime, with no blackout dates
Speaker 1: or restrictions. Sign up now on the Regal app or
Speaker 1: at the link in our description and use code FILMSPOT26
Speaker 1: to receive 15% off.
Speaker 2: What kind of a show are you guys putting on
Speaker 2: here today?
Speaker 1: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Well, look, we're going to do this thing.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a conversation. From Chicago, this is
Speaker 2: Film Spotting. I'm Adam Kempinar.
Speaker 1: And I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 3: I've been out walking.
Speaker 1: I don't do too much talking these days.
Speaker 2: The right song and the right scene can stop time.
Speaker 2: This week, it's our top five movie needle drops with
Speaker 2: Rico Galeano from the movie podcast.
Speaker 1: Plus a little golden brick spotting with It Ends and
Speaker 1: 90s movie villains. That and more ahead on Film Spotting.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Film Spotting. Josh, this top five turns out
Speaker 2: we really like music. We really like movies. So when
Speaker 2: you get three guys together who really like music and
Speaker 2: movies and music in movies, we had a lot to say.
Speaker 1: We should have seen this coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like doing a film spotting podcast
Speaker 1: and a music spotting podcast episode in one. So we
Speaker 1: went on a bit.
Speaker 3: This is true.
Speaker 2: We invited Rico Galeano from the Mubi podcast. And this season,
Speaker 2: as you'll hear, he's doing a podcast for Mubi devoted
Speaker 2: to needle drops. That's the crossover. We thought we might
Speaker 2: go long. We just didn't come up with a good
Speaker 2: strategy for it. We had to come up with a
Speaker 2: strategy for how to deal with such a long show
Speaker 2: after the fact. It took so long, in fact, that
Speaker 2: I decided to put a different shirt on. So here
Speaker 2: we are.
Speaker 1: This isn't that we're recording a few days later now.
Speaker 1: You just did a break and a costume change, basically.
Speaker 2: I was sweating profusely. So we have regrouped. And what
Speaker 2: we're going to give you is part one. I don't
Speaker 2: know that we've really ever done this other than our
Speaker 2: old top 10 shows that we used to divide into.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You're getting part one here. And then depending on when
Speaker 2: you access these shows, you'll have part two in your
Speaker 2: feed as well. You're going to get the top five
Speaker 2: picks five through four and our definitions and criteria. And
Speaker 2: then later you'll get picks again. three through one. You'll also,
Speaker 2: in this show, get some commentary about a very good
Speaker 2: new film called It Ends and our 90s movie villains poll.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and kick it back to ourselves now
Speaker 2: and welcome in Rico Galeano from MUBI. We are very
Speaker 2: pleased to be joined now by the head of audio
Speaker 2: at MUBI, Rico Galeano, a returning guest here on Film Spotting. Rico,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 4: I am so glad to be back. I couldn't, like,
Speaker 4: you know, my day was going pretty good. Now it's
Speaker 4: about to get awesome.
Speaker 2: We'll see how it goes. I mean, maybe we'll let
Speaker 2: you down.
Speaker 1: I like the confidence. I like the confidence, Rico. Thank
Speaker 1: you for bringing that.
Speaker 3: How could it be wrong? We're going to talk about
Speaker 3: music and movies.
Speaker 2: What could be better indeed? And you inspired this top
Speaker 2: five because you have been putting out into the world
Speaker 2: and we've been enjoying it. Side two, needle on the
Speaker 2: record side two. This is part of the movie podcast,
Speaker 2: and you first did this in 2023. What made you
Speaker 2: want to revisit this series?
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean, if I had my druthers, this would
Speaker 4: be the series.
Speaker 2: Maybe it could be.
Speaker 3: I'm a music and movie geek.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is our latest season is the second time
Speaker 4: that we're tackling great needle drops in movies.
Speaker 1: And I mean, mainly.
Speaker 4: what's funny is that I think since we did the
Speaker 4: first one, first of all, the first one was really successful.
Speaker 4: So that always helps the first season that we did
Speaker 4: of this is really successful. And then ever since then,
Speaker 4: I've been thinking about the movies that I wish that
Speaker 4: I had also had a chance to cover the, we
Speaker 4: had a great time the first time. And, uh, what's
Speaker 4: funny is that I actually kept track of all the
Speaker 4: ones that, you know, you would think of something and
Speaker 4: be like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would love to talk about that.
Speaker 4: None of those actually ended up being in the season
Speaker 4: for various reasons that had nothing to do with my.
Speaker 3: Love of them.
Speaker 4: Um, but that was also cool because actually we did
Speaker 4: a few that I knew the movies, but I hadn't
Speaker 4: really realized how interesting and important some of the music
Speaker 4: was in them.
Speaker 3: So that was groovy.
Speaker 2: What was the biggest discovery for you then this time
Speaker 2: putting the season together?
Speaker 3: Uh, it was probably the movie belly.
Speaker 4: Uh, for those who don't know, um, hype Williams only
Speaker 4: film hype Williams being one of the great hip hop
Speaker 4: video directors.
Speaker 3: Uh, starting in the late eighties, I believe.
Speaker 4: And really like a ground zero for a lot of
Speaker 4: amazing music. He was originally, he was based out of
Speaker 4: Queens and like actually, you know, in his neighborhood where
Speaker 4: people like LL Cool J, there were one of the
Speaker 4: very first music video shows, hip hop video programs was
Speaker 4: a local, I think cable access show that came out
Speaker 4: of Queens and And he worked for the guy who
Speaker 4: created that show, had his own production company. And he
Speaker 4: worked for them and ended up doing all of these videos.
Speaker 4: He became like one of the great rap videos directors.
Speaker 4: And then the late 90s, I think 98, he did Belly,
Speaker 4: which is this insane fever dream of a movie. It
Speaker 4: stars all these hip hop guys, Nas, DMX, T-Boz, and...
Speaker 4: But if you think about a gangster movie, because that's
Speaker 4: what it is, it's like this gangster movie. There were
Speaker 4: a lot of those coming out, Juice, Menace to Society.
Speaker 4: Those have been coming out throughout the 90s. This movie
Speaker 4: is like the art film version of that. And I
Speaker 4: had never seen it. And it is just like stupefyingly beautiful.
Speaker 4: And it's had a huge impact that was unbeknownst to
Speaker 4: me on a lot of filmmakers, especially black filmmakers, because
Speaker 4: of the way that it actually photographs black skin. which
Speaker 4: many black filmmakers have since taken, like Moonlight, Barry, I'm
Speaker 4: going to blow it. Barry Jenkins. Barry Jenkins has talked
Speaker 4: about that movie as a major sort of visual touch point.
Speaker 4: But also the opening sequence of that movie has had
Speaker 4: a big, you know, it's been parodied. It's been aped
Speaker 4: by lots of hip hop videos and lots of directors.
Speaker 4: And it's like this opening sequence that's actually not set
Speaker 4: to a hip hop song. And that was also fascinating
Speaker 4: to me. This guy was totally into hip hop. And
Speaker 4: it stars all these hip hop guys. You could start
Speaker 4: with any of their songs. Obviously they're in the movie.
Speaker 4: And instead he starts with this like late eighties dance track,
Speaker 4: which is the acapella version of soul to souls back
Speaker 4: to life. Figuring out why he chose that, how important
Speaker 4: that song actually was to, and probably still is to
Speaker 4: hip hop culture. And then the impact of that, that's song,
Speaker 4: which is actually very, has a lot of space to it.
Speaker 4: And it doesn't even have a beat that comes in
Speaker 4: until very late in the song, but it's. The music
Speaker 4: is the background to a robbery sequence and the kind
Speaker 4: of audacity of taking this very quiet tune and putting
Speaker 4: it against this robbery sequence right at the beginning of
Speaker 4: your movie. And also the way that sequence is shot,
Speaker 4: it's set in a nightclub. It's a robbery at a nightclub.
Speaker 4: There's these like black lights anyway, all of this. The
Speaker 4: movie is just amazing to me and is also just crazy.
Speaker 4: There's all this stuff going on. We talked to the
Speaker 4: guy who came up with it. He was one of
Speaker 4: the co-story writers of it, talking about the ideas behind
Speaker 4: it that are not necessarily even apparent on first viewing.
Speaker 4: There's a lot going on in that movie. It was
Speaker 4: a big revelation to me.
Speaker 1: I think we've got the right person, Adam. We already
Speaker 1: have an excellent pick here and we haven't even started
Speaker 1: our list.
Speaker 2: No, it's true. And that was a discovery for me.
Speaker 2: I didn't end up getting a chance to watch the
Speaker 2: entire film, but watching that sequence, a discovery for me
Speaker 2: because it was a discovery for you.
Speaker 3: You had not heard of it?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had heard of Belly, but I had
Speaker 2: never watched that scene and I didn't know it was
Speaker 2: such a touchstone for so many people. But came up
Speaker 2: again and again in doing research for this top five
Speaker 2: as well. It was on so many lists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is surprising, right? I mean, there's like fashion.
Speaker 4: I was told by one of the guys that I
Speaker 4: spoke to that there was a fashion module that was
Speaker 4: based on the color scheme of this opening sequence. There's like,
Speaker 4: you know, a pair of tennis shoes that was put out,
Speaker 4: you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: Pretty amazing.
Speaker 4: Sneakers, sorry, not tennis shoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I would like for you to share with the
Speaker 2: audience here a couple more things. maybe it was that one,
Speaker 2: but do you have a favorite episode this season that
Speaker 2: you put together? And maybe you alluded to this, but
Speaker 2: maybe you could share with the audience as well how
Speaker 2: you put these episodes together, because it's not just you
Speaker 2: have one person on, a guest or two, and you
Speaker 2: talk about the music. You're really putting together a whole
Speaker 2: tapestry here. I mean, you are digging into how the
Speaker 2: music is constructed and the how and the why and
Speaker 2: the who.
Speaker 4: Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about
Speaker 4: this because it's a rare opportunity to be able to
Speaker 4: do a show like this in any medium, but especially
Speaker 4: in podcasting these days. It's like an audio documentary series.
Speaker 4: So we're talking to multiple people and we have original music.
Speaker 4: We use archival clips of stuff that was going on
Speaker 4: at the time, as well as from the movie itself.
Speaker 4: So we're weaving all this stuff together to tell the
Speaker 4: whole arc of the story of the making of the
Speaker 4: film and how it dovetails with the music, why the
Speaker 4: music is important, why that music was chosen. In a way,
Speaker 4: this season, it was actually, I was so excited to
Speaker 4: do it. And then as I was doing it, I
Speaker 4: was reminded of the first season. It's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm basically telling two stories here. It's the story of
Speaker 4: the movie and the story of the music. And I
Speaker 4: have to ping pong back and forth between the two
Speaker 4: of them. And it was kind of a nightmare.
Speaker 3: Actually, to put it together. A joy and a nightmare.
Speaker 4: But the ones that I like the best, this is
Speaker 4: for kind of personal reasons. The first episode of the
Speaker 4: season was for Whisper of the Heart, the Studio Ghibli
Speaker 4: animated film, which is another movie. Actually, it was recommended
Speaker 4: by one of the guys on our team, who is
Speaker 4: a big anime guy. I had not seen this one.
Speaker 4: It's not actually directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It's one of
Speaker 4: his other sort of proteges that made it, his only film.
Speaker 4: And so I had not heard of it. It didn't
Speaker 4: get as much play. It was a huge hit in Japan,
Speaker 4: but not as huge a hit in the US.
Speaker 3: And it's just beautiful. It's not this kind.
Speaker 4: Of dreamlike movie like a lot of Hayao Miyazaki's stuff is.
Speaker 4: It's very grounded in reality. It's kind of a love
Speaker 4: story between teenagers. It's very much like I was told
Speaker 4: that the visual representation of Tokyo in this movie, if
Speaker 4: you lived in Tokyo in the 90s, you would be
Speaker 4: able to recognize advertisements, be like, oh yeah, I know
Speaker 4: exactly where that intersection is, that kind of thing, like
Speaker 4: super detailed, realistic, but very beautiful love story.
Speaker 3: And weirdly, the.
Speaker 4: Kind of musical theme through the film is... The John Denver,
Speaker 4: originally John Denver song, Take Me Home Country Roads. Weirdly,
Speaker 4: we put out this episode and then a few months later,
Speaker 4: the World Cup happened. And all of a sudden, everyone
Speaker 4: was talking about that because it became the U.S. soccer
Speaker 4: team's anthem. It's already, it's other teams' anthems in the U.K.,
Speaker 4: by the way, I think, Arsenal. And, uh, by the way,
Speaker 4: it may not be Arsenal and people right now are
Speaker 4: screaming if I've got that wrong. I'm sorry, guys. I'm
Speaker 4: not a sports dude. Um, but that song personally for me,
Speaker 4: I think that song.
Speaker 2: I thought it was Manchester and it is in fact
Speaker 2: Manchester United.
Speaker 3: It's Manchester.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. Should I go back and retake it?
Speaker 1: No, no. Leave me out there.
Speaker 2: Let's run with it.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm dead, man. Uh, so I grew up though.
Speaker 4: In West Virginia as a really young kid. And Take
Speaker 4: Me Home Country Roads, you know, Almost Heaven, West Virginia
Speaker 4: is the first line of it. So it's totally embraced
Speaker 4: by people in West Virginia. And I think John Denver,
Speaker 4: maybe even before the Beatles, was one of the first
Speaker 4: pop musicians that I was into as a really little kid.
Speaker 4: And by doing this episode, talking about that song, I
Speaker 4: got to interview the guy who co-wrote it. And that
Speaker 4: was just, first of all, he's a great guy. It's
Speaker 4: like in his eighties and he's just totally got it together.
Speaker 4: Remembers every single detail about coming up with it. He's
Speaker 4: like one of these really great folk singer type dudes.
Speaker 4: And he just has all these stories about John Denver,
Speaker 4: but also learning about the history of that song and
Speaker 4: how many versions of it came out almost immediately. Cause
Speaker 4: this was John Denver's first hit. Nobody knew who he was.
Speaker 4: So to make it a global hit, they gave it
Speaker 4: to all these other people. There's the Toots and the
Speaker 4: Maytals version. The movie opens with Olivia Newton-John's version, which
Speaker 4: was apparently huge in Japan and probably why they used
Speaker 4: it in the first place. And then also talking to
Speaker 4: the teenage daughter of the producer for Studio Ghibli, who
Speaker 4: was the one who wrote the Japanese lyrics for Take
Speaker 4: Me Home Country Roads for the film and how they
Speaker 4: subvert the meaning of the song. which seems like this
Speaker 4: very nostalgic song about going back home and how great
Speaker 4: it will be back home. She takes the lyrics and
Speaker 4: turns it into being about, I'm not going to go
Speaker 4: back home, even though that would be nice. I'm going
Speaker 4: to persevere and move forward into the future kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And why that would be something that a teenager in
Speaker 4: the 1990s in Japan would want that song to say
Speaker 4: is also fascinating. Anyway, so it was just like learning
Speaker 4: about this tune that has been with me since I
Speaker 4: was a little kid and like seeing how much of
Speaker 4: a deal it is all over the world.
Speaker 2: Sure. Well, I still have a few episodes left in
Speaker 2: the series, but I'm enjoying it so far. I hope
Speaker 2: our listeners will seek it out. You can get the
Speaker 2: movie podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And let's jump
Speaker 2: in to our needle drops. Josh, we can come back
Speaker 2: to Rico as our needle drop expert here in a moment.
Speaker 2: But of course, our usual approach is we like to
Speaker 2: define the top five lists. I don't know if we
Speaker 2: need to define what a needle drop is, but that's
Speaker 2: how we usually do it. And we establish our criteria.
Speaker 2: And I'll start with you. But when I was thinking
Speaker 2: about this, I always kind of took for granted. I
Speaker 2: knew what a needle drop was. And then I started
Speaker 2: looking around. I'm looking at some different lists online. I
Speaker 2: found one from Fader, thefader.com. They had the 100 best
Speaker 2: needle drops in film and television history. And I'm looking
Speaker 2: at the list and I'm thinking, I'm seeing some here
Speaker 2: that didn't strike me as what I thought was maybe
Speaker 2: a needle drop. And then I read their definition and
Speaker 2: it seems so broad. And this is what they said.
Speaker 2: a piece of diegetic or non-diegetic music that enhances the mood, flavor,
Speaker 2: and or narrative of the film slash show. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: so a needle drop is wrong. I mean, it's just,
Speaker 2: so it's just any, it's any prerecorded music. And, and,
Speaker 2: and that, that kind of seems to be what a
Speaker 2: lot of, a lot of sites were, were going with it,
Speaker 2: going with. And I, I almost Josh went with, or
Speaker 2: it was going to force myself to go with a
Speaker 2: needle drop being, it had to be, had to be,
Speaker 2: completely non-diegetic. That the needle drop for me was a
Speaker 2: filmmaker is the one dropping the needle, right? Like they're
Speaker 2: dropping it over the film is the way I almost
Speaker 2: thought of a needle drop. Not that that was the
Speaker 2: right definition, but that was going to be my definition.
Speaker 2: I didn't end up setting that restriction. And I actually
Speaker 2: only ended up with one, I think that was truly
Speaker 2: completely non-diegetic. So we'll see as we get through our list.
Speaker 2: How did you end up defining it?
Speaker 1: I had a very similar experience where I thought we
Speaker 1: didn't need to think much about this one. It was obvious.
Speaker 1: And then when I sat down, I realized, yeah, the non-diegetic,
Speaker 1: diegetic question came up. The opening credits sequence came up
Speaker 1: to me. Do I set those aside? And as usual,
Speaker 1: what happens is I needed boundaries to winnow down my
Speaker 1: list to justify for me setting some things aside. So
Speaker 1: I largely did avoid opening credits, I think. I also
Speaker 1: went in search of a handy definition. I found one, Adam,
Speaker 1: that's maybe not quite as specific, but I did use
Speaker 1: as a guideline for not only my choices, but organizing
Speaker 1: the order of my list and thinking about how these
Speaker 1: songs were actually working in the context of the film.
Speaker 1: So this comes from The Hollywood Reporter, a 2025 roundup
Speaker 1: of the top 40, appropriately, I think they probably chose that,
Speaker 1: top 40 of all time, they said. And this was
Speaker 1: co-written by Scott Roxborough and Patrick Breski. Here's their definition
Speaker 1: of a needle drop. The use of a preexisting track
Speaker 1: that compliments, collides with, or completes the images on screen,
Speaker 1: creating something bigger than either alone. So I loved that
Speaker 1: narrowing in on compliments, collides with, or completes because it
Speaker 1: just gave me a way in to think about the
Speaker 1: use of the song. didn't really restrict me from choosing
Speaker 1: an opening credit sequence. If I wanted to, wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if the two of you might have that.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Um, so yeah, it just, it, it painted a way forward.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the end all be all definition.
Speaker 1: But it was helpful to me because this is a
Speaker 1: massive topic with so many amazing choices.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: I just needed something to cling on to.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know that that actually helps you narrow
Speaker 2: anything down. That still opens you up to almost the
Speaker 2: entirety of great needle drops.
Speaker 1: It's not more specific, but it does. The way it
Speaker 1: helped me narrow down is, you know, there are great
Speaker 1: songs that are dropped into a movie that we love.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: To me, if it didn't really do one of those
Speaker 1: things distinctly.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1: And compliment is a little broad, right?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously every song chosen, it wouldn't make our
Speaker 1: list if it didn't compliment it in some way.
Speaker 2: In some way.
Speaker 1: But I understand. But I do, yeah, I do think
Speaker 1: the notion that a needle drop can work differently was
Speaker 1: helpful to me.
Speaker 2: Okay. Rico, you're our expert. How did you define it?
Speaker 2: How did you approach your top five?
Speaker 4: I don't think I get the final say on any
Speaker 4: of these things. You're both, you know, perfect gentlemen and
Speaker 4: very wise. And I think that there's legitimacy to both
Speaker 4: your approaches. If that's as wishy-washy as it sounds.
Speaker 2: This is why we love having you on the show, Rico.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 3: You guys are great. Your hair, if anyone could see it.
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1: Keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 4: Life Itself, great movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poster behind you.
Speaker 3: I see that movie poster behind you, Adam.
Speaker 2: Impeccable taste in decor.
Speaker 3: Excellent choice in docs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait.
Speaker 4: One thing, though, Adam.
Speaker 3: Bruce, can you reread yours?
Speaker 2: It was a piece of diegetic or non-diegetic music that
Speaker 2: enhances the mood, flavor, and or narrative of the film
Speaker 2: slash show. Because they included television as well in this topic.
Speaker 2: The problem that.
Speaker 4: I have with that is that it's got to be,
Speaker 4: I go more with Josh only in the sense that
Speaker 4: I do think it has to be pre-existing. The idea
Speaker 4: is that you're taking something that existed outside the world
Speaker 4: of the movie beforehand and now you're using it. to
Speaker 4: bring into the world of the film.
Speaker 2: And quite frankly, maybe if I look back at the
Speaker 2: list that was spelled out somewhere before that, but I'm
Speaker 2: quoting from the list and it's not said in the definition.
Speaker 3: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Which would be crazy because that is part and parcel.
Speaker 3: Of- That's all music.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's all music in cinema, for God's sake. A score
Speaker 4: could be defined as that basically.
Speaker 2: It could be, right?
Speaker 4: So, but other than that, I think anything goes pretty much.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: And I think I probably- think of a great needle
Speaker 4: drop along the lines of josh's my favorite though being
Speaker 4: i'm actually as i'm thinking about i'm not sure that
Speaker 4: this applies to any of the ones i actually ended
Speaker 4: up choosing because i chose a lot of them based
Speaker 4: on some nostalgia although i can make great arguments for
Speaker 4: all of them as well i think but the i
Speaker 4: really like the contradiction a piece of music that is
Speaker 4: dropped in contradiction to what's going on on the.
Speaker 2: Collides colliding that was really a nice term yeah I.
Speaker 4: Feel like that is a vast majority of, say, Martin
Speaker 4: Scorsese's use of music. He loves putting something that may
Speaker 4: be era appropriate over a sequence that otherwise has nothing
Speaker 4: to do with the music that you're listening to.
Speaker 1: Interesting that you say that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 2: You may return to that. You may return to that.
Speaker 2: And I think as we get through my list, you'll
Speaker 2: have a couple that directly complement and some where there
Speaker 2: may be a little bit of a collision. I'm with you. though, Josh,
Speaker 2: I love this topic so much. I as well. And
Speaker 2: I had so many good options. I felt that I
Speaker 2: needed some, I really needed to set some boundaries as well.
Speaker 2: So I went, I went a step further than, than you.
Speaker 2: And I started thinking about, could I, could I approach
Speaker 2: this where do I narrow my list down to a
Speaker 2: top five where I'm thinking about who are the most
Speaker 2: frequent and adept purveyors of the needle drop? And do
Speaker 2: I pick maybe a favorite from each of them? And
Speaker 2: I came up with a top seven and I will
Speaker 2: share the top seven later, but I did end up
Speaker 2: having four of those represented. I didn't go that route,
Speaker 2: but I still ended up having four of those top
Speaker 2: seven represented. And I think you would probably guess who
Speaker 2: the top seven are. But then here's where I did
Speaker 2: end up. I thought, you know, arguably part of what
Speaker 2: makes needle drops so effective very often anyway, is familiarity.
Speaker 2: That we usually recognize the songs and our relationship to them.
Speaker 2: Not always, but our relationship to them can inform our
Speaker 2: connection to the scene. And I wanted to go the
Speaker 2: other way and focus on something that I often go
Speaker 2: to the movies for, which is surprise and discovery. What's
Speaker 2: better with music than when Josh, you, or Rico, if
Speaker 2: we're hanging out and you say, I've got a song
Speaker 2: you've got to hear. Have you ever heard this band before?
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard this track before? And you play
Speaker 2: it for me and my mind is blown. And then
Speaker 2: I'm the biggest fan of this band now. And I
Speaker 2: can't wait to go hear all of their songs. What's
Speaker 2: better than going to see a movie, hearing a song
Speaker 2: you've never heard before. You love the scene. You love
Speaker 2: the song. And now you just can't wait to hear more.
Speaker 2: And I said, you know what? I'm going to pick
Speaker 2: five where the filmmaker was introducing me to a song.
Speaker 2: And in some cases, a song and a performer that
Speaker 2: had me not only engaged as a movie viewer, but
Speaker 2: as a music listener. And I left the theater wanting
Speaker 2: to hear that song again, and I wanted to discover
Speaker 2: more of that artist's work. So all five of the cases,
Speaker 2: I'd never heard the song before. And even if I
Speaker 2: was familiar with the artist, in the moment, I couldn't
Speaker 2: connect the song to that artist. So a good example
Speaker 2: of that would be In the Royal Tenenbaums, she smiled
Speaker 2: sweetly when Margot drops the actual needle drop on the
Speaker 2: record player in the tent with Richie. How many stitches
Speaker 2: did you get?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: You want to see it?
Speaker 2: Of course I know the Rolling Stones, but I've never
Speaker 2: listened to that album and I didn't know the track
Speaker 2: She Smiled Sweetly. I know Ruby Tuesday. That was on
Speaker 2: the radio. I didn't know She Smiled Sweetly. And I
Speaker 2: was like, I love this song. This is an incredible song. Now,
Speaker 2: I might have picked that, except Rico, we have this
Speaker 2: thing on FilmSpotting called the Pantheon, which is our little
Speaker 2: Valhalla of movies. And for us, those picks from those
Speaker 2: movies are ineligible. So even if I wanted to pick, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Royal Tenenbaums, I can't. You know what else I
Speaker 2: can't pick?
Speaker 1: Good fellas.
Speaker 2: I can't pick. I was going to get there because
Speaker 2: that's the craziest one. I can't pick The End from
Speaker 2: The Doors from Apocalypse Now. I can't pick Hotel California
Speaker 2: from The Big Lebowski, The Sound of Silence from The Graduate,
Speaker 2: or These Days from The Royal Tenenbaums. I can't pick
Speaker 2: Layla from Goodfellas, or Sunshine of Your Love from Goodfellas,
Speaker 2: or any other track from Goodfellas. You could do an
Speaker 2: entire top five just from Goodfellas.
Speaker 1: Ineligible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: Because it's in the pantheon. Let's go ahead and get
Speaker 2: into our list. We're going to let you as our
Speaker 2: guest start. Rico, what's your number five needle drop?
Speaker 4: Oh man, this is like starting a negotiation. You always
Speaker 4: want somebody else to go first to set the floor.
Speaker 4: So then I'm going to start with, I did not
Speaker 4: say that opening credit sequences were verboten. I did go
Speaker 4: with an opening credit sequence.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 3: I'm looking through here.
Speaker 4: I don't think I picked any others, but this is
Speaker 4: to me, one of the greatest opening credit sequences ever.
Speaker 4: And it's to Ghost World, the 2001 movie. And that
Speaker 4: opening sequence is set to, interestingly, a piece of film
Speaker 4: music from the past and from a different country. It's
Speaker 4: a song called Yan Pechan Ho. I hope that I'm
Speaker 4: pronouncing that correctly. And it's sung by Mohamed Rafi, and
Speaker 4: it was created by the team of Shankar Jakishan, who
Speaker 4: are one of the greatest songwriting duos in Indian film history.
Speaker 4: And I say all that like I know a ton
Speaker 4: about Indian film history. The fact of the matter is
Speaker 4: if I know anything about Indian film history, it's because
Speaker 4: of first hearing that song in that movie. It was
Speaker 4: probably the first piece of Indian film music that I
Speaker 4: was exposed to that I somehow got. I always thought
Speaker 4: it was cool, you know, like Indian film music is interesting,
Speaker 4: but I never felt it in my gut or I
Speaker 4: never had a way into it to understand it. And
Speaker 4: for those who don't remember the movie, it is the
Speaker 4: character of Enid dancing. That's Thora Birch playing the character.
Speaker 4: And she's dancing happily and crazily in her room while
Speaker 4: watching the original Indian film from the 1960s and the
Speaker 4: sequence that featured that song. And she's dancing like crazy
Speaker 4: in her room while we actually see around her the
Speaker 4: cameras panning in and out of windows in the suburbia
Speaker 4: that she's living in. And everybody else is in this
Speaker 4: kind of Dan Klausian style. Just kind of zombified form.
Speaker 4: They're just existing in their little rooms doing nothing, watching television,
Speaker 4: being very bland. And she is dancing, wearing her cool
Speaker 4: clothes to this really cool track from this really cool movie.
Speaker 4: And it sounds like both an Indian piece of music,
Speaker 4: but also it has this surf music component to it.
Speaker 4: Which is probably why I got into it. It's like,
Speaker 4: there's this one Western element to it that makes me
Speaker 4: realize that there's some way that it jives with my
Speaker 4: world in a way.
Speaker 3: And I just, it's a great track. I also many moons.
Speaker 4: Later went to the Netherlands and went to a dance
Speaker 4: club and they were playing it. And there were all
Speaker 4: these Dutch people dancing like crazy to that song. And
Speaker 4: the fact that it is, has that effect on people
Speaker 4: is just wonderful to me. That sequence is incredible. And
Speaker 4: it also sets up exactly what the movie is about
Speaker 4: in a way. It's kind of like this bland environment
Speaker 4: where you've got somebody who's desperate to break out of
Speaker 4: it and is a unique individual trapped in this world.
Speaker 4: Her only way out is through music and images and film.
Speaker 4: You get it right away. It's a beautiful sequence.
Speaker 2: As soon as you said the title, I could hear
Speaker 2: the song. I could picture the scene precisely. That's how
Speaker 2: you know it's a great needle drop.
Speaker 1: That multicultural aspect to... Two reminds me, Rico, of your
Speaker 1: Bend It Like Beckham episode where you talked about the
Speaker 1: use of music there. And obviously there's the, you know,
Speaker 1: the connection with Indian culture, but even beyond that, um,
Speaker 1: that's what makes it, you know, like a discovery, as
Speaker 1: you said, for yourself and in the way Adam was
Speaker 1: talking about in his setup, looking for, for music discoveries.
Speaker 1: So I can probably place, I didn't think about that
Speaker 1: as a definition or a category, Adam, but I could
Speaker 1: probably place my number five pick there. as well as
Speaker 1: a discovery. One thing I did try to resist doing
Speaker 1: is going, Adam, to our Rap Party Picks for Music
Speaker 1: Moment of the Year. Rico, this is a show we
Speaker 1: do every year. Just kind of look back at different
Speaker 1: categories like Funniest Moment, Music Moment. And a cheat way
Speaker 1: of doing this list would just be go back to
Speaker 1: the years of all those and maybe picking those. And
Speaker 1: I thought that would be too easy. So I tried
Speaker 1: to resist that. But I did have to cheat a
Speaker 1: little bit because I am starting here with a discovery
Speaker 1: song that ended up being a scene of the year
Speaker 1: pick I made in 2020. And really, I picked it
Speaker 1: because it's all about the music. And this is the
Speaker 1: acapella sing-along to Janet Kaye's Silly Games in Steve McQueen's
Speaker 1: Lover's Rock. The song I'd never heard before Janet Kaye
Speaker 1: completely unfamiliar with until it was employed a couple of
Speaker 1: times in this movie, actually. It's not just the one sequence.
Speaker 1: This was Adam and I, we shared it as our
Speaker 1: number one film in 2020. It is one of the
Speaker 1: installments to McQueen's Small Axe Anthology, which was set among
Speaker 1: London's Caribbean community. And Lovers Rock dramatizes one night at
Speaker 1: a 1980s house party. So obviously with that setting, music
Speaker 1: is crucial. The title itself refers to a slow groove,
Speaker 1: romantic sub-genre of reggae that emerged in England in the 70s.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Silly Games, you hear it a couple times
Speaker 1: throughout this party. and throughout the movie. But the moment
Speaker 1: I'm picking specifically is late in the party, and the
Speaker 1: DJ turns off the speakers. And the couples who are
Speaker 1: dancing just continue singing Silly Games a cappella for, I
Speaker 1: think it might be like 10 minutes that this goes on.
Speaker 1: And it really is a distillation of, of lovers rock.
Speaker 1: So in that construct, I was talking about compliments collides
Speaker 1: or completes. I see this one as completing the movie,
Speaker 1: what it is trying to do. This is a movie
Speaker 1: all about creating this space for, for freedom. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: trying to especially create the space for these particular young
Speaker 1: people in this particular time in history, in this particular place.
Speaker 1: I love how the dancers become a choir here. It's
Speaker 1: like a needle drop still has a bit of distance between,
Speaker 1: even if it's, even if it's diegetic, right? Even if
Speaker 1: it's something that's in the scene and the character's, press
Speaker 1: play on the CD or literally drop the needle, there's
Speaker 1: still a bit of distance because they're listening, right? They're
Speaker 1: still receiving it as listeners. And this does something special
Speaker 1: where the characters actually become the performers. So naturally, as
Speaker 1: might happen at a party like this, and suddenly they're
Speaker 1: the ones sharing the music. So they're this choir delivering
Speaker 1: this expression of community and unity, and they're creating this
Speaker 1: protective communal space. I also love, I mentioned this during
Speaker 1: that wrap party show, but it's kind of cool that
Speaker 1: Dennis Bovell, who wrote Silly Games, does have a cameo
Speaker 1: on the dance floor during the sequence. So that's where
Speaker 1: I'm kicking my list off with. Relatively recent pick, Janet
Speaker 1: Kaye's Silly Games from Lover's Rock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost made my list. In fact, for a while,
Speaker 2: had it at number five. And that's because it checked
Speaker 2: the box for me. Had not heard the song, had
Speaker 2: not heard of the song or the artist until we
Speaker 2: saw lovers rock. And you're so right. It's communal. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of people dancing. It's so intimate. It's
Speaker 2: so sensual. And there's something about them all starting to
Speaker 2: sing on their own. It becomes like they're under a
Speaker 2: spell and we fall under the spell of it too.
Speaker 2: It's such a scene. It's such a good movie.
Speaker 4: I mean, I have at least one pick on my
Speaker 4: list that is someone in a movie listening to music
Speaker 4: And I wonder what that's about. Because I have a
Speaker 4: feeling there'll be more as we go through our list.
Speaker 4: And in the same way that at some point, I
Speaker 4: recognize that a lot of my favorite scenes in movies
Speaker 4: are people playing some sort of game, either a playful
Speaker 4: game with each other, a verbal game. Actually, now that
Speaker 4: I think about it, there's a scene like that in
Speaker 4: one of the movies I have on my list.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And there's something about watching somebody fall in love with
Speaker 4: a piece of music while you're falling in love with
Speaker 4: a piece of music. I'd have to think about what
Speaker 4: is the attraction of that. I mean, maybe it's obvious,
Speaker 4: but it is beautiful.
Speaker 3: And if you can capture.
Speaker 4: It, I mean, I think also we're music lovers, I think.
Speaker 4: So in a way, it's kind of evoking that experience
Speaker 4: that you know and have such a deep affection for,
Speaker 4: I guess, that gives it that little extra layer when
Speaker 4: you watch somebody fall in love with a piece of music.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My number five, I do have to say it
Speaker 2: wasn't a complete introduction, a little bit of a reintroduction,
Speaker 2: but you'll abide my inclusion, I think, because I had
Speaker 2: never heard the version of the song by this band,
Speaker 2: by the original group And the group is the Delphonics.
Speaker 2: The song is Did I, parentheses, blow your mind this time,
Speaker 2: from Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Of course, Quentin Tarantino,
Speaker 2: one of those top seven and maybe in the top
Speaker 2: two or top one of those purveyors of the needle drop.
Speaker 2: But you know who did perform Did I Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind this time? You guys probably don't know. But I'll
Speaker 2: tell you who did perform, didn't I blow your mind
Speaker 2: this time, back when I heard it in 1986. The
Speaker 2: New Kids on the Block.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if my wife was here, she would have slapped me.
Speaker 4: I gave my heart and soul to you, girl. Now
Speaker 4: didn't I do it, baby?
Speaker 2: I have, well, I had four younger sisters, but my
Speaker 2: sister Melissa, the one directly below me, was a New
Speaker 2: Kids on the Block fan. And I remember her having
Speaker 2: a friend over at the house and they were watching
Speaker 2: Hanging Tough Live, the new kids on the block live.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: And I was curious. I was starting to get into
Speaker 2: music and I'm a year away from starting a band
Speaker 2: with my junior high friends. And so I'm starting to
Speaker 2: get a little pretentious, even though all I'm listening to
Speaker 2: is hair metal. So I'm judging the new kids on
Speaker 2: the block. as I'm watching this concert and this isn't,
Speaker 2: this isn't revisionist history. I was not a fan of
Speaker 2: the new kids on the block, but they, they start
Speaker 2: performing this song. I don't know which songs are they
Speaker 2: wrote or didn't write. And of course they didn't write
Speaker 2: any of them, but they start performing this song. And I,
Speaker 2: I'm like something about this song is different.
Speaker 1: The song survived. This has survived new kids.
Speaker 2: Like this has a beautiful melody. It's got that call
Speaker 2: and response structure. It's got a really great bridge. It's
Speaker 2: got rich harmonies. It's got that incredible key change that
Speaker 2: happens in it. Like, this is just a great pop song.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I remember thinking, am I liking a New
Speaker 2: Kids on the Block song?
Speaker 3: It's okay. It turns out it's okay.
Speaker 2: How can I be enjoying this? And so, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't investigate it any further. We didn't have the
Speaker 2: internet back then at this point, right? Flash forward 11 years.
Speaker 2: I'm in the theater watching Jackie Brown. And Robert Forster's
Speaker 2: Max Cherry, the bail bondsman, has just taken Pam Greer's
Speaker 2: Jackie back to her house after a night in jail.
Speaker 2: And she decides to put on some music, puts on
Speaker 2: a record. I should get some extra points here for
Speaker 2: having an actual needle drop in my top five needle drops.
Speaker 2: She puts it on, puts the record on. Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 2: shows us the extreme close-up of the needle going on
Speaker 2: the vinyl.
Speaker 3: They're listening to music.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the moment the opening lines come in, I give
Speaker 2: my heart and soul to you, girl. I give my
Speaker 2: heart and soul to you, girl. I'm simultaneously thinking, holy crap,
Speaker 2: it's that New Kids on the Block song. And it's
Speaker 2: not a New Kids on the Block song. And I'm,
Speaker 2: if not slowly falling in love with Jackie like Max is,
Speaker 2: I'm absolutely mesmerized by Jackie.
Speaker 1: Now, Adam, are you sure you didn't say... You kids
Speaker 1: did this way better.
Speaker 2: No, I did not think that. And, and, you know,
Speaker 2: Tarantino is just so, he's so smart. The, the first
Speaker 2: thing Max says about the music is it's pretty and
Speaker 2: it is pretty, but the camera is on Jackie when
Speaker 2: he says it. And, and it's not only that it's
Speaker 2: Max's point of view, it's his angle looking up at
Speaker 2: her from the kitchen table that he's sitting at, you know, it's,
Speaker 2: it's because Tarantino shoots it all from Max's point of view.
Speaker 2: When she kneels down in front of the records, the
Speaker 2: camera tilts down just like Max's head would if he's
Speaker 2: looking at her when she kneels down. And then it
Speaker 2: just stays static. There's just cross-cutting between him and him
Speaker 2: looking at her from the kitchen table, static point of view,
Speaker 2: exactly as he would. And he's just watching her in
Speaker 2: her bathrobe. And those two shots, it's two shots, one cut.
Speaker 2: As the music starts playing, Jackie lighting a cigarette. She's
Speaker 2: lighting a cigarette in this kind of dingy apartment in
Speaker 2: a bathrobe against the sunlight of her shades and the
Speaker 2: cut is to Max staring intently just slightly tilting his
Speaker 2: head and it's all just to the opening notes of
Speaker 2: of that song the delphonics and it's romantic as hell
Speaker 2: and and Thankfully, Max, you know, asks Jackie who it is.
Speaker 2: So I, as a viewer, understand that it's the Delphonics.
Speaker 2: I didn't have to think about it the rest of
Speaker 2: the movie. I got the answer to my question. And
Speaker 2: I also figured out that it wasn't the New Kids
Speaker 2: on the Block. It's okay that I loved it back
Speaker 2: in 1986.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 4: By the way, I mean, like, kudos to you for
Speaker 4: picking like the least obvious Quentin Tarantino needle drop that exists.
Speaker 4: There are so many that immediately leap to mind. And
Speaker 4: that is like deep.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess I know most of those songs, but
Speaker 2: I didn't know Little Green Bag. That was a discovery. Good,
Speaker 2: good song. But this scene's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's distinct to your point, Rico. It is another example
Speaker 1: of characters choosing the music for themselves. So the director
Speaker 1: is choosing it, of course. But in the reality of
Speaker 1: the movie, the characters are choosing it. And even in Tarantino,
Speaker 1: those move us differently. I'm thinking of in Pulp Fiction, right?
Speaker 1: When Uma Thurman puts the songs, not coming to me,
Speaker 1: but like there are many characters choosing in Tarantino movies,
Speaker 1: the music, and those feel differently than when he drops
Speaker 1: them on us like a bomb, which are thrilling as well,
Speaker 1: because this is a skill he has. They operate in
Speaker 1: very different ways. So that's why, I mean, Not only
Speaker 1: do I like this pick because it's my favorite, favorite Tarantino,
Speaker 1: but I think it is, he's working in a different
Speaker 1: gear here, even though it's a tool he often employs. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the layers, the layers to it as well, like Jackie,
Speaker 2: Jackie's the kind of person and they're adults at this
Speaker 2: point where she's the kind of person who doesn't need
Speaker 2: to play any games and is just going to pick
Speaker 2: a song that she loves and she's going to play
Speaker 2: it because that's what she's in the mood for.
Speaker 1: It's for her, it's not for him.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. But she also is precisely the kind of
Speaker 2: person who in this movie is playing games. And everything
Speaker 2: she does is a precursor to another move that she's establishing.
Speaker 2: And she does need Max on her side. And she
Speaker 2: knows what she's doing when she puts on one of
Speaker 2: the most romantic, pretty songs of all time and stands
Speaker 2: there in her bathrobe and lights the cigarette in front
Speaker 2: of the shades, right? Like, she does know what she's doing.
Speaker 4: But you mentioned Uma Thurman putting on Girl, You'll Be
Speaker 4: a Woman soon in Pulp Fiction. Think about the difference
Speaker 4: between those two movies. One comes right before, right? It's
Speaker 4: Pulp Fiction and then Jackie Brown, right?
Speaker 3: Am I out of my mind?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's like, this actually almost perfectly illustrates something that
Speaker 4: at first was disappointing to me.
Speaker 3: Now I don't care.
Speaker 4: But at the time, I love all those movies. I
Speaker 4: loved Reservoir Dogs. I love Pulp Fiction, love Jackie Brown.
Speaker 4: But I remember seeing, even when I saw Pulp Fiction,
Speaker 4: I remember thinking there are certain scenes. I always think
Speaker 4: about the moment in that movie where she comes back
Speaker 4: from the bathroom in the burger joint and says, don't
Speaker 4: you love it when your food, you go to the bathroom,
Speaker 4: you come back and your food has arrived, which is
Speaker 4: a thousand percent true and has never been in a
Speaker 4: film before. And I was like, this guy is an
Speaker 4: incredible observer of life. He like, is this guy?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: People think of him as this bloody action guy. There's
Speaker 4: actually not that many shootouts in his movies. There's just
Speaker 4: the threat of violence hanging over a lot of his movies.
Speaker 4: He's actually got this really incredible, you know, insight into
Speaker 4: people and he's going to be doing, you know, any
Speaker 4: kind of movie he wants he can do. And then
Speaker 4: he did Jackie Brown. I was like, see, like, look
Speaker 4: at that. You can see so much more of the
Speaker 4: kind of new wave French influence, you know, in that
Speaker 4: movie and everything. And then it doesn't do as well.
Speaker 4: And then he doesn't do anything for a while. And
Speaker 4: then he comes back with Kill Bill. And at first
Speaker 4: I was very disappointed. It was like, you just gave
Speaker 4: them what they said you were, man. Like they want
Speaker 4: you to be this guy and you're more than that, dude.
Speaker 4: But I don't care anymore. And I actually did like,
Speaker 4: especially when Kill Bill 2 came out, it was like.
Speaker 3: Ah, it's all for a reason.
Speaker 4: But at that moment, I was kind of like, you
Speaker 4: could take those two scenes and those are the difference.
Speaker 4: There's one where he's got Uma Thurman puts on, you'll
Speaker 4: be a woman soon. And she's like literally floating around
Speaker 4: the room. She's like dancing and doing all this stuff.
Speaker 4: In this movie, she puts it on and she just
Speaker 4: sits there smoking a cigarette in her dingy bathrobe. It's
Speaker 4: like the total opposite kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Amazing pick.
Speaker 2: Josh, in a few weeks here on Film Spotting, we're
Speaker 2: hoping to give the sacred cow treatment to T2 Judgment Day.
Speaker 2: Hopefully we'll get a chance this weekend at Regal Cinemas
Speaker 2: to see that movie, to revisit it on the big screen.
Speaker 2: It's like we're back in 1991. We're back in high
Speaker 2: school seeing that film on the big screen. Check REGmovies.com.
Speaker 2: See where that film is playing near you. And if
Speaker 2: you can make it to that one, or even if
Speaker 2: you can't, maybe you can see The Dog Stars, the
Speaker 2: new film from Ridley Scott. That's a film we're hoping
Speaker 2: to see this weekend and maybe give a few minutes
Speaker 2: to next weekend. Certainly the movie that's inspiring our top
Speaker 2: five or our draft next week devoted to the films
Speaker 2: of Ridley Scott. It's also available in IMAX if that
Speaker 2: is an option near you. You may be able to
Speaker 2: see The Dog Stars for free if you are a
Speaker 2: Regal Unlimited member. Regal Unlimited is the all-you-can-watch movie subscription
Speaker 2: pass that pays for itself in just two visits. If
Speaker 2: you sign up for Regal Unlimited using the code of
Speaker 2: film spot 26, you get 15% off. You can see
Speaker 2: any standard 2d movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions.
Speaker 2: And with Regal Unlimited, you won't just save money on tickets.
Speaker 2: You do also get 10% off all non-alcoholic concessions. We
Speaker 2: encourage you to sign up now in the Regal app
Speaker 2: or at the link in our description and use code
Speaker 2: film spot 26 to receive your discount. Rico, we are
Speaker 2: at your number four. Really?
Speaker 4: I got to top that.
Speaker 3: That's a really good cut. I'm going to go with it.
Speaker 2: This is a tie.
Speaker 4: Because I think, I know you're going to say that
Speaker 4: this is cheating, but I think we can talk about
Speaker 4: them in tandem. Mainly because they had the exact same
Speaker 4: impact on me when I saw them. And they're kind
Speaker 4: of used in the same way, which is in Wings
Speaker 4: of Desire, the Bender's 1988 movie. One of my favorite
Speaker 4: movies of all time. And it's both, well, I'll do
Speaker 4: them in chronological order in the movie. Crime in the
Speaker 4: City Solutions is, Six Bells Chime, and Nick Cave and
Speaker 4: the Bad Seeds from Her to Eternity. Both of these
Speaker 4: are actual performances within the movie. They were both songs
Speaker 4: that existed before the movie came out. But in the movie,
Speaker 4: you see the band sort of lip syncing to as
Speaker 4: though they're performing them. They're both in nightclub sequences. They're
Speaker 4: both in these kind of very, how do I put it?
Speaker 4: They're like faded glamour nightclubs because it's being shot and
Speaker 4: is in a lot of ways about that movie. the
Speaker 4: Berlin of that period, which is just before the wall
Speaker 4: comes down. So it's a city that has a lot,
Speaker 4: you know, it's still kind of in semi ruins from
Speaker 4: World War II somewhat. It's still a kind of walled city.
Speaker 4: There's like all sorts of, and therefore it's very bohemian.
Speaker 4: It blew my mind at the time because I was
Speaker 4: in college radio at the time when this came out.
Speaker 4: And a lot of people were into goth. And I
Speaker 4: actually liked the Cure a lot, but the Cure kind
Speaker 4: of more poppy side of goth, particularly as I was
Speaker 4: getting into them. I thought of goth music as horror
Speaker 4: rock in my mind. It's people dressing like vampires and
Speaker 4: some of it was pretty noisy and like spooky. And
Speaker 4: I kind of felt like it was kitschy maybe in
Speaker 4: some way. I didn't totally get what it was that
Speaker 4: attracted people to it. And that movie and these two
Speaker 4: scenes put it in context for me so that I
Speaker 4: understood the romance of goth music. It's about finding beauty
Speaker 4: in decay. And darkness.
Speaker 3: And it.
Speaker 4: So changed my aesthetics in like 30 different ways. It
Speaker 4: was like, it changed my musical aesthetics because I got that.
Speaker 4: I understood that there was this, there was something could
Speaker 4: sound maybe scary or gritty or something, but there's actually
Speaker 4: something totally different going on underneath it. And it did
Speaker 4: the same thing about places for me. It actually made
Speaker 4: me want to travel that movie. which is not unusual
Speaker 4: than vendors movies are a lot about travel in a way,
Speaker 4: but it made me want to do a certain kind
Speaker 4: of travel, which is to find spaces like that, where
Speaker 4: music like that would be appropriate. That it's like a
Speaker 4: place that is beautiful, but decaying that has history to
Speaker 4: it and is still got, you know, and it's still
Speaker 4: being used in a modern way. the kind of collisions
Speaker 4: of different eras, the fact that it was in this
Speaker 4: faraway place, that people spoke a different language and just
Speaker 4: did things slightly differently. And it's all got this ethereal
Speaker 4: overlay to it, because if anybody knows that movie, it's
Speaker 4: about an angel who falls in love with a woman.
Speaker 4: And in both of these scenes, the angel is with
Speaker 4: the woman and she doesn't know it yet. She's immortal.
Speaker 4: He's an angel watching her in the first scene with
Speaker 4: Crime in the City Solutions. And this music is playing
Speaker 4: and she's swaying like all sort of gently. At one point,
Speaker 4: this non-corporeal being puts his hand over her hand and
Speaker 4: pretends he's holding it and kind of... follows the arc
Speaker 4: of her hand down it's this like totally beautiful graceful
Speaker 4: ethereal moment it just epitomizes so many things for me
Speaker 4: those two things and it's a great example of what
Speaker 4: you were talking about is uh you know going in
Speaker 4: and not knowing a song or not knowing even for me,
Speaker 4: like really getting a genre and having it put in
Speaker 4: context for you so that it's like, not only do
Speaker 4: you get it, but now it's essential. I listen to
Speaker 4: that kind of music whenever I travel now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Nick Cave, if a voice can be cinematic,
Speaker 1: he has one of those. So it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: any use of him probably would work on some level
Speaker 1: in a movie, but certainly does here.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen Wings of Desire since the 90s,
Speaker 2: since I was becoming... A cinephile. One of the movies
Speaker 2: that transformed me. It's been that long and you've made
Speaker 2: me now extremely eager to revisit it. I can't believe
Speaker 2: it's been that long. Talk about a movie we need
Speaker 2: to do a sacred cow on.
Speaker 4: It's one of the most beautiful movies ever. Like no movie,
Speaker 4: literally physically, like, I mean, visually, no movie has looked
Speaker 4: like that since that film came out. The black and
Speaker 4: white in that film is insane. And paired with that music.
Speaker 4: And by the way, that's the other thing. If you listen,
Speaker 4: like the soundtrack for that movie is pretty popular. Because
Speaker 4: of tracks like that. And actually, if you listen to it,
Speaker 4: it sounds like pretty grim in certain ways.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of like sadness.
Speaker 4: There's like one song called Pas.
Speaker 3: A Tende.
Speaker 4: I can't even remember who does it, but it's got
Speaker 4: like clanking kind of, you know, industrial sounds. I think
Speaker 4: because a lot of that music was what was being
Speaker 4: made in Berlin at that time. And that movie is
Speaker 4: a love letter to Berlin. But it's bizarre that I
Speaker 4: now associate all those things with this beautiful love story
Speaker 4: that has, spoiler alert, a happy ending. That's the power
Speaker 4: of music. You can totally recast music like that.
Speaker 1: And you need the visuals to recontextualize it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: All right. So for my number four, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go from a surprise to a nostalgia pick. I think
Speaker 1: it's only fair that nostalgia comes into play here for
Speaker 1: a list like this. And I realized I needed to
Speaker 1: have a track from a John Hughes movie. And this
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily because I was a little young for his
Speaker 1: run as a director and producer in the 80s with
Speaker 1: teen movies. So we've got 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink,
Speaker 1: The Breakfast Club, Weird Science. I think the first one
Speaker 1: I actually saw was probably Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but
Speaker 1: these were in the air. So even as like a
Speaker 1: kid who's just a couple years behind going with friends
Speaker 1: to the theater to see these movies, you knew about
Speaker 1: them and you knew they were the thing to do.
Speaker 1: And absolutely, you knew the music. I mean, just from
Speaker 1: the radio, from the television commercials, from whatever, you knew
Speaker 1: the music. So even if you were too young to
Speaker 1: see the films themselves, you were aware of them. And
Speaker 1: talk about an embarrassment of new wave, early alternative riches.
Speaker 1: This is what you got in these John Hughes movies.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with a song that I remember
Speaker 1: hearing the most from the movie I wanted to see
Speaker 1: the most, but couldn't. And that was 1985's The Breakfast Club,
Speaker 1: specifically Simple Minds' Don't You Forget About Me, used during
Speaker 1: the final moments. I try to stay away from opening credits.
Speaker 1: Do I stay away from end credits? Do I stay
Speaker 1: away from final scenes? But this one is interwoven into
Speaker 1: the final scene well before the credits. So we think
Speaker 1: of it, at least I do in my mind, as
Speaker 1: being a final credit song, but it's not. It starts
Speaker 1: a lot earlier in this sequence, which is after the
Speaker 1: group we've been hanging out with all day separates. They
Speaker 1: leave detention. For those who need a reminder on Breakfast Club,
Speaker 1: it's basically a detention, Saturday detention movie. Cross-section of high
Speaker 1: school humanities who are hanging out with here. Prom, Queen Claire,
Speaker 1: Molly Ringwald, Jock Andrew, Emilio Estevez, Burnout Bender, Judd Nelson,
Speaker 1: Nerd Brian, Anthony Michael Hall, and then Loner Allison. played
Speaker 1: by Ally Sheedy. So they've, you know, against all odds,
Speaker 1: they've bonded over the course of the day across these
Speaker 1: social classes and they're getting picked up in the final
Speaker 1: sequence by their parents in the final moments. And yeah,
Speaker 1: don't you forget about me as we watch them leave
Speaker 1: the building, get into their separate cars and, you know,
Speaker 1: Hughes gives them each distinct moments with their parents, who's
Speaker 1: picking them up. And then, and then interestingly, if I'm
Speaker 1: remembering correctly, there aren't a, edits from one kid to
Speaker 1: the next it's a lot where like the next car
Speaker 1: will pull up in the same frame yes so it's
Speaker 1: kind of still holding them together as we're seeing them
Speaker 1: pulled apart and the song playing over all of this
Speaker 1: is of course also holding them together with their wish
Speaker 1: the wish they have at this moment is that this
Speaker 1: is what they're hoping it's what we're hoping i think
Speaker 1: it's what we know isn't going to happen um they
Speaker 1: want to remain friends come on they were right we
Speaker 1: dug into this when we did our sacred cow review
Speaker 1: of breakfast club, right, Adam. And if I recall, I
Speaker 1: think we were both kind of pessimistic, a little cynical
Speaker 1: about that. But for this moment, for this moment, that's
Speaker 1: what everybody wants. Right. And it's what the song is,
Speaker 1: is asking for. So yeah, just incredible use of simple minds. And, um,
Speaker 1: I was glad I did finally get to see the
Speaker 1: breakfast club. And of course that revisit, the revisit we did,
Speaker 1: it really holds up. I mean, it does. It's a,
Speaker 1: it's still a great movie.
Speaker 3: It's been a while, actually.
Speaker 4: I think it might be like 10 years since I
Speaker 4: revisited that movie.
Speaker 3: But I was.
Speaker 4: Expecting 100% to roll my eyes at it. And there's
Speaker 4: some pretty eye-rolly stuff. It's simplistic at points, for sure.
Speaker 4: And also, by the way, Molly Ringwald has since said
Speaker 4: that she had some discomfort with some of the sequences
Speaker 4: in that movie. So I think we should probably mention that.
Speaker 3: But it does.
Speaker 2: I think we did.
Speaker 3: But it does.
Speaker 4: Still carry a lot of emotional, like, you know, it's
Speaker 4: like pretty, it has some beautiful things to say, you know,
Speaker 4: these kids really open up to each other. You can
Speaker 4: tell that they were feeling it in the moment. I know,
Speaker 4: I remember even when it came out, all of those actors,
Speaker 4: there was like an article in, I think like Newsweek
Speaker 4: that I read at the time that it came out
Speaker 4: or something. And it was like all of those actors,
Speaker 4: every young actor in Hollywood wanted to be in that movie.
Speaker 4: They like would have killed to be in that movie.
Speaker 4: And you can tell they all just like gave it
Speaker 4: their all. And it's really, it's like, it's pretty beautiful.
Speaker 4: I do have some bad news though. I think that
Speaker 4: song was written for the movie. So I'm not sure
Speaker 4: it qualifies.
Speaker 2: Good thing we didn't go by your definition.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes. See, this is why I don't make rules
Speaker 1: for myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Not hard and fast rules. I would have never thought that.
Speaker 2: I just always assumed this was a Simple Minds song
Speaker 2: that pre-existed.
Speaker 4: I believe it was written by like a writing crew
Speaker 4: for somebody to do. And it was brought to Simple
Speaker 4: Minds and Simple Minds was like, we don't do like,
Speaker 4: we're going to do our own music. We don't do
Speaker 4: other people's music.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I suppose the title makes sense, especially considering what
Speaker 2: you just said, Josh, about the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: When do you think then that you finally, do you know,
Speaker 2: when did you finally see The Breakfast Club?
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, it had to be like a
Speaker 1: VHS catch up, right? Once VHS... became more popular and
Speaker 1: common and you were going hanging out at friends' houses,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, this is one that I'm going to
Speaker 1: get to see. Unless I'm misremembering that and it couldn't
Speaker 1: have been the first time for.
Speaker 2: Our sacred cow.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: By 85, it wasn't uncommon for people to have VHS.
Speaker 2: I mean, in 85, I'd already seen this a hundred
Speaker 2: times and had it memorized. That's how often we watch
Speaker 2: this film. So I love that this is on your list.
Speaker 2: It's such a great pick. And I don't want to
Speaker 2: downplay at all that you are positive on this movie.
Speaker 2: You did give it four stars when we revisited it,
Speaker 2: according to Letterboxd, out of five. But I gave it
Speaker 2: five out of five. That's how nostalgic I am for
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club. So I'm so happy.
Speaker 1: Should be on your list.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy that you put it there. I'm actually going,
Speaker 2: so it's so funny, you're going with a pick from
Speaker 2: a movie that in grade school, in junior high, I
Speaker 2: probably would have said was the greatest movie ever, at
Speaker 2: least in grade school, I would have said it was
Speaker 2: the greatest movie ever made, maybe when I was in
Speaker 2: sixth or seventh grade. And now I'm going to go
Speaker 2: to a pick that is a song from a band
Speaker 2: that I never in junior high or high school would
Speaker 2: have admitted to liking. Now, in fairness, I didn't listen
Speaker 2: to them then. And you set me up nicely for
Speaker 2: this pick, Rico, with your number four. And this is...
Speaker 2: this is a choice. This is another, this is a
Speaker 2: director who I would, I would consider another heavy needle dropper.
Speaker 2: And I liked the choice because heavy is a really
Speaker 2: appropriate word for the song as well. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of options to go with from Sofia Coppola's catalog.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to go with just from Marie Antoinette,
Speaker 2: but my favorite happens to meet my criteria for this list,
Speaker 2: my main criterion. And yeah, 2026 me really digs the cure.
Speaker 2: 2006 me was, was cure curious, but, but as I
Speaker 2: was suggesting just a few moments ago, you know, I
Speaker 2: wasn't a listener at all, even in 2006. And, and
Speaker 2: I didn't know when I saw this movie and reviewed
Speaker 2: it here on the show, I didn't know what song
Speaker 2: was playing when I heard it. I just knew I
Speaker 2: thought it was a banger and I had to look
Speaker 2: it up when, when Marie becomes queen. And she and
Speaker 2: King Louie the 16th walk down the descend the staircase
Speaker 2: and everyone's clapping for them. That moment, I just had
Speaker 2: to know what that was. There's no lyrics to it,
Speaker 2: but it was incredible. And the song is The Cure,
Speaker 2: plain song. We don't see a needle drop here. But
Speaker 2: part of what I love about it is that it
Speaker 2: feels like there's a drop. There's an illusion. It's just
Speaker 2: so heavy the way the song comes into that scene
Speaker 2: where King Louis XV has just died. And there's a
Speaker 2: series of shots where we see Schwarzman's Louis XVI being
Speaker 2: crowned his successor. And then a sound comes in on
Speaker 2: the soundtrack that it seems like it could be diegetic almost.
Speaker 2: It's kind of confusing. It seems like chimes. And maybe
Speaker 2: they're coming from inside the church. Or maybe it's non-diegetic,
Speaker 2: but it's like part of a score. It doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like a pop song, but it would be totally appropriate
Speaker 2: for a score for a scene where something so regal
Speaker 2: and sanctified is occurring. And we hear those chimes as
Speaker 2: we see this gorgeous close-up of Kirsten Dunst looking on
Speaker 2: at her husband being crowned. And the camera is just
Speaker 2: ever so slowly tracking forward on her and her face
Speaker 2: is betraying very little, but it's suggesting perhaps some reverence
Speaker 2: for her husband, maybe some pride, but also as I
Speaker 2: read it, some trepidation, maybe some anxiousness. And then the
Speaker 2: heavy part is we're still hearing these chimes, but then
Speaker 2: there's the cut from her face to the stairs. It's official.
Speaker 2: He's the king. She's the queen. And it, is on
Speaker 2: a cymbal crash, and we get that huge synth bass sound.
Speaker 2: And it really does feel like the sound has just
Speaker 2: completely dropped, and we see them moving to that great adulation.
Speaker 2: And of course, like the rest of the movie, it's
Speaker 2: totally anachronistic. It feels like it could be the score
Speaker 2: from a prom scene, Josh, from an 80s movie like
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club, almost, to be more appropriate for that.
Speaker 2: But the The rhythm of it, the momentousness of it,
Speaker 2: it sounds sweeping. It sounds grand like it should be.
Speaker 2: It's just, it's perfect for the scene. And then if
Speaker 2: you do go and listen to the song, if you
Speaker 2: listen to Plain Song, you realize that the chimes are
Speaker 2: part of the song. It isn't just the bass synth stuff,
Speaker 2: the keyboards or whatever. It's the chimes are actually leading
Speaker 2: into it. And that cymbal crash that then is the
Speaker 2: precursor to the, to the synth. It, it's all part
Speaker 2: of the song and, and that it's just such an
Speaker 2: elegant choice for that scene. It was like, it was
Speaker 2: truly like it was made for that moment. And I
Speaker 2: suppose it makes sense that the reverse is true, that
Speaker 2: Sofia Coppola just knew how to perfectly execute the visuals
Speaker 2: around the music. And, and maybe that's exactly what she
Speaker 2: had in mind is, is the way she actually did
Speaker 2: execute it. I love it.
Speaker 4: I think that may be also why that, because it
Speaker 4: presages a party sequence. It goes, it segues from this
Speaker 4: regal thing into a party sequence all within the same song.
Speaker 4: And it maybe is partially why that is one of
Speaker 4: the great party sequences of all time, because it gets
Speaker 4: across how a great party feels when you're young. It
Speaker 4: feels like more than a party.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is where it is at.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's very almost famous.
Speaker 4: And you know that she knows her music because it's
Speaker 4: a rare song that's going to be able to do
Speaker 4: that where you can pivot from something that grand into
Speaker 4: something that youthful. And I mean, it's interesting because when
Speaker 4: I first saw that movie, I could have sworn because
Speaker 4: she's the kind of person that would do this and
Speaker 4: has in fact used bands like New Order. And I
Speaker 4: thought for sure this must have been early factory records,
Speaker 4: like a much earlier song. I thought that it was
Speaker 4: like maybe one of those deals. And it's actually a
Speaker 4: late model 80s tune. For me, it's a deeper cut.
Speaker 4: It's a deeper cut Cura song and a pretty astute
Speaker 4: one to use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Adam, you're warming my heart here. Is this your
Speaker 1: first Sofia Coppola top five? pick, it might be.
Speaker 2: It's possible. It's possible. You went with The Breakfast Club
Speaker 2: and I went with Sofia Coppola. We've switched bodies here
Speaker 2: for this top five.
Speaker 1: Apparently. And The Cure, I mean, listen, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to claim I was listening, you know, disintegration era, but
Speaker 1: Wish was kind of my like, oh, why have I
Speaker 1: not been into The Cure? And yeah, the way it
Speaker 1: works in this sequence and Coppola uses it is absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 1: So So what a win this, what a win these
Speaker 1: lists have been for me so far already.
Speaker 4: By the way, Gang of Four kicking off that movie
Speaker 4: is a total genius choice too.
Speaker 3: I thought for sure.
Speaker 4: When you were starting to talk about that movie, I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, it's going to be that tune because
Speaker 4: it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Like I said, so many options.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, you're talking about seeing a character
Speaker 1: actually like drop the needle. That would not have been
Speaker 1: out of place in that movie. Like we have the
Speaker 1: Converse sneakers, right? I mean, so we might as well
Speaker 1: have somebody, you know, dialing up the cure on a
Speaker 1: record player or something like that. So a reminder, we
Speaker 1: will have picks three through one coming your way. Look
Speaker 1: for that in the feed. Right now, let's take a
Speaker 1: few minutes to thank some members of the Film Spotting family.
Speaker 1: Membership in the family is the single source of support
Speaker 1: for the show. We are independently produced, and so the
Speaker 1: support we get from our listeners is how we're able
Speaker 1: to keep doing this. This is the last weekend. If
Speaker 1: you're listening to this as soon as the show dropped,
Speaker 1: this will be the last weekend for you. to get
Speaker 1: our 20% off discount that we are offering for family membership.
Speaker 1: We're doing this through August 31st. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is use the promo code summer at filmspottingfamily.com and
Speaker 1: you can join the family for 20% off. We want
Speaker 1: to thank family members Michael Shaw, who's in LA, and
Speaker 1: Mikey Rogers in Nashville.
Speaker 2: Okay, Michael and Mikey. We start with Michael, who says
Speaker 2: he found us on a colleague's recommendation, American Fiction and
Speaker 2: What Siskel and Ebert Got Wrong. We're among early listens,
Speaker 2: but I went back at least as far as Josh
Speaker 2: and Michael's review of Sorry to Bother You. Reviews we
Speaker 2: got wrong. Almost every blockbuster slash superhero movie that could
Speaker 2: have been devoted to a potential Golden Brick nominee. Apologies
Speaker 2: to the blockbuster aficionado. So he wants more arthouse stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean you were wrong.
Speaker 1: Just a golden brick show is what Michael wants, it
Speaker 1: sounds like. Not a bad idea.
Speaker 2: A movie he credits with becoming a cinephile. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I've earned genuine cinephile status, but A Clockwork Orange
Speaker 2: was the first film that made me in awe of
Speaker 2: the power of film.
Speaker 1: Mikey says, Josh's book Movies Are Prayers was recommended to
Speaker 1: me by a friend. I found the book to be
Speaker 1: really encouraging, both as a person of Christian faith and
Speaker 1: as a cinephile. This led me to check out the podcast.
Speaker 1: Though not an official film spotting review, I got to
Speaker 1: attend part of Cinema Interruptus for Phantom Thread on a
Speaker 1: trip to Chicago last December. Hearing how Josh facilitated discussion
Speaker 1: of the film inspired me to become a more regular
Speaker 1: listener of the show. Well, thank you, Mikey.
Speaker 2: Thank you for getting us some listeners, Josh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do what I can. I'm out there
Speaker 1: on the streets, Adam. For Mikey, a review we got wrong.
Speaker 1: Dune and Dune Part 2. I think with enough patience,
Speaker 1: these movies are aesthetically rich and thematically profound. Though Josh
Speaker 1: and Adam didn't deride the films, I didn't get the
Speaker 1: enthusiasm I was hoping for towards such a top-quality fantasy blockbuster.
Speaker 1: Not much enthusiasm, no. I mean, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: getting roped into your lack of enthusiasm, Adam. I do appreciate—
Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel, really.
Speaker 2: I can't remember. I'm saying I'm not enthusiastic.
Speaker 1: I know you aren't, and And I'm taking the blame
Speaker 1: for it. I'm positive on both films. Maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: quite as enthusiastic as Mikey, I guess. Okay. As for
Speaker 1: a credit, a movie that Mikey credits with becoming a cinephile,
Speaker 1: Captain America, The Winter Soldier, saw it in theaters when
Speaker 1: I was 12. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Mikey, for
Speaker 1: joining the family and for listening. You can follow Mikey
Speaker 1: on Letterboxd at MikeyRogers58. This response to the questionnaire we
Speaker 1: got from Michael said, not on Letterboxd yet, but may
Speaker 1: bite the bullet soon. You should do that, Michael. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: If we're throwing out cliches, bite the bullet, take the plunge,
Speaker 2: do whatever you have to do, Michael. It's worth it.
Speaker 2: More about joining the FilmSpotting family is available at filmspottingfamily.com.
Speaker 2: You get to listen early and ad-free. You get access
Speaker 2: to that FilmSpotting family-only feed that lets you listen ad-free,
Speaker 2: whether it's on Apple, Spotify, whatever platform you choose. You
Speaker 2: get our weekly newsletter. you get access to the film
Speaker 2: spotting family discord. You also get access to our monthly
Speaker 2: bonus shows. We have not yet taped it, but coming soon,
Speaker 2: you will hear our August blind spotting discussion of Kiyoshi
Speaker 2: Kurosawa's cure from 1997. That's an interesting film. We'll be
Speaker 2: an interesting through the ringer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: To have a dialogue about that streaming on the criterion
Speaker 2: channel and available on VOD, we plan to drop that
Speaker 2: in your family feed. on August 30th. And in September,
Speaker 2: Trivia Spotting, exclusive for family members. So if you would
Speaker 2: like to play Trivia Spotting, you got to be a
Speaker 2: Film Spotting family member. Check your email. You should have
Speaker 2: an invite in your email. RSVP for that. If you
Speaker 2: would like to play, remember the promo code is summer
Speaker 2: and it is only available through August 31st to take 20%
Speaker 2: off filmspottingfamily.com.
Speaker 4: What if we're supposed to suffer.
Speaker 1: Here?
Speaker 3: What if that's the point?
Speaker 1: I'll do it.
Speaker 2: It's time for some golden brick spotting. It Ends is
Speaker 2: new in theaters this weekend. A car full of recent
Speaker 2: grads heads out for a final hang before they go
Speaker 2: their separate ways. A wrong turn puts them on an
Speaker 2: unfamiliar road that seems to never end. The plot description
Speaker 2: available online, Josh, refers to it as a two-lane hellscape.
Speaker 2: You have seen It Ends, which is from first-time feature writer,
Speaker 2: director Alexander Ulam. Producer Sam suggests that I should ask
Speaker 2: you if Hellscape is an accurate description, but what producer
Speaker 2: Sam doesn't know and what you don't know is that
Speaker 2: I have a pretty good idea whether or not Hellscape
Speaker 2: is accurate because it turns out that just prior to
Speaker 2: sitting down to record the show with you.
Speaker 3: Do you fit it in?
Speaker 2: I managed to fit in it.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: Now I do feel like I am still processing this film.
Speaker 2: I want, I want to leave the review. officially up
Speaker 2: to you, but I, I can co-sign any recommendation of
Speaker 2: this and do feel like it is deserving of any
Speaker 2: golden brick nomination that you may give it. This is
Speaker 2: a really good film. The question I'm most eager to
Speaker 2: ask you is, is Gen Z okay?
Speaker 1: No, no, they're not. And they shouldn't be. Think of
Speaker 1: what they're going through. Now, here's the other question. Does
Speaker 1: It Ends directly address specifically what they're going through in
Speaker 1: this moment in time? Does it address what anyone graduating
Speaker 1: from college is going through? I think for me, it's
Speaker 1: maybe somewhere in the middle, which is partly why I
Speaker 1: think it's a really good movie is because it's It's topical,
Speaker 1: but universal. Yes.
Speaker 2: Specific, but universal enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To the hellscape question, I
Speaker 1: think what I would tell people, I do not want
Speaker 1: to spoil anything because I had no idea beyond that
Speaker 1: basic premise where this was going. It definitely begins like
Speaker 1: a waiting for good old type puzzler. Existential, vaguely allows
Speaker 1: you to ruminate on these big questions and Just before
Speaker 1: the title drops takes a, uh, shall we see a
Speaker 1: zombie movie like turn though? This is not a zombie movie.
Speaker 1: It is not want to be clear about that. Um,
Speaker 1: but it, it makes a turn that brings it a
Speaker 1: little closer to maybe a hellscape. Um, but really what
Speaker 1: I loved about this is it's, it's a malleable metaphor
Speaker 1: movie and it, it, that, but it's not so vague
Speaker 1: that it means nothing, but it could precisely mean a
Speaker 1: lot of things to different people. because of the care
Speaker 1: that a Lomaz writer-director making his feature debut puts into
Speaker 1: this and the details of this constricted world that he provides.
Speaker 1: I think it allows you to think that this could be,
Speaker 1: you know, about a number of things. For me, most richly,
Speaker 1: it is about the obvious question of, you know, am
Speaker 1: I now going to enter the monotony of responsible adulthood?
Speaker 1: That's the universal part, right? At the same time, I'm
Speaker 1: eager to see what other interpretations people have, specifically moviegoers
Speaker 1: of the age of these characters, and see how it
Speaker 1: resonates with them, because I think it has that power.
Speaker 1: I also want to call out the lead performer. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not a lead performance. It's maybe the lead of
Speaker 1: this ensemble. I think it is. Yeah, Phineas Ewan. As James,
Speaker 1: who is this cynical, sarcastic, very funny, the kind of
Speaker 1: guy who says no offense to his friend, and then
Speaker 1: you know is going to follow it with something quite offensive.
Speaker 2: He's a cervic. It's a sharp performance.
Speaker 1: It's a sharp performance. But then on top of that,
Speaker 1: he finds ways to layer it with gestures that speak
Speaker 1: to the deep emotionality going inside this young man as well.
Speaker 1: The one that comes back to me, and maybe this
Speaker 1: was written to the script, but it's where he writes
Speaker 1: in marker, his name on a head, on the headrest
Speaker 1: at one point, and then just so slowly smudges it out.
Speaker 1: And the sense of sort of resignation and loss and
Speaker 1: the loss of yearning. It's not even that he's yearning.
Speaker 1: It's like the loss of yearning that that communicates. It's
Speaker 1: an incredible performance. I think in this movie, and Olam
Speaker 1: as director too manages ways. I think here's where it's
Speaker 1: golden brick worthy is not only the idea, the sort
Speaker 1: of clever visionary idea, but the filmmaking here really manages
Speaker 1: to make this constricted setting compelling. I keep thinking of
Speaker 1: a shot which we've seen a million times, the cameras
Speaker 1: inside the car looking outside as they're just driving past
Speaker 1: these woods continually, right? And in the same shot you
Speaker 1: see the trees blurring by outside the window, but he
Speaker 1: also has the side mirror, which is capturing the trees
Speaker 1: blurring from another angle. And it's all in the same shot.
Speaker 1: And the way that just, you know, evokes their experience
Speaker 1: of the bizarre passing of space and time is it's,
Speaker 1: it's just a really visually insightful touch that I think
Speaker 1: this movie is full of. Um, so yeah, but what,
Speaker 1: what did I totally, you know, you having just seen it,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. The way your mind is worrying, not
Speaker 1: because it's so puzzling, but because it opens so many possibilities,
Speaker 1: I feel like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I had a similar reaction, I think, to
Speaker 2: you in that the Yoon performance stood out very much
Speaker 2: to me. I do think the overarching metaphor of it
Speaker 2: seems very malleable. I think that's the right term. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of different people could attach their own
Speaker 2: significance to it. At the same time, it feels very
Speaker 2: much of this generation. I have to imagine that people
Speaker 2: graduating like these characters are going to feel a bit
Speaker 2: more potency, are going to feel a little bit more,
Speaker 2: indicted's the wrong word because it's not an assault on
Speaker 2: them necessarily, but they're going to feel a little bit
Speaker 2: more of an attachment, if you will, to these characters.
Speaker 2: The thing that surprised me about it is that it
Speaker 2: is a high concept. There's no doubt. And it's a
Speaker 2: minimalist type film. And so as a viewer, if you're
Speaker 2: captivated enough by it, if you're intrigued enough by it,
Speaker 2: as I was, you can't help but think, where is
Speaker 2: this going? How is this journey going to end? I
Speaker 2: don't know that any ending can be 100% satisfying. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if it is 100% satisfying, but at
Speaker 2: the same, at the same time, watching it I was
Speaker 2: I was so pleasantly surprised with how effectively Olam kept
Speaker 2: it feeling vibrant kept it feeling like there was always
Speaker 2: something new that there was not only something new always
Speaker 2: to look at the way these characters were finding ways
Speaker 2: to pass the time finding new ways to emotionally challenge
Speaker 2: themselves to have new ways that they were, that they
Speaker 2: were in tension with each other and intention with themselves.
Speaker 2: That that's, that's one of the challenges as a viewer
Speaker 2: watching the film is just thinking, how are we going?
Speaker 2: How are we going to pass the time with these
Speaker 2: characters and keep it interesting and keep it from getting monotonous?
Speaker 2: And it didn't feel that way. It never got that.
Speaker 2: It never got to that point for me, these characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'd agree. And to your point about the ending is, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you come up with a high concept like this,
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up to fail with an ending that's
Speaker 1: going to be completely satisfying for everyone. I kind of
Speaker 1: loved where this ended with a mixture of mystery and humor.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And without undercutting anything that came before. I feel like.
Speaker 1: So that is, again, for a emerging filmmaker, that is
Speaker 1: a challenge you set for yourself. Not only the box visually,
Speaker 1: physically you've placed yourself in, but also having to come
Speaker 1: up with a resolution to this concept. And I think
Speaker 1: Ola manages both pretty impressively.
Speaker 2: We really can't get into this because it would be spoiler,
Speaker 2: but I'm just going to ask you this generally anyway.
Speaker 2: The number... 90 seconds has significance in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you have a theory on that? Have you researched that?
Speaker 1: I haven't. Why, why exactly that amount of time? No,
Speaker 1: I've researched other bizarre things related to this movie, but
Speaker 1: not that. So you've piqued my curiosity. Do you have something?
Speaker 2: I think I have something.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It can't be random, right?
Speaker 1: No, no, no.
Speaker 2: It just cannot be. Why would it be that? As
Speaker 2: well thought out as this movie is, it can't be, right? No,
Speaker 2: it just, it simply can't be. And so I think I,
Speaker 2: I think I have a theory. I don't think it's that,
Speaker 2: that incredible, that remarkable, but it seems kind of obvious
Speaker 2: to me or it just pedestrian, if you will, but
Speaker 2: I don't know what else it could be in relation
Speaker 2: to this film. And, and the state that these characters
Speaker 2: are in, but I'm just curious and I'll have to
Speaker 2: run it by you off air and see what you.
Speaker 1: Oh, cause it would, it would spoil. It would spoil.
Speaker 2: It would, it would give away, it would certainly give
Speaker 2: away the state these characters are in, which I don't
Speaker 2: think we want to get into those kinds of details.
Speaker 1: Okay. Fair enough.
Speaker 2: At this, at this point for, for people who are
Speaker 2: coming to this, this movie, this movie fresh. and we
Speaker 2: are recommending that people see It Ends, and we are
Speaker 2: going to add it to our list of Golden Brick
Speaker 2: nominees over at filmspotting.net. It opens in limited release this weekend.
Speaker 2: What are you doing here? I'm coming with you.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: Please get out.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 2: I made a double bet with Ken, and you can't
Speaker 2: make me look uncool in front of Ken. Ken's not cool!
Speaker 2: He is to me. Time to take a look at
Speaker 2: some poll results. A couple of weeks ago, we asked
Speaker 2: you to choose a director's third feature, That was released
Speaker 2: since 2020. I said this wasn't arbitrary. It's not arbitrary.
Speaker 2: But now you're going to have to remind me what
Speaker 2: the tie-in to the show was.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: What third feature were we discussing on the show?
Speaker 1: A recent... Wow, Adam.
Speaker 3: What was the movie we were talking about?
Speaker 2: You're really putting us both on the spot here. It's
Speaker 2: too late as we're recording this.
Speaker 1: We're failing our producer, Sam, on this.
Speaker 2: Jane Schoenbrun, of course, in Teenage Sex and Death at
Speaker 2: Camp Neon.
Speaker 1: Of course the answer is that obvious.
Speaker 2: The movie that we both think is the best of
Speaker 2: the year so far that we just reviewed two shows
Speaker 2: ago is the tie-in for this poll question.
Speaker 1: Sometimes doing this show is like being in a car
Speaker 1: on a road that just never ends. Interesting theory. You
Speaker 1: forget what show you did when and they blend together.
Speaker 1: Where's the turn, Josh? Where is the turn? Did we
Speaker 1: miss it? I think we missed it.
Speaker 2: So your options were these. Greta Gerwig's Barbie, Ari Aster's
Speaker 2: Bo is Afraid, Brady Corbett's The Brutalist, Olivia Wilde's The Invite,
Speaker 2: Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, Jordan Peele's Nope, Robert Ager's The Northman,
Speaker 2: or you could go other, write in a candidate that
Speaker 2: we failed to include in the poll. Josh, how did
Speaker 2: it come out?
Speaker 1: Always notable when other is not in last place. And
Speaker 1: in this case, it is not. Last place goes to
Speaker 1: Ari Asters. Bo is afraid with 4% of the vote.
Speaker 1: Other did get 5%. And then right there with those
Speaker 1: two is Robert Eggers, the Northman with 6%. Chloe Zhao's
Speaker 1: No Man Land, 8% of the vote. The Brutalist, 9%.
Speaker 1: Little jump up here for the invite. Obviously the most
Speaker 1: recent option in this poll. The invite still received 12%
Speaker 1: of the vote. I mean, that's pretty impressive actually. But
Speaker 1: it was going to come down to these two, Nope
Speaker 1: and Barbie. Barbie took it. 31% of the vote for
Speaker 1: the win. That means 26% went to Nope. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Greta Gerwig for the win here.
Speaker 2: Almost a third going to Greta Gerwig and Barbie. Here's
Speaker 2: Andy Bucati. He says, when you factor in the degree
Speaker 2: of difficulty of taking the general concept of freaking Barbie
Speaker 2: and turning it into a film. Actually, I'm not familiar
Speaker 2: with that version of Barbie. Freaking Barbie. What store? Is
Speaker 2: that available at and turning it into a film that
Speaker 2: appealed to all ages and genders appealed to the masses
Speaker 2: and the art house crowds and the critics was the
Speaker 2: highest grossing film domestically the entire year and garnered copious
Speaker 2: end of year accolades, including eight Oscar nominations. What an accomplishment.
Speaker 2: And yet, despite all that, it's still her third best film.
Speaker 2: What a filmmaker.
Speaker 1: I mean, freaking Barbie, clearly weird. Barbie's sister, Adam. Good point.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 1: All right. Devin Suber wrote in most filmmakers would kill
Speaker 1: to have a scene half as good as the star
Speaker 1: lasso experience. Incredibly, it's not even the best sequence in
Speaker 1: the film. Gordy's home, raining blood. And don't even get
Speaker 1: me started about seeing Inside Jean Jacket, still one of
Speaker 1: the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Nope, was my
Speaker 1: number one film of 2022 from the moment I saw it,
Speaker 1: practically as soon as those scenes hit. And nothing could
Speaker 1: ever even begin to dislodge it. Along with Schoenbrunn, Peele
Speaker 1: is one of those filmmakers you only need to mention
Speaker 1: to get my butt in that seat.
Speaker 2: Here's Rob Stager. It could be recency bias, but the
Speaker 2: invite really knocked me flat, so I'm giving it a
Speaker 2: slight edge over nope today. And Josh, you know this.
Speaker 2: I didn't think there was, well, it's not that I
Speaker 2: didn't have good or high expectations for the invite after
Speaker 2: your high praise and all the good buzz, but it
Speaker 2: didn't seem that likely that a feature by Olivia Wilde
Speaker 2: was going to fare well in any poll that I'm
Speaker 2: voting in after My mixed take on Booksmart and my
Speaker 2: very negative take on Don't Worry Darling, but having now
Speaker 2: had the pleasure of catching up with The Invite, it's
Speaker 2: one of the films of the year.
Speaker 1: Love it.
Speaker 2: Very easily.
Speaker 1: You're on board. Very easily. And I imagine if it
Speaker 1: came out a year ago and we did this poll,
Speaker 1: it would be giving Barbie some pretty tough competition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe so.
Speaker 1: Here's Patrick. The esteemed Sam Van Halgren gave Nomadland five
Speaker 1: stars on Letterboxd. which is my vote. That is all
Speaker 1: the defense rests.
Speaker 3: Okay, Patrick.
Speaker 2: It, you know, it gives me no pleasure to, to
Speaker 2: ridicule Chloe Zhao or Francis McDormand, but, but Patrick, you
Speaker 2: know that, you know that Sam is wildly incorrect sometimes, right?
Speaker 2: Just wildly off base.
Speaker 1: But, but usually not positively, right? I mean, well, you're right. Wait, no, wait, wait.
Speaker 1: I forgot about Temple of Doom. Nevermind. Take that back. Sam, Sam,
Speaker 1: cut that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good point. Here's Kyle Cresce. Bo is afraid without question.
Speaker 2: So Kyle somehow made up all 4%, just hitting the
Speaker 2: vote over and over again. Bo is afraid without question,
Speaker 2: so deeply unhinged and chaotic, but Aster is always in control.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most overlooked films of the decade,
Speaker 2: and as time goes on and Aster's career continues, it
Speaker 2: will be looked back on as a masterpiece. Well, now
Speaker 2: we at least know what Kyle's, or I should say,
Speaker 2: what Ari Aster's Nome de Plume is. It's Kyle Cresce.
Speaker 1: That is bold, Kyle. We shall see. You may prevail
Speaker 1: in the end. Here's our friend Jeffrey Overstreet. It's between
Speaker 1: Gerwig and Peele. Both third films delivered on the promise
Speaker 1: of the previous two and made me all the more
Speaker 1: eager to see what comes next. But wait, we're forgetting someone.
Speaker 1: Doesn't director Tom Moore qualify? The master of Cartoon Saloon's
Speaker 1: innovative animation studio directed The Secret of Cowles in 2010,
Speaker 1: then Song of the Sea in 2014, and then Wolfwalkers
Speaker 1: in 2020. I'd argue that Wolfwalkers is the most visually
Speaker 1: enthralling of the three. We find him elaborating on the
Speaker 1: stylistic strength of the first two. If I learned that
Speaker 1: new films from Moore, Peel, and Gerwig were opening next weekend,
Speaker 1: I'd buy tickets for all three, but I'd go for
Speaker 1: Moore's first and maybe more than once. Okay.
Speaker 2: I love the take. I love it anytime someone's advocating
Speaker 2: for a filmmaker that certainly is not getting enough attention,
Speaker 2: but I have a feeling if we included Tom Moore
Speaker 2: in the poll, he would have gotten less of a
Speaker 2: percentage than Ari Aster.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably true. It's just a little bit
Speaker 1: of an animation bias, or should I say animation awareness?
Speaker 1: Those are all great films, but yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I could put them up against Nope or Barb.
Speaker 2: A few more here. J.P. Aguirre. I will definitely have
Speaker 2: to vote for other for B. Gahan's masterpiece, Resurrection. I
Speaker 2: don't think any film has blown me away in originality
Speaker 2: and ambition as this one. Not only do I think
Speaker 2: it's one of the best films of this decade, but
Speaker 2: for me, might be one of the best of all time.
Speaker 2: The others are Kaylee Blues. Is that Kaylee Blues, Josh?
Speaker 2: That's what it looks like as it's spelled in front
Speaker 2: of me. I haven't seen it, nor have I seen
Speaker 2: Long Day's Journey Into Night from 2018. I am.
Speaker 2: Sadly deficient when it comes to that filmmaker.
Speaker 1: JP is shaming us both here, so I'm afraid I
Speaker 1: can't help you out. Mark Friedman says this, Todd Field
Speaker 1: deserves this nod for Tar. He moved out of the
Speaker 1: small-slash-searing family drama and into a different realm of epic,
Speaker 1: big-personality tragedy with Tar. And he guided an already great actor, Blanchett,
Speaker 1: toward her all-time greatest performance. And yeah, Todd Field in
Speaker 1: the bedroom and Little Children before this. Didn't he come
Speaker 1: up when there was discussion.
Speaker 2: Of the poll? We certainly knew that he qualified. We
Speaker 2: just all felt like it was a different poll with
Speaker 2: Todd Field in it. It didn't feel like the same
Speaker 2: generation of filmmakers. And that is certainly the case if
Speaker 2: we're including RMP's vote, which is Victor Arise, who also
Speaker 2: has just three, The Spirit of the Beehive from 1973
Speaker 2: and Else. from 1983. And amazingly, 2023's Close Your Eyes.
Speaker 2: He has my vote for that last one and my
Speaker 2: gratitude for them all. I've only seen The Spirit of
Speaker 2: the Beehive. So thank you for reminding us.
Speaker 1: I like where RMP is going. I've seen that. And
Speaker 1: Close Your Eyes made my top 10 list that year.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: But again, yeah, again, it's a situation of the space
Speaker 1: between those films is just different than the experience we
Speaker 1: were thinking of when we look at who was in
Speaker 1: the poll, where these are filmmakers who had in succession,
Speaker 1: building excitement, building expectation, a little different there in the
Speaker 1: case of Arise. But Close Your Eyes, great film.
Speaker 2: I knew Close Your Eyes sounded familiar and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to kind of quickly, yeah, I've tried to look up
Speaker 2: to see whether or not I had actually seen it
Speaker 2: and I was speaking out of turn, and I have
Speaker 2: seen it, and I was very favorable on it, so
Speaker 2: we must have talked about it on the show, and
Speaker 2: it turns out only El Sur is one or the
Speaker 2: one of those three films that I have not seen.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone who wrote in and shared your
Speaker 2: feedback and everyone who voted in that poll. The new
Speaker 2: Deeply Flawed Film Spotting poll is inspired by this weekend's
Speaker 2: re-release of T2 Judgment Day. We're asking you to choose one,
Speaker 2: and only one movie villain, Josh, the choices are.
Speaker 1: Agent Smith from The Matrix, Annie Wilkes. I should pause
Speaker 1: between each of these so listeners can get a chance to,
Speaker 1: you know, who's Annie? Oh, Misery. That's right. Okay, this
Speaker 1: one's obvious. Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs. How
Speaker 1: about John Doe? That's seven. Scar, of course, The Lion King, T-1000, obviously,
Speaker 1: Terminator 2, Judgment Day, and yes, We will have the
Speaker 1: category of other. A lot of suggestions on the Film
Speaker 1: Spotting Discord, which is a benefit for Film Spotting family members.
Speaker 1: People there threw out Nicholas Cage's Caster Troy from Face Off,
Speaker 1: Billy Zane's Cal Hockley in Titanic, Warden Norton, Shawshank Redemption.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: How about this? Shooter McGavin, the villain, Adam of Happy Gilmore.
Speaker 1: Kaiser Soce, of course, usual suspects. And I don't know, Mr.
Speaker 1: Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, is he a villain?
Speaker 2: Are you going to bark all day, little doggie?
Speaker 1: Are you going to bite? I mean, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess. I wouldn't want to hang out with him. Unforgiven,
Speaker 1: we could also include Little Bill, someone suggested. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you have an obvious answer from
Speaker 1: the official options?
Speaker 2: It's tough because all of those choices feel pretty good
Speaker 2: to me. And if you look at I hadn't looked
Speaker 2: at this list before we put this poll, but as
Speaker 2: I Google it and you look at the AFI 100 years,
Speaker 2: 100 heroes and villains list, you've got naturally, as you'd expect,
Speaker 2: Hannibal Lecter's number one. So you've got a 90s movie
Speaker 2: villain at number one. You've got, I'm sure there's a
Speaker 2: few other 1990s villains on there. You know who actually
Speaker 2: one of them is that isn't on this list? Annie
Speaker 2: Wilkes is on the list. Number 17, Eamon Goath from
Speaker 2: Schindler's List.
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2: Wow. So I could see that. These feel like pretty iconic, intense,
Speaker 2: scary movie villains from the 90s. It depends on how
Speaker 2: you're approaching it, obviously, as always. Going back to what
Speaker 2: you said, though, if you are taking that to heart,
Speaker 2: I am only taking that to heart because, Josh, when
Speaker 2: I first saw, for example, agent Smith, it's kind of
Speaker 2: easy for me to write off agent Smith because there's
Speaker 2: nothing really compelling about agent Smith. It's just a machine.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of true with the T2. Now T2
Speaker 2: is more interesting to me. The T1000 is more interesting
Speaker 2: to me for whatever reason, maybe it's just nostalgia. Then,
Speaker 2: you know, I was younger and I feel more interesting too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I just have, I was younger when I saw
Speaker 2: the movie. I have a stronger attachment to the film.
Speaker 2: there's something about that, that character that I'm drawn to more,
Speaker 2: but something about agent Smith is just kind of, I
Speaker 2: don't really care that much. I I'm more interested in
Speaker 2: John Doe. I'm more interested in Hannibal Lecter even because
Speaker 2: Hannibal Lecter at least is provocative. Hannibal Lecter at least
Speaker 2: makes us question things about us, right. And the nature
Speaker 2: of good and evil and, And we're drawn to him,
Speaker 2: even though we're also terrified by him and we find
Speaker 2: him repulsive in so many ways. Whereas Agent Smith is
Speaker 2: just whatever. He's just there to stop us from doing
Speaker 2: good things.
Speaker 1: Good performance. Great.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2: And Scar kind of similarly is like, Scar is just
Speaker 2: a bad lion or whatever. Who cares?
Speaker 1: Whoa. Whoa.
Speaker 2: And I love Jeremy Irons, but no. Okay, now.
Speaker 1: If we go with the construct, the theory that I
Speaker 1: said at the top, that a good villain, you can
Speaker 1: have sympathy for, or you can understand the motivation.
Speaker 2: I went too far with Scar, Josh.
Speaker 1: That's Scar, right? Is he? That's Scar.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen him since 93. He's the overlooked brother.
Speaker 1: I can sort of understand where Scar is coming from,
Speaker 1: but this is, I'm going to go your way. You
Speaker 1: often feel like there's a clear answer, like, There's a
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore, right? In this case, there's only one face
Speaker 1: that should be on the 90s villain Mount Rushmore. Yes.
Speaker 1: Is there?
Speaker 2: Did I guess right?
Speaker 1: There's Hannibal Lecter. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to go with Andy Wilkes.
Speaker 1: No, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's Hannibal Lecter, of course.
Speaker 1: It's Hannibal.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is- It's like, what is this? What
Speaker 2: are we doing here?
Speaker 1: What are we doing?
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: And I don't even, I have no sympathy for Hannibal
Speaker 1: Lecter or even want to understand his motivation. So I'm
Speaker 1: going against my own reasoning here.
Speaker 2: Most interesting character, most interesting performance.
Speaker 1: It's, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2: Iconic, unquestionably the most iconic.
Speaker 1: Let's proceed anyway and let's see if we're both wrong.
Speaker 2: We'll pretend this is actually a poll question and we'll
Speaker 2: mock everybody who voted for someone else.
Speaker 1: That sounds like fun.
Speaker 2: We'll pretend to read their comments with interest.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Okay. I could do it. Okay.
Speaker 2: Vote and leave a comment at filmspotting.net. We'll share the
Speaker 2: results and your comments in a couple of weeks. Josh,
Speaker 2: that is our show.
Speaker 1: If you want to connect with us on social media,
Speaker 1: you can find Adam and the show on Instagram, Facebook, Letterboxd, YouTube,
Speaker 1: and Blue Sky at FilmSpotting. I'm Matt Larson on film.
Speaker 1: We are independently produced and listener supported. You can support
Speaker 1: the show by joining the FilmSpotting family at filmspottingfamily.com. You
Speaker 1: can listen early and ad free. You'll get monthly bonus episodes,
Speaker 1: a weekly newsletter, and access to the entire show archive.
Speaker 1: For show t-shirts and other merch, go to filmspotting.net slash shop.
Speaker 2: Bad Lion is definitely the next name of my band.
Speaker 2: American Doctors playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center. That's
Speaker 2: a documentary about three American doctors saving lives while risking
Speaker 2: their own in Gaza. Colony is the latest from the
Speaker 2: director of Train to Busan.
Speaker 1: Idiots.
Speaker 2: It's about two idiots of the title, Dave Franco and
Speaker 2: O'Shea Jackson Jr. They're hired to transfer a rich teen
Speaker 2: to rehab. It's written and directed by Macon Blair. The
Speaker 2: Sun Never Sets is the latest from Joe Swanberg. It
Speaker 2: stars Dakota Fanning, Jake Johnson, and Corey Michael Smith. It
Speaker 2: ends also out in limited release and recommended by both
Speaker 2: of us. In wide release, you can see Buddy, kids
Speaker 2: TV star Buddy, an orange unicorn, starts to crack when
Speaker 2: a kid refuses to play along. Our friend Isaac Feldberg says,
Speaker 2: good God, this goes so much harder than you're expecting.
Speaker 2: The cast includes Kristen Milioti, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, and
Speaker 2: Patton Oswalt.
Speaker 1: I'm in. We've got to congratulate Isaac, too.
Speaker 2: Oh, I saw that. New gig at Letterboxd.
Speaker 1: Over at Letterboxd. So very exciting news.
Speaker 2: Congrats, Isaac.
Speaker 1: Congrats, Isaac. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Coyote vs. Acme is being seen by people on screens.
Speaker 2: Wiley Coyote sues Acme Corp with Will Forte and John Cena.
Speaker 2: T2 Judgment Day, 35th anniversary re-release. We'll go ahead and
Speaker 2: tell people now. We will be late to this because
Speaker 2: it's coming out in theaters now, but we do have
Speaker 2: this penciled in. a few weeks from now to revisit
Speaker 2: this as a sacred cow. So it should be fun
Speaker 2: if that does indeed come to fruition. Ridley Scott's The
Speaker 2: Dog Stars with Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, and Josh Brolin
Speaker 2: is also out. Next week in your film spotting feed,
Speaker 2: the movie racket with Michael Phillips returns. Here is the
Speaker 2: law of motion pictures they will be wrestling with. It's
Speaker 2: a Samuel Golden quote. I love it. It's going to
Speaker 2: be a great show. Pictures are for entertainment. messages should
Speaker 2: be delivered by Western Union.
Speaker 1: I like that one.
Speaker 2: They'll debate it. Tuesday on Film Spotting SVU, it's Desert
Speaker 2: Warrior on Hulu, a 7th century Arabia set epic with
Speaker 2: Anthony Mackie, Sharon Copley, and Ben Kingsley. It's directed by
Speaker 2: Rupert Wyatt, who made Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 2: On Thursday, it's part two of the next picture show's
Speaker 2: pairing with The End of Oak Street and Steven Spielberg's
Speaker 2: The War of the Worlds. And then this is going
Speaker 2: to be great. On Friday, Film Spotting, A draft, me, you,
Speaker 2: Roxanna Haddadi, drafting Ridley Scott films.
Speaker 1: You know what I just picked up from the library today? What?
Speaker 1: My DVD of G.I. Jane.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: Which I have never seen.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: See, there you go.
Speaker 2: I do have maybe three other Ridley Scott films I
Speaker 2: kind of want to watch ahead of G.I. Jane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the draft will actually go that
Speaker 2: deep that I need to watch these films, but... I
Speaker 2: kind of want to watch them, and you never know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll watch G.I.
Speaker 2: Jane.
Speaker 1: You're saying Rex Anna, or maybe I'm not going to
Speaker 1: take G.I. Jane, number one?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Not number one. I have a pretty
Speaker 2: good feeling about that. So we do have to find
Speaker 2: out who's going to draft first, what the order is
Speaker 2: going to be, who's going to be so unlucky as
Speaker 2: to not get Alien or Blade Runner, who's going to
Speaker 2: have to pick G.I. Jane third. That's what we'll have
Speaker 2: to find out with the draft order. Look forward to
Speaker 2: that draft coming Friday.
Speaker 1: Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe DeSoto and Sam
Speaker 1: Van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go.
Speaker 1: Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Special thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: at WBEZ Chicago. More information is available at WBEZ.org. For
Speaker 1: Film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 2: And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening. This conversation can
Speaker 2: serve no purpose anymore.
Speaker 1: Goodbye.
Speaker 3: Bye.